by James Ellroy
He did it. He parked curbside and walked up. He ran his penlight over the door and studied the markings. Wild: geometric patterns etched in dark red.
Vertical lines down to the porch. A ripped-apart bird on the doormat.
You belong here. This could be yours.
Something told him the door would be open and to turn right inside. He did it. The living room was pitch-dark and musty. Plastic sheaths covered the furniture. He followed a metal-chalky smell to the kitchen. His breath went haywire. His hands shook. His penlight jerked. He steadied the beam with two hands and saw it.
The entrails in the sink. The severed arm/the missing hand/the brown skin, pure female. The geometric tattoo on the biceps. The deep gouge through and beside it. The crumbled green stones embedded bone-deep.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 6/21/68. Los Angeles Herald Express headline and subhead:
PRE-TRIAL MOTIONS IN KENNEDY CASE
ACCUSED ASSASSIN SIRHAN: “I’M A POLITICAL PRISONER”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 6/24/68. Milwaukee Sentinel headline and subhead:
BRITISH CUSTODY FOR KING SUSPECT RAY
FBI CALLS HIS CONSPIRACY TALK “FANCIFUL”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 6/27/68. Los Angeles Times subhead:
“ZIONIST GUARDS POISONED MY FOOD,” ACCUSED ASSASSIN SAYS
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/2/68. Hartford Courant headline and subhead:
RAY’S EXTRADITION LIKELY
ACCUSED KING ASSASSIN DESCRIBES “WIDESPREAD CONSPIRACY TO EXPLOIT ME”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/8/68. San Francisco Chronicle subhead:
FBI ASSURES PRESIDENT: KING ASSASSINATION WORK OF LONE GUNMAN
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/12/68. Nashville Tennessean subhead:
HOOVER TO AMERICAN LEGION: “RAY WAS THE LONE GUNMAN, PURE AND SIMPLE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/13/68. Des Moines Register headline and subhead:
NIXON-HUMPHREY RACE TIGHT
CONVENTION OFFICIALS PREDICT TROUBLE FROM “SUBVERSIVES AND HIPPIE YOUTH”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/16/68. Seattle Post-Intelligencer headline and subhead:
NIXON VS. HUMPHREY—IT’S TIGHT
MIAMI AND CHICAGO GEAR UP FOR “CONVENTION HIJINX”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/18/68. Las Vegas Sun article:
COLORFUL FREDDY O.
He’s been a Los Angeles policeman and a celebrity private eye, as well as a World War II marine drill instructor. The plucky Lebanese-American kid from small-town Massachusetts has lived more than nine lives in his 46 years, and now he’s starting out Life Number Ten as the owner-operator of the Golden Cavern Hotel-Casino.
Welcome to Las Vegas, Mr. Fred Otash!
He bought the Golden Cavern from “Big” Pete Bondurant, quite a colorful character himself, also a former L.A. cop, private eye and soldier of fortune. “Pete B. wanted to retire,” Otash told this reporter. “I picked up the Golden Cavern for a song, and that song is ‘Vegas Is My Lady.’ ”
Freddy O. has worn many hats in his lifetime. “That’s true,” he said. “And I’ve had a few hats knocked off my head.” When asked to explain, he replied, “I was run out of the LAPD unjustifiably. I got my PI’s license and verified scandal stories for Confidential magazine, but Confidential went down behind libel suits. That rumor that I doped a racehorse named Wonder Boy?—100% false. Yeah, I lost my license behind it, but when Hollywood celebs are in a jam, they still yell, “Get me Otash!,” so I’m still the man to see in L.A.”
Beverly Hills divorce lawyer Charles “Chick” Weiss confirms Freddy O.’s statement. “Freddy’s the king of the L.A. private eyes, even though he lost his license and has gone into the hotel biz now. Listen, I do divorce work, and sometimes it’s not pretty. Freddy’s my liaison to the wheelman community, these hot-car guys who tail the cheating spouses to their extramarital rendezvous. He’s a battle-trained urban warrior, just the kind of guy to make it big in a high-stress burb like Las Vegas.”
“Howard Hughes can buy up all the big joints on the Strip and Glitter Gulch,” Otash told this reporter. “I’m here to play to the junket crowd and the working Joe who wants to have fun without losing his shirt. Don’t call my place a ‘carpet joint’ or a ‘low-roller joint,’ either. Call me the friend of the discerning gambler on a budget who appreciates a bang for his buck.”
Los Angeles private investigator Clyde Duber offers a dissenting view of Fred Otash, which he claims is not the minority one. “Freddy is strictly shakedown,” he said. “His only friend is the almighty dollar, so you might say that Vegas is the perfect place for him.”
Ouch! Tell me, Fred O., what do you say to that?
“Clyde’s just jealous,” Otash said with a grin. “He always played second banana to me, and it’s always rankled him. Yeah, I’m colorful, and I’ve got a few rough edges. You know my motto? ‘I’ll do anything short of murder, and I’ll work for anyone but Communists.’ How can you quibble with that?”
How indeed—and spoken like a true Las Vegan! So, once again, welcome to the Jewel of the Desert, Mr. Fred Otash!
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/20/68. FBI telex communiqué. From: SAC Wilton J. Laird, St. Louis Office. To: Special Agent Dwight C. Holly. Marked: “Confidential 1-A: Recipient’s Eyes Only.”
SA Holly,
Per our phone conversation and your preceding memo (Confidential 1-A memorandum #8506) requesting an update on rumors pertaining to the M. L. King homicide circulating at the Grapevine Tavern, St. Louis, the following may warrant your attention:
1.—Electronic surveillance equipment, perhaps of Bureau manufacture, was discovered on the premises at the Grapevine Tavern in early to mid-June of this year. Confidential Bureau informants frequenting the tavern have reported that the apparatus was discovered by NORBERT DONALD KLING & ROWLAND MARK DE JOHN, convicted felons and tavern habitués and the acknowledged “leaders” of several other tavern habitués (CLARK DAVIS BRUNDAGE, LEAMAN RUSSELL CURRIE, THOMAS OGDEN PIERCE & GEORGE JAMES LUCE), all convicted felons active in numerous far-Right paramilitary organizations.
2.—The discovery of the apparatus has led to growing conjecture among the above mentioned. IE: that the apparatus was part of a monitoring process developed to lure accused King assassin JAMES EARL RAY into a “FBI-mandated” King assassination plot. While obviously preposterous, it should be noted that this rumor might prove to be damaging to the Bureau’s prestige, given Mr. Hoover’s many recent derogatory comments about King, and given that Ray’s brother CHARLES ELDON RAY is a part owner of the tavern.
3.—This office had no part in installing electronic surveillance apparatus, if indeed it was Bureau-manufactured equipment that was discovered on the tavern premises. If some other Bureau field team installed the equipment, I did not know about it personally, nor was such equipment installed by any agent under my command.
4.—According to statements made by the above-referenced tavern habitués, there was frequent discussion of a $50,000 “bounty” on King, allegedly to be paid by a cabal of wealthy segregationists to any “White Race Warrior” who would “buck LBJ’s liberal hegemony to off Martin Luther Coon.” This preposterous line of talk was frequently indulged by numerous tavern habitués in the months preceding King’s death.
5.—The “FBI hit plot” rumors are growing in both virulence and frequency. Alarmingly, confidential sources within the St. Louis Office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have informed me that the tavern will soon be placed under ATF surveillance, pertaining to evidence of gunrunning taking place on the tavern premises proper. The above-referenced tavern habitués are not gunrunning suspects, but I find ATF’s proximity to the tavern disturbing, given the virulence and frequency of the anti-Bureau rumors & CHARLES ELDON RAY’S part ownership of the tavern.
Respectfully, SAC Wilton J. Laird, St. Louis Office/EYES ONLY/PLEASE DESTROY UPON READING.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/26/68. Los Angeles Herald Express article:
STILL A BAFFLER: “THE BIG HEIST”
AND THE COP STILL OBSESSED
Tu
esday, February 24, 1964. It was chilly in Los Angeles, with storm clouds hovering. The early morning silence was shattered by the collision of a milk truck and a Wells Fargo armored car carrying a multimillion-dollar cargo of U.S. currency and priceless emeralds. The quiet corner of 84th and Budlong streets became the scene of a holocaust, and within minutes four armed guards and two members of a daring robbery gang were dead—the latter obviously betrayed and shot by a fellow gang member—and the robbery-murder case has remained unsolved for four and a half years now.
“Not exactly,” Sergeant Robert S. “Scotty” Bennett stated at Piper’s Coffee Shop. “It’s been four years, five months and two days.”
One does not quibble with Sergeant Bennett on anything pertaining to the case he has worked on so hard and for so long. He has been the lead investigator since that bloody morning, and his determination to crack the case has become legend within the Los Angeles Police Department. The man, all six-foot-five of him, is a legend himself. He has killed 18 armed robbers in the line of duty and commemorates the LAPD record with small 18’s embroidered in the Scottish-plaid bow ties he always wears. When asked about those shootings, he replied, “When you let that buckshot go, there’s no taking it back.”
It’s a funny line with a harrowing truth behind it: detectives working the LAPD’s Headquarters Robbery Squad go up against armed-and-dangerous criminals routinely, and they are a determined breed of man proud to be wearing “211” tie bars, the number noting the California Penal Code designation for armed robbery. “The Heist,” as it’s known around the Robbery Division squadroom, is a near-constant topic of speculation, and Scotty Bennett addresses it with great relish. “It was planned down to a ‘T,’ ” he said. “The fake milk-truck collision was very forceful and potentially fatal, which obviously convinced the guards that it was real. The robbery gang knew what the armored car would be transporting, and we’ve never determined exactly how they got that information. More importantly, we’ve never determined whether the heist gang was comprised of white men or Negroes.”
Sergeant Bennett sipped coffee and continued. “The heist was conceived and executed boldly,” he said. “And I believe that the leader of the gang decided beforehand to kill his underlings at the scene and obscure their identities, and their races, by burning their bodies past recognition. All fine and good, but obscuring racial identification requires more than burning the surface of the skin, and the man first dosed the bodies with a chemical accelerant that greatly enhanced the tissue damage of the burning. We’ve never been able to identify the chemical that he used, which is another reason why the heist has remained such a baffler.”
Some other reasons?
“Well,” Sergeant Bennett said, “we know that many of the cash stacks stolen from the armored car were wrapped with ink-exploding bands, and ink spill was found at the crime scene. Also, ink-stained bills have surfaced periodically in south Los Angeles, so I’m convinced that there was at least a partial Negro component to the gang. Also, the origin of the emeralds remains undetermined. It was a very valuable cargo, and intermediaries for the consigner and the consignee signed secrecy waivers with Wells Fargo, which has impeded the investigation.”
And the persistent rumor that the emeralds hailed from Central America or the Caribbean?
Sergeant Bennett said, “Just that, a rumor. Entirely unsubstantiated.”
And the rumor that black-militant organizations plotted and executed the heist?
Scotty Bennett laughed heartily. “Why mince words? Black militants are grandstanders who always claim credit for their deeds. The Panthers and US are informant-infiltrated, and we would have picked up leads by now. We’ve got two rowdy militant groups causing woo-woo in L.A. now, the Black Tribe Alliance and the Mau-Mau Liberation Front, but for the life of me I can’t see them executing anything more complex than a liquor-store job or a purse snatch.”
And the leader of the gang? The ruthless mastermind who killed his own men at the scene?
Scotty Bennett laughed even more heartily. “Tell him this,” he said. “When I let that buckshot go, there’s no taking it back.”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/27/68. Internal FBI memorandum. Marked: “Stage-1 Covert”/“Director’s Eyes Only”/“Destroy After Reading.” To: Director Hoover. From: SA Dwight C. Holly.
Sir,
The following states the design and goals of our COINTELPRO aimed at discrediting and disrupting the black-militant movement at large and more circumscribed and localized black-nationalist groups in specific. Pending your approval, I have named the program OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER. It is a nod to our less-than-successful OPERATION BLACK RABBIT and ironically celebrates the Negro verbal tic of using “bad” to mean “good.” Male Negroes often address each other as “brother,” which I thought you might appreciate. As I’m sure you know, a Negro extremist group called the “Black Nationalists of New Libya” precipitated racial violence in Cleveland, Ohio, this past week that left eleven dead, including three white policemen. This is the perfect time to initiate a physically small-scaled COINTELPRO that may well achieve large-scale national results.
It is my firm belief that both the BLACK PANTHER PARTY(BPP) and the UNITED SLAVES (US) are too well known and well infiltrated already. I believe that our goals would be better served by operating the Los Angeles–based BLACK TRIBE ALLIANCE(BTA) and MAU-MAU LIBERATION FRONT (MMLF). Our COINTELPRO could put them on the map and wholly discredit them concurrently. By controlling the public perception of two lesser-known groups at the outset, we would also discredit the black-militant movement as a whole. I have studied the initial Bureau intelligence reports on the BTA and MMLF that you sent me and have requested Intel Division dossiers on their members from LAPD. I firmly contend that they are perfect COINTELPRO targets and that their destruction should be the ultimate goal of OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER. I believe our goal should be accomplished in this manner:
1.—Both groups are rumored to be considering the sale of narcotics as a means to finance their activities, which might provide us with avenues to exploit their inherent criminality and publically underscore the point that criminal activity and subversive political activity are one and the same thing.
2.—We must find a high-caliber confidential informant who will ingratiate him or herself with one or both groups and report back with assiduously detailed briefs on their political activities. I believe that a female informant would be the most effective. A woman schooled in left-wing-revolutionary jargon would have a greater chance of eliciting confidences and inspiring indiscreet conversation and would most likely be better able to maneuver between the two (male-dominated) groups without creating rancor. Toward the end of recruitment, I have confidential Bureau informant #4361 assisting me.
3.—The linchpin of the incursion should be the placement of a male Negro infiltrator, mandated to uncover and report the criminal activities of the BTA and MMLF. Ideally, the infiltrator should have had police experience. Also ideally (but much more unlikely), he should possess a past history of racial animus for whites. Toward that possibility, I have requested a wide array of police agency personnel files and am currently seeking to secure a viewing of the hate-mail subscription lists of the late Wayne Tedrow Sr. and Bureau confidential informant Dr. Fred Hiltz. Wayne Tedrow Jr. has refused to grant me access to his father’s lists, but I will persist with him.
4.—Pending your consent, I would move to Los Angeles and establish a full-time temporary residence there, along with a cosmetically obscured front office for OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER. Per initial operating expenses, I would request $60,000 in cold funds.
In conclusion:
I strongly believe that the BLACK TRIBE ALLIANCE and MAU-MAU LIBERATION FRONT offer us an unparalleled opportunity to disrupt and discredit the subversive designs of the black-militant movement at large. I await your appraisal and response.
Respectfully,
SA Dwight C. Holly
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/28/68. FBI telex communiqué. From:
SAC Marvin D. Waldrin, Las Vegas Office. To: Special Agent Dwight C. Holly. Marked: “Confidential 1-A: Recipient’s Eyes Only.”
SA Holly,
Per your preceding memo (Confidential 1-A memorandum #8518) requesting information on rumors pertaining to the 6/9/68 death of MR. WAYNE TEDROW SR., I have developed the following information:
A.—Rumors that MR. TEDROW’S death was in fact a homicide, all unsubstantiated, are circulating, according to Bureau informants within the Las Vegas Police Department and Clark County Coroner’s Office.
B.—One source would seem to be an LVPD officer who allegedly saw MR. TEDROW’S body on the night of his death.
C.—A coroner’s assistant told our informant, “It wasn’t any heart attack, not with his head caved in like that.”
D.—Eyewitness neighbors of MR. TEDROW allegedly told canvassing officers that Mr. Tedrow’s son and ex-wife (former LVPD SERGEANT WAYNE TEDROW JR. and JANICE LUKENS TEDROW) were seen near MR. TEDROW’S home on the p.m. of 6/9/68.
Will forward all future data on this matter per Conf 1-A guidelines.
Marvin J. D. Waldrin, SAC, Las Vegas. Eyes Only/Please Destroy Upon Reading.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/30/68. FBI telex communiqué. From: SAC Wilton J. Laird, St. Louis Office. To: Special Agent Dwight C. Holly. Marked “Confidential 1-A: Recipient’s Eyes Only.”
SA Holly,
Per Conf. 1-A memo #8506: rumors of the “FBI bugging” & “FBI-mandated hit” on Rev. M. L. King are growing in both virulence and frequency, according to informally placed sources frequenting the Grapevine Tavern.
Respectfully,
