Shortell said, “All down. Son, are you getting close?”

Another electric jolt: the Bunker Hill burglaries ended on August 1, 1942; the Sleepy Lagoon murder—the victim’s clothes zoot stick slashed—occurred on August 2. “Almost, Jack. Some right answers and luck and that fucker is mine.”

Danny got to Variety International Pictures just as dusk was falling and the picket lines were breaking up for the day. He parked in plain view, put an “Official Police Vehicle” sign on his windshield and pinned his badge to his coat front; he walked to the guard hut, no familiar faces, pissed that he was ignored. The gate man buzzed him in; he walked straight back to Set 23.

The sign on the wall had Tomahawk Massacre still in production; the door was open. Danny heard gunfire, looked in and saw a cowboy and an Indian exchange shots across papier-mâché foothills. Lights were shining down on them; cameras were rolling; the Mexican guy he’d seen outside the morgue was sweeping up fake snow in front of another backdrop: grazing buffalos painted on cardboard.

Danny hugged the wall going over; the Mex looked up, dropped his broom and took off running, right in front of the cameras. Danny ran after him, sliding on soap flakes; the moviemaking stopped; someone yelled, “Juan, goddamn you! Cut! Cut!”

Juan ran out a side exit, slamming the door; Danny ran across the set, slowed and eased the door open. It was slammed against him, reinforced steel knocking him back; he slid on phony snow, hauled outside and saw Duarte racing down an alley toward a chain-link fence.

Danny ran full out; Juan Duarte hit the fence and started climbing. He snagged his trouser legs; he kicked, pulled and twisted to get free. Danny caught up, yanked him down by his waistband and caught a hard right hand in the face. Stunned, he let go; Duarte collapsed on top of him.

Danny kneed upward, a jerky shot; Duarte hit down, missing, smashing his fist on the pavement. Danny rolled away, came up behind him and pinned him with his weight; the Mex gasped, “Puto fascist shitfuck fascist cop fascist shitfuck.” Danny fumbled out his cuffs, ratcheted Duarte’s left hand and attached the spare bracelet to a fence link. The Mex flopped on his stomach and tried to tear the fence down, spitting epithets in Spanish; Danny got his breath, let Duarte shake and shout himself out, then knelt beside him. “I know you saw my picture, and you saw me at the morgue and you snitched me to Claire. I don’t care and I give a fuck about UAES and the fucking Red Menace. I want to get Augie’s killer and I’ve got a hunch it goes back to Sleepy Lagoon. Now you can talk to me, or I’ll nail you for Assault on a Police Officer right here. Call it now.”

Duarte shook his cuff chain; Danny said, “Two to five minimum, and I don’t give a shit about the UAES.” A crowd was forming in the alley; Danny waved them back; they retreated with sidelong looks and slow head shakes. Duarte said, “Take these things off me and maybe I’ll talk to you.”

Danny unlocked the cuffs. Duarte rubbed his wrist, stood up, got rubber-legged and slid down to a sitting position, his back against the fence. He said, “Why’s a hired gun for the studios give a damn about my dead fag cousin?”

Danny said, “Get up, Duarte.”

“I talk better on my ass. Answer me. How come you care about a maricón who wanted to be a puto movie star like every other puto in this puto town?”

“I don’t know. But I want the guy who killed Augie nailed.”

“And what’s that got to do with you trying to get next to Claire De Haven?”

“I told you I don’t care about that.”

“Norm Kostenz said you sure care. When I told him you were the fucking law, he said you should get a fucking Oscar for your bonaroo portrayal of Ted Krug—”

Danny squatted by Duarte, holding the fence. “Are you going to spill or not?”

Duarte said, “I’ll spill, pendejo. You said you thought Augie’s snuff went back to Sleepy Lagoon, and that got my interest. Charlie Hartshorn thought that too, so—”

Danny’s hand shook the fence; he braced his whole body into it to stay steady. “What did you say?”

“I said Charlie Hartshorn thought the same thing maybe, so maybe talking to a puto cop ain’t all poison.”

Danny slid down the fence so he could eyeball Duarte close. “Tell me all of it, slow and easy. You know Hartshorn killed himself, don’t you?”

Duarte said, “Maybe he did. You tell me.”

“No. You tell me, because I don’t know and I’ve got to know.”

Duarte stared at Danny, squinty-eyed, like he couldn’t figure him out. “Charlie was a lawyer. He was a maricón, but he wasn’t a swish or nothing. He worked Sleepy Lagoon, filing briefs and shit for free.”

“I know that.”

“Okay, here’s what you don’t know, and here’s the kind of guy he was. When you saw me at the morgue it was my second time there. I got a call from a buddy who works there, maybe one in the morning, and he told me about Augie—the zoot cuts, all of it. I went to Charlie’s house. He had legal juice, and I wanted to see if he’d goose the cops so they’d give Augie’s snuff a good investigation. He told me he’d been goosed by some cop about the death of a guy named Duane Lindenaur, even though the cop pretended he didn’t care about that. Charlie read this scandal rag that said Lindenaur and some clown named Wiltsie got cut up by a zoot stick, and my morgue buddy said Augie got chopped like that, too. I told Charlie, and he got the idea all three snuffs went back to Sleepy Lagoon. He called the cops and spoke to some guy named Sergeant Bruner or something—”

Danny cut in. “Breuning? Sergeant Mike Breuning?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Charlie told Breuning what I just told you and Breuning said he’d come to see him at his crib right away to talk to him about it. I took off then. So if Charlie thought there was something to this Sleepy Lagoon theory, maybe you ain’t such a cabrón.”

Danny’s brain stoked on overdrive:

Breuning’s curiosity on the zoot stick queries, his making light of them. His strange reaction to the four surveillance names— Augie Duarte singled out—because he was Mex, a KA of a Sleepy Lagoon Committee member? Mal telling him that Dudley Smith asked to join the grand jury team, even though, as an LAPD Homicide lieutenant, there was no logical reason for him to work the job. Mal’s story: Dudley brutally interrogating Duarte/Sammy Benavides/Mondo Lopez, stressing the Sleepy Lagoon case and the guilt of the seventeen youths originally charged with the crime—even though the questioning tack was not germane to UAES.

Hartshorn mentioning “zoot stick” on the phone to Breuning.

Jack Shortell’s oral report: Dudley Smith and Breuning were seen hobnobbing at Wilshire Station the night before last—the night Hartshorn killed himself. Did they make a quick run to Hartshorn’s house—a scant mile from the station—kill him and return to the Wilshire squadroom, hoping that no one saw them leave and return—a perfect cop alibi?

And why?

Juan Duarte was looking at him like he was from outer space; Danny got his brain simmered down to where he could talk. “Think fast on this. Jazz musicians, burglary, wolverines, heroin, queer escort services.”

Duarte slid a few feet away. “I think they all stink. Why?”

“A kid who worships wolverines.”

Duarte put a finger to his head and twirled it. “Loco mierda. A wolverine’s a fucking rat, right?”

Danny saw Juno’s claws lashing out. “Try this, Duarte. Sleepy Lagoon, the Defense Committee, ‘42 to ‘44 and Reynolds Loftis. Think slow, go slow.”

Duarte said, “Easy. Reynolds and his kid brother.”

Danny started to say, “What?”, stopped and thought. He’d read the entire grand jury package twice on arrival and twice last night; he’d read the psychiatric files twice before Considine took them back. In all the paperwork there was no mention of Loftis having a brother. But there was a gap—’42 to ‘44—in Loftis’ shrink file. “Tell me about the kid brother, Duarte. Nice and slow.”