[h3]Los Angeles[/h3] [b]South Central 3:15 PM[/b] The old black lady turned her nose up Jeff Thomas. He was on her porch, the screen door between the two of them. Jeff had his badge out and up against the screen mesh for her to see he was official. Jeff could smell something cooking inside the house, probably greens. He could also smell booze, closer and wafting through the screen. "They don't hire niggas to be police," she slurred. "Right," said Jeff. "But they do hire negroes. I'm one of those, ma'am. I'm here because Wendall Brock had this house listed as his address." "The motherfucker didn't live here!" The old lady swayed on her feet and gripped against the screen to help from tottering back further. Jeff put his badge up and pulled out his notebook. "But you knew him, right?" "He rented the garage behind my house. He was late on his rent. Now, I gotta clean his shit out and try to fix it up for a new tenant." "You haven't touched it yet? I need access to that garage." "Well, I need a warrant, Mr. Po-lice." Jeff ignored her. He stepped off the porch and walked around the side of the house. The old lady squealed and tried to chase after him. She walked on unsteady feet and yelled at Jeff as they headed into the backyard. There was a detached wooden garage will a metal roll-up door. "Uncle Tom motherfucker!" "You want to go to jail, granny?" Jeff asked as he looked at the woman. "Public intoxication, obstruction of justice, harassing a police officer. Take your pick and I can call patrol up. You'll be in central lock up before five, hanging with the whores and the bull dykes. What do you say?" The fight went out of the old drunk. She started to back away from Jeff and towards the house. "I'll get out of your hair so you can work, sir." She shuffled back into the house and slammed the door shut. Jeff heard the loud clang of the bolt locking into place and laughed softly to himself. With her gone, he turned to the garage and pulled on a pair of leather gloves. The autopsy on Brock proved very little insight into the events leading up to his murder. The massive gunshot wound to the head had been the cause of death, no surprise there. Jeff also wrote up a request for the lab downtown to do a blood test on Brock for any kind of narcotics. He pulled open the roll-up door and looked in on a one-room apartment. There was a dresser that looked like it opened up on a Murphy bed, a cheap desk with a folding chair and a typewriter, and a toilet and sink in the far corner of the garage. Jeff sketched a layout of the apartment before stepping in. The place was neat, far neater than he expected it to be. Whatever Wendall Brock had been in life, neat had been among his features. The clothes in the dresser were neat and folded on the hangers. Jeff pulled out the bed and was not surprised to find it made with the corners tucked in neatly. He scribbled "military?" in the notebook before turning to the desk. Nothing was in the typewriter, but a stack of typing paper was in the top drawer of the desk. He rifled through it and found something he wasn't expecting underneath the paper. Pamphlets and political tracts on a variety of subjects rested at the bottom of the drawer. They skewered to the far-left and approached radical. One was titled "Houism: A Crash Course", one said "LAPD: KKKorupt KKKops," still another was title "Who Will Survive in America?" Jeff took notes on the tracts and stuck a few in his pocket. He walked out the garage and pulled the door down. He heard a rattling noise and looked towards the house to see the blinds in one window closing shut quickly. Jeff smirked and pocketed the gloves in his sports coat before walking back towards the street. He was starting to feel the need for another snort. His last had been a few hours earlier and had managed to last him longer than he thought it would. Jeff laid out a small line of the brown stuff on the dash of his car and snorted it up. He let out a sigh of relief and leaned back in the seat. The wave of pleasure crashed through his body and put his mind at ease. It also helped him think. The case Hoyt had dismissed as Darktown intrigue seemed a bit more complicated than even Jeff thought it would be. Wendall Brock was a neat, politically interested man who probably was a writer. Did he write the tracts in the drawer? Maybe. The DOB on his license put him at the right age to have taken part in all the political shit that happened during the war. If he was as left as the pamphlets implied, he would be on a list somewhere. He started the car and headed back towards 77th Street Station, buzzed on both big H and the progress in the investigation. ---- [b]Hollywood 9:09 PM[/b] Elliot Shaw exited the movie theater along with a pack of people. He had been among them during the showing of [i]Shall We Dance?[/i], a ballroom dancing farce picture Pinnacle Studios wrote, shot, and released all in the span of two months. It was middle of the road stuff. Raymond Hollister starred as a nice guy engaged of a shrew of a woman. The shrew demanded that he take dancing lessons before their wedding. Enter Bridgette Davenport as the beautiful dancing instructor. Anyone who's seen a movie knew the rest of the story. Shenanigans ensue, and Hollister and Davenport fall in love and end up together. Clair Beauchamp had a supporting part in the picture. That's why Elliot had went to see it, to see her in action. It would have been easier to watch the film at one of the private screening rooms Pinnacle had on its lot, but Elliot wanted to watch it among the people to see if she lit up the screen as much as Jeannie claimed she did. Her part was Davenport's best friend, shoulder to cry on, and comic relief. Jeannie was right that the girl lit up the screen. She had about fifteen minutes of screen time but always stole focus anytime she came into the picture. A couple of the gags made even Elliot laugh. He knew the people in the theater ate it up. So maybe there was something to the claim she was the next big thing. Thunder rumbled somewhere off. Elliot lit up a cigarette and hit a payphone. He fed it a few quarters and dialed Sid's number. It rang a few times, letting Elliot take a long drag off his smoke and exhale it before the ringing stopped abruptly. "[i]Whisper Magazine[/i], from your lips to our pages." "Sid, it's Elliot Shaw." "Elliot! Long time no speak, buddie!" Sidney Applebaum, managing editor for [i]Whisper[/i], was a cockroach. He scuttled around Hollywood in search of what he labeled "prime sinnuendo." He was one of the people who knew where the bodies were buried. He was rumored to have file boxes stashed somewhere filled to the brim with dirt on movie stars, studio moguls, and anyone in the entertainment industry. Shit too depraved to put into his magazine. Applebaum was hated by the studio heads because of the dirt. The potential for blackmail loomed large with Sid. Elliot was afraid he had dirt on him as well. 5/6/56 writ large. That was the day of the shootout Dorchester. The day he quit the Boston PD and headed to west to escape the bad press and any potential incitements. If anyone knew about it, it would be Sid fucking Applebaum. "You got some hot copy for me, Elliot?" Elliot would often feed Sid gossip he heard about rival studios. He was nominally an executive, so he occasionally hobnobbed with the competition and talked shop. He was sure the others did it with him as well, which is why he always gave them low-level gossip. "Not this time, Sid. I need information. What do you know about Darktown nightclubs?" "Oooh, you mudsharking, Elliot? I've been thinking of doing an all interracial issue. The love that dare not speak its name, tiny white ingenues with well hung Mandingos. What do you think?" "Fascinating, Sid. I'm working on something. Gimme the lowdown on some nightclubs and I might give you some copy if it all goes according to plan?" A lie, but a small one. He wouldn't tell shit about the girl, but he could always let slip that Dexter Parkerberry was currently in a dry out farm in Malibu because of his Big H addiction. It was dirt, but not damning enough to hurt Parkerberry's career the way Clair Beauchamp would be hurt if it got out she liked dark meat. "The big spot is Minnie's Playroom. There's also The Voodoo and Red's. T-Bone Harris is supposed to be playing The Voodoo. You should check him out. I don't like that blues shit, but that boogie is doing something else." "Thanks, Sid," Elliot said with a smirk. "I'll be sure to get his autograph." ---- [b]Mullholland Drive 11:19 PM[/b] Jessica Hyatt drove along the curvy road at speeds that were too fast. Her thoughts weren't on the road. They were back in that little room with Agent Parker. The man had her dead to rights. He knew all about her history with marches and protest. And he knew about who she was before she was Jessica Hyatt. Tears were forming in her face, making the road blurry. It wouldn't be that hard, she thought. Just let go of the wheel and at the next turn she would fly off the side and down into the canyon below. There would be pain, so much pain. But that would be the last thing she would feel before death. No more hiding who she was, no more lies and no more secrets. She turned off the lights of the car and let it race down the road in darkness. It got the better of her and she quickly turned them back on in time to see a bend in the road. Jessica cut the wheel sharply before the curve. The over adjusting caused the car to spin out in the middle of the road before the side of it banged against a metal barrier on the road's edge. She sat there, heart racing and gripping the wheel. She wanted to live. Goddammit all, she wanted to live. She thought of herself as a coward. The will to live, even in this shitty situation, had won out over her courage. She thought of her father and how he had ended his life before he could be caught. The people who knew who she really was had called him brave and said he had gone out on his own terms, a radical to the end. But she never knew the man because of that act. But that was different, wasn't it? There was no way he would have lived had he been caught. The government would have seen to it. Jessica started back the way she had come, back towards LA. A few miles down the road she pulled off the side and lit a cigarette, her thoughts back to Parker and his mission. A simple infiltration job, he had said. For someone with her pedigree, getting in and earning trust would be easy. Once she was in, she would let the Pinkertons know everything there was about the Good People. According to Parker, they were a small group of like-minded individuals operating in LA. Radicals, anarchists, socialist -- you name the leftist philosophy-- all part of a secretive meeting group hosted somewhere in the city. The FCB and the Pinkertons were actively looking for them, but they could never get close. Jessica knew that people like her could smell a fed from a mile away. They were rumored to have entertainers in their midst, people who could shape the messages coming out of the studios. If subversives were influencing the culture, that might actually make Mr. and Mrs. Small Town America question their government and the Pinkertons couldn't have that. Jessica flicked the butt of her cigarette out the car and started it back up. She pulled back on to Mulholland Drive and flicked her lights on. Find them, Parker had said. Find them, identify them, and we're square. You go about your business and we never bother you again. She didn't believe that for a second. But what choice did she have? She was against a rock and another rock. Helping Parker was like gnawing her arm off to get free. But better one-armed and free than trapped and dead.