The Big Nowhere (18 page)

Upshaw leaned over the table; Mal wondered how much the speaker was distorting his voice. “You’re ixnay with Jack, Vinnie. At best, he lets you go on the Sun-Fax, at worst he has you whacked when you hit the penitentiary. And that’ll be Folsom. You’re a known mob associate, and that’s where they go. And the Sun-Fax is in Cohen territory. Mickey buys the gift baskets he greases judges with there, and he’ll make damn sure one of those judges hears your case. In my opinion, you are just too stupid to live. Only a stupid shit would knock off a joint in Cohen territory. Are you looking to start a fucking war? You think Jack wants Mickey coming after him over a chump-change stickup?”

Dudley nudged Mal. “That lad is very, very good.”

Mal said, “In spades.” He pushed Dudley’s elbow aside and concentrated on Upshaw and his verbal style—wondering if he could run Commie argot as well as he did gangsterese. Vincent Scoppettone coughed again; static hit the speaker, then died out into words. “There ain’t gonna be no war. Jack and Mickey been talkin’ about a truce, maybe going in on a piece of business together.”

Upshaw said, “You feel like talking about that?”

“You think I’m stupid?”

Upshaw laughed. Mal caught the phoniness, that Scoppettone didn’t interest him—that it was just a job. But it was a Class A phony laugh—and the kid knew how to squeeze his own tension into it.

“Vinnie, I already told you I think you’re stupid. You’ve got panic city written all over you, and I think you’re on the outs with Jack bad. Let me guess: you did something to piss Jack off, you got scared, you thought you’d hightail. You needed a stake, you heisted the Sun-Fax. Am I right?”

Scoppettone was sweating heavy now—it was rolling off his face. Upshaw said, “You know what else I think? One heist wouldn’t have done it. I think there’s other jobs we can make you for. I think I’m gonna check robbery reports all over the City and County, maybe Ventura County, maybe Orange and San Diego. I’ll bet if I wire your mugs around I’ll come up with some other eyeball witnesses. Am I right?”

Scoppettone tried laughter—a long string of squeaky ha ha ha’s. Upshaw joined in and mimicked them until his prisoner shut up. Mal snapped: he’s wound tight as a steel spring on something else and shooting it to Vinnie because he’s the one here—
and he probably doesn’t know he’s doing it
.

Squirming his arms, Scoppettone said, “Let’s talk dealsky. I got something sweet.”

“Tell me.”

“Heroin. Heroin very large. That truce I told you about, Jack and Mickey partners. Quality Mex brown, twenty-five pounds. All for niggertown, cut-rate to lowball the independents down there. The God’s truth. If I’m lyin’, I’m flyin’.”

Upshaw aped Vinnie’s tone. “Then you’ve got wings stashed under your mattress, because the Mick and Dragna as partners is horseshit. Sherry’s was six months ago, Cohen lost a man and doesn’t forget stuff like that.”

“That wasn’t Jack, that was LAPD. Shooters out of Hollywood Station, a snuff kitty half the fuckin’ division kicked in for ’cause of fuckin’ Brenda. Mickey Kike knows Jack didn’t do it.”

Upshaw yawned—broadly. “I’m bored, Vinnie. Niggers geezing heroin and Jack and Mickey as partners is a fucking snore. By the way, you read the papers?”

Scoppettone shook his head, spraying sweat. “What?”

Upshaw pulled a rolled-up newspaper from his hip pocket. “This was in last Tuesday’s
Herald
. ‘Yesterday evening tragedy occurred at a convivial cocktail lounge in the Silverlake District. A gunman entered the friendly Moonmist Lounge, carrying a large-caliber pistol. He forced the bartender and three patrons to lie on the floor, ransacked the cash register and stole jewelry, wallets and purses belonging to his four victims. The bartender tried to apprehend the robber, and he pistol-whipped him senseless. The bartender died of head injuries this morning at Queen of Angels Hospital. The surviving robbery victims described the assailant as “an Italian-looking white man, late thirties, five-ten, one hundred and ninety pounds.” ’ Vinnie, that’s you.”

Scoppettone shrieked, “That ain’t me!” Mal craned his neck and squinted at the print on Upshaw’s newspaper, glomming a full page on last week’s fight card at the Olympic. He thought: pull out the stops, bluff him down, hit him once, don’t get carried away and you’re my boy—

“That ain’t fucking me!”

Upshaw leaned over the table, hard in Scoppettone’s face. “I don’t fucking care. You’re standing in a lineup tonight, and the three squarejohns from the Moonmist Lounge are gonna look you over. Three white bread types who think all wops are Al Capone. See, I don’t want you for the Sun-Fax, Vinnie, I want you for keeps.”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Prove it!”

“I can’t prove it!”

“Then you’ll take the fucking fall!”

Scoppettone was putting his whole body into his head, the only part of him not lashed down. He shook it; he twisted it; he thrust his chin back and forth like a ram trying to batter a fence. Mal got a flash: the kid had him nailed for a backup heist that night; the whole performance was orchestrated for the newspaper punch line. He elbowed Dudley and said, “Ours”; Dudley gave him the thumbs-up. Vinnie Scoppettone tried to jerk his chair off the floor; Danny Upshaw grabbed a handful of his hair and slapped his face—forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand—until he went limp and blubbered, “Deal. Deal. Deal.”

Upshaw whispered in Scoppettone’s ear; Vinnie drooled an answer. Mal stood on his tiptoes for a better shot at the speaker and heard only static. Dudley lit a cigarette and smiled; Upshaw hit a button under the table. Two uniformed deputies and a woman holding a steno pad double-timed down the corridor. They opened the interrogation room door and swooped on their live one; Danny Upshaw walked out and said, “Oh shit.”

Mal studied the reaction. “Good work, Deputy. You were damn good.”

Upshaw looked at him, then Dudley. “You’re City, right?”

Mal said, “Right, DA’s Bureau. My name’s Considine, this is Lieutenant Smith.”

“And it’s about?”

Dudley said, “Lad, we were going to reprimand you for rattling Mr. Herman Gerstein’s cage, but that’s water under the bridge now. Now we’re going to offer you a job.”

“What?”

Mal took Upshaw’s arm and steered him a few feet away. “It’s a decoy plant for a grand jury investigation into Communist activity in the movie studios. A very well-placed DA is running the show, and he’ll be able to square a temporary transfer with Captain Dietrich. The job is a career maker, and I think you should say yes.”

“No.”

“You can transfer to the Bureau clean after the investigation. You’ll be a lieutenant before you’re thirty.”

“No. I don’t want it.”

“What
do
you want?”

“I want to supervise the triple homicide case I’m working—for the County
and
the City.”

Mal thought of Ellis Loew balking, other City hotshots he could grease for the favor. “I think I can manage it.”

Dudley came over, clapped Upshaw on the back and winked. “There’s a woman you’ll have to get next to, lad. You might have to fuck the pants off of her.”

Deputy Danny Upshaw said, “I welcome the opportunity.”

He was a cop again, bought and paid for, in with major leaguers playing for keeps. Howard’s bonus had him out of hock with Leotis Dineen, and if the grand jury succeeded in booting the UAES from the studios he’d be minor-league rich. He had a set of keys to Ellis Loew’s house and the use of the City clerks who’d be typing and filing there. He had a “target list” of Pinkos untouched by previous grand juries. And he had the
big
list: UAES top dogs to glom criminal dirt on, no direct approaches now that they were deep in subterfuge, with newspaper pieces planted that said their investigation was dead. An hour ago he’d had his secretary place query calls to his local Fed contact, City/County DMV/R&I and the criminal records bureaus of California, Nevada, Arizona and Oregon States, requesting arrest report information on Claire De Haven, Morton Ziffkin, Chaz Minear, Reynolds Loftis and three unholy-sounding pachucos: Mondo Lopez, Sammy Benavides and Juan Duarte, asterisks after their names denoting them “known youth gang members.” The gang squad boss at Hollenbeck Station had been his only call back; he said that the three were bad apples—members of a zooter mob in the early ’40s before they cleaned up and “got political.” East LA would be his first stop—once his secretary logged in the rest of her responses to his call-outs.

Buzz looked around his office for something to kill time with, saw the morning
Mirror
on the doormat and picked it up. He flipped through to the editorial page and got bingo! under Victor Reisel’s by-line, less than twenty-four hours after cuckold Mal told Loew his plan.

The title was “Reds 1—City of Los Angeles 0. 3 Outs, No Witnesses on Base.” Buzz read:

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.”

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.

Buzz parked and stuck his billy club down the back of his pants, throwing the fit off even worse. He approached a group of four young Mexicans; two saw him coming and took off, obviously to drop hot shit in the grass somewhere, reconnoiter and see what the fat puto cop wanted. The other two stood there watching a cockroach fight: two bugs in a shoebox placed on a bench, gladiators brawling for the right to devour a dead bug soaked in maple syrup. Buzz checked out the action while the pachucos pretended not to notice him; he saw a pile of dimes and quarters on the ground and dropped a five spot on it. “Finsky on the fucker with the spot on his back.”

The Mexicans did double-takes; Buzz did a quick size-up: White Fence tattoos on two sinewy right forearms; both vatos lean and mean at the welterweight limit; one dirty T-shirt, one clean. Four brown eyes sizing
him
up. “I mean it. That fucker’s got style. He’s a dancemaster like Billy Conn.”

Both pachucos pointed to the shoebox; Clean T-shirt said, “Billy muerto.” Buzz looked down and saw the spotted bug belly up, stuck to the cardboard in a pool of amber goo. Dirty Shirt giggled, scooped up the change and five-spot; Clean Shirt took an ice cream stick, lifted the winner out of the box and put him on the bark of a pepper tree next to the bench. The bug hung there licking his feelers; Buzz said, “Double or nothin’ on a trick I learned back in Oklahoma.”

Clean Shirt said, “This some goddamn cop trick?”

Buzz fished out his baton and dangled it by the thong. “Sort of. I got a few questions about some boys who used to live around here, and maybe you can help me. I pull off the trick, you talk to me. No snitch stuff, just a few questions. I don’t do the trick, you stroll. Comprende?”

The clean shirt vato started to walk away; Dirty Shirt stopped him and pointed to Buzz’s stick. “What’s that thing got to do with it?”

Buzz smiled and took three steps backward, eyes on the tree. “Son, you set that roach’s ass on fire and I’ll show you.”

Clean Shirt whipped out a lighter, flicked it on and held the flame under the victor bug. The bug scampered up the tree; Buzz got a bead and overhanded his baton. It hit and clattered to the ground; Dirty Shirt picked it up and fingered pulp off the tip. “That’s him. Holy fuck.”

Clean Shirt made the sign of the cross, pachuco version, his right hand stroking his balls; Dirty Shirt crossed the standard way. Buzz tossed his stick in the air, bounced it off the inside crook of his elbow, caught it and twirled it behind his back, let it hit the pavement, then brought it to parade rest with a jerk of the thong. The Mexicans were slack-jawed now; Buzz braced them while their mouths were still open. “Mondo Lopez, Juan Duarte and Sammy Benavides. They used to gangsterize around here. Spill nice and I’ll show you some more tricks.”

Dirty Shirt spat a string of obscenities in Spanish; Clean Shirt translated. “Javier hates 1st Flats like a dog. Like a fucking evil dog.”

Buzz was wondering if Audrey Anders would go for his stick routine. “So those boys ran with the Flats?”

Javier spat on the pavement—an eloquent lunger. “Traitors, man. Back maybe ’43, ’44, the Fence and Flats had a peace council. Lopez and Duarte was supposed to be in on it, but they joined the fuckin’ Sinarquista Nazi putos, then the fuckin’ Commie Sleepy Lagoon putos, when they shoulda been fightin’ with us. The fuckin’ Apaches cleaned the Flats’ and Fences’ fuckin’ clock, man. I lost my cousin Caldo.”

Buzz unclipped two more fivers. “What else have you got? Feel free to get ugly.”

“Benavides was ugly, man! He raped his own fuckin’ little sister!”

Buzz handed out the money. “Easy now. Give me some more on that, whatever else you got and some leads on family.
Easy
.”

Clean Shirt said, “It’s just a rumor on Benavides, and Duarte’s got a queer cousin, so maybe he’s queer, too. Queerness runs in families, I read it in
Argosy
magazine.”

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.

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.”