“Which means?”
“Which means I dislike him slightly more than I dislike you. Which means he’s two seconds away from arresting you and putting you on display as a hostile witness, then releasing you and letting Sam Giancana or whoever have you killed.”
Meg jailed/ brutalized/clipped–Technicolor. “Will you relocate my sister?”
“That’s impossible. This last escapade has cost you credibility with Noonan, relocation for your sister was not covered in your contract and there is no established precedent for mobsters harming the loved ones of fugitive witnesses.”
GET MONEY.
Ruiz throwing it away.
“We’re your only hope. I’ll square things with Noonan, but you be at the Federal Building by eight A.M. day after tomorrow, or we’ll find you, arrest your sister and begin tax-charge proceedings.”
Crowd noise, dust. Reuben watching us.
I waved the keys. Sunlight on metal–he nodded.
Shipstad: “Klein . . .”
“I’ll be there.”
“Eight A.M.”
“I heard you.”
“It’s your only–”
“What’s Ruiz doing?”
He looked over. “Expiation of guilt or some such concept. Can you blame him? All this for a baseball stadium?”
Reuben walked up.
Side 183
Ellroy – White Jazz
“Did you come to see _him?_ And what’s with those keys?”
“Give me some time with him.”
“Is it personal?”
“Yeah, it’s personal.”
Shipstad walked; Ruiz passed him and winked. Rockabye Reuben: bullfight threads, grin.
“Hey, Lieutenant.”
I twirled the keys. “You go first.”
“No. First you tell me this is just two witness buddies gabbing, then you tell me popping Mexican bantamweights for robbery don’t push your buzzer.”
Bulldozers down the road–a shack crashed.
“_Keys_, Reuben. You saw the originals, memorized the numbers and tried to get that locksmith to cut dupes, and there’s tool marks on the lockers at that storage place.”
“I didn’t hear you say anything like ‘This is just two guys who’d like each other to stay out of trouble talking.'”
Gear whine/wood snap/dust–the noise made me flinch. “I’m way past arresting people.”
“I sort of thought so, given what the Feds been saying.”
“Reuben, _spill_. I’ve got this half-assed notion you want to.”
“Do penance, maybe. Spill, I don’t know.”
“Did you boost some furs out of those lockers?”
“As many as me and my righteous B&E buddies could carry. And they’re gone, in case you want a mink for your slumlord sister.”
Flowers sprouting next to weeds; smog wafting in.
“So you bagged some furs, sold them and gave the money to your poor exploited brethren.”
“No, I gave a silver fox pelt to Mrs. Mendoza next door, ’cause I popped her daughter’s cherry and never married her, _then_ I sold the furs, _then_ I got drunk and gave the money away.”
“Just like that?”
“Yeah, and those stupidos down there’ll probably spend it on Dodger tickets.”
“Reuben–”
“Fuck it, all right–me, Johnny Duhamel and my brothers took down the Hurwitz fur warehouse. You were maybe pushing that way when I saw you in my dressing room, so now you tell me what you got before I sober up and get bored with this penance routine.”
“Let’s try Ed Exley operating Johnny.”
Smog–Reuben coughed. “You picked a good fucking topic.”
“I figured if Johnny talked to anybody, it was you.”
“You figured pretty good.”
Side 184
Ellroy – White Jazz
“He told you about it?”
“Most of it, I guess. Look, this is, you know, off the record?”
I nodded–easy now–cut him rope.
Tick tick tick tick.
Jerk the rope: “Reuben–”
“Yeah, okay, I guess it was like this spring, like April or something. Exley, he read this newspaper story about Johnny. You know, a what you call human-interest story, like here’s this guy in graduate school working all these jobs, he used to be a comer in the Golden Gloves, but now he’s gotta turn pro even though he don’t want to, ’cause his parents croaked and stiffed him and his school, and how he’s broke. You follow me so far?”
“Keep going.”
“Okay, so Exley, he approached Johnny and what you call manipulated him. He gave Johnny money and paid off his college loan, and he paid off these debts Johnny’s parents left. Exley, he’s like some kind of rich-kid cop with this big inheritance, and he gave Johnny this bonaroo fucking amount of money and paid these reporter guys to write these other, you know, similar-type newspaper stories about him, playing on this angle that he had to turn pro out of, you know, financial necessity.”