Monk did a motion with his hand. “Treason, plotting to overthrow the United States. Wasn’t there talk of slamming that against Jane Fonda when she went to North Vietnam during the war?”
“Right. The Foley Square case, so-called because the trial took place at the Foley Square Courthouse in New York, began in 1949 when the Party’s General Secretary Eugene Dennis, Ben Davis, an African-American, Gil Green, and other leaders were convicted essentially for teaching Marxism and Leninism. Keep in mind none of these individuals were proven to have instigated or committed physical violence. But the power of their words was enough to get them sentenced for their ideas.”
“You must have just been a teenager then, Fletcher.”
“Yes, I was. But my folks took their Lutheran duty to heart. They’d come out from Milwaukee before the war like a lot of Midwesterners. We had a tradition of being neighborly and helping those less fortunate. I know it sounds like the missionary complex, but for my parents it translated into standing up to the bigotry against blacks and Mexicans that they saw perpetrated here in Los Angeles.”
“So your folks were members of the Party?”
Wilkenson laughed like he was sucking in air. “Mom flirted with the notion, but she believed too much in the here and after. That was one contradiction she couldn’t overlook. But they worked in social justice organizations, some with Party members, who were doing their good Communist work.”
“And of course there were other organizations that were fronts, constructs of the Party that gave the appearance of grassroots organizations, but which actually were headed by cadre members.”
“So you came up in all this?”
“Yeah. I remember people like Dorothy Healey, once called the Red Queen of Los Angeles, coming over to our house. She smoked like the devil, but she would always ask me how I liked school, and recommend books for me to read. We lived on Manhattan Place just off Adams. Ben Dobbs, another Dorothy—Doyle, I think her married name was—hell, even the old reprobate Gus Hall were over several times.”
“The last true Communist,” Monk remarked. He recalled seeing the obstreperous octogenarian Hall in an A&E documentary still extolling Communist Party, U.S.A. rigidness post the fall of the Wall and breakup of the Soviet Union.
Wilkenson said, “You got to give him something for consistency. Anyway, after the sentences were upheld, the Party took the position that fascism was fast approaching. They operated on the premise that it was five minutes to midnight. This was the same mind-set of the resistance movements during Nazi-occupied Europe. So the Party sent specific members to other cities—with new names, the whole bit.
“It sounds like Looney Toons today, maybe, but you gotta recognize the times.”
“That isn’t so crazy, Fletcher,” Monk said soberly. “Those times may yet be back again.”
“How true,” the other man agreed. “So my folks helped with some of this ferrying people about, securing new identities for them and so on. It was quite an adventure for me and my brother,” he said fondly.
“A lot of people went underground in L.A.?”
“Not like in the cities back East, no. In Healey’s memoirs, she pretty much chalks it up to Keystone Kops antics. But she too had the value of decades of hindsight. Like you said, if you think you’re in the gun sights, then you damn sure do something not to be a target.”
“You hungry?”
“I could stand to dirty a plate,” Wilkenson enthused.
“Let’s get a bite downstairs.” He also wanted to see if Gorzy had calmed down any about his wife and the supposed missing money.
At one of the grey Formica tables in the Cafe 77, Monk asked, “Skipping a few years, I gather some of the people you knew in and out of the Party worked in local government.” Monk quickly put a hand up like he was warding off a blow. “I’m not saying it was a conspiracy. It just makes sense that if you want change, you go where change is made.”
Wilkenson chewed his egg salad on wheat. “Sure, that’s where the goddamn Merchants and Manufacturers Consortium and the Golden State Realtors had us. That sumabitch Parker could’ve given Hoover lessons on information gathering. When I first got in the Housing Authority in fifty-seven, I got word from those fat cats that if I named names, I could continue in the department.”
“Since you didn’t, how come the big boys didn’t come after you then?” Monk looked around for Gorzy, but only the waitress and the cook seemed to be around.
“Remember what I said about closed and so on? When some of the others, Dorothy Millhouse, Chuck Mosley—you know he was a bodyguard for Paul Robeson when he came to town? Anyway, when they got bounced, they’d done a disinformation campaign of their own. The Party made it seem that me and a few who were left were really just a bunch of college kids who didn’t know anything. That we’d been their flunkies. To prove they were telling the truth, they gave up a couple of closed members in the Planning Department.”
Monk’s brow went down. “What?”
Wilkenson dabbed a napkin on his lips. “It was part of a larger plan to ensure at least some of us would survive. As the political climate changed, it was hoped we could bring to fruition some of the things so many had sacrificed so long to see realized.” He ate more of his sandwich.
“The closed members who were given up went along with this willingly?” The concept was a strain for him to grasp.
“Not much choice. You see, Ivan,” he rolled the name around with a touch of irony, “you see, mere had already been a series of discussions, like the ones a man named McReynolds of the Socialist Party in L.A. had organized. And there were the American Forum discussions that took place in fifty-seven. These were all part of the dialogues that took place among many on the Left who heretofore hadn’t had much to do with one another. This was an historic occurrence, you see what I mean?”
“Necessity being the mother,” Monk noted, “because of McCarthyism and whatnot.”
“Yes. And Stalin was gone too—died in fifty-three. Inside the Soviet Union there was also beginning to be a thaw, an opening up if only by degrees. So by the time we’re talking about, late fifty-eight, this first glasnost, combined with what the comrades had gone through here in the States, created fertile ground for a new crop of ideas.”
“And then the real bomb was dropped.” He ate some of his coleslaw. “Party leaders finally ’fessed up to the murderous outrages committed by Stalin.” A tenseness had crept into his voice. “So, really, what choice did these closed members have? There were splits among the Party members over the Stalin revelations, and again friend turned against friend.”
“But there was still hope,” Monk ventured.
Wilkenson said nothing, but the creases at the corners of his eyes deepened as if a gravitational force pushed in on him. “Good, strong men and strong women who knew the good fight was not won in a single battle. Or even a hundred. By sixty-one, the wall had gone up in Berlin.… Still, there was that period of great flux, of possibilities. That’s what we held out for, Ivan.”
“A fight that continues.”
Mrs. Gorzynski had entered, easily carrying a cardboard box full of honeydew melons. She put the produce down on the counter, and went in back to the office. Monk’s feeble plan consisted of merely confronting the woman with what Gorzy had said. That approach really had little appeal, as he might cause a problem when he really didn’t think one existed. Anyway, he had his own concerns, what with zealots dancing around the Rancho, gunmen in the night, and a possible trial.
“Do you trust Maladrone?” he blurted out.
Wilkenson stalled. “How does one answer that? Do I think he’s sincere in attempting to do what he says he is. Well, yes, I do.”
“Yeah,” Monk said impatiently, “he’s not the first gangster with a warped sense of honor. Meyer Lansky attended Temple and died devoutly in Israel.”
Wilkenson smiled. “Certain friends of mine ascribe to the theory of progressive gangsterism, that the iron hand must be applied w
hen discipline is absent. If the enemy is using ruthlessness, then maybe strong-arm methods are needed to counterbalance such machinations.”
“Aztlán by way of the AK.”
“Sounds awfully harsh when you say it like that,” Wilkenson retorted. “Jokay is nobody’s saint, but I think his illness has forced him to see beyond mere illicit profits.”
Monk’s eyes got wide. “If the two names he gave me are real, he might be orchestrating one big setup so he can use me to get the Ra-Falcons out of the way.”
Wilkenson held his hands up. “But why? I don’t think there’s gold buried under the land.”
Monk moved his empty Miller bottle around like a glass chess piece. Mrs. Gorzynski was still in the back. “When will your book be finished?”
“In about another month or so, I’m hoping. The publisher is a university press,” Wilkenson said. “Basically now I’m fact checking, and following up on where those who were active then are these days. At least the ones still alive. H. H. DeKovan is particularly interesting in that he’s become a recluse in the last few years. Yet he continues to buy and develop sports stadiums and shopping malls, has his hand in gambling ventures, and is reported to still have connections in politics.”
Monk stopped playing with the bottle. “What are the other gaming interests he has?”
“He’s a partner in that combination casino and amusement park in Vegas laid out like a Turkish bazaar. You know the one Newsweek had on a cover last year?”
“You don’t think DeKovan wants the land the Rancho’s on to build one big supercasino, hotel, and indoor mall?” Monk imagined wildly.
“So he could ship new Chinese capitalists in to fleece ’em?” Wilkenson seemed to take joy in the idea.
“How many acres is the Rancho, Fletcher?”
“You have to take into account there’s that field behind where the hulk of the job training site sits. That part was intended for a shopping center. So all together it’s around 230 acres I would guess.”
“Good-sized piece of land,” Monk fantasized about the possibilities.
Wilkenson remained silent, not sure where their conversation had gone. Finally he said, “What are you suggesting?”
“Maybe your old pal DeKovan wants to build an Aztec-Muslim playland. Where the rides include flying fatted calves, the sun sacrifice roller coaster, and the fast food is lamb-on-a-stick with salsa.”
“Crickets.”
“Huh?”
“Ancient Mejicano food included crickets,” Wilkenson said.
“Oh, my bad.”
They both laughed.
Twenty
Monk spent the next three days chasing down all manner of leads and rumors concerning H. H. DeKovan. He salvaged information from on-line and at the refurbished, and swank, downtown L.A. library—which had a section on the DeKovan family due to an endowment from his maternal grandmother, Genera Smith Berringer. And he read and reread the research material Wilkenson had accumulated on the odd multimillionaire.
Photos of DeKovan from the late sixties up through the seventies showed a dark-complected, athletically built man, jackknife deadly in Botany 500 and Saville Row suits. In several of the shots he had the obligatory starlet-on-the-rise on his arm, and invariably the women had busts protruding like the prow of a destroyer and hemlines only a gynecologist could have designed.
DeKovan, in bell-bottoms and puff sleeve shirt, at the opening of Hair at the Aquarius; buying drinks for the house at Perinos; escorting the merry widow Jacqueline Kennedy to the opening of The Fantastiks at me Dorothy Chandler Pavilion; watching his horses run at Santa Anita with a dour-faced Stanley Kubrick; hosting a private party at the Griffith Park Observatory where the Doors were performing live, driving an Ingot stock car at Daytona; holding a shovel like a rifle, standing in a field announcing his role in the acquisition of land that would become the Magic Mountain amusement park; clasping a cigarette holder while groping Mamie Van Doren at the Playboy Mansion; looking aloof at the ground-breaking for the Century Freeway. Portraits of H. H. DeKovan, the hip capitalist, as he squired and accumulated women and money over the years.
Taking several of the photocopies he’d made from the photos on microfiche, Monk put them in chronological order. Along with the knowledge he’d gained from Wilkenson and the other source material, a rudimentary psycho-history of DeKovan was laid before him in the reproductions. In the early shots DeKovan had a genial, almost mischievous quality to his facial expressions and poses. But as time progressed, there seemed to be more of a strained quality in the flashes of caps, the worried set of his eyes not in sync with his forced grins.
Even his physical posture indicated the internal change. There was a picture taken in 1979 on Melrose in front of the place that had been the Ash Grove, a famous folk and blues landmark where musicians like Bob Dylan and John Lee Hooker had played. He was pointing at the building, standing in a knot of people that included then–Secretary of State Jess Unruh, and several Sacramento types.
DeKovan’s body was doing a swinger’s imitation of Nixon. His cheeks were blue with whiskers, and his suit didn’t have that pristine, just-out-of-the-cleaner’s look of the early days. His shoulders were hunched forward and one of his hands was grabbing his own leg midthigh. He was facing Unruh, but his orbs were drifting away from him, a deviant glare evident on his face.
According to a November 1984 piece in Wilkenson’s file, an article reprinted from Esquire, the writer had set out to find the once outgoing, gregarious DeKovan. Somewhere around 1980, DeKovan had taken to holing up in one of his estates. It was the one in L.A. above Temescal Canyon Fire Road. He’d quit certain boards he had been on because they required him to attend meetings. The writer had interviewed business partners, former girlfriends, and politicos who knew him, but he couldn’t pinpoint a specific incident that might have brought on the need for DeKovan to secret himself away from public view.
The writer speculated that maybe it was an illness or a disfigurement he’d gotten from an accident skiing or skydiving. The rakish millionaire was adept at both sports, but there was no empirical evidence to support the writer’s presumptions.
Monk looked at the clock, it was past eleven-thirty, and he was not going to have a third cup of coffee at this hour of the night. Kodama padded into the breakfast nook in her bare feet and terry cloth robe. She had that morning’s Daily Journal under one arm.
“What it be like on the trail of the Pink Panther?” She kissed him on the cheek and sat next to him, rubbing his back.
“I do feel like Clouseau,” he groused.
“I was just playing, honey.” She kissed him again.
He shoved the table and its load of material away from him. “I think I’ve pissed away three days I ain’t got to be fooling with. DeKovan may be living in a reconverted nuclear testing bunker in the Nevada desert growing orchids, or holed up in a suite at some hotel he owns in Amsterdam,” Monk said, exasperated. “Well-endowed nurses in uniforms riding up their heavy thighs giving him enemas and bee pollen shots on the regular.”
“I know that’s how you want to wind up.” Idly, she sifted through his papers. She came upon a shot of DeKovan touring the Herald Examiner newsroom with a bleary and bloated Elvis. “Quite the player,” she mused.
“He was. But he might as well be the man who invented the water engine as far as trying to find this strange bastard.” He backhanded some of the papers, revealing several more beneath.
Kodama looked through more of the stuff, stopping at a listing of the names of various enterprises. “These are the companies he owns?”
“Or at least has significant interest in.” Monk yawned.
“Business parks, stadiums, casinos—and what are these?” She pointed at names like Eridanus Enterprises, Trentex, and White Hall.
Monk jabbed his thumb at the companies she was looking at. “That first one builds water recycling units, the second one some kind of software concern, and the third is a line of premium cigars.�
��
“Well,” she drawled, “have you ever had one of his?”
“Every once in a while. But generally, White Halls are too rich for my blood.” Suddenly, he hit the table with his fist. “It was a recycling concern that bought the Randolph Center.”
“What was the name?” Kodama studied the list.
“I’ll have to ask Henry Cady again.” Monk also glanced at the list. “Look”—he pointed to a name further down—“he even has something to do with the Dancing Dinosaur chain.”
Kodama scrunched her features. “What? The children’s playland with those loud kill-the-slobbering-alien video games, singing dinosaur waiters and waitresses, comic book panels for wallpaper, and jumping pits full of sticky, gummy rubber balls?” The mention of the facility, with the attendant carousing children, seemed to bring her up short.
“You forgot the wholesome menu of chili-cheese potato skins, popcorn-fried chicken, triple-cheese pizza, and pirate flagons of strawberry soda and root beer.” Monk rubbed his stomach.
“The name Trentex was in the news recently,” Kodama said, jabbing the paper.
“You remember why?” Monk asked excitedly.
Kodama got up. “We might still have it.” She went to search through the previous week’s newspapers in the yellow recycling tub in the back end of the kitchen. Presently she returned with the folded Business section from the L.A. Times.
“There you go, champ.”
Monk read through a story about Trentex, a boutique software designer located in Burbank. The high-tech firm had produced three of the most popular CD-ROMs currently on the market. One of them was called L.A.’s Hidden History. “I bet DeKovan included a section on Wilkenson just for laughs.”
“The arrogance of the rich and untouchable,” Kodama lamented, stretching. “Let’s go to bed. You need some rest. We’ll get through this.”
Bad Night Is Falling Page 19