Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The THE BIG NOWHERE

A classroom bell sounded; Buzz got pissed: Mary Margaret Conroy would never blab, only confirm by her actions–all he was doing was humoring Mal’s hump on Dudley. “Art of the Mayans” adjourned in a swirl of students, Mary Margaret the oldest by a good ten years. Buzz followed her outside, tapped her shoulder and said, “Miss Conroy, could I talk to you for a second?”

Mary Margaret turned around, hugging her armload of books. She eyed Buzz with distaste and said, “You’re not with the faculty, are you?”

Buzz forced himself not to laugh. “No, I’m not. Sweetie, wouldn’t you say Uncle Dudley went a bit too far warnin’ José Diaz away from you?”

Mary Margaret went sheet white and passed out on the grass.

o

o

o

Dudley for Diaz.

Buzz left Mary Margaret on the grass with a firm pulse and fellow students hovering. He got off the campus quick and drove to Ellis Loew’s house to play a hunch: Doc Lesnick’s absence while UAESer lunacy raged on all fronts was too pat. The four Bureau dicks trying to find the man were filing reports at the house, and there might be something in them to give him a spark atop the hunch and the flicker that caused it: all the psych files ended in the summer of

’49, even though the brain trusters were still seeing Lesnick. That fact reeked of wrong.

Buzz parked on Loew’s front lawn, already crowded with cars. He heard voices coming from the back yard, walked around and saw Ellis holding court on the patio. Champagne was cooling on an ice cart; Loew, Herman Gerstein, Ed Satterlee and Mickey Cohen were hoisting glasses. Two Cohen boys were standing sentry with their backs to him; nobody had seen him yet. He ducked behind a trellis and listened.

Gerstein was exulting: yesterday’s picket brawl was blamed on the UAES; the Teamster film crew leaked their version of the riot to Movietone News, who’d be captioning it “Red Rampage Rocks Hollywood” and shoving it into theaters nationwide. Ellis came on with his good news: the grand jury members being appointed by the City Council looked mucho simpatico, his house was packed with great evidence, mucho indictments seemed imminent. Satterlee kept talking about the climate being perfect, the grand jury a sweetheart deal that was preordained by God for this time and place only, a deal that would never come again. The geek looked about two seconds away from asking them to kneel in prayer; Mickey shut him up and not too subtly started asking questions about the whereabouts of Special Investigator Turner “Buzz” Meeks.

Buzz walked to the front of the house and let himself in. Typists were typing; clerks were filing; there was enough documentation in the living room to make confetti for a thousand ticker tape parades. He moved to the report board and saw that it had been replaced by a whole wall of photographs.

Federal evidence stamps were attached to the borders; Buzz saw “SLDC” a dozen times over and looked closer. The pics were obviously the surveillance shots Ed Satterlee was trying to buy off a rival clearance group; another scope and he noticed every photo was marked SLDC, with ’43 and ’44 dates tagged at the bottom, the pictures arranged chronologically, probably waiting for some artwork: circling the faces of known Commies. Buzz thought: Coleman, and started looking for a face swathed in bandages.

Most of the photos were overhead group shots; some were enlarged sections where faces were reproduced more clearly. The quality on all of them was excellent–the Feds knew their stuff. Buzz saw some blurry, too white faces in the earlier pics, crowd shots from the spring of ’43; he followed the pictures across the wall, hoping for Coleman sans gauze and dressings, an aid to ID the rat killer in person. He got bandage glimpses through the summer of ’43; little looks at Claire De Haven and Reynolds Loftis along the way.

Then–blam!–a Reynolds Loftis view that was way off; the handsome queer too, too short in the tooth, with too much hair.

Side 179

Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The Buzz checked the date–8/17/43–rechecked the Loftis glimpses, rechecked the clothes on the bandaged man. Reynolds had noticeably thinning hair throughout; the too young Reynolds sported a full head of thick stuff. In three of the overhead shots, bandage man was wearing a striped skivvy shirt; in the close-up, too young Reynolds was wearing the same thing. Juan Duarte had told Mal that Reynolds’ “kid brother” looked just like him– but _this man_ was Reynolds in every respect except the hair, every facial plane and angle exactly like his father–a mirror image of Daddy twenty years younger.

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