“That old scarlet letter routine doesn’t wash with me.”
“Good. Let’s follow up on that. Oh, really? Fascist politicians have ruined many politically enlightened people by slandering us as subversives.”
Danny grabbed a line from a musical he saw with Karen Hiltscher. “I’ve always had a thing for redheads, baby.”
Considine laughed. “Good, but don’t call De Haven ‘baby,’ she’d consider it patronizing. Here’s a good one. ‘I find it hard to believe that you’d leave the Teamsters for us.'”
Easy. “Mickey Cohen’s comedy routines would drive anybody out.”
“Good, Deputy, but in your decoy role you’d never get close to Cohen, so you wouldn’t know that about him.”
Danny got a brainstorm: the dirty joke sheets and pulp novels his fellow jailers passed around when he worked the main County lockup. “Give me some sex banter, Lieutenant.”
Considine flipped to the next note page. “But I’m thirteen years older than you.”
Danny made his tone satirical. “A grain of sand in our sea of passion.”
Dudley Smith howled; Considine chuckled and said, “You just walk into my life when I’m engaged to be married. I don’t know that I trust you.”
“Claire, there’s only one reason _to_ trust me. And that’s that around you I don’t trust myself.”
“Great delivery, Deputy. Here’s a curveball: ‘Are you here for me or the cause?'”
Extra easy: the hero of a paperback he’d read working night watch. “I want it all. That’s all I know, that’s all I want to know.”
Considine slid the notebook away. “Let’s improvise on that. ‘How can you look at things so simplistically?'”
His mental gears were click-click-clicking now; Danny quit digging for Side 90
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The lines and flew solo. “Claire, there’s the fascists and us, and there’s you and me. Why do _you_ always complicate things?”
Considine, coming on like a femme fatale. “You know I’m capable of eating you whole.”
“I love your teeth.”
“‘I love your eyes.'”
“Claire, are we fighting the fascists or auditing Physiology 101?”
“‘When you’re forty, I’ll be fifty-three. Will you still want me then?'”
Danny, aping Considine’s vamp contralto. “We’ll be dancing jigs together in Moscow, sweetheart.”
“Not so satirical on the political stuff, I’m not sure I trust her sense of humor on that. Let’s get dirty. ‘It’s so _good_ with you.'”
“The others were just girls, Claire. You’re my first woman.”
“How many times have you used that line?”
Aw-shucks laughter–a la a pussy hound deputy he knew. “Every time I sleep with a woman over thirty-five.”
“Have there been many?'”
“Just a few thousand.”
“The cause needs men like you.”
“If there were more women like you around, there’d be millions of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I really like you, Claire.”
“Why?”
“You drink like one of the boys, you know Marx chapter and verse, and you’ve got great legs.”
Dudley Smith started clapping; Danny opened his eyes and felt them misting. Mal Considine smiled. “She does have great legs. Go get your haircut, Deputy. I’ll see you at midnight.”
o
o
o
Mayor Bowron’s barber shaped Danny’s outgrown crew cut into a modified pompadour that changed the whole set of his face. Before, he looked like what he was: a dark-haired, dark-eyed Anglo-Saxon, a policeman who wore suits or sports jacket/slacks combos everywhere. Now he looked slightly Bohemian, slightly Latin, more of a dude. The new hairstyle offset his clothes rakishly; any cop who didn’t know him and spotted the gun bulge under his left armpit would shake him down on the spot, figuring him for some kind of outlaw muscle. The look and his banter improvisations made him feel cocky, like the Chateau Marmont was a fluke that nailing Claire De Haven would disprove once and for all. Danny drove back to Hollywood Station to prepare for his second pass at the Marmont and his first shot at Felix Gordean.
He went straight to the squadroom. Mickey Cohen was vilified on the walls: cartoons of him stuffing cash in Sheriff Biscailuz’ pockets, cracking a whip at a team of sled dogs in LASD uniforms, poking innocent citizens in the ass with a switchblade sticking out of his prayer cap. Danny fielded an assortment of fisheyes, found the records alcove and hit the sex offender files–shaking hands with the beast–fuel for his Gordean interrogation.