James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (47 page)

Luc's inlet to the Windward Passage and Cuba's Red Reefs. Two militia launch docks destroyed and thirty Fidelistos
mort
. “You eat ice-cream cones and perv on women.” Yeah, but nineteen Commies rot dead.

Tiger Klaw:
wood-hulled and World War II vintage. Tiger-striped, tiger-pawed, christened “109.”
L'hommage à le grand putain Jack
.

Crutch ate Dramamine.
Tiger Klaw
wah-watusi'd in choppy waves. Dusk doused the sun and freon froze the water. Land approached starboard. Saldívar spotted semaphore blinks. Froggy steered
Tiger Klaw
toward a cove. Shoals hemmed them in. Lantern light strafed the bow. Crutch saw four spics with Tommy guns.

The spics grapple-hooked the bow and tied
Tiger Klaw
tight. The fit held: machine-gun mounts cinched to rock fissures. The Krew hopped off. Sand sucked at their socks. The P.R. spics looked like the Cubans. They all had that macho-maimed visage. Names went around. Crutch kept it
zipped. The spics bowed to Luc. It was his pedigree. Six-foot-eight voodoo priest and Tonton cop. Luc was an all-time rare turd.

The Krew followed the spics. Jungle brush pressed up to the beach. Night bugs swarmed. The lantern light killed most of them dead in the air. Crutch saw a fishing shack. Two spics door-guarded it. The inside was eight by eight. Powder bricks sat on a table.

Saldívar brought the money in a knapsack. Luc brought sucrose filler, a razor blade and a hypodermic syringe. The spics crossed themselves and blessed his test flight.

Gómez-Sloan slit the bricks. Saldívar spooned powder into a purple solution. It turned yellow. Froggy went
voilà!
The spics went
¡arriba!
Luc swabbed his spike, stretched a tourniquet and geezed up.

All eyes on Luc. He's at Cape Coonaveral. He's heading for liftoff.

Luc tapped the plunger. Blood hit the syringe. Luc listed, lulled, levitated and left them for Cloud 9.

The water was cold. Waves banged the hull and sudsed the foredeck. Crutch had watch duty. He had to get wet. He brain-tripped. The Dominican women kiss. It takes him back to Joan and Gretchen/Celia and their kiss last summer.

The voodoo death book. Tattoo vanishes that summer. She's a 6/14 traitor. Joan and Gretchen/Celia
want
her dead. Slasher homicide—or maybe something else.

“
You perv on women.
”

The Cubans didn't scare him. Luc didn't scare him. Froggy, Scotty and Dwight Holly—nix. Wayne
scared
him. Wayne didn't scare the other guys. Froggy defied Wayne. Froggy said they could keep the dope biz clandestine. Wayne killed Martin Luther King and several lesser-known niggers. Wayne had a black girlfriend. Wayne was scary because he processed evil shit and fed it back to you, uninvited.

He dropped Wayne off in hellhole Haiti. Wayne came back three days later, gaunt and head-tripped. He okayed a transfer: bucks from the Boys to the Midget. The jail crew and slave crew were working now. The Cubans and La Banda cracked the whip. Tiger Krew's work ran non-stop. They supervised the sites. They maintained
Tiger Klaw
. They straw-bossed the build on a full-mooring berth. Luc's voodoo slaves were gouging an inlet space. Froggy called it “Tiger Kove.” Luc had dope
coon
ections in Port-au-Prince. Tonton spooks would lay the smack on the dealers. Boss spook Papa Doc would glom a big cut.

Wayne said no smack. The Krew contradicted. Wayne
scared
him. He
hated
Wayne. He had a picture of Wayne shaking hands with the Midget.
Luc taught him a voodoo hex. He cursed Wayne with it. He stuck pins in a dead chicken. He drew his blood and stuck the pin in Wayne's picture face.

A wave doused him. It fucked with his brain pix. Crutch fired tracer rounds at the sky.

The CIA guys were golf nuts. Terry Brundage shot scratch. His flunkies had low handicaps. Their office was the ex–caddy shack on the Midget's private golf course. La Banda ran a torture bunker under the ninth hole.

Crutch walked in. The floor was synthetic grass. Cocktail glasses served as golf holes. Terry and his flunkies wore T-shirts and nubby-silk knickers.

Terry said, “
Hola, pariguayo.
”

Crutch laughed. One flunky blew a putt. One flunky sunk a
loooong
one. The place was messy. Three desks, short-wave radio, teletype machine. A file bank with drawers overstuffed.

The watercooler held a cup dispenser and pre-mixed daiquiris. Crutch grabbed a cup and pulled a short slurp.

Terry twirled his putter. “Did Mesplede send you?”

“No, it was my idea. I thought I'd check your dissident file. I think there's been some Commies nosing around the sites.”

The flunkies packed their golf bags. They shoved shotguns in with their sticks.

Terry filled a thermos with rum goo. “There's some skin mags in the john. If you're looking for chicks, you'll be better off there.”

The file bank was chaos. Four cabinets, sixteen drawers, no system. Dumped folders, loose snapshots. No tracking or routing numbers. Nothing alphabetized.

Crutch worked drawer-to-drawer. He locked himself in the office. He had four hours. Golf and boozy hoo-haw took that long. He dumped drawers and skimmed documents. He scanned for
anything
Joan Klein/Celia Reyes/6-14–related. He got name lists, membership lists, suspect lists, interrogation lists and assumed-dead lists. He saw a shitload of Commie acronyms and lists in Spanish. He saw a
fourteen-thousand-name
enemy list for Rafael “the Goat” Trujillo. He saw a list of suspected safe houses in Santo Domingo and half-ass memorized it. He saw
fragments
of a 6/14/59 time line. The narrative was fractured. Half the pages were missing.

He knew the basic facts already. The new shit was horrific. The Goat machete-murdered 6/14 sympathizers en masse. He wiped out border villages.
He fed children to the gators in the Plaine du Massacre. A list followed: 6/14 members captured. No Joan, no Gretchen/Celia, no María Rodríguez Fontonette.

The narrative ended. Non sequitur pages followed. Crutch dumped three more drawers and got this:

A fractured string of paragraphs on an un-numbered page. The name María Rodríguez Fontonette. Her moniker, “Tattoo.”

She's 6/14. She's a turncoat. She ratted out the invasion. La Banda knew. Countermeasures were swiftly prepared and effected. A Tonton Macoute traitor assisted the rebels and escaped to parts unknown. His name: Laurent-Jean Jacqueau.

Crutch re-read the page. He read the pages following it and behind it and re-skimmed every page he'd read already. Nothing revised or enhanced the fractured narrative. Three and a half hours to
this
.

He dumped four more drawers. He got more names, names and names. He dumped two more drawers. He saw a file folder. “Reyes, Celia” was typed on the front. The folder was empty.

He slurped rum goo straight from the spout. He dumped another drawer. He saw a million photos of Commie-looking spics. He saw a pic marked 6/14/59. He heard screams somewhere under the golf course. The room light dimmed for two seconds and came back on strong.

He turned the photo over. It's an aerial shot. There's a rocky beach. Soldiers hold guns on scruffy rebels.

He blinked and squinted. He looked very close. He saw one woman in with thirty-odd men. It was Joan Rosen Klein. Her right fist was raised.

Smoke whiffed out a cooling shaft. A stink followed. The invasion was ten years ago. Joan's hair was all dark.

More smoke and stink. Another scream—pure Kreole French. More stink—pure scalded flesh.

(Los Angeles, 4/13/69)

J
unkie Monkey ragged Sonny Liston. It pushed Sonny's buttons. Sonny shot his wad on drag queens and had no oomph for Ali. His manhood got de-jizzified.

Jomo plugged calls. Junior snarfed cognac-dipped moon pies. Milt's shtick was protracted. Wayne and Marsh watched Sonny seethe.

It was raining. The roof leaked. The stripedy wallpaper peeled. A Dr. Feelgood owed Tiger Kab 350. He paid off in Desoxyn and Dilaudid. Sonny and Jomo were speedbally pissed.

Junkie Monkey was fey today. Junkie Monkey preened his Afro and pursed his lips.

“Ali be so
pretty
. That young man can rhyme and play the dozens like no one else this girl has ever seen. ‘Liston's gonna flee. He'll go down in three.' ‘This ain't no jive. He be out by round five.' ‘He can't last to four, 'cause he be out fuckin' whores.' ‘He ain't got no hope with his arm full of dope.' ”

Sonny sipped rocket fuel—liquid meth and Everclear. Sonny lit a Kool filter king.

“It ain't funny. Do the one where Lady Bird Johnson sucks my dick.”

Junkie Monkey pouted. “This simian sister is
soooooooo
tired of your reluctance to acknowledge that pretty young man who has brought colored folk into the Age of Aquarius, while you be actin' as the organ-grinder's monkey for the pig power structure and the mob.”

Sonny balled his fists. His cigarette crumbled. Marsh looked at Jomo. Wayne looked at Marsh. Junior waddled to the john. Milt taped a plastic cigarette to Junkie Monkey's lips.

“ ‘He'll be seein' heaven when he goes down in seven.' ‘If he last to nine, his punk ass is mine.' ”

Jomo said, “That's enough. That shit is wearing me thin.”

Wayne nodded. Marsh caught it—
we're close
.

Junkie Monkey preened. “And this girl is
soooooo
tired of you poseurs who don't know Eldridge Cleaver from Beaver Cleaver and Franz Fanon from my fat fanny, you silly—”

Jomo said, “Shut up, pops. That's the last time I'm saying it.”

Wayne signaled Marsh—now.

Marsh said, “Easy, brother. Let the monkey do his thing.”

Jomo popped his knuckles. All eight—slow and loud.

Wayne signaled Marsh—more.

Marsh walked to the switchboard. Jomo was close. Marsh leaned on a chair.

“What gives you the right to push old men around? I'm talking about you, nigger. I'm talking about that poor liquor-store man you whupped on, who did you no motherfucking—”

Jomo stood up. Marsh moved close. They both grabbed chairs. Jomo swung wide and missed. Marsh ducked. The chair hit the switchboard.

The legs snapped. The console shattered. Call plugs dropped to the floor. Marsh swung tight. He caught Jomo's back, he caught Jomo's legs, he grazed Jomo's head and carved half an ear off. Jomo stumbled and hit the console. Marsh uppercut him. He aimed crotch-high and jammed a chair leg into his balls.

Jomo screamed. Marsh ran outside and screamed in the rain. It sounded like one word repeated. Wayne jammed up a window to hear.

It was
BTA! BTA! BTA!
Marsh jabbed the chair in the air and kept shouting it. People poured out of storefronts. Some people cheered.

He went trolling. It was trolling with intent. It pertained to that recurring
click
.

He'd argued with Mary Beth. She told him about the “Freedom School.” He went there and saw the faculty photo. The woman with the gray-streaked hair. The
click
he couldn't place. The semi
-click
back to that pub crawl.

Three months ago. The first Tiger Kab bash. The back view of a woman with that same hair.

His mindscape in Haiti. The herbs and her shape-shifting picture.

Wayne cruised the southside. His phone fight with Mary Beth echoed. She pressed him on his trip. He lied—the D.R. and Haiti aren't that
bad. My investors will boost the economy. Balaguer isn't Trujillo. Please believe that things will improve. Mary Beth scoffed. I know better, babe.

Wayne turned down Central Avenue. The clubs were zooming. He saw that woman at Sultan Sam's Sandbox. She might be there now. It was a slim-chance long shot.

He'd spent three days in Haiti. He dope-tripped non-stop. He kaliedo-scoped his whole life. Faces grew out of trees and stream water. The herbs burned through his system. It was a zombie state. He had to sit still and listen. He didn't have the will to create thought or run. He fell asleep after a million hours tripping. The real world returned to him, changed.

Wayne cut east on Slauson. He saw dope buys outside a gumbo stand. Tiger Krew wanted to push heroin. He quashed it. They wouldn't betray him. They feared his clout with the Boys. The Krew would probably make Cuban runs. Cuba: the nut Right's idée fixe.

Some BTA poseurs walked by. They wore cossack hats and slim-cut black suits. Marsh delivered. He was Mister BTA now.

A crowd stood outside Sultan Sam's. Wayne double-parked and walked to the head of the line. The bouncers called him “boss.” The Boys owned the place now. The black people behind the rope cold-eyed him.

He opened the door and looked inside. Everybody was black. No white woman with gray-streaked hair.

He drove to Rae's Rugburn Room and played big white bwana. He got more cold eyes and heard some pig noise. She wasn't there. He hit the Snooty Fox, Nat's Nest and the Klover Klub. The pig noise escalated throughout.

Cherchez la femme. La femme n'est pas là
.

Wayne drove to Mr. Mitch's. He didn't own the place. He greased two bouncers for a VIP entry. A black man flamboyantly oinked him.

The interior was cave-dark. The hostess seated patrons with a flashlight. She walked Wayne to a table. He saw Sonny ensconced with Junior Jefferson. Two booths up: Ezzard Donnell Jones and the woman.

Wayne joined Sonny and Junior. They were bombed on Mr. Mitch's jet fuel. The bottle radiated.

Sonny said, “Jomo's gonna be carrying his balls around in a wheelbarrow.”

Junior snarfed lychee nuts. “Marsh be best advised to keep himself scarce the next few days.”

Sonny sipped brew. “You too fat and Wayne too skinny. Every time you reach for a moon pie, hand one to him.”

The woman smoked. The woman tossed her hair. The woman swayed to a canned-music beat.