Send My Love and a Molotov Cocktail! (41 page)

“I'm inspecting.” The door was locked but it didn't take much to get through it, loose as it was in the frame. He went downstairs, using the flashlight Van Meter had included in the supplies she'd given him.

Overhead were sewage and water pipes and heat conduits leading from vintage but functioning gravity heaters. He made his way around, operating on the theory he would stick to areas so far untouched by the construction crew. If the money had been found by one of the workers, Van Meter assumed she would have heard of such.

Aside from the inner workings of the building, Swanmoor found cardboard boxes of discarded clothes, neatly tied stacks of yellowed and brittle girlie magazines and
National Geographies,
and an assortment of sweep brooms of various sizes. More exploring turned up little else of interest.

Back upstairs in his room, Swanmoor lay on the bed, hands behind his head staring at the water-stained ceiling. He reviewed the past, hoping for a clue in the present as to where Georgie Boy hid the COINTELPRO slush funds they'd stolen. The FBI under Hoover orchestrated the Counter-Intelligence Program for over a decade. The Program's one overarching goal was through chicanery and agents-provocateurs to disrupt and destroy self-determination struggles from the militant American Indian Movement, mainstreamers Martin Luther King, to hope-to-die revolutionaries like him, Leann Holt and Georgie Boy, George Dixon—the three who'd pulled off the score.

Dressed in matching khakis, black turtlenecks, work boots, gloves and full-face ski masks, the three had moved precision quick back then out of the Falcon station wagon parked at a yellow zone. Applying the pry bar to a service entrance sans latch, they forced the door open. A day before, Leann Holt in disguise of a housecoat, curlers—she'd hot combed her afro straight so as to have it fit underneath her mask—and sunglasses, had come into the unemployment office and clipped the alarm wires to that particular door.

Their movements rehearsed by Swanmoor, a decorated Vietnam vet, they got the drop on the building's two security guards. One was an out-of-shape, chain-smoking former cop with a gimpy leg. The other a hippie who said he dug them taking it to the man. The trio bound and gagged the two, shooting Novocain into their legs to temporarily make their limbs numb and useless.

Rory Briscoe was the Special Agent in Charge of the regional implementation of COINTELPRO that covered this area back then. Briscoe was a hands-on kind of Bureau man. Beatings, planting evidence and illegal wiretaps were all part of his repertoire. He also shook down the hustlers and weed and smack dealers for a taste. Briscoe had amassed a sweet sum for his retirement coupled with cash shipments from Washington to be used specifically for bribing snitches and setting up off-the-books operations.

This slush fund was nearly three million which even in today's dollars had worth. But Briscoe had it bad for this one mixed race street walker named Francie. To impress her one time, after she gave him a blowjob in his secret field office, he'd shown her the stash and told her they could get away, start over as he wanted out of his square marriage. She stalled him, but Francie, who did like to brag while on the nod, had let it slip in the Lamplighter about the money.

Briscoe's unmarked office was inside the unemployment office building and the monies were kept there in a floor safe. Given they had time, the three peeled the safe door using a heavy-duty drill and a power chisel. The goal was to seed the money back into the community. Splitting after the robbery, Georgie Boy had been tasked with hiding the scratch while Swanmoor and Holt ditched their getaway car and clothes, setting fire to them. They made sure to keep apart but otherwise maintain their regular regimes. They'd told Francie to leave town, promising to send her a cut. Her body was found under a freeway overpass, her neck broken.

Only in what had to be classified as the caprice of the gods, Georgie Boy was eating a fish sandwich, laughing hard as he told friends a story about his dad, an amateur prize fighter. He choked to death on a fish bone. Where he hid the money, he and Holt didn't know.

Swanmoor's reverie ceased as he smiled knowingly. He suddenly remembered what Georgie Boy had said as, fueled on exhilaration, they'd dropped him off at the other getaway car, a VW beetle belonging to his girlfriend, Sharon Mason.

“It'll be cool, y'all,” Georgie Boy had said driving away. As a kid, Swanmoor knew Georgie Boy had sold newspapers in front of the Warwick.

That night, up on the roof of the dilapidated hotel, near the long broken air conditioning units, he found the two duffle bags of cash. They'd been stuffed into a crawl space access cavity. The panel to get to this was rusted over and the edges of the panel had been super glued by Dixon, though most of that had worn away. Van Meter had supplied Swanmoor with a crowbar he used to remove the panel.

“I knew I recognized you,” the pudgy man said. “Hell, I gave money to your defense fund when you were accused of killing that undercover cop.” He stood near Swanmoor on the roof.

The duffle bags were at Swanmoor's feet. The crowbar was within reach, but that wouldn't block a bullet.

“That's the COINTELPRO score, isn't it?” Pudgy man indicated the duffels with the muzzle of the .45 he held on Swanmoor.

“Yeah.”

“Fuckin' urban legend. And it was over my head all this time.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, Mister Minister of Strategy, you can have the privilege of taking the people's money downstairs to your car and I'll leave with the goods. I'd help, but my back's all twisty. I'm on disability, you understand.”

“You ain't having no trouble lifting that gun.”

“That's true, blood. I know how to shoot it too. Civilize the mind, make savage the body, isn't that what Chairman Mao said in those Little Red Books you all used to sell?” Swanmoor remained silent.

“Let's hit it, bro. You first.”

A million in one-hundred-dollar bills weighs about twenty-two pounds. The almost two point seven million COINTELPRO swag was in hundreds, twenties, fifties and fives. This meant each duffle was roughly forty pounds. Swanmoor dragged them down the stairs by their cords. Maybe if he was thirty years younger he'd try something. But he was certain he didn't have the arm strength to suddenly turn and swing one of the sacks at his overweight obstructionist.

On the ground floor in the stairwell, Swanmoor pushed the crash bar on the exit door leading to the street. The bar depressed but the door didn't open.

“Harder,” his new companion demanded.

Swanmoor repeated the motion several times, including leaning against the door.

“Shit. Come on.” The pudgy man jerked the gun, indicating they had to go through the other door leading to the lobby. He moved to one side to allow Swanmoor to go first, still dragging the duffle bags.

“Can't you pick those up?”

“They're heavy and I'm old.”

“Try.”

Swanmoor had his back against the now partially opened lobby door. He let go of one of the duffles, and put up a knee to brace the other duffle bag. He got his arms around this one but pretended it was heavier than it was and stumbled backwards into the lobby area, falling down. He kicked himself further into the lobby.

“Get up,” the other man yelled, coming part way into the lobby too.

“Take it, take all of it,” Swanmoor said fearfully, crawling away on his backside, his hands out from his body.

The pudgy man was standing near Swanmoor with the gun in his hand, denizens of the lobby area staring at the two. The duffle Swanmoor had dropped was near him on the floor. He'd purposely undid its top, bills spilling out. This particularly got the attention of the gathered who moved toward the money like wolves to deer. The chess-playing oldster with his walker clumped forward furiously.

“Back the fuck up,” pudgy man warned the others. He swung the gun back and forth. When he turned his head to look over at Swanmoor, the bigger man was already beside him. “Sonofabitch,” he managed, but Swanmoor already had a hand on the man's gun arm. With his other hand tightened into a fist, he went at the pudgy man's face like he'd seen Sugar Ray Leonard do in his matches

“Ughhh,” the object of his anger groaned as he assumed a fetal position on the floor, bleeding freely from mouth and nose.

Swanmoor doled out hundreds to each down-and-outer and drove away with the slush funds. Using the disposable cell phone Van Meter had given him, he made some calls.

The tawny-hued black woman tented her fingers as she spoke evenly and forcefully into the overhead mic. Her broadcast, based out of her home radio station KZRN, was carried across the nation. “Before I go today, I wanted to mention this rumor that's surfaced within the last few hours. Now I warn you this seems to be gaining traction in the leftist elite circles so bear that in mind.

“But there's been scuttlebutt about a retired FBI agent suspected in the shooting of one of those biker types. Normally this sort of headline I'd leave for your local news, but this particular individual has a history with the so-called black power movement and you've heard me before talk about how that misguided effort actually set black people back.

“So I'll be watching the developments in this case as it wouldn't be far-fetched to believe this no-doubt courageous law enforcer has been framed by sinister liberal forces. Stay tuned, good citizens.”

Rory Briscoe's arthritis had flared in his left hand but he ignored the pain while jamming clothes into his luggage. That fucking Swanmoor had fucked him good but he'd get him back, he vowed.

“The fuck you think you're going?” Clete Willhelm said.

Briscoe looked from the Aryan Legion leader to his gun on his dresser. It might as well be in the next block for all the good it could do him.

“It's all about anger management, right, Clete?” His attempt at a jocular tone failed.

“You know the grief that's on me, man? Questions about you, whispers about the missing money. Was I out to screw the brethren, making a deal on the side.”

Briscoe huffed. “You were making a deal on the side.”

Willhelm gave him a blank look.

Briscoe continued. “This can all be worked out to our satisfaction, Clete. We just need to concentrate on taking out Swanmoor. We take a run at his daughter and— ”

“Uh-huh. Just what I should do, add a kidnapping charge to my happiness.”

“No, you don't get it. She's a fraud.” He held up his hands in protest. “All we have to do is threaten to expose her and this will force Swanmoor to play ball.”

“I no longer give a shit, Rory. I don't know if Swanmoor or you chilled Gigi. If I was a cynic, I'd say you were using me to get the money then planned on taking me out too.”

“Clete, come on, we're family.”

Willhelm went on as if he hadn't heard him. “If you weren't around, a lot of my problems go away.”

“Aw, goddammit.” Briscoe moved as fast as he could toward his gun. Even if he was younger, he wouldn't have bridged the distance in time.

Willhelm shot his former father-in-law in the stomach and as he bent over, holding his wound, shot him in the top of the head. He left the dead older man's apartment.