The bare little office was getting stuffy. “Yes.”
Kellerman said, “Mazel tov,” checked his court calendar and some papers on the desk. “At preliminary I’ll start stalling for continuances and try to work out an angle to get you switched to Greenberg’s docket. He’ll fucking love you. How’s the grand jury gig going?”
“It’s going well.”
“Then why are you looking so glum? Look, is there any chance you’ll get your promotion before the grand jury convenes?”
Mal said, “No. Jake, what’s your strategy past the continuances?
Kellerman hooked two thumbs in his vest pockets. “Mal, it’s a hatchet job on Celeste. She deserted the boy–”
“She didn’t desert him, the fucking Nazis picked up her and her husband and threw them in fucking Buchenwald.”
“Sssh. Easy, pal. You told me the boy was molested as a direct result of being deserted by his mother. She peddled it inside to stay alive. Your MP battalion has got her liberation interview pictures–she looks like Betty Grable compared to the other women who came out alive. I’ll kill her in court with that–Greenberg or no Greenberg.”
Mal took off his jacket and loosened his tie. “Jake, I don’t want Stefan to hear that stuff. I want you to get a writ barring him from hearing testimony. An exclusion order. You can do it.”
Kellerman laughed. “No wonder you dropped out of law school. Writs excluding minor children from overhearing testimony in custody cases cannot be legally sanctioned unless the counsel of both parents approve it–which Celeste’s lawyer will never go for. If I break her down in court–and I will–he’ll want Stefan there on the off-chance he runs to mommy, not daddy. It’s out of our hands.”
Mal saw Stefan Heisteke, Prague ‘45, coming off a three-year jag of canned dog food and rape. “You swing it, or you find stuff that happened after the war to hit Celeste with.”
“Like her dutifully schooling Stefan in Czech? Mal, she doesn’t drink or sleep around or hit the boy. You don’t wrest custody from the natural mother because the woman lives in the past.”
Mal got up, his head throbbing. “Then you make me the biggest fucking hero since Lucky Lindy. You make me look so fucking good I make motherhood look like shit.”
Jake Kellerman pointed to the door. “Go get me a big load of Commies and I’ll do my best.”
o o o
Mal rolled to the Pacific Dining Car. The general idea was a feast to pamper himself away from Eisler, Rolff and Dudley Smith–the purging that an hour of scalding hot water didn’t accomplish. But as soon as his food arrived he lost interest, grabbed Eisler’s diary and flipped to 1938–1939, the writer’s time with Claire De Haven.
No explicitness, just analysis.
The woman hated her father, screwed Mexicans to earn his wrath, had a crush on her father and got her white lefty consorts to dress stuffed-shirt traditional like him–so she could tear off their clothes and make a game out of humiliating paternal surrogates. She hated her father’s money and political connections, raped his bank accounts to lavish gifts on men whose politics the old man despised; she went to tether’s end on booze, opiates and sex, found causes to do penance with and fashioned herself into an exemplary leftist Joan of Arc: organizing, planning, recruiting, financing with her own money and donations often secured with her own body. The woman’s political efficacy was so formidable that she was never dismissed as a camp follower or dilettante; at worst, only her psyche and motives were viewed as spurious. Eisler’s fascination with Claire continued after their affair ended; he remained her friend throughout her liaisons with pachuco thugs, dryouts at Terry Lux’s clinic, her big penance number over Sleepy Lagoon: a Mex boyfriend beat up in the zoot riots, a boilout at Doc Terry’s and then a full social season, stone cold sober, with the SLDC. Impressive. Dudley’s Smith’s lunatic fixation aside, the seventeen kids accused of snuffing José Diaz were by all accounts innocent. And Claire Katherine De Haven–Commie rich girl slut–was a major force behind getting them sprung.
Mal leafed through the journal; the De Haven entries dwindled as he hit ‘44 and ‘45. He picked at his food and backtracked through a glut of pages that made Eisler look intelligent, analytical, a do-goodnik led down the primrose path by Pinko college professors and the spectre of Hitler looming over Germany. So far, zero hard evidence–if the diary were introduced to the grand jury it would actually make Eisler appear oddly heroic. Remembering the man as a Reynolds Loftis friend/Chaz Minear co-worker, Mal scanned pages for them.