James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (31 page)

Dwight jerked the telescope. The eyepiece banged Marsh. He regrouped and went instant blank-faced.

“Here's your target list. Get next to Ezzard Donnell Jones, Benny Boles, Leander Jackson, J. T. McCarver, Jomo Kenyatta Clarkson and Claude Torrance. Call me every fourth day at the phone drop until I find you a cutout. Start hanging out at Black Cat Cab and Sultan Sam's Sandbox, start attending the Friday night crap game at the barbershop on 58th and Florence.”

Marsh smiled. It verged on a simper. I'm above all this.

“Is there anything else?”

“Yes, there is.”

“And that is?”

“It's this. You're undoubtedly the luckiest nigger on God's green earth.”

“Because you're my director?”

“Because you're too publicly notable for Scotty Bennett to kill.”

Joan handed him the shells. Six spents with baffling treads attached. She drove a '61 Karmann Ghia. The plates looked counterfeit. The headliner was trashed from poor upkeep or backseat fucking.

The Elysian Park cutoff. Near the LAPD Academy. A sweet view and an implied threat.

Dwight said, “How do I know they're the right shells?”

“Because you trust me?”

It was chilly now. Joan wore long sleeves. Her knife scar was covered. Dwight missed the stimuli.

“You were on it faster than I thought you'd be.”

Joan lit a cigarette. “I thought you'd appreciate that.”

“I do.”

“I'm sleeping with Ezzard Jones' girlfriend. She's skeptical of the BTA. You'll hear all about it.”

A spring-loaded sap was jammed between the front seats. The backseat
was packed with leftist screeds. He smelled Joan's shampoo and stale marijuana.

Joan said, “I consigned the cocaine to Leander Jackson. He's a lovely Haitian man with an unseemly fixation on voodoo. He sold a few grams already. I gave my share to the MMLF's breakfast program. Claude Torrance was grateful. He's invited me to a series of fund-raising parties.”

Dwight smiled. “There'll be brawls.”

“I know.”

“You'll be groped, in a demeaning fashion.”

“I count on it.”

“Why?”

“I'll stab the man who gropes me, with female witnesses present. They'll groove on me and tell me stories about the men. It's an MMLF party. Leander's beholden to me now. He'll be pissed when he hears I've been associating with the MMLF, but he won't cut me loose, because he'll dig the stabbing story and I'll be the only female hanger-on who can score dope.”

Dwight grabbed his cigarettes. The pack was empty. Joan lit one of hers and passed it to him. Dwight smelled her hand cream.

She wore black boots. Her dress buttoned down to the hemline. The car was hot. Sweat pooled at the neckline.

Dwight said, “Who else have you informed for?”

Joan said, “I'm not telling you.”

“Why is your file so heavily redacted?”

“I'm not telling you.”

“Were those simply pro forma roundups, or were you at one time an armed-robbery suspect?”

“I'm not telling you.”

“Give me the names of some known associates. I won't move on them. I'm just trying to get a handle on your history.”

“Under no circumstances.”

Dwight popped two aspirin. Joan pushed her seat back and rested her legs on the window ledge. An ankle bracelet rode up her calf, over the boot top. A little red flag on a gold chain.

Dwight smiled. Joan smiled. They blew lousy smoke rings and fumed up the car. Two LAPD sleds zoomed by. Black dudes were cuffed in the backseats.

Joan said, “There's a gym teacher at Manual Arts High School. His name is Berkowitz. He's a pedophile. I think you should reprimand him.”

“Is this related to our operation?”

“Yes.”

“I'd like more of an explanation.”

“People tell me things that require me to respond. In part, that's why I'm working for you. I'm hoping you'll be amenable.”

Dwight said, “I'll take care of it.”

Joan said, “I'd like to see proof.”

Dwight nodded. Joan drew her legs up and banged the horn by mistake. The noise was startling. They both laughed.

They met at a coffee cave on Hillhurst. It was near Karen's pad and the drop-front. It featured a kid's play alcove. Dwight dug it. It made him feel quasi-married.

Dina lounged in the alcove. Kids brought their stuffed animals. Karen kvetched her fate as the world's oldest mother. Dwight chewed gum. He quit smoking around Karen. It tempted her. He didn't want to mess up Eleanora.

Karen held her belly. She looked incongruous—this lean woman with this big bulge.

Dwight crumbled two aspirin and dropped them in his coffee. A new approach to stress headaches. Jack Leahy explained it. Vascular constriction, blah blah.

Karen said, “Nixon's going to win. He won't institute instant repression or do much of anything, which will infuriate my comrades fucking up the Humphrey campaign.”

“It's all a little too convoluted for me.”

Karen nibbled a sweet roll. “It's entirely understandable to you, which means that something's on your mind, or you wouldn't be making such blandly disingenuous comments.”

Dwight laughed. “My infiltrator is running cocky. I'm going to have to knock him down a notch or two.”

Karen crossed herself. Hybrid faith. The Greek Orthodox girl gone Quaker. A waiter brought fresh coffee. Dwight crumbled fresh aspirin.

“Why's Joan's file so heavily redacted?”

“I don't know. Have you asked her?”

“She won't tell me.”

“Then let it go.”

“Her entire KA section has been blacked out.”

“Then some handler in her past did her a favor.”

“She said she'd never informed Federally before. There's things she won't tell me, something about—”

Karen knocked over his coffee cup. His hands got doused. His aspirin tin went flying.

“You're tweaked on that woman. I know you. I've been reading you for months. Every instinct I have tells me that you've done some very bad shit lately, even by your fucked-up fascist stand—”

Dwight heard Dina crying. She'd heard Karen yell. Dina kicked at a mound of toys and ran from the other children. Karen chased after her.

(Miami, 10/23/68)

H
ubert Humphrey deployed pidgin Spanish. Bilingual pols urged him on. The crowd was half white, half spic and all nonplussed. They were heat-wilted. The parking lot was sun-smacked and Hubert was a noon snooze. They craved cold beer and some yuks.

Mesplede stood mid-crowd. Crutch stood at the rear. They waved to the driver of a tarp-covered truck.

The truck pulled up to the edge of the parking lot. Crutch cued the driver. Three, two, one—the invasion force rolls out.

Two dozen out-of-work actors. More Clyde Duber plants. “Guerrilla Troupe” hambones done up as Fidel.

The beard, the boots, the green fatigues, the fat cigars—

“
Fidel loves Hubert! Fidel loves Hubert! Hubert loves Fidel!
”

Hubert stood there with his thumb up his ass. Eight Nixon-shirt guys jumped out of the truck and dispensed free beers. The Fidels circulated and passed out free cigars. The crowd went nuts. Crutch and Mesplede howled.

CUBA, CUBA, CUBA—Froggy talked it trilingual and
très grande
non-stop. Crutch kept thinking
D.R
. They rent-a-carred through Little Havana. They shared a reefer. Froggy kept saying “Cessna” and “coast run.” Crutch kept seeing that photo in the library book.

The voodoo guy. The tattoo. The pattern like the dead chick in Horror House.

Mesplede passed the reefer back. Crutch took a last hit and ate the
roach. They hit Flagler Street. The exile storefronts flew Cuban flags. Straw Castros hung from lightposts. Kids ran up and stuck pocket-knives in.

Crutch kept it zipped. He'd been talking D.R. like Froggy talked Cuba. “Keep it zipped.” Dwight Holly told him that. He obeyed, so far. Marsh Bowen was a fruit. He kept
that
zipped. He bombed by Miami-Dade PD last night. He did file checks on Gretchen/Celia and Joan Rosen Klein. Froggy asked him where he went. He kept it zipped.

He was learning
. His killer pals would respect that.

They drove to a rinky-dink airfield outside Miami. The crew was all Cuban. They were all diced and sliced from sugarcane work. Mesplede signed some papers and rented a two-seater plane. They took off and torched a joint at three thousand–plus feet.

Crutch got scared. The altitude cross-wired his high to acid-trip dimensions. He kept seeing people who weren't there. His mom did the Twist with Dana Lund. Blow-job Bev Shoftel blew Sal Mineo.

They flew low over Little Havana. Mesplede hit a lever and cut five thousand Nixon signs loose. Kids plucked them out of the air and flipped the plane off. Misplede dipsy-doodled south. They flew over a string of bridgeways and keys. Mesplede served Dexedrine chased with hash-spiked schnapps. Dig those brown cubes floating in white liquid.

Crutch imbibed. The cocktail re-cohered him. They flew out over the Caribbean. They passed two refugee rafts and dumped Nixon signs on them. The cocktail kept Crutch un-airsick. Mesplede pointed behind the seats. Crutch saw a Tommy gun with a hundred-round drum. He popped a bullet out. The tip had been dumdum-gouged and stuffed with rat poison.

Crutch got flutters. The cocktail had him anesthetized short of real fear. This big brown shape loomed. Froggy grinned at him. Crutch blinked. Now the shape's a pancake-flat island.

Froggy pushed the stick and brought them in low. They skimmed waves and water-bumped their wheels. Crutch saw the beach and some brownshirt spics ringed by sandbags. The spics were hunched over a .50-caliber machine gun. The thing had a vented barrel, feeder belts and a 360 swivel.

Froggy diversion-dipped and dove straight at them. The spics fired over, under and wide. Froggy came in ultra-low. The spics swiveled, re-swiveled and sent off panic shots. The noise was like typewriter clack meets the A-bomb.

Crutch rested the Tommy gun on his window ledge. Froggy got see-their-eyes low. Crutch head-counted eight. They were ducking and trying to swivel their machine gun in tight.

Crutch fired. He saw two heads explode. He saw one guy's ribs blow
out of his chest and blood-blast a sandbag. Froggy cut through some low trees. Fronds buffeted the airplane and blocked their frontal view. Crutch fired behind him. Stitch shots, very precise. He got four guys standing together. He saw a tall guy's glasses shatter as his head pitched off.

Froggy pulled the stick back. Crutch saw Cuba upside down and held in his cookies. They flew backward over the ocean. He saw his eight new kills and that guy's head rolling toward the surf line.

Hangover. Blackout.

He didn't remember the flight back or the ride to the hotel. He woke up in his bed. Mesplede was still asleep. He walked down to the restaurant and sat outside. He ordered pancakes and a Bloody Mary and kept it all down. He re-wired his head and grooved the awe of it. He killed two Cuban Reds in Chicago. He'd just killed eight more. Two plus eight was ten. He was moving toward Scotty Bennett's toll.

A shade tree loomed over his table. Lovers had carved initials and honeymoon dates on it. Crutch got out his pocketknife and stabbed in “D.C.” and “10.”

He walked back upstairs. His bedroom door was open. Mesplede was sitting on the bed. His briefcase had been pried open. The summary report on his case was out in plain view. Mesplede was on page 43.

Froggy had his gun out. Crutch gulped and brain-stalled for some lies. Froggy said, “You've withheld information twice. Your fixation on the Dominican Republic was a non sequitur that aroused my suspicion, so now you must tell me everything.”

So he did.

He started with the Dr. Fred/thieving girlfriend caper. He layered in Farlan Brown, Gretchen/Celia and Joan. Add Horror House. Add all his futile cop work. Add Celia's Dominican roots and Haiti. Add the dead woman's tattoo and the tattoo on the voodoo guy in the picture book.

Mesplede pulled out Crutch's pocket atlas. It was open to the Caribbean page. He said, “Our agendas merge.” He drew a straight line between the D.R. and Cuba.

(Los Angeles, 10/25/68)

B
lack Cat Cab featured black velvet walls and a black-history tribute. The time line spanned the Black Jesus to the Black LBJ. The flocked-on icons were peeling. The air conditioning ran twenty-four hours and messed with the motif. The boss weighed 428 pounds. The hut was stalactite-cold, per his orders.

Cordell “Junior” Jefferson: entrepreneur, Teamster-loan defaulter.

Wayne said, “The Boys are calling in their paper, Mr. Jefferson. There's some good news within that context.”

Jefferson squirmed in his chair. It was triple-wide. The room ran 50°. He was sweating.

“You're tellin' me I'm about two months behind, so I gots to take this?”

Wayne shivered. “You're three years behind, sir. Three years, but my news is not all bad.”

Jefferson spooned ice cream from a half-gallon drum. Some Panther types walked through the hut and evil-eyed Wayne. A big white man followed them. He radiated
Cop
. He wore a gray suit and a plaid bow tie.

Jefferson waved his spoon. “What's all this motherfuckin' good news you talkin' about, while you tryin' to pull the motherfuckin' rug out from under me?”

Wayne opened his briefcase and tossed ten grand in Jefferson's lap. Jefferson fondled it, smelled it and rubbed his face on it.

He snapped the rubber band holding it. He squeezed it into the world's fattest flash roll.

Wayne said, “You hold the deed on the biz. We bring in a white guy named Milt Chargin to help you run things, you help some cop friends of
mine out with information and dry-clean some cash, for which you get 7% of the action.”