The Big Nowhere (45 page)

Ten days went by; Buzz hid out at a motel in San Pedro. Johnny Stompanato brought him information and bothered him for his fee on the Minear squeeze; the chink restaurant down the street delivered three greasy squares a day; the newspapers and radio supplied more info. He called Audrey in Ventura every night, spinning her tall tales about Rio and Buenos Aires, where the U.S. government couldn’t extradite and Mickey was too cheap to send men. He fretted on the last and craziest money-making scheme of his LA career, wondering if he’d survive to spend the proceeds. He listened to hillbilly music, and Hank Williams and Spade Cooley did terrible things to him. He missed Mal Considine wicked bad.

After the shootout, and LAPD army got the citizens quelled and the bodies removed. Four dead: Coleman, Loftis, Mal and the back door bouncer he shot. Claire De Haven disappeared—she probably sent Reynolds on his lunatic mission, heard the shots, decided one redemption for the night was sufficient and calmly caught a cab home to plan more People’s Revolts, Beverly Hills style. He followed Mal to the morgue and gave a statement at the Seven-Seven squadroom, tying in the Healy/Loftis deaths to the homo snuffs and insisting the late Deputy Danny Upshaw get credit for cracking the case. His statement glossed the illegalities he and Mal pulled; he didn’t mention Felix Gordean, Chaz Minear, Dudley Smith or Mike Breuning at all. Let fruitfly Chaz live to enjoy his redemption; crazy Dud was too large to tap for the José Diaz kill or Charles Hartshorn’s “suicide.”

Reading between newspaper lines, you could follow the upshot: the Gordean killing unsolved, no suspects; the shootout explained as Mal and himself “following up a lead on an old case”; the dead boogie attributed to Coleman. No Commie or queer homicide angle on it at all—Ellis Loew had beaucoup press connections and hated complications. Reynolds and his son-lover were dismissed as “old enemies settling a grudge”—the howler to top all howlers.

Mal Considine got a hero’s funeral. Mayor Bowron attended, as did the entire LA City Council, Board of Supervisors and selected LAPD brass. Dudley Smith gave a moving eulogy, citing Mal’s “grand crusade” against Communism. The
Herald
ran a picture of Dudley chucking Mal’s kid Stefan under the chin, exhorting him to “be a trouper.”

Johnny Stomp was his conduit for dope on the grand jury, Ellis Loew to Mickey to him—and it looked like 24-karat stuff on all fronts:

Loew would begin his presentation of evidence next week—perfect timing—the UAES was still bearing the brunt of radio and newspaper editorials blaming them for the Gower Gulch bloodshed. Herman Gerstein, Howard Hughes and two other studio heads had told Loew they would oust UAES the day the grand jury convened—violating the union’s contract on the basis of fine-print clauses pertaining to expulsion for subversive activities.

Johnny’s other glad tidings: Terry Lux had suffered a stroke—the result of “prolonged oxygen deprivation” caused by a mouthful of money and a popped artery in his right hand. He was recuperating well, but ruined tendons in that hand would prevent him from performing plastic surgery again. Mickey Cohen had upped the ante on the Meeks contract to $20,000; Buzz jacked his payoff on the Minear job to $25,000 so Stompanato wouldn’t put a bullet in his head. The Mick was pulling his hair out over Audrey; he’d erected a shrine out of Audrey memorabilia: her stripper publicity pics, the costumes she wore when she headlined the Burbank in ’38. Mickey locked the stuff up in his bedroom at the hideaway and spent hours mooning over it. Sometimes you could hear him crying like a baby.

And Turner Meeks himself, holder of the Va Va Voom Girl’s real true love, was getting fat, fat, fatter on moo shu duck, sweet and sour pork, shrimp chop suey and beef kowloon—a shitload of condemned man’s last meals. And with his money shot a day away, he knew there were two things he wanted to know before he stuck his head in the noose: the whole story on Coleman and why the UAES hadn’t played its extortion scheme against the studios—whatever it was—yet. And he had a hunch he knew where to get the answers.

Buzz went to the motel office, changed a five into nickels and walked to the phone booth in the parking lot. He got out the list of rest homes he’d torn from the Yellow Pages the day of the shootout and started calling, impersonating a police officer. He figured Lesnick would be hiding under an alias, but he hit the flunkies he talked to with his real name anyway, along with “old,” “Jewish,” “dying of lung cancer.” He was $3.10 poorer when a girl said, “That sounds like Mr. Leon Trotsky.” She went on to say that the oldster had checked out against medical advice and left a forwarding address: the Seaspray Motel, 10671 Hibiscus Lane, Redondo Beach.

A cheap Commie joke making it easy for him.

Buzz walked to a U-Drive and rented an old Ford sedan, thinking it looked pretty long in the tooth for a getaway car. He paid a week’s fee in advance, gave the clerk a look at his driver’s license and asked him for a pen and paper. The clerk complied; Buzz wrote:

Buzz drove to the Seaspray Motel, hoping Mal’s death kiboshed the Bureau men looking for Lesnick. It was an auto court at the tail of a dead-end street facing the beach; the office was shaped like a rocket ship pointed at the stars. Buzz walked in and punched the bell.

A youth with godawful pimples came in from the back. “You want a room?”

Buzz said, “Mr. Trotsky still alive?”

“Barely. Why?”

Buzz handed him the note and a five-spot. “Is he in?”

“He’s always in. Here or the beach. Where’s he gonna go? Jitterbugging?”

“Give him the paper, sonny. Keep the five. If he says he’ll talk to me, Abe Lincoln’s got a brother.”

The pimple boy motioned Buzz outside; Buzz stood by his car and watched him walk to the middle of the court and knock on a door. The door opened, the boy went in; a minute later he came out lugging two beach chairs, a stooped old man holding his arm. The hunch played—Lesnick wanted some friendly ears on his way out.

Buzz let them come to him. The old man had a hand extended from ten yards away; his eyes were bright with sickness, his face was muddy beige and everything about him looked caved-in. His voice was strong—and the smile that went with it said he was proud of the fact. “Mr. Meeks?”

Buzz gave the hand a little tug, afraid of breaking bones. “Yessir, Doctor.”

“And what is your rank?”

“I’m not a policeman.”

“Oh? And what were you doing with the grand jury?”

Buzz handed the clerk a fiver and grabbed the beach chairs. The boy walked off smiling; Lesnick held Buzz’s arm. “Why, then? I had thought Ellis Loew’s minions were all policemen.”

Lesnick’s weight on his was almost nothing—a stiff breeze would blow the fucker to Catalina. Buzz said, “I did it for money. You wanta talk on the beach?”

Lesnick pointed to a spot near some rocks—it was free of glass and candy bar wrappers. Buzz shephered him over, the chairs more of a strain than the man. He set the seats down facing each other, close, so he could hear if the Doc’s voice went bum; he settled him in and watched him hunch into folds of terrycloth. Lesnick said, “Do you know how I was convinced to become an informant?”

True snitch behavior—he had to justify himself. Buzz sat down and said, “I’m not sure.”

Lesnick smiled, like he was glad he could tell it. “In 1939 representatives of the Federal government offered me a chance to secure my daughter’s release from Tehachapi Prison, where she was incarcerated for vehicular manslaughter. I was the official CP analyst in Los Angeles then, as I have remained. They told me that if I gave them access to my psychiatric files for evaluation by the 1940 State Attorney General’s probe and other probes that might come up, they would release Andrea immediately. Since Andrea had a minimum of four more years to serve and had told me terrible stories of the abuse the matrons and her fellow inmates inflicted, I did not hesitate one second in agreeing.”

Buzz let Lesnick catch some breath—and cut to Coleman. “And the reason you didn’t kick loose with Loftis’ file from ’42 to ’44 was because Coleman was smeared all over it. That right?”

Lesnick said, “Yes. It would have meant much unnecessary suffering for Reynolds and Coleman. Before I turned the files over in toto I checked for other Coleman references. Chaz Minear alluded to Coleman, but only elliptically, so his file I relinquished. I did that same sort of editing when I gave my files to the HUAC investigators, but I lied and told them the Loftis file had been lost. I didn’t think Ellis Loew would believe that lie, so I just secreted Reynolds’ file portion and hoped I would die before they asked me for it.”

“Why didn’t you just chuck the damn thing?”

Lesnick coughed and hunched deeper into his robe. “I had to keep studying it. It compelled me greatly. Why did you leave the grand jury? Was it moral qualms over Ellis Loew’s methods?”

“I just didn’t think UAES was worth the trouble.”

“Your statement on the newspapers gives you credibility, and I find myself wondering exactly how much you know.”

Buzz shouted over a sudden crash of waves. “I worked the killings
and
the grand jury! What I don’t know is the history!”

The ocean noise subsided; Lesnick coughed and said, “You know all…”

“Doc, I know the incest stuff, and the plastic surgery and all about Coleman tryin’ to frame his daddy. The only other guy who knew was that DA’s captain who was killed at the jazz club. And I think you wanta tell what you got, or you wouldn’t of pulled that juvenile ‘Trotsky’ number. Make sense, headshrinker?”

Lesnick laughed, coughed, laughed. “You understand the concept of subliminal motivation, Mr. Meeks.”

“I got a half-assed brain, boss. Wanta hear my theory why you held the files back from summer ’49 on?”

“Please expound.”

“The UAESers who knew were talkin’ about Reynolds and Claire gettin’ married and how Coleman would take it. That right?”

“Yes. I was afraid the investigators would seize the Coleman references and try to locate him as one of their friendly witnesses. Claire tried to keep news of the wedding out of the papers so Coleman wouldn’t see it, but she did not succeed. At a terrible price, as I’m sure you know.”

Buzz stared at the water, stone quiet: his favorite trick to open suspects up. After a minute or so, Lesnick said, “When the second two victims were reported in the scandal tabloids, I knew the killer had to be Coleman. He was my analysand during the SLDC time. I knew he would have to be living somewhere near the Central Avenue jazz clubs, and I located him. We were close once, and I thought I could reason with him, get him to a locked institution and stop his senseless slaughter. Augie Duarte proved me wrong, but I tried.
I tried
. Think of that before you judge me too harshly. ”

Buzz looked at the walking dead man. “Doc, I’m not judgin’ anybody in this fuckin’ thing. I’m just leavin’ town in a day or so, and I sure would like you to fill in what I don’t know.”

“And nobody else will be told?”

Buzz threw Lesnick some crumbs. “You tried to spare your friends grief while you played the game, and I’ve pulled tricks like that too. I’ve got these two friends who’d like to know why, but they ain’t ever gonna. So could you maybe just tell me?”

Saul Lesnick told. It took him two hours, with many long pauses to suck in air and keep himself fueled. Sometimes he looked at Buzz, sometimes he looked out at the ocean. He faltered at some of the worst of it, but he always kept telling.

1942.

Wartime blackouts in LA, 10:00 P.M. curfew. Coleman was nineteen, living on Bunker Hill with his crazy mother Delores and two of his quasi-sisters. He used the surname “Masskie” because slave breeder mommy needed a paternal monicker to get Relief payments for her son and the seven letters jibed with Sister Aimee’s dictates on numerology. Coleman dropped out of Belmont High when they wouldn’t let him play in the school band; he was heartbroken when the band teacher told him the stupid saxophone flubbing he did was just noise that indicated no talent, only strong lungs.

Coleman tried to join the army two months after Pearl Harbor; he flunked the physical on trick knees and a spastic colon. He passed out handbills for Angelus Temple, earned enough money to buy himself a new alto sax and spent hours running chords and improvisational charts that sounded good only to him. Delores wouldn’t let him practice at home, so he took his horn to the Griffith Park hills and honked at the squirrels and coyotes and stray dogs that trucked there. Sometimes he walked to the downtown library and listened to Victrola records with earphones. His favorite was “Wolverine Blues,” sung by an old coon named Hudson Healy. The jig mushed words, and you could hardly hear him; Coleman invented his own words, dirty stuff about wolverines fucking, and sometimes he sang along under his breath. He listened to the record so much that he wore down the grooves to where you could hardly hear anything, and he started singing a little bit louder to make up for it. Finally, the old biddy who ran the Victrola Room got wind of his lyrics and gave him the boot. For weeks he jerked off to fantasies of Coleman the Wolverine butt raping her.

Delores kept bothering Coleman for Sister Aimee money; he took a job at the Joredco Dental Lab and gave her a percentage tithe. The work was pulling animal teeth out of decapitated trophy heads, and he loved it. He watched the more skilled workers make dentures with the teeth, fashioning plastic and mortar paste into choppers that could bite for eternity. He stole a set of bobcat plates and played with them when he honked his sax up in the hills. He pretended he was a bobcat and that Delores and his phony brothers and sisters were afraid of him.