James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (27 page)

“Will you guarantee me no random detentions and no photo-surveillance hassles?”

Dwight shook his head. “No. If I ask that favor, the other L.A. agents will know you're working for me. I've already flagged your file with a false listing. As of last week, you were creating woo-woo with some militant fucks at UC Davis.”

She didn't smile. He wanted her to. Her smiles leveled her harshness.

“May I tell you what I won't do?”

“I'm listening.”

“I won't inform on young people who come in for a lark and get out when things get ugly.”

“You're assuming they'll get ugly?”

“Yes, aren't you?”

Dwight said, “Not like you might wish. I don't foresee armed revolution in America, I don't see street-corner punks like the BTA and MMLF as the vanguard of anything more than a few fistfights and pimp rousts.”

Joan smiled. Her harshness leveled
up
.

“Then why are you working so hard to suppress them?”

“Because they're driven by criminal design, because I despise disorder, because Mr. Hoover told me to.”

“Because their antics will discredit the black-power movement at large. Because the better-known groups are more of a threat, but they've ingratiated themselves with the press. Because black militancy has achieved a degree of mainstream acceptance and you're trying to take it back to the gutter.”

Dwight looked at her. She smiled for him. Her teeth were lipstick-smeared.

“I haven't asked you why you're doing this.”

“For the money? Because suppression never works in the end? Because I'll find some people and shape their views in ways you'll never be able to assess, and Mr. Hoover will be paying me to create revolution on an undetectable level that will never make its way into any file he can gloat over at 3:00 a.m., when warm milk, cookies and Seconal don't work.”

Dwight smiled. “You're very well informed.”

Joan smiled. “One of Mr. Hoover's former housekeepers has a son in the Panthers. He's a gifted cartoonist. He did four panels on Mr. Hoover at bedtime. He peruses surveillance photos of well-oiled young black men sunbathing, and Aunt Jemima has to knock before she brings in her goodies.”

Dwight slapped his knees. His elbows banged the table and dumped a glass. A waiter zoomed up and blotted the spill.

Joan said, “It wasn't that funny.”

“I'll disagree there.”

“You're very impolitic.”

“Mr. Hoover and I share a history. Humor helps sometimes.”

“Tell me about it.”

Dwight shook his head. “Tell me about that scar on your arm and why you're so proud of it.”

Joan shook her head. “I'm working on a new version. Something subtle and racist-inspired. Something the BTA and MMLF will groove on.”

“You could tell me the truth.”

“Utilitarian fictions are more my style.”

His stomach churned. Dwight chased two mints with coffee.

“Who redacted your file? Your ‘Known Associates' section has been inked, so you must have informed Federally.”

Joan lit a cigarette. “I've informed, yes. I've never informed Federally, so there must be some names in there that some other Federal handler wanted deleted.”

Dwight said, “I'm not sure I buy that.”

“I don't care what you buy, Mr. Holly. We're both here to buy and sell, and I'm sure we'll create repression and revolution in a fucked-up, but somehow complementary fashion.”

It was her smell. She was sweating. Her soap scent was gone. Her armholes were damp
.

“I have a few specific questions, Miss Klein.”

“All right.”

“How will you get next to the BTA and MMLF?”

“I run a safe house. I've already made arrangements for the BTA to stash some guns there.”

“And you won't tell me the address?”

“No.”

Dwight said, “Here's your first test. You borrow the guns, fire them into acoustical baffling and bring me the spent shells. You replace the guns, so that I have the spents to run comparisons on.”

Joan said, “No.”

Dwight said, “Then there's no deal. Then I run a fifty-state detention sheet on you.”

She squeezed the table ledge. Her fingers throbbed. The whole table shook.

“I won't reveal the location of the house, but I'll get you the shells.”

“How do I know they'll be the right ones?”

Joan smiled. “Because you trust me?”

Dwight placed a plastic-wrapped block of cocaine on the table. Powder puffed out a stretch hole.

“Make some Commie spooks as happy as you've just made me.”

Karen said, “I've never met her, but I've heard about the scar.”

They were in bed. Karen was showing full-on. Dwight put a hand on her belly. Eleanora kicked twice.

“Tell me.”

“It was that riot at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill. I think it was '49. Joan tangled with some Legionnaires.”

Dwight turned on the desk fan. The bedroom air churned and stayed warm.

Karen said, “I saw a news spot on Dr. Hiltz. Remember, you told me you knew him.”

Dwight nodded. “The Bureau bootjacked the investigation.”

“Why?”

“He was a paid informant.”

“Like me?”

“Less effective, more volatile and capricious, less politically astute.”

Karen smiled. “That's one of the sweetest things you've ever said to me.”

“You must love me, then.”

“Well, I'll think about it.”

They fell toward each other and found the fit. Dwight drifted with that smell, that harsh smile, that gray hair.

(Minneapolis, 9/22/68)

H
HH in '68! HHH in '68! HHH in '68!

The Twin Cities were Hubert turf. Scando types jammed the Berglund's Bazaar lot. Four hundred hayseeds. A good midday toll.

Fifty hippies stirred up shit. They were Clyde Duber recruits. They jabbed horror placards high. Dig it: gooks on fire, napalmed kids and U.S. jets trailing ooze.

Cheers and jeers: HHH! and hippie hate. Peace doves and slant kids with flame-flecked hairdos.

Crutch and the Frogman watched. They glommed the protest punks off Clyde's left-wing front list. They paid them with maryjane and ten-spots. They hosted a poster party last night. Froggy served pizza, beer and weed. Crutch was the art director. He cut up magazines and found some swinging fascist pix.

The rally droned on. The roar accelerated: HHH! HHH! HHH!

Security guys plowed a path to the bandstand. Humphrey and some fatso pols wobbled between them. Crutch yukked. Froggy grinned. Dig it: we slipped THC in your breakfast coffee.

Humphrey charged up the steps and caught his foot on the platform. A security geek rescued him. The veep got his legs. He had blissed-out eyes. His fly was down. His BVDs showed. Chuckles circulated. Hubert addressed the crowd. He slurred his words. He said something like, “My fellow Abyssinians.”

• • •

They had a two-bedroom suite in St. Paul. It was full-boat on Howard Hughes. Room service ran twenty-four hours. They noshed New York strips, stuffed mushrooms and peppermint ice cream. The Frogman served Pernod and THC-laced cookies. They always got zorched and talked CUBA.

Mesplede was a broken record. Yeah, but that record
spun
.

LBJ, Nixon, Hubert—sissified sob sisters all.
Heroin
. We sell it, we buy guns, we depose Fidel. It worked in Vietnam. Betrayals deep-sixed Tiger Kadre. They'd run a tighter Krew now. Froggy was Wayne Tedrow's casino front man. He'd be cruising for the right right-wing country. Their sites would be Cuba-close.

We sell Big “H.” We hook an island clientele. We make gun money and run speedboat missions. We rape the coast and kill Reds.

Crutch said, “I want in.”

Froggy said, “My friend, I guarantee it.”

Crutch pointed to his bow tie. Froggy said, “Your numbers will increase, once we determine our casino-site location.”

Crutch swilled Pernod then. His peripheral vision fritzed. Froggy showed him his scalping knife. He'd scalped thirty-one Castroite fucks.

Travel lodging. He festooned the bedroom walls for his two-night stays. He kept his Joan Klein pix in his wallet. He taped up a big Cuba map and tossed darts at militia installations.

Crutch tossed and missed, tossed and hit. The surrounding walls got dart-dinged and pocked. He'd memorized most of the village names and all the roads into Havana. Memo: buy a scalping knife, just like Froggy's.

Crutch stared at the Joan pix. His Pernod/cookie buzz had him seeing new things. He'd talked to Clyde. Clyde's take: the Dr. Fred snuff did not play into the Gretchen Farr caper. The Feds usurped the inquiry. Jack Leahy was running it. Jack's take: it's that jig heist gang. They robbed that Brentwood house, they hit Dr. Fred next.

Crutch got panic pangs. Dwight Holly said, “Is there anything you're not telling me?” Crutch lied and said, “No.”
Nobody knows about Horror House. Nobody knows about Gretchen Farr as Celia Reyes or about Joan Rosen Klein
. He clued Buzz Duber in to one lead: Farlan Brown's airline-stew revelation. Buzz was working that lead in L.A. now. He was checking airline offices with Crutch's sketch.

Pernod and THC. The bedroom walls wafting peach to magenta. Still no make on the dead woman's tattoo. Still no make on the wall markings. He broke into Arnie Moffett's office again, en route to the airport. He reransacked
the house-rental files. He got more zero on Gretchen/Celia and Joan. He'd leaned on Arnie
baaaaaaad
. The cocksucker probably dumped their file post-beating.

His fuck-up-Hubert gig was now three cities in. He'd checked three local PD Intel and Robbery files. Zero—no mentions of Joan Rosen Klein.

Crutch dart-bombed the Bay of Pigs and Havana. His weird high got him all swelled up and misty. He taped the Joan pictures above his bed. The wall colors shifted—magenta to tropic sunrise.

Another shopping mall lot today. Last night's news: “Exhausted Humphrey makes policy gaffes.” This gig was that gig re-psychedelicized. Froggy said he learned some shit in Chicago.

The crowd ran three hundred. They ran porky and Minnesota blond. They were noisy. They talked liberal rah-rah. HHH emoted on placard fronts. He tried to look studly. He failed. He looked like your pedophile coach.

Crutch and the Frogman stood beside the speaker's platform. A cheer went up:
He's coming! He's coming! He's coming!
Crutch saw Humphrey and some flunkies approaching, stage left. Four cops trailed them by four paces. Mesplede waved three fingers. Three moonlighting Teamsters waved back.

They opened canisters on the QT. They squatted on the QT. They poured liquid wax on the ground beside the platform. The shit was neutral-colored. It slithered and spread.

Four paces, three, two, one—

Humphrey and his flunkies slipped, slid and slalomed up the platform steps. Hubert did Frug and Wah-Watusi moves just to stay upright. The crowd yukked. Two cops pratfalled. The crowd re-yukked. A fat cat hugged Hubert. Hubert's look said “What's
this
shit?” The fat cat spoke into the microphone. More yuks leveled his spiel. Crutch signaled a guy by the platform. The guy toppled and mock-convulsed. The fucker was double-jointed. He kicked his arms and legs out at right angles. Alka-Seltzer foam dripped from his mouth.

Hubert fans yelled for help. Seizure Sid did his shtick. A fat babe jammed a frozen Mars bar over his tongue. Some chumps yelled, “Get a doctor!” and “Man down!” The crowd dispersed. Hubert fumed and tried to express compassion. The fat cat futzed with the platform mike. Reverb went
screeeee
.

Crutch signaled three groups in mid-crowd. Three fistfights broke out. The crowd
re
-dispersed. Two skinny nuns bopped the fighters with their
PEACE NOW
! signs.

Hubert stamped his feet. The cops flailed on liquid wax. Their fat jiggled. They looked like honky pigs in nigger hate cartoons. Hubert did that V-for-victory thing.

Froggy signaled a blonde in go-go boots and tight jeans. Crutch handed her a Nixon sign and boosted her up onstage. Froggy waved to three groups of men. They started whistling and chanting, “Take it off!”

Hubert stood there. The fat cat dry-popped Digitalis. Some fresh cops charged the fistfighters. The peacenik nuns got trampled. Cops charged the platform. Liquid wax sent them sprawling. The blonde waved her Nixon sign. The crowd went nuts. “TAKE IT OFF!” went epidemic. The blonde pulled off her shirt and bra and did the Swim, the Fish and the Mashed Potato topless. Crutch kicked on a hi-fi gizmo under the stage. Dig it: Archie Bell and the Drells with “The Tighten Up.”

A fuckload of cops charged the platform. Mesplede walked away. Crutch grabbed the discarded bra and sprinted.

Back to L.A.

Crutch killed time at the airport. The Frogman split to Miami on an earlier flight. The boarding gate featured a phone bank. Crutch called Clyde Duber Associates collect.

The secretary put Buzz on. Buzz said, “We got a lead.”

“What are you—”

“That picture you drew. I got a make. PSA Airways, the fourth place I hit. The personnel director said, ‘Bingo, that's Janet Joyce Sherbourne, and she was one all-time no-goodnik.' ”

Crutch got out his notepad. “Slow, now. Tell me the story.”

“It's some story, and it hooks in to the Dominican Republic. Remember? Gretchen Farr got those answering-service calls from the Dominican consulate.”

Buzz knew
that
part. Buzz knew shit per Gretchen as Celia or Celia's Dominican—

“Hey, are you there?”

“I'm here. Come on, tell—”

“Okay, the Sherbourne cooze was a bilingual stewardess. She worked the L.A. to Santo Domingo run exclusively, right up until that fucked-up little war in '65, when LBJ sent the marines in. Okay, so there's a layover in Mexico City, and the Sherbourne cooze gets caught with a gun and a half-dozen fake passports. Okay, she fucking wiggles out of custody, and nobody knows
how
, and
then
she vanishes off the face of the earth.
Now
, here's the good part, the part that is just so fucking perfectly Gretchie. It turns out that the cooze's job application was a complete fake, her fucking
address was some kind of Commie safe house, and her personnel file got snatched from the PSA office.”