stayed on the job—but out of his way. Rumor had it that Meeks thought Mal was behind the shooting—revenge for the affair with Laura. Mal let the talk simmer: it played a good counterpoint to the coward innuendo he’d inspired in Watts. Word leaked out here and there on the gas man; Ellis Loew, DA’s comer, Jew, draft dodger, took an interest in him and offered to swing some gravy his way once he aced the lieutenant’s exam. In ’47 he made lieutenant and transferred to the DA’s Bureau of Investigations, cop protégé to the most ambitious Deputy District Attorney the City of Los Angeles ever saw. He married Celeste and settled into family life, a ready-made child part of the deal. And the closer father and son became, the more mother resented it; and the more he pressed to formally adopt the boy the more she refused—and tried to mold Stefan in the manner of the old Czech aristocracy that was yanked out from under her by the Nazis—language lessons and European culture and customs, Celeste oblivious to the memories they’d uprooted.
“To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”
Mal listened to Celeste’s sewing machine, Stefan’s toy soldiers hitting the door. He came up with his own epigraph: saving a woman’s life only induces gratitude if the woman has something to live for. All Celeste had was memories and a hated existence as a cop’s hausfrau. All she wanted was to take Stefan back to the time of his horror and make him part of the memories. His final epigraph: he wouldn’t let her.
Mal walked back in the house to read the Commie snitch’s files: his glory grand jury and all it would reap.
Juice .
Chapter Six
The two picket lines moved slowly down Gower, past the entrances of the Poverty Row studios. The UAES hugged the inside, displaying banners stapled to plywood strips: FAIR PAY FOR LONG HOURS, CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS NOW ! PROFIT SHARES FOR ALL WORKERS. The Teamsters paced beside them, a strip of sidewalk open, their signs—REDS OUT! NO CONTRACTS FOR COMMUNISTS—atop friction-taped two-by-four’s. Talk between the factions was constant; every few seconds, “Fuck” or “Shit” or “Traitor” or “Scum” would be shouted, a wave of garbled obscenities following. Across the street, reporters stood around, smoking and playing rummy on the hoods of their cars.
Buzz Meeks watched from the walkway outside Variety International Pictures’ executive offices—three stories up, a balcony view. He remembered busting union heads back in the ’30s; he sized up the Teamsters versus the UAES and saw a bout to rival Louis and Schmeling Number Two.
Easy: the Teamsters were sharks and the UAES were minnows. The Teamster line featured Mickey Cohen goons, union muscle and hard boys hired out of the day labor joints downtown; the UAES was old leftie types, stagehands past their prime, skinny Mexicans and a woman. If push came to shove, no cameras around, the Teamsters would use their two-by-four’s as battering rams and charge—brass knuckle work in close, blood, teeth and nose cartilage on the sidewalk, maybe a few ears ripped off of heads. Then vamoose before the lackluster LAPD Riot Squad made the scene. Easy .
Buzz checked his watch. 4:45; Howard Hughes was forty-five minutes late. It was a cool January day, light blue sky mixed with rain clouds over the Hollywood Hills. Howard got sex crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab’s Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty’s yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes’s—one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises’ fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself. Hopefully, bonus money was involved: he was still in hock to a bookie named Leotis Dineen, a six-foot-six jungle bunny who hated people of the Oklahoma
“To the mother the child belongs. Even a failed lawyer like you should know that maxim.”
Mal listened to Celeste’s sewing machine, Stefan’s toy soldiers hitting the door. He came up with his own epigraph: saving a woman’s life only induces gratitude if the woman has something to live for. All Celeste had was memories and a hated existence as a cop’s hausfrau. All she wanted was to take Stefan back to the time of his horror and make him part of the memories. His final epigraph: he wouldn’t let her.
Mal walked back in the house to read the Commie snitch’s files: his glory grand jury and all it would reap.
Juice .
Chapter Six
The two picket lines moved slowly down Gower, past the entrances of the Poverty Row studios. The UAES hugged the inside, displaying banners stapled to plywood strips: FAIR PAY FOR LONG HOURS, CONTRACT NEGOTIATIONS NOW ! PROFIT SHARES FOR ALL WORKERS. The Teamsters paced beside them, a strip of sidewalk open, their signs—REDS OUT! NO CONTRACTS FOR COMMUNISTS—atop friction-taped two-by-four’s. Talk between the factions was constant; every few seconds, “Fuck” or “Shit” or “Traitor” or “Scum” would be shouted, a wave of garbled obscenities following. Across the street, reporters stood around, smoking and playing rummy on the hoods of their cars.
Buzz Meeks watched from the walkway outside Variety International Pictures’ executive offices—three stories up, a balcony view. He remembered busting union heads back in the ’30s; he sized up the Teamsters versus the UAES and saw a bout to rival Louis and Schmeling Number Two.
Easy: the Teamsters were sharks and the UAES were minnows. The Teamster line featured Mickey Cohen goons, union muscle and hard boys hired out of the day labor joints downtown; the UAES was old leftie types, stagehands past their prime, skinny Mexicans and a woman. If push came to shove, no cameras around, the Teamsters would use their two-by-four’s as battering rams and charge—brass knuckle work in close, blood, teeth and nose cartilage on the sidewalk, maybe a few ears ripped off of heads. Then vamoose before the lackluster LAPD Riot Squad made the scene. Easy .
Buzz checked his watch. 4:45; Howard Hughes was forty-five minutes late. It was a cool January day, light blue sky mixed with rain clouds over the Hollywood Hills. Howard got sex crazy in the winter and probably wanted to send him out on a poontang prowl: Schwab’s Drugstore, the extra huts at Fox and Universal, Brownie snapshots of well-lunged girls naked from the waist up. His Majesty’s yes or no, then standard gash contracts to the yes’s—one-liners in RKO turkeys in exchange for room and board at Hughes Enterprises’ fuck pads and frequent nighttime visits from The Man himself. Hopefully, bonus money was involved: he was still in hock to a bookie named Leotis Dineen, a six-foot-six jungle bunny who hated people of the Oklahoma
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