Danny nodded, pulled a sheet of paper off Considine’s pad and wrote down his clothing sizes. Dudley Smith said, “You wear those clothes everywhere, lad. On your queer job, too. We don’t want your new Pinko friends seeing you on the street looking like a dapper young copper. Malcolm, give our fair Daniel some De Haven lines to parry. Let’s see how he fields them.”
Considine spoke directly to Danny. “Deputy, I’ve met Claire De Haven, and I think that for a woman she’s a tough piece of work. She’s promiscuous, she may be an alcoholic and she may take drugs. We’ve got another man checking out her background and the background of some other Reds, so we’ll know more on her soon. I spoke to the woman once, and I got the impression that she thrives on banter and one-upmanship. I think that it sexually excites her, and I know she’s attracted to men of your general appearance. So we’re going to try a little exercise now. I’ll feed you lines that I think would be typical of Claire De Haven, you try to top them. Ready?”
Danny shut his eyes for better concentration. “Go.”
“But some people call us Communists. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“That old scarlet letter routine doesn’t wash with me.”
“Good. Let’s follow up on that. Oh, really? Fascist politicians have ruined many politically enlightened people by slandering us as subversives.”
Danny grabbed a line from a musical he saw with Karen Hiltscher. “I’ve always had a thing for redheads, baby.”
Considine laughed. “Good, but don’t call De Haven ‘baby,’ she’d consider it patronizing. Here’s a good one. ‘I find it hard to believe that you’d leave the Teamsters for us.’”
Easy. “Mickey Cohen’s comedy routines would drive anybody out.”
“Good, Deputy, but in your decoy role you’d never get close to Cohen, so you wouldn’t know that about him.”
Danny got a brainstorm: the dirty joke sheets and pulp novels his fellow jailers passed around when he worked the main County lockup. “Give me some sex banter, Lieutenant.”
Considine flipped to the next note page. “But I’m thirteen years older than you.”
Danny made his tone satirical. “A grain of sand in our sea of passion.”
Dudley Smith howled; Considine chuckled and said, “You just walk into my life when I’m engaged to be married. I don’t know that I trust you.”
“Claire, there’s only one reason to trust me. And that’s that around you I don’t trust myself.”
“Great delivery, Deputy. Here’s a curveball: ‘Are you here for me or the cause?’”
Extra easy: the hero of a paperback he’d read working night watch. “I want it all. That’s all I know, that’s all I want to know.”
Considine slid the notebook away. “Let’s improvise on that. ‘How can you look at things so simplistically?’”
His mental gears were click-click-clicking now; Danny quit digging for lines and flew solo. “Claire, there’s the fascists and us, and there’s you and me. Why do you always complicate things?”
Considine, coming on like a femme fatale. “You know I’m capable of eating you whole.”
“I love your teeth.”
“‘I love your eyes.’”
“Claire, are we fighting the fascists or auditing Physiology 101?”
“‘When you’re forty, I’ll be fifty-three. Will you still want me then?’”
Danny, aping Considine’s vamp contralto. “We’ll be dancing jigs together in Moscow, sweetheart.”
“Not so satirical on the political stuff, I’m not sure I trust her sense of humor on that. Let’s get dirty. ‘It’s so good with you.’”
“The others were just girls, Claire. You’re my first woman.”
“How many times have you used that line?”
Aw-shucks laughter–a la a pussy hound deputy he knew. “Every time I sleep with a woman over thirty-five.”
“Have there been many?’”
“Just a few thousand.”
“The cause needs men like you.”
“If there were more women like you around, there’d be millions of us.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That I really like you, Claire.”
“Why?”
“You drink like one of the boys, you know Marx chapter and verse, and you’ve got great legs.”
Dudley Smith started clapping; Danny opened his eyes and felt them misting. Mal Considine smiled. “She does have great legs. Go get your haircut, Deputy. I’ll see you at midnight.”