by James Ellroy
BR: Because I trust scrambler technology.
FR: It’s more than that.
BR: Okay, it’s because he’s slipping. Why mince words? King’s the one guy he wanted to break the most, and King’s the one guy he can’t break. Here’s another punch line for you. Lyle liked King. He worked against him and admired him anyway, and I’m starting to feel the same way. That grandiose cocksucker is a jigaboo for the ages.
FR: I’ve heard everything now.
BR: No, you haven’t. Try this. Hoover’s a hophead.
FR: Dwight, come—
BR: That Dr. Feelgood guy flies down from New York every day, on the Bureau’s time-card. He gives Hoover a pop of liquid methamphetamine mixed with B-complex vitamins and male hormones. The old boy fades about 1:00 p.m. and perks up like a dog in heat around 2:00.
FR: Jesus.
BR: He’s not God or Jesus. He’s slipping, but he’s still good. We’ve got to be careful around him.
FR: We need to start thinking about a fall guy.
BR: I want to bring in Fred Otash and Bob Relyea to help us look. I’ve gotten tight with Otash, he’s solid, and he’s got juice on the coast. Bob’s your rabbit, so you know the score there. That hump knows every expendable race-baiter in the south.
FR: I’ve got an idea. It might help to facilitate things.
BR: I’m listening.
FR: We should do some hate-mail intercepts on King and the SCLC, to see if we can find a guy who’s sent them letters. I know the Bureau’s doing mail covers, so I think we should bring in a man to go through the covered mail, photograph it and return it to the covering agent, on the sly.
BR: It’s a good idea, if we can find a man we can trust.
FR: My son.
BR: Shit. Don’t give me that.
FR: I’m serious.
BR: I thought you and the kid were estranged. He was moving dope with Pete Bondurant, and you two were on the outs.
FR: We’ve reconciled.
BR: Shit.
FR: You know how he hates coloreds. He’d be perfect for the job.
BR: Shit. He’s too volatile. You recall that little run-in I had with him?
FR: He’s changed, Dwight. He’s a brilliant kid, and he’d be perfect for the job.
BR: I’ll buy brilliant. I bought him his first chemistry set in 1944.
FR: I remember. You said he’d figure out how to split the atom.
BR: You’ve reconciled, you trust him, I concede he’d be good. That said, we don’t want him to know what we’re building up to.
FR: We’ll muddy things. We’ll have him cull mail on King, plus one liberal and one conservative politician. He’ll think I’m just building my intelligence base.
BR: Shit.
FR: He’ll be good. He’s the right man for—
BR: I want a wedge. I’ll bring him in, as long as we’ve got something on him. I know he’s your son, but I’m still going to insist.
FR: Let’s see if we can hand him Wendell Durfee. He’s allegedly in L.A., which means I could put my LAPD contacts on him covert. You know what Wayne will do if he finds him.
BR: Yeah. And I could make like I still hate him and squeeze him with that.
FR: It might work. Shitfire, it will work.
BR: Durfee’s a long shot. He might take time and we might tap out on him.
FR: I know.
BR: We need to bring in our mail guy within the next six weeks.
FR: I’ll bring Wayne in. We’ll work on Durfee in the meantime.
BR: That fucks up the wedge aspect.
FR: Not in the long run.
BR: What are you saying?
FR: We don’t need a wedge for his mail work. We’ve got to have one in place when I tell him he’ll be there for D-Day.
BR: Jesus Christ.
FR: My son doesn’t know it, but he’s been waiting his whole life for this.
BR: In your words, “Shitfire.”
FR: That about says it.
BR: I’ve got to go. I want to get some coffee and think this all through.
FR: It’s going to happen.
BR: You’re damn fucking right it is.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 1/26/67. Las Vegas Sun headline:
HUGHES-DESERT INN NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUE
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/4/67. Denver Post-Dispatch subhead:
FEDERAL INDICTMENTS ON CASINO SKIM-COURIERS
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/14/67. Las Vegas Sun headline and subhead:
WHERE’S DOM DELLACROCIO?
VEGAS POLICE BAFFLED
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/22/67. Chicago Tribune subhead:
KING PREDICTS “VIOLENT SUMMER” IF NEGROES DO NOT GET “FULL JUSTICE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/6/67. Denver Post-Dispatch subhead:
SKIM COURIERS PLEAD GUILTY
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/6/67. Las Vegas Sun subhead:
HUGHES SPOKESMEN CITE SKIM PLEAS
AND PLEDGE TO WORK FOR “CLEAN LAS VEGAS”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/7/67. Los Angeles Times headline and subhead:
HOFFA ENTERS PRISON
58-MONTH SENTENCE LOOMS
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/27/67. Las Vegas Sun headline:
HUGHES-DESERT INN DEAL FINALIZED
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/2/67. San Francisco Chronicle subhead:
KING ATTACKS “RACIST” WAR IN VIETNAM
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/4/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.
Location: Office/Mike Lyman’s Restaurant/Los Angeles/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Unidentified Males #1 & #2, presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 2.6 minutes in progress.)
UM #1: … under Truman and Ike you had order. You had Hoover, who bore us no ill fucking will. Fucking Bobby and Jack changed all that.
UM #2: LBJ’s got schizophilia. He don’t take no shit from the Reds in Vietnam, but he sucks up to that King like he’s his long lost soul brother. The policy guys back east see this correlation. King comes to Harlem, gives these speeches and gets all the pygmies hopped up. They quit playing the numbers, our policy banks take it in the shorts, and the fucking pygmies get agitated and start feeling their oats.
UM #1: I see the correlation. They quit betting policy, their minds wander. They start thinking about Communism and raping white women.
UM #2: King likes white women. I heard he’s a pig for it.
UM #1: All the niggers want it. It’s the fruit of the forbidden fucking tree.
(Non-applicable conversation follows.)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/12/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.
Location: Rec room/St. Agnes Social Club/Philadelphia/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Steven “Steve the Skeev” DeSantis & Ralph Michael Lauria, organized-crime associates. (Conversation 9.3 minutes in progress.)
SDS: … Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie, you can’t talk to them. You can’t reason with them like they’re regular people.
RML: This is not news to me. I have been a landlord for many fucking years.
SDS: You’re a slumlord, Ralphie. Do not try to shit a well-known shitter like me.
RML: You’re talking like that nigger fuck King, which is just the point I wanted to make. I run to my buildings on the first, the welfare checks are out and it’s payday for the few shvoogies who work. Now, one old nigger lady shows me Time Magazine with King on the cover and says, “I don’t gots to pay no rent ’cause the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior says you a slumlord who is exploiting me.” This fuck two doors down demands his civil rights, which he fucking describes as “I don’t have to pay no rent until all my peoples is free.”
SDS: They’re way out of line. As a fucking race, I mean.
RML: That King’s got them hopped up. You got a whole race of overstimulated people.
SDS: Someone should clip that hump King. They should slip him a poison watermelon.
RML: We should
join the Ku Klux Klan.
SDS: You’re too fat to wear a sheet.
RML: Fuck you. I’ll join anyway.
SDS: Forget it. They don’t take Italians.
RML: Why? We’re white.
(Non-applicable conversation follows.)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 4/21/67. Listening-post report. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.
Location: Suite 301/El Encanto Hotel/Santa Barbara/listening-post-accessed.
Sirs,
During the 1st monitoring period (4/2/67–4/20/67), Subject RFK was not in residence at the target location. Subject RFK rents the suite on a yearly basis & it remains empty during his absences. The (voice-activated) mounts have thus far picked up only the non-applicable conversations of El Encanto caretakers & other employees. Per orders, the listening post will continue to be manned full-time.
Respectfully,
SA C. W. Brundage
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/9/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.
Location: Card room/Grapevine Tavern/St. Louis/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Unidentified males #1 & #2, presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 1.9 minutes in progress.)
UM #1: … Klan’s willing to stand up and be counted, which means you’ve got to call them our shock troops.
UM #2: I’m for segregation, don’t get me wrong.
UM #1: St. Louis is a good example. One, it’s hillbilly. Two, it’s got lots of Catholics. I ain’t ashamed to say I’m a hillbilly, you’re sure as hell an Italian and a Catholic, we work together good ’cause you so-called Mafia guys are white men who worship Jesus just like me, which means we hate alike, too, so you got to concede that the Klan’s got some answers, and if they put their anti-Catholic shit aside you’d be the first to make some big donations.
UM #2: That is true. I sub-contract to you because you okies, no offense, think and hate like we do.
UM #1: If Nigger King walked in here right now, I’d kill him.
UM #2: I’d fight you for the right. King and Bobby Kennedy, those are the shitbirds I hate. Bobby fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked the Outfit until we had no place left to bleed. King’s doing the same thing right now. He’ll fuck this country in the keester and fuck us and fuck us and fuck us and fuck and fuck us and fuck us while the other boogies overbreed and turn this country into a welfare-state shithole.
UM #1: I’m 3rd-generation Klan. There, I said it, and you ain’t shocked. You may take your orders from Rome, but I don’t care. You’re a white man, just like me.
UM #2: Fuck you. I take my orders from a fat dago with a pinkie ring.
(Non-applicable conversation follows.)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 5/28/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.
Location: Card room/Grapevine Tavern/St. Louis/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Norbert Donald Kling & Rowland Mark DeJohn, paroled felons (Armed Robbery/Bunco/GTA) & presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 3.9 minutes in progress.)
NDK: … like a kitty, I mean.
RMDJ: I get it. Guys pitch in, you watch the kitty grow.
NDK: We don’t pitch in. Guys with real coin do, until you got a big enough pot to attract a guy who can do it.
RMDJ: Right. It’s a bounty. The word goes out that it’s there, you do the job, you prove you did it, you collect.
NDK: Right. You attract a pro, and he gets away with it. It’s not like Oswald, you know, with Kennedy.
RMDJ: Oswald was a Commie and a psycho. He wanted to get caught.
NDK: Right. And people loved Kennedy.
RMDJ: Well, some people. Personally, I hated the son-of-a-bitch.
NDK: You know what I’m saying. With King you got a nigger that everyone hates. The only white people who don’t hate him are some Jews and pinkos, but every other white person knows that integration will put this country in the toilet, so you get rid of Public Nuisance Number One and nip that eventuality in the bud.
RMDJ: He’s dead, the country rejoices.
NDK: You put the word out. That’s the thing.
RMDJ: Yeah, the bounty.
NDK: We ain’t got the scratch, but there’s guys around here who do.
RMDJ: He’s begging for it.
NDK: That’s the part I like. You beg for it, you get it.
(Non-applicable conversation follows.)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 6/14/67. Hate-mail extract. Compiled by: FATHER RABBIT. Sealed and marked: “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.”
Mail sender: Anonymous. Postmark: Pasadena, California. Recipient: Senator Robert F. Kennedy. From page 1 (of 19):
DEAR SENATOR KENNEDY,
I KNOW THAT YOU & THE ZIONIST WORLDWIDE PIG ORDER HAVE PUT THE PUS IN THE JEWISH CANCER MACHINE AND GAVE ME HEADACHES, NOT FALLS FROM HORSES AS DR’S BELIEVE. YOU SAY THAT ALLAH DRIVES AN IMPALA BUT I KNOW THAT THE JEWISH CONTROL APPARATUS CONTROLS AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION IN DETROIT AND BEVERLY HILLS. YOU ARE A PUS PUPPET IN THE CONTROL OF THE JEWISH VAMPIRE AND MUST STOP EMITTING HEADACHES IN THE NAME OF THE CHIEF RABBI OF LODZ AND MIAMI BEACH AND THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/5/67. Hate-mail extract. Compiled by: FATHER RABBIT. Sealed and marked: “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.”
Mail sender: Anonymous. Postmark: St. Louis, Missouri. Recipient: Dr. M. L. King. From page 1 (of 1):
Dear Nigger,
You better fear the ides of July and June;
There’s going to be a bounty on you, Coon;
You’re a traitor and a Commie and an evil ape;
All you do is lie, steal and rape;
But the White Man’s wise to your evil ways;
The bounty means you’d better pray and count your days;
You can’t dodge bullets like Superman;
You can’t run away from the White Man’s Plan;
When you get this letter you better hide;
Because you can’t escape the White Man’s fearless tide.
Signed,
U.W.M.A. (United White Men of America)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/21/67. Hate-mail extract. Compiled by: FATHER RABBIT. Sealed and marked: “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.”
Mail sender: Anonymous. Postmark: Pasadena, California. Recipient: Senator Robert F. Kennedy. From page 2 (of 16):
[And] YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE ARAB PEOPLE AND STOLEN OUR LAND OF MILK AND HONEY TO MILK PUS FROM THE WORLDWIDE ZIONIST PIG ORDER AND THE JEWISH CANCER MACHINE. BAYER ASPIRIN AND BUFFERIN AND ST. JUDE’S HOSPITAL CANNOT STOP MY HEADACHES FROM THE PUS INFLICTED BY THE JEWISH VAMPIRE AND CANNOT HEAR ME SAY RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!!
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/23/67. Boston Globe headline and subhead:
RIOTS SWEEP CITY
ARSON, LOOTING, REIGN
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/29/67. Detroit Free Press headline and subhead:
RIOTS ROCK DETROIT
DEATHS AND DAMAGE MOUNT
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/30/67. Boston Globe headline and subhead:
KING TO PRESS:
RIOTS “MANIFESTATIONS OF WHITE RACISM”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/2/67. Washington Post subhead:
RIOT DAMAGE MOUNTS; POLICE CALL DISTRICT “COMBAT ZONE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/5/67. Los Angeles Times headline and subhead:
KING ON RIOTS:
“THE FRUIT OF WHITE INJUSTICE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/6/67. Telephone call transcript. Taped by: BLUE RABBIT. Marked: “FBI-Scrambled”/“Stage-1 Covert”/ “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.” Speaking: BLUE RABBIT, FATHER RABBIT.
BR: Senior, hi.
FR: How are you, Dwight? It’s been a while.
BR: Don’t mind the clicks. My scrambler’s on the fritz.
&nbs
p; FR: I don’t mind. I’d rather talk than mess with pouches.
BR: Have you been watching the news? The natives are restless.
FR: King predicted it.
BR: No, he promised it, and now he’s gloating.
FR: He’s making enemies. There’s times I think we might not get there first.
BR: There’s times I agree. The Outfit hates him, and every cracker in captivity has got his tits in a twist. You should hear my listening-post tapes.
FR: Shitfire, I’d like to.
BR: There’s a joint in St. Louis. A dump called the Grapevine. Outfit guys and sub-lease hoods frequent it. They’ve been talking up a fifty-grand bounty. It’s starting to feel like a giant wet dream out there in the spiritus mundi.
FR: You slay me. “Wet Dream” and “Spiritus Mundi” in the same sentence.
BR: I’m a chameleon. I’m like Ward Littell that way. I alter my vocabulary to suit the company I’m with.
FR: At least you know it. I can’t say Littell’s that much in control of his effects.
BR: He is and he isn’t.
FR: For instance?
BR: For instance, he watches for tails everywhere he goes. Mr. Hoover’s been running spots on him off and on for years, and he knows it. He catches 90% and misses 10. He’s probably got just enough hubris to think he’s batting a hundred.
FR: Hubris. I like it.
BR: You should. I picked it up at Yale Law.
FR: Boola, boola.
BR: Tell me about the intercepts. By my lights, your son should be twelve weeks in.
FR: More like eight. You know how he travels for Bondurant. It took him months to set up his system.
BR: Tell me about it.
FR: He rented a place in D.C. He’s pulling mail off King, Barry Goldwater, and Bobby Kennedy. The Bureau’s running normal intercepts, and all their mail comes addressed to the SCLC headquarters and the Senate Office Building. There’s a four-agent team running a mail drop at 16th and “D.” The night shift goes home at 11:00, so Wayne lets himself in at 1:00, pulls the mail, copies it and returns it at 5:00. He shuttles down from New York when he rotates in from Saigon.