Blood's a Rover

by James Ellroy

  Where’s Reggie? Who’s the Woman? Who’ll disburse the emeralds with Mr. Clean dead?

  Frustration. Night sweats. Woooooo, toss the sheets.

  Marsh was frustrated. He’s read all their files. He reads them and nit-picks the details. They’re the world’s greatest rogue cop salt-and-pepper team. They’re years in and still short of the rainbow.

  Frustration meant backlash. Scotty fucked his wife and girlfriends more and lived for stakeouts. He nailed two cholos outside a Boyle Heights bodega in May. Marsh loved it—at least they weren’t black. He 86’d two neo-Nazis a week later. They robbed a black-owned market on Vermont. He blew one cracker’s arm off. He pulled a black tot to safety. Marsh loooooved it. Marsh had clout with the NAACP. They might give him a medal.

  Marsh let steam off his way. Do your own thing? Sure. Marsh vanished three times in eight months. He said he took car trips, to re-wire his head. It had to be fruit shit. Fruit junkets, fruit trysts, fruit excursions.

  Frustration. You want gooooood booty? Let Pastor Bennett and Peeper Crutchfield pimp for you.

  Sissy Sal crush-crawled all over Macho Marsh. Marsh won’t jump his bones back. It was driving him nuts. Ditto Peeper, Fred T. and Fred O.

  Frustration. Who’s the Woman?

  He’s sniffed all over darktown. He’s gotten nothing substantive. The description rings bells. Some geeks seem slightly spooked. One guy said she might be black militant–connected. He queried his Panther and US contacts and got shit. The BTA and MMLF geeks were all off in prison. He couldn’t brace them there. His visits would be noted. Stray talk would disperse.

  The case was all Her. The woman with the gray-streaked hair was Everything.

  DOCUMENT INSERT: 11/18/71. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.

  Los Angeles,

  November 18, 1971

  Media was eight months ago. My comrades and I have remained unapprehended; no one has broken ranks; the FBI’s illegal surveillance of political organizations, civic groups and protest-inclined individuals has been revealed in a flurry of news reportage, angry editorials and television and radio airtime. The revelation has come and gone. The concept of the COINTELPRO has been introduced to the American people, who have largely chosen to ignore it. The FBI’s more draconian undercover operations were not mentioned in any of the released files. Dwight and Joan seemed pleased by this. I am quite capable of discerning Dwight’s unspoken thoughts. He’s happy that the FBI’s specific war on the civil rights movement and black-militant groups has not been preemptively placed under the COINTELPRO umbrella.

  I don’t want to know what Joan and Dwight are planning; I suspect that I will learn of it in the public arena and am beginning to nurture a sense of it as a grandiosely large event. Media was a diversionary tactic and/or a setup. The ramifications of my one proactive salvo for Dwight and Joan will become apparent over time. I don’t want to know. They know that and withhold their plans from me. I have prayed over this and have made a vow to continue to love them, regardless of any horror and chaos they may perpetrate.

  We never meet as a group of three. Joan has resurfaced in my life; we meet for coffee or lunch two or three times a week, always here in Silver Lake or Echo Park. We discuss politics incessantly. Nixon, Vietnam, labor issues and the black-militant movement in decline can engross us for hours. Joan is gaunt and speaks in nervous, yet fully coherent bomb bursts of invective, with perceptive flows of political monologue mixed in. The lovely and defining gray patches in her hair are turning white and are streaking through the overall black. I’m afraid she’s becoming paranoid—she says she’s had an intermittent sense of being followed—and she often speaks of her lover/comrade Celia, out of touch in Haiti or the Dominican Republic. Celia once told Joan not to try to find her should she go missing. How many times has Joan told lovers or lover/comrades the same thing? Now, Joan is the one bereft, and it is her bond with Dwight Chalfont Holly that has taken her to this point where she cannot suppress grief.

  Joan smokes constantly and drinks pots of self-brewed Haitian herb tea. She swallows Haitian herb capsules with all her meals, at precisely timed moments of the day. I asked her about it. She said she was trying to get pregnant. She wanted to have a child.

  I didn’t question her motive. I knew not to ask “Why?” Joan would simply say, “I’m not telling you.” A woman her age cannot will a child. Joan doesn’t seem to know how improbable it is. It continues to remain unspoken, albeit ineluctably true. She wants to have this child with Dwight.

  Joan and I have always withheld from each other. We are individually compromised and duplicitous; we live in a mendacious world we have been morally charged to undermine and subvert. I could tell Joan the one thing I have never told Dwight. It might or might not hurt her. I know what it would do to Dwight. I fear the further breakdown that it might engender and the deep resolve it would certainly create.

  DOCUMENT INSERT. 11/18/71. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen.

  Baldwin Hills,

  11/18/71

  I thought the murder would hurt me more and would more hurtfully invade my body and mind. It hasn’t. I assumed the role of murderer and behaved in the manner of a first-time killer determined to survive. It took a few days for my mental equilibrium to adjust. I mindscaped the possible upshot of my actions as Scotty took care of business. I met him for a series of late-night dinners at Ollie Hammond’s. We boozed a bit and ate steak sandwiches. Scotty preached. In the end, you’ll survive. You did what was necessary; you’ll do it again if you have to. Feel better now?

  I did then, I do now. I have the upper hand in the partnership. I know two things that Scotty doesn’t: Reginald Hazzard and the emeralds are in Haiti. The woman is Joan Rosen Klein.

  My life is a series of shadow plays and non sequiturs. I work the detective bureau at Hollywood Station. I go to movie-biz cocktail parties and enjoy the ambivalent responses that my presence there provokes. Three years ago, I was a policeman who had been beaten, ostracized and converted to the black-militant faith. That inspired film-biz cachet. Now, I am a policeman revealed to have been a planted informant; a policeman who extolls authoritarian values in prestigious speaking engagements and stands tall in LAPD dress blues. The film-biz folks would love to hate me as a sellout, but they can’t. I won the game and I look too good.

  I’ve been party-hopping and meeting people, including the very attractive actor Sal Mineo, who starred in several notable angry teenager films in the ’50s. Sal has the Bent and has determined that I share it. Sal’s tweaked on me; we run into each other; we talk on the phone, flirt, go out for coffee, but don’t do it. Sal’s very persistent, and he’s a sweetheart, but my plate is too full to accommodate a part-time or full-time squeeze. It’s funny. It’s mindscape. I talk to Sal and hang up; Scotty calls five minutes later. Scotty took care of the Thornton/Bostitch brothers business with great panache and leaked a series of Intelligence Division files showing Mr. Clean to be, in fact, a mob stooge. Crusading journalists picked the story up; articles have appeared in Los Angeles and have gotten prominent nationwide ink. Scotty slanders our dead as we grasp for leads on our living. We’ve considered making an attempt to grab Thornton’s Fed-snitch file, but Scotty thinks it’s too risky. I’ve thought about trying for an independent look, but haven’t figured out how.

  I’m holding back Reggie in Haiti and the Woman as Joan. She’s Dwight Holly’s lover. That makes her unapproachable. Dwight Holly fucked with could blow our deal sky-high.

  Mindscapes: feints, jabs, withholdings and deceptions.

  I’m holding back from Scotty. I’ve made stabs at getting full customs files on Reginald Hazzard and have failed. Access requires legal warrants. My hold-backs are motivated by pure hubris and pure race hate. I learned some things from OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER. Kudos to Mr. Holly: I did, in part, transcend my self-serving actor’s pathology. I did become radicalized.

  Scotty Bennett represents the white world out to level
me with indifference. I cannot let that be. Scotty is the white oppressor, and I will not knuckle down to him. Scotty will not split the money and emeralds. I must get to them first and kill Scotty before he kills me.

  I’ve made three trips to Haiti. I’ve synced them to Scotty’s boozy weeklong fishing trips with his cop pals. Sal had been to Haiti on a film shoot and shared his knowledge of that wondrous and atavistic place. I flew to Port-au-Prince. I toured Haiti as a middle-class, French-fluent black man. I displayed my Reggie Hazzard photograph and asked questions. I learned nothing substantive and smelled the obvious fact that Reginald had to be here.

  Haiti was primitive and seductive. I felt like I was regressing. It was an actor’s immersion process. I visited voodoo-sect taverns and drank klerin alcohol. I dreamt of armless men with wings. I attended a few voodoo ceremonies and ate handfuls of herbs. I came out of trances and found myself dancing with wooden-masked men. I awoke from an herb trip and saw that I had blood on my hands. The man in bed beside me said I had eaten a fresh-killed chicken.

  My shape-shifting personality served me well in Haiti. I pretended to be a French tourist, which assisted me in my queries on Reginald. Nobody knew Reginald. Many people told me tales of the late Wayne Tedrow and his brave pro-Haitian acts. What would poor Wayne say to that? People walk around with photographs of him attached to their necks. I heard the story of Wayne’s death twenty or thirty times. The details varied. Several people told me that winged men came for him. Wayne and I shared the dream-state concept. He related it to chemistry. It was all about fated souls in flux.

  I’ve been to Haiti three times. I’ll be back. Reginald Hazzard has to be there.

  104

  (Los Angeles, 3/15/71–11/18/71)

  Peeper.

  It’s his old name and his new name re-discovered. Guys used to call him Dipshit and pariguayo. He asked Clyde about it. Clyde said, “You’ve been around awhile. People in The Life know you. There’s rumors about you. Some guys believe them, some guys don’t. If a handle sticks to you, you’ve got to figure there’s some truth in it.”

  He let it go. He didn’t mention his JFK/MLK/RFK hit knowledge. He didn’t mention his Commie kills or his case. He didn’t mention his nightmares or the shit he saw and did on that island.

  Peeper—sure, it’s true. Peeper—it’s okay for now.

  He tail-jobbed for Clyde and Chick Weiss. He entrapped cheating spouses. He kicked in doors and peered in windows.

  Peeper, sure. Reader, too. Part-time student—that fits.

  He read some more chemistry books and left-wing-theory books. He mixed a sulfur paste and blew up a street sign at 1st and Oxford. He learned about the Wobblies and the L.A. Times bombing. He mixed fertilizer paste and blew up a VIVA VIETNAM sign.

  There was a dream movement inside of him. It was like he was becoming Reggie and Wayne.

  He studied. He learned. He part-time Tiger-kabbed. He drove to Vegas and tried to find the Haitian herb man. The guy was gone. He asked around and found some other herb guys. None of them knew Reggie. They all knew how to cook herbs and induce wild shit.

  They said they’d teach him. He spent two weeks in Vegas and learned tricks. They taught him how to mix toad organs and blowfish toxins. They showed him how ferns and tree-frog livers caused heart attacks. He learned zombification. He mixed grand mal seizure potions. He learned some dope-trip formulas. He bought herbs, tubes and beakers. He learned some Kreole French.

  He blew up a Nixon sign in East L.A. He popped herbs, drove around and peeped windows. He tried leapfrogging Dwight Holly again. Dwight lost him three times running. He lucked out on tail #4.

  Dwight drove to a bungalow in Silver Lake. He perched and peeped. Dwight stayed inside for long stretches. Dwight took breaks and walked to a house down the street. A tall woman and two little girls lived there. A part-time hubby showed on occasion. He checked house-sale records and got the woman’s name: Karen Sifakis.

  He did more checking. He stiffed a call to Clyde. Clyde said Karen S. was a college prof and a Fed snitch. She was Big Dwight’s lover. Big Dwight back-doored the hubby. It was going on five or six years.

  He popped herbs and surveilled the bungalow. It was file-packed, like his pads. He thought about breaking in. He couldn’t do it. The thought immobilized him. He’d learned all this new shit. It made him sit still and just look.

  Then she was there.

  She was older and more gray and even more fierce. Her glasses still fit crooked. Her slouchy walk was the same. He perched out of sight and watched her arrive for twenty days straight. He anticipated what she’d wear. Some days he saw her knife scar, some days he didn’t. He still had the 6/14 scar on his back.

  He watched her come and go. He started to get a sense of what it all meant.

  He’s the nexus of great and startling events. Nobody knows and nobody cares. He has linked a series of baffling crimes. Nobody knows and nobody cares. Scotty Bennett and Marsh Bowen killed Lionel Thornton and are chasing the armored-car swag. He knows this. Nobody else knows and nobody else cares.

  Scotty distrusts Marsh. Scotty is levying a fruit squeeze. Sal cannot seduce Marsh. He knows this. Nobody else knows and nobody else cares.

  Jack Leahy redacted Joan Rosen Klein’s file. Nobody knows and nobody cares. He tailed Joan to Jack and surveilled three of their lunch dates. He hovered close by. He heard them discuss Celia, lost in the D.R. He heard the word Haiti. Reggie was living in Haiti. He sensed it quite strongly. Reggie sends out the emeralds. Nobody else knows and nobody else cares.

  He’s alone in his quests. Joan and Jack were in on the heist. He accepts that conclusion as fact. Marsh and Scotty know more and less than he does. He has worked this case for a very long time. It is all unprovable. His paper trials are logically inviolate and specious. It is all in his head.

  The island terrifies him. He’s afraid to go back. He might become that monster child again and lose everything he has.

  He’s a kid chemist and a kid Red now. He reads files and books and passes out in paper. His mother’s file, Wayne’s file, the file on “Tattoo.” He gets lost in logical surety and inconsistency. Nobody knows how hard he works and nobody cares.

  Tattoo wanted to meet film-biz men. He didn’t know who she met. His suspect pool was large. Joan did not kill Tattoo. It consoled him. It allowed him to track her and live that much more with her.

  Joan has lunch with Karen Sifakis. He observes them. He knows they share a love for Dwight Holly. They never mention Dwight. He’s the third party hovering. Only peepers know how this works.

  He follows Joan. He lives in the hope that she will lead him somewhere. It must justify all the time he has spent with her. She must do something or say something that will let him rest and give this all up.

  I have been following you for three years, four months and twenty-nine days. I know you have a story you can only tell to me.

  Part V

  THROWDOWN GUN

  November 18, 1971–March 26, 1972

  105

  (Puckett, 11/18/71)

  “So, who’m I gonna kill?”

  “You’ll know him when you see him.”

  “You picked a date yet?”

  “Next summer’s our best shot. It has to happen in L.A.”

  “These political hits stir up lots of shit. Various patriotic groups get scrutinized pretty good.”

  The kampground was krowded. Mi kasa es su kasa. The Exalted Knights invited some kolleagues. Sleepover kamp. Klan klods, Cuban exiles, South American fascistas.

  The bunkhouse was full. The gun range did brisk biz. The county sheriff dressed a four-point elk. His deputies built a cook pit.

  Bob said, “You want the conspiracy talk. I’m just afraid my name’ll pop up on the suspect list.”

  Dwight shook his head. “It won’t. The fall guy’s taking all the bows on this one. Nobody will want to look past him. We’ve built him from the ground up. The more you look, the more you’ll want to keep looking.�
��

  Bob got sulky. He scooched low in his chair. His sheet brushed the dirt. It was mid-fall hot. Dusk came on. Exiles propped up arc lights. Some beat-on Klan frau prepped a buffet.

  Dwight shut his eyes. It cued Bob to split. You’re a loser assassin, please go away.

  Bob meandered. Dwight opened his eyes. The kampsite was deklassé. His daddy’s Klan was high-swank compared to this. Indiana, the ’20s. Nativist gabfests and pyramid schemes. Eugenics readings. A ladies’ string kwartet.

  Full night hit. Bugs bombed the arc lights. The roast elk smelled good. The nuts hit the snack buffet for sour mash and Cheetos.

  Dwight walked away from the party. The arc lights glowed wide and hot. The kampsite was dirt-floored. The Klan klowns mingled. Their sheets were soiled to the knees.

  Joan worried him. She was haggard. She was chain-smoking and knocking back double scotches at night. She was vicious per Mr. Hoover. It was un-utilitarian and very un-Joan. She refused to explain her invective. She stonewalled his queries with looks and “I’m not telling you.” It was frustrating. Their time frame was “insanely protracted.” She knew Mr. Hoover was elderly and traveled far less. He had been somewhat discredited. He did fewer public gigs. Doctor’s visits preempted his recent jaunts. The White House was telexing an updated schedule. Joan was worried about Celia. He stiffed an unscheduled call to the prez and requested help. Nixon rebuffed him. “You’ve been to that well, kid. You can’t keep coming back.”

  Odd things moved her. Lionel Thornton’s death stuck and held. She refused to say why. Scotty Bennett worked the case and closed the case, toot sweet. Scotty vaguely troubled him. Scotty had a tweaky friendship going with Marsh. Peeper Crutchfield reported it before the “Blastout.” Marsh’s life would be fine-tooth-combed postmortem. It begged a question: should they insert Scotty in the fake diary?