by James Ellroy
No/nyet/nein. Noi in Viet. Barb radiated. Barb fucking glowed.
They glowed three years in. They glowed with crazy shit concurrent. Barb got better. Barb got stronger. Barb got X-ray eyes.
She saw through show people. She saw through the Life. The Life was rigged. The men took the risks. The men had the fun. The men conspired. The men served causes. The women served tea.
Barb said it: “I peaked early. I extorted JFK.” Barb said it: “You’ve got Cuba. I’ve got the Sultan’s Lounge.”
She didn’t nag him. She didn’t play shrew. She just said she’d changed.
They hashed it out. He sensed cabin fever. Vegas hemmed her in. He sold dope batch #1. He bought two tickets east.
They booked to Miami. They took the cat. They booked a suite at the Doral. The cat leveled it.
He clawed the drapes. He shit on chairs. He killed terrace birds. He bootjacked their room-service food.
They caught Dino. They caught Shecky Green. They got ringside seats. They slept late and made love.
They talked. He laid out Vietnam. He lied. He downplayed the killing. He downplayed the slaves.
Barb pressed him. Barb tripped him up. Barb nailed his lies. He said fuck it. He cut loose. He disclosed.
Barb said, “All that for Cuba?”
They got some rays. They ran into Jimmy H. They went out for stone crabs. Jimmy fumed. Jimmy fugued. Jimmy ran nonstop boo-hoo.
His legal woes. Sam G. in stir. His ripe hemorrhoids.
Pete bored in. Pete pumped him. Pete worked his mood. Pete pumped angles. Pete pumped oblique.
It’s Kansas City. It’s ’56. Danny Bruvick fucks you.
Jimmy cut loose—six fucks!/six cocksuckers!/six Arden cunts! Jimmy dished on Arden. Jimmy tossed a bomb:
Arden Bruvick—that cunt—she was Jules Schiffrin’s ex.
Pete said, “Excuse me.” Pete walked to the john. Pete found a throne. Pete sat down. Pete hashed it all through.
Jules Schiffrin—Mob money man—dead in ’60. The “real” fund books—Schiffrin’s property. Arden Bruvick: bookkeeper.
It’s ’56. It’s K.C. Danny Bruvick splits. Jimmy fugues out. Cops bust Arden. The T&C Corp bails her. Carlos M. owns T&C.
Cut to:
’59—New Orleans—J.P. Mesplède passes through. Mesplède sees Arden—with some Carlos goon.
Cut to:
1960—Wisconsin—Ward Littell steals the books. Schiffrin heart-attacks and drops dead.
Cut to:
Fall ’63. Carlos taps Ward. Carlos says this:
You got the books. Jimmy don’t know it. The Boys and I do. We know you. We own you. You’ll sell Drac our hotels. You’ll work the books. You’ll dredge up data. You’ll funnel skim through.
Cut to:
Dallas—hit time—Arden meets Ward. She works for Jack Ruby. She keeps his books. She’s seen the safe house. She’s seen the targets. She’s seen the crew.
Ward falls for Arden. Carlos wants her dead. Ward makes Arden “Jane.” Ward hides “Jane.” Ward brews fund-book schemes.
So:
Did Carlos find Arden? Did Carlos pledge mercy? IF YOU SPY ON LITTELL? Arden was a bookkeeper. Arden knew Schiffrin. Arden lived with Littell.
Sound logic, but:
He saw Ward with “Jane.” They were real. He knew it.
It scared him. He teethed on it. He riffed: Real deals with women could be undercut—and thus shot to shit.
Barb saw him pump Jimmy. Barb gauged his john run. Barb got halfway hip. He filled her in. He abridged it. He omitted Carlos. He omitted Big D.
Barb loved it. Barb loved secrets. Barb held them tough. They discussed it. He told her—I’ll probe up more stuff.
He called Fred Otash. Otash weighed in. Otash said I’m on it—don’t sweat. I’ll buy more cops. I’ll put out more search fees. My cops will check files and call back.
They schmoozed. Otash had news. Otash said Ward hired him. Ward craved dirt. Ward bought a dirt search—let’s find the old scandal-rag files.
Pete riffed on his Arden search. Pete said don’t tell Ward—don’t clue Ward in. Otash played ball. Otash had Arden pix already. Otash knew Arden was Jane.
Pete teethed on it. Pete sifted it. Pete lived with it. Pete ran rotations.
Vegas was good—100%. White horse hits. The word expands. Clients accrue: Sniffers/tasters/junkies/skin-popper geeks.
The street pushers worked. The street pushers proselytized. They wore flash threads. They drove jig rigs. They glorified “H.” They glamorized it. They accessorized it. They Tupperwared it.
They cruised the projects. They drew crowds. They sniffed powdered milk and bopped strong. They debunked that addiction jive.
They wore pendants. They wore processed hair. They carried mock-gold guns. They lied. They said spooks ran the biz. They denied that the White Man existed.
Wayne tailed them. It scared them. They knew Wayne’s rep. Wayne Junior be baaaaaaaaaaaad. Wayne Junior kill our kin.
Profits accrued. Milt totaled them. Milt praised the horse epidemic. It was restricted. It was contained. No whites need apply.
A dope punk moved in. Said punk brought ambition. Said punk sniffed the air. Said punk sniffed the wrong vibration:
Horse is cool—let’s sell some—the Mob don’t mind.
Pete dispatched his niggers. Said niggers grabbed said punk.
Santo T. had a shark named Batista. He lived in Santo’s pool. He ate burgers. He ate steak. He ate pizza.
The niggers dropped the punk in the pool. Batista ate him live.
White horse stayed west. Junkies stayed home. Junkies eschewed white Vegas. Tiger Kabs prowled west. Tiger orbs glowed.
So far:
No new pushers. No pending fuzz heat. No unbribed narcs making noise.
Tiger Kab was hip. Sonny Liston tigerized. Sonny ate at the hut. Sonny drank at the hut. Sonny went on local TV.
Sonny did ads. Sonny proselytized:
“Tiger Kab packs a knockout punch.” “Tiger Kab kicks Cassius Clay’s patootie.”
Fag drivers drove. Straight drivers drove. Pete enforced faction détente. Fag drivers sold boys. Fag celebs bought boys. Fag drivers drove fags to hotels.
Fag clerks minced. Fag clerks smirked. Fag clerks supplied rooms. Said rooms: Bugged/tapped/extortionized.
Fag drivers drove fags. Fag drivers turned tricks. Donkey Dom tricked with Sal Mineo. Donkey Dom tricked with Rock Hudson.
Sonny said it:
“Tiger prowls 24 hours! If you don’t swing, don’t ring!”
Tiger Kab swung in Vegas. Tiger Kamp rocked Laos hard.
Pete rotated. Pete left Vegas. Pete cut the Barb cord. Wayne rotated. Stanton worked in Saigon. Laurent and Chuck worked in Laos.
Pete detached Flash—4/65—strict orders: Hit the Gulf. Hit exile camps. Scout for good troops.
Pete detached Mesplède—4/65—strict orders: Hit the U.S. Hit the South. Scout gun dealers out.
Bob Relyea left Laos—5/65—Bob Relyea hit Mississippi. Bob was Fed now. Bob did snitch work. It was klandestine.
Chuck to follow Bob. Chuck to hit Houston. Chuck to scout guns. Chuck to scout Gulf-close—close to Mississippi. Close to Mesplède and pal Bob.
Chuck snickered to Bob. Bob snickered to Chuck. They snickered contrapuntal. They snickered through Bob’s big farewell.
They implied mischief. They indulged wordplay. They inferred klown-ery. Birmingham, Alabama. Really BOMBingham. Bogalusa—tee-hee—BOMBalusa.
Bob split for Fed work. Chuck changed roommates. Chuck bunked with Laurent Guéry now. Chuck bugged him. Chuck hassled him. Chuck harangued him:
With Klan klaptrap. With klownish klaims. With klaims of krossburns to kome.
Rotations all—Dallas to Vegas—Dallas to Vietnam. Grad-school hijinx and reunions.
Chuck shot. Chuck shot from the knoll. Mesplède shot Oswald’s gun. Flash and Laurent stood in Boyd’s team. They got scuttled pre-hit.
Rotations—Saigon to
the Gulf—the Gulf to Cuba. Flash is Cuban. Flash is dark. Flash could get in.
The plan:
Flash goes in. Flash charts resistance. Flash finds good men. Flash smuggles them out. Flash boats them in. Flash feeds Guéry and Mesplède.
They’ve got a shack. It’s Gulf-close. They’ve got electrodes. They torture the men. They test their balls. They ensure their loyalty.
Rotations—Cuba to the Gulf—the Gulf to Vietnam. Bigggggggg U.S. troop numbers.
Stanton logged said numbers. Stanton logged provocations. Stanton vibed a long war.
The Cong hits Pleiku. Eight Yankees die. LBJ reacts. Air strikes: Operation Flaming Dart.
The Cong hits Qui Nhon. Twenty-one Yankees die. LBJ reacts. More air strikes: Flaming Dart II.
U.S. troops arrive—“advisors”—two Marine battalions. More air strikes: Operation Rolling Thunder.
Two battalions arrive—logistical troops—20,000 men. They get deployed. They get dispersed. They get detached to Marv units.
Firefights. Dead Yanks. Incoming rotations. Buildups—incremental—40,000 men per.
Troops hit Saigon. Troops R&R. Troop numbers swell. Long war good. Kadre like it. Buildup most boocoo.
Wayne lived in Saigon. Wayne lived in his lab. Wayne said his fucking world swelled. More people. More noise. More songs up his vents. More Marvs. More O-heads. More whores.
More cover. More white horse. More money.
Stanton laundered profits. Stanton fed Pete. Pete fed Mesplède. Mesplède bought righteous guns.
.50-calibers/Ithacas/BARs/antitank guns.
Flash found a troop site. It was Gulf-close and gooood. It was near Port Sulphur, Louisiana. It housed sixty troopers—Cubano shitkickers all.
Mesplède dropped some guns off. The shitkickers roared. Pete rotated through. Pete dug on the troops. Pete dug their maneuvers.
The troopers were hard-ons. The troopers were très hard. The troopers were très sanguinaire.
Pete rotated. Pete hit Saigon. Pete met Stanton’s CIA crew. Six men plus Stanton—all Cubafied.
They talked Cuba. They talked ops. They talked polygraph tests. They’d be mandatory and random. They’d go kadre-wide. Let’s ID and whack traitors. Let’s uproot thieves. Let’s assure loyalty.
Stanton flew to Laos. Stanton brought his poly machine. Pete tested. Pete tested clean. Tran tested. Tran tested clean.
Stanton stayed for a visit. Stanton watched the spring burn.
Guards unshackled slaves. Slaves piled brush. Guards formed a fire brigade. They stacked the piles. They positioned them—one per stalk row.
Slaves filled drums with propane gas. Guards dipped torches. Guards whooped. Guards lit torches. Guards torched brush.
The fields burned. The sky flared. The fields burned all night. Guards cheered. Slaves cheered. Tiger Kamp cinderized.
Ash blew. Ash settled. Ash nourished kamp-wide.
Stanton loved it. Stanton stayed. Stanton stayed for the Clay-Liston fight. Chuck rigged a hookup—closed-circuit shit—a feed off MACV in Saigon.
Sonny lost. The fight vibed nonclimax. Sportswriter stupes yelled, “Fix!”
Pete laughed. Fuck it—Pete knew:
Sonny was old. Sonny was slow. Sonny was tigerfried.
70
(Las Vegas, Saigon, Saravan, Bao Loc
3/21/65–6/15/65)
Let’s escalate. Let’s watch.
Khanh is in. Khanh is out. Premier Ky kreams Premier Khanh. Don’t blink—koups and kream-outs kome kwick.
“Escalate”—a verb—LBJ’s word: “To increase, enlarge or intensify.”
The war escalated. Wayne watched.
More troops came in. More troops got pledged. Provocation meant response. More Marines came in. More Marines got pledged. More Airborne came in. More Airborne got pledged in response.
More dead:
More bomb attacks in mid-Saigon. More mid-range dead. The Brinks Hotel/the embassy—more Yankee dead.
More VC. More night patrols. More sabotage.
Pleiku—much aircraft blow—nice U.S. fleet. VC attack—most bold and sincere. VC use pole-and-satchel bombs—homemade/très VC. TNT/palm leaves/bamboo.
Many planes blow. One VC die.
Provocation meant response. Response meant bomb runs. More pilots. More troops. More artillery.
Stanton ran numbers. Provocation meets response—thus fervor meets weight. Stanton predicted two hundred K troops—in by ’66.
Big numbers. Big ordnance. Big weight.
Wayne watched. Wayne dug it. Wayne missed the point. Vietnam was a shithole. The Cong couldn’t lose. The Cong lived to die.
A Cong walked in the Go-Go. Said Cong wore Cong drag—black pj’s deluxe. A spec-4 shot him. A chest bomb blew. Oops—Cong booby-trapped.
Six dead—all U.S.—Cong reigns six-to-one.
Stanton loved the war. Pete loved the war. Stanton and Pete loved Cuba. Cuba was a shithole. Cuba was Saigon with sand.
The kadre loved the war. The kadre kame for Kuba. Wayne came to watch.
He stayed in Saigon. He cooked dope. He watched. GIs hit the Go-Go. GIs bought whores. GIs fucked whores on floor planks.
He watched.
The O-heads decomped. Quicklime ate bone. Marvs made fertilizer. Marvs sold it discount.
He watched.
The Cong burned pylons. Saigon went dark. Pilots dropped psychedelic-tint flares.
He watched. He worked. He lived in Saigon. He cabbed to Bao Loc. He bought weapons. Said weapons were dope cover. Said weapons were donation stock.
He jeeped up and back. He tailed patrols. His standard procedure was watch.
4/8/65—near Dinh Quan. Rice field firefight—jarheads and VC.
A road mine popped. Wayne’s jeep flew. The windshield blew up. The driver ate glass. The driver died. Wayne crouched by his stiff.
Bushes—off the road. They’re moving now. They’re bush-wrapped VC.
They charged. The jarheads proned out. Fair fight/no cover.
Wayne rolled free. Wayne pulled his piece. Wayne shot three VC. His shots dinged. He hit tin vests—fucking trashcan lids.
The VC fired. The jarheads fired. The jarheads aimed high and low. They shot feet. They shot legs. They shot faces. They hit vest-free zones.
The VC went down. Rounds dinged off the jeep. A medic went down with one in the neck. Wayne rolled and fired free.
He hit six VC. He notched all head shots. He double-killed.
The jarheads stood up. A jarhead tripped a punji stick. Spikes slammed him—knees to nipples—punctures and rips.
Wayne rolled to the medic. Wayne grabbed his Syrettes—pure morphine cc’s.
He rolled to the jarhead. He shot up the jarhead. The jarhead convulsed. The jarhead hurled chunks of his spleen.
Wayne had white horse—one spike in his pocket—one short test dose.
He found a vein. He geezed the man. The man gasped. The man smiled. The man nodded out.
Wayne timed his death. He went out in sixteen seconds. He went out wispy and numb.
Pete was World War II. Pete had a rule: Don’t sell to GIs. It was naive. It negated the real rule: provocation meets response.
“Our Boys” would fight the war. “Our Boys” would look for outs. “Our Boys” would find Big “H.”
Stanton had terms: “the Agency’s War” and “the Personal Commitment.”
He killed Bongo. He committed. He joined the war then. He squashed a bug. It felt right. It felt impersonal. He killed Bongo. He dumped Bongo. He took his own pulse. Sixty-two beats a minute—no malice/no stress.
Rats ate Bongo. Some Marvs found his bones. A rumor spread: Chemist do it—chemist kill pimp.
Whores braced Wayne. They said be our pimp—we love you. He said no. He saw that colored whore. He saw her trailer.
The rumor spread. Chuck heard it. Chuck told Bob. Bob braced him. Bob said come south and join my Klan—we’ll fuck niggers up.
Wayne said no. Bob dropped hints: I
work for your dad. Wayne said no. Bob laughed. Wayne said he might come to WATCH.
He watched in Saigon. He watched in Bao Loc. He watched in Vegas. He watched the pushers. He tailed the pushers. He ensured subservience.
He watched West LV. He watched the bars. He watched that trailer. Junkies used it now. Junkies geezed within. They ignored the soot. They ignored the smell. They ignored the whore’s bones.
He watched West LV. He asked around. He trawled for Wendell Durfee. The locals ignored him. The locals misled him. The locals spit on his shoes.
He logged tips. He paid rewards. He logged futile data. He hit the bars. He logged fear. He brought Sonny Liston along.
Sonny quaffed J&B. Sonny popped pills. Sonny ran riffs: Wendell Durfee went Muslim—Muhammad speaks—it gots to be!
Wendell runs a mosque. Wendell knows Cassius Clay. Wendell knew the late Malcolm X.
Storm the Nigger Mosques. Climb the Nigger Grapevine. Comb the Nigger Underworld. Patch the Nigger Switchboard. Punch the Nigger Teletype—and track that nigger down!
Sonny peeled his nigger eyes. Sonny filed his nigger claws. Sonny tapped his nigger intuition. Sonny logged tips. Sonny dished out rewards. Sonny pledged results.
Pete said Durfee was dead. DPD killed him unpublicized. They killed him for Maynard Moore.
Wayne said no—you’re wrong. Wayne logged tips and WATCHED.
He logged lounge time. He watched Barb. He took side seats. He looked backstage. He got candid shots.
The Bondsmen smoked weed there. Barb popped pills. Barb popped Johnnie Black. Her eyes showed it. Her pulse showed it. She cleaned up for Pete’s rotations.
He watched. He saw things everywhere. He felt invisible.
He logged lounge time. He caught Barb’s gigs. He saw Janice and Ward Littell. They sat close. They held hands. They brushed knees.
He saw them. They never saw him. Sonny had a theory: Only niggers see you.
71
(Las Vegas, 6/18/65)
Janice hit balls.
She chipped off her porch. Said porch as golf range—tee/putting strip/net.
It was hot. Janice wore a middy blouse and shorts. Littell watched her concentrate. Littell watched her hit.
Janice teed balls. Janice hit shots. Janice stretched the net. She swiveled. Her blouse gapped. Her beating scars flexed.