by James Ellroy
Robert Kennedy jumped up. His chair crashed—the one-way glass shimmied. “That is very strong testimony! That is a virtual admission of conspiracy to commit land fraud and intent to defraud the Pension Fund!”
Kemper picked the chair up. “It’s only courtroom valid if Gretzler corroborates it or perjures himself denying it. Without Gretzler, it’s Roland’s word versus Hoffa’s. It comes down to credibility, and Roland has two drunk-driving convictions while Hoffa’s record is technically clean.”
Bobby fumed. Kemper said, “Bob, Gretzler has to be dead. His car was dumped in a swamp, and the man himself can’t be found. I’ve put a lot of hours in trying to find him, and I haven’t turned up one viable lead.”
“He could have faked his own death to avoid appearing before the Committee.”
“I think that’s unlikely.”
Bobby straddled his chair and gripped down on the slats. “You may be right. But I may still send you down to Florida to make sure.”
Kirpaski said, “I’m hungry.”
Jack rolled his eyes. Kemper winked at him.
Kirpaski sighed. “I said I’m hungry.”
Kemper checked his watch. “Wrap it up for the senator, Roland. Tell us how Gretzler got drunk and shot his mouth off.”
“I get the picture. Sing for your supper.”
Bobby said, “Goddamnit—”
“All right, all right. It was after the shark shoot. Gretzler was pissed because Jimmy ridiculed him for holding his Tommy gun like a sissy. Gretzler started talking up these rumors he’d heard about the Pension Fund. He said he heard the Fund is a lot fucking richer than people knew, and nobody could subpoena the books, because the books weren’t real. See, Gretzler said there were these ‘real’ Teamster Fund books, probably in code, with fucking tens of millions of dollars accounted for in them. This money gets loaned out at these exorbitant rates. There’s supposed to be some retired Chicago gangster—a real brain—who’s the bookkeeper for the ‘real’ books and the ‘real’ money, and if you’re thinking about corroboration, forget it—I’m the only one Gretzler was talking to.”
Bobby Kennedy pushed his hair back. His voice went high, like an excited child’s.
“It’s our big wedge, Jack. First we subpoena the front books again and determine their solvency. We trace the loaned-out money the Teamsters admit to and try to determine the existence of hidden assets within the Fund and the probability that those ‘real’ books exist.”
Littell pressed up to the glass. He felt magnetized: tousle-haired, passionate Bobby—
Jack Kennedy coughed. “It’s strong stuff. If you can produce verifiable testimony on those books before the Committee’s mandate ends.”
Kirpaski applauded. “Hey, he speaks. Hey, Senator, glad you could join us.”
Jack Kennedy cringed, mock-wounded. Bobby said, “My investigators will be forwarding our evidence along to other agencies. Whatever we dig up will be acted on.”
Jack said, “Eventually?” Littell translated: “Too late to bolster my career.”
The brothers locked eyes. Kemper leaned across the table between them. “Hoffa’s got a block of houses set up at Sun Valley. He’s down there himself, giving PR tours. Roland’s going down to look around. He runs a Chicago local, so it won’t look suspicious. He’ll be calling in to report what he sees.”
Kirpaski said, “Yeah, and I’m also gonna ‘see’ this cocktail waitress I met when I went down for the convention. But you know what? I’m not gonna tell my wife she’s on the menu.”
Jack motioned Kemper in close. Littell caught static-laced whispers:
“I’m flying to L.A. when this snow lets up.”/“Call Darleen Shoftel—I’m sure she’d love to meet you.”
Kirpaski said, “I’m hungry.”
Robert Kennedy packed his briefcase. “Come on, Roland. You can join the family for supper at my house. Try not to say ‘fuck’ around my children, though. They’ll learn the concept soon enough.”
The men filed out a back door. Littell hugged the glass for one last look at Bobby.
7
(Los Angeles, 12/9/58)
Darleen Shoftel faked a mean climax. Darleen Shoftel had whore pals over for shop talk.
Darleen was a bigggg name dropper.
She said Franchot Tone dug bondage. She called Dick Contino a champion muff diver. She dubbed B-movie man Steve Cochran “Mr. King Size.”
Phone calls came in and went out. Darleen talked to tricks, hooker chums and Mom in Vincennes, Indiana.
Darleen loved to talk. Darleen said nothing to explain why two Feds wired her crib.
They attached the Fed apparatus four days ago. 1541 North Alta Vista was miked up floor to rafters.
Fred Turentine piggybacked the Boyd/Littell setup. He heard everything the FBI heard. The Feds rented a listening-post house down the block; Freddy monitored his hookups from a van parked next door and kept Pete supplied with tape copies.
And Pete smelled money and called Jimmy Hoffa—maybe a bit premature.
Jimmy said, “You got a good sense of smell. Come down to Miami on Thursday and tell me what you got. If you got nothing, we can go out on my boat and shoot sharks.”
Thursday was tomorrow. Shark shooting was strictly for geeks. Freddy’s pay was two hundred a day—steep for a crash course in extraneous sex jive.
Pete moped around the watchdog house. Pete savored the hints he dropped on Mr. Hughes: I know you lent Dick Nixon’s brother some coin. Pete kept playing the piggyback tapes out of sheer boredom.
He hit Play. Darleen moaned and groaned. Bedsprings creaked; something headboard-like slammed something wall-like. Dig it: Darleen with a big fat porker in the saddle.
The phone rang—Pete grabbed it fast.
“Who’s this?”
“It’s Fred. Get over here now—we just hit paydirt.”
The van was crammed with contraptions and gadgets. Pete banged his knees climbing in.
Freddy looked all hopped up. His zipper was down, like he’d been choking the chicken.
He said, “I recognized that Boston accent immediately, and I called you the second they started screwing. Listen, this is live.”
Pete put on headphones. Darleen Shoftel spoke, loud and clear.
“… you’re a bigger hero than your brother. I read about you in Time magazine. Your PT boat got rammed by the Japs or something.”
“I’m a better swimmer than Bobby, that’s certainly true.”
3-cherry jackpot: Gail Hendee’s old squeeze, Jack the K.
Darleen: “I saw your brother’s picture in Newsweek magazine. Doesn’t he have like four thousand kids?”
Jack: “At least three thousand, with new ones popping up all the time. When you visit his house the little shits attach themselves to your ankles. My wife finds Bobby’s need to breed vulgar.”
Darleen: “ ‘Need to breed’—that’s cute.”
Jack: “Bobby’s a true Catholic. He needs to have children and punish the men that he hates. If his hate instincts weren’t so unerring, he’d be a colossal pain in the ass.”
Pete clamped his headset down. Jack Kennedy talked, postfuck languid:
“I don’t hate like Bobby does. Bobby hates with a fury. Bobby hates Jimmy Hoffa very powerfully and simply, which is why he’ll win in the end. I was in Washington with him yesterday. He was taking a deposition from a Teamster man who’d become disgusted with Hoffa and had decided to inform on him. Here’s this dumb brave Polack, Roland something from Chicago, and Bobby takes him home for dinner with his family. You see, uh …”
“Darleen.”
“Right, Darleen. You see, Darleen, Bobby’s more heroic than I am because he’s truly passionate and generous.”
Gadgets blinked. Tape spun. They hit the royal flush/Irish Sweep-stakes-jackpot—Jimmy Hoffa would SHIT when he heard it.
Darleen: “I still think that PT boat thing was pretty swell.”
Jack: “You know, you’re a good listener, Arlene.
”
Fred looked ready to DROOL. His fucking eyes were dollar-sign dilated.
Pete made fists. “This is mine. You just sit tight and do what I tell you to.”
Freddy cringed. Pete smiled—his hands put the fear out every time.
A Tiger Kab met his plane. The driver talked Cuban politics nonstop: El grande Castro advancing! El puto Batista in retreat!
Pancho dropped him off at the cabstand. Jimmy had the dispatch shack commandeered—goons were packing up life jackets and Tommy guns.
Hoffa shooed them out. Pete said, “Jimmy, how are you?”
Hoffa picked up a nail-studded baseball bat. “I’m all right. You like this? Sometimes the sharks get up close to the boat and you can give them a few whacks.”
Pete opened up his tape rig and plugged it into a floor outlet. The tiger-stripe wallpaper made his head swim.
“It’s cute, but I brought something better.”
“You said you smelled money. That’s gotta mean my money for your trouble.”
“There’s a story behind it.”
“I don’t like stories, unless I’m the hero. And you know I’m a busy—”
Pete put a hand on his arm. “An FBI man braced me. He said he had an ‘in’ on the McClellan Committee. He said he made me for the Gretzler job, and he said Mr. Hoover didn’t care. You know Hoover, Jimmy. He’s always left you and the Outfit alone.”
Hoffa pulled his arm loose. “So? You think they’ve got evidence? Is that what that tape’s all about?”
“No. I think the Fed’s spying on Bobby Kennedy and the Committee for Hoover, or something like that, and I think Hoover’s on our side. I tailed the guy and his partner up to a fuck pad in Hollywood. They bugged and wired it, and my guy Freddy Turentine hooked up a piggy-back. Now, listen.”
Hoffa tapped his foot like he was bored. Hoffa brushed tiger-striped lint off his shirt.
Pete tapped Play. Tape hissed. Sex groans and mattress squeaks escalated.
Pete timed the fuck. Senator John F. Kennedy: 2.4-minute man.
Darleen Shoftel faked a climax. There, that Boston bray: “My god-damn back gave out.”
Darleen said, “It was goooood. Short and sweet’s the best.”
Jimmy twirled his baseball bat. Goosebumps bristled up his arms.
Pete pushed buttons and cut to the good stuff. Two-Minute Jack rhapsodized:
“… a Teamster man who’d become disgusted with Hoffa … this dumb brave Polack, Roland something from Chicago.”
Hoffa popped goose bumps. Hoffa choked up a grip on his bat.
“This Roland something has working-class panache.… Bobby’s got his teeth in Hoffa. When Bobby bites down he doesn’t let go.”
Hoffa popped double goose bumps. Hoffa went bug-eyed like a fright-wig nigger.
Pete stood back.
Hoffa let fly—watch that nail-topped Louisville Slugger GO—
Chairs got smashed to kindling. Desks got knocked legless. Walls got spike-gouged down to the baseboard.
Pete stood way back. A glowing plastic Jesus doorstop got shattered into eight million pieces.
Paper stacks flew. Wood chips ricocheted. Drivers watched from the sidewalk—Jimmy roundhoused the window and glass-blasted them.
James Riddle Hoffa: heaving and voodoo-eyed stuporous.
His bat snagged on a doorjamb. Jimmy stared at it—say what?
Pete grabbed him in a bear hug. Jimmy’s eyes rolled back, catatonic-style.
Hoffa flailed and squirmed. Pete squeezed him close to breathless and baby-talked him.
“I can keep Freddy on the piggyback for two hundred a day. Sooner or later we might get something you can fuck the Kennedys with. I’ve got some political dirt files, too. They might do us some good someday.”
Hoffa focused in half-lucid. His voice came out laughing-gas squeaky.
“What … do … you … want?”
“Mr. Hughes is going nuts. I was thinking I’d get next to you and cover my bets.”
Hoffa squirmed free. Pete almost choked on his smell: sweat and bargain-basement cologne.
His color receded. He caught his breath. His voice went down a few octaves.
“I’ll give you 5% of this cabstand. You keep the piggyback going in L.A. and show up here once in a while to keep these Cubans in line. Don’t try to Jew me up to 10%, or I’ll say ‘fuck you’ and send you back to L.A. on the bus.”
Pete said, “It’s a deal.”
Jimmy said, “I’ve got a job in Sun Valley. I want you to come with me.”
They took a Tiger Kab out. Shark-shoot goodies bulged up the trunk: nail bats, Tommy guns and suntan oil.
Fulo Machado drove. Jimmy wore fresh threads. Pete forgot to bring spare clothes—Hoffa’s stink stuck to him.
Nobody talked—Jimmy Hoffa sulking killed chitchat. They passed buses filled with Teamster chumps headed for the sucker-bait tract pads.
Pete did mental arithmetic.
Twelve cab drivers working around-the-clock. Twelve men with Jimmy Hoffa-sponsored green cards—taking short-end taxi-fare splits to stay in America. Twelve moonlighters: stickup men, strikebreakers, pimps. 5% of the top-end money and whatever else he could scrounge—this gig packed potential.
Fulo pulled off the highway. Pete saw the spot where he whacked Anton Gretzler. They followed a bus convoy to the bait cribs—three miles from the Interstate easy.
Movie spotlights gave off this huge glow—extra-bright, like a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese. The cosmetic Sun Valley looked good: tidy little houses in a blacktop-paved clearing.
Teamsters were boozing at card tables—at least two hundred men squeezed into the walkways between houses. A gravel parking lot was crammed with cars and buses. A bar-b-que pit stood adjacent—check that spike-impaled steer twirling and basting.
Fulo parked close to the action. Jimmy said, “You two wait here.”
Pete got out and stretched. Hoffa zoomed into the crowd—toadies swarmed him right off the bat.
Fulo sharpened his machete on a pumice stone. He packed it in a scabbard strapped to the backseat.
Pete watched Jimmy work the crowd.
He showed off the pads. He gave little speeches and wolfed bar-b-que. He seized up and flushed around a blond Polack type.
Pete chain-smoked. Fulo played the cab radio: some Spanish-language pray-for-Jesus show.
A few buses took off. Two carloads of hookers pulled in—trashy Cuban babes chaperoned by off-duty state troopers.
Jimmy huckstered and hawked Sun Valley applications. Some Teamsters grabbed their cars and fishtailed off drunk and rowdy.
The Polack bagged a U-drive Chevy and burned gravel like he had a hot date somewhere.
Jimmy walked up fast—stubby legs chugging on overdrive. You didn’t need a fucking road map: the Polack was Roland Kirpaski.
They piled in to the tiger sled. Fulo gunned it. The radio geek cranked up a donation plea.
Lead-foot Fulo got the picture. Lead-foot Fulo went 0 to 60 inside six seconds.
Pete saw the Chevy’s taillights. Fulo floored the gas and rammed them. The car swerved off the road, clipped some trees and stalled dead.
Fulo brodied in close. His headlights strafed Kirpaski—stumbling through a clearing thick with marsh grass.
Jimmy got out and chased him. Jimmy waved Fulo’s machete. Kirpaski tripped and stood up flashing two fuck-you fingers.
Hoffa carne in swinging. Kirpaski went down flailing wrist stumps gouting blood. Jimmy swung two-handed—scalp flaps flew.
The radio clown jabbered. Kirpaski convulsed head to toe. Jimmy wiped blood from his eyes and kept swinging.
8
(Miami, 12/11/58)
Kemper called the car game Devil’s Advocate. It helped him keep his loyalties straight and honed his ability to project the right persona at the right time.
Bobby Kennedy’s distrust inspired the game. His southern accent slipped once—Bobby caught it instantly.
Kemper cru
ised South Miami. He began the game by marking who knew what.
Mr. Hoover knew everything. SA Boyd’s “retirement” was cloaked in FBI paperwork: if Bobby sought corroboraron, he’d find it.
Claire knew everything. She’d never judge his motives or betray him.
Ward Littell knew of the Kennedy incursion. He most likely disapproved of it—Bobby’s crimebuster fervor deeply impressed him. Ward was also an ad hoc infiltration partner, compromised by the Darleen Shoftel wire job. The job shamed him—but gratitude for his THP transfer outweighed his guilt pangs. Ward did not know that Pete Bondurant killed Anton Gretzler; Ward did not know that Mr. Hoover condoned the murder. Bondurant terrified Ward—a sane response to Big Pete and the legend he inspired. The Bondurant matter should be kept from Ward at all cost.
Bobby knew that he was pimping for Jack—supplying him with the numbers of especially susceptible old flames.
Questions and answers next: practice for deflecting skepticism.
Kemper braked for a woman lugging groceries. His game snapped to the present tense.
Bobby thinks I’m chasing leads on Anton Gretzler. I’m really protecting Howard Hughes’ pet thug.
Q: You seem bent on crashing the Kennedy inner, circle.
A: I can spot comers a mile off. Cozying up to Democrats doesn’t make me a Communist. Old Joe Kennedy’s as far right as Mr. Hoover.
Q: You “cozied up” to Jack rather fast.
A: If circumstances had been different, I could have been Jack.
Kemper checked his notebook.
He had to go by Tiger Kab. He had to go to Sun Valley and show mug shots to the witness who saw the “big man” avert his face off the Interstate.
He’d show him old mug shots—bad current Bondurant likenesses. He’d discourage a confirmation: you didn’t really see this man, did you?
A tiger-striped taxi swerved in front of him. He saw a tiger-striped hut down the block.
Kemper pulled up and parked across the street. Some curbside loungers smelled COP and dispersed.
He walked into the hut. He laughed—the wallpaper was fresh-flocked tiger-striped velveteen.