Blacklist

by Jerry Ludwig

  “Then you know!” And I let it rip. How I came to take the job, hoping that Leo was on the level and wanting to make amends, I wanted to believe that, never knowing, never dreaming that—

  Zacharias cuts me off. Mildly but firmly. “Sure you did.”

  He’s broken my litany of righteous anger. “I did what?”

  “You knew. You’re behaving like Shannon’s item about Leo was news to you.”

  “It was! I knew about the others, of course, but not about Teddy. Leo swore to Teddy just last year in Paris that he didn’t give Teddy’s name to the Committee.”

  “Did Teddy believe him?”

  “Yeah, he did!” And I describe the meeting at the Ritz Bar.

  Zacharias listens stone-faced. “How do y’know Teddy believed Leo?”

  I’m getting steamed at Zacharias. “Because Teddy cried when he told me, that’s how I know! The only time I ever saw Teddy cry!”

  Zacharias reacts to my anger with sadness. “Took a lot to make that man weep. All the years we knew each other—the only time I saw Teddy cry was the day we liberated Dachau.”

  Now I’m confused. “So what are you saying?”

  “Why do you think Teddy was crying in Paris?”

  “Well,” I’m a tad sarcastic, “maybe because Teddy had just found out his best friend and partner was dying and—”

  “—and Leo was still lying to Teddy about what he’d done. Even then, one final betrayal.” Zacharias takes a drag on his cigarette. “That woulda been enough to make me cry.”

  That rocks me. Zacharias goes on gently.

  “C’mon, Duveed, you’re a smart guy. So was Teddy. He could figure things out. Y’think the Committee would squeeze Leo to spill his guts about everyone he knew in the Party and forget to inquire about his own partner? Harry Rains was a smart lawyer, he cut a face-saving deal for Leo: Give us Teddy in executive session, you can leave him out in the public hearing. The Committee would do that. Leo was a prize.”

  I’m hit with a wave of self-loathing. “Guess I just didn’t want to know. Feels like I sold out Teddy. Going to work for Leo.”

  “Hey, Duveed. You just wanted a job. You wanted to be with Jana. Those are not sins. Piling on with the jackals, like Leo did, helping them tear people you love to pieces—that’s a sin.”

  Zacharias is granting me absolution. But I’m not ready to let myself off the hook. Then he asks, “You talk to Jana since this hit the fan?”

  “Not yet.” And I’m now filled with a new dread. “You think she knew?”

  “Guess you’re gonna have to ask her.”

  That’s the scary truth. That’s what I’m going to have to do. So much is going to depends on her answer. I’ve been intent on holding back no secrets. Has she? Feels like I’m teetering on the brink again.

  CHAPTER

  25

  DAVID

  The tour bus drops us all off back at the Chinese Theatre. I ask Zacharias to have a drink with me, but he has another run to make. We stand on the curb while I speculate as to what makes Joe Shannon tick.

  Zacharias lights another Lucky Strike and spits. “Seems like this to me: Shannon doesn’t want people to think of him as a homo, which, of course, he is; no problem there as far as I’m concerned, but he thinks he can mask that by wrapping himself in Old Glory, and I understand that.”

  “You making excuses for him?”

  “Me? I’m from the club that wishes a bolt of lightning zaps him. And the sooner the better. He did a bang-up job on me back when it was my turn to be a fish in the barrel. I’m just saying I understand what he’s all about.” Zacharias puffs his cigarette. “So you assume it’s the FBI guy’s been tailing you who provided all the dirt to Shannon?”

  “Who else? McKenna was sitting right there with him.”

  “Well, it wouldn’t be the first or last time the Slim Jims spoon-fed their pals in the press.”

  The next batch of tourists are starting to board the bus. We hug again, Zacharias pounds my back. “Let’s stay in touch now, okay?”

  * * *

  I go down the street to have a drink by myself at Musso & Frank. Dark-paneled restaurant and bar. Low lighting, warm buzz of chatter. I take a corner stool at the bar, where an ancient bartender tells customers about the days when William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald used to get shitfaced here. I brood and talk to no one. Sip my scotch. Try phoning Jana at the studio again. No, she hasn’t come back, they still don’t know where she is.

  So I move on to the next bar along Hollywood Boulevard. No conversation except to order more scotch. I’m wallowing in rage over Leo. Waiting for the booze to fuzz my head so I can stop thinking. Well, can’t be done in this bar, they must be serving watered-down hooch. So I continue on. Drinking my way to Cahuenga and then over to Sunset. Searching for Blottoville.

  I sway out of a saloon near Sunset and Gower, hey, when did it get to be nighttime? Suddenly I’ve got that feeling again: someone’s watching me! So I bellow into the blackness, “Come out, McKenna, you bastard, come out where I can see you!”

  Nobody emerges from the shadows, but I scare an elderly platinum blonde in tight toreador pants and spike heels who’s walking her springer spaniel. Her dog barks and she crosses the street to avoid me.

  So I hit another joint, and my anger flips back to Joe Shannon. The craven vulture. Without him blaring his phony patriotics and nastiness in that shitty column none of this would have happened. Nah, I reject that—it excuses the real mind-fucker in all this: me! Ignoring what’s in plain sight. Took Zacharias to force me to see. But I still feel as if going over to Shannon’s place and kicking his ass would be a terrific idea! A public service! I chugalug the rest of my drink.

  Then I stagger out and go looking for my car, but can’t find it. Later on I wake up in my car, so I guess I did find it, and I’m parked near a saloon on Western Avenue and there’s a grease stain on my jacket and the right shoulder is torn. The knuckles on my right hand are bruised, don’t ask me why. I’m drunk as a skunk.

  Exercising extreme caution, I drive up Fountain Avenue, where traffic is lighter than on the main drags and less likely to be patrolled by the cops. I make it into the parking lot under the Chateau. As I cross the deserted lobby, the nosy young night clerk at the desk hails me. The clock behind him reads 2:20 A.M.

  “You’ve got messages.” He hands me a sheaf of the little slips. They’re pink. Same color as HUAC subpoenas. I flip through. Harry Rains’s office called, Mr. Rains wants to see Mr. Weaver at his house at 8:30 for breakfast. Probably wants to ream me for upsetting Leo, the fork-tongued Judas. All the other messages are from Jana. I shove them in my jacket pocket, notice the flap is torn, too. Rigidly upright to impress the clerk with how sober I am, I wend toward my room.

  In front of my door Jana is hunkered down, hugging her knees, fast asleep. I look down at her. She senses someone’s there and stirs, lifts her head, blinks, and I smile and she smiles back, because for a moment we’ve both forgotten what’s happened.

  “Hey,” I say. I hold out a hand, she takes it, pulls herself to her feet.

  “I was so worried,” she says. “Since I saw the item in the paper this morning. I called the set, they said you quit. The gate man told me they chased you away. So I went looking for you everywhere, down at our spot on the beach, Dolores coffee shop, everywhere and—”

  “Well, now y’found me.” I say with a sheepish grin. “Went for a bus ride with good ol’ Zacharias.”

  “You’re drunk,” she says.

  “Pretty much.”

  Jana takes the room key from my hand, unlocks the door, and guides me inside. Helps me out of my clothes, then propels me into the shower, puts it on full blast, and leaves me there a while. Then she turns off the water and dries me. Such gentleness in the way she touches me. Mustn’t forget: we’ve got each other. Despite Leo.

  While she rubs me with the thick warm towel, I mumble: “Good ol’ Zacharias, Leo used to say he was maybe the best writer i
n Hollywood, he’s driving a crappy tour bus now.”

  “It’s a lie!” she answers my unspoken question. “Leo swore to me! He didn’t give Teddy’s name! He didn’t do that to Teddy!”

  “Yeah, he did. We always knew, jus’ didn’t wanna know. Tha’s what Zacharias says.”

  She stares at me as if I’ve hit her between the eyes. Then she shepherds me into my bed and tucks me in. She lies down, still clothed, on top of the blanket, beside me. Later on, it’s still dark, but I wake up with a jolt and she’s still there. Her eyes are wide open, staring at the ceiling. She kisses my cheek and says, “Shhhhhh, go back to sleep,” and so I do.

  CHAPTER

  26

  MCKENNA

  I’m fast asleep when my phone rings. Groggy, I hear Willie Pierson’s voice. “Mac, sorry to rouse you.”

  “So why’re you doin’ it?” The luminous dial on my wristwatch on the nightstand reads 3:17 A.M.

  “I’m at the office, got lobster shift. The police scanner’s on—”

  “Willie, is there a point to this?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But—there’s been a fire. In that house you were telling me about. The one where that fairy gossip columnist got decked, and—they think somebody’s dead.”

  “Who?”

  “Didn’t say on the scanner, but—thought you might want to know.”

  “Thanks, kid, I’ll check it out in the morning.”

  I hang up, pull the quilt up to my ears, ready to go back to sleep. But the call stays in my head. Somebody’s dead. Okie O’Connell sleeps there. Is he dead? Cop instinct kicks in. Maybe this won’t keep until morning. I switch on the lamp and get dressed. The last thing I do is strap on my watch. It has a wide leather band to conceal the ugly scar on my wrist. A childhood forget-me-not from my stepfather.

  * * *

  When I turn my Mustang into Ramona Court, I’m stunned. It looks like a V-2 rocket scored a direct hit on Joe Shannon’s cottage. It’s a pile of charred beams and waterlogged debris. No flames, but two fire engines on scene. Smoke still rising in the air as the firefighters coil their hoses. A pair of them are still poking through the wreckage with picks and shovels. Parked near the engines there is the usual clutter of cop cars, marked and unmarked. Residents of the street, in bathrobes and slippers, gawk behind the police barriers in the gloom.

  I park and push through the neighbors and flash my ID for the blue uniform at the barrier. But my ID doesn’t work its usual magic. The uniform on guard shakes his head, no one told him I was coming. I insist he let me through, but he’s stonewalling. Then I hear a loud testy voice:

  “McKenna, who the hell needs you?”

  Ray Alcalay stomps up, his gold LAPD lieutenant’s badge pinned to the lapel of a navy-blue blazer, gray slacks tucked into klutzy knee-high wading boots. Tall, barrel-chested guy. Since I saw him last he’s graduated to shopping at the Big Man’s Store. Used to be stocky, now he’s expanded to portly. Few years older than me, maybe fifty, with a hawkish, squinty-eyed face like the Indian on the old nickel. With the extra weight he reminds me of someone else, but I can’t make the connection yet. Alcalay is star homicide, so this is not an accidental death case.

  “Hey, Ray,” I say, “long time.”

  “He okay, Lieutenant?” the copper asks. “You said not to let anybody through.”

  “Nah, he’s not okay. But let him through anyway.”

  In the movies, that’s how big lugs talk when they really like each other. Not this time. Alcalay genuinely hates my guts. I don’t blame him. I wish it was some other investigator out here tonight.

  I slip inside the barrier and advance a few steps, but Alcalay blocks my way. “Okay, Agent McKenna, state your business.”

  “Just wanted to help out if I can. Heard the call on the scanner and—”

  “—decided to jump out of your jammies and rush here. Whattaguy!”

  “I knew the stiff real well, Okie was a weird guy, but—”

  “Hey, don’t tell me, tell him.”

  He gestures toward a police car a distance away where Okie O’Connell, his snazzy but outdated Sy Devore suit rumpled but not smudged, is gabbing with two detectives. One of them nudges Okie, who makes to rush over, but the detectives keep him there. So he yells:

  “Hey, Mac—you saw it! When that Weaver kid belted Joey. Left him with a shiner, lookin’ look like a Disney raccoon.”

  I turn to Alcalay in confusion. “So who got clipped?”

  “Joe Shannon. Another friend of yours, right?”

  “Shannon was a contact,” I say carefully.

  “You don’t seem broken up to lose him.”

  “We shared common interests a few years back. But a mean bastard.”

  “For instance?”

  Now a chance to demonstrate my insider credentials. “This place was Shannon’s office.” Alcalay shrugs, he knows that. “But once I went to his house for a Christmas party, a showcase near Jack Warner’s in Beverly Hills. I hadn’t been there before, so Shannon took me around. We came to the den, you could hardly get in, it was piled that high with holiday gifts from the studios and the stars. He told me, ‘See the power of fear?’”

  Alcalay smiles. Thin and cold. “Hey, McKenna, a lot of people think that’s what you do for a living.”

  I let that one go by. He pats my shoulder. “Well, thanks for the dishy anecdote and for stopping by and verifying Okie’s tale about this guy Weaver clocking Shannon. See ya around.”

  He starts walking away. The fucker’s dismissing me. I can’t let him do that! Because, like a thunderbolt, I know, I just know this is the case I’ve been hoping for. So I start to follow him, but the blue uniform’s got my arm, yanking me back toward the barrier. “C’mon, Ray, cut the shit!”

  Alcalay stops and looks back. Rubber-gloved hands on his hips. “Whadayawant, Feeb?” That’s sneering cop slang for FBI “Want me to invite you into my life so you can screw me over again?”

  The uniform is smothering a grin.

  “Let’s just talk, huh?” I say. “Privately. Two minutes. C’mon, Ray, you can spare two minutes.”

  Alcalay mulls, then nods at the uniform to let me loose. Alcalay and I walk behind one of the fire engines. No one else near us. He tells me, “You’ve got no jurisdiction here, McKenna.”

  “Unless you invite me in to consult.”

  “I’d sooner bite my balls off.” Again, there is a resemblance to someone else, but who? He glances at his watch. “Y’got two minutes. Go.”

  “It’s simple. You need me. This is a Hollywood homicide. I know all these players, you don’t. I can save you time, put you onto leads, keep you from going off on wild goose chases, I know what skeletons are hidden in which closet. We can work together.”

  He peers at me with loathing. “Like the last time?”

  What happened then was a sexy supermodel-turned-actress disappeared. LAPD began investigating, but I strong-armed my way in—kidnapping is classic FBI territory, and there were headlines to be had. So we made Alcalay suck hind tit. Grabbed all the cop data and made errand boys out of them. Until I got a whiff that it was a put-up job. Not a lovely damsel in distress, but a panicky bitch and her manager seeking media attention to juice up her career. I told D.C. the score and suggested we update LAPD. Instead, Hoover instructed me to tell them nothing and back off. Orders from headquarters. When the thing blew up the Bureau’s skirts were clean and LAPD looked like a bunch of idiots.

  “It won’t be like the last time,” I say.

  “Or the time before that?” He means the Sammy Davis thing. “Go home and go back to sleep. You’re not sliming your way in here.” Taps his watch. “Time’s up.”

  He’s ready to go off again. “Ray, listen—” I grab his sleeve. He shakes me off like I’m a leper. “I’m asking you please. Man to man. You gotta let me in.” I can hear the desperation in my voice. So can he.

  He stares at me. Appraising. “Means that much to you?”

  “Yeah, it d
oes.”

  He considers, then reluctantly: “Okay, who knows, you might be useful. Stranger things have happened.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “You won’t regret it. I owe you one.”

  “But just one itsy-bit of Bureau bullshit and you’re gone.”

  “Deal,” I say. And I mean it.

  * * *

  We’re walking toward what used to be the house. He’s bringing me up to speed. “First thought was a malfunction of the floor furnace heating system, those sumbitches oughta be outlawed, looked like the pilot light blew out, fumes filled the place, somebody lit a cigarette, and boom.”

  “Yeah, but?”

  “But that was before the fire guys found the remnants of a tote can of car gas. They figure the place was doused and then torched. With the owner and proprietor inside.”

  “Only Shannon?”

  “So far as we know. And he was pretty crisp when they dug him out.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t him.”

  “Save it for your TV show. It’s him. Wearing the jewelry. And we already woke up his dentist, got hold of Shannon’s records. We have to be sure on this one.” Then he adds, “Shannon’s head was crushed like an eggshell. Not from a falling beam. Blunt force trauma. Killer beat him with a hammer or something. Real vicious shit. Someome had a real hate on.”

  “Joe tended to inspire those kinds of feelings.”

  Okie falls in step with us. Arm around my shoulder. “Glad you’re here, cousin.”

  Alcalay says, “We been asking Okie if Shannon had any enemies—”

  “—and I said,” Okie reports, “only enough to fill the Rose Bowl. But the Weaver kid, he’s the latest member of the fan club.”

  Alcalay asks me, “You think this Weaver’s a top possible?”

  “I’d sure talk to him, but—the kid won that round, so why would he come back for more?”

  Okie offers, “Well, maybe ’cuz Joey tore him a new one in the column yesterday. Kremlin-loving creep.”

  I offer Okie a bleak smile. “You auditioning for Joe’s job?”