James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (59 page)

He followed lines and arrows. Facts, logic, conjecture. It all made perfect sense.

Mary Beth's missing son. Emeralds. Haiti and Leander James Jackson. The woman with the dark, gray-streaked hair.

Celia, leftist firebrand. A hint of Joan and Dwight Holly in love.

His case and Wayne's—indivisible.

Dear God, that little red flag.

(Silver Hill, 4/5/70–12/4/70)

T
he bed, the lawn. The white buildings, the injected sleep.

Coercion got him in. He spent thirty days then. He stayed eight months now. Thirteen years of penance tithes formed his time between stays. His first visit was happenstance. The context was drunken neglect. The issues raised were guilt payments and abstinence. This stay resulted from reckless intent and cruel political thinking. The death toll was uncountable. The mind-set that created the actions mandated a conscious address.

He was here. She was wherever she went when she vanished. She knew she was complicit. Her heedlessness had spawned chaos on other occasions. She went away to build the will to return.

Silver Hill was beautiful. His stay covered three seasons. He got spring blaze, summer glow and snow.

He sent Mr. Hoover a telex. It stated his need for a long rest and did not state his location. Mr. Hoover knew he'd be here. A card arrived a month later.

Take as much time as you need. I have a new job for you. It's in Los Angeles. You'd start in January.

“File superintendent.” “Dirt-digger,” euphemized. Hoard gossip and scandal skank. Feed the old girl's private stash.

Low-risk work. A non-death-causing assignment.

L.A. was L.A. He might feel safe north of the southside. Karen was there. Joan might surface and find him.

He collapsed in New Orleans. He chartered a Bureau plane and flew straight here. Doctors examined him and found him physically sound.
They force-fed him big meals and put proper weight on his frame. They sedated him. He slept eighteen hours a day for six weeks running. He woke up startled. He saw his lost ones the moment he opened his eyes. He sobbed. He segued into panic jolts and threw himself at walls. Male nurses shot him up. He went back to sleep and did it all over again.

His bedroom walls were padded. The throws didn't hurt. He wanted to cause pain. He thought it would blur the dead people's faces.

He got through that part of it. Repetition burned it out. The docs decreased his sedation. He avoided the head-shrinkers and the other patients. He spent time with a flock of tame goats. They lived protected on the grounds. They were there to console the burnouts.

He fed them and petted them. He mail-ordered stuffed animals and sent them to Karen's kids. He pretended that the kids were his kids and that he had a life where nobody got fucked over and hurt. Those thoughts killed him. He'd lose it and weep and get afraid that he could never go out in the world again.

His lost ones came at him. He'd sit still with them. He spent weeks listening to them and weeks talking to them. He got to where they could coexist.

They came and went. He started to see what they wanted and what he owed them. They gave him his mind back on a consignment basis.

Karen sent him notes full of Quaker prayers for peace. The girls sent thank-you cards for the stuffed animals. Karen sent a photo of all three of them. Their address and phone number were scrawled on the back. Dina wrote above it: “If this man is lost, please return him.”

He carried the photo. He spent hours with his goats. He thought all of it through and began to see it.

A detailed operation. A multicontext design. An explicative scenario. Tell it like it was then and how it is now.

Mr. Hoover's racial lunacy. The FBI's war on the civil rights movement. Its calamitous faux pas with black-militant groups.

A huge feat of exposition. A densely packed indictment. A treatise on the collusive mind-set. JFK, RFK and MLK are dead. Let me tell you how.

A big social document, with key players brightly lit. Marsh Bowen: a duplicitous homosexual and merciless provocateur. Mob figures with vile ghetto ties. Mr. Hoover's orbit of hired guns. Special Agent Dwight C. Holly—called forth to confess.

An event of gravely stern measure. A grand idea culled from Mr. Hoover's file mania. An epic of malign paperwork rendered banal by the staggering weight of its emptiness. A text so deep that it would defy all easy reading and inspire contentious study for all motherfucking time.

He saw it all. He wrote nothing down. He rested and nuzzled his goats.

Karen sent him a peach pie for Thanksgiving. He shared it with his goats. He got fretful about them. He braced an administrator.

The man said, “They'll never be hurt, Mr. Holly. They'll be here for life. They're here for people like you.”

He rested. He slept. He had some peaceful dreams about Wayne. He revised and embellished his idea. He could tell her soon. He knew he couldn't find her. He sensed that she'd find him in L.A.

He was wrong. It happened abruptly. She found him there with his goats.

He heard footsteps. He turned around and saw her. She looked more fierce and breathtaking than he had ever seen her. She had carried every bit of her weight.

He said, “Hello, comrade.” He pulled out the little red flag.

She said, “What are we going to do?”

He said, “Let me tell you.”

December 5, 1970–November 18, 1971

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 12/5/70. Verbatim FBI telephone call transcript. Marked: “
Recorded at the Director's Request/Classified Confidential 1-A: Director's Eyes Only.
” Speaking: Director Hoover, President Richard M. Nixon.

Scotty Bennett

(Los Angeles, 12/7/70)

“A
mong the many things I learned during my time undercover is that inherent criminality is inherent criminality, regardless of the racial or political grievance that serves as its justification, regardless of the soundness or unsoundness of the ideology expressed.”

The spiel got applause. Mayor Yorty and Chief Davis clapped. Scotty clapped along. Marsh looked good. Sergeant's stripes on new blues. A close-cut Afro.

Full house: the Academy gym, cops and politicians. No Feds—big surprise there.

“The LAPD has superbly interdicted the criminal aspects of black nationalism as it has honored the legal right of black-nationalist civil address, while concurrently opening its arms to a new generation of minority police officers.”

Scotty yukked internal. He hit up Marsh back in March. He let time simmer. Today was the day: the big heist summit.

The fucker could speak. He chose his words and rocked with the rhythm. He eschewed a homo aesthetic.

The chief dug him. Rank and filers resented him. Sam Yorty grooved his Uncle Tom act.

Marsh cranked it.
Woooo
, some crescendo! He stabbed the air like JFK. He hit the MLK note of redemption. He got a standing ovation.

The audience swarmed the lecturn. Marsh was Mr. Gracious. Scotty winked on his way out.

• • •

Armed Robbery—211 PC. His den treasure-troved it.

Eighteen wall pix. Eighteen kills documented. The twelve Panthers went unsung. You can't photograph the dead-and-buried.

Liquor-store jobs and market rips. Sitting-duck ambushes and shoot-outs. Eighteen dead male Negroes.

Marsh thought he hated black folks. Marsh was wrong. He never said the word
nigger
. He hated killers, dope-pushers and heisters. Black militants were up there. His all-black kill sheet was luck and demographic. Shit played out that way.

Ann and the kids were in Fresno. The house was a stag-party zone. Scotty laid out booze, dip and Fritos. Scotty pulled all his files out.

Marsh Bowen tweaked him from the get-go. Marsh passed that ink-stained cash. Marsh worked at the Peoples' Bank briefly. Marsh got on LAPD. All tweakers, but inconclusive.

Then Marsh goes Fed and fucks him. Then Marsh starts making heist queries. Then he runs a DMV check and gets 84th and Budlong.

Scotty snarfed Fritos and bean dip. The wall photos spoke.

Rydell Tyner said, “Jesus, Scotty.” He said, “Son, I warned you.”

Bobby Fisk bled out at All-American Liquor. He gave Bobby's flash roll to his grandma.

Lamar Brown had a pencil neck. Triple-aught buck severed his head.

The basement bell rang. Scotty opened up. Marsh was back in civvies.

“Hello, partner.”

“Hello, Scotty.”

“Make yourself at home. If you show me yours, I'll show you mine.”

Then to now: six years and ten months. Marsh kicked it off. He was there that day.

There
was
a third robber. He was black. The lead guy shot him, chemically scalded him and left him for dead. The third man crawled to an alley and hid. Marsh lived on that block then. He saw the third man. He saw his bulletproof vest and extra precautionary gauzing. He figured it saved the man's life. LAPD was out
bruuutal
. Marsh was outraged. He took the man to a doctor neighbor's house and hid him there. The doctor treated the man's wounds and burns. The man refused to discuss the heist-killings and never revealed his identity. He left two days later. He gave the doctor twenty thousand dollars in ink-stained cash. The doctor deposited it in the Peoples' Bank of South Los Angeles. He told Lionel Thornton to leak the cash back to the community. Charity donations: do it prudently. Small amounts of cash surfaced in the black community. Scotty leaned on the
passers. The doctor died in '65. Marsh got obsessed with the case. He got a job at the bank, learned zero and quit.