[h3]Los Angeles[/h3]


[b]Chinatown
7:35 PM[/b]


"Right this way, Mr. Shaw."

Uncle Ace Kwan personally led Elliot to a table. Uncle Ace: Full-time restaurateur, part time dope and gun runner. The money he made off it ended up funneled across the Pacific to support Chinese anti-communist causes and smuggling dissidents out of the country. Elliot bought horse, opium, and girls from him from time to time. It depended on whatever the craving starlet or movie producer needed at that time.

Detective Jefferson Thomas was already waiting for him. A metal pot of tea and two ceramic cups sat on the table. Thomas stood up. He was bigger up close than Elliot realized, that was because the even taller Detective Hoyt was not present to dwarf the two of them. The two men shook hands and exchanged greetings. Elliot ordered lo mein for the two of them before Uncle Ace shuffled off to the kitchen.

"I'm surprised I didn't get any lip from the old man," Thomas said, pouring himself a cup of tea. "If you think some white people are bad when it comes to negroes, they don't have anything on Chinamen."

"Uncle Ace knows where his bread is buttered," replied Shaw. "He pisses off the studio people and he loses a lot of cash and favors coming his way."

Detective Thomas nodded, pulling a pencil and notepad out of his jacket pocket. Elliot's eyes glanced down at it. He saw notes jotted on the paper in shorthand, but it was unreadable. 

"Thank you for meeting with me, Mr. Shaw. Just some routine questions. But I'm sure you know all about that. I understand you were a cop back east?"

"Boston," said Elliot. "Five years in patrol, ten as a detective."

"What brought you out west?"

Elliot saw flashes of memory: Christmastime. Snow flurries. He stood in the cold. Blood spatter on his face. A pump shotgun in his hands. Red, numbing hands on cold gunmetal. Eight people dead. Heinous crimes required swift resolution. Shotgun justice.

"The weather," he said after a long second. "I got my fill of New England winters."

Thomas made a note of it before he looked back up at Elliot. There was a soft smile on the detective's face and it set off alarm bells. He knew the look well, he had used it often. The smile was to put someone at ease, to help them forget the authority of the cop. They were two friends, after all, just having a nice chat. No reason for Elliot to worry or be concerned. At least not until the other shoe fell.

"What can you tell me about Miss Beauchamp's personal life?"

"Not much there," Elliot shrugged. "Part of my job at Pinnacle is to know about our star's personal lives. We have a moral clause in all our talent contracts and they are rigidly enforced. Claire was in full compliance of the morality clause."

Thomas made a note and spoke without looking up. "What about with screenwriters, Mister Shaw?"

Elliot raised an eyebrow as the detective looked back up at him impassively.

"Excuse me?"

"Wendall Brock," said Thomas. Elliot had to resist the urge to curse. He knew exactly who Brock was. "He is -- he was -- a negro man, gunned down in South Central a few days before Miss Beauchamp, a few blocks away from the Voodoo. It took me a while to find it, but Brock worked as a screenwriter for Pinnacle Pictures, at least until he was blacklisted two years ago."

Thomas reached into his jacket and pulled out pamphlets. He laid them on the table and Elliot felt a lump forming in his stomach. The pamphlets were political tracts, and they were just like the ones he'd recovered from Claire Beauchamp's bungalow. 

"Brock also had a redacted criminal history, the redacting started around the time he was blacklisted. Brock and Beauchamp. Two people with ties to Pinnacle, one with radical politics, are killed less than seventy-two hours in the same area of town in the same way. And let's not forget your involvement, Mister Shaw."

Son of a bitch, thought Elliot. "Me?"

"I remember seeing you that night at the Voodoo. The bartender remembered you, too. A white man like you stands out like a sore thumb in a place like that. Three people with Hollywood connections all in the same area, two of them murdered. What do I make of that?"

Elliot tried not to sweat. The son of a bitch had laid a trap for him and Elliot had waltzed right in. He had to give Thomas credit. The detective gave him just enough rope to hang himself with. He'd handled it just like Elliot would have.

"I thought the LAPD were rounding up all the criminals in South Central?" he asked.

Thomas nodded. "They are. They want an easy bookend to the case. They want to say the case is closed, regardless if they get the guilty person or not. The truth is a lot of things, easy isn't one of them."

Elliot saw a wedge and plunged into it. 

"So this is all unsanctioned," he said with a laugh. "You're on your own on this, Detective Thomas. I wonder if the commissioner would like to know. You know I have his personal line in my address book, right? The studio people have that kind of power."

Thomas smiled. It was nowhere near the comfortable one he had been wearing minutes ago.

"Do that, Mr. Shaw, and I'll leak what I have to the tabloids. I have just enough to create a sensation. Communism, murder, and the movies. It'll sale a million copies. Congress will be very interested in that old story of radical influence in the picture business."

They didn't speak as a waiter laid a steaming plate of lo mein on the table along with utensils and two plates. Once he was gone, Elliot looked over the food at Thomas. He was way out on a limb on his own, which meant there was an angle he was playing. He was fine with that. Playing an angle meant Elliot could make his own play if he needed to.

"What do you want?"

"Access," Thomas said, scooping noodles on to a plate. "I need to know everything I can about Brock and Beauchamp to find out who killed them. For that access, I'll keep quiet with what I know. If you help me catch the killer or killers, then you get to spin the story of why they were killed how you want. The case is closed, everybody forgets about it, and Pinnacle can move on. Do we have a truce."

Elliot watched Thomas eating noodles. He looked like just another jig the first time he saw him at the Voodoo. How wrong he had been about that.

"Fine," he finally said. "It's not a truce. It's a non-aggression pact."

"Excellent," said Thomas. "Now, I need to know everything about why Wendall Brock was blacklisted."