James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (78 page)

The bore-through-rock technology caused massive worker layoffs. Enhanced emerald profits financed right-wing coups throughout South America and the Caribbean.

Green Fire served to sustain Rafael Trujillo's power. The Goat became obsessed. He had to own the initial Muzo-Klein stones outright. The provenance consumed him. He wanted the story to end with him.

Trujillo hoarded Dominican money and grabbed Haitian-owned land. Papa Doc Duvalier had been emerald-financed and wanted the gems for himself. Trujillo and Duvalier hated each other. Trujillo murdered Haitian refugees. Duvalier enacted reprisals. The two führers discovered their mutual longing. They decided to trust each other on the acquisition of the stones and nothing else. Joan tracked the arc of the emeralds to this point and no further. She went to the D.R. in early '59.

She found a country ripe for revolt. She found Celia.

A leftist network supplied the introduction. Celia was a gone-bust United Fruit heiress. She was half American, half Dominican, all old money. She used her father's surname of Farr and her mother's maiden name of Reyes interchangeably. Gretchen and Celia came and went at whim. Joan preferred the latter name. Celia was a casualty of revolution, left- and right-wing. Castro nationalized the cane fields and bankrupted her father. The Goat robbed her mother in a recent land grab. Celia was a nationally ranked polo player and a bunco artist extraordinaire. She was omnivorously intelligent and not quite brilliant. Joan considered her ripe for conversion. One thing told her this.

The emeralds. Celia was crazed over them.

They became comrade/lovers. Celia was headstrong and tractable,
independent and willfully submissive to the concept of revolt. Celia was a mystic. Joan was not. Celia dabbled in Eastern philosophy and more than dabbled in voodoo. Celia believed in the spiritual force of the emeralds. Joan did not. They reconciled their differences and traveled to Castro's Cuba. They began plotting the 6/14 invasion.

The invasion failed. A rebel named María Rodríguez Fontonette betrayed the Cause. A Tonton Macoute man named Laurent-Jean Jacqueau assisted the Cause. Jacqueau secretly emigrated to America and changed his name to Leander James Jackson. Joan and Celia were captured, imprisoned and bribed free. Joan had stashed a robbery take in an L.A. bank vault. Jack Leahy tapped the cash and found the right officials.

Joan and Celia flew to America. The Goat was assassinated. Juan Bosch and Joaquín Balaguer succeeded him. They were repressive and much less garish rulers. Balaguer inherited the Goat's emerald fixation. He was then a government lawyer eyeing the presidency. Papa Doc remained in power and remained emerald-fixed.

The men found each other. They collaborated and cut a side deal. They learned the identity of the Paraguayan
el jefe
. They gave him a down payment on the Muzo-Klein emerald stash.
El jefe
was near-broke and in poor health. He wanted to sell. It was December '63. Fate intervened and fucked it all up.

Balaguer had a financial setback. Papa Doc had a financial setback. They lacked the cash to outright buy the stones. They looked for a rich American to consign them to.

The right-wing grapevine supplied a name: Dr. Fred Hiltz. He was a hate pamphleteer and an emerald-myth worshiper. They contacted Dr. Fred. He paid off
el jefe
with a bank draft. The stones were messengered to Santo Domingo. Balaguer and Papa Doc met there
just to touch them
. They did not trust messengers to hand-deliver the stones. Dr. Fred insisted on an armored-car drop. A Haitian man was hired to fly the emeralds to L.A. It was now 1/16/64. He could not leave until 2/21/64. Balaguer and Papa Doc enjoyed the delay.
They got to touch the stones more
.

SUDDENLY:

A Tonton Macoute thug learned of the shipment. He contacted his old Tonton
frère
Leander James Jackson. Leander knew his old comrades 0Joan and Celia. Serendipity: Celia's brother Richard Farr worked at Wells Fargo in L.A.

Jack Leahy ran the FBI's L.A. Office. Richard knew the armored-car route. Richard predicted the cash take along with the stones. Jack knew expendable criminal scum to leave dead at the scene. The greatest hurdle
was obscuring their IDs. Joan knew a brilliant chemist named Reginald Hazzard. She had mentored him at the Freedom School. She had bailed him out of jail the month before.

The plan was developed. Reginald concocted a bone-deep burning solution. Jack recruited an expendable Klansman named Claverly and an expendable hood named Wilkinson. The plan was now fully formed,
but:

Reginald wanted to
be there
. He told Joan and Jack this. Joan and Jack conferred and tried to dissuade him. Reginald insisted. He thought his chemical expertise marked him invaluable and immune to deceit. He was right and he was wrong. Joan and Jack argued. Jack argued for compliance as Joan argued for termination. Jack won. Reginald would go in and Reginald would survive. The plan was now fully formed,
but:

Reginald feared a double cross. Reginald harbored a hurt-child resentment. His comrades trusted him to develop deep-burning compounds, but not to be there.
He was there that day
. He impulsively popped a bank tab and let loose jets of ink. Jack impulsively shot him.

His flame-retardant precautions saved his life. Soft-point bullets hit him, regardless. His chemical compounds worked erratically. The palliative pellets in his mouth circumvented damage. The anti-flame chemicals enhanced flames paradoxically.

So he lived. So Marsh Bowen and the doctor saved him. He grabbed handfuls of inked cash as he went down. He gave them to the doctor.

He hid in East Los Angeles. Scotty Bennett led the LAPD Task Force. Jack worked FBI-adjunct. The newspaper accounts and crime-scene reports shocked him. There were
two
dead robbers at the scene.

Jack wanted to find Reginald and kill him. Joan told him, “No.” The debate raged for days. Comrade Joan won. She searched for Reginald and found him. She begged for his forgiveness. He told her he wanted to live in Haiti and study herbal chemistry. She gave him the emeralds and told him to serve the Cause.

Joan and Jack now possessed millions of dollars. A dozen ink bindles had leaked. Stains rendered the cash unpassable for some time. They waited. Jack heard a rumor: pilfered heist cash had been laundered through the Peoples' Bank. He told Joan. She asked around about Lionel Thornton. She learned that he was mobbed up. She learned that he came out of the Detroit labor struggle, circa '40. She arranged a meeting with him.

The meeting went well. It was instinctively collaborative. A level of trust built both ways. Thornton was politically versed and self-interested. Joan got dirt on him as an insurance policy.

She gave him the stained and non-stained cash. Reginald developed a compound to obscure the ink markings. She let Thornton trade the
money up, down and sideways. The base sum grew in a hidden bank vault. She let him implement Reginald's emerald-disbursement plan. The green stones formed a circuit back to Isidore Klein and his struggle. That gave Joan a bare semblance of peace.

Thornton did his job and kept his word. Scotty Bennett and Marsh Bowen killed him. He did not reveal Jack's name or hers.

Reginald remained in Haiti. He was still there. His exact whereabouts were unknown. He forgave Joan and Jack. He was nineteen, he was eager, he was easily led. He was passively complicit and as guilty as they were. He bought revolution unblinkingly and never saw through to the cost. Joan understood a bit of that now. She was thirty years in the game.

The heist aftershocks subsided. Joan rode the '60s zeitgeist. Jack stayed with the Bureau. He disseminated information. He redacted and misplaced their comrades' files. Joan kept up with Karen Sifakis. Karen described her love affair with a rogue Fed named Dwight Holly.

Dwight did terrible things for Mr. Hoover. Dwight was dead-wrecked in the spring of '68. Tommy Narduno sensed the FBI behind the King hit. Tommy saw Dwight in Memphis a few days before. Joan kept Tommy's thoughts from Karen. Karen said Dwight was planning a
COINTELPRO
. He needed an informant. Joan knew it had to be her.

BAAAAAAD BROTHER
entered the planning stage.

A non sequitur clash occurred. Jack called Joan and reported rumblings.

It was Dr. Fred. He put together some leads on the heist, gleaned from Clyde Duber's file. He wasn't looking for revenge. Balaguer and Papa Doc had refunded his money. He wanted a second shot at the stones.

Hiltz wanted to run his heist leads by Mr. Hoover. He was a trusted CBI and a Hoover phone-chat pal. Joan summarily acted.

She knew about Dr. Fred's bomb-shelter stash. Leander knew of Jomo Clarkson, via the black-militant grapevine. Joan cutout-worked Jomo and fed him the plan. Steal Dr. Fred's money. Don't hurt him. Scare him into silence per 2/64. He'll fold off that.

She didn't want more death. She got it anyway. Jomo and his partner killed Dr. Fred. The partner absconded. Jomo found him and killed him.

BAAAAAAD BROTHER
went forth. Joan became Dwight's informant and lover. The wild-card clash of Marsh Bowen and Scotty Bennett occurred. Joan and Dwight did not know the extent then.

Marsh and Scotty wanted the money and the emeralds. They colluded and betrayed each other and died for
their
cause. Dwight and Joan colluded and conspired. She betrayed him only by her silence. They had crafted an operation that would serve to right all their wrongs. Dwight pulled out, unilaterally. Their paperwork was stashed at a comrade's
house. She'll honor Dwight's decision to abort their plan. She lacks the requisite will.

Celia was lost on that island. La Banda and the Tonton had X-marked her. The warrants derived from her work with Wayne Tedrow. Celia was past reason in some regards. María Rodríguez Fontonette was almost certainly murdered in L.A several years back. Celia felt complicitous. She had hexed Tattoo. It was preposterous. Voodoo was barbarous capitalism cloaked in magic. Celia thought otherwise. It didn't matter. Celia was courageous beyond ideology. Belief works that way.

She should have told Dwight the story. One thing hexed her, still. Her last word to him should not have been “No.”

The clouds broke and spilled rain. The boy looked different. The length of her tale matched the breadth of his surveillance. That pop-up face always there.

I know you want to touch me
.

So I'll let you
.

He caught the signal and leaned in. She thought he'd be clumsy. He brushed dried blood off her wrists and kissed the part in her hair.

(Los Angeles, 3/27/72)

T
HE ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE HANDS AND FEET, THE EYE
.

The fried skin, the stumps, the flamethrower stink. Cinerama and Smell-O-Vision. Wait—there's a dog in a voodoo hat and a palm tree on fire.

Crutch woke up. The barking dog was a dog outside. The flames were a 6:00 a.m. sun.

He got his bearings. It was pad #3/safe house #1. Scotty was dead. He didn't have to hide.

You have to go back. There's where she took you. It cost her everything. She punched your surveillance card. You clocked out at three years and nine months
.

Crutch made coffee and wrote out a question list for Celia. She knew things about Tattoo. He wondered if she still cared.

He fucked with his chemistry set. The story kept re-spooling. The tape jammed here and there.

The Operation. Joan and Dwight's plan. It could only be
That
.

Crutch drove to Clyde Duber Associates and let himself in. It was 7:10. He could log private time.

He read Clyde's heist file and Marsh Bowen's personnel file. He had Joan's story now. Facts clicked in, redundant. Who gives a shit?

Farewell tour. You can't peep and prowl paper the rest of your life. You're fucked-up in the head.

Crutch split and cruised by the wheelman lot. Phil Irwin and Bobby Gallard snoozed in their sleds. Clyde was throwing a wake bash for Scotty. The lot would be tartan bunting–draped and lit up.

Joan had gotten a second wind and riffed before he left. She told him about the blacklist and all the people Hoover trashed. He memorized their names. He wanted to touch her scar and show her the scar on his back.

He cut east. He parked in front of the fallback and walked up the steps. The buzzer didn't work. He knocked a bunch of times, loud. The lock was too lame not to pick.

She'd made a nest on the floor. Dwight's jackets and sweaters, Dwight's Fed suits. He smelled her cigarette smoke and Dwight's aftershave. The suits were blotched up with it. She'd doused them good.

Crutch walked out to the terrace. A cool pair of Bausch & Lombs sat on the ledge. He adjusted the sights and looked down at Karen's house. Karen and Joan were burning paper in the backyard bar-b-q. Joan had bandaged up her wrists.

The little girls played catch. A blood-crusted towel was draped over a chair back. He zoomed in very close. Joan almost smiled and laughed.

He got
AN IDEA
. He didn't hex it by stating it, inside or outside of his head. His chemical shit was stashed at pad #3. He Walpurgisnacted and worked till he dropped.

Blowfish toxin and stinging nettle. Tree-frog livers from his icebox. Rigorous formulas, potpourri and improvisation. Three hot plates boiling and mushroom clouds like Hiroshima.

Build, reduce, enhance, revise, re-calculate and re-try. It's like Brylcreem: “A little dab'l do ya.” Re-formulate and get it down to sub-atomic size.

He got close. Eyedrop portions burned paper and wood. He recalculated and re-tried. He futzed with endless molecular strings and brought down the dose. He thought he got sub-ultra-close and miscalculated. He got closer than that first close and yelled
Halt!
before he collapsed.

He squeezed a particle on a piece of cheese and left it on his back porch. He popped two red devils and slept it all off.