THE BIG NOWHERE by James Ellroy

The question interrupted Audrey starting to smile–a big beam that showed off two slightly crooked teeth and a cold sore on her lower lip. “No, what?”

“That Mickey thinks enough of you to talk to you about stuff like that. That surely does surprise me.”

Audrey’s smile fizzled out. “He loves me.”

“You mean he appreciates the favors you do him. Like when I was a cop, I skimmed that good old white powder and sold it to Mickey, not Jack D. We got to be as friendly as anybody and Mickey can be ‘cause of that. I’m just surprised he plays it that close with a woman is all.”

Audrey lit another cigarette; Buzz saw it as cover for bad thoughts, good banter flushed down the toilet. He said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be so personal.”

Audrey’s eyes ignited. “Oh yes you did, Meeks. You surely did.”

Buzz got up and walked around the room, checking out the strange chink furnishings, wondering who’d picked them out, Mickey’s wife or this ex-stripper/bookkeeper who was making him feel jumpy, like a gun would go off if he said the wrong thing. He tried small talk. “Nice stuff. Hate to see Jack D. put bullet holes in it.”

Audrey’s voice was shaky. “Mickey and Jack are talking about burying the hatchet. Jack wants to go in on a deal with him. Maybe dope, maybe a casino in Vegas. Meeks, I love Mickey and he loves me.”

Buzz heard the last words as bang, bang, bang, bang. He picked up the cash roll, stuffed it in his pocket and said, “Yeah, he loves takin’ you to the Troc and the Mocambo, cause he knows every man there is droolin’ for you and afraid of him. Then it’s an hour at your place and back to the wife. It’s real nice the two of you talk every once in awhile, but as far as I’m concerned you’re gettin’ short shrift from a Jewboy who ain’t got the brains to know what he’s got.”

Audrey’s jaw dropped; her cigarette fell into her lap. She picked it up and stubbed it out. “Are you this crazy or that stupid?”

Bang, bang, bang, bang–cannon loud. Buzz said, “Maybe I just trust you,” walked over and kissed Audrey Anders full on the lips, one hand holding her head, cradling it. She didn’t open her mouth and she didn’t embrace him back and she didn’t push him away. When Buzz snapped that it was all he was going to get, he broke the clinch and floated to the car with quicksand under his feet.

o o o

It was bang, bang, bang, bang on the drive downtown, ricochets, old dumb moves kicked around to see how they stood up next to this doozie.

In ‘33 he’d charged six picket bulls outside MGM, caught nailstudded baseball bats upside his arms, took the boys out with his baton and caught tetanus–stupid, but the audaciousness helped get him his LAPD appointment.

Early in ‘42 he worked with the Alien Squad, rounding up Japs and relocating them to the horse paddocks at Santa Anita Racetrack. He grabbed a wiseacre kid named Bob Takahashi just as he was en route to get his ashes hauled for the first time, felt sorry for him and took him on a six-day toot in Tijuana–booze, whores, the dog track and a teary farewell at the border–bad Bob hightailing it south, a slant-eyed stranger in a round-eyed land. Very stupid–but he covered his absent ass by shaking down a suspicious-looking car outside San Diego, busting four grasshoppers transporting a pound of premium maryjane. The punks had a total of nineteen outstanding LA City warrants between them; he got a commendation letter and four felony notches on his gun. Another shit play turned into clover.

But the granddaddy was his brother Fud. Three days out of the Texas State Pen, Fud shows up at the door of then Detective-Sergeant Turner Meeks, informs him that he just stuck up a liquor store in Hermosa Beach, pistol-whipped the proprietor and intended to pay Buzz back the six yards he owed him with the proceeds. Just as Fud was digging through his blood-soaked paper bag, there was a knock at the door. Buzz looked through the spy hole, saw two blue uniforms, tagged blood as thicker than water and fired his own service revolver into the living room wall four times. The bluesuits started knocking down the door; Buzz hustled Fud to the cellar, locked him in, smashed the window leading to the back porch and trampled his landlady’s prize petunias. When the patrolmen made it inside, Buzz told them he was LAPD and the perpetrator was a hophead he’d sent to Big Q–Davis Haskins–in reality a recent overdose in Billings, Montana; he’d picked up the info working an extradition job. The blues fanned out, called for backup and surrounded the neighborhood until dawn; Davis Haskins made the front page of the Mirror and Daily News; Buzz shat bricks for a week and kept Fud docile in the cellar with whiskey, baloney sandwiches and smut mags swiped from the Central Vice squadroom. And he walked on the caper, white trash chutzpah carrying him through, no one informing the police powers that be that a dead man robbed the Happy Time Liquor Store, drove a stolen La Salle up to the front door of Sergeant Turner “Buzz” Meeks, then shot out his living room wall and escaped on foot. When Fud bought it a year later at Guadalcanal, his squad leader sent Buzz a letter; baby brother’s last words were something like, “Tell Turner thanks for the fur books and sandwiches.”

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