by James Ellroy
He went through them. They held stacks of flyers and polemics. ¡Huelga!, Hands Off Cuba!, fruit-picker strikes. Support Al Fatah, the PLF, the 6/14 Movement. Remember Leo Frank, Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Civil-rights rants, black-power screeds. Malcolm X, Franz Fanon, Free the Rosenbergs. Free Algeria! Free Palestine! Down with the evil Goat Trujillo, Uncle Sam’s insect. United Fruit: Do you know what that banana on your plate just cost?
He hit a group photograph. It was dated 9/22/62. It looked like a faculty shot.
Seven men and women outside the bungalow. Three are white, four are black. Two white women off to the side. One woman is tall and red-haired. The other woman is shorter. She’s mid-to-late thiryish. She has dark, gray-streaked hair and black-framed glasses.
Click. Blip. Maybe, probably, not quite.
The click clicked on and clicked off short of Eureka! The blip took a weird form. Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, three months ago. Smoke rings and a back view of streaked hair just like that.
Wayne squinted at the photo. The woman wore long sleeves. No scars stood out. Reginald went to this school. Reginald got popped in the redneck town. Maybe, not quite probably—the woman bailed him out.
Drac Air flew him in. The plane landed on the private Hughes runway. Cops with bullwhips supervised the VIP lounge build.
Joaquín Balaguer sent a limousine and four flanking motorbikes. The vehicles were mid-Trujillo vintage. All five were jackhammer-loud.
They drove into Santo Domingo. The windows were smoked. Bright colors filtered in monochromatically. The limo lurched through traffic. The pictures were sepia-soaked. It was a pauper-nation newsreel. Kids pulled rickshaws, beggars begged, goons chased sign-waving youths. It was a quick-shutter slide show. Blink and you see oppression. Blink and it’s gone.
Wayne was bleary-eyed. Slide show: he kept seeing that woman’s face. The glasses, the streaked hair—the slide jammed and re-ran her image. He read the 6/14 tract on the airplane. It decried Dominican despots and innocent Haitians slaughtered. It prophesied future despots more savvy than the Goat. It predicted U.S.-Dominican collusion in the interest of a Yankee tourist trade.
Reginald meets the Haitian man. They discuss voodoo herbs. Click—memory tug and loss. The woman, the “Freedom School,” mental gears stripped short of connection.
Wayne rolled down his window. The monochrome newsreel went eye-burning bright. The colors assaulted. The salt air burned. Cops chased protestors down a dead-end alley and pinned them to a wall. Wayne saw a single nightstick raised and heard a single scream.
The limo dropped him at the El Embajador. A toady ensconced him in a plush suite. He had a wide view. The Río Ozama was due west. Black kids dove and fought each other for fishing-boat chum. The skin tone shifted district to district. He saw occasional red flags on sticks.
He walked down to Mesplede’s suite, knocked and got no answer. He walked to Dipshit’s suite and saw the door ajar.
He breezed in. It was a kid’s crib. Magazines were tossed pell-mell. Dipshit dug Playboy and Guns & Ammo. Dipshit was a picture punk. He had a Polaroid camera. He had ad-lib pix of women up the ying-yang.
Brown bottles on a nightstand. White-labeled, what’s—
Sulfur oxide precipitant, ammonia, acetic anhydride.
“Hi, Wayne. What’s shaking?”
Dipshit wore a Colt Python with Bermuda shorts. Dipshit licked an ice-cream cone. Dipshit had acne.
Wayne smiled and walked up. Dipshit stuck his hand out. Wayne bent his fingers, proned him out and kicked him in the balls. Dipshit dropped his ice-cream cone and went blue.
“No heroin. You don’t make it, you don’t buy it, you don’t sell it. I’ll kill anyone who does.”
Dipshit puked butter brickle and cone shreds. A shadow hit the wall.
“Ça va, Wayne. C’est fini, l’héroïne.”
Balaguer negotiated. The payouts and contingency plans favored the Führer. The overall deal favored the Boys. Balaguer haggled and conceded. Wayne took the same tack. They chatted in a parlor at the Palacio Nacional and worked from scratch sheets. Mesplede and Dipshit were off boozing. Smith and Brundage were off golfing. The Cubans were off whoring.
Building costs, labor costs, airport kickbacks. Reduced fares for U.S.-D.R. flights. Incentive payments. No-customs-interference chits. Stateside money-wash details. Inspection tours by Dwight Holly, President Nixon’s liaison.
The last point bugged Balaguer. Wayne mollified him. Sir, the tours would be by and large cosmetic.
Der Führer liked that. Wayne bait-and-switched behind it. Tourism only works in peaceful settings. Too much evidence of poverty will turn tourists off. President Nixon understands that, sir. He is your typical tourist writ more politically astute. Visitors will find your enforcement efforts confusing. Goon squads and roving dissidents are greek to them. They cannot extrapolate. They will be shocked by what they see.
Balaguer bristled through the discourse. Wayne forfeited three money points to cut him slack. The chat took six hours. Balaguer stood up to bid adios.
Wayne said, “No whips, sir. I’m afraid I have to insist.”
Cosmetic.
He saw it fast: food giveaways and less hurt from La Banda. The slide show felt marginalized. His shutter popped quicker. He saw or didn’t see at an accelerated rate. The monochrome view helped: Mesplede’s car had smoked windows.
The Santo Domingo sites were plowed and construction-ready. They were police-guarded. They were in half-decent areas. Airport shuttles could take tours through good neighborhoods. Tour packages would be all-inclusive. Guests would be urged to stay inside and spend.
Santo Domingo was Jim Crow. Light-skinned people, dark-skinned people and a stratified mix. Wayne remembered Little Rock, ’57. The 82nd Airborne and forced desegregation.
Mesplede drove and chain-smoked. Dipshit sat in the backseat and worried his dipshit lapel pin. Radio music stifled conversation. Caribbean jazz, brassy and repetitive.
The Autopista ran them north. The road was bad. The cane fields and glades de-saturated the existing monochrome. Black people ran across the road. Mesplede swerved around them.
The Piedra Blanca site was construction-vetted and guarded. The high-rise view would take in a few shacks and encompass wide greenery. The site felt rapidly vacated. Wayne saw bloodstains on a discarded two-by-four.
They stayed a few minutes and split for Jarabacoa. C’est fini, l’héroïne—nobody talked.
The ride took three hours. Wayne rolled down his window and de-smoked and jazzed the car. The bright colors hurt his eyes. He smelled jungle rot and gunpowder.
Jarabacoa was identical. The guards were servile and offered them cervezas. Wayne saw a bullwhip stashed behind a bush.
A black man sprinted past a cane field. His face was all open-sored ooze.
Wayne said, “Jean-Philippe, you go back. Crutchfield, you’re driving me into Haiti.”
Mesplede tossed his cigarette. “We have only the one car, Wayne.”
“There’s a bus station a mile back. We’ll drop you.”
The air conditioner tanked. They climbed the Cordillera Central in a mobile sauna. The open windows got them hot air and bugs like Godzilla. They crossed south of Dajabón. A wobbly pylon bridge spanned the Plaine du Massacre. Fascisto border guards waved good-bye and hello. Gators sunned on the Haitian banks, surrounded by leg bones.
Skin tone darkened. The bright colors held as the poverty index spiked. Rusted tin-roof shacks and mud huts. Blood-marked trees and lynched roosters dripping entrails.
Dipshit drove. His hand trembled on the shifter. Wayne shut his eyes and put his seat back full supine. The upholstery was sweat-slick. Moisture pooled at the piping.
“No more fuckups. I’ll kill you next time.”
Dipshit said, “Okay.”
“Your fail-safes are bullshit. Nobody would believe you. You’re a jerkoff. You eat ice-cream cones and perv on women. Mesplede’s soft for you, but I’m not.”
Dipshit said, “Okay.” His voice squeaked and broke.
“I’ll say this once. You don’t get out of The Life unmaimed or alive. Killing Communists and working for guys like me gets you nothing but your next nightmare.”
Dipshit said, “Sure”—this whisper-squeak.
Wayne opened his eyes. The road was dirt now. Jalopies, oxcarts and a village: thatched huts and pastel cubes flying voodoo-sect flags.
Rhinestone-rock walls. Murals on easeled signboards. A tavern called Port Afrique.
Wayne said, “Stop the car.”
Dipshit pulled over. Wayne got out. Black folks milling about got magnetized.
“Go back to Santo Domingo. I’ll get back on my own.”
Dipshit shrugged and screeched off. Wayne walked into Port Afrique. He smelled ammonia base, semi-toxics and untreated alcohol. The place was rectangular. There was a stand-up bar with bottle shelves behind it and no more. French slogans covered the side walls: “By the power of the saint star, walk and find.” “Sleep without knowing or sleeping.” The barman looked at him. Three other men followed his eyes. They held sequined goblets. Fumes rose out of them. High acidity, low alkaline content. Klerin liquor, certainly. Odds on semi-poisonous reptile-gland compounds.
Wayne walked to the bar and bowed to show respect. The three men walked away. The shelf bottles were transparent and tape-marked in French. Colored talc, tree bark, pharmacologically active snake powder.
The barman bowed. Wayne pointed to an empty goblet. The barman’s look said Are you sure?
“S’il vous plaît, monsieur. Je suis chimiste, et voudrais essayer votre plus potion.”
The barman bowed. “Comme vous voulez, monsieur. Mais vous comprenez q’il y a des risques.”
Wayne said, “Oui.” The barman opened bottles and dipped a spoon. Fungible plants, bark, puffer-fish liver. Bufo marinus: a sea snake’s porotoid gland. Klerin liquor from a siphon. An unknown liquid that made it all foam.
The fizz increased. It smelled like a volatile component bond. The barman served the goblet with blessing gestures. Wayne bowed and placed U.S. cash on the bar.
The three men walked over. One toasted him, one blessed him, one handed him a sect card. The foam burned the air all around them. Wayne drank the potion in one gulp.
It scorched his throat and shuddered through him. The barman said, “De rien, monsieur. Bonne chance.”
He found a shady spot outside the village. He stood there and turned off external noise. He heard the air breathe and knew he brought belief to the moment. He felt the soil under him swirl.
His pulse beat and wired his limbs to the trees surrounding him. His peripheral vision expanded and allowed him to see from the back of his head. His eyes watered. He saw Dr. King and the Reverend Hazzard swimming. Dr. King had Mary Beth’s coloring. The pastor had Marsh Bowen’s eyes. Birds perched inside him. Their chirps resounded as those mind clicks he kept hearing back in the world. The sun turned into the moon and dropped into his pocket. He kept seeing the woman with the dark, gray-streaked hair.
68
(Los Angeles, 4/10/69)
Scotty said, “Marsh fucked up. He witnessed a 211 and didn’t report it.”
Dwight lit a cigarette. “I know.”
“Marsh copped to it?”
“He told his cutout.”
“You mean Wayne Tedrow?”
“That’s right.”
Scotty laughed. “Inspired casting. The spooks are afraid of him, so they adore him. Nobody suspects that he’s FBI-adjunct, because he’s working for the Boys.”
Piper’s Coffee Shop on Western. The 1:00 a.m. clientele: cops and Schaeffer’s Ambulance ghouls.
Dwight said, “Who told you about Wayne?”
“One of my numerous southside informants.”
“The liquor-store guy?”
“My lips are sealed.”
Dwight rubbed his eyes. “Let’s talk about Jomo.”
“Give me a concession first.”
“All right. I’ll let Jomo go if you let Marsh slide.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, you can have Jomo independent of my operation. Meaning, he’s my best black-militant psycho, but I can live without prosecuting him. Meaning, you’ve got something going that you won’t talk about, because you didn’t call me at midnight for a nigger-strongarm roust.”
Scotty cream-dosed his coffee. “Correct on all counts. Jomo’s got a lot of bread, and I think I know where he got it.”
“And if you need Marsh as a witness, you’ll call him in.”
“That’s correct.”
Dwight chained cigarettes. “Will you promise not to reveal Marsh’s Bureau status?”
Scotty bummed a cigarette. Dwight lit it for him.
“Yes. Will you promise not to pop Jomo for any and all Federal offenses while I build my case?”
“Yes.”
Scotty took one drag and stubbed out his cigarette. Two cops walked by and saluted. Scotty winked at them.
“Thanks for coming out. I realize it was short notice.”
Dwight stretched. “It’s all right. I couldn’t sleep, anyway.”
“There’s always booze.”
“It quit working for me.”
“There’s always women.”
Dwight said, “I’m stretched a bit thin there.”
69
(Mona Passage, 4/10/69)
“C’est fini, l’héroïne.”
“You’re a jerkoff.”
“Allons-y, l’héroïne—oui!”
Tiger Klaw pushed waves. Destination: Point Higuero, Puerto Rico. Saldívar manned the turbines. Froggy manned the bridge. Gómez-Sloan and Canestel manned the torpedo drops. Morales read the owner’s manual.
Crutch manned the fore machine-gun placement. Luc Duhamel manned the aft. They launched from Luc’s private inlet. They skirted the north coast to the passage unobstructed. It was death-defying shit.
That bankroll clique bought the boat. Bebe Rebozo supplied the bulk of the bread. Luc knew a dope cadre in Point Higuero. Tiger Klaw sidled the night side. Their baaaad baby made four sabotage runs to date.
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 coonections 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.
