James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (5 page)

Pete would hold. Otash would hold. The lone-nut consensus would kick in. Mr. Hoover would short-shrift all divergent queries. The one wild card was the kid.

“I've known him all my life, Sir.”

And his daddy and my daddy and Indiana long gone.

His daddy was “Daddy” Holly, an upstart nativist and Klan huckster. Daddy Holly got rich selling Klan kitsch in the '20s Klan heyday. Daddy hatched his sons Dwight and Lyle out of wedlock and sent Louisa Dunn Chalfont back to Kentucky. Dwight and Lyle grew up in Klan kampgrounds.
Daddy taught them to spell all hard “C” words with a “K.” Daddy hated Jews, Papists and niggers and understood that the Klan was a shuck.

Daddy rose to Exalted Cyclops standing. Daddy sold kustom Klan robes, Klan kid's klothes and kanine kouture. Daddy got rich. The '20s boom sustained him. A rape-suicide scenario derailed him. His Grand Dragon mentor assaulted a young woman on a train. She drank mercury and killed herself. The story got massive ink. Rabid censure swept the Klan out of favor. Klan-backed politicians were ousted en masse. Daddy looked for new opportunities and invested heavily in stocks. His wealth grew straight up to Black Tuesday.

Dwight was twelve then. Lyle was nine. They lost their big house in Peru, Indiana, and moved to Shitsville. Daddy started ignoring them. Daddy found a protégé: a younger man named Wayne Tedrow. They dreamed up get-rich-quick schemes and hawked hate tracts. Dumb-fuck Hoosiers dug the kaptioned kartoon texts and katkalls at Franklin Double-Cross Rosenfeld. Wayne Tedrow hatched a son with a local girl, circa '34. Wayne Junior was a brilliant kid with a chemistry bent. Dwight dug him as a kid brother/son from the get-go.

Daddy Holly crapped out in '39. Cirrhosis took him down. Wayne Senior raised Wayne Junior in Peru. He ditched his first wife and married a fast skirt named Janice Lukens. Dwight and Lyle worked dead-dog jobs and put themselves through college. Dwight went on to Yale Law School. Lyle went on to Stanford Law School. Wayne Senior moved his family to Nevada and got rich off hate and real estate. Dwight joined the marines, got commissioned and killed Japs on Saipan. Lyle joined the navy, got commissioned and killed Japs on boats. Dwight joined the FBI in '46. Lyle joined the Chicago PD in '47. They both kept in touch with the Tedrows.

Wayne Junior grew up studious and wild. He served with the 82nd Airborne in the mid to late '50s and got a chemistry degree. Dwight worked hot-desk Bureau jobs and developed a rapport with Mr. Hoover. He almost bellied up in early '57. Mr. Hoover allotted him a brief rest reprieve. Lyle quit the Chicago PD. Mr. Hoover gave him a full-time assignment.

Get next to Martin Luther King. Infiltrate and subvert the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Lyle did his best. Lyle failed. Lyle failed because he rather liked Martin Luther King and because Martin Luther King was unstoppable.

Wayne Junior joined the Las Vegas PD. Dwight transferred to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He worked the Southern Nevada Office and spent time with Wayne Senior. Wayne Junior's life imploded in Dallas. A big coon hunt resulted. Wayne Junior waxed three shines that Dwight was
set to prosecute. Yeah, he cared for the kid. But no passes for old friendships. You do not cross Agent Dwight C. Holly.

He went after Wayne Junior. Ward Littell and Pete Bondurant interceded. Wayne Junior waltzed on the spooks. Ward and Pete pulled strings
for
Dwight and forged a tenuous truce. Dwight was named chief investigator for the Southern Nevada Office. He didn't stay long. The job bored him. Mr. Hoover lured him back to the FBI.

Lyle killed himself in August '65. It was slightly hinky. Ward Littell was embroiled with Lyle then. Ward spread grief wherever he went and sometimes turned minor grief fatal. Lyle Dunn Holly, dead at forty-five. A boozer, a gambler and a womanizer. A sweet-natured hump spread too thin.

Dr. King had Mr. Hoover spread wafer-thin. It was a fucking grizzly bear versus a Chihuahua. Dr. King was a stone Commie. Mr. Hoover was a stone Tory. Dr. King fucked women with gusto. Mr. Hoover collected antiques and vintage pornography. History welcomed Dr. King. History withdrew the welcome mat and put Mr. Hoover flat on his ass. He concocted Operation Black Rabbit and tried
everything
.

Bug jobs, tap jobs, black-bag jobs, shakedowns, poison-pen campaigns. Tail jobs. Newspaper slander. Innuendo, coercion, plants, cutouts, propaganda, psych warfare. Black Rabbit went on for three years. The key personnel had rabbit names. Dr. King was Red Rabbit. Dwight was Blue Rabbit. Lyle was White Rabbit for a spell. Red Rabbit had a fag adviser code-named Pink Rabbit. Wayne Senior was Father Rabbit. The operation was a rabid rabbit hutch and a dead-end cluster fuck. Dr. King soared as Mr. Hoover withered. Dr. King had his nigger-florid “I have a dream” shtick. Mr. Hoover told Dwight that
he
had a dream without ever stating the words. He stayed out in the dream ether. Blue Rabbit made the dream cohere in Memphis. Blue Rabbit watched the resultant riots live on TV. Blue Rabbit saw a little colored girl dead from a stray bullet.

Dwight did fifty chin-ups total. He made himself all sweat and muscle ache. He showered, dressed and packed. He got out his anonymous check-writing kit.

One postal money order and one envelope. $300 to Mr. George Diskant in Nyack, New York.

Dwight wrote the check, sealed the envelope and wiped it fingerprintfree.

The flight left Dulles late. Dwight ate salted nuts and read black-militant memoranda.

The Black Panthers. Cool name, cool mascot. Founded in '66. Exconvict
and aggrieved-spook membership. Lots of meetings, lots of whoop-de-doo, exponential growth assured. Cop-haters. Celebrity “Brothers” Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. “Off the Pigs!” rhetoric. Non-fatal cop snipings. A fatal shoot-out in Oakland, California—10/28/67.

Huey Newton wounded. One policeman dead. Criminal proceedings pending.

The Panthers hated the United Slaves. It was jig factional jive. US had a catchy motto: “Wherever you are, US is.”

Fatal shootout—4/6/68—two days post-Memphis. Oakland again—this honky-hater hot spot. The Panthers called it an ambush. The cops called it “tactical surveillance.” One Panther was killed. Eldridge Cleaver was wounded. Footnote: Brother Cleaver was a convicted rapist.

Dwight flipped pages. Most big-city PDs had files on the Panthers and Negro informants placed. Food drives, educational programs, black-culture rebop. Burgeoning numbers, hip cachet, minor newspaper clout.

An instinct:
the Panthers are too well-known to full-on operate
.

The Bureau ran a half-assed Cointelpro last summer. The goal: create Panther-versus-US dissension. Some San Diego agents circulated custom hate lit. The Panthers called US “chitlin chumps.” US called the Panthers “pork-chop niggers.”

An instinct:
US was too well-known to full-on operate
.

Note to Mr. Hoover: do not increase pressure on Panthers or US. Status-quo existing operations. Both groups will discredit themselves over time.

Dwight flipped pages. He hit sheets on the Black Tribe Alliance and Mau-Mau Liberation Front. They were garish, outlandish and distinctly criminal.

Darktown L.A. Rival storefront operations. Small membership stats in gradual ascent. Both groups: “Allegedly seeking to sell narcotics to finance their activities.”

No known informants placed. Nomenclature out of
Amos 'n Andy
. “Lord High Commissioner,” “Propaganda Minister,” “Pan-African Ruler.” Rat jackets on the key players:

A geek with four dope busts. A faggot carhop with two armed-robbery jolts. A bunco artist/voodoo priest. A card shark with ninety-one arrests and a phone book–size rap sheet. A “politically motivated” rape-o. Arrivistes, opportunists, Black Panther manqués. Buffoons prone to whimsy and carnage.

Dwight got goose bumps. Dwight fretted his law-school ring and read more pages.

More names, dates and locations. More details on BTA/MMLF brouhahas.
A note from LAPD Sergeant Robert S. Bennett: “Per the armored-car robbery-homicides of 2/24/64, rumors of BTA & MMLF participation cannot be substantiated.”

Street-corner agitation. Fistfights, drunk-driving beefs, Mickey Mouse rousts. The faggot carhop pimped drag queens. The card shark pimped his wife to cover his gambling debts. The Pan-African Ruler owned a porno bookstore and keestered his neighbor's pet goat.

His goose-bump count
zoooomed
. His nerves jumped. He ordered his one drink a night early. There, now—put your seat back and trip on Karen.

Confidential Bureau informant #4361—Karen (NMI) Sifakis. DOB 2/1/25, New York City. Fellow Yalie, history prof, Quaker-leftist subversive.

He brought her file with him. He loved the old surveillance pix and mug shots. There's Karen in '49, at a Paul Robeson bash. There's Karen outside Sing Sing—the Rosenbergs just got it. L.A., 3/12/61—Karen at a ban-the-bomb rally. His favorite: Karen composed in prayer as Berkeley cops bash heads all around her.

She taught history at UC Santa Barbara. Her husband was a lefty lawyer in Jew York. He rotated west two weeks per month. They quit fucking four million years ago. They stayed together for obscure Commie reasons and for the sake of their two-year-old daughter. Karen disdained violence. Karen built bombs, blew up monuments and always made sure that no human beings or watchdogs got hurt. She operated under the direct sanction of Special Agent Dwight C. Holly.

Quid pro quo. He let her destroy jingoist statuary. He pulled her activist chums out of the shit with some regularity. She ratted Reds who exceeded her low threshold for physical hurt. She was pregnant again now, at age forty-three. It was some kind of jack-off-in-a-jar/test-tube job that required hubby's assistance. Karen Sifakis—Jesus Fucking Christ.

They met at Yale. It was fall '48. He was a rookie Fed. She was a Smith College/Yale trial coed. They had a two-hour pub chat. They killed a bottle of scotch and a pack of cigarettes and made everlasting impressions. He dug her looks. She dug his looks. He didn't know it was mutual until three years back.

L.A., August '65. The Watts riot—crazy nigger shit ascendant. Mr. Hoover was aghast. He ordered file checks on all the college profs who signed pro-spook petitions. Dwight did a full week of file work. There's Karen's name. There's Karen's picture. Fuck—it's that tall, red-haired Greek girl from Yale.

He did some research. He learned that Karen wrote her doctoral thesis
on the Indiana Klan. Prominently mentioned: Walter “Daddy” Holly himself.

He conducted some interviews. He learned that some Indiana Klan klowns lynched Karen's Greek immigrant granddad. It was 1922. Daddy Holly ran a klavern two counties south of the lynch site.

He did more research. He pulled Karen's FBI file from the Central Records. He got her protest-march arrest records expunged in nine cities. He climbed a big limb to get her granddad some late justice.

One of the lynch guys had spawned a neo-Nazi grandson. Dwight tracked him to a county jail in Ohio. The guy was an evil sack of shit. Dwight got him moved to an all-nigger tier. The spooks gave him a come-to-God whipping.

He flew out to L.A. and knocked on Karen's door. She recognized him seventeen years later. He told her what he'd done and that his father was Daddy Holly. She asked him why he did it. He told her that he wanted to give her something that no one else ever could.

She invited him in.

They developed an arrangement.

He's black-bagged her house. He's read her journal. She describes her fascist-toady lover tenderly.

She always tells him, “We're too circumspect to self-immolate.” He always tells her, “We're too tall and good-looking to lose.” Sometimes he snaps out of nightmares and finds himself coiled in her arms.

The flight got bumpy. The seat-belt warning flashed. Dwight jotted notes on a file card:

“BTA & MMLF best bets. Check various police agcy files & hate-mail subscriber lists (left-wing, anti-white mailings) for leads on possible plant (Wayne Sr.'s stash/Dr. Fred Hiltz).”

The bumps leveled off. The plane descended. There's that big wide light. Jesus, L.A. looked good.

The bedroom was hot. The window unit went on the fritz and pushed stale air around. They'd sweated the sheets through to the mattress. Karen called it a “sauna fuck.” Dwight kissed her wet hair, sheened up all the more red.

The husband was back east. He had a name, but Dwight never said it. Dina was out at nursery school. They had three hours.

Karen rolled on her back. She was three months pregnant. She showed a little. Her litheness was filling out into curves.

She stretched. She grabbed the bed rails and arched off her back.
Dwight put a hand on her belly and eased her down slow. She rolled into him. He hooked a leg over her and drew her in close.

“Are you sure it's not mine?”

“Yes. It was a procedure, and you were nowhere near the receptacle.”

Dwight smiled. “It's a girl.”

“Not necessarily.”

“Girls are less trouble. Any male being you create will mean problems for me. I'll spend the rest of my career redacting his files and busting him out of jail.”

Karen lit a cigarette. “Dina will blow up Mount Rushmore. She's starting to put out a vibe.”

“Dina will marry a Republican. You know how I know it? She always wants me to show her my badge.”

The window unit buckled. Icy air hit them. Karen shivered and nuzzled into him.

“A colleague of mine needs some help. He's being assessed for tenure, but he was blacklisted from '51 to '54. The chairman of the tenure committee hates him, and he's not above using that as a wedge.”

Dwight laughed. “I thought all college professors were high-minded Commies above shit like that.”

“I am, but they're not.”

“I'll misplace his file or do some redactions. Let me know what you need.”

Karen blew smoke rings. They hit the cold air and dispersed. Dwight took the cigarette and put it out.