THE BIG NOWHERE by James Ellroy

That close, he got distortion blur, Man Camera malfunctions. He pulled back so that his eyes could capture a larger frame, saw tuxedos entwined in movement, cheek-to-cheek tangos, all male. The faces were up against each other so that they couldn’t be distinguished individually; Danny zoomed out, in, out, in, until he was pressed into the window glass with the pins and needles localized between his legs, his eyes honing for mid-shots, closeups, faces.

More blur, blips of arms, legs, a cart being pushed and a man in white carrying a punch bowl. Out, in, out, better focus, no faces, then Tim and Coleman the alto together, swaying to hard jazz. The pins and needles hurting; Tim gone, replaced by a blond ingenu. Then shadows killing his vision, his lens cleared by a step backward–and a perfectly framed view of two fat, ugly wallflowers tongue-kissing, all oily skin and razor burn and hair pomade glistening.

Danny bolted home, seeing San Berdoo ‘39 and Tim giving him the fisheye when he wouldn’t take seconds on Roxie. He found his spare I.W. Harper, knocked down his standard four shots and saw it worse, Tim reproachful, saying, yeah it was just horseplay, but you really liked it. Two more shots, the Chateau Marmont in Technicolor, all pretty ones that he knew had Timmy’s body.

He went straight to the bottle then, quality sourmash burning like rotgut, Man-Cameraing women, women, women. Karen Hiltscher, Janice Modine, strippers he’d questioned about a stickup at the Club Largo, tits and cunt on display in the dressing room, inured to men looking at their stuff. Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, the hat check girl at Dave’s Blue Room, his mother stepping out of the bathtub before she got fat and became a Jehovah’s Witness. All ugly and wrong, just like the two wallflowers at the Marmont.

Danny drank standing up until his legs went. Going down, he managed to throw the bottle at the wall. It hit a pinup of the blood patterns at 2307 Tamarind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mal got his lies straight on the doorstep and rang the bell. Heels over hardwood echoed inside the house; he pulled his vest down to cover his slack waistband– too many meals forgotten. The door opened and the Red Queen was standing there, perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed in silk and tweed–at 9:30 in the morning.

“Yes? Are you a salesman? There’s a Beverly Hills ordinance against soliciting, you know.”

Mal knew she knew otherwise. “I’m with the District Attorney’s Office.”

“Beverly Hills?”

“The City of Los Angeles.”

Claire De Haven smiled–movie star quality. “My accumulation of jaywalking tickets?”

Cop-quality dissembling–Mal knew she had him pegged as the nice guy in the Lopez/Duarte/Benavides questioning. “The City needs your help.”

The woman chuckled–elegantly–and held the door open. “Come in and tell me about it, Mr….”

“Considine.”

Claire repeated the name and stood aside; Mal walked into a large living room furnished in a floral motif: gardenia-patterned divans, tufted orchid chairs, little tables and bookstands inlaid with wooden daisies. The walls were solid movie posters–anti-Nazi pictures popular in the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. Mal strolled up to a garish job ballyhooing Dawn of the Righteous–a noble Russki facing off a drooling blackshirt brandishing a Luger. Sunshine haloed the good guy; the German was shadowed in darkness. With Claire De Haven watching him, he counterpunched. “Subtle.”

Claire laughed. “Artful. Are you an attorney, Mr. Considine?”

Mal turned around. The Red Queen was holding a glass filled with clear liquid and ice. He couldn’t smell gin and bet vodka–more elegant, no booze breath. “No, I’m an investigator with the Grand Jury Division. May I sit down?”

Claire pointed to two chairs facing each other across a chess table. “I’m warming to this. Would you like coffee or a drink?”

Mal said, “No,” and sat down. The chair was upholstered in leather; the orchids were embroidered silk. Claire De Haven took the opposite seat and crossed her legs. “You’re crazy to think I’d ever inform. I won’t, my friends won’t, and we’ll have the best legal talent money can buy.”

Mal played off the three Mexicans. “Miss De Haven, this is a mop-up interview at best. My partner and I approached your friends at Variety International the wrong way, our boss is very angry and our funding has been cut. When we got our initial paperwork on the UAES–old HUAC stuff–we didn’t find your name mentioned, and all your friends seemed… well… rather doctrinaire. I decided to play a hunch and present my case to you, hoping you’d keep an open mind and find aspects of what I’m going to tell you reasonable.”

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