by James Ellroy
He’d worked three days straight with Joan. They combined the fake-diary excerpts with Marsh’s real-life text. It was now seamless. They deleted the Lionel Thornton murder. It would throw huge heat on Scotty and induce him to talk. The omission might convince him to stay silent. Joan had been close to Lionel Thornton. The omission would spare his family.
The new text revealed Marsh’s heist fixation. He partnered up with the equally fixated Scotty and pursued fruitless leads. Marsh was now all greed and perversion. He came to political grievance late. He was pawn and puppetmaster. His psyche had disarticulated sixteen million ways. Cops took him in and gave him an identity. Cops told him to retain it while he assumed an antithetical one. The search for the money and emeralds went nowhere. He didn’t know who he was, where he was or what to do. He decided to kill a public figure to make it all click.
Howard Hunt walked in. Dwight waved him over. The barman saw him and built a martini.
He took two sips and packed a pipe. He cleaned his glasses with his necktie.
“I can’t stay for lunch.”
“I didn’t expect you to.”
“It’s warm out. The spring’s going to be a bear.”
Dwight passed him an envelope. Hunt palmed it and lit his pipe.
“So?”
“This summer. The Watergate. Your call on the exact timing and the personnel.”
“The old girl turned him down. I’ve heard rumors.”
“The Man likes me. Let’s leave it at that.”
Hunt drained his martini. “You’re in charge?”
Dwight shook his head. “Look in the envelope. There’s a drop-phone you can call. The Man has a thing for Cubans. You’ve been here before. It’s all drops, cutouts and flash paper. I’m walking away from it now.”
Hunt put down a five-spot. Dwight handed it back.
“It’s on me.”
“Dwight ‘the Enforcer.’ Ever the gent.”
“Nice seeing you, Howard.”
Hunt put on a golf cap and walked outside. The door swung wide. Sunshine hit the bar and the table floor. Two big guys ushered in a frail old man.
He shuffled. His clothes fell off him. His glasses slipped down his nose. Liver spots, palsy, slack neck. Half-inch mincing steps.
The old man looked over and saw him. He had filmy dark brown eyes. Nothing clicked outward. Dwight blinked and refocused. Mr. Hoover dead-eye stared.
The bodyguards eased him to a table. It took three minutes to walk fifteen yards. He looked around the restaurant, unfocused. Nobody noticed him. People table-hopped around him. A waiter brought pre-cooked food out.
Dwight had him head-on. A short space stood between them. He stepped away from the bar. He built a big, simple frame.
Mr. Hoover looked over. Dwight waved. Mr. Hoover stayed blank.
One bodyguard cut up his steak. One bodyguard fed him. Ted Kennedy noticed him and looked away. Ronald Reagan smiled and waved his way. Mr. Hoover dead-eyed it. Saliva dripped down his chin.
Dwight walked three steps closer. It built a clearer frame. Mr. Hoover coughed. Saliva pooled on his plate. A waiter pounced and snatched it. Dwight stepped forward. He hovered now. Mr. Hoover was very close. He looked straight at Dwight and never saw him.
The girls skipped around the monument. Dwight and Karen held hands on a bench.
“Have you told them Washington was the father of our country?”
Karen smiled. “Your American history is not my American history.”
“I might dispute that now.”
“Given recent events, I might concede the point.”
The lawn was full of nannies with strollers and kids kicking balls. A little boy saw Dwight’s belt gun and grinned.
Karen said, “We’ve been together for seven years.”
“I know. You’ll be forty-seven in February.”
“Take me somewhere for a weekend. I’m bracing myself all the time. You’re doing something irreparable. I want a few moments with you first.”
Dwight tucked a knee up and faced her. Karen looked at him. He held her face. Some tears rolled. He brushed them off with his thumbs.
“I’m not doing it.”
Karen leaned away from him. Her tears rolled crazy. She took off her sweater and blotted her eyes.
The mauve cashmere cardigan. His first Christmas gift. She’d said, “What? You didn’t buy me red?”
“Why?”
Dwight said, “Nobody dies.”
He had a big suite at the Willard. Bureau-vouchered digs. The bathroom featured a walk-in shower.
Room service sent up a bottle of bourbon. It made him salivate. He carried his briefcase and the jug into the bathroom. He dumped the diary pages in the shower and poured the bourbon on top.
He lit a match and dropped it. The shower stall contained the blaze. He let the flames leap way up.
The nozzle dangled outside the stall. He kicked on the water and sprayed it all out. The pages crackled down to black muck.
A wall phone was clamped above the toilet. Dwight dialed the fallback direct. He got three rings and “Yes?”
“We’re pulling out. I can’t do it.”
Joan said, “No,” and hung up.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 12/8/71–1/17/72. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen
I always know when something has ended. I opened my door, saw that silly boy on my porch and realized that many threads of my life had fully run their course. I did not ask him to elaborate on his statement; I did not tell him that I had glimpsed him here and there enough to know that he had to be a deft surveillance artist with considerable knowledge of me. His car was parked in my driveway. I walked over to grab the day’s newspaper off my lawn and saw that the boy had photographs of Joan Rosen Klein taped to the dashboard. In that instant, I knew: it is over.
He drove off. I grabbed my journal from its hiding place, liquidated my bank account, packed a bag and flew here. I doubted that Scotty would come here or risk exposure of our many crimes by siccing the LAPD on me. Instinct told me that the money was in Los Angeles and Reginald and the emeralds were here. Thus, I got on an airplane and flew to Port-au-Prince.
It is very black. I am a French-fluent black man, an American, a policeman. I have the gifted actor’s flair for assimilating language. I could never pass myself off as purely Haitian, but I have become proficient in Kreole French. Native people feel honored when foreign rubes attempt to speak their tongue and actually succeed at it. My proficiency and natural charm have given me carte blanche to indulge and observe.
I travel by foot and bicycle and stay in small hotels. I ask questions about Reginald Hazzard in French and English wherever I go. I describe the young black man with the burn-scarred face; I sometimes display my police credentials. Many people recall having seen Reginald, but no one knows where he is. I have all the time in the world to find him. I am not going back to America.
The Tonton Macoute has surveilled me on many occasions and has interrogated me four times. My American-cop status flummoxes them. They are all rogue cops and sense that I am one, as well. They have seen me distribute cash for tips on Reginald. I am certain that they know who he is and perhaps where he is now. Tonton men have told me the cautionary tale of another American policeman who felt compelled to explore rural Haiti. Wayne Tedrow was white and lacked my protective coloration. The Tonton men have never threatened me; they have implied that black Americans with financial resources can buy their way into anonymous security and live safely in Haiti as long as their money holds out. They have further implied that this may be the case with Reginald Hazzard and have yet further implied that perhaps I should go home.
I’m staying. The Tonton men accept it with some reluctance—because Haiti is a dangerous place, I’m a black cop who speaks their language with no small flair and because they seem to like me. A Tonton man told me that LAPD had queried them about my whereabouts. The Tonton had not yet responded. It had to be a secondhand query initiated by Scotty. I g
ave the man some money and told him to rebuff the query. He told me he would.
I am always jaunting about Port-au-Prince, the larger nearby towns and more remote villages. I drink klerin and trip on all manner of Haitian herbs. I herb-tripped and retraced Wayne’s last day on earth. A bokur mixed me a potion named after Wayne. It is the most breathless mindscape. I often see faces out of my past in entirely altered forms. I think of my life as a middle-class black kid, a left-wing poseur, a policeman, a homosexual, a faux black militant and a killer. I live in a contemplative and unburdened state. February 24, 1964, and everything I have done to claim profit from it feels entirely irrelevant.
I occasionally think of Scotty. I think of Wayne frequently and Mr. Holly most of all. I loved him in the manner that the morally afflicted love those people who most exemplify their complex will to assert and to survive. I think we knew each other. In the end, it led to nothing more than that. Given who I am, he is and we are, it was a bond of some solvency—and, on my part, affection. I am oddly nurtured by it now.
Rural Haiti compels me. It is akin to a rough-trade zone in East Hollywood. I have attended a number of voodoo ceremonies. I have seen men and women zombified. Groups of men follow me sometimes, but I never feel threatened. I think of Wayne and our discourses on the dream state. I want to be physically immobilized so that I can be utterly still and devoid of the will to summon conscious thought and reaction. I have a stash of wildly powerful herbs and blowfish toxin that I’ve been saving for a special occasion. I carry it with me at all times. I seek stimulation and stimulation seeks me. I want to be chemically prepared to enhance any state of revelation that I may find myself in. I often recall my first conversation with Mr. Holly. It was during the Chicago police riot of summer ’68. I was in a southside lockup, a racist-cop casualty who also happened to be a cop. Mr. Holly was in the early stages of entrapping me for OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER. He quoted “a very wise woman,” whom I later learned was his Quaker leftist girlfriend. “ ‘Take note of what you are seeking, for it is seeking you,’ “Mr. Holly said to me. It was an immediate recognition of my life to date and a spellbinding prophecy of my future. I was sitting on the bench at Cayes-Jacmel yesterday. I was mindscaping that very thought and looking out at the Caribbean. It was sunny and not quite hot. A vendor had sold me a shaved-ice treat laced with klerin liqueur. It was fruit-sweetened, with a bitter aftertaste. Reginald Hazzard walked up and sat down next to me.
I recognized him from that day nearly eight years before. Wayne’s photograph was a flat, pre-disfigured image. This man was the man my doctor neighbor and I rescued from the robbery and the vicious police aftermath.
We said hello to each other. Reginald’s burn scars had faded and had left his dark skin blotched pink-white. He thanked me for saving him and told me he had heard rumors that a policeman had been asking questions. I was pointed out to him three weeks earlier. He had been following me since that time. He knew who I was at once. It took a long period of study for him to determine that I meant him no harm.
He had a bottle of klerin. We passed it back and forth. I did not press him for details on the robbery; he did not press me for details on my police career or my recent hometown celebrity. He knew a great deal about me. I sensed it readily and knew it would be ungracious to seek affirmation or in any way pry.
I asked Reginald if he felt safe in Haiti. Reginald said that he did, but added that he missed his mother a great deal. I did not mention his father’s death in the summer of ’68, with Wayne Tedrow very much in its orbit. I did not mention Wayne as Haitian folk hero. I did not mention Wayne’s union with Mary Beth Hazzard or his quest to find the boy who so easily found me. He knew all of it, none of it, part of it or most of it. I understood that and again behaved decorously.
The sun fell low on the water. We sat silently much more than we talked. Reginald asked me if I had met Joan. I said that I had. Reginald placed an emerald in my hand and told me it was the very last one. I thanked him. He got up and walked away from me.
• • •
I bicycled into the Haitian interior. Villages were scattered along low mountain ridges and brush-covered plains. Fallen branches and sharp rocks shredded my tires. I continued on foot. The night grew darker. I sensed groups of men following me.
The moon gave me sight at odd moments. I got glimpses of far-ranging crocodiles and blood-marked trees. I felt the groups behind me expanding. I came up to a small village with a very small hotel. Car lights strafed me. I waved to the driver. He was wearing a white wooden mask.
I swallowed my special stash of herbs and entered the village. A dog wearing a pointed hat ran up and bit me. I walked into the hotel and spoke French to the desk clerk. He rented me a second-floor, street-facing room.
It was low-ceilinged and narrow, with just a sink, a chair and a bed. I turned the lights off. I held Reginald’s emerald and stood in front of the window. The herbs took effect. The moon made the green stone a prism. People passed in and out of the rays and said astonishing things to me.
A group of men is forming outside now. They are looking up at me. There are three of them. They are carrying machetes in scabbards. They have left arms and wings where their right arms should be.
I’m becoming immobilized. My thoughts are dispersing as I start to form them. I will drop the pen I am writing with in a moment. The winged men are entering the hotel now. I have left the door unlocked for them.
112
(Los Angeles, 1/22/72–3/18/72)
He got the word late. It knocked him down. It sent him sideways.
He’d spent weeks running one way. It sent him running back and running out and sitting still to think. He missed him more than anything. He had a friend in this. The friend fucked him and ran. He missed him anyway.
Marsh got snuffed in Haiti. He knew that he’d fled there. He stiffed an LAPD query and got a late response. He couldn’t go there. His white-pig status would deep-six him. Extradition was out. Marsh was AWOL, but Marsh was clean. IA cops searched his house. They found fruit-bar listings in his address book. They interviewed Scotty. You and Marsh clashed in ’68—tell us about it.
He tattled Marsh’s Fed-plant deal. The IA guys jumped on it and braced Dwight Holly. Dwight told them Marsh did an outstanding job. The IA guys laid out dumb-ass theories. Marsh ratted black militants. It might be belated revenge.
Scotty pooh-poohed it. Haiti—who cares. Let it go. Call it a fag junket. Don’t reveal his fruitness. Don’t soil LAPD. Don’t shit on his elderly dad.
Marsh might have left a diary. That prospect gored him. He tossed his crib and found a stash hole in a ceiling beam. It reeked of leather and paper. Obvious—Marsh took the diary with him. IA decided to drop the case. It was best all around. The “Black-Militant Blastout” cop’s a swish. He won the Medal of Valor—go figure that.
The news curveballed him. He’d been hamstrung and schizzed all the preceding weeks. He brooded in his den. He worked stakeouts. He took Ann and the kids to Disneyland. He took four of his girlfriends to Vegas on consecutive weekends. He spread tip cash around darktown and waited for callbacks. Who’s the Commie woman?
Marsh was always secretive. They pulled outrageous shit together. Marsh rabbited and held his mud. He respected him for it. He walked on their shit. Marsh died behind it. Fucking Haiti—flying centipedes and voodoo. Marsh was a closet mystic. He talked that jive sometimes. Reggie and the emeralds—a dead-issue bust. The money was another thing.
Somebody tipped Marsh. The fruit summit had just ended. Suspects: Sal M., Fred O., Peeper C. Sal and Fred had no motive. That left Peeper. He spent weeks thinking it through.
Peeper was ubiquitous. He drove around and peeped and kept his yap zipped. Fred O. implied that he knew things. He’s seen shit and done shit—don’t short-shrift that kid.
Peeper lived in his head. So did he, lately. The heist lived all in his head now. Marsh was there that day. So was he. They knew what it meant and why they had to have it. No one else d
id.
He postponed the Peeper issue. He cruised by the wheelman lot and induced fear. Pieces fell together at the summit. It came down to this:
Jack Leahy worked the heist. The details didn’t matter. He went in with the bank team. He got the money out first.
It’s a soft confrontation. He’ll see the light and okay the split.
He saturated the southside. Mr. Scotty spreeeeads that long green. He got big consensus leads last week.
The probable call: Joan Rosen Klein. She’s got a hard-Left pedigree. There’s missing cop files. There’s 211 rumors. She’s a Federal informant. She might be Big Dwight’s squeeze.
He tallied all his tip sheets. He chewed breath mints and worried it. It felt kosher. She’s Red, she’s wrong. She’s been margin-hopping black-militant shit since ’68.
She mandates a rogue-cop summit. One order of business: the extended cash split.
It supersedes all agendas. It’s essentially left-wing. Let’s share the wealth. I don’t want to cause pain.
He taps Dwight. Dwight taps Jack and Joan. The dollar count depletes. It’s big coin just the same.
He missed Marsh. It stuck with him. He did this grand-gesture thing.
The fruit gig went kaput. Fred O. returned half of his money. He cut a check and sent it to Marsh’s dad in Chi-town.
Hey, pops. Our deal went south, but I was fond of your kid.
113
(Los Angeles, 1/22/72–3/18/72)
Safe House.
It’s a radical term. It’s Joan Zone nomenclature. He’s got his own variation on it.
He needed a safe house. He was a half-assed Red. He had spooky knowledge and a chemistry set. He had some new ideas. He had a right-wing white man out for payback.
Scotty came by the wheelman lot and winked at him. Scotty got his bruiser sons part-time Tiger Kab jobs. Bruiser One and Bruiser Two were Scotty-sized. They winked and smirked.