Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The THE BIG NOWHERE

Buzz drove to the school and badged Bergstrom. The man had seen the newspaper plant on Upshaw’s death, said Danny was born to die young and elaborated over beers in a nearby bar. He said that Danny liked to figure things like motors and engines and arithmetic out, that he stole cars because he loved the danger, that he was always trying to prove himself, but kept quiet about it.

You could tell he was crazy inside, but you couldn’t figure out how or why; you could tell he was really smart, but you didn’t know what he’d end up doing with his brains. Girls liked him because he was mysterious and played hard to get; he was a terrific street fighter. Years ago, drunk, Danny told him a story about witnessing a murder; that was when he got hipped on being a cop, hipped on scientific forensic stuff. He was a cold drunk: booze just made him more inside, more mysterious and persistent, and sooner or later you knew he’d persist with the wrong guy and get himself shot–what surprised him was that Danny died accidentally. Buzz let that one go and said, “Was Danny a queer?”

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 Danny Upshaw’s Personnel file had been yanked and that for all intents and purposes the kid was never a member of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He took a trip by the West Hollywood Substation, talked to the guys on the squad, learned that Danny never accepted bribes or trade pussy; he never moved on his snitch Janice Modine or on switchboard Karen Hiltscher– both of whom were dying to give it to him. Upshaw’s fellow deputies either respected his brains or wrote him off as an idealistic fool with a mean streak; Captain Al Dietrich was rumored to like him because he was methodical, hard-working and ambitious. Buzz thought of him as a kid graduating from machines to people at the wrong time, fishing for WHY? in a river of shit, getting the worst answer two bad cases had to give and ending up dead because he couldn’t lie to himself.

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. Danny Upshaw didn’t kill Gene Niles. Mal said Thad Green and two hardnoses roughed him up; they probably recounted Niles calling him a queer and went over what Dudley Smith told Mal and Green: that Danny was seen shaking down Felix Gordean. With a poly test and silly syrup pending, Green let the kid go home with his gun, hoping he’d spare LAPD the grief of a trial and Niles as a Dragna bagman coming out. Danny had obliged–but for the wrong reason and not with his gun.

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 Danny away from Mal was one way. The cop couldn’t Side 160

Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The believe the kid killed Niles, and he was pretty shrewd in tagging Cohen gunmen for the job–he’d watched Danny question a Dragna hump named Vinnie Scoppettone, who spilled on the shooting at Sherry’s: LAPD shooters. But that was as far as his reconstruction went, and he still idealized Upshaw as a smart young cop headed for rank and glory. Keeping the kid’s secret was the beginning.

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 Danny’s prints on a shitload of tossed furniture and pegged him going crazy in the last moments of his life. LAPD’s property report–the contents of the apartment inventoried– carried no mention of the grand jury paperwork or the personal file Danny kept on his homicides. He broke into the place and tossed it extra good; no files were secreted anywhere inside the four rooms. Mal was there when the body was discovered; he said LAPD

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