Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The THE BIG NOWHERE

Mongoloid idiots, all of them.”

Mal sighed. “It was a railroad, Lieutenant. It was right before the zoot suit riots, and everyone was cuckoo about the mexes. And a Republican governor pardoned those kids, not the Commies.” Smith looked at Loew. “Our friend here takes the word of the fourth estate over the word of a brother officer. Next he’ll be telling us the Department was responsible for all our pooooor Latin brethren hurt during the riot. A popular Pinko interpretation, I might add.”

Mal reached for a plate of rolls–keeping his voice steady to show the big Irishman he wasn’t afraid of him. “No, a popular LAPD one. I was on the Department then, and the men I worked with tagged the job as horseshit, _pure and simple_. Besides–”

Loew raised his voice–just as Mal heard his own voice start to quiver.

“_Gentlemen, please_.”

The interruption allowed Mal to swallow, dredge up a cold look and shoot it at Dudley Smith. The big man shot back a bland smile, said, “Enough contentiousness over a worthless dead spic,” and extended his hand. Mal shook it; Smith winked.

Ellis Loew said, “That’s better, because guilty or not guilty isn’t Side 8

Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The germane to the issue here. The fact is that the Sleepy Lagoon case attracted a lot of subversives and _they_ exploited it to their ends. That’s _our_ focus.

Now I know you both want to go home to your families, so I’ll wind this up for today.

“Essentially, you two will be bringing in what the Feds call ‘friendly witnesses’–UAESers and other lefties willing to come clean on their Commie associations and name names. You’ve got to get admissions that the pro-Red movies UAES worked on were part of a conscious plot–propaganda to advance the Communist cause. You’ve got to get proof of venue–subversive activities within LA City proper. It also wouldn’t hurt to get some big names. It’s common knowledge that a lot of big Hollywood stars are fellow travelers. That would give us some . . .”

Loew paused. Mal said, “Marquee value?”

“Yes. Well put, if a bit cynical. I can tell that patriotic sentiment doesn’t come easy to you, Malcolm. You might try to dredge up some fervor for this assignment, though.”

Mal thought of a rumor he’d heard: that Mickey Cohen bought a piece of the LA Teamsters off of their East Coast front man–an ex-syndicate trigger looking for money to invest in Havana casinos. “Mickey C. might be a good one to tap for a few bucks if the City funding runs low. I’ll bet he wouldn’t mind seeing the UAES out and his boys in. Lots of money to be made in Hollywood, you know.”

Loew flushed. Dudley Smith tapped the table with a huge knuckle. “No dummy, our friend Malcolm. Yes, lad. Mickey would like the Teamsters in and the studios would like the UAES out. Which doesn’t negate the fact that the UAES is crawling with Pinks. Did you know, lad, that we were almost colleagues once before?”

Mal knew: Thad Green offering him a transfer to the Hat Squad when his sergeantcy came through back in ’41. He turned it down, having no balls for armed robbery stakeouts, going in doors gun first, gunboat diplomacy police work: meeting the Quentin bus at the depot, pistol-whipping hard boys into a docile parole. Dudley Smith had killed four men working the job. “I wanted to work Ad Vice.”

“I don’t blame you, lad. Less risk, more chance for advancement.”

The old rumors: Patrolman/Sergeant/Lieutenant Mal Considine, LAPD/DA’s Bureau comer, didn’t like to get his hands dirty. Ran scared as a rookie working 77th Street Division–the heart of the Congo. Mal wondered if Dudley Smith knew about the gas man at Buchenwald. “That’s right. I never saw any percentage there.”

“The squad was wicked fun, lad. You’d have fit right in. The others didn’t think so, but you’d have convinced them.”

_He’s got the old talk nailed_. Mal looked at Ellis Loew and said,

“Let’s wrap this up, okay? What’s the heavy ammo you mentioned?”

Loew’s eyes moved back and forth between Mal and Dudley. “We’ve got two men assisting us. The first is an ex-Fed named Edmund J. Satterlee. He’s the head of a group called Red Crosscurrents. It’s on retainer to various corporations and what you might want to call ‘astute’ people in the entertainment industry. It screens prospective employees for Communist ties and helps weed out subversive elements that may have wormed their way in already.

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