THE BIG NOWHERE by James Ellroy

Dudley made a little pooh-pooh noise. “It always surprised me that the Commies and your so-called concerned citizens never proferred a suitable killer or killers of their own to take the fall on José Diaz. You people are masters of the scapegoat. Lopez, Duarte and Benavides were gang members who probably knew plenty of white punks to put the onus on. Was that ever discussed?”

“No. What you say is incomprehensible.”

Dudley shot Mal a little wink. “My colleague and I know otherwise. Let’s try this. Did the three Mexes or any other SLDC members proffer sincerely believed theories as to who killed José Diaz?”

Gritting his teeth, Rolff said, “No.”

“What about the CP itself? Did it advance any potential scapegoats?”

“I told you no, I told you I was in New York for the bulk of the SLDC time.”

Dudley, straightening his necktie knot with one finger pointed to the street: “Malcolm, any last questions for Mr. Rolff?”

Mal said, “No.”

“Oh? Nothing on our fair Claire?”

Rolff stood up and was running a hand inside his collar like he couldn’t wait to ditch his inquisitors and take a bath; Mal knocked his chair over getting to his feet. He dug for cracks to throw and came up empty. “No.”

Dudley stayed seated, smiling. “Mr. Rolff, I need the names of five fellow travelers, people who are well acquainted with the UAES brain trust.”

Rolff said, “No. Unequivocally no.”

Dudley said, “I’ll settle for the names now, whatever intimate personal recollections you can supply us with in a few days, after a colleague of ours conducts background checks. The names, please.”

Rolff dug his feet in the grass, balled fists at his sides. “Tell Judith about Sarah and me. She won’t believe you.”

Dudley took a piece of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “May 11, 1948. ‘My Dearest Lenny. I miss you and want you in me despite what you carried with you. I keep thinking that of course you didn’t know you had it and you met that prostitute before we became involved. The treatments hurt, but they still make me think of you, and if not for the fear of Judith finding out about us, I would be talking about you my every waking moment.’ Armbuster 304’s are the cheapest wall safes in the world, comrade. A man in your position should not be so frugal.”

Lenny Rolff hit the grass on his knees. Dudley knelt beside him and coaxed out a barely audible string of names. The last name, sobbed, was “Nate Eisler.” Mal double-timed it to the car, looking back once. Dudley was watching his friendly witness hurl typewriter and manuscript, table and chairs helter-skelter.

o o o

Dudley drove Mal back to his motel, no talk the whole time, Mal keeping the radio glued to a classical station: bombastic stuff played loud. Dudley’s goodbye was, “You’ve more stomach for this work than I expected”; Mal went inside and spent an hour in the shower, until the hot water for the entire dump was used up and the manager came knocking on the door to complain. Mal calmed him down with his badge and a ten-spot, put on his last clean suit and drove downtown to see his lawyer.

Jake Kellerman’s office was in the Oviatt Tower at Sixth and Olive. Mal arrived five minutes early, scanning the bare-bones reception room, wondering if Jake sacrificed a secretary for rental freight in one of LA’s ritziest buildings. Their first confab had been overview; this one had to be meat and potatoes.

Kellerman opened his inner office door at 3:00 on the dot; Mal walked in and sat down in a plain brown leather chair. Kellerman shook his hand, then stood behind a plain brown wooden desk. He said, “Preliminary day after tomorrow, Civil Court 32. Greenberg’s on vacation, and we’ve got some goyishe stiff named Hardesty. I’m sorry about that, Mal. I wanted to get you a Jew who’d be impressed by your MP work overseas.”

Mal shrugged, thinking of Eisler and Rolff; Kellerman smiled. “Care to enlighten me on a rumor?”

“Sure.”

“I heard you coldcocked some Nazi bastard in Poland.”

“That’s true.”

“You killed him?”

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