o o o
Krugman to Upshaw to Krugman.
Shortell got Danny back to his car, extracting a promise that he’d try to sleep. Danny drove home, woozy one second, all jitters the next. Finally pure exhaustion hit him and he employed Ted-Claire repartee to stay awake. The banter saw him straight to bed, a pass on Mal Considine’s bottle. With the Krugman leather jacket as his blanket, he fell asleep immediately.
And was joined by odd women and HIM.
The San Berdoo High senior hop, 1939. Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey on the PA system, Susan Leffert leading him out of the gym and into the boys’ locker room, a Mason jar of schnapps as bait. Inside, she fumbles at his shirt buttons, licking his chest, biting the hair. He tries to drum up enthusiasm by staring at his body in the dressing mirror, but keeps thinking of Tim; that feels good, but hurts, and finally having it both ways is just bad. He tells Susan he met an older woman he wants to be loyal to, she reminds him of Suicide Donna who bought him his nice bombardier jacket, a real war hero number. Susan says, “What war?”; the action fades because he knows something’s off, Pearl Harbor is still two years away. Then this tall, faceless man, silver-haired, naked, is there, all around him in a circle, and squinting to see his face makes him go soft in Susan’s mouth.
Then a whole corridor of mirrors, him chasing HIM, Karen Hiltscher, Roxy Beausoleil, Janice Modine and a bevy of Sunset Strip gash swooping down while he hurls excuses.
“I can’t today, I have to study.”
“I don’t dance, it makes me self-conscious.”
“Some other time, okay?”
“Sweetie, let’s keep this light. We work together.”
“I don’t want it.”
“No.”
“Claire, you’re the only real woman I’ve met since Donna.”
“Claire, I want to fuck you so bad just like I used to fuck Donna and all the others. They all loved it because I loved doing it so much.”
He was gaining ground on HIM, gaining focus on the gray man’s brick shithouse build. The apparition twirled around; he had no face, but Tim’s body and bigger stuff than Demon Don Eversall, who use to hang out in the shower, trap water in his jumbo foreskin, hold his thing out and croon, “Come drink from my cup of love.” Hard kissing; bodies mashed together, the two of them inside each other, Claire walking out of the mirror, saying, “That’s impossible.”
Then a gunshot, then another and another.
Danny jolted awake. He heard a fourth ring, saw that he’d sweated the bed sopping, felt like he had to piss and threw off the jacket to find his trousers wet. He fumbled over to the phone and blurted, “Yes?”
“Danny, it’s Jack.”
“Yeah, Jack.”
“Son, I cleared you with the assistant watch commander, this lieutenant named Poulson. He’s pals with Al Dietrich, and he’s reasonable about our Department.”
Danny thought: and Dietrich’s pals with Felix Gordean, who’s got LAPD and DA’s Bureau pals, and Niles is pals with God knows who on the Sheriff’s. “What about Niles?”
“He’s been yanked from our job. I told Poulson he’d been riding you, that he provoked the fight. I think you’ll be okay.” A pause, then, “Are you okay? Did you sleep?”
The dream was coming back; Danny stifled a shot of HIM. “Yeah, I slept. Jack, I don’t want Mal Considine to hear about what happened.”
“He’s your boss on the grand jury?”
“Right.”
“Well, I won’t tell him, but somebody probably will.”
Mike Breuning and Dudley Smith replaced HIM. “Jack, I have to do some work on the other job. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Shortell said, “One more thing. We got minor league lucky on our hot car queries–an Olds was snatched two blocks from La Paloma. Abandoned at the Samo Pier, no prints, but I’m adding ‘car thief’ to our records checks. And we’re a hundred and forty-one down on the dental queries. It’s going slow, but I have a hunch we’ll get him.”
HIM.
Danny laughed, yesterday’s wounds aching, new bone bruises firing up in his knuckles. “Yeah, we’ll get him.”