The switchblade hit the top step; a voice screeched; the door caved in, Danny riding it. Then it was a crash to the carpet and a topsy-turvy shot of Otis Jackson scooping junk bindles off the floor, stumbling to the bathroom, a toilet flushing. Danny got to his knees, sighted in and yelled, “Sheriff’s!” Otis Jackson flipped him his middle finger and weaved back to the living room wearing a shiteater grin.
Danny stood up, his head pounding with jazz chords. Otis Jackson said, “The fuckin’ Sheriff’s ain’t fuckin’ shit around here.”
Danny lashed the .45 across his face. Jackson hit the rug, moaned and spit out cracked bridgework. Danny squatted beside him. “You sell to a tall, gray-haired white man?”
Jackson spat bloody phlegm and a slice of his tongue. “I’m with Jack D. and the Seven-Seven, mother–”
Danny held his gun at eye level. “I’m with Mickey and the County, so what? I asked you a question.”
“I deal Hollywood, man! I know lots of gray-haired suckers!”
“Name them, and name everyone else you know who unloads at the clubs on South Central.”
“I’ll let you kill me first, sucker!”
The jazz noise was coming back, soundtracking images: Coleman Healy fondling his sax, the reefer guy about to beg. Danny said, “One more time. I want skinny on a tall white man. Middle-aged, silver hair.”
“An’ I told you–”
Danny heard footsteps coming up the stairs, grunts and the unmistakable sound of revolvers being cocked. Otis Jackson smiled; Danny glommed the gist, holstered his piece and reached for his badge holder. Two big white men popped in the doorway aiming .38’s; Danny had his shield out and a peace offering ready. “Sheriff’s. I’m a Sheriff’s detective.”
The men walked over, guns first. The taller of the two helped Otis Jackson to his feet; the other, a fat guy with curly red hair, took Danny’s ID buzzer, examined it and shook his head. “Bad enough you guys get in bed with Mickey Kike, now you gotta beat up my favorite snitch. Otis, you are one lucky nigger. Deputy Upshaw, you are one stupid white man.”
The tall cop helped Otis Jackson into the bathroom. Danny stood up and grabbed his badge holder. The fat redhead said, “Get the fuck back to the County and beat up your own niggers.”
CHAPTER Five
“…And the most pervasive aspect of Communism, its single most insidiously efficacious tool, is that it hides under a million banners, a million different flags, titles and combinations of initials, spreading its cancer under a million guises, all of them designed to pervert and corrupt in the name of compassion and goodness and social justice. UAES, SLDC, NAACP, AFL-CIO, League for Democratic Ideals and Concerned Americans Against Bigotry. All highsounding organizations that all good Americans should be proud to belong to. All seditious, perverted, cancerous tentacles of the Communist Conspiracy.”
Mal Considine had been sizing up Edmund J. Satterlee, ex-Fed, ex-Jesuit seminarian, for close to half an hour, taking occasional glances at the rest of the audience. Satterlee was a tall man, pear-shaped, in his early forties; his verbal style was a cross between Harry Truman homespun and Pershing Square crackpot–and you never knew when he was going to shout or whisper. Dudley Smith, chain-smoking, seemed to be enjoying his pitch; Ellis Loew kept looking at his watch and at Dudley–probably afraid that he was going to drop ash all over his new living room carpet. Dr. Saul Lesnick, psychiatrist/longtime Fed informant, sat as far away from the Red Chaser as possible while remaining in the same room. He was a small, frail old man with bright blue eyes and a cough that he kept feeding with harsh European cigarettes; he had the look native to stool pigeons everywhere–loathing for the presence of his captors–even though he had allegedly volunteered his services.
Satterlee was pacing now, gesticulating to them like they were four hundred, not four. Mal squirmed in his chair, reminding himself that this guy was his ticket to a captaincy and Chief DA’s Investigator.
“…and in the early days of the war I worked with the Alien Squad relocating Japs. I gained my first insights into how anti-American sentiment breeds. The Japs who wanted to be good Americans offered to enlist in the armed forces, most were resentful and confused, and the subversive element–under the guise of patriotism–attempted to coerce them into treason by concerted, heavily intellectualized attacks on alleged American racial injustices. Under a banner of American concerns: liberty, justice and free enterprise, the seditious Japs portrayed this democracy as a land of lynched Negroes and limited opportunities for coloreds, even though the Nisei were emerging as middle-class merchants when the war broke out. After the war, when the Communist Conspiracy emerged as the number-one threat to America’s internal security, I saw how the same kind of thinking, of manipulation, was being used by the Reds to subvert our moral fiber. The entertainment industry and business were rife with fellow travelers, and I founded Red Crosscurrents to help weed out radicals and subversives. Organizations that want to keep themselves Red-free pay us a nominal fee to screen their employees and prospective employees for Commie associations, and we keep an exhaustive file on the Reds we uncover. This service also allows innocent people accused of being Pink to prove their innocence and gain employment that they might have been denied. Further–”