James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (37 page)

It was Sam G.'s idea: let's revive Tiger Kab. Miami and Vegas, the anti-Castro days. Wayne, it's your job. Tigrify those cabs and make the shines like it.

Junior Jefferson noshed ice cream. “Tigers are okay, but panthers got more soul.”

Milt Chargin said, “I detect a political statement there.”

“It ain't politics. I'm just seeing two more white dudes than I usually see, which is contributing to the headache I gots from that strippedy-ass wallpaper.”

The hut was SRO. The co-bosses sat in scuffed BarcaLoungers. Wayne perched on the window unit. Two men stood by the switchboard. Wayne ID'd them from file pix: Marshall Bowen and Jomo Kenyatta Clarkson.

Milt said, “The car painters are coming in today. You'll groove the new look. They're attaching tiger tails to the rear bumpers.”

Jomo said, “This is jive honky bullshit. You're appropriating the racial identity of this business. Tigers are faggoty animals that punks dig on. Panthers are deadlier, but they got a distinction that makes you white fuckers squirm.”

Wayne yawned. He was sleep-shot. Two calls rocked him last night. Sam said, “You're the Tiger Kab overseer.” Dwight said, “I've got a job for you.”

“Racial identity is one thing, Mr. Clarkson. Comfort's another. I've ordered air-conditioning units for the whole fleet.”

Jomo picked at his machete scars. Political, self-inflicted. Marsh Bowen wore an all-black ensemble. He failed to look sinister. He looked like a male model slumming.

Junior said, “I likes that. Fat folks tend to sweat.”

Milt lit a cigarette. “You've got to lose weight, schmuck. Obesity comes back to haunt you later in life.”

“Ain't gonna be no ‘later in life' for me. A race war's coming, and I just hope I ain't too plump to run.”

Milt sighed. “If a race war is coming, why are you having such a good time with me?”

“ 'Cause you a funny old kike motherfucker, and you makes me laugh.”

Jomo glared at Wayne. Junior passed him a full-page cartoon. It was a mimeo sheet, all reprint-blurred. LAPD pigs butt-fucked Black Panther leaders while Richard Nixon watched and jacked off.

Junior slurped ice cream. “Maybe the brothers in US are putting that shit out to discredit the Panthers.”

Milt said, “The world does not need more hatred. The world needs more love. Inter-racial fucking and sucking would revitalize our great nation and spare us all lots of grief.”

Junior yukked, Wayne laughed, Marsh Bowen grinned. Jomo
glaaaared
anew. A switchboard call came in. Jomo ignored it. Tires screeched outside. A shotgun blast and glass explosion followed. Wayne pegged the distance: one half block.

“New ownership means new rules. That doesn't mean I'm here to put the skids to everything you've got going on the side. Minor crime, fine. Politics, sure. Dealing weed and pills, fine by me. No heroin, no violent crime, no armed robbery. The Boys don't want it and I won't tolerate it. I'm ex–law enforcement, so you'll just have to get used to the way things are being run now.”

Junior shrugged. Milt gulped. Marsh went blank-faced. Jomo pulled out a knife and carved “MMLF” on the wall.

The blade cut down to the baseboard. Plaster crumbled. Tiger-striped flocking peeled.

Wayne smiled at Jomo. “I'm glad you brought it up. From this point on, 2% of the Tiger Kab profits will go to the MMLF's Feed the Kiddies program.”

Milt and Junior split outside. Marsh stepped aside. The knife was stuck in the wall. The handle wobbled from the thrust. Jomo picked his teeth with a diamond stickpin.

Wayne walked up and pulled the knife out. He wiped the blade on his pants leg and placed it on the switchboard.

Jomo picked his teeth. The stickpin jumped and drew blood. He slow-pivoted and walked off.

Wayne passed Marsh a note. It read: “I'm your cutout. France's Drive-In in one hour.”

Dwight laid it out: Bowen was an FBI entrapper. His job: take down the BTA and MMLF. Dwight provided the case file and described the incursion to date. Dwight's specific plan:
heroin
.

Wayne was appalled. He cooked “H” and ran “H.” He saw it fuck up the Vegas ghetto and the U.S. troops in Saigon. Dwight used the phrase “non-lethal dope war.” It was Fed triplespeak. Passive FBI sanction of a localized narcotics trade. Interdiction and prosecution for a media effect.

Dwight said, “Sure, you hate narcotics. But this settles all your old debts.” Dwight said, “You're a badass ex-cop. I'm betting the brothers will get their rocks off on you. Tell Bowen to spread the word on your Vegas shit. I want to create an ambivalent reaction.

“And by the way—Bowen is queer.”

Wayne looped through the southside. It was smoggy. Street billboards magnetized him. Black models hucksterized. Be black and smoke cigarettes, be black and drive garish cars, be black and drink top-shelf booze. He drove slow. Pedestrians eyed him. He tried to read faces in split-second views.

He belonged here. He had business here. Reginald might have passed through here. He was building a file. He requeried the Clark County Sheriff's and found more paperwork. They'd be sending him report carbons soon.

He had L.A. work and Vegas work. The Boys kept suites in the Count's hotels. Nixon was prez now. He overturned LBJ's anti-trust injunctions fast. The Boys sold Drac the Landmark Hotel and two thousand prime Vegas acres. Drac's new fixation was atomic waste. Underground tests scared him shitless. He called Wayne in to explain nuclear fission. Drac believed that A-bomb rays enhanced the black sex drive.

Work was delegation. He sent Mesplede and Dipshit south. Mesplede nixed Panama as a casino-site location. Next stop: Nicaragua. Work was vexing. Mary Beth kept pressing him for details. He put her off and pressed on
her
work. She described paltry pay rates, management hassles and fly-by-night health-plans. He listened for short bursts of time and got all bollixed up. It was his world versus her world. It got his head racing.

He met with Lionel Thornton again. They discussed money transfers and the final wash of assets. It was tense. Thornton sat him face-to-face with the Dr. King portrait. Some world-clash thing resulted.

Thornton was pissy and treated his workers like shit. Wayne told him to bring in a union maintenance crew and toss the scab crew out. Thornton fumed. Wayne told him to square the debt to his employees' credit union. Thornton pounded his desk. Wayne told him the mail room pipes were leaking asbestos. That constituted a health risk. Please address the issue now. Thornton kicked his desk and ratched his shoes. Wayne saluted the portrait.

“What do you know about me?”

“I know you killed three black junkies under dubious circumstances when you worked LVPD.”

“Beyond that?”

“Beyond that, I know that you were looking for a man named Wendell Durfee, who had raped and murdered your wife.”

“You're correct so far. Do you know what happened to Wendell Durfee?”

“He was murdered here about a year ago. It's a Central Division unsolved. I wouldn't be surprised if you told me you did it.”

The drive-in was an Oreo spot on the race border. A jazz hut stood at the rear. The carhops were black
and
white—pretty girls on skates.

They sat in Wayne's rental car. The bolt-on trays cramped them and made them sit sideways.

“I did it.”

“I figured you had. Is there anything you'd like me to do with the information?”

Wayne stirred his coffee. “Spread the word judiciously. You were on LAPD then. Describe your presence at the crime scene. It was brutal beyond words. The investigators made me for it, but my father had too much clout.”

Marsh stirred his coffee. “What do you know about me?”

“Dwight Holly briefed me and telexed me the master file. I know about Scotty Bennett, your work with Clyde Duber and the operation to date.”

“And your assessment?”

“I disapprove of the heroin aspect, but it's viable within the overall context.”

“
Dramatically
viable? Like your racial baggage in plain view for the brothers to see?”

Wayne smiled. “Tell me some things. Rumors, perceptions, how you see it so far.”

Marsh tried to cross his legs. The car tray stopped him. He almost looked un-cool.

“Both groups are courting me. I doubt that they can score narcotics, so that strategy may prove problematic. There's been a series of southside liquor-store robberies with attendant rumors of black-militant suspects, but nothing more substantive than that. You know about those hate cartoons. It's either the Panthers versus US or vice versa, although my more conspiracy-minded brothers think it's the FBI. Mr. Holly has assured me that it is not.”

A carhop skated by and waved at Marsh. She looked like a younger Mary Beth.

Wayne said, “There's an outing tonight. Let's call it a get-acquainted party for the Tiger Kab crew. I want you there. You convince Jomo and at least one BTA man to come. There's some after-hours clubs I want to buy. I wouldn't mind stirring up some political shit with witnesses around.”

That carhop skated by again. Marsh threw her a faux-lusty grin. Wayne pulled out his show pic of Reginald Hazzard. Marsh studied it and blinked.

“Have you seen him?”

“No. Who is he?”

“A young man I'm trying to find. He's seventeen in the picture, but he'd be twenty-four now.”

Marsh smirked. Actor's gaffe, red flag—Wayne caught it.

“Tell me what you were thinking. Be candid, or this deal of ours won't work.”

“I was wondering if you planned to kill him.”

Wayne looked at the carhop. She had Mary Beth's eyes.

“I'm out of that line of work now.”

“I'm glad to hear it.”

“Have you ever heard of black people recently in the news getting emeralds anonymously in the mail?”

Marsh blinked and said, “No.”

The painters striped a '63 Lincoln limo. The JFK Deathmobile as jungle barge. Southside L.A. as the River Styx.

The backseats faced each other. The guys sat knee-to-knee. Wayne, Marsh, Junior, Milt. Jomo and BTA armorer Leander James Jackson.

Smoked windows. Backseat stereo. Archie Bell and the Drells on six speakers. 151 rum and hash-spiked Kool filters.

The barge embarked from the Tiger Kab lot. Junior's skinny brother Roscoe X drove. Wayne stayed sober. The other guys indulged. Milt did shtick. Nixon pimps his plain-Jane daughters to cover his campaign nut. Gay Edgar Hoover craves black schlong. Junior snarfed Eskimo pies and chocolate-dipped bananas. Jomo and Leander worked up an I-hates-you glare. Marsh checked out Wayne sidelong.

They drove by LAPD rousts. Jomo rolled down his window and made pig noise. They hit the Snooty Fox. A Moms Mabley type did ridicule patter and insulted the audience. She singled out Milt and Wayne. They were ofay mud-shark motherfuckers out to muff-dive black chicks on the rag. This vampire cat beat them to it. He done cunnilingized the southside dry and be snoozin' in his coffin as we speaks.

Wayne checked out Marsh sidelong. Marsh emitted ghetto laughs convincingly. File faces popped to life. There's Benny Boles. He's a fruit. He's trolling. He's checking out Roscoe X. There's Joseph Tidwell McCarver. He's the MMLF's “Pan-African Ruler.” He's with three whores. He's trading clenched-fist greetings with Jomo.

A junkie combo replaced the comic. The piano man nodded out and banged his face on the keys. The crew split. The barge dropped them at Rae's Rugburn Room. The floor show featured hooded women with dildos. Strobe lights played over insertion points. The soundtrack featured the Beatles with “All You Need Is Love.”

Milt and Jomo dug it. Leander and Junior looked away. Wayne decided to buy the place. It was packed. It had money-wash potential.

Next stop: the Scorpio Lounge. A soul-food buffet and a low-stakes dice game. The croupier was a topless chick with a two-foot Afro. Afro-heads bobbed in back booths. Blow jobs went for ten dollars per.

Jomo and Leander fueled up That Glare. Marsh and Wayne watched. They exchanged little nods. They exchanged telepathic waves—Marsh, it's on you.

Let's buy the place. It's a cash cave. Mr. Clean will make that green glow.

The crew rolled to Sultan Sam's Sandbox. Wayne got a contact buzz from the hash smoke. Buy the place—easy call—it's 1:00 a.m. packed. The joint had a Far East motif. The waitresses wore turbans and see-through saris. The walls were studded with big colored stones. The green ones reminded Wayne of that emerald. It was like a dream revived.

He trolled for file faces. He snagged one close by. Ezzard Donnell Jones, BTA bossman. He was with a white woman. Wayne caught a back view. She had dark, gray-streaked hair. Perfect smoke rings dispersed above her.

The crew sat at three tables. Wayne watched Marsh cup his hands and
work quick. He crumbled two Benzedrine rolls into powder. He scooped it up, table-hopped and did some buddy-buddy drapes. He dropped powder in Leander's scotch and milk. He jiggled the glass and sidled over to Jomo. Jomo worked on bourbon with a malt-liquor chaser. Marsh distracted him and powdered up both drinks.

Wayne nodded. Marsh nodded back. Wayne touched his wristwatch. Marsh flashed ten fingers.

It was 2:00 a.m. The crew was yawning. Milt mentioned food. Junior said, “I hear
that.
” The gestalt circulated: the Pines on Imperial Highway.

The chow consensus built. They booked to the barge. Milt and Junior plopped in first. Wayne and Marsh hovered. Jomo and Leander got squished in together. They bristled at the contact.

The barge pulled out. Jomo and Leander got jostled in tight. They squirmed apart. They shoulder-rolled and got themselves a few inches. Wayne and Marsh sat facing them. Milt and Junior dozed. Jomo looked sulky and blurry. Leander started to get bennie-bipped.

His mouth twitched. His hands talked. Little plucks at his trousers, little puckers and grins. He bumped Jomo. Jomo pulled away. Their feet bumped. They scuffed each other's shoes. Fucker, don't invade my space.