The syndicate, p.5
The Syndicate, page 5
Abe turned off the engine. “Let’s eat,” he said.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You want to come in, you can,” he said, his voice clipped. “You want to stay, that’s up to you. Ain’t nowhere to run, here. And no one to help you, either.”
Abe got out of the car. He was top-heavy, moving slowly across the forecourt, handing the keys to the one-armed attendant before heading inside. Craine saw him pass a rack of newspapers on a stand. “SIEGEL KILLED IN GANGLAND SLAYING,” the headlines read.
Craine swallowed and could taste old iron in his mouth. He looked around. Nothing but desert and the odd coyote slinking through the shimmering heat. Without the air rushing past, Abe’s Mercury was sun-cooked, so hot that breathing was a struggle. Even the oil on the forecourt seemed to sizzle.
There were four other cars in the parking lot, but the other drivers barely noticed him. Everyone was heading somewhere. Craine wanted to call out to them. To beg them for help. One or two walked past and Craine looked at them imploringly but they didn’t look back.
He went inside.
The diner was a simple but clean establishment. Abe sat them at a booth nearest the back wall. That seemed to be important to him. Like he didn’t want anyone to approach them from behind.
The two men sat in silence, Abe studying a city map of Los Angeles that unfolded as wide as the table. A waitress with bleached, chin-length hair approached. She looked suspiciously at Craine’s bruises, like he might spring up and rob the place at any moment.
“Steak and eggs with a cup of coffee, please,” Abe said. He glanced at Craine. “He’ll have the same.”
There was a boy in the diner about Michael’s age. He was eating breakfast with his father. The elder man had his newspaper. The younger had his. But they seemed comfortable with each other. A family. He thought about where his son was right now and felt sick to the pit of his soul.
After their coffees had arrived, Craine asked the same question he’d been asking for hours.
“What will happen to my son?”
Abe spoke with a low burr, like his jaw didn’t move as fast as his thoughts. “I told you before. Our men will stay with him at the house. They’ll remain there for the duration. So long as you play by the rules, no harm will come to him.”
“How can I trust you? Or them?”
“You can’t,” he said, slurping his coffee. “But I’d say you don’t have a choice. As soon as you find Siegel’s killer, you can go home. Argue all you want, but Mr. Lansky wants this resolved by Friday.”
“It’s a fool’s errand,” Craine said. “You saw the papers out there. Everyone knows it’s a mob hit.”
“It isn’t.”
“You tell me why it isn’t. Because Lansky says so?”
Abe banged the coffee cup down. “Look, Craine. I don’t know why Lansky wanted your involvement. But he did. My job is to take you from A to B. To make sure you do the job that’s been asked of you.”
“What are you, my driver or my jailer?”
“You’re under my ward.”
“So you’re here to protect me?”
“Or to kill you, depending how you get on.”
“Do you have a preference?”
“Not really.” He slurped at his coffee again. “I go where they send me. I know a few people there but I don’t know L.A. None of us do. Maybe that’s why Lansky asked you.”
“You don’t think I should be here either, do you?”
Abe shrugged. “We used to wash our own laundry.”
Craine stared at him. There was something primitive about Abe. Like a rudimentary drawing, sketched but unfinished. The only thing they seemed to have in common was a mutual lack of faith in Craine’s abilities.
“Tell me why Lansky believes it wasn’t a mob hit,” Craine asked, sounding resigned.
Abe lowered his voice and held up three fingers. “There are three syndicates in America: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Lansky controls New York. Siegel controlled Los Angeles. And while that’s been taken over by Jack Dragna, he’s not considered a suspect. Too much to lose.”
“And Chicago?”
“Aren’t involved in California anymore. They’ve been weak ever since Frank Nitti killed himself. Their leaders are in prison, you and your F.B.I. friends saw to that. Besides, they’d never risk a move on Siegel when they’re in a position of weakness. It has to be someone else. Which is where you come in.”
Craine exhaled heavily. “What Lansky’s asking . . . An investigation can take months.”
“We have until Friday.”
“Why? What else is going on? This feels more than personal.”
Abe didn’t answer.
Their waitress brought over their breakfasts. Craine didn’t touch his at first. Abe ate inelegantly and quickly, working the food round the plate before pushing it into his mouth. “You should eat,” he said when he was half-finished.
Abe was right. Self-pity wasn’t going to help Craine. He picked at the breakfast steak. The salt hurt his blistered mouth but he started to feel better.
“I don’t have the tools I need,” Craine said when he couldn’t eat any more. “I don’t have the resources.”
“Were you or were you not a homicide detective?”
“I have no jurisdiction. Why would anyone give me information?”
“You tell people Meyer Lansky sent you, you’ll see the color drain from their faces. Then they’ll help you alright.”
Craine didn’t reply.
Abe forked the last of his eggs into his mouth. “You decide where we go and who we need to see. But we don’t talk directly to the police or the F.B.I. That’s important.”
“They’ll already be involved. I’ll need to read witness statements. Then there’s autopsy reports. Ballistics information. Abe, I have to speak to the homicide detectives investigating—”
“No. Absolutely not.”
Craine didn’t hide his frustration. “I need all the help I can get. My son’s life is at risk here. Kastel mutilated him.”
“Oh, you’re angry? Good. Anger gets things done. No one ever did anything with self-pity.” Abe pointed his fork at Craine. “Dragna can get us in front of the people who were with Siegel that night, people close to him who might have reason to want him dead. And his girlfriend – Virginia. No one’s seen her since Siegel was killed. We should try to talk to her, too. But you heard me right before. You do not involve the police or the F.B.I.”
Craine rubbed his eyelids. He looked around desperately, as if one of the truckers in this diner might be able to save him from this situation.
“We don’t know each other,” Abe said, catching his eye. “But you should know this about me. If you try to run, if you do anything that puts me or my bosses in the firing line, you’ll disappear.”
Abe held his gaze to make sure the point had sunk in, then turned his head to call for the check.
For an L.A.P.D. homicide detective, a 40 percent clearance rate was a good year. The odds were already against him. And now he had none of the resources he would normally have access to. He was starting tabula rasa. A blank page. No information other than what was in the papers.
And then a thought struck him. Without police resources, newspaper reports were his best assets. They would give him witnesses and leads; crime scene photographs and updates from police press briefings.
When the waitress came over, Craine asked her if he could buy a newspaper.
“Sure.” She shrugged, chewing gum.
“You keep Saturday’s papers, too?”
She checked her watch. “Delivery comes late this far out. Probably still out there. Which ones you after?”
“All of them.” Craine noticed her pencil and pad. “And can I borrow your pencil for a second?”
She looked at his bruises again. “If you give it back.”
“Absolutely.”
Five minutes later, they pulled back onto the road and Craine sat silently in the passenger seat, scouring the headlines for information on Siegel’s death.
When Craine worked in Hollywood, the major West Coast broadsheets reported objectively on newsworthy events, but like most nationals leaned toward political bias when it suited them. City Hall would pressurize publishers to make sure Los Angeles didn’t seem soft on crime or overwhelmed with mob shootings.
William Hearst’s Los Angeles Examiner ran the headline “BUGSY SIEGEL MURDERED.” Subheadings added, “Rubbed Out in Beverly Hills in Hail of Bullets,” and “F.B.I. Brought in for Mob Slaying.” Craine pored over the report, highlighting key facts with his newly acquired pencil.
“BEVERLY HILLS, Calif., June 21—Benjamin Siegel, 41-year-old gambler and one-time New York mobster, was slain on Friday night by a fusillade of bullets fired through the living room window of his Beverly Hills house.
“Police Capt. Henson said an unidentified gunman fired several shots shortly after Siegel and friends Allen Smiley and Charlie Hill returned from dinner at Ocean Park Beach, and fired through the glass doors.
“At least four shots entered the body of Siegel as he sat reading the paper on a divan. Working alongside the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the L.A.P.D. reported that Siegel was pronounced dead on arrival. Both Charlie Hill and Allen Smiley were said to be in shock but otherwise unharmed. They have not been available for comment, but police and F.B.I. believe this to be a mob assassination. Siegel has spent millions of dollars building The Flamingo Hotel in Nevada and unnamed sources stated that ‘his investors were unhappy he’d gone over budget.’ ”
Craine knew he had to talk to Smiley and Hill to find out exactly what had happened and if they’d got any sight of the shooter. He remembered Allen Smiley as a “sporting figure,” better known as a low-level gambler. Charlie Hill’s name didn’t mean anything to him.
Editorials of most other local papers tallied with the Los Angeles Examiner report, suggesting Siegel had been murdered by New York mob associates but keeping the details of the crime itself vague. As he compared stories in different papers, Craine could spot the news items taken word for word from the police briefing.
Yellow press dared to call Siegel “the Al Capone of California.” They’d managed to get photographs of the living room where Siegel was shot but offered little detail on the crime itself. They stated that motive for his murder was likely due to his hotel ventures in Las Vegas, but their sources were both unnamed and questionable.
The Hollywood Enquirer, the city’s biggest trade newspaper, didn’t mention Siegel at all; owner William Wilson’s trade view column seemed more preoccupied with outing communist sympathizers within the motion picture industry.
It was the Los Angeles Herald that caught Craine’s attention. They were the only paper to note that Siegel’s girlfriend Virginia Hill had not been interviewed by police and was unavailable for comment. Unlike Hearst’s papers, the Herald’s reporter outlined the crime in specific detail and attacked police refusal to share information on Siegel’s whereabouts on the day of his death. The article highlighted that Siegel had been shot with a .30 caliber military M1 carbine. The weapon interested Craine. Not a submachine gun, the mob’s usual weapon of dispatch. A soldier’s weapon.
Crime reporters didn’t always get a wide berth from the police when Craine was a lieutenant, but this one had done their homework. The reporter even had a quote from Smiley at the scene, saying: “I was right there next to him. It was like the room was exploding.”
Unlike the other broadsheets, the Herald also quoted unnamed sources stating that Siegel had been with movie star George Raft earlier that day. Raft’s omission from other papers made sense to Craine—studio publicity teams would have lobbied the press to avoid mentioning Raft’s name to protect his star image. Which meant that the Herald wasn’t toeing the party line.
Craine looked at the columnist’s name: T. L. Conroy. The name rang a bell but he couldn’t put a face to it.
Craine felt the car slow for the first time in an hour. The roads were getting busier. He looked up and a sign announced LOS ANGELES—10 miles.
He was entering the belly of the whale.
Chapter 6
The Los Angeles Herald’s budget meeting was held in the City Editor’s briefing room every Monday at 10 A.M. It covered the day’s news, but its main focus was what was going to be featured in the week’s papers.
The flatplans for tomorrow’s edition were laid out on the table. A horseshoe of two dozen senior reporters surrounded the City Editor as he rolled through key items. Tilda Conroy was the only one not smoking.
“The Chief Printer has set up a new block for the front page,” he announced. “To confirm, the lead story tomorrow will now focus on the Taft–Hartley Act going into effect. Tom, I want four hundred words on why last year more than five million blue-collar Americans were involved in strikes.”
The Taft–Hartley Act was a controversial labor bill that imposed limits on strikes and required union leaders to declare that they had no ties to the Communist Party. The country was divided on union strikes in America, but the Herald was broadly supportive. In fact, Tilda Conroy had always wanted to work at the Herald because it was more liberal and metropolitan than most nationals.
The City Editor stared across the office. “Anything else?”
Conroy cleared her throat. A row of cigarette cherries turned in her direction. She was one of only three women in the room, the other being the editor of the Homemaking section and a secretary taking minutes. “The police are briefing the press tomorrow on the latest with the Siegel murder.”
“Unless there’s a suspect, omit it entirely. I don’t want us to repeat ourselves.”
Homicides were tedious from a news perspective. With most crime locating itself below the poverty line, Conroy had a habit of linking murders to wider social issues, something the City Editor was less than fond of. But Siegel was a national celebrity, one with ties to major figures in Hollywood.
“Sir, it’s got interest on both coasts. Updates on the case are—”
The City Editor stared her down. “I said we omit it entirely,” he snapped.
The room fell silent. Most of the men were staring at Conroy over their cigarettes. “Now,” he said more quietly, “I had breakfast with our esteemed publisher this morning. He asked me if we’re going to do a report on the crime numbers. Can you cover it?”
Less a question and more a demand. Crime had fallen in the last two quarters, which in City Hall’s eyes warranted front-page news. They wanted Los Angeles to be seen as a safe haven for real estate investors.
“I’ll get right on it,” Conroy said with muted enthusiasm for writing another police puff piece.
“Good. Anyone else?”
A wave from the back. “Howard Hughes is preparing to fly his ‘Spruce Goose’ flying boat.”
“We have pictures,” the Pictures Editor added.
“Fine. Column on page four. Two hundred words.”
Teddy Kahn, the Political Editor, raised his pencil. “One of my press agents tipped me off that Jack Warner, Harry Cohn and Louis Mayer will be testifying to the House Un-American Activities Committee.”
“H.U.A.C. are in L.A.?”
“That’s what he said. Apparently the F.B.I. has got them worried about the studio unions. ‘Communism infiltrating the pictures,’ et cetera. It’s a closed hearing but they’re holed up at the Biltmore Hotel.”
The City Editor considered this. “Cover the hearings,” he said decisively. “I want five hundred words on page six. Make sure you get pictures, and see if you can get a statement from Mayer or Warner.”
Conroy noticed Teddy Kahn look at her and sneer. He was a braggart and a male chauvinist and they’d never seen eye to eye. He rolled his eyes whenever she spoke. Wolf-whistled when she walked past. She’d gotten used to it but that didn’t mean she’d learned to accept it.
“Is that everything?” the City Editor asked the room.
His secretary leaned forward and whispered something into his ear.
“What?” he barked. “Oh, we have some news. Teddy, you sly dog. Ladies and gentlemen, today is Teddy’s birthday.”
The political reporter grinned.
“Do we have a cake?” All eyes turned to the women in the room. Conroy had never baked a cake in her life. “No?” he asked, glancing at Conroy. “Well, we’ll get some donuts sent up. Teddy, you’ll have to make do with a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday.’ ”
When the conference broke up, Conroy followed the City Editor to his office, a small glass-walled suite overlooking the City Room.
After she shut the door he said, “Don’t you question my fucking judgment in the budget meeting again, Conroy. It’s fucking disgraceful.”
Most men refrained from swearing in mixed company, but his tone wasn’t aggressive, merely part of their informal rapport. He was the one that first suggested her for the crime desk.
“Sir, can we at least discuss it?”
He sat down behind his desk and prodded his finger at a pile of galley proofs. “I decide what goes in the paper, not you. No, don’t sit down. You’re standing.”
“I’m sorry, sir. But I can’t understand why you’re pulling my story on Siegel.”
“People are bored of Siegel. It’s a mob hit. There’s no conspiracy. There’s no story because we’ll never know who did it.”
“We could dedicate resources to finding out who—”
He broke in before she could finish. “It’s not your job to find the killer or postulate on suspects. Why don’t you write about that wannabe actress raped and killed in Echo Park. She’d signed with Paramount a week ago.”
“The Examiner are covering it,” she said dismissively. “There’s nothing new.”
“The Examiner are covering it because it’s tragic and sad and that’s what people want to read about. They even got a great spread on the latest Paramount picture.”
The City Editor was a gun dog. Easygoing to a certain point, but hardly prone to sleeping by the hearth. He was results-driven.
He lit a Chesterfield. “Let’s just say City Hall is less enthusiastic about coverage of Siegel’s death than you are. You already ignored me when I asked you not to mention Siegel’s ties with George Raft.”
