Buzz tucked his billy club back in his pants. “What about families? Who’s got family still around here?”
Javier answered. “Lopez’ mother died, and I think maybe he got some cousins in Bakersfield. ‘Cept for the maricón, mosta Duarte’s people moved back to Mexico, and I know that puto Benavides got parents livin’ on 4th and Evergreen.”
“A house? An apartment?”
Clean Shirt piped in: “Little shack with all these statues in front.” He twirled a finger and pointed to his head. “The mother is crazy. Loca grande.”
Buzz sighed. “That’s all I get for fifteen scoots and my show?”
Javier said, “Every vato in the Heights hates those cabróns, ask them.”
Clean Shirt said, “We could make up some shit, you could pay us for that.”
Buzz said, “Try to stay alive,” and drove to 4th and Evergreen.
o o o
The lawn was a shrine.
Jesus statues were lined up facing the Street; there was a stable made out of kid’s Lincoln Logs behind them, a dog turd reposing in baby J.C.’s manger. Buzz walked up to the porch and rang the bell; he saw the Virgin Mary on an end table. The front of her flowing white gown bore an inscription: “Fuck me.” Buzz made a snap deduction–Mr. and Mrs. Benavides couldn’t see too well.
An old woman opened the door. “Quién?”
Buzz said, “Police, ma’am. And I don’t speak Spanish.”
The ginch fingered a string of beads around her neck. “I speak Inglés. Is about Sammy?”
“Yes, ma’am. How’d you know that?”
The old girl pointed to the wall above a chipped brick fireplace. A devil had been drawn there–red suit, horns and trident. Buzz walked over and scoped him out. A photo of a Mex kid was glued where his face should be, and a line of Jesus statues was looking up from the ledge, giving him the evil eye. The woman said, “My son Sammy. Communisto. Devil incarnate.”
Buzz smiled. “It looks like you’re well protected, ma’am. You’ve got Jesus on the job.”
Mama Benavides grabbed a sheaf of papers off the mantel and handed them over. The top sheet was a State Justice Department publicity job–California-based Commie fronts in alphabetical order. The Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee was check-marked, with a line in brackets next to it: “Write P.O. Box 465, Sacramento, 14, California, for membership list.” The old woman snatched the pages, flipped through them and stabbed a finger at a column of names. Benavides, Samuel Tomás Ignacio, and De Haven, Claire Katherine, were starred in ink. “There. Is the truth, anti-Christ Communista y Communisto.”
The ginch had tears in her eyes. Buzz said, “Well, Sammy’s got his rough edges, but I wouldn’t exactly call him the devil.”
“Is true! Yo soy la madre del diablo! You arrest him! Cornmunisto!”
Buzz pointed to Claire De Haven’s notation. “Mrs. Benavides, what have you got on this woman here? Give me some good scoop and I’ll beat that boogie man up with my stick.”
“Communista! Drug addict! Sammy took her to clinica for cure, and she–”
Buzz saw a prime opening. “Where is that clinic, ma’am? Tell me slow.”
“By ocean. Devil doctor! Communista whore!”
Satan’s mother started bawling for real. Buzz blew East LA and headed for Malibu–a sea breeze, a doctor who owed him, no cockroach fights, no fuck me madonnas.
o o o
Pacific Sanitarium was in Malibu Canyon, a booze and dope dry-out farm nestled in foothills a half mile from the beach. The main building, lab and maintenance shacks were surrounded by electrified barbed wire; the price for kicking hooch, horse and drugstore hop was twelve hundred dollars a week; detoxification heroin was processed on the premises–per a gentleman’s agreement between Dr. Terence Lux, the clinic’s bossman, and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors–the agreement based on the proviso that LA politicos in need of the place could boil out for free. Buzz drove up to the gate thinking of all the referrals he’d given Lux: RKO juicers and hopheads spared jail jolts and bum publicity because Dr. Terry, plastic surgeon to the stars, had given them shelter and him a 10 percent kickback. One still rankled: a girl who’d OD’d when Howard booted her out of his A list fuck pad and back to selling it in hotel bars. He almost burned the three hundred Lux shot him for the business.