James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (52 page)
Read James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 Online
Authors: Blood's a Rover
Tags: #General, #Los Angeles (Calif.), #Noir Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Political Fiction, #Nineteen Sixties, #Political, #Hard-Boiled, #Fiction, #Literary
DOCUMENT INSERT
: 5/14/69.
VERBATIM STAGE-1/CLOSED CONTACT/TOP-ACCESS ROUTING telephone-call transcript
. Closed file #48297. Speaking: President Richard M. Nixon and Special Agent Dwight C. Holly, FBI.
RMN: Dwight, good evening.
DH: Good evening, Mr. President.
RMN: You're not taping this, are you, Dwight?
DH: No, Sir. Are you?
RMN: Yes, I am. I've got a device that records my calls automatically, but one of my slaves comes by and dumps the tapes in a vault. They'll never see the light of day, and we'll be pushing up daisies if they do.
DH: I'm cool with it, Sir.
RMN: I can dig it. Did you vote for me, Dwight?
DH: I'm not registered to vote, Sir.
RMN: You're a bad citizen. You're like your friend Tedrow, who messed with my friend Bebe. He's the First Friend, Dwight. I enjoy these talks of ours, and Wayne has been instrumental in facilitating our arrangement with the Italians, but Bebe is Bebe and Wayne fucked with him.
DH: May I make a few blunt comments, Mr. President?
RMN: Tell it like it is.
DH: Wayne Tedrow is a very competent man given to the occasional extravagant gesture. The foolishness that he interdicted may have proven detrimental to the casino build in the D.R. Mr. Rebozo's pet exile group is composed of dubious far-Right ideologues with a giant oozing hard-on to depose Fidel Castro, and as you once told me, Sir, the fucker is here to stay. I would describe Mr. Rebozo's exile comrades as heedless and whimsical at best, gratuitously psychopathic at worst. Wayne did the prudent thing, Sir.
RMN: You're absolutely correct, Dwight. Moreover, the D.R. is a shithole, the Boys may take a bath on their hotels, and JoaquÃn Balaguer is solidly anti-Red and a good deal more tractable than Rafael Trujillo. That cocksucker was a nightmare. You wouldn't believe the CIA file on him. The shit he pulled with his so-called bitter rival Papa Doc Duvalier was horrific. They looted land, smuggled emeralds, and foreclosed banks and split the profits. While they're doing this, the Goat is slaughtering Haitian refugees and Papa Doc is fucking half of his girlfriends.
DH: Strange bedfellows, Sir.
RMN: On that note, let's talk about you-know-who. I was listening to the radio today. A disc jockey called him “Gay Edgar.”
DH: The media has been unkind lately, Sir.
RMN: Do you think he takes it up the keester?
DH: I think he finds the closet too confining for that, Sir.
RMN: A little schlong would make him less uptight.
DH: Yes, Sir.
RMN: He's losing it. Right, Dwight?
DH: Yes, Sir. But, again, he's utterly dangerous and should be handled delicately.
RMN: And he's got those goddamn files.
DH: He does, Sir.
RMN: And they're wildly revealing and impolitic.
DH: Not as much as this conversation, Sir.
RMN: Dwight, you're a pisser. It's fun to belt a couple and jaw with salty guys like you.
DH: Sir, I enjoy our chats very much.
RMN: That Irish cocksucker Jack Kennedy stole the 1960 election from me.
DH: Yes, Sir.
RMN: The cocksucker is dead and I'm the president of the United States.
DH: Yes, Sir.
RMN: Keep tabs on you-know-who for me. Will you do that, Dwight?
DH: Yes, Sir. I will.
RMN: Good night, Dwight.
DH: Good night, Mr. President.
(Los Angeles, 5/16/69)
D
wight said, “You're afraid of something. Your hands are shaking.”
Dipshit slid a wire through a bore slot. His pliers jumped. Marsh Bowen's pad was bug-tap-amenable. The phones were big and old-fashioned. The wall molding was soft.
“Don't mess with me. I can't concentrate.”
Dwight smiled. “It's a periodic. Wayne will rotate through and check the listening post. He'll tally the calls.”
The job entailed drill work. Dipshit was good. He laid down a drop cloth and kept his space tight. Marsh was at a BTA gig. They had three hours.
“How many Communists have you killed now?”
“More than you.”
“Are you still peeping?”
“I peeped your mother. She was turning tricks on skid row.”
Dwight laughed and checked out the living room. Marsh employed the Stanislavski Method. The crib was in character. Black-power posters, pix of foxy black chicks with guns.
“I was talking to President Nixon about you.”
Dipshit spackled a drill hole. His hand shook and held firm. He wore a tool belt and magnifier. The loser kid as bug pro.
“Don't mess with me. We're running late.”
“You and Bowen are soul brothers. You're scaredy-cats, but you damn well persist.”
“Bowen's your coon daddy. Come on, let me work.”
“How many Communists have you killed?”
“Jesus, man.”
Dwight checked his watch. It was midnight. Jig soirees ran to the wee small hours. Reefer and speeches, gasbags and demagogues.
Dipshit finished up. Hot-wired: two lamps, three wall panels, two phones. Dipshit was sweaty and dust-caked. Dwight tossed him a towel.
“How's tricks in the D.R.? Are you peeping down there?”
Dipshit toweled off. “Quit riding me.”
Dwight walked the padâfinal look-see, no loose ends. Marsh breathed the Method. Commie books, ribs in the fridge, no telltale cop or queer shit.
The job was good. No dust sprays, no mounts or wires loose.
Dipshit was nerve-knocked. His breath spurted. His legs fluttered. The tool belt jiggled on his hips.
Dwight said, “Don't fuck up. Wayne's looking to kill some fool right-winger.”
“He did not call JFK a cocksucker.”
Dwight did the hands-on-heart thing. “I'm not lying to you.”
Norm's on Vermont. The 1:00 a.m. clientele: pot-smacked kids noshing budget steak meals.
Karen brought Eleanora. She snoozed in her car seat. Dwight kept staring at her.
“She looks like me.”
“No, she doesn't. It was a procedure, and you were nowhere near the receptacle.”
Dwight yukked and sipped coffee. Karen lit a cigarette. Dwight propped up a menu and shielded Ella from the smoke.
“You like Richard Nixon. I can't believe what it says about you.”
Dwight smiled. “You love me. What does that say about you?”
Karen twirled her ashtray. “I have some friends in the San Mateo County Jail. They're being denied habeas.”
“I'll take care of it.”
“How's Mr. Hoover?”
“A little uptight.”
“Is Marshall Bowen your infiltrator?”
“No comment.”
“Is Joan as good an informant as I am?”
“Time will tell.”
Ella stirred. Dwight rocked the car seat. Karen peeked over the menu. Ella grinned and went back to sleep.
“You're too thin, Dwight.”
“I've heard that before.”
Karen smiled. “Bad dreams?”
“You know the answer to that one.”
“I'll qualify it, then. âBad dreams born of a guilty conscience?'Â ”
Ella kicked her leg out of the car seat. Dwight tucked it back in.
“I love her, you know.”
“Yes, I know that.”
They laced up their fingers. Dwight said, “Do you love me?” Karen said, “I'll think about it.”
He dawdled at Norm's. The geek show was a riot, the drop-front was musty, he wouldn't sleep anyway.
Cops and peaceniks. Late-night film buffs. Stragglers from the porno book bin next door.
The waitress kept bringing coffee. Dwight smoked in sync with her. Time metastasized.
Wayne walked in and sat down. He was too thin. He had new gray hair.
Dwight said, “You're the bad penny.”
“You know why I'm here.”
“We've been through this. I'll admit that she works for me, but that's as far as I'll go.”
Wayne brushed off the waitress. “I saw a tall red-haired woman with a baby walk out of here an hour ago. I ran her plates and got her name, and I'm assuming that she was here with you.”
Dwight lit a cigarette. “Why did you assume that?”
“Because I don't believe in coincidences.”
Dwight worried his law-school ring. It rolled across the table. Wayne rolled it back to him.
“I saw a photo of the faculty at a left-wing âFreedom School.' Karen Sifakis and the woman we're discussing were standing together.”
Karen said she never met Joan in person. She said they were mail-drop comrades. Joan said the same thing
.
Dwight shrugged. Wayne said, “Tell me.” Dwight said, “I'm not going to.”
A gaggle of drunks walked in. Two cops at the counter bristled.
“Say her name, Wayne. I want to hear you say it.”
Wayne said, “Joan.”
Dwight did the hands-on-heart thing.
(The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Caribbean Waters, Los Angeles, 5/16/69â3/8/70)
R
otations:
The D.R. to L.A. and back. The casino build, the smack biz, Cuban coastal runs. His case wedged in.
He offed Luc Duhamel and the
bokur
and kept it all zipped. He torched the shack and Luc's Lin
coon
and night-walked back to the D.R. Luc plain vanished. Some Tonton ghouls braced Tiger Krew with routine questions. Crutch toughed it out. Word surfaced: Luc got snuffed in a voodoo-sect war. Reprisals followed: spells, machete massacres and zombifications. Crutch laid low and rode it out. His nerves had him noggin-nudged and gored out of his gourd. He had nightmares in Voodoo VistaVision.
He found good homes for Luc's dogs. Froggy found some Tonton guys to run the Haitian end of the biz. Luc's inlet remained Tiger Kove.
Tiger Klaw
was moored there. The Puerto Rican and Cuban jaunts launched from Luc's old turf.
Work was full-time. His case was part-time. There's the voodoo-shack epiphany. He's zombified. His brain broils as his body is bokur-bound and immobile. Emeralds/1964/Celia. Laurent-Jean Jacqueau/America/changed name. His mind melts and morphs to the
ARMORED-CAR HEIST
.
He tracked the epiphany and validated it. He B&E'd the La Banda ops office and found some paperwork. It was cryptic and written in Spanish. He took Minox pix, developed the film and pidgin Englishâtranslated. An emerald shipment left Santo Domingo, 2/10/64. Destination: L.A. The sender and recipientânot listed. No mode of transport listed. No names to latch on to. The paper trail dead-ended there.
He tried to track Tonton turncoat Laurent-Jean Jacqueau. He took 6/14/59 as his disappearance date and extrapolated. He checked outbound emigration records. He got nothing. He checked incoming U.S. émigrés and got nothing. He started with Jacqueau's real name. That didn't work. He tried his initials. That didn't work. He expanded from there. He checked intake sheets on all Negro Caribbean males and got nothing.
All he got was scuttlebutt and oral history. The Goat and Papa Doc were emerald fiends. He got that and no more. Likewise emeralds and Laurent-Jean Jacqueau. Likewise emeralds, Celia Reyes and Joan Rosen Klein. He raided three file troves: the CIA, La Banda and Ivar Smith's group. He saw no target names listed. He got no Green Fire leads.
Rotation
.
He made sixteen Cuban runs and eight dope runs, all top secret. All accomplished in defiance of Wayne T. Wayne paid Ivar Smith to surveil Tiger Krew and report back to him. Ivar told Froggy this. Froggy and Ivar countermanded Wayne. Ivar double-dealt Wayne for a cut of the dope biz. They developed a warning system. Ivar pre-announced Wayne's visits. The dope biz and Cuban runs were curtailed then. Tiger Krew anti-Castroized and dope-dealt while Wayne was gone.
Tiger Klaw
launched from seclusion. The Puerto Rican runs were clandestine. The Tonton spooks ran the conduit to Port-au-Prince.
His dead-Commie count stood at twenty-four now. The coastal runs entailed torpedo lobs.
Tiger Klaw
slipped in and bomb-slathered the coast. Moored boats went down with scorched Reds on board. The scalp runs got to him more. The body counts were lower and high nightmare quotients resulted. All the runs were nerve-knocking. He fueled up on voodoo herbs. Froggy and the Cubans never suspected.
Le poudre zombie
almost killed him. The heist revelation issued from that altered state. He trusted the moment and kept trying to re-capture it. Most voodoo herbs were brain-bracing and benign. He logicked that one out. He snuck into Haiti and scored herbs to rev him
and
calm him. The shit worked. It buttressed his balls and got him to Cuba and back. It never revived revelations per his case. It helped with his nightmares.
ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE HANDS AND FEET, THE EYE
.
Bad dreams kept him up. He dosed himself with voodoo herbs and went peeping. It wore him out. Woman imagery subsumed his dreams most nights.
He dug on voodoo. He didn't believe in it. He hexed Wayne a million times, anyway. He grooved the ritual. Wayne was too big to fuck with. Voodoo had a power beyond his volition. He grokked that aspect of it.
His life was work. The casino build was go, go, go. Twelve floors were
up at all four locations. Heavy rains slowed things down. Slaves died from overwork and required replacement. Froggy and the Cubans bossed the work crews. La Banda goons assisted. Ivar Smith warned them of Wayne's visits. Froggy brought ringer work crews in. Wayne brought bribe and construction cash. Crutch steered clear of him and hate-hexed him. Froggy and the Cubans oozed mock innocence. They hated Wayne. Wayne required big-time connivance and kid gloves.
Rotation
.
Crutch worked in the D.R. and L.A. His case was bifurcated: the MarÃa Rodriguez Fontonette snuff and the armored-car heist. Celia blew in and out of Santo Domingo. He couldn't track her down. He ran more paper checks. He surveilled the known safe houses on the La Banda list. He tailed Commie punks from CIA dissident lists in the dumb hope that they knew her. It was futile. He got diverted by random women. Window glimpses swerved him for days at a pop. He had to find Celia. She was his spark point to Joan.
