The Big Nowhere

Mal took it hard, going on a two-day drunk, sobering up with a direct frontal attack on the Red Menace. A strongarmed lefty told Dudley Smith that Claire De Haven made “Ted Krugman” as a cop; Mal was enraged, but the consensus of the team was that they now had enough snitch testimony to take UAES down without Upshaw’s covert dirt. Docket time was being set up; if all went well, the grand jury would convene in two weeks. Mal had gone off the deep end, crucifying Reds to perk his juice for his court battle. He’d turned Nathan Eisler’s diary upside down for names, turning out snitches from four of the men Claire De Haven serviced to start her union. His flop at the Shangri-Lodge Motel now looked like Ellis Loew’s living room: graphs, charts and cross-referenced hearsay, Mal’s ode to Da

Buzz kicked the gravestone again; he thought that Captain Mal Considine almost had himself convinced that UAES was a hot damn threat to America’s internal security—that he had to believe it so he could keep his son and still call himself a good guy. Odds on the Hollywood Commies subverting the country with their cornball propaganda turkeys, rallies and picket line highjinks: thirty trillion to one against, a longshot from Mars. The entire deal was a duck shoot, a play to save the studios money and make Ellis Loew District Attorney and Governor of California.

Bagman.

Fixer.

He’d been skating since the moment Mal called him with the news. Ellis told him to run background checks on the names in Eisler’s diary; he called R&I, got their dope and let it go at that. Mal told him to conduct phone interviews with HUAC snitches back east; he gave a third of the numbers cursory calls, asked half the questions he was supposed to and edited the answers down to two pages per man, easy stuff for his secretary to type up. His big job was to locate Dr. Saul Lesnick, the grand jury’s boss fink; he’d skated entirely on that gig—and kept skating in general. And always in the same direction—toward Da

When he knew the hush was in, he drove up to San Bernardino for a look-see at the kid’s past. He talked to his widowed mother, a faded ginch living on Social Security; she told him she didn’t attend the funeral because Da

Buzz drove to the school and badged Bergstrom. The man had seen the newspaper plant on Upshaw’s death, said Da

Bergstrom flushed, twitched, sputtered into his beer and said, “Hell, no”—and two seconds later was whipping out pictures of his wife and kids.

Buzz drove back to LA, called a County pal, learned that Da

Daniel Thomas Upshaw, 1922—1950. Queer.

Turner Prescott Meeks, 1906—? Free ride because the kid couldn’t take it.

“It” couldn’t be anything else. Da

Scapegoat.

Who got some kind of last laugh.

He couldn’t sleep for shit; when he did put three or four hours together he dreamed of all the crappy stunts he’d pulled: farm girls coerced into Howard’s bed; heroin bootjacked and sold to Mickey, cash in his pocket, the junk sidetracked on its way to some hophead’s arm. Sleeping with Audrey was the only cure— she’d played her string since Niles like a trouper—and touching her and keeping her safe kept the kid away. But their four nights in a row at Howard’s place was dangerous too, and every time he left her he got scared and knew he had to do something about it.

Keeping his take on Da

Buzz cocked a finger at the gravestone and made up his mind around two facts. One, when LAPD crashed Upshaw’s pad, they found it thoroughly trashed; Nort Layman did a forensic, came up with Da

“Deputy, are you tellin’ me Loftis is a suspect for your killin’s?”