Breuning eyes narrowed. “Another goose. And that’s old Mex stuff, pretty far afield. I know Doc Layman tagged the back wounds as zoot stick, but don’t you think he could be wrong? As far as I’m concerned, it just doesn’t play.”

A Dudley Smith stooge patronizing Norton Layman, MD, PhD. Danny reached for some frost. “No. Layman’s the best, and he’s right.”

“Then I don’t think it’s a real lead. I think our guy just read about the damn sticks or eyeballed one of the zoot riots and got a kick out of them. He’s a fucking psycho, there’s no reason to those guys.”

Something about Breuning’s take on the sticks was off; Danny shrugged to cover the thought. “I think you’re wrong. I think the zoot sticks are essential to the way the killer thinks. My instincts tell me he’s revenging old wrongs, and the specific mutilations are a big part of it. So I want you and Niles to comb the station files in Mex neighborhoods and check old occurrence reports— ‘42, ‘43, around in there, the zoot riots, Sleepy Lagoon—back when the Mexes were taking heat.”

Breuning stared at Danny; Niles groaned and muttered, “My instincts.” Danny said, “Sergeant, if you’ve got comments, address them to me.”

Niles cracked a grin. “Okay. One, I don’t like the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and their good buddy Mickey Kike, and I’ve got a County pal who says you’re not the goody two shoes you pretend to be. Two, I’ve been doing a little work on my own, and I talked to a couple of Quentin parolees who said no way was Marty Goines a queer—and I believe them. And three, I think you personally fucked me by not calling in Tamarind Street, and I don’t like that.”

No Bordoni. No Bordoni. No fucking Bordoni. Danny, calm. “I don’t care what you like or what you think. And who were the parolees?”

Two hard stares locked; Niles glancing down at his notebook. “Paul Arthur Koenig and Lester George Mazmanian. And four, I don’t like you.”

The bluff called. Danny looked at Niles, spoke to LASD Sergeant Shortell. “Jack, there’s a poster on the notice board that shits on our Department. Rip it up.”

Shortell’s voice, admiring. “My pleasure, skipper.”

Ted Krugman.

Ted Krugman.

Theodore Michael Krugman.

Teddy Krugman, Red Commie Pinko Subversive Stagehand.

Friends with Jukey Rosensweig of Young Actors Against Fascism and Bill Wilhite, a cell boss with the Brooklyn CP; ex-lover of Donna Patrice Cantrell, leftist firebrand at Columbia University circa ‘43, jumper suicide in ‘47—a dive off the George Washington Bridge when she got the news that her socialist father attempted suicide over his HUAC subpoena, turning himself into a permanent vegetable via ingestion of a scouring powder cocktail that scoured his brain down to sub-idiot quality. Ex-member of AFL-CIO, North Shore Long Island CP, Garment Workers’ Defense Committee, Concerned Americans Against Bigotry, Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Fair Play for Paul Robeson League. Socialist summer camps as a kid, New York City College dropout, not drafted because of his subversive politics, liked to work as a theater grip because of all the politically enlightened people you met and pussy. Worked a long string of Broadway shows, plus a handful of B movies shot on location in Manhattan. Slogan shouter, brawler, hardcase. Loved to attend meetings and demonstrations, sign petitions and talk Commie rebop. Active in the New York leftist scene until ‘48—then nowhere.

Pictures.

Donna Patrice Cantrell was pretty but hard, a softer version of her dad the Ajax guzzler. Jukey Rosensweig was a big fat guy with bulging thyroid eyes and thick glasses; Bill Wilhite was white-bread handsome. His supporting cast of characters, caught in Fed surveillance snaps, were just faces attached to bodies wielding placards: names, dates and causes on the back, to shore him up with some more history.

Parked on Gower just north of Sunset, Danny ran through his script and photo kit. He had his co-stars’ faces down pat: the Teamster picket boss he was supposed to introduce himself to, the goons he’d be picketing and arguing with, the LAPD Academy muscleman he’d fight—and finally—if Considine’s scenario played to perfection—Norman Kostenz, UAES picket boss, the man who’d take him to Claire De Haven. Deep-breathing, he locked his gun, badge, cuffs and Daniel Thomas Upshaw ID in the glove compartment, sliding Theodore Michael Krugman license photostats into the sleeves in his wallet. Upshaw into Krugman completed; Danny walked over, ready to do it.

The scene was pandemonium divided into two snakelike strips of bodies: UAES, Teamsters, banners on sticks, shouts and catcalls, three feet of sidewalk separating the factions, a debrisfilled gutter and studio walls bracketing the lines down a quartermile-long city block. Newsmen standing by their cars on the opposite side of Gower; lunch trucks dispensing coffee and doughnuts; a bunch of oldster cops stuffing their faces, watching newshounds shoot craps on a piece of cardboard laid across the hood of an LAPD black-and-white. Duelling bullhorns bombarding the street with squelch noise and static-layered repetitions of “REDS OUT!” and “FAIR PAY NOW!”

Danny found the Teamster picket boss, picture pure; the man winked on the sly and handed him a pine slab with UAES—UN-AMERICAN ESCAPED SUBVERSIVES printed on reinforced cardboard at the top. He went through a rigmarole of laying down the law and making him fill out a time card; Danny saw the guy working the Teamster lunch truck eyeball the transaction—obviously the UAES plant man mentioned in Considine’s info package. The shouts got louder; the picket boss hustled Danny over to his marching buddies, Al and Jerry, picture perfect in their grubby work clothes. Tough-guy. salutations per the script: three hard boys who brook no horseshit getting down to business. Then him—Ted Krugman—starring in his own Hollywood epic, surrounded by extras, one line of good guys, one of bad guys, all of them moving, separate lines going in opposite directions.

He marched, three abreast with Al and Jerry—pros who knew their stuff; signs came at him: FISCAL JUSTICE NOW!; END THE STUDIO AUTOCRACY!; NEGOTIATE FAIR WAGES! Teamster elbows dug into UAES rib cages; the bad guys winced, didn’t elbow back, kept marching and yelling. It was Man Camera with something like Sound-O-Vision thrown in; Danny kept imagining mixmasters, meat grinders, buzz saws and cycle engines working overtime, not letting you think or sight on a fixed image. He kept talking his pre-planned diatribe, feeding Jerry, right on the button with Considine’s first cue: “You’re talkin’ the fuckin’ Moscow party line, pal. Who’s fucking side are you on?”

Himself, coming back: “The side that’s paying me a fucking buck an hour to picket, pal!”

Jerry, grabbing his arm as UAESers stood aside and watched: “That’s not good enough—”

He broke free and kept walking and shouting per the scenario; per the scenario the picket boss came over and issued him a warning about team play, hauling Al and Jerry over, making them all shake hands like kids in a schoolyard, a bunch of anemic lefties scoping it out. All three of them played it sullen; the picket boss hotfooted it to the lunch truck; Danny saw him talking to the coffee man—UAES’s plant—hooking a thumb back at the little fracas he just refereed. Al said, “Don’t goldbrick, Krugman”; Jerry muttered anti-Red epithets; Danny launched his “I’m one of the guys” spiel, real real Krugman stuff in case the bad guys had a close ear down, stuff Considine yanked out of an old NYPD Red Squad report: garment worker unions bashing heads insanely, the “bosses” on both sides fucking over the rank and file. Him pleading with philistine Al and Jerry to see the reason behind what he was saying; them shaking their heads and picketing away from him, disgusted at working the same line as a rat fucker Commie traitor.