James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (72 page)

“Tell me what you're thinking.”

“That I should relent. That you should call your phone pal and have him make some calls for Celia.”

Dwight shook his head. “I called from Mississippi. He said no.”

Joan rolled away from him. He pulled off their robes and curled around her. She put his fingers in her mouth for a second and tucked his hand under her head.

“It's all taking too long.”

“He'll probably be in L.A. next summer. I'll be getting his revised schedule soon.”

“Suppose he doesn't stay at the Beverly Wilshire?”

“He will. We'll have to lease the perch soon, and start laying in the evidence.”

Joan coughed. “The black kid who leases it will be a witness.”

“We'll work him through a cutout. If he comes forward, he'll be considered a nut. People want to crash history. There were four-thousand-odd false witnesses on Jack alone.”

Her pillow was sweated through. Dwight pulled it out and tucked a fresh one under her head.

Joan grabbed a capsule off her nightstand. Dwight passed her his water glass.

She swallowed the capsule. Her hair was wet. Dwight stroked it dry with a bedsheet.

She started dozing. She fell asleep tucked into his hand.

• • •

He worked late. Midnight meant Marsh-as-me time. He recalled a cop barter, 1953. Cleveland PD wanted a Fed file. A grand larceny suspect was Red-tinged. The SAC refused a file trade. The PD sent a cop's ex-wife to lube the Enforcer. She liked random men. He liked random women then. They spent the night at the Shaker Heights Plaza. She brought champagne. He brought the file. They enjoyed each other. She read the file in the morning. Cleveland PD nailed the guy—six-count indictment.

Okay, now—Marsh Bowen's perspective.

The time was now. Marsh is working the Hollywood night car. He's alone. He's trolling. Marsh shits where he eats. He spots a hunky male prosty. He pat-searches him and gets a hard-on. The prosty notices it.

Marsh F.I.-cards the kid and warrant-checks him. He comes back dirty: possession and deuce. Marsh says, “How do you want to handle this?” Fade to the crude back-alley embrace.

He couldn't sleep. Joan was dead out. Marsh was sleeping over in Ventura. The Black Leadership Council brought him up. Keynote speech: “The Minority Officer's Role in Team Policing.”

It was 2:14 a.m. He got in with tungsten bolt-snaps and wore infrared shades. He carried his Minox mini. He prowled in rose-tinted dark.

He opened drawers and tapped panels. He got status quo. He scanned the bedroom walls. Marsh had a new Rothko print. He checked the stereo rack. New sides by Chet Baker and the Dresden Stattskapelle. He checked the kitchen trash. Marsh had a new yen for gourmet TV dinners. There's an airline boarding ticket. Marsh recently traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Educated guess: he shits
out
of harms way. Afro fruit retreat.

Dwight walked back to the living room. More status quo. The steel-brushed frames, the neat work desk, the address book by the phone.

He skimmed the pages. Ah, at
B:
Scotty's home and work numbers. He skimmed
C
to
M
. Ah, there's a new one.

Sal Mineo. A West Hollywood–prefix listing.

Logical: Sal's a fag, Sal's a horndog, Sal's got a well-traveled chute.

But:

He
deployed Sal in a fruit squeeze, four-plus years ago. He saw Sal's name on a Bureau snitch roster.

Status quo? Probably, but—

One agent dozed in the squadroom. The file keys were hooked to a cork-board. Dwight grabbed them and walked straight back.

The CBI files were five-digit-coded and ran ceiling high. Dwight
skimmed the directory. There: “Mineo, Salvatore”/02108. There: third shelf up, two rows over.

Dwight unlocked the panel, stood on his tiptoes and snagged it. It was skimpy. Four pages total. Simple narrative gist.

August, '66. Sal's got a co-star gig. He's the sidekick in a crime turkey. It's called
Southside Crackdown
. It plays low-rung drive-in circuits and disappears. It's loosely based on the famous 1964 heist.

So far—snore.

Jack Leahy visits the set. Jack braces Sal and the rest of the actors and crew. Suspicious guys loitering? Suspicious queries on the real-life heist?

Sal knew
buppkes
. Ditto everyone else. Jack charmed Sal and popped his snitch cherry. Sal ratted out queer actors for occasional chump change.

Snore, yawn, status quo—but don't dismiss it yet.

Dwight stood there. Dwight heard a whole box of pins drop.

The Bureau worked the heist
for ten seconds
. It was LAPD's case and Scotty B.'s fixation. Scotty and Marsh, tight now. The heist: Clyde Duber's soft-line fixation. Marsh worked for Clyde. Scotty grilled Jomo C. about the heist. It made no sense then. It might make sense now. Jomo killed Fred Hiltz, Jomo's a heister. There's Joan hovering. She false-snitched Jomo. She ratted Marsh's fruitness. What do Marsh and Scotty want? Red file tab, red flag. The Marsh-Scotty bond must not impede the Operation.

Dwight put the file back. The pin drop went to pins and needles.

Sicko Sal never slept. He closed fruit bars and debriefed in coffee shops. His milieu was the pre-dawn hen party. The fry cook at the Klondike said try Arthur J.'s.

Dwight bombed over. Sodomy Sal was ensconsed with three trannies. He was tattling. I browned James Dean on
Rebel Without a Cause
. He was hung like a light switch. I packed him the pork till he squealed.

The trannies tittered. Salacious Sal ragged on Rock Hudson. He was hung like a microbe. I tickled his tonsils till he trilled.

Dwight loomed by the table. The trannies gulped and get-awayed. They left their coffee and pancakes. Dwight helped himself.

Sal fondled his spit curl. “Hello, Mr. Holly.”

“What's shaking, Sal?”

“Not you again, I hope.”

Dwight poured coffee. “Nothing like that.”

“No entrapment? No victimizing some poor champion of social justice who just happens to dig boys?”

Dwight wiped lipstick off his coffee cup. “Summer '66. You were working
on
Southside Crackdown
. Jack Leahy came around with some questions.”

Sal buttered his hash browns. “So? We're dealing with ancient history. That flick was a loser. I had to sue to get my per diem.”

“You started informing for Jack.”

“Well …”

Dwight snagged a bread stick and scratched his neck. Redd Foxx and that shyster fuck Chick Weiss walked in. A Tiger Kab geek propped them up.

“So, I'm assuming there's more to the story. ‘Jack Leahy came around.' You take it from there.”

Sal shrugged. “So, another cop comes around, asking the same kind of questions.”

Dwight said, “Scotty Bennett?”

Sal rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes. Scotty.”

Dwight snapped the bread stick. “Let me drop a name on you. I want to see how you react.”

“It's a little
early
for name games, but I'll play.”

Dwight said, “Marshall Bowen.” Servile Sal seized up and queased up. Oh, yeah—he's green at the gills.

“Tell me about it.”

Sal fucked with his spit curl. “Why should I?”

“I'll buy you breakfast if you do. I'll hang stat rape on you if you don't. There's a perv honking boys at Berendo Junior High. You match the description.”

Sal popped a Valium and coffee-chased it. Sal took a get-it-over-with breath.

“Okay, sweetie. I've got another fruit shake going. Freddy O. recruited me. A cop's bankrolling it, but I don't know his name. Bowen's the mark, but I
cannot
get him to loosen his wig and rock ‘n' roll with me. Some guys are just like that. I'm
dying
to give up some prime slash, but the boy just will not bite.”

Scotty B. Marsh. Running ubiquitous now
.

“Who else is in on it?”

“Fred T.'s the bug man. The charmless Peeper Crutchfield is watch-dogging me.”

“Bowen. What's going on there?”

Sal rolled his eyes. Sal tossed his spit curl. Sal did fag exasperation shtick.

“He just won't
biiiiite
. I've got plenty to bite onto, but he just
wooooooon't
. It's
craaaaazy
. Marsh is sure-as-shit gay, but he just won't
plaaay
. He's
sooooo
weird. He just sits there or runs all these weird riffs on
Haiti
, of all fucking places.”

Dwight rubbed his eyes. His feelers twitched. More pins dropped, more pins stuck and held.

Okay, Jack Leahy. He knows about Marsh and BAAAAAD BROTHER. Jack's tweaked on Mr. Hoover. It's untoward and impolitic. He just B&E'd Marsh Bowen's pad. He saw plane tix to
Haiti
. Joan's
Haitian
herbs. The recent shit in the D.R. and
Haiti
. Celia's there. Peeper Crutchfield
was
there. The persistent Peeper rumor: he's searching for some runaway woman. She bilks men. She may have
Red
ties. Peeper's a loser, let him do his own thing.

Tie-in: Celia as the bilker. Toss the net, take the leap. Wider now, say it.

Joan's 211 background. The things she won't say. Wider, now: Jack redacted Joan's file. They were in on the armored-car heist.

A rainstorm hit. The windows drummed. Raindrop-pins fell. Three drag queens walked in. They wore soaked-through prom dresses. Their chest hair showed. They saw Sal and waved. They saw Dwight and ran away.

Sal pouted. Sal scolded Dwight with his fork.

“Mr. Holly, you are fucking with my love life.”

(Los Angeles, 11/22/71)

T
he bar TV blared. America mourns JFK, eight loss-looped years later. We were innocent then. The world hates us now.

Scotty signaled the barman. The barman switched channels. Bucky Beaver huckstered Ipana toothpaste. Scotty resignaled the barman. The barman pulled the plug.

Marsh said, “You're fried, brother. Go out and waste a few heist guys. You'll feel better then.”

The Kibitz Room at Canter's Deli. The 6:00 p.m. clientele: alky hebes bopping home from shul.

Scotty lit a cigarette, took two hits and snuffed it. Scotty ate a bite of kreplach and pushed his plate back.

“We keep hitting dead ends.”

“Scotty, it's over. The bank examiners got the vault stash, and they're not letting on. We can't find Reggie, we can't find the emeralds, and there's nothing more we can do.”

“
It's not over
. We've got to find the woman. We brace her, she'll talk, we'll take it from there.”

Marsh shook his head. Condescending, patronizing, noble-negro shit.

“You check steamship companies. You go through their work passage lists. You work it from spring '64 through the end of the year. You work every major port and overseas destination. You fucking do it, and you fucking do it now.”

(Los Angeles, 11/26/71)

A
box arrived at the Vivian. It was parcel-posted Las Vegas. The contents rattled. It weighed a fucking ton.

He paid off the postman and lugged it inside. Return address: Mary Beth Hazzard, P.O. Box 19. An envelope taped on.

Fuck—she answered his queries. Fuck—she found more—

He opened it up. Mary Beth Hazzard wrote:

The file was updated: 12/8/68.
SUBJECT KLEIN, JOAN ROSEN,
routine numbers, adios. Six full redacted-ink pages.

One file. Sent to a dead man. The fucking genius chemist: “Very limited success.”

And a spectroscope.

And a fluoroscope.

And high-pH hydroxic acid.

And Wayne's notes on contrasting-ray bombardment.

He laid everything out. He skimmed his chem books and got proportion stats on hydroxic acid. He got zilch on spectroscopes and fluoroscopes. He hooked the gizmos up to a wall plug and positioned them on his desk. He grabbed some Q-tips and put on rubber gloves. He laid out the inked pages.

He hit the On switches. Blue and pink lights beamed. “
Bombardment
”—huh?—you mean mix and match?

He tried it. He craned the gizmos and let the beams crisscross. The first four times, it blackened the black. The second two times, it lightened the black. He dabbed
smiiiiidgens
of hydroxic acid on the lighter ink. It burned the paper through to his desk.

Re-adjust the beams. Dab the dark ink now.

He did that. He dabbed heavy, he dabbed light. He burned the paper through to his desk.

He stopped.
Deep breath now
. He tried the blue-beam gizmo and heavy dabs. He burned the paper through to his desk. Let's start over. He tried the pink-beam gizmo and light dabs. He burned the paper through to his desk.

His hand jerked. The bottle fell. Acid spilled out. Four full pages burned through to his desk.

Start over. Deep breath now. Brother Wayne, I'm trying. We've got two pages left
.

He blotted up the acid spill. He crisscrossed the beams again. He got
all
lighter-type lines. He dabbed them
exxxtra light
.

The paper sizzled and bubbled. The lines burned all the way through to his desk.

Last page.

His desk was burn-scarred. He toweled it off. He centered the page. He futzed with the beams. He got some all-new pink-blue hybrid. He got dark-ink lines and light-ink lines and saw something else.