by James Philip
McKesson had always thought that this particular claim was no more than one of those reckless things that politicians pull out of a hat when they realize that they are on the wrong end of an election.
“I asked you to come in today, sir,” Sam Yorty explained as the four men settled in their chairs, “because Mr Tolson and Mr Lovell have been so good as to make Chief Parker and me aware of a situation.”
The District Attorney tried hard not to physically recoil from the word ‘situation’. No attorney liked to be on the receiving end of a surprise, let alone outright bad news and he was intuitively defensive.
“A situation, Mr Mayor?” He coughed, cleared his throat. “I was given to understand that I was to testify before the Los Angeles County Civil Defense and Disaster Commission?”
It was then that McKesson realized that he was not the man under the searchlight; that singular honour belonged to the brooding, glowering presence of fifty-eight year old South Dakota born William Henry Parker III, since August 1950 the Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department. McKesson had known Parker for many years and had never – not ever – seen him hunkered down so deeply in his shell. The man was sitting across the room from him fulminating like a time bomb.
Aptly, for man who had enjoyed such a distinguished career as a lawman, Parker had been born in the town of Deadwood. Yes, the town famous for hosting the murder of Wild Bill Hickok and the site of the Mount Moriah Cemetery where both Hickok and Calamity Jane were laid to rest.
The Parker family had migrated to Los Angeles in the early 1920s. Parker had initially looked towards a legal career but joined the LAPD; later he had passed the California Bar Exam but opted to remain a policeman. Apart from his war service in the 1940s – he was wounded in Normandy, and in addition to a Purple Heart was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and the Italian Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity - he had spent his whole working adult life in the LAPD, rising steadily, surely through the ranks until, with a sense of inevitability, at the age of forty-five he had been appointed Police Chief. Back in 1950 he had inherited a corrupt, inefficient force which had lost control of the streets of large areas of the city, and become notoriously hands off in its dealings with organised crime. Parker had changed a lot of that but even after thirteen long gruelling years in the job reforming the LAPD was still, at best, a monumental work in progress. Significant pockets of resistance to the new order still survived and undermined the work of the generally much better trained, disciplined and organised city-wide force. Worse, Parker’s tactics to regain control of the streets had inflamed the citizens of many neighbourhoods largely inhabited by minority ethnic groups. His men were routinely accused of brutality and racism as well of corruption. It was heartbreaking for the majority of honest, decent officers to find themselves trapped between liberal reformers yearning for consensus policing and conservative hardliners who wanted pickpockets and unruly youths shot on sight, while all the while knowing that there was a incorrigible and apparently untouchable hard core of bad cops embedded within their ranks.
In all the hullaballoo most people forgot that Parker was actually in the process of, and had been wholly committed to – for several years - racially de-segregating the LAPD. The trouble was that although Parker had cleaned up the LAPD somewhat, used his public relations nous to improve the overall image of his force; within the LAPD the old practices around managing crime, particularly vice and minor offending, by employing essentially corrupt means and lazy, outdated policing methodologies persisted. Everybody in Los Angeles knew that you had a fifty-fifty chance of buying yourself out of a vice bust or of ameliorating the consequences of any minor felony arrest by greasing the right palm at the appropriate moment.
The Mayor glanced towards Franklin Lovell.
“I represent the interests of a Mister Samuel Brenckmann,” the svelte grey haired man from the State Department prefaced. “Mr Brenckmann is a twenty-six year old musician who was arrested by officers from Van Nuys Police Station on the night of the 9th December in the back lot of a club called The Troubadour at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard. At the time of his arrest he had just escaped from a burning building, the aforementioned Troubadour club, and was being attacked by the two men who, in all likelihood, were responsible for setting fire to that building. In defending himself he was struck by buckshot fired by a gun in the hands of the club’s, understandably aggrieved owner, a Mister Douglas Weston. At the time of his arrest Mister Brenckmann was endeavouring to staunch the blood from the most seriously assailant’s shotgun injuries...”
“What is going on here?” The Los Angeles County District Attorney demanded, finding his old Superior Court judge’s voice.
It was not lost on McKesson that at the mention of ‘Van Nuys’ Chief Parker’s eyes had rolled heavenward.
“Mister Brenckmann,” Franklin Lovell continued as if he had not heard the intervention, “was actively prevented from continuing to render possibly lifesaving assistant to the wounded man by officers of the Los Angeles Police Department arresting officers. In fact, notwithstanding the fact that he was covered in blood and limping heavily from his own injuries those ‘arresting’ officers repeatedly assaulted him at that time. As a matter of record it was at least eight hours before appropriate medical assistance was offered to Mister Brenckmann, and then only by a National Guard doctor rather than an LAPD registered medical practitioner. Mister Weston was also arrested and similarly manhandled at this time.”
McKesson looked to Police Chief Parker.
“Van Nuys?” He queried, glumly. “Isn’t that O’Connell’s...”
He never got the opportunity to finish his question because Parker spat a vitriolic, disgusted single syllable at him.
“Yes!”
“All my enquiries of your department, Mr McKesson,” Franklin Lovell went on blandly, “as to the whereabouts and welfare of my client, and of Mister Weston, his co-accused in the matter of the alleged, as yet unspecified charges, of murder relating to the death of the two ‘Troubadour fire bombers’ have drawn a complete blank at the Office of the Los Angeles District Attorney, and with the Los Angeles Police Department.” He nodded respectfully to the silent, hard-eyed Clyde Tolson. The Associate Director of the FBI remained almost, but not quite impassive, his lip curling minutely in a suggestion of contempt. “It is only due to the good offices of Mr Tolson and his colleagues at the Federal Bureau of Investigation that I was finally able to track down my client and to gain intelligence as to where the District Attorney’s Office, the LAPD and the California Department of Corrections may have ‘last seen’ Mr Weston alive.”
Clyde Tolson stirred.
People who did not know him were often surprised by the quiet menace the man generated on those rare occasions when his gander was up. It was also the case that because he was, who he was, when he spoke with menace his voice carried real and very substantial threat.
“Have any of you gentlemen any idea what is going on under your noses?” He asked the three Los Angelinos in the room in a coldly unforgiving voice.
There was a brief silence.
“Director Hoover has asked me to personally supervise the investigation of racketeering, money-laundering, and the practice of turning a blind eye to organized criminal activities in this city. The starting point of that investigation will be a thorough forensic investigation of your roles in allowing the current disappointing situation to arise in the first place. I won’t beat about the bush. I have to tell you that the speedy fashion in which you expedite the resolution to the specific situation that we are here today to address, will have a major bearing on the conduct of my subsequent inquiry.”
The threat could not have been more brutally delivered to an audience that understood that they had just been told that if they did not play ball there would be very, very bad consequences for each of them personally.
“I hope you are not attempting to intimidate me, sir?” McKesson cavilled because lawyers always thought that the
y were above the law.
Clyde Tolson said nothing.
He was not trying to intimidate anybody.
What he was doing was threatening to unleash the whole weight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in a ruthless inquisition into every aspect of law enforcement in Los Angeles County.
Franklin Lovell retook the floor.
“You should be aware that Samuel Brenckmann is the son of the newly appointed US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Captain Walter Brenckmann, USN. Captain Brenckmann was the man who tackled the mad woman who attempted to assassinate the President at the end of the Battle of Washington. Mr Samuel Brenckmann’s father is therefore, the man who saved the President’s life last month.”
He let this sink in.
“Neither Captain Brenckmann nor the President has yet been troubled by the sordid details of this matter in Los Angeles. I think it is in the County of Los Angeles’s best interests that this situation is resolved as soon as possible.” He smiled. “Might I suggest that my client and Mr Weston be released without charge before midnight tonight,” he smiled, “always assuming you know where they are?”
“What if we can’t locate them?” Police Chief Parker grunted sulkily.
Clyde Tolson had heard enough.
“Let’s put it this way Chief Parker,” he drawled, breathless with anger. “If the two men in question are not placed in the custody and protection of my agents by one minute past midnight, my agents, assisted by Secret Service Officers and Federal Marshalls will be alerted to start knocking on your door and the doors of several of your senior confederates, and on the doors of senior officers of the District Attorney’s Department’s homes. Please do not misunderstand me. If what it takes to get the wheels of justice turning in this State is the arrest and indictment of every senior official of the Mayor’s Office, the LAPD and of the District Attorney’s office then that is what will start happening in the early hours of tomorrow morning.”
Franklin Lovell grimaced.
“But I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
Chapter 51
Thursday 23rd January 1964
Van Nuys Police Station, Los Angeles
Captain Reggie O’Connell of the Los Angeles Police Department had awakened in the holding cell with one of those hangovers where you were afraid to open your eyes in case you bled out. Despite the humid warmth of the grubby little room he was shivering even though perspiration soaked his armpits and dripped off his temples. He badly needed a drink and was beginning to get used to the idea that none of his friends was coming to his rescue any time soon. The people who had rousted him from his bed at one o’clock that morning had been his own Van Nuys cops! Now that he had had time to think about it and to get his bearing in this new and changed reality that was the worst thing. The Feds had stayed in the background, no doubt smirking behind their hands as he was walked out into the circle of headlamps on Mulholland Avenue. Loretta going missing ought to have been his cue to run but she had walked in and out of their marriage – such as it was – a lot the last year and honestly and truly he had hardly noticed her absence the last couple of days.
O’Connell sat on the hard cot and brooded.
At least the bastards had not put him in with the spics, deadbeats and druggies in the big holding cage at the back of the station. The cell he was in was one of two reserved for suspects who needed to be kept separately from the normal human detritus that washed through Van Nuys; usually for their own safety or because his detectives did not want to advertise the presence at the station of the occupant.
His detectives...
Past tense, now.
The days when Reggie O’Connell owned anything in particular were, he realized, gone forever. It was for this reason that when the cell door suddenly opened he was working through the options of how best to go about cutting a deal with the District Attorney. It had not occurred to him that nobody would actually want to ‘cut a deal’ with him.
“Follow me,” a stranger, a tall lean blond guy in his twenties in an off the peg lightweight grey suit demanded. In the corridor there were other men in crisp suits.
O’Connell was in a daze as he stumbled through the station that up until yesterday afternoon he had owned and out into the balmy, overcast evening. A hand pressed down his head or he would have smacked his face against the frame of the door of the dark sedan into which his minders had guided him. It was not until he was on the back seat of the car squashed between two minders that he realized that somewhere between leaving his cell being bundled into the vehicle his hands had been cuffed behind his back.
“Where the fuck are we going?” He croaked. It was a feeble protest and it was ignored as the car sped off into the sunset. “I’m entitled to a fucking telephone call!”
It was at this juncture that the man in the front passenger seat twisted around and viewed the prisoner.
“You were offered the opportunity to call your lawyer three times earlier today, Mister O’Connell. On those occasions you stated for the record in front of several witnesses that you did not wish to avail yourself of counsel.”
Reggie O’Connell did not remember that; which meant nothing. He must have really tied one on last night, sometimes the booze only caught up with a man later.
“Yeah, well,” he retorted, “I want to talk to my attorney now!”
The man in the front seat had already turned away.
At a time like this most men would – naturally – begin to ask themselves what had gone wrong. Captain Reginald Francis O’Connell of the LAPD was not ‘most’ men, leastways he had always considered himself to have been cut from a different, superior fabric from ‘most’ men. His contemplation did not linger on his mistakes, misjudgements, his greed or his scorn for the laws that regulated everybody else’s lives; no, his thoughts focused immediately on the thorny question of exactly who had betrayed him.
In retrospect he had been, albeit mildly, a little thoughtful about letting those fucking bikers torch The Troubadour. However, the money had been okay and he had been tickled to have an excuse to turn over Sabrina Henschal’s little beatnik commune in Laurel Canyon. That woman’s friends at the Los Angeles Times had been sniping at him off and on for a couple of years and the bitch had had it coming to her. At the time he had wondered what the connection between Gretsky’s, Sabrina Henschal’s hideaway in the hills and The Troubadour was but he had not been interested enough to ask. That was careless, his people ought to have warned him.
People had been killed in the fire. Not anybody important and anyway, both the bikers responsible were dead. One had died in the back lot of the club, the other had got into a fight with the wrong people in the holding pen at Irvine. His people said they had made the necessary arrangements to deal with the Brenckmann kid. He should have supervised things personally, especially when he discovered that his people had ‘mislaid’ Doug Weston, the owner of The Troubadour. If Brenckmann or Weston ever got to court a half-way competent Defense attorney was going to make his people and by reflection, him, look stupid.
O’Connell told himself that but for the outbreak of a civil war in Washington DC - and the temporary declaration of a state of emergency - The Troubadour deal would have gone down without a hitch. How was he supposed to know that even before the flames had died down at 9081 Santa Monica Boulevard that his station would be crawling with carbine-toting National Guardsmen?
“Where the fuck are we going?” He asked again as the car turned onto Sunset Boulevard.
The driver guffawed.
“San Francisco. The DA’s office has transferred your case to the Attorney General’s Department.”
Reggie O’Connell slumped back in the seat.
He felt like somebody had just kicked him in the groin; for a moment he was afraid he was going to throw up.
While he had been in Los Angeles he had been among friends, people he could buy. Up in the Bay Area he would be beyond all help.
Condemned, in fact.
&nb
sp; Chapter 52
Thursday 23rd January 1964
Texas City, Galveston County, Texas
Dwight Christie drove south from the city of Houston through an increasingly wrecked urban landscape until he came to ground where no building stood, only ruins. And then he drove farther south into the dead zone. Even though he had been forewarned he was astonished to discover, here and there along the road several houses had been rebuilt since his last visit and verdant green new growth sprouted everywhere across the apparently endless sea of destruction, nurtured on the potassium rich ashes of the former city. As he drove he wondered idly if the devastated cities of Europe and Russia were ‘greening’ over now; if nature was everywhere reclaiming the wastelands uncaring of the radiation or the detritus left over from the war?
Texas Avenue and most of the side streets had been cleared, and great mounds of bulldozed rubble and spoil were heaped on deserted lots. Perhaps, the most disarming aspect of the drive was being able to see clearly for miles in practically every direction when one knew one was driving through what had been a thriving town until that awful day fifteen months ago. He had been told some of the docks had been re-opened and seen trucks rumbled up Interstate 45 towards Houston; in the port the masts of big steamers poked up through the haze.
Big tankers still came into Galveston Bay but not to feed the pre-October War refineries along the foreshore. The refineries and oil storage facilities upon which the wealth and prosperity of Texas City had depended had burned for several weeks after the war. Now the tankers moored out in the bay well clear of the gutted carcasses of the ships trapped inshore by the bomb which had extinguished human existence on Galveston Island and Texas City in the blink of an eye. New long jetties had been built to enable tankers to pump their cargoes directly ashore, into giant new storage tanks or directly through the rebuilt pipelines to the surviving refineries to the north. Tens of thousands had died in this place but the wheels of commerce still turned with ferocious energy.