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 that. 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.”
