“No, I’ll find an in on the movie crew.”

Hughes stood up. I laid on the glad hand: “I’ll nail her, sir.”

A limp shake—Hughes wiped his hand on the sly.

New money—spend it smart. Think smart:

Nail Glenda Bledsoe fast. Let Junior carry some Kafesjian weight—hope his fuck-up string ended. Figure out that Darktown tail, stay tailless.

Instinct: Exley wouldn’t rat me on Johnson. Logic: he destroyed the coroner’s file; I could rat him for a piece of Diskant. Instinct: call his Kafesjian fix PERSONAL. Instinct-call me bait—a bad cop sent out to draw heat.

Conclusions:

Number one: Call Wilhite and Narco more dangerous; call me a bent cop juking their meal ticket. Maybe the Fed grand jury blues upcoming: true bills, indictments. Rogue cops out of work then, one scapegoat: a lawyer-landlord with a sure police pension. Out-of-work killers, one target: me.

Number two: Find a burglar/pervert confessor—some geek to take my 459 fall. Palm squadroom bulls for leads; keep Junior on the case legit. No legit B&E man?—Joe Pervert buys the dive.

I drove over to Hollywood Station. No file-room clerk—I boosted “459 Cleared,” “False Confessions,” ‘49—’57. A 187 sheet on the board—the “Wino Will-o-the-Wisp.” Perv stuff, nice—I grabbed a carbon.

Conclusion number three:

Call me still short of scared.

Griffith Park, the west road up-streams, small mountains. Steep turns, scrub-hill canyons—Movieland.

I pulled into a makeshift lot—vehicles parked tight. Shouts, picket signs bobbing way back. I hopped a flatbed, scoped the ruckus.

Union placard shakers-Chick Vecchio facing them off—the stiff-arm fungoo up close. A clearing, trailers, the set: cameras, a rocket ship half Chevy.

“Scab!” “Scab scum!”

Over, buck the line—”Police officer!” Punk pickets—they let me through, no grief. Chick greeted me-smiles, back slaps.

“Scab scum!” “Police collusion!”

We walked over to the trailers. Catcalls, no rocks—sob sisters. Chick: “You looking for Mickey? I’ll bet he’s got a nice envelope for you.”

“He told you?”

“No, it’s what my brother would call an ‘inescapable conclusion to the cognoscenti.’ Come on, a witness flies out the window with Dave Klein standing by. What’s a card-carrying cogno supposed to think?”

“I think you almost did some union thumping.”

“Hey, we should have called the old Enforcer. Seriously, you got ideas? Mickey’s got a bad case of the shorts. You know any boys who won’t cost us an arm and a leg?”

“Fuck it, let them picket.”

“Uh-uh. They yell when we’re shooting, which means scenes have to be redubbed, which costs money.”

Someone, somewhere: “Cameras! Action!”

“Serious, Dave.”

“Okay, call Fats Medina at the Main Street Gym. Tell him I said five sparring partners and a roadblock. Tell him you’ll go fifty a man.”

“For real?”

“Do it tonight, and you won’t have union trouble tomorrow. Come on, I want to check out this movie.”

Up to the set. Chick held a finger to his lips—scene in progress.

Two “actors” gesticulating. The spaceship close up: Chevy fins, Studebaker grille, Kotex-box launching pad.

Touch Vecchio: “Russian rocket ships have dropped atomic waste on Los Angeles—a plot to turn Angelenos into automatons susceptible to Communism! They have created a vampire virus! People have turned into monsters who devour their own families!”

His co-star—blond, padded crotch: “Family is the sacred concept that binds all Americans. We must stop this soul-usurping invasion whatever the cost!”

Chick, cupping a whisper: “The hoot is my brother’s killed eight men, and he takes this noise serious. And feature-him and that bottle-blond fruitcake are porking in trailers every chance they get, and chasing chicken down at the Fern Dell toilets. You see that guy with the megaphone? That’s Sid Frizell, the so-called director. Mickey hired him on the cheap, and to me he reads ex-con who couldn’t direct a Mongolian cluster fuck. He’s always talking to that guy Wylie Bullock, the cameraman, who at least has got a place to live, unlike most of the bums Mickey’s hired. Feature: he hired the crew out of the slave markets down on skid row. They sleep on the set, like this is some kind of fucking hobo jungle. And the dialogue? Frizell—Mickey shoots him an extra sawbuck a day to be scriptwriter.”

No Mickey, no women. Touch: “I would slay the highest echelon of the Soviet Secretariat to protect the sanctity of my family!”

Blondie: “I of course empathize. But first we must isolate the atomic waste before it seeps into the Hollywood Reservoir. Look at these wretched victims of the vampire virus!”

Cut to werewolf-mask extras hip-hopping. Hip, hop—T-Bird popped out of back pockets.

Sid Frizell: “Cut! I told you people to leave your wine back with your blankets and sleeping bags! And remember Mr. Cohen’s order—no wine before your lunch break!”

A geek lurched into the spaceship. Touch squeezed Blondie’s ass on the QT

Frizell: “Five-minute break and no drinking!” Background noise: “Scab scum! Police puppets!”

No Glenda Bledsoe.

Touch oozed by the camera slow. “Hi, Dave. Looking for Mickey?”

“People keep asking me that.”

“Well, it’s an inescapable conclusion of the cognoscenti.”

Chick winked. “He’ll show up. He goes by this bakery to get week-old bread to make sandwiches with. Feature the cuisine we get: stale bread, stale doughnuts and this lunch meat sold out the back door at this slaughterhouse out in Vernon. I quit eating on the set when I caught fur on my baloney and cheese.”

I laughed. Script talk: Blondie and an old geek dressed like Dracula.

Touch sighed. “Rock Rockwell is going to be such a big star. Listen, he’s actually telling Elston Majeska how to interpret his lines. What does that imply to the cognoscenti?”

“Who’s Elston Majeska?”

Chick: “He was some kind of silent-movie star over in Europe, and now Mickey gets him passes from this rest home. He’s a junkie, so Mickey pays him off in this diluted H he gets cheap. Old Elston says his lines, shoots up and goes on a sugar jag. You ought to see him snarf those stale doughnuts.”

Pops peeled a Mars Bar, weaving—Blondie grabbed his cape.

Touch, swooning: “One man sandwich with the works!”

Frizell: “Glenda to the set in five minutes!”

“When I met Mickey, he was clearing ten million a year. From that to this, Jesus Christ.”

Chick: “Things come and go.”

Touch: “The torch passes.”

“Bullshit. Mickey got out of McNeil Island a year ago-and nobody has grabbed his old action. Is he scared? Four of his guys have gotten clipped, all unsolveds—and I mean nobody knows who did it. You guys are all the muscle he’s got left, and I can’t feature why you stick around. What’s he got left, the Niggertown coin business? How much can he be turning on that?”

Chick shrugged. “So feature we been with Mickey a longtime. Feature we don’t like change. He’s a scrapper, and scrappers get results sooner or later.”

“Nice results. And Lester Lake told me some out-of-town guys are working the Southside coin.”

Chick shrugged. Wino cheers and wolf whistles—Glenda Bledsoe in a pom-pom-girl outfit.

Feature:

Tall, lanky, honey blond. All legs, all chest—a grin said she never bought in. A little knock-kneed, big eyes, dark freckles. Pure something—maybe style, maybe juice.

Touch shot me details: “Glamorous Glenda. Rock and me are the only males on the set immune to her charms. Mickey discovered her working at Scrivner’s Drive-In. He’s smitten, Chick’s smitten. Glenda and Rock play brother and sister. She’s been infected with the vampire virus, and she puts the make on her own brother. She turns into a monster and sends Rock running off into the hills.”