Crazy Item #1: The glut of pro-Russian movies made during the early 1940’s were largely scripted by members of the so-called UAES Brain trust.
Crazy Item #2: UAES Brain trust members belong to a total of 41 organizations that have been classified as Commie fronts by the State Attorney General’s Office.
Crazy Item #3: The UAES wants more of that filthy capitalist lucre; the Teamsters want jobs for their people; a number of patriotic men in the LA District Attorney’s Office had been slated to gather evidence for a prospective grand jury to delve into just how deep those green-loving UAESers’ influence in the movie biz went. Let’s face it: Hollywood is an unsurpassed tool for disseminating propaganda, and the Commies are the subtlest, most cruelly intelligent foe America has ever faced. Given access to the motion picture medium and its pervasiveness in our daily life, there is no end to the cancerous seeds of treason that well-placed movie Reds could plant–subtle satires and attacks on America, subliminally planted so that the public and right-thinking movie people would have no idea they were being brainwashed. The DA’s men had made approaches to several subversives, and were attempting to get them to admit to the error of their ways and appear as witnesses when money–the great equalizer and common denominator–reared its head to give aid and comfort to the enemy.
Lieutenant Malcolm Considine, of the DA’s Bureau of Investigations, said: “The City had promised us budget money, then withdrew. We’re understaffed and now unfunded, with a backlog of criminal matters clogging up potential grand jury docket time. We might be able to begin gathering evidence again in fiscal ‘51 or ‘52, but how many inroads will the Communists have made into our culture by then?”
How many indeed. Lieutenant Dudley Smith of the Los Angeles Police Department, Lieutenant Considine’s sadly short-lived partner in the DA Bureau’s sadly shortlived investigation, said, “Yes, it all came down to money. The City has precious little, and it would be immoral and illegal to seek outside funding. The Reds do not balk at exploiting the capitalist system, while we live by its rules, accepting the few inherent frailties in an otherwise just and humane philosophy. That’s the difference between them and us. They live by the law of the jungle, we are too peace-loving to stoop to it.”
Reds–1, the City of Los Angeles and the movie-going public–0.
It’s a crazy world.
Buzz put the paper down, thinking of crazy Dud circa ‘38– brass-knuckling a nigger hophead half to death for drooling on a cashmere overcoat Ben Siegel greased him with. He hit the intercom. “Sweetheart, any results on those calls yet?”
“Still waiting, Mr. Meeks.”
“I’m going out to East, LA. Leave my messages on my desk, would you, please?”
“Yes, sir.”
o o o
The morning was cool, with rain threatening. Buzz took Olympic straight out, Hughes Aircraft to Boyle Heights with a minimum of red lights, no pretty scenery, time to think. The .38 he’d strapped on made his rolls of flab hang funny; his ID buzzer and the Racing Form weighted his pockets wrong, bum ballast that had him picking at his crotch to even things out. Benavides, Lopez and Duarte were either White Fence, 1st Flats or Apaches; the Mexes in the Heights were good people, anxious to suck up right and be good Americans. He’d get good information from them–and the idea bored him.
He knew why: he hadn’t been with a woman in years who wasn’t a whore or a starlet looking to get next to Howard. Audrey Anders had him running on her time, brainstorming on her so hard that even this sweetheart of a deal with the DA’s Office came a cropper. Betting with Leotis Dineen was plain stupid; chasing Audrey was stupid that meant something–a reason for him to quit gorging on porterhouse, au gratins and peach pie and lose a shitload of pounds so that his beaucoup wardrobe fit right–even though they’d never be able to go out in public together.
Downtown came and went; the woman stayed. Buzz tried concentrating on the job, turning north on Soto, heading into the terraced hillsides that formed Boyle Heights. The Jews had ceded the neighborhood to the Mexicans before the war; Brooklyn Avenue had gone from reeking of pastrami and chicken stock to reeking of cornmeal and deep-fried pork. The synagogue across from Hollenbeck Park was now a Catholic church; the old men with beanies who played chess under the pepper trees were replaced by pachucos in slit-bottom khakis–strutting, primping, walking the road camp walk, talking the jailhouse talk. Buzz circled the park, eyeing and tagging them: unemployed, mid-twenties, probably pushing fifty-cent reefers and collecting protection off the hebe merchants too poor to move to the new kosher canyon at Beverly and Fairfax. White Fence or 1st Flats or Apaches, with tattoos between their left thumbs and forefingers spelling it out. Dangerous when fired up on mescal, maryjane, goofballs and pussy; restless when bored.