by James Ellroy
“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 pad—final 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. ‘Bad dreams born of a guilty conscience?’ ”
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 ‘Freedom 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.
75
(The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Caribbean Waters, Los Angeles, 5/16/69–3/8/70)
Rotations:
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 Lincoon 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 English–translated. An emerald shipment left Santo Domingo, 2/10/64. Destination: L.A. The sender and recipient—not 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 p
er 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 María 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.
Rotation.
Crutch lied to Froggy. He laid out “Clyde Duber needs me in L.A.” tales. Froggy said sure. He flew to L.A. and prowled. He read Clyde’s heist file a dozen times, got the gist and no more. He called Wells Fargo. He tried to track the emerald shipment and got rebuffed. He went back to Clyde’s file. Scotty Bennett’s obsession with the case was confirmed. That was old news. The new news: Scotty’s filed reports were threadbare.
Omissions. A paper dearth. He knew Scotty. They bullshitted at the wheelman lot. Scotty showed him reports on minor heists—always detail-packed. His reports on 2/24/64—slight by comparison.
He tried to pump Scotty. He came on suuuubtle, but Scotty did not reveal shit. He didn’t tell Scotty that he’d hot-wired Marsh Bowen. Scotty would slam Bowen at the proper time.
A ripe rumor rippled: Bowen snitched a spade named Jomo for some liquor-store jobs. Jomo offed himself in jail. Scotty told Crutch that he was spreading the rumor. Safe bet: Bowen’s queer ass was cooked.
Rotation.
The island was a Zombie Zone. L.A. was a safe zone. He dropped by the wheelman lot and brought beer and pizza. He went by his pad at the Vivian and his downtown file pad. He read his mother’s missing person file. It helped smother his nightmares.
His mother sent him five bucks and a Christmas card. This one was postmarked Kansas City. She split in 1955. She sent her first card that year. She sent a card for Christmas ’69. It was 1970 now.
She was still alive. Like Celia and Joan. Like Dana Lund and all the Hancock Park girls in windows. His case was stalled. Scotty had to have more paperwork. Dana Lund had new gray hair. She wore the cashmere sweater he’d bought her at Christmas.
Dana’s gray streaks looked like Joan’s. It was all a fucking knife to the heart.
76
(Las Vegas, Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, 5/16/69–3/8/70)
Dream State.
It was Bowen’s stated concept. It was his life now. It was unquantifiable. It reminded him of his early chemistry studies. Some experiments brought assured results. Many did not. He took greater risks and became more attuned to uncertainty. A world existed beyond his comprehension. The notion drove him and consoled him, then and now.
His herb trips clarified his dream state. They brought him an unforeseeable hope. They dulled his sense of risk more.
He flies to the D.R. and detours into Haiti. He hires Tonton thugs to protect him as he chemically dallies. He brings money for Celia and Joan. He tells Celia to deploy the money and spare him the details. She has pledged to leave the building sites alone. He has donated $1,649,000. The results are unquantifiable.
Dream State.
He liquidated his father’s estate and reimbursed Balaguer’s construction firm. That covered his first impromptu tithe. He became an embezzler then.
The Boys trusted him with quickly tallied and un-vouchered cash. They knew he loved power and gave little thought to financial remuneration. He skimmed skim off Drac’s hotels. He diverted payments from Teamster-book buyouts. He cooked the books at Tiger Kab and the southside clubs. He quick-wash-and-dried funds through the Peoples’ Bank. He delivered monthly stipends to Balaguer and near-equal funds to Celia.
He asked to speak to Joan. It pertained to a young man she knew at one time. Celia said, “Under no circumstances” and “Please don’t ask me again.” He refrained from further requests. He chased Joan and the ghost of Reginald Hazzard back to L.A.
Dwight refused to discuss Joan. Wayne submitted a Federal file request through a friend on LVPD. Joan’s file was missing from Central Records. The Bureau had no file on Joan’s colleague Karen Sifakis. Dwight pulled both files. He was sure of that. He ran a nationwide PD check on both women and got nothing. That second little click kept clicking him. He did anti-redaction work on Joan’s file. His memory clicked and stalled out there.
He scoured South L.A. He couldn’t find Joan. He built a partial Joan-Reginald time line. The Freedom School, ’62. The jail bailout, ’63. He scoured files in the D.R. Joan: tied to Celia Reyes and embroiled in Dominican revolt. Joan: one file photo. The 6/14 invasion and a younger woman with a fist raised.
Late ’63: Reginald studies Haitian herbs and hard-Left politics. Joan’s a renegade professor. It’s a wild tutelage. The Haitian connection—jump then to now.
Joan is BTA-tight. The BTA “Armorer”: Haitian hellion Leander James Jackson. Brother Jackson had a knife fight with the late Jomo Clarkson. Wayne and Marsh Bowen provoked it. Jackson was allegedly ex–Tonton Macoute. Wayne tried to run a Tonton records check on him. The Tonton kept no written records.
More file checks, more dead ends.
No file on Leander James Jackson. No immigration files on men with those three initials. No Fed or muni-PD files extant.
Jackson: most likely unrelated to Reginald and Joan. He considered bracing Bowen on Jackson and decided against it. Bowen would probably double-deal confidential information.
Dream State.
He cruises southside L.A. He looks for people who aren’t there. He’s got Tiger Kab and the clubs as information hubs. Nobody knew Reginald then or knows Reginald now. He’s hand-checking LAPD and Sheriff’s station files. He’s looking for one name in millions of words.
I will find Reginald Hazzard just as I found Wendell Durfee. I will impart mercy as I once imparted death.
His dream state imposed clarity. It seamlessly bridged L.A. and the D.R. The hotel-casinos were going up. It was a controlled experiment with quantifiable results. He was tithing revolution at a consistently opposing rate. Ivar Smith was watch-dogging Tiger Krew. The fucks were abstaining from Cuban runs and had scotched their dope biz. That was quantifiable. That controlled experiment worked. He visited Tiger Krew. He soaked up their hatred and fear. The RED borders of his U.S.-Caribbean junkets blurred.
The Boys loved him. He hated them and sucked up to them and bilked them. The Boys knew he was with a black woman. They kept quiet because they needed his skills. He spends time with them. He fraternizes with queer black militants. He’s riding his dreamscape through a zeitgeist with an off-RED flag aswirl.
Marsh Bowen was full-time wired. Wayne checked the listening post every third day. Marsh and his pals talked revolutionary shit and never did shit to create revolution. They can’t score heroin. Half of them don’t want to score heroin. A few have tenuous moral qualms. Most just fear the fuzz. Chicago cops killed two Panthers in December. The Panthers shot it out with LAPD the same month. It was a non-fatal/let-off-steam/could-have-been-us moment. Whew! He
roin? Brother, I’m not sure.
It frustrated Dwight. It delighted Wayne. He smoked weed with Marsh once. They again discussed the dream-state concept. Marsh didn’t know he was wired. Marsh didn’t know that LAPD bagged his ass. They stood in the Tiger Kab lot. Wayne got this nutty idea: I’ll tell him I killed Martin Luther King and see how he takes it.
Dwight didn’t trust Marsh. Dwight was right—he’s a time-buyer and a favor-doer lost in compliant calculation. Marsh bailed Ezzard Donnell Jones out of lockup twice—77th Street and University stations. Marsh was afraid of MMLF reprisal and BTA whiplash. Marsh’s mindscape was all stasis and circumspection.
Dwight’s brainscape was all machination. He was losing weight. He was boozing to suppress his nerves and notch some sleep. Dwight said Mr. Hoover was reaming him for results. Wayne said, “How?” Dwight mimicked a junkie shooting up.
The pantomime was spooky. Wayne got chills. Dwight said, “Son, you cannot fuck with me on this.”
Dream State.
He did not tell Mary Beth about his tithing. She would consider it stealing. She would critique his guilty conscience. She would disapprove of his herb trips. She would view his experiment theory as a fatuous riff of the times. Her resentment was an indictment. She brought it to bed with them. He brought images of Joan for fire and consolation. She considers his quest to find her son grandiose and self-serving. She cannot comprehend the scope of his debt.
77
(Los Angeles, the Dominican Republic, 5/16/69–3/8/70)
She’s gone.
She left him with nineteen file cards and no good-bye note. She left a lipstick smear on her pillow.
The cards listed snitch-outs gleaned from the BTA. Joan gave up six armed-robbery teams, two kidnap gangs and eleven mail-bombing leftists. Dwight attributed the work to Marsh Bowen. It bought the time-buyer more time and wowed Mr. Hoover. The old girl ordered the Federal raids herself.
