o o o
Glasses and ashtrays hit the table; Mal glanced up from his doodling–swastikas and hangman’s nooses–and saw his fellow Red chasers looking at him. Dudley slid a clean glass and the bottle down. Mal slid it back and said, “Lieutenant, you blew it for us with the Mexicans. This is for the record. I say no direct interrogations until Meeks gets us some hard criminal stuff that we can use, like indictment threats. I say we hit lefties outside UAES exclusively, turn them as friendly witnesses, get them to inform and plant a decoy as soon as we find one. I say we cover ourselves on the Mexicans by planting some lines in the political columns. Ed Satterlee’s pals with Victor Reisel and Walter Winchell, they hate Commies, the UAES probably reads them. Something like this: ‘LA City grand jury team slated to investigate Red influence in Hollywood scotched due to lack of funds and political infighting.’ Every Pinko in the UAES knows what happened at Variety International the other day, and I say we put a lid on it and lull them to sleep.”
All eyes were on the Irishman; Mal wondered how he’d field the gauntlet–two witnesses to irrefutable logic. Dudley said, “I can only apologize for my actions, Malcolm. You were circumspect, I was bull-headed, and I was wrong. But I think we should squeeze Claire De Haven before we pull back and go sub rosa. She’s the fulcrum to snitch the whole brain trust, she’s a virgin as far as grand juries go, breaking her would demoralize all those sad excuses for men in love with her. She’s never been braced by the police, and I think she damn well might fold.”
Mal laughed. “You’re underestimating her. And I suppose you want to be the one to do the bracing?”
“No, lad, I think you should be the one. Of all of us here, you’re the only one who comes off as even remotely idealistic. A kid gloves cop you are, kid gloves with a cruel streak. You’ll nail her with that great right hook I’ve heard you’ve got.”
Ellis Loew mouthed the words, “Not me,” hard eyes on Mal’s end of the table. Buzz Meeks sipped Scotch. Mal winced, wondering exactly how much Dudley knew. “It’s a sucker play, Lieutenant. You screwed up once, now you’re asking me to compound it. Ellis, a direct approach is bullshit. Tell him that.”
Loew said, “Mal, control your language, because I agree with Dudley. Claire De Haven is a promiscuous woman, women like that are unbalanced, and I think we should risk the approach. In the meantime, Ed Satterlee is trying to co-opt a man for us, a man he knew in the seminary who’s infiltrated Communist cells in Cleveland. He’s a pro, but he doesn’t work cheap. Even if the approach with De Haven fails and the UAES is alerted to us, he’ll be able to get next to them so subtly that they’ll never know it in a million years. And I’m sure we can get the money for our decoy from Mr. Hughes. Right, Buzz?”
Buzz Meeks winked at Mal. “Ellis, if this babe is a roundheels, I wouldn’t be sendin’ in a seminary boy to work her. Howard himself might do the trick. He likes poon, so maybe you could send him in in disguise.”
Loew rolled his eyes; Dudley Smith laughed, like he’d heard a real knee-slapper at the Elks Club smoker. Meeks winked again, testing the water–were you the one who got me shot to shit back in ‘46? Mal thought of his custody juice riding with a cracker buffoon, hatchet cop and hard-on lawyer. It wasn’t until Loew banged the table to dismiss them that he realized he would be meeting the Red Queen face to face, his own pawn to operate.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Danny spent the next morning at his apartment, updating his file, all new stuff on the two new victims tied in to his case.
Twenty-four hours in, he had this:
No ID on victims two and three; Doc Layman, as a City pathologist, was privy to Hollywood Squad summary reports and would be calling when and if the bodies got names. He had already called to say that Sergeant Gene Niles was heading the LAPD investigation, deemed it lowball and was short-shrifting it so that he could return to a fur warehouse robbery that promised some newspaper ink to make up for the Brenda Allen smear that cost him his wife and kids. Uniformed cops were rousting winos in Griffith Park and getting nowhere; Niles himself had rubberhosed two Sterno jockeys with child molester jackets. Layman’s seventeen-page autopsy report–which did tag the smaller of the two men as dying of a barbiturate OD–was ignored by Niles and the handful of uniformed flunkies detached to work under him. The Doc was convinced that a “Reverse Black Dahlia Syndrome” was in effect–the three stiffs found so far had received a total of four inner section newspaper columns, city editors shying away because Marty Goines was trash and the whole thing was queer shit that you couldn’t print without the Legion for Decency and Concerned Catholic Mothers on your ass.