“Yeah, that’s him. Charlie told Breuning what I just told you and Breuning said he’d come to see him at his crib right away to talk to him about it. I took off then. So if Charlie thought there was something to this Sleepy Lagoon theory, maybe you ain’t such a cabrón.”
Danny’s brain stoked on overdrive:
Breuning’s curiosity on the zoot stick queries, his making light of them. His strange reaction to the four surveillance names– Augie Duarte singled out–because he was Mex, a KA of a Sleepy Lagoon Committee member? Mal telling him that Dudley Smith asked to join the grand jury team, even though, as an LAPD
Homicide lieutenant, there was no logical reason for him to work the job. Mal’s story: _Dudley brutally interrogating Duarte/Sammy Benavides/Mondo Lopez, stressing the Sleepy Lagoon case and the guilt of the seventeen youths originally charged with the crime–even though the questioning tack was not germane to UAES_.
Hartshorn mentioning “zoot stick” on the phone to Breuning.
Jack Shortell’s oral report: Dudley Smith and Breuning were seen hobnobbing at Wilshire Station the night before last–the night Hartshorn killed himself. Did they make a quick run to Hartshorn’s house–a scant mile from the station–kill him and return to the Wilshire squadroom, hoping that no one saw them leave and return–a perfect cop alibi?
And why?
Juan Duarte was looking at him like he was from outer space; Danny got his brain simmered down to where he could talk. “Think fast on this. Jazz musicians, burglary, wolverines, heroin, queer escort services.”
Duarte slid a few feet away. “I think they all stink. Why?”
“A kid who worships wolverines.”
Duarte put a finger to his head and twirled it. “Loco mierda. A wolverine’s a fucking rat, right?”
Danny saw Juno’s claws lashing out. “Try this, Duarte. Sleepy Lagoon, the Defense Committee, ’42 to ’44 and Reynolds Loftis. Think slow, go slow.”
Duarte said, “Easy. Reynolds and his kid brother.”
Danny started to say, “What?”, stopped and thought. He’d read the entire grand jury package twice on arrival and twice last night; he’d read the psychiatric files twice before Considine took them back. In all the paperwork there was no mention of Loftis having a brother. But there was a gap–’42 to
’44–in Loftis’ shrink file. “Tell me about the kid brother, Duarte. Nice and slow.”
Duarte spoke rapidamente. “He was a punk, a lame-o. Reynolds started bringing him around around the time the SLDC was hot. I forget the kid’s name, but he was a kid, eighteen, nineteen, in there. He had his face bandaged up. He was in a fire and he got burned bad. When he got his burns all healed up and the bandages and gauze and shit came off, all the girls in the Committee thought he was real cute. He looked just like Reynolds, but even handsomer.”
The new facts coming together went tap, tap, tap, knocks on a door that was still a long way from opening. A Loftis burn-faced brother put the actor back in contention for HIM, but contradicted his instinct that the killer drew sex inspiration from the youth’s disfigurement; it played into Wolverine Prowler and Burn Face as one man and tapped the possibility that he was a killing accomplice–one way to explain the new welter of age contradictions. Danny said,
“Tell me about the kid. Why did you call him a punk?”
Duarte said, “He was always sucking up to the Mexican guys. He told this fish story about how a big white man killed José Diaz, like we were supposed to like him because he said the killer wasn’t Mexican. Everybody knew the killer was Mexican–the cops just railroaded the wrong Mexicans. He told this crazy story about seeing the killing, but he didn’t have no real details, and when guys pressed him, he clammed up. The SLDC got some anonymous letters saying a white guy did it, and you could tell the kid brother sent them–it was crazy-man stuff. The kid said he was running from the killer, and once I said, ‘Pendejo, if the killer’s looking for you, what the fuck you doing coming to these rallies where he could grab your crazy ass?’ The kid said he had special protection, but wouldn’t tell me no more. Like I said, he was a lame-o. If he wasn’t Reynolds’