Dr. Katz said, “Get out of here, Deputy Upshaw.”
Danny said, “Happy New Year.”
Ralph Carty said, “It’s the truth, Doc–if I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”
Danny packed up his evidence kit, wavering on a destination: canvassing Allegro Street or home, sleep and dreams: Kathy Hudgens, Buddy Jastrow, the blood house on a Kern County back road. Walking out to the loading dock, he looked back. Ralph Carty was splitting his bribe money with the doctor in the rhinestone party hat.
CHAPTER TWO
Lieutenant Mal Considine was looking at a photograph of his wife and son, trying not to think of Buchenwald.
It was just after 8:00 A.M.; Mal was in his cubicle at the DA’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, coming off a fitful sleep fueled by too much Scotch. His trouser legs were covered with confetti; the roundheeled squadroom steno had smeared kisses on his door, bracketing EXECUTIVE OFFICER in Max Factor’s Crimson Decadence. The City Hall sixth floor looked like a trampled parade ground; Ellis Loew had just awakened him with a phone call: meet him and “someone else” at the Pacific Dining Car in half an hour. And he’d left Celeste and Stefan at home alone to ring in l950–because he knew his wife would turn the occasion into a war.
Mal picked up the phone and dialed the house. Celeste answered on the third ring–”Yes? Who is this that is calling?”– her bum phrasing a giveaway that she’d been speaking Czech to Stefan.
“It’s me. I just wanted to let you know that I’ll be a few more hours.”
“The blonde is making demands, Herr Lieutenant?”
“There’s no blonde, Celeste. You know there’s no blonde, and you know I always sleep at the Hall after the New Year’s–”
“How do you say in English–rotkopf? Redhead? Kleine rotkopf scheisser schtupper–”
“Speak English, goddamn it! Don’t pull this with me!”
Celeste laughed: the stage chortles that cut through her foreign-language routine and always made him crazy. “Put my son on, goddamn it!”
Silence, then Celeste Heisteke Considine’s standard punch line: “He’s not your son, Malcolm. His father was Jan Heisteke, and Stefan knows it. You are my benefactor and my husband, and the boy is eleven and must know that his heritage is not amerikanisch police talk and baseball and–”
“Put my son on, goddamn you.”
Celeste laughed softly. Mal knew she was acknowledging match point–him using his cop voice. The line went silent; in the background he could hear Celeste cooing Stefan out of sleep, sing-song words in Czech. Then the boy was there–smack in the middle of them. “Dad–Malcolm?”
“Yeah. Happy New Year.”
“We saw the fireworks. We went on the roof and held umb-umb–”
“You held umbrellas?”
“Yes. We saw the City Hall light up, then the fireworks went, then they… fissured?”
Mal said, “They fizzled, Stefan. F-i-z-z-l-e-d. A fissure is a kind of hole in the ground.”
Stefan tried the new word. “F-i-s-u-r-e?”
“Two s’s. We’ll have a lesson when I get home, maybe take a drive by Westlake Park and feed the ducks.”
“Did you see the fireworks? Did you look out the window to see?”
He had been parrying Penny Diskant’s offer of a cloakroom quickie then, breasts and legs grinding him, wishing he could do it. “Yeah, it was pretty. Son, I have to go now. Work. You go back to sleep so you’ll be sharp for our lesson.”
“Yes. Do you want to speak to Mutti?”
“No. Goodbye, Stefan.”
“Goodbye, D-D-Dad.”
Mal put down the phone. His hands were shaking and his eyes held a film of tears.
o o o
Downtown LA was shut down tight, like it was sleeping off a drunk. The only citizens in view were winos lining up for doughnuts and coffee outside the Union Rescue Mission; cars were erratically parked–snouts to smashed fenders–in front of the hot-sheet hotels on South Main. Sodden confetti hung out of windows and littered the sidewalk, and the sun that was looming above the eastern basin had the feel of heat, steam and bad hangovers. Mal drove to the Pacific Dining Car wishing the first day of the new decade an early death.
The restaurant was packed with camera-toting tourists wolfing the “Rose Bowl Special”–hangtown fry, flapjacks, Bloody Marys and coffee. The headwaiter told Mal that Mr. Loew and another gentleman were waiting for him in the Gold Rush Room–a private nook favored by the downtown legal crowd. Mal walked back and rapped on the door; it was opened a split second later, and the “other gentleman” stood there beaming. “Knock, knock, who’s there? Dudley Smith, so Reds beware. Please come in, Lieutenant. This is an auspicious assemblage of police brain power, and we should mark the occasion with proper amenities.”