James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (53 page)

Rotation
.

Crutch lied to Froggy. He laid out “Clyde Duber needs me in L.A.” tales. Froggy said sure. He flew to L.A. and prowled. He read Clyde's heist file a dozen times, got the gist and no more. He called Wells Fargo. He tried to track the emerald shipment and got rebuffed. He went back to Clyde's file. Scotty Bennett's obsession with the case was confirmed. That was old news. The
new
news: Scotty's filed reports were threadbare.

Omissions. A paper dearth. He
knew
Scotty. They bullshitted at the wheelman lot. Scotty showed him reports on minor heists—always detail-packed. His reports on 2/24/64—slight by comparison.

He tried to pump Scotty. He came on
suuuubtle
, but Scotty did not reveal shit. He didn't tell Scotty that he'd hot-wired Marsh Bowen. Scotty would slam Bowen at the proper time.

A ripe rumor rippled: Bowen snitched a spade named Jomo for some liquor-store jobs. Jomo offed himself in jail. Scotty told Crutch that he was spreading the rumor. Safe bet: Bowen's queer ass was cooked.

Rotation
.

The island was a Zombie Zone. L.A. was a safe zone. He dropped by the wheelman lot and brought beer and pizza. He went by his pad at the Vivian and his downtown file pad. He read his mother's missing person file. It helped smother his nightmares.

His mother sent him five bucks and a Christmas card. This one was postmarked Kansas City. She split in 1955. She sent her first card that year. She sent a card for Christmas '69. It was 1970 now.

She was still alive. Like Celia and Joan. Like Dana Lund and all the
Hancock Park girls in windows. His case was stalled. Scotty had to have more paperwork. Dana Lund had new gray hair. She wore the cashmere sweater he'd bought her at Christmas.

Dana's gray streaks looked like Joan's. It was all a fucking knife to the heart.

(Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, 5/16/69–3/8/70)

D
ream State
.

It was Bowen's stated concept. It was his life now. It was unquantifiable. It reminded him of his early chemistry studies. Some experiments brought assured results. Many did not. He took greater risks and became more attuned to uncertainty. A world existed beyond his comprehension. The notion drove him and consoled him, then and now.

His herb trips clarified his dream state. They brought him an unforeseeable hope. They dulled his sense of risk more.

He flies to the D.R. and detours into Haiti. He hires Tonton thugs to protect him as he chemically dallies. He brings money for Celia and Joan. He tells Celia to deploy the money and spare him the details. She has pledged to leave the building sites alone. He has donated $1,649,000. The results are unquantifiable.

Dream State
.

He liquidated his father's estate and reimbursed Balaguer's construction firm. That covered his first impromptu tithe. He became an embezzler then.

The Boys trusted him with quickly tallied and un-vouchered cash. They knew he loved power and gave little thought to financial remuneration. He skimmed skim off Drac's hotels. He diverted payments from Teamster-book buyouts. He cooked the books at Tiger Kab and the southside clubs. He quick-wash-and-dried funds through the Peoples' Bank. He delivered monthly stipends to Balaguer and near-equal funds to Celia.

He asked to speak to Joan. It pertained to a young man she knew at one time. Celia said, “Under no circumstances” and “Please don't ask me
again.” He refrained from further requests. He chased Joan and the ghost of Reginald Hazzard back to L.A.

Dwight refused to discuss Joan. Wayne submitted a Federal file request through a friend on LVPD. Joan's file was missing from Central Records. The Bureau had no file on Joan's colleague Karen Sifakis. Dwight pulled both files. He was sure of that. He ran a nationwide PD check on both women and got nothing. That second little
click
kept
clicking
him. He did anti-redaction work on Joan's file. His memory
clicked
and stalled out there.

He scoured South L.A. He couldn't find Joan. He built a partial Joan-Reginald time line. The Freedom School, '62. The jail bailout, '63. He scoured files in the D.R. Joan: tied to Celia Reyes and embroiled in Dominican revolt. Joan: one file photo. The 6/14 invasion and a younger woman with a fist raised.

Late '63: Reginald studies Haitian herbs and hard-Left politics. Joan's a renegade professor. It's a wild tutelage. The Haitian connection—jump then to now.

Joan is BTA-tight. The BTA “Armorer”: Haitian hellion Leander James Jackson. Brother Jackson had a knife fight with the late Jomo Clarkson. Wayne and Marsh Bowen provoked it. Jackson was allegedly ex–Tonton Macoute. Wayne tried to run a Tonton records check on him. The Tonton kept no written records.

More file checks, more dead ends.

No file on Leander James Jackson. No immigration files on men with those three initials. No Fed or muni-PD files extant.

Jackson: most likely unrelated to Reginald and Joan. He considered bracing Bowen on Jackson and decided against it. Bowen would probably double-deal confidential information.

Dream State
.

He cruises southside L.A. He looks for people who aren't there. He's got Tiger Kab and the clubs as information hubs. Nobody knew Reginald then or knows Reginald now. He's hand-checking LAPD and Sheriff's station files. He's looking for one name in millions of words.

I will find Reginald Hazzard just as I found Wendell Durfee. I will impart mercy as I once imparted death
.

His dream state imposed clarity. It seamlessly bridged L.A. and the D.R. The hotel-casinos were going up. It was a controlled experiment with quantifiable results. He was tithing revolution at a consistently opposing rate. Ivar Smith was watch-dogging Tiger Krew. The fucks were abstaining from Cuban runs and had scotched their dope biz.
That
was quantifiable.
That
controlled experiment worked. He visited Tiger Krew. He soaked up
their hatred and fear. The RED borders of his U.S.-Caribbean junkets blurred.

The Boys loved him. He hated them and sucked up to them and bilked them. The Boys knew he was with a black woman. They kept quiet because they needed his skills. He spends time with them. He fraternizes with queer black militants. He's riding his dreamscape through a zeitgeist with an off-RED flag aswirl.

Marsh Bowen was full-time wired. Wayne checked the listening post every third day. Marsh and his pals talked revolutionary shit and never
did
shit to create revolution. They can't score heroin. Half of them don't
want
to score heroin. A few have tenuous moral qualms. Most just fear the fuzz. Chicago cops killed two Panthers in December. The Panthers shot it out with LAPD the same month. It was a non-fatal/let-off-steam/could-have-been-us moment.
Whew! Heroin
? Brother, I'm not sure.

It frustrated Dwight. It delighted Wayne. He smoked weed with Marsh once. They again discussed the dream-state concept. Marsh didn't know he was wired. Marsh didn't know that LAPD bagged his ass. They stood in the Tiger Kab lot. Wayne got this nutty idea:
I'll tell him I killed Martin Luther King and see how he takes it
.

Dwight didn't trust Marsh. Dwight was right—he's a time-buyer and a favor-doer lost in compliant calculation. Marsh bailed Ezzard Donnell Jones out of lockup twice—77th Street and University stations. Marsh was afraid of MMLF reprisal and BTA whiplash. Marsh's mindscape was all stasis and circumspection.

Dwight's brainscape was all machination. He was losing weight. He was boozing to suppress his nerves and notch some sleep. Dwight said Mr. Hoover was reaming him for results. Wayne said, “How?” Dwight mimicked a junkie shooting up.

The pantomime was spooky. Wayne got chills. Dwight said, “Son, you cannot fuck with me on this.”

Dream State
.

He did not tell Mary Beth about his tithing. She would consider it stealing. She would critique his guilty conscience. She would disapprove of his herb trips. She would view his experiment theory as a fatuous riff of the times. Her resentment was an indictment. She brought it to bed with them. He brought images of Joan for fire and consolation. She considers his quest to find her son grandiose and self-serving. She cannot comprehend the scope of his debt.

(Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, 5/16/69–3/8/70)

S
he's gone
.

She left him with nineteen file cards and no good-bye note. She left a lipstick smear on her pillow.

The cards listed snitch-outs gleaned from the BTA. Joan gave up six armed-robbery teams, two kidnap gangs and eleven mail-bombing leftists. Dwight attributed the work to Marsh Bowen. It bought the time-buyer more time and wowed Mr. Hoover. The old girl ordered the Federal raids herself.

A brief return to form, followed by more slippage.

“Dwight, those prehensile-tailed creatures must sell heroin. I fear that they will not accomplish this in my flickering-out lifetime.”

He mollified the old girl. The old girl responded with a daily telex barrage. Racist doggerel and hate cartoons, sent through the FBI mail flow.

Pat Nixon pulls a train for Archie Bell and the Drells. Slippage verging on breakdown.

He walked away from it. He tried to find Joan.

Phone checks, records checks—nothing. Subtle probings with Karen—no go. Wayne nailed that “Freedom School” lead. It proved that Joan and Karen lied to him. Wayne redacted Joan's file. He told Dwight that a little
click
kept eluding him. Dwight knew what it was. Wayne stripped inked paper and got the name Thomas Frank Narduno. The man knew Joan. They were comrades. Dwight and Wayne's gang killed Narduno at the Grapevine Tavern. It begged the biggest questions of their lives:

What does she want? What does she know? Why have we let her in
?

Dwight print-dusted the Eagle Rock and Altadena pads. No prints, no diary notes, no guns under pillows.

She's gone
.

His nerves are stripped gears. He stares at the drop-front walls and lets time evaporate. He takes more pills with more booze and sleeps worse commensurately.

He filled the Joan void with Karen. Joan gave him nineteen snitches. He gave Karen the quid pro quo benefit. He bailed her friends out of jail in record numbers. Karen pulled more Quaker woo-woo than ever before. He has Dr. King nightmares. Karen gets a monument-bombing chit the next day. He keeps thinking of Silver Hill. The doctors told him not to think. He stared at the walls and thought anyway.

She's gone
.

He's got more time to think and stare at walls and wait for the walls to speak back. OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER was in a soul coma. The BTA and MMFL brothers were losing their fire
fast
. October 18, '69. The Panthers ambush two L.A. cops. One cop is wounded, one Panther is wounded, one Panther is dead.

December 8, '69: The big pig-Panther shoot-out at Panther HQ. Woundings, no deaths. LAPD reprisals?—probably. Most likely implemented by Scotty B.

Marsh Bowen was useless. The wire was useless. The talk was Revolution 101 for burrheads and dupes. His new Marsh vibe: the fuck had an agenda. The fuck was lying in wait. He should have produced more or plain rabbited from the Jomo thing.

Scotty weighed on him. Scotty had an agenda. Scotty got LAPD to fire Marsh. Scotty put out the word: no reprisals on Marsh. He snitched Jomo, I don't care, don't fuck with him or I'll fuck with you.

The sweat-box room, the hose shots, the Q&A.
Why the grilling on that armored-car heist
?

Suspicion
.

It kept aging cops up nights. Their brain compartments seeped. They saw shit that wasn't there and missed the shit that was. He had phone chats with President Nixon and Mr. Hoover. President Nixon feared Mr. Hoover's file stash. Mr. Hoover feared President Nixon's soft line on black militants and Commies. Mr. Hoover was obsessed with Wayne's black girlfriend and feared that coon-killer Wayne had gone Red. Nixon sent Dwight on a scouting trip to the D.R. He wanted Dwight's take on the Midget. He wanted to make sure his mob deal wouldn't boomerang. Dwight dipped down to Santo Domingo. The casino build was going strong. The Midget gave good lunch. La Banda gave good oppression. He called the prez and told him the D.R. looked kosher.

Suspicion
.

He called Mr. Hoover and reported the trip. Mr. Hoover was
suspicious
—“Dwight, did Nixon talk about me?”

Dwight said, “No, Sir. He didn't.” Mr. Hoover was aghast and relieved. He told a
fourteen-minute
joke about Dr. King and Lassie. He told a
sixteen-minute
joke about the prez and Liberace.

Suspicion
.

He had downtime in Santo Domingo. He hobknobbed with Tiger Krew and felt shit percolating. His hunch: they were moving smack behind Wayne's back. He didn't tell Wayne. Why promote chaos?

The D.R. felt creepy-crawly. L.A. felt good on the rebound.

She's gone
.

His birthday was last week. He turned fifty-three. The prez called and requested a D.R. backup trip. Karen bought him dinner at Perino's. He got a plain white envelope in the mail.

It came to the drop-front. His name and address were typed on. There was no return address.

He opened the envelope. Inside: a little red flag on a stick.

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 3/8/70. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.

Los Angeles,
3/8/70         

My daughters are playing in the next room. Four-year-old Dina is watching fifteen-month-old Eleanora steady herself on a large rubber beach ball and teach herself to walk. At some point, she'll become jealous of Ella's rapid progress and push her to the floor; Ella will cry, get up and keep going. It will be the third or fourth time this has happened. I reprimanded Dina the first time. She blamed Dwight for her actions. She had overheard Dwight telling me that Ella was quickly becoming the dominant little girl, and Dina had better “log some payback while she's able.”