by Joseph Kanon
“A man who breaks into the house-you believe him?”
“They got together again later. After the Bureau. Riordan catches Reds for Minot and Danny helped him with that, too. A name here and there-I don’t know how many. But enough to keep Riordan interested. Partners in crime.”
“It’s not true.”
“But he thinks there must be one more name. Somebody Danny didn’t get to tell him about. Whoever killed him. So he had the desk searched. A little clumsy, but he wanted to know. He sends apologies if it frightened you.”
“No, you,” she said, suddenly white, her face drained. “You frighten me.”
“Me?”
“You’ll say anything now, to make me hate him. Any lie. Daniel wouldn’t do that.”
“Yes, he would. He just wouldn’t tell you about it. Like a lot of things.”
She glared at him. “That makes it easier for you? If he was like that. Then it doesn’t matter what we do?” She went over to him, putting her fists on his chest. “Stop it.”
“You think I’d make all this up to go to bed with you? I didn’t have to, remember? I didn’t have to force you, either.”
He took her hands, holding them, close enough to feel her breathing, until she pulled them away. She looked at him, then slumped onto the couch, half-sitting on the back.
“No, you didn’t,” she said quietly. “So it’s another thing I’ve done in my life.”
He touched the side of her face, tentative, waiting for her to turn away, but she leaned into it, letting him work down to her neck.
“I’ll never force you to do anything,” he said.
“No?” she said, staring at the carpet.
“No.”
“No,” she said wearily. “That wouldn’t be-seemly.” She looked up at him. “The good brother. But not always.”
He took his hand away.
She said nothing, then got up and went over to the window again, pacing.
“And the bad one, who was supposed to do all these things-who was that? I didn’t know anybody like that.”
“Riordan saw the reports.”
“Your friend.”
“For the moment. He wants to know who killed Danny, too. His own reasons, but so what? He can help. He’s-”
“Expedient,” she said, a test answer.
“A chance. A lead.”
“It was better when it was Rosemary,” she said, picking nervously now at her fingers. “One push. You could believe it.” She paused. “What did he say about my father?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Yet?”
“I don’t know what he said about anybody. But we need to, now,” he said, including her, still together. “We need to know what he gave them. See who might have been next.”
“Oh, and they’ll tell you. How are you going to do that?”
“I thought, the way he did.”
She looked over at him.
“Work with them. Be like Danny. The one we didn’t know.”
POSSE
Minot had suggested Chasen’s for lunch and Dave Chasen himself took them to the table, one of the front booths reserved for regulars and recognizable faces. Greer Garson, near the door, seemed not to know who Minot was, but most of the others parading past the table did, and the lunch was interrupted by a series of hellos and handshakes. A surprisingly public place for such a meeting, but what had he expected? Raincoats in an alley? A murky room, drapes drawn? In real life you talked at Chasen’s, hoping for a mention in the columns.
“The chili here is great,” Minot said, ordering it. “Some people never have anything else.”
“Best in L.A.,” Riordan said, a chorus.
“You notice how good Dave is? Smooth. You’re in, he’s gone. He lets you get on with it. Romanoff, he’s all over you, you can’t get rid of him. The Russian prince. Harry Gerguson, Brooklyn.” He had leaned his football shoulders forward, confiding. “That’s the real name.” He shook his head. “There’s a lot of that element here.”
“What element is that?” Ben said, on guard, as if someone had just stamped a J in his passport.
“Phonies. I like to know who people are.”
“You picked the wrong town then,” Ben said, easier. “Half the people in Hollywood have changed names.”
“Well, in the industry sure. That’s just part of the territory, isn’t it? But a waiter pretending to be-”
“A waiter,” Riordan said, amused.
“Anyway, I didn’t pick this town, you know, I was born here. Native Californian, one of the few. I’ve seen it change. A small town in those days-well, small compared-then the phonies and smart guys start coming in. Spoilers. A couple of years ago it was still just oranges here. Like a Garden of Eden. Now you have to be careful you don’t step on the snakes.” He smiled, pleased at the turn of phrase, something he could use again.
“A big city’s bound to have crime.”
“Not crime. Police can handle that. But what do we do with the others? They want to spoil what we’ve got here, where we’re going, and I still don’t know why. Some idea. Have you been down to Long Beach? You see what’s happened there since the war? We can have the biggest port in America, big as New York, and I’ll be goddamned if we’re going to let somebody like Harry Bridges close it down. San Francisco, all he’s got to do is snap his fingers and nothing moves. We don’t want that here. Man’s not even a citizen and he can push a whole city around.”
“He’s not a citizen?”
“Australian. A break for us. You can’t bust a union, but you can sure as hell deport troublemakers. Cheryl, dear.” He rose to greet a grayhaired woman in a feathery hat and fur stole. “How’s George?”
“The flowers meant so much to him, Ken, thank you.”
“Never mind about that, you just get him home. You get the best at Cedars but it’s still not home.” He patted her hand.
“At least they keep him in bed. You know what he’s like. He’ll be a bear.”
“You’ll have a nurse?”
“He says he wants Laraine Day, so I guess he’s getting better,” she said, almost winking. “Well, enjoy your lunch. I’ll tell him you asked.”
“A massive heart attack,” Minot said after she’d gone. “Richfield Petroleum. Not everyone here’s in the movies. Just the ones everybody knows about.” He took a drink from his water glass. “That makes them special. People are interested in the movies. You can get their attention.”
Ben said nothing, waiting for him.
“Dennis here tells me we might have some mutual interests.”
Ben nodded.
“I like the sound of that. That’s how I like to work. What government’s all about. Mutual interests. I don’t believe in isms. Any of them. Just getting things done. But you’ve got people out there, they have a different idea. Not to your face. A fair fight, they know they’d lose. They get underneath. Hide. That’s the way they work. We need to know who they are, get them out into the open.”
“Congressman,” Ben said, stopping him. “A Communist killed my brother. They’re not my favorite people, either.”
“Ken,” Minot said automatically. “And now they want this country.” Unable to let it go. “Your brother did us a great service. Dennis says we can count on you, too.”
“I want to find out who did it.” He nodded to Riordan. “We think it’s somebody he was going to give you, so I figure we both want to know.”
“Like I said.” Minot smiled. “A mutual interest. I have to say, when Dennis told me about this, I was-well, relieved isn’t the right word. It’s a tragedy, what happened, however it happened. A man’s dead. But you hate to think people you work with might be-unreliable. A lot of what we get is hearsay. You’d be surprised how much time we have to spend just making sure information’s worth something. Now with your brother we never had that. If he told us to take a look at somebody, we’d find it all right. He didn’t shoot from the hip, he got it right. So you learn to trust tha
t. Then this happens and you have to wonder. You’re going to have people saying your sources are unstable. And that makes it all suspect. They’d like people to think that, it’s one of their tactics.”
“So it was better as an accident,” Ben said, interrupting the flow.
“That’s right,” Minot said, hesitating, not sure what Ben knew. “But this, this is a whole new game. If it’s true, we could make some real noise. Most of the time it’s hard to get people excited. They think it’s just about union business, organizing the coloreds. Politics. But a trial, that’s something else. A Red kills somebody working for the Bureau- everybody’s going to jump on that.”
“If it’s true?”
“Well, I mean you have to prove it. Otherwise, it’s still just ‘a man fell.’ Dennis here says it’s not going to be easy. Police never took it up, so we’re not long on evidence. We can get some help from the Bureau, on the quiet, but even they can’t make a miracle. Far as I can see, the best chance we have is you.”
“Me.”
“You’re in his house, you know everybody he knows. And it has to be somebody he knows. You don’t name strangers.”
“I’ve already looked through his things. If he was keeping notes, something like that, he wasn’t keeping them there. But sometimes one name leads to another, so it would be useful to see the files.”
“What files would those be?” Minot said, wary.
“What he gave you.”
“Look, let me explain how this works. Your brother never gave us any paper. He liked to play things close to the vest. He didn’t want anything traced back to him. Limits you, once that’s out. People don’t confide in you. No, he’d just give Dennis a name, a little information if he had it, and then it was up to us. Like I said, they were the right names- once we knew where to look.”
“You said there were reports,” Ben said to Riordan.
“With the Bureau, you talk and somebody types it up. That’s how it worked with us. He’d talk to me and I’d memo the file. You don’t have to see them-just ask me.”
“Who did he talk about? Can you give me a list?”
“How this started? The Bureau wanted to know what Ostermann was up to.”
“You thought he was a Communist?”
“We didn’t know what he was. All we knew was when he spoke- wrote an article or something-people listened. There’s a war on, it’s important to know what somebody like that is going to say. And your brother-well, who was in a better position to know?”
“So he agreed to report on him,” Ben said, hoping to be contradicted.
“Tell you the truth, it kind of surprised me, too. I mean, what if the wife found out? How would she feel? But I think maybe he thought he could do him some good. He liked Ostermann. He said we never had to worry about him. And you know, we didn’t. No funny business there at all. Wants to be a citizen now.”
“Maybe you should write him a character reference,” Ben said, more sourly than he’d intended.
“Don’t get touchy. You got an important German figure and we’re at war with Germany, of course the Bureau has to be interested. Nobody ever interfered with him. He went right on making those speeches, all that. I doubt he ever knew.”
“So that’s how it started,” Ben said, leading him. “Who else?”
“We asked about Brecht. No surprises there-we already knew. But that was a kind of test, see if your brother was pulling his punches.”
“And he wasn’t.”
“The important thing, see, was whether somebody was actually in the Party or just had lefty sympathies. Like Feuchtwanger. Your brother’d been inside, so he knew the difference. People approached him, tried to recruit him back in.”
“How? At lunch?” Ben said, opening his hand to Chasen’s.
Minot peered at him. “We don’t recruit. People come to us. Like you.”
“Not to inform on my family.”
“Informing,” Riordan said, waving this off. “Nobody’s informing.”
“He didn’t see it that way,” Minot said calmly. “It was-part of the war effort.”
“And now?”
“It’s a different war.”
“I just want to be clear. Not Ostermann. Not-family. I won’t do that.”
“Nobody gives a rat’s ass what Ostermann says now,” Riordan said, a little exasperated.
“As long as it’s pro-American.”
“But he is pro-American,” Minot said patiently. “And Feuchtwanger writes-what do you call them? Like Anthony Adverse. Kaltenbach can’t get work at the studios so he’s flirting with the East Germans, but he’s not going anywhere.”
“He’s not.”
“I think he’d find it hard to leave the country. We’re not going to give him a passport so he can be some propaganda stunt. The point is, nobody’s asking about the Germans. That’s how it started, with your brother, but that’s not what he did for me. I’m not interested in that.”
“What are you interested in?”
Minot leaned back against the booth, playing with his fork.
“I’m interested in getting people’s attention. This country is under attack and it doesn’t even know it. How do you get them to see it? And here we are, sitting in a district with the most popular thing on earth. You want something to make people sit up and notice, nothing even comes close to the industry. They’ve already got people’s attention. If we show what’s happening here-”
“In the industry? You mean in the unions?”
Minot smiled. “Well, the unions. Nobody would be very surprised at that, would they? Howard Stein, he’s practically got a Party number on his back.” He looked up. “Your brother was helpful about that. Information we can use when the time comes.”
“I thought everybody already knew,” Ben said, his stomach turning over. “At least they assume-”
“And he can deny it. But not under oath. Then you’re looking at perjury.”
“He’s going on trial?”
Minot made another half smile. “No. The industry is.”
Ben looked at the broad, handsome face, remembering his hand on Jack Warner’s shoulder, Bunny eager to please, everyone taking up positions in the chess game of the consent decree. Minot leaned forward.
“I assume all this is in confidence?”
Ben nodded, fascinated, a different game board.
“Hollywood has done a lot for this city,” Minot said. “Nobody knows better than I do. I even know the figures, which is more than you can say for most of them. And the figures are big. Since the war-” He trailed off, letting the obvious finish itself. “So now it’s like a rich widow-everyone wants something out of her. The unions want their piece. The East Coast bankers. Let’s not even think about the payoffs, let’s just pretend they don’t happen. But the Commies want something else, they want to use her to get ideas across.” He caught Ben’s skeptical expression. “They don’t have to be blatant. Nobody’s making Battleship Potemkin here. Good thing,” he said, flashing a smile. “Who the hell would go see it? Nothing that obvious. You don’t attack America. You just chip away at it. Some doubt here. Suspicion. But how do you stop them? First you have to find them.” He nodded, somehow including Ben with Danny. “Then you get them to lie. Actually show them lying. Not even their fans are going to trust them after that. You know, you can’t put someone away just for being a Commie. Conspiracy to overthrow? You spend years making a case like that. But perjury’s quick, and it’s right there. They’re lying or they’re not.” He paused. “As long as you have evidence. So you get some. You ask about files, Tenney’s got files. And Jack can be a little hasty, so god knows what he’s got in them. But we have to be more careful. We’re not just some committee in Sacramento. We’re a congressional committee. Subpoena power. You lie at the hearing, you just bought a ticket inside.”
“And if they do come across,” Riordan said, “you still have a shot at contempt.”
Ben raised his eyebrow, waiting.
; “Nobody’s a Red alone,” Riordan said. “But they’re usually reluctant to say who their friends are. Even under oath.”
“So either way,” Ben said.
“Assuming we’ve got the goods on them in the first place.”
“And that’s what Danny was doing for you? Giving you movie stars for show trials?”
“No, we’re a little shy in the star department,” Minot said with a stage modesty, not catching the Moscow reference, something that had happened far away. “But any kind of friendly witness here can be something-you still get the press. There’s lots of ways you can use information. Your brother wasn’t going to testify, anything like that. I told you, he liked to play things close to the vest. Of course, if I’d really had to, I could have subpoenaed him, but why would I do that? He played fair with me. He gave me background. And you can use background in different ways. Sometimes, like I say, to set up a perjury charge. But sometimes to get people to cooperate, lead you somewhere else.”
“Give you other names.”
“That, or help in other ways. Be a friend to the committee. You know, we don’t want to hurt the industry. We want to help it protect itself.”
His voice earnest, without a trace of irony. Was it possible he really believed this? Saw himself as a savior, not just another of the rich widow’s cynical suitors, borrowing her limelight?
“So, are you going to be a friend to the committee?” he said casually, bringing his hands together, fingers touching, putting a question.
But when he looked at Ben, not smiling, his whole body seemed to tense, expectant, as if he were waiting for the snap of the ball, and Ben saw that the rest of the lunch didn’t matter, just this moment. He sat fixed by Minot’s gaze, in a kind of quiet panic, feeling exposed, like the second before you leaned forward to a woman, crossing a line. He thought, wildly, of the first night with Liesl, being drawn in, no going back.
“He was my brother,” he said finally, hoping his voice sounded steady, plausible. “I want to know who did it. I think we both owe him that.”
Minot said nothing, assessing, then nodded, the bargain struck, that easy.
“Everything goes through Dennis, understand? Not through my office. When we’re ready for subpoenas, we want them to come as a surprise.”
