It’s out of our hands.”
Mal saw Stefan Heisteke, Prague ’45, coming off a three-year jag of canned dog food and rape. “You swing it, or you find stuff that happened after the war to hit Celeste with.”
“Like her dutifully schooling Stefan in Czech? Mal, she doesn’t drink or sleep around or hit the boy. You don’t wrest custody from the natural mother because the woman lives in the past.”
Mal got up, his head throbbing. “Then you make me the biggest fucking hero since Lucky Lindy. You make me look so fucking good I make motherhood look Side 107
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The like shit.”
Jake Kellerman pointed to the door. “Go get me a big load of Commies and I’ll do my best.”
o
o
o
Mal rolled to the Pacific Dining Car. The general idea was a feast to pamper himself away from Eisler, Rolff and Dudley Smith–the purging that an hour of scalding hot water didn’t accomplish. But as soon as his food arrived he lost interest, grabbed Eisler’s diary and flipped to 1938–1939, the writer’s time with Claire De Haven.
No explicitness, just analysis.
The woman hated her father, screwed Mexicans to earn his wrath, had a crush on her father and got her white lefty consorts to dress stuffed-shirt traditional like him–so she could tear off their clothes and make a game out of humiliating paternal surrogates. She hated her father’s money and political connections, raped his bank accounts to lavish gifts on men whose politics the old man despised; she went to tether’s end on booze, opiates and sex, found causes to do penance with and fashioned herself into an exemplary leftist Joan of Arc: organizing, planning, recruiting, financing with her own money and donations often secured with her own body. The woman’s political efficacy was so formidable that she was never dismissed as a camp follower or dilettante; at worst, only her psyche and motives were viewed as spurious. Eisler’s fascination with Claire continued after their affair ended; he remained her friend throughout her liaisons with pachuco thugs, dryouts at Terry Lux’s clinic, her big penance number over Sleepy Lagoon: a Mex boyfriend beat up in the zoot riots, a boilout at Doc Terry’s and then a full social season, stone cold sober, with the SLDC. Impressive. Dudley’s Smith’s lunatic fixation aside, the seventeen kids accused of snuffing José Diaz were by all accounts innocent. And Claire Katherine De Haven–Commie rich girl slut–was a major force behind getting them sprung.
Mal leafed through the journal; the De Haven entries dwindled as he hit
’44 and ’45. He picked at his food and backtracked through a glut of pages that made Eisler look intelligent, analytical, a do-goodnik led down the primrose path by Pinko college professors and the spectre of Hitler looming over Germany.
So far, zero hard evidence–if the diary were introduced to the grand jury it would actually make Eisler appear oddly heroic. Remembering the man as a Reynolds Loftis friend/Chaz Minear co-worker, Mal scanned pages for them.
Minear came off as weak, the nance of the two, the clinging vine. Mal read through accounts of Chaz and Eisler scripting _Eastern Front_ and _Storm Over Leningrad_ together circa 1942– 1943, Eisler pissed at Minear’s sloppy work habits, pissed at his mooning over Loftis, pissed at himself for despising his friends’ homosexuality–tolerable in Reynolds because at least he wasn’t a swish. You could see Minear’s impotent rage building back in the Sleepy Lagoon days–his crying on Eisler’s shoulder over some fling Loftis was having–“My God, Nate, he’s just a boy, and he’s been disfigured”–then refusing to go any further on the topic. Hindsight: in ’47, Chaz Minear hit back at his faithless lover–the snitch to HUAC that got Reynolds Loftis blacklisted. Mal made a mental note: if Danny Upshaw couldn’t infiltrate the UAES braintrust, then Chaz Minear, homosexual weak sister, might be ripe for overt bracing–exposure of his snitch duty the lever to get him to snitch again.
The rest of the diary was a bore: meetings, committees, gatherings and names for Buzz Meeks to check out along with the names Dudley coerced from Lenny Rolff. Mal killed it off while his steak got cold and his salad wilted in the bowl; he realized that he liked Nathan Eisler. And that with the journal checked out and dinner attempted, he had no place to go except back to the Shangri-Lodge Motel and nothing he wanted to do except talk to Stefan–a direct violation of Jake Kellerman’s orders. All the motel had to offer was women’s names scrawled on the bathroom door, and if he called Stefan he’d probably get Celeste, their first amenities since he reworked her face. Restless, he paid the check, drove up into the Pasadena foothills and parked in the middle of a totally dark box canyon: “Cordite Alley,” the spot where his generation of LAPD rookies got fried on kickback booze, shot the shit and target practiced, tall clumps of sagebrush to simulate bad guys.