Elmer sipped his drink. “I’m just prolonging the interview. You’ll say, ‘What’s this all about?’ pretty damn soon, which will damn near break my heart.”
Jean futzed with her tumbler. Ice cubes click-clicked.
“I’m dead bored, and you’re not the only one prolonging. If you intended grief, you’d have dropped the punch line by now. It’s Thursday night, and I’ve got tomorrow off. I’ve got nobody to stay up late with, and this is a swell diversion.”
Elmer stretched his legs and plopped his feet on the hassock. Jean’s feet bounced a half inch away.
“I’ve got a part-time girlfriend named Ellen Drew. She goes back to the ’30’s, at Paramount. Did you see If I Were King?”
“I knew Ellen. We used to schmooze at Lucy’s El Adobe. She’s still at Paramount, and she’s on her second part-time husband. I also heard she turns tricks for Brenda Allen.”
“Brenda’s my other part-time girlfriend. I run that call service with her.”
Jean lit a cigarette. “Your face just dropped down to your lap. Does running girls chagrin you?”
Elmer relit his cigar. The whore biz double-chagrined him. Jean had good sonar.
“Did you know a Paramount geek named Ralph D. Barr? He was some sort of stagehand or carpenter.”
Jean said, “I knew Ralphie, but Meyer knew him better. Meyer had a cameraman gig at the studio, and he used to recruit for the Party there. He was running a one-man book on the side. He had his Commo aspect and his money-grubber aspect, and never the twain shall meet.”
Ralph D. Barr. Arsonist and whipout man. Detained and released, 10/33.
“Barr was a firebug, wasn’t he?”
“Coy doesn’t suit you. You know from Ralphie. He set fires and pulled his pud until the fire engines came.”
Elmer played somber. “My brother died in the Griffith Park fire. Remember? October ’33?”
Jean played no-shit footsie. Her foot tapped his foot. She tapped with expertise.
“Here’s something else that you know damn well, and I damn well remember. The cops rousted our cell. Because of that fire, because Meyer was making speeches, predicting fires and tidal waves and all sorts of CP hoo-ha, because capitalism was producing spontaneous combustion, so get ready for some god-awful thunderstorms and conflagrations. He was preaching that crap before the fire, so the cops came around, and then it all went blooey.”
Blooey. That said it. Gasbag Gelb. Gasbag Lesnick. He gasbags to Annie Staples.
Jean said, “Meyer knew this fruity English poet. W. H. Auden, his name was. W.H. wrote a poem for one of his numerous boyfriends, and it had the words ‘This Storm’ in it. Meyer read the poem at his rallies, to work up the rubes. You know how this works. You provoke the rubes, and the cops come nosing around.”
Elmer tapped Jean’s foot. “Like yours truly.”
Jean went Yep. Elmer said, “You and your comrades got leaned on, but it was just routine.”
Jean went Yep. Elmer said, “What about the old gang? Do you still stay in touch?”
“Not much. Meyer loops through my life every so often. I saw him at a party a week or so back. Otto Klemperer’s place. You know — that hotshot maestro who had the brain tumor. The Lesnicks were there, so we all said hi and bemoaned the Hitler-Stalin pact. It was typical CP horseshit.”
Elmer heh-heh’d. Annie Staples was there. He’d hot-wired her.
Jean sighed. She’d had enough. ¿Qué es this jive, muchacho?
Elmer came clean. “Your name turned up in a hoodlum’s address book. Tommy Glennon. It all pertains to a case I’m on. The fire stuff is incidental. My brother died that day, and it’s always mauled me.”
Jean drained her drink. “My kid brother Bobby goes for boys. To each his own, okay? Bobby met Tommy at some kind of Catholic youth event, because that’s where those type of boys go to find chicken. Okay, they got something percolating. Bobby was staying with me then, and Tommy was calling him here. Bobby was crushed when Tommy got sent to San Quentin.”
Elmer tapped Jean’s foot. Jean tapped his foot back.
“Did Bobby know that Tommy raped women? That the evil little shit worshipped Hitler?”
Jean sighed. “Love is blind. Don’t they say that?”
“I say we’re both stir-crazy. I’ve got a fat roll yelling ‘Spend me,’ and I want to spend it on you.”
Jean dressed up nice. She put on a floral-print dress and new glasses. A fox throw topped her off. For-real fox heads and fox paws stuck out. Elmer goo-goo’d the foxes. It coaxed Jean to laugh.
They played southern rubes on a date. They talked up Wisharts and Beaumont and all points between. He told Jean he hated the Klan. She loved that. She told him she hated the Reds now. He double-loved it.
They drove up to the Strip. It hopped sans marquee lights. The blackout created this ghost-town effect. Elmer played the big kahuna out to paint the town red.
He overtipped lavish. Waiters and barmen genuflected. They hit the Troc and the Mocambo. They danced fast and slow and worked up an appetite. Elmer waved to Charlie Barnet and Lena Horne. He made like he knew them. Jean knew it was a shuck.
Dave’s Blue Room was straight across Sunset. Brenda and him owned 10 %. They made a big entrance. Kay Lake and Joan Conville waved from the bar. The standard Elmer Jackson hubbub ensued.
He’s that bagman cop. He runs girls with Brenda A. Who’s that cooze with the glasses? That fox throw’s from hunger.
They noshed steak sandwiches and slurped Dave’s renowned gin fizzes. They hashed out queer kid brothers and Klanned-up brothers roasted alive. A tipster cruised their table. He ratted a coon 211 gang. Elmer whipped a yard on him. The tipster salaamed. Jean said, “He was yanking your chain.” Elmer said, “I’m out to spread the love tonight.”
They ditched the Strip and levitated to browntown. Hear dem tom-toms? Let’s get tantalizized.
They cruised the Club Alabam. Elmer knew the hostesses and bar crew. He’d canvassed them on the klubhaus job and treated them white. They treated him white right back.
High-yellow girls circled their table. They served illegal corn-liquor shots, on the house. Elmer and Jean downed three shots and toured the solar system. Elmer dispensed C-note tips. You gots to lay down dat love.
A bouncer played escort and dropped them at the Club Zombie. Elmer slid him two yards and sent him off loved. They entered the dark dinge dive. Elmer saw the tall jig he muscled with Lee Blanchard.
He soothed his tall ass. He genuflected his own self. He coaxed numerous smiles off of him. The tall jig poured two Baron Samedi cocktails. “One sip leaves you zombified.”
Dat’s no muthafuckin’ shit, Daddy-O.
Four sips dive-bombed them. They side-draped themselves and weaved back to Elmer’s sled. Elmer close-cleaved the middle lane and slow-crawled them up Central.
Per blackout regs. Under the speed limit. With cellophane taped to the headlights.
God got them to Lyman’s, undead. The joint jumped with nite-owl cops and their consorts. A waiter read their zombified state and brought them coffee. Elmer crumbled bennies into their cups. The brew took hold faaaaaast. They went zombified to electrified.
They talked a lot. They drew stares. Elmer quick-sketched the barside gang. Buzz Meeks, Two-Gun Davis. Kay and Big Joan, reprised. Their talk drifted over. They spritzed heady concepts and big words.
Elmer talked. Jean talked. Elmer said he saved Two-Gun’s life and got on the PD. Jean said she saw a colored man lynched in Beaumont. Elmer said him and Buzz were fucking with one very bad hombre.
It got late-late/early-early. The sky lit up gray-gray. They walked to Elmer’s car in the rain.