The Big Nowhere (28 page)

Ted Krugman.

Ted Krugman.

Theodore Michael Krugman.

Teddy Krugman, Red Commie Pinko Subversive Stagehand.

Friends with Jukey Rosensweig of Young Actors Against Fascism and Bill Wilhite, a cell boss with the Brooklyn CP; ex-lover of Donna Patrice Cantrell, leftist firebrand at Columbia University circa ’43, jumper suicide in ’47—a dive off the George Washington Bridge when she got the news that her socialist father attempted suicide over his HUAC subpoena, turning himself into a permanent vegetable via ingestion of a scouring powder cocktail that scoured his brain down to sub-idiot quality. Ex-member of AFL-CIO, North Shore Long Island CP, Garment Workers’ Defense Committee, Concerned Americans Against Bigotry, Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Fair Play for Paul Robeson League. Socialist summer camps as a kid, New York City College dropout, not drafted because of his subversive politics, liked to work as a theater grip because of all the politically enlightened people you met and pussy. Worked a long string of Broadway shows, plus a handful of B movies shot on location in Manhattan. Slogan shouter, brawler, hardcase. Loved to attend meetings and demonstrations, sign petitions and talk Commie rebop. Active in the New York leftist scene until ’48—then nowhere.

Pictures.

Donna Patrice Cantrell was pretty but hard, a softer version of her dad the Ajax guzzler. Jukey Rosensweig was a big fat guy with bulging thyroid eyes and thick glasses; Bill Wilhite was white-bread handsome. His supporting cast of characters, caught in Fed surveillance snaps, were just faces attached to bodies wielding placards: names, dates and causes on the back, to shore him up with some more history.

Parked on Gower just north of Sunset, Danny ran through his script and photo kit. He had his co-stars’ faces down pat: the Teamster picket boss he was supposed to introduce himself to, the goons he’d be picketing and arguing with, the LAPD Academy muscleman he’d fight—and finally—if Considine’s scenario played to perfection—Norman Kostenz, UAES picket boss, the man who’d take him to Claire De Haven. Deep-breathing, he locked his gun, badge, cuffs and Daniel Thomas Upshaw ID in the glove compartment, sliding Theodore Michael Krugman license photostats into the sleeves in his wallet. Upshaw into Krugman completed; Danny walked over, ready to do it.

The scene was pandemonium divided into two snakelike strips of bodies: UAES, Teamsters, banners on sticks, shouts and catcalls, three feet of sidewalk separating the factions, a debrisfilled gutter and studio walls bracketing the lines down a quarter-mile-long city block. Newsmen standing by their cars on the opposite side of Gower; lunch trucks dispensing coffee and doughnuts; a bunch of oldster cops stuffing their faces, watching newshounds shoot craps on a piece of cardboard laid across the hood of an LAPD black-and-white. Duelling bullhorns bombarding the street with squelch noise and static-layered repetitions of “REDS OUT!” and “FAIR PAY NOW!”

Danny found the Teamster picket boss, picture pure; the man winked on the sly and handed him a pine slab with UAES—UNAMERICAN ESCAPED SUBVERSIVES printed on reinforced cardboard at the top. He went through a rigmarole of laying down the law and making him fill out a time card; Danny saw the guy working the Teamster lunch truck eyeball the transaction—obviously the UAES plant man mentioned in Considine’s info package. The shouts got louder; the picket boss hustled Danny over to his marching buddies, Al and Jerry, picture perfect in their grubby work clothes. Tough-guy salutations per the script: three hard boys who brook no horseshit getting down to business. Then him—Ted Krugman—starring in his own Hollywood epic, surrounded by extras, one line of good guys, one of bad guys, all of them moving, separate lines going in opposite directions.

He marched, three abreast with Al and Jerry—pros who knew their stuff; signs came at him: FISCAL JUSTICE NOW!; END THE STUDIO AUTOCRACY!; NEGOTIATE FAIR WAGES! Teamster elbows dug into UAES rib cages; the bad guys winced, didn’t elbow back, kept marching and yelling. It was Man Camera with something like Sound-O-Vision thrown in; Danny kept imagining mixmasters, meat grinders, buzz saws and cycle engines working overtime, not letting you think or sight on a fixed image. He kept talking his pre-planned diatribe, feeding Jerry, right on the button with Considine’s first cue: “You’re talkin’ the fuckin’ Moscow party line, pal. Who’s fucking side are you on?”

Himself, coming back: “The side that’s paying me a fucking buck an hour to picket,
pal!
”

Jerry, grabbing his arm as UAESers stood aside and watched: “That’s not good enough—”

He broke free and kept walking and shouting per the scenario; per the scenario the picket boss came over and issued him a warning about team play, hauling Al and Jerry over, making them all shake hands like kids in a schoolyard, a bunch of anemic lefties scoping it out. All three of them played it sullen; the picket boss hotfooted it to the lunch truck; Danny saw him talking to the coffee man—UAES’s plant—hooking a thumb back at the little fracas he just refereed. Al said, “Don’t goldbrick, Krugman”; Jerry muttered anti-Red epithets; Danny launched his “I’m one of the guys” spiel, real real Krugman stuff in case the bad guys had a close ear down, stuff Considine yanked out of an old NYPD Red Squad report: garment worker unions bashing heads insanely, the “bosses” on both sides fucking over the rank and file. Him
pleading
with philistine Al and Jerry to see the
reason
behind what he was saying; them shaking their heads and picketing away from him, disgusted at working the same line as a rat fucker Commie traitor.

Danny marched, banner high, shouting, “REDS OUT!,” meaning it, but savoring the curve he’d just pitched. His Man Camera started working, everything seemed contained and controlled like he’d just had his four shots and didn’t want a fifth, like he was born for this and the queer shit at Gordean’s pad didn’t really send him. It felt like chaos in a vacuum, being shoved into a meat grinder and laughing as you got chopped up. Time passed; Al and Jerry brushed by him: once, twice, three times, side-mouthing ugly stuff, bringing the LAPD goon with them on their fourth go-round, a brick shithouse blocking his path, fingers on his chest, the hump
improvising
on Considine’s script: “This guy’s a tough guy Commie? He looks like a weak sister to me.”

The wrong words, then, “Make it good you County fuck,” whispered up close. Danny improvised, bending the shithouse’s fingers back, snapping them at the bottom digit. The man shrieked and swung a bum left hook; Danny stepped inside with a counter one-two to the solar plexus. The LAPD man doubled over; Danny shot him a steel-toed right foot to the balls, crashing him into a group of UAES pickets.

Shouts all around; whistles blowing. Danny picked up a discarded pine slab and got ready to swing it at his co-star’s head. Then blue uniforms surrounded him and billy clubs beat him to the ground and he was pummeled, lifted, pummeled, lifted, dumped and kicked at. He went stone cold out—then he tasted blood and sidewalk and felt hands lifting him up until he was face to face with Norman Kostenz, looking just like Mal Considine’s surveillance pic, a friendly guy who was saying, “Ted Krugman, huh? I think I’ve heard of you.”

The next hour went Speed-O-Vision fast.

Friendly Norm helped him clean himself up and took him to a bar on the Boulevard. Danny came out of his thumping quickly, thudding pains in the soft part of his back, loose teeth, side aches. The bluesuits had to have been in on Considine’s plan—improvising in his favor—or they’d have cracked his head open for real. The script had called for them to break up a fistfight, separating the combatants, some minor roughhouse before cutting them loose. They’d obviously played off his improvisation, the kicks and gutter dump their aside for his wailing on one of their own. Now the question was how hard “Call me Mal” would come down on him for the damage he’d done—he was an ex-LAPD man himself.

At the bar it was all questions, back to Ted Krugman, no time to think of repercussions.

Norm Kostenz took his photograph for a record of the assault and kissed his ass, a tough-guy worshiper; Danny moved into Ted, nursing a beer and double shot, making like he rarely boozed, that it was just to ease his aching, fascist-thumped bones. The liquor did help—it took the bite off his aches and got him moving his shoulders, working out the kinks that would come later. The juice downed, he started feeling good, proud of his performance; Kostenz ran a riff on how Jukey Rosensweig used to talk about him and Donna Cantrell. Danny put out a sob number on Donna, using it to segue into his missing years: Prof Cantrell a vegetable, his beloved Donna dead, the fascists responsible, but him too numbed by grief to organize, protest or generally fight back. Kostenz pressed on what he had been doing since Donna’s suicide; Danny gave him an Upshaw/Krugman combo platter: real-life car thief stories under Red Ted’s aegis, phony East Coast venues. Friendly Norm ate it up, vicarious kicks on a platter; he called for a second round of drinks and asked questions about the garment district wars, the Robeson League, stuff Jukey had told him about. Danny winged it, flying high: names and pictures from Considine’s kit, long spiels extolling the virtues of various lefties, borrowing from the actual personalities of deputies and San Berdoo townies he’d known. Kostenz licked his plate and begged for more; Danny went sky high, all his aches lulled, kneading his jacket sleeves like they were his second skin. He spun tales out of thin air and Considine’s facts: a long schtick about his loss of political faith, his rapacious womanizing with the Commie quail from Mal’s surveillance pics, his long cross-country odyssey and how self-hatred and a desire to scope the scene brought him to the Teamster picket line, but now he knew he could never be fascist muscle—he wanted to work, fight, organize and help UAES end the bloodsucking tyranny of the studio bosses. Almost breathless, Norm Kostenz took it in, got up and said, “Can you meet me and our member screener tomorrow? The El Coyote on Beverly at noon?”

Danny stood up, weaving, knowing it was more from his Academy Award acting than from booze and a beating. He said, “I’ll be there,” and saluted like Uncle Joe Stalin in a newsreel he’d seen.

Danny drove home, checked to make sure his files and pictures were secure in their hiding place, hot-showered and daubed linament on the bruises that were starting to form on his back. Naked, he performed intro lines to Claire De Haven in front of the bathroom mirror, then dressed from his lefty wardrobe: wool slacks with a skinny belt, T-shirt, his workboots and the leather jacket. Ted Krugman but a cop, he admired himself in the mirror, then drove to the Strip.

Dusk was falling, twilight darkening over low rain clouds. Danny parked on Sunset across from the Felix Gordean Agency, hunkered down in the seat with binoculars and fixed on the building.

It was a one-story gray French Provincial, louvered windows and an arched doorway, deco lettering in brass above the mailbox. An enclosed autoport was built on, the entrance illuminated by roof lights. Three cars were parked inside; Danny squinted and wrote down three Cal ’49 license numbers: DB 6841, GX 1167, QS 3334.

Full darkness hit; Danny kept his eyes on the doorway. At 5:33, a twenty-fivish male Caucasian walked out, got into green Ford coupé GX 1167 and drove away. Danny wrote down a description of the car and the man, then went back to straight surveillance. At 5:47, a white prewar La Salle, Cal ’49 TR 4191, pulled in; a handsome young Latin type wearing a suitcoat and pegged pants got out, rang the buzzer and entered the agency. Danny jotted his stats down, kept looking, saw two older, dark-haired men in business suits leave, walk to the carport and get into DB 6841 and QS 3334, back out and go off in opposite directions on Sunset. The Latin type left ten minutes later; Danny filled in his descriptions of the men—none of whom matched his suspect.

Time dragged; Danny stayed glued, smelling linament, feeling his muscle aches return. At 6:14 a Rolls-Royce pulled into the carport; a man in a chauffeur’s outfit got out, rang the agency buzzer, spoke into the intercom and walked across the street and out of sight. Lights went off inside—until only a single window was glowing.

Danny thought: Gordean’s driver leaving his car, probably no more “clients” coming in. He spotted a phone booth on the corner, walked over, gave the box a coin and called the DMV Police Line.

“Yes? Who’s requesting?”

Danny eyed the one light still on. “Deputy Upshaw, West Hollywood Squad, and make this fast.”

The operator said, “We’re a little bit backlogged on vehicle registrations, but—”

“This is the
police
line, not DMV Central. I’m a Homicide detective, so you kick loose for me.”

The man sounded chastised. “We were helping regis—I’m sorry, Deputy. Give me your names.”

Danny said, “I’ve got the numbers and the vehicle descriptions,
you
give
me
the names. Four California ’49s: DB 6841, GX 1167, QS 3334 and TR 4191. Go fast.”

The operator said, “Yessir.” The line buzzed; Danny watched the Felix Gordean Agency. Seconds stretched; the DMV man came back on the line. “Got them, Deputy.”

Danny braced his notepad against the wall. “Go.”

“DB 6841 is Donald Willis Wachtel, 1638 Franklin Street, Santa Monica. GX 1167 is Timothy James Costigan, 11692 Saticoy Street, Van Nuys. On QS 3334, we’ve got Alan Brian Marks with a K-S, 209 4th Avenue, Venice, and TR 4191 is Augie Luis—that’s L-U-I-S—Duarte, 1890 North Vendome, Los Angeles. That’s it.”

No sparks on the names—except the “Duarte” seemed vaguely familiar. Danny hung up just as the light in the window went off; he ran back to his car, got in behind the wheel and waited.

Felix Gordean walked out the door a few moments later. He checked the lock and flipped a switch that doused the carport lights, backed the Rolls out and hung a U-turn, then headed west on Sunset. Danny counted to five and pursued.

The Rolls was easy to track—Gordean drove cautiously and stuck to the middle lane. Danny let a car get in front of him and fixed on Gordean’s radio aerial, a long strip of metal with an ornamental Union Jack at the top, oncoming headlight glare making it stand out like a marker.