Джеймс Эллрой - The Big Nowhere

Cohen and his Teamsters in; UAES out. Mal wondered if Mickey C. was a contributor to Loew’s six-figure slush fund — which should hit the half million mark by the time of the ’52 primaries. “You’re good, counselor.”

“So are you, Captain . Down to brass tacks, Ed. I’m due in court at noon.”

Satterlee handed Mal and Dudley mimeographed sheets. “My thoughts on the interrogation of subversives,” he said. “Guilt by association is a strong lever on these people — they’re all connected up — everyone on the far left knows everyone else to one degree or another. In with your depositions I’ve got lists of Commie front meetings cross-filed with donation lists, which are excellent levers to procure information and get Reds to inform on other Reds to save their own damn skin. The donations also mean bank records that can be subpoenaed as evidence. Proffering surveillance photos to potential witnesses is my personal favorite technique — being shown at a subversive meeting puts the fear of God into the most Godless Pinks, and they’ll inform on their own mother to stay out of jail. I may be able to get us some extremely damaging photos from a friend who works for Red Channels — some extremely good pictures of Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee picnics. In fact, I’ve been told the photos are the Rembrandts of Federal surveillance — actual CP bigwigs and Hollywood stars along with our friends in UAES. Mr. Loew?”

Loew said, “Thank you, Ed,” and gave his standard one finger up, indicating everybody stand. Dudley Smith practically leaped to his feet; Mal stood and saw Doc Lesnick walking to the bathroom holding his chest. Awful wet coughs echoed from the hallway; he pictured Lesnick retching blood. Satterlee, Smith and Loew broke up their circle of handshaking; the Red Chaser went out the door with the DA kneading his shoulders.

Dudley Smith said, “Zealots are always tiresome. Ed’s good at what he does, but he doesn’t know when to quit performing. Five hundred dollars a lecture he gets. Capitalist exploitation of Communism, wouldn’t you say so, Captain?”

“I’m not a captain yet, Lieutenant.”

“Ha! And a grand wit you have, too, to go with your rank.”

Mal studied the Irishman, less scared than he was yesterday morning at the restaurant. “What’s in this for you? You’re a case man, you don’t want Jack Tierney’s job.”

“Maybe I just want to get next to you, lad. You’re odds on for Chief of Police or County Sheriff somewhere down the line, all that grand work you did in Europe, liberating our persecuted Jewish brethren. Speaking of which, here comes the Hebrew contingent now.”

Ellis Loew was leading Lesnick into the living room and settling him into an easy chair by the fireplace. The old man arranged a pack of Gauloises, a lighter and ashtray on his lap, crossing one stick leg over the other to hold them in place. Loew pulled up chairs around him in a semicircle; Smith winked and sat down. Mal saw cardboard boxes packed with folders filling up the dining alcove, four typewriters stacked in one corner to accommodate the grand jury team’s paperwork. Ellis Loew was preparing for war, his ranch house as headquarters.

Mal took the leftover chair. Doc Lesnick lit a cigarette, coughed and started talking. His voice was highbrow New York Jew working with one lung; Mal made his pitch as processed, spieled to a load of other cops and DAs.

“Mr. Satterlee did you a disservice by not going back further in his rather threadbare history of subversive elements in America. He neglected to mention the Depression, starvation and desperate people, concerned people, who wanted to change terrible conditions.” Lesnick paused, got breath and stubbed out his Gauloise. Mal saw a bony chest heaving, nailed the old man as gravebait and sensed that he was wavering: the pain of speech versus a chance to justify his fink duty. Finally he sucked in a huge draft of air and kept going, some kind of fervor lighting up his eyes.

“I was one of those people, twenty years ago. I signed petitions, wrote letters and went to labor meetings that accomplished nothing. The Communist Party, despite its evil connotations, was the only organization that did not seem ineffectual. Its reputation gave it a certain panache, a cachet, and the self-righteous hypocrites who condemned it in a blanket manner made me want to belong to it in order to assert my defiance of them.

“It was an injudicious decision, one that I came to regret. Being a psychiatrist, I was designated the official CP analyst here in Los Angeles. Marxism and Freudian analysis were very much in the intellectual vogue, and a number of people whom I later realized were conspirators against this country told me their... secrets, so to speak, emotional and political. Many were Hollywood people, writers and actors and their satellites — working-class people as deluded as I was regarding Communism, people who wanted to get close to the Hollywood people because of their movie connections. Just before the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact I became disillusioned with the Party. In ’39, during the California State HUAC probe, I volunteered to serve the FBI as an undercover informant. I have served in that capacity for over ten years, while concurrently acting as CP analyst. I secretly made my private files available to the 1947 House Un-American Activities Committee probers, and I am doing the same for this grand jury probe now. The files are for UAES members essential to your probe, and should you require assistance in interpreting them, I would be happy to be of service.”

The old man nearly choked on his last words. He reached for his cigarette pack; Ellis Loew, holding a glass of water, got to him first. Lesnick gulped, coughed, gulped; Dudley Smith walked into the dining alcove and tapped the filing boxes and typewriters with his spit-shined brogues — uncharacteristically idle footwork.

A horn honked outside. Mal stood up to thank Lesnick and shake his hand. The old man looked away and pushed himself to his feet, almost not making it. The horn beeped again; Loew opened the door and gestured to the cab in the driveway. Lesnick shuffled out, gulping fresh morning air.

The taxi drove away; Loew turned on a wall fan. Dudley Smith said, “How long does he have, Ellis? Will you be sending him an invitation to your victory celebration come ’52?”

Loew scooped big handfuls of files off the floor and laid them out on the dining room table; he repeated the process until there were two stacks of paper halfway to the ceiling. “Long enough to suit our purposes.”

Mal walked over and looked at their evidence: information extraction thumbscrews. “He won’t testify before the grand jury, though?”

“No, never. He’s terrified of losing his credibility as a psychiatrist. Confidentiality, you know. It’s a good hiding place for lawyers, and doctors covet it too. Of course, it’s not legally binding for them. Lesnick would be kaput as a psychiatrist if he testified.”

Dudley said, “You would think he would like to meet his maker as a good patriotic American, though. He did volunteer, and that should be a grand satisfaction for someone whose next life looms so imminently.”

Loew laughed. “Dud, have you ever taken a step without spotting the angles?”

“The last time you did, counselor. Captain Considine, yourself?”

Mal said, “Sometime back in the Roaring Twenties,” thinking that mano a mano, brain to brain, he’d favor the Dublin street thug over the Harvard Phi Bete. “Ellis, when do we start approaching witnesses?”

Loew tapped the file stacks. “Soon, after you’ve digested these. Based on what you learn here, you’ll be making your first approaches — on weak points — weak people — who’d seem most likely to cooperate. If we can build up an array of friendly witnesses fast, fine. But if we don’t get a fair amount of initial cooperation, we’ll have to put in a plant. Our friends on the Teamsters have heard picket line talk — that the UAES is planning strategy meetings aimed at coercing exorbitant contract demands out of the studios. If we get a string of balks right off the bat, I want to pull back and put a decoy into the UAES. I want both of you to think of smart, tough, idealistic-looking young cops we can use if it comes to that.”