by James Ellroy
He walked to the safe house. Santo Domingo looked different. The visit was ad-libbed. He didn’t call Ivar Smith or the Boys. He just wanted to see.
It felt like wide-screen hi-fi. He usually limousined. It bought him eyeball relief and less volume. This was the shit. The sewers reeked, the noise peaked, the cops perched and pounced.
It was winter-warm/night-air sticky. Wayne wore a sport coat over his cuff chain. The address was in Borojol. The district was all go-go bars and low-peso hotels. Haitian vendors sold klerin-laced ice cream.
Wayne found the address: a pink cube off the main drag. His free hand ached from the wall punch. He banged his bracelet on the door. Celia opened up.
She wore a bloody smock. The space behind her was crammed with cots and fluid-drip stands. Four boys and two girls were head-sutured. Barbed-wire sap wounds—Wayne saw the stitch cuts oozing.
He saw the doctor he met last year. Two nurses changed bedpans. One boy had a foot stump. One girl had a bullet crease down to her cheekbone.
A back window framed an alley space. Wayne saw Joan outside, smoking. Scalpels poked out of her boot tops.
Celia pointed to the satchel. Wayne unlocked it. His hand throbbed. Celia scooped out the money.
“How much?”
“One forty-eight.”
“I spoke to Sam. He told me that Balaguer has agreed to four more casinos. They’ll have to burn or flood Haitian villages before the building can begin.”
Wayne shut his eyes. His senses reloaded. He smelled the skin rot there in the room.
He opened his eyes. Celia repacked the satchel and slid it under a cot. A boy screamed in Spanish. A girl moaned in Kreole French. Joan turned around and saw him. Wayne sidestepped cots and walked out to her.
Her hair was tied back. Her glasses fit crooked. She had small, rough hands.
“Did you bring a donation?”
“Yes, but not quite as much as last time.”
“I’m confident that there’ll be a next time.”
“Yes, there will be.”
Joan lit a cigarette. Her fingernails were blood-caked.
“How real is all of this to you?”
“Tell me what you know about me. Tell me how you know.”
“I’m not going to.”
A gunshot cracked somewhere. A man dog-bayed. Joan said, “The doctor should look at your hand.”
Wayne shook his head. “I tried to find you in L.A.”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t the only one looking for you.”
“I’ll find the man we’re discussing when it becomes necessary.”
The dog man bayed. Two more dog men piped in. A dog woman bayed from the opposite direction.
Wayne said, “There’s some things you could tell me.”
“I’m not going to.”
The dog pack bayed and threw bottles at walls. Glass shattered in stereo.
“You haven’t answered my question.”
Wayne flexed his hand. “Some people you wait your whole life for. They send you someplace you’d be a fool not to go.”
Joan reached in her pocket. Wayne noticed tremors. She pulled out a small red flag on a stick.
Wayne said, “Get me a silencer threaded for a .357 Magnum revolver.”
The Santo Domingo sites were back from the street and one-man-guarded. The guards knew him. The crews slept in tents thirty yards adjacent. The demolition shacks abutted the foundation struts. The interior walls were baffle-wrapped and unleaded. Dynamite, C-4, nitro. All pure flammables.
The surrounding ground was rain-damp. The work bosses talked site-to-site via pay telephone. Soak a tight synthetic cord and plastic-sheath it. Allow enough circumference to air-feed the flame. Rig the phones and call the phones and pray for a simple ignition.
The rural sites would be harder. They were sixty miles apart. That might mean a bomb-toss gambit.
Wayne found an all-night auto-parts store. He bought the tools and two acrylic-pad car seats. He bought a thick plastic hose at a hardware store and went back to his hotel.
He cut the seats down to fabric strands and gasoline-soaked them. He memory-measured. He cut the hose sections down to an approximate length. He perforated them and created flame-feeders. The pay phones stood on loose dirt. The wire rigs should be easy. The phone-call currents might or might not ignite.
A boy delivered the silencer. Wayne worked all night. He turned his suite into a workshop. He called the desk and rented a car for tomorrow night. He dosed himself with voodoo herbs and slept through the day.
His dreams were mostly peaceful. Dr. King, sermonizing and laughing.
He got up and made himself eat. He packed his rental Chevy and drove to the first site. His hand didn’t hurt. He couldn’t hear external sounds or feel his feet on the pedals. He was way-inside-his-head calm.
11:26 p.m.
He parked across the street. The guard was pacing and smoking. The slave tent was dark.
Wayne jammed a pair of tin snips down his waistband. The guard walked to the gate and came on nosy. Wayne rolled down his window and yelled “Hola.” The guard recognized him and unlocked the gate.
Wayne got out and walked over. The guard did You el jefe shtick. Wayne pointed to the moon. The guard turned his back. Wayne put the Magnum to his head and fired once.
The silencer worked. The soft-point bullet pierced and spread. The guard fell dead with no exit spray.
Wayne walked to the car and got out the tubing. He walked back and dug the dirt trench with his hands. He pulled keys off the guard’s belt and unlocked the explosives shack. He unscrewed the back of the pay phone, unfurled the wires and clamped them to the edge of the tube.
Sixteen minutes.
He unrolled the tubing, end to end. He filled the trench with it, phone to shack. He ran to the slave tent and tapped the floodlight by the entrance.
The slaves stirred. They were shackled cot-to-cot. Most were black, some were light, most looked Haitian. They stared at him. They saw the gun in his belt and genuflected. The postures got them caught up in their chains. Wayne pulled out his tin snips. They started screaming. Wayne grabbed the nearest man and cut his wrists free.
The man just looked at him. Wayne stepped back. The man jumped up and down and waved his free hands. The other men stared at Wayne and Got It.
They raised their hands in unison. Shackle chains linked them together. Wayne walked man to man and cut them free. They swarmed him and lifted him high. He memorized their faces as they ran.
• • •
The second site was two miles off. The gate was unlocked. The guard snored in a sleeping bag by the pay phone. Wayne shot him in the head and lugged up his tools.
The ground was soft, the trench laid flat, the work went fast. The job ran nine and change.
The slave tent was made from near-transparent gauzing. It was rain-soaked and heat-absorbent. Four all-night floodlights baked it.
The slaves were awake. Their cots were sweat-soaked and dipped to the ground. They saw Wayne and just lay there. Murmurs built and stayed short of shouts. Wayne walked cot to cot. The first slave pulled his hands back. Wayne grabbed his wrists and cut his chain off. The other slaves got the picture. They held their wrists up.
Wayne worked man to man. They got up slowly. They stumbled and hobbled. Nobody looked at Wayne. A man did a voodoo benediction. Two men tore through the gauzing and ran.
Wayne watched them. They sprinted to a small hut and kicked and shouldered the door. It fell off its hinges. They grabbed the rifles and Sten guns inside.
The Autopista ran straight north. He needed a view. Elevated and within his sight range.
A gas station popped up at Reparado. Foothills and a downslope horizon. A single phone booth. A big nightscape frame.
The calls would be short of long-distance. No operator patch-through. It might or might not work.
Wayne double-dipped the coin slot and dialed the first site phone. He got sixteen rings and nothi
ng. Ring seventeen echoed and brought a pink glow. Ring eighteen whooshed a big red-streaked sky.
He dropped coins and dialed the second number. The flame burst on the second ring. The red patches merged.
The rural sites troubled him. The phones and shacks were badly spaced. The slave tents were foundation-flush. That meant casualties.
The Midget knew by now. La Banda knew. The rural sites would get fast reinforcement.
Wayne parked in a thicket outside Jarabacoa. He ate herbs and willed himself not to think. Tree branches lifted his car. He saw ten million stars. Constellations moved at his fingertips. He heard sounds that could have been gunfire and could have been drums.
Coins dropped from the sky. He opened his mouth to taste them. Dial tones rang and sparked light shows. The colors lulled him someplace safe.
The sun woke him up. Windshield glare hit him. His eyes blurred. He saw flames and smelled smoke.
He started the car and took back roads. He passed a fire truck and two Policía Nacional cars. The flames shot up over a tree line. He saw the Jarabacoa site burn.
Show me more—
He stopped the car. He got up and stood on the roof. He saw two site guards lynched from tree limbs. He saw “6/14” smeared on a foundation block and a discarded Sten gun.
Show me—
He jumped onto a tree branch and climbed to a summit perch. The world expanded. Foliage swirled somewhere close. He saw light-skinned kids and black men running with guns.
Show—
He looked south. The world re-expanded. He did spontaneous math and geometry. Coins dropped. The sky exploded where the other site should be.
80
(Los Angeles, 3/19/70)
Stragglers left Sultan Sam’s. Sambo locked up. Dwight perched in the rear lot.
Afro music pulsed inside. A copmobile cruised Central. The stragglers oink-oinked. The cops let it slide. The spooks outnumbered them.
Dwight checked his watch. Joan phone-dropped him. The lot at 2:00 a.m. That made her eight minutes late.
The music downshifted to bebop. Dwight laid his piece on the briefcase. He got the shit through customs. He split the D.R. in short-hair sync.
His White House contact called. Nixon was agitated, verging on pissed. Some Commies sabotaged the casino sites. La Banda tagged it 6/14.
Dipshit got out in pre-sync. Dwight carved him and robbed him and told him how to lie. Get to L.A. and work the Bowen wire. Let Mesplede mourn the dope. Tell him Clyde Duber needs you.
Dwight rolled up his window and earplugged the bop. He hit L.A. and put out feelers. Tell her we’re on, she’ll get it, she’ll know. He braced every left-wing denizen on Planet Earth. It took six full days.
Headlights strafed him. A ’63 Dodge pulled into the lot. Dwight blinked his brights. The Dodge blinked back. Dwight grabbed his shit and got out of the car.
Joan pulled up beside him. She doused her lights and kept the motor running. An alley lamp backlit her. She looked done in, verging on fraught.
“You never said good-bye.”
“It didn’t seem necessary. I knew we were incomplete.”
“Where were you?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“No. I’m not going to.”
Dwight touched her hair. Joan leaned into his hand for a heartbeat.
“We’re on?”
Dwight passed her the briefcase. “Get it to BTA through a cutout. Keep your name out of it if you can. We want Bowen to think it’s a windfall. Kid, we got lucky, it just dropped on your head.”
A horn honked. Dwight aimed at the sound. Joan reached out and eased down his gun hand.
“I need you to say it.”
Dwight leaned into the car. Joan pressed his hand to the doorsill.
“We should say it. Belief works that way.”
Dwight said, “Nobody dies.”
81
(Los Angeles, 3/19/70)
Dead air. Dawn air and insomnia—the shits.
The bug post was a shine shack on Marsh Bowen’s block. The feed lines ran through overhead phone wires. Extraneous calls popped in. You heard a coon cacophony.
Funny and diverting. Non-lethal. Lots of pimp talk and holy roller spiel.
Crutch yawned. He was jet-lagged four days on. Big Dwight scripted him. Froggy saw his carved-up back and fucked-up room and bought it. Clyde needs me, Boss. Go, my son. You will be avenged.
Convergence: a faux-Commie dope rip-off and real sabotage.
Froggy called and broke the news. The 6/14ers torched the sites. The Midget was prepping a Big Red Roundup.
Crutch shifted his headphones. A call hit the air: the asthmatic biddy next door.
Mama wheezed and ragged Governor Ray-gun. Crutch rode out a nerve jolt. He bugged Sam G.’s suite. He heard Sam and Celia talking. She pumped him on the casino sites. He remembered high school Latin. Post hoc, propter ergo hoc. After this, because of this.
Yeah, but:
It felt dumb, it felt wrong, it felt un-Celia and un-Joan.
Mama wheezed—Ray-gun cut my welfare check. Crutch got antsy. He dumped the headphones and pulled off his shirt.
A wall mirror faced the console. Crutch stood up and craned for a look. The wound was scabbed over and peeling. Scar lines extended. The numbers were visible, the branding might stick.
He kept looking. He glanced at the console. His Joan pix were there on the ledge.
The math came to him. One year, eight months and twenty-seven days. He had tracked her that long.
The red light blinked. Bowen—incoming call.
Crutch slipped on his headphones. He heard Bowen, yawn-voiced. He heard “Marsh, it is Leander James Jackson.”
A happy cat. Cheery. Big Haitian lilt.
Greetings ping-ponged and devolved into off-the-pigs chat. That Haitian sound. “Baby boy”—the late Luc’s verbal tic.
Wait—
Leander James Jackson. Laurent-Jean Jacqueau. The same initials.
Haitian men. Jacqueau, the Tonton traitor. Jacqueau, the 6/14 convert. Jacqueau, unfindable in the U.S.
Line static, feeder fuzz, reverb and squelch.
Bowen: inaudible/“Have to score smack.”
Jackson: squelch/“In my country, it is known as the ‘beast from the East.’ ”
Squelch/fuzz/static. A stray call cuts in. Wheezy Mama’s back. Ooooh, that Ray-gun.
Big Dwight. The bootjacked dope. The black-militant gig—
File work.
Read files when tweaked. Read files when bored. Read files when up all night, hammered. “Read files” was his mantra. It consoled his ass and work-supplied him.
It was 7:10. Crutch bombed to Clyde Duber Associates and let himself in. Clyde and Buzz showed up nineish. That gave him file time.
Clyde’s hobbyhorse—the armored-car job. Four file cabinets.
Crutch pulled up a chair and pulled folders. They were re-pulls. He knew the file sideways and backward. Old facts hit him: names, dates, locations. Forensic stats, scorched bodies. Did a second heist man ex-cape? Photos: Scotty B. scowling. Scotty hard-nosing male Negroes.
A loose sheet fell out. Crutch unfolded it. A hand-drawn street map. 84th and Budlong, 2/24/64. X marks for the slaughter. Little houses street-numbered and sketched to scale.
Crutch studied the map. Something skimmed his skull. Some other file, some other fact, some complementary numb—
Oh, yes. That’s it. Safe guess: Clyde doesn’t know.
Marsh Bowen lived on that block then. He was nineteen. He was fresh out of Dorsey High. He lived with his mom and dad.
File work.
Read files when bugged. Read files when buzzed. Read different files when other files scorch you.
Crutch holed up at the Vivian. He studied his mother’s file. He picked at his 6/14 scabs and grooved on the scarring. Zombie Zone outtakes zapped him.
THE ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE EYES, THE HANDS AND FEET. La Banda stunt
s and the black guy’s hands melted.
He got scared. He popped two red devils with an Old Crow chaser. It un-scared him. He grabbed his binoculars and aerial-peeped.
Barb Cathcart watered her front lawn. She wore a shift dress. A cool wind gave her goose bumps. Gail Miller’s mom breezed with the mailman. Old lady Miller hated him. He picture-peeped Gail and snapped a shot of her bush. He got kicked out of Hollywood High.
The phone rang. Crutch jumped on it.
“It’s Crutchfield.”
“Donald, I am outraged.”
Cool it—he doesn’t know/he can’t know.
“What happened, Froggy? Tell me.”
“Wayne performed the sabotage. He was seen purchasing explosive material. He desecrated the northern sites in order to blame 6/14. He very obviously enlisted Communists to assist him. I think his putain Rouge comrades are the ones who robbed you.”
“Froggy, tell me—”
“Balaguer has made an expediently reasoned decision. He has decreed no reprisals on Wayne. He has decided that 6/14 should pay and that future dissidents should be taught a lesson. Tiger Krew will be part of this, which mandates your immediate return.”
He got sweaty hands. The phone slipped. It hit the floor. The receiver cracked.
The red devils hit full-on. He hated-hexed Wayne, pins to eyeballs. He got this voodoo-vile idea.
He knew her name and her job stats. He wrote the note at the Barstow rest stop. He used the hood of his car as a desk.
Dear Mrs. Hazzard,
I work for your friend Wayne Tedrow in numerous illegal capacities. He routinely underestimates me and refers to me as “Dipshit.” I suspect that Wayne has been less than candid about events in his recent past and that you may have doubts about his stability and moral character.
Your doubts are fully justified. Wayne was involved in the murder of Rev. Martin Luther King in April 1968, and was a suspect in the murder of his own father two months later. It is highly probable that he was involved in the tragic shooting deaths of your husband and a West Las Vegas criminal later that summer. You deserve to know these things. I intend you no harm; I only want to set you straight.
