by James Ellroy
Boyd had trouble sleeping. It’s a blessing, Kemper—you don’t want my claustrophobic nightmares.
71
(Washington, D.C., 6/61–11/61)
He loved his office. Carlos Marcello bought it for him.
It was a spacious three-room suite. The building was very close to the White House.
A professional furnished it. The oak walls and green leather nearly matched Jules Schiffrin’s study.
He had no receptionist and no secretary. Carlos did not believe in sharing secrets.
Carlos brought him full circle. The ex-Chicago Phantom was now a Mafia lawyer.
The symmetry felt real. He hitched his star to a man who shared his hatreds. Kemper facilitated the union. He knew that it would jell.
John F. Kennedy took Kemper full circle. They were two charming, shallow men who never grew up. Kennedy sicced thugs on a foreign country and betrayed them when he saw how it looked. Kemper protected certain Negroes and sold heroin to others.
Carlos Marcello played the same rigged game. Carlos used people and made sure they knew the rules. Carlos knew that he would pay for his life with eternal damnation.
They walked hundreds of miles together. They went to mass in jungle towns and contributed extravagant church tithes.
They walked alone. No bodyguards or back scratchers walked with them.
They ate in cantinas. They bought entire villages lunch. He wrote deportation briefs on tabletops and phoned them in to New York.
Chuck Rogers flew them to Mexico. Carlos said, “I trust you, Ward. If you say ‘Turn yourself in,’ I’ll do it.”
He fulfilled that trust. Three judges reviewed the evidence and released Marcello on bond. The Littell writ work was considered audaciously brilliant.
Grateful Carlos set him up with James Riddle Hoffa. Jimmy was predisposed to fondness—Carlos handed the Fund books back to him and described the circumstances behind their return.
Hoffa became his second client. Robert Kennedy remained his sole adversary.
He wrote briefs for Hoffa’s formal litigators. The results confirmed his brilliance.
July ’61: A second Sun Valley indictment is dismissed. Littell writs prove the grand jury was improperly impaneled.
August ’61: A South Florida grand jury is cut off at the knees. A Littell brief proves that evidence was obtained through entrapment.
He’d come full circle.
He quit drinking. He rented a beautiful Georgetown apartment and finally cracked the Fund book code.
Numbers and letters became words. Words became names—to track against police files, city directories and every financial listing in the public domain.
He tracked those names for four months straight. He chased celebrity names, political names, criminal names and anonymous names. He ran obituary checks and criminal record checks. He quadruple-checked names, dates and figures, and cross-referenced all salient data.
He tracked names linked to numbers linked to public stockholder reports. He assessed names and numbers for his own investment portfolio—and amassed a staggering secret history of financial collusion.
Among the Teamster Central States Pension Fund lendees:
Twenty-four U.S. senators, nine governors, 114 congressmen, Allen Dulles, Rafael Trujillo, Fulgencio Batista, Anastasio Somoza, Juan Perón, Nobel Prize researchers, drug-addicted movie stars, loan sharks, labor racketeers, union-busting factory owners, Palm Beach socialites, rogue entrepreneurs, French right-wing crackpots with extensive Algerian holdings, and sixty-seven unsolved homicide victims extrapolatable as Pension Fund deadbeats.
The chief cash conduit/lender was one Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.
Jules Schiffrin died abruptly. He might have sensed uncharted Fund potential—machinations past the grasp of the common mobsters.
He could implement Schiffrin’s knowledge. He could put the full force of his will behind that one thing.
Five months stone-cold sober taught him this:
You’re capable of anything.
Part IV
HEROIN
December 1961–September 1963
72
(Miami, 12/20/61)
Agency guys called the place “Suntan U.” Girls in shorts and halter tops five days before Christmas—no shit.
Big Pete wants a woman. Extortion experience preferred, but not mandat—
Boyd said, “Are you listening to me?”
Pete said, “I’m listening, and I’m observing. It’s a nice tour, but the coeds are impressing me more than JM/Wave.”
They cut between buildings. The Ops station was cattycorner to the women’s gym.
“Pete, are you—?”
“You were saying Fulo and Néstor could run the Cadre business by themselves. You were saying Lockhart went off contract status to start up his own Klan in Mississippi and snitch for the Feds. Chuck’s taking his place at Blessington, and my new gig is funneling guns to Guy Banister in New Orleans. Lockhart’s got some gun connections I can tap into, and Guy’s touting some guy named Joe Milteer, who’s hooked into some guys in the John Birch Society and the Minutemen. They’ve got beaucoup fucking gun money, and Milteer will be dropping some off at the cabstand.”
They hit a shady walkway and grabbed a bench out of the sun. Pete stretched his legs and eyeballed the gym.
“That’s good retention for a bored listener.”
Pete yawned. “JM/Wave and Mongoose are boring. Coastal harassment, gun running and monitoring exile groups is one big snore.”
Boyd straddled the bench. College kids and Cuban hard-ons fraternized two benches over.
“Describe your ideal course of action.”
Pete lit a cigarette. “We should clip Fidel. I’m for it, you’re for it, and the only guys that aren’t for it are your pals Jack and Bobby.”
Boyd smiled. “I’m starting to think we should do it anyway. If we could develop a patsy to take the fall, the hit would probably never be traced back to the Agency or to us.”
“Jack and Bobby would just figure they got lucky.”
Boyd nodded. “I should run it by Santo.”
“I already did.”
“Did he like the idea?”
“Yeah, he did. And he ran it by Johnny Rosselli and Sam G., and they both said they wanted to be in on it.”
Boyd rubbed his collarbone. “You got a quorum just like that?”
“Not exactly. They all like the idea, but it sounds like they’ll need some more convincing.”
“Maybe we should hire Ward Littell to whip up a few briefs. He’s certainly the chief convincer of the moment.”
“You mean you appreciate the way he snowed Carlos and Jimmy.”
“Don’t you?”
Pete blew smoke rings. “I appreciate a good comeback as much as the next man, but I draw the line at Littell. And you’re smiling because your sissy kid brother finally started acting half-ass competent.”
College girls walked by. Big Pete wants a—
Boyd said, “He’s on our side now, remember?”
“I remember. And I remember that your friend Jack used to be.”
“He still is. And he listens to Bobby like he listens to no one else, and Bobby’s becoming more pro-Cause by the day.”
Pete blew nice concentric rings. “That’s good to know. Maybe it means we’ll tap into our casino money about the time fucking Bobby himself gets elected President.”
Boyd looked distracted. It could be shootout side effects—trauma fucked you up long-range sometimes.
“Kemper, are you listening to—?”
Boyd cut him off. “You were evincing general anti-Kennedy sentiment. You were about to start in on the President, even though he remains our best wedge to get at the casino money, and even though general CIA unpreparedness and not Kennedy cowardice was the major contributing cause of the Bay of Pigs disaster.”
Pete whooped and slapped the bench. “I should have known better than to rag your boys.”
“It’s ‘boy,’ si
ngular.”
“I fucking apologize, although I still don’t see what’s so fucking thrilling about sucking up to the President of the United States.”
Boyd grinned. “It’s the places he lets you go.”
“Like protecting niggers in Meridian, Mississippi?”
“I’ve got Negro blood now. That transfusion I got at Saint Augustine’s came from a colored man.”
Pete laughed. “What you’ve got is a Big White Bwana complex. You’ve got your spooks and your spics, and you’ve got this crazy notion that you’re their southern aristocrat savior.”
Boyd said, “Are you finished?”
Pete clicked his eyes off a tall brunette. “Yeah, I’m finished.”
“Do you feel like rationally discussing a Fidel hit?”
Pete flicked his cigarette at a tree. “My one rational comment is ‘Let Néstor do it.’ ”
“I was thinking of Néstor and two expendable backup shooters.”
“Where do we find them?”
“We look around. You recruit two two-man teams, I recruit one. Néstor goes with the finalists no matter what.”
Pete said, “Let’s do it.”
Dougie Frank Lockhart had the far-right South wired. Gun seekers knew the man to call: carrot-topped Dougie in Puckett, Mississippi.
Santo and Carlos kicked in fifty Gs apiece. Pete took the coin and went gun shopping.
Dougie Frank brokered the deals for a 5% commission. He procured A-1 hand-me-downs hot off the race hate circuit.
Lockhart knew his job. Lockhart knew the Dixie Right was reassessing its weaponry needs.
The Commie Threat had mandated major ordnance. Tommy guns, mortars and grenades fit the bill. Feisty niggers now eclipsed the Red Menace—and small arms handled them best.
The Deep South was one big loony yard sale.
Pete traded junk pistols for brand-new bazookas. Pete bought operational Thompsons for fifty scoots a pop. Pete supplied six campsites with half a million rounds of ammunition.
The Minutemen, the National States Rights Party, the National Renaissance Party, the Exalted Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Royal Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Imperial Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the Klarion Klan Koalition for the New Konfederacy supplied him. He supplied six exile camps, full of expendable backup killers.
Pete spent three weeks gun shopping. He made five Miami-New Orleans circuits.
The fifty grand evaporated. Heshie Ryskind kicked in an additional twenty. Heshie was scared—his doctors diagnosed him with lung cancer.
Heshie whipped up a camp R&R tour to take his mind off his bum health. He brought in Jack Ruby and his strippers, Dick Contino and his accordion.
The strippers stripped and cavorted with exile trainees. Heshie bought entire campsites blow jobs. Dick Contino played “Lady of Spain” six thousand times.
Jimmy Hoffa showed up at the Lake Pontchartrain soiree. Jimmy ranted, railed and raved against the Kennedys nonstop.
Joe Milteer joined the party outside Mobile. He dropped ten grand on the gun fund, unsolicited.
Guy Banister called Old Joe “harmless.” Lockhart said the old boy loved to torch nigger churches.
Pete auditioned backup triggers for the Fidel hit. He laid down his criteria with two simple questions.
Are you an expert marksman?
Would you die to set up Néstor Chasco’s killshot?
He schmoozed up at least a hundred Cubans. Four men made the cut.
CHINO CROMAJOR:
Bay of Pigs survivor. Willing to detonate Castro with a strip-search-proof enema bomb.
RAFAEL HERNÁNDEZ-BROWN:
Cigar maker/gunman. Willing to slip the Beard a poison panatella and go up in smoke with the man who raped his tobacco fields.
CÉSAR RAMOS:
Former Cuban Army cook. Willing to whip up an exploding suckling pig and die at Castro’s Last Supper.
WALTER “JUANITA” CHACÓN:
Sadistic drag queen. Willing to butt-fuck Fidel and go out orgasmic in exile crossfire.
Memo to Kemper Boyd:
Top my shooters—if you can.
73
(Meridian, 1/11/62)
Kemper snorted a coke-“H” speedball. It was precisely his sixteenth taste of dope.
It was his twelfth since the doctor cut off his medication. It averaged out to 1.3 nonaddicted tastes per month.
His head twirled. His brain revved. His shabby room at the Seminole Motel looked almost pretty.
Memo:
Go see that colored preacher. He’s rounding up a group of voting rights complainants.
Memo:
See Dougie Frank Lockhart. He’s got two would-be triggers lined up for you to audition.
The taste hit all the way home.
His collarbone quit throbbing. The pins holding it together meshed clean.
Kemper wiped his nose. The portrait above his desk took on a glow.
It was Jack Kennedy, photographed pre-Pigs. His post-Pigs inscription: “To Kemper Boyd. I guess we both caught a few bullets lately.”
Taste #16 felt high-octane. Jack’s smile was high-test—Dr. Feelgood shot him up before the photo session.
Jack looked young and invincible. The last nine months knocked a lot of that out of him.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco did it. Jack grew up behind a tidal wave of censure.
Jack blamed himself—and the Agency. Jack fired Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell. Jack said, “I’ll smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.”
Jack hates the CIA. Bobby doesn’t. Bobby now hates Fidel Castro like he hates Hoffa and the Mob.
The Bay of Pigs postmortem was painfully protracted. He double-agented as Kemper Boyd, chaperone. He showed Bobby scores of sanitized exiles—the noncriminal types that Langley wanted him to see.
The Study Group called the invasion:
“Quixotic,” “undermanned” and “based on specious intelligence.”
He agreed. Langley disagreed.
Langley thought he was a Kennedy apologist. They considered him politically unsound.
John Stanton told him this. He silently agreed with the appraisal.
He vocally agreed: Yes, JM/Wave will prove efficacious.
He silently disagreed. He urged Bobby to assassinate Fidel Castro. Bobby disagreed. He said it was too gangster-like and inimical to Kennedy policy.
Bobby was a bully with strong moral convictions. His guidelines were often hard to gauge.
Bully Bobby set up racket squads in ten major cities. Their one goal was to recruit organized-crime informants. The move enraged Mr. Hoover. Independent Mob-busters might upstage the Top Hoodlum Program.
Bully Bobby hates Bully J. Edgar. Bully J. Edgar reciprocates. It was unprecedented hatred—the Justice Department seethed with it.
Hoover staged protocol slowdowns. Bobby trashed FBI autonomy. Guy Banister said Hoover placed illegal bug/taps in Mob venues coast to coast.
Bobby had no inkling. Mr. Hoover knew how to keep secrets.
So did Ward Littell. Ward’s best secret was Joe Kennedy’s Teamster Fund “malfeasance.”
Joe had a near-fatal stroke late last year. Claire said it “devastated” Laura.
She tried to contact her father. Bobby prevented it. That three-million-dollar buyoff was binding and permanent.
Claire graduated from Tulane magna cum laude. The NYU law school accepted her. She moved to New York City and took an apartment near Laura.
Laura rarely mentioned him. Claire told her he was wounded by a “random gunshot” in Miami. Laura said, “Kemper and ‘random’? Never.”
Claire believed his squeaky-clean version of the shootout. Claire zoomed down to Saint Augustine’s the second the doctor called her.
Claire said Laura had a new boyfriend. Claire said he was nice. Claire said she met Laura’s “nice friend,” Lenny Sands.
Lenny violated his order and resumed contact with Laura. Lenny always played things indirectly—that Hush-Hush Bay o
f Pigs piece was filled with double-edged innuendo.
He didn’t care. Lenny was extortable and long gone from his life.
Lenny dug up dirt for Howard Hughes. Lenny tattled certain secrets and quashed others. Lenny possessed circumstantial evidence on how badly Kemper Boyd fucked up in April ’61.
Kemper sniffed another speedball.
His heart revved. His collarbone went numb. He remembered how last May compensated for last April.
Bobby ordered him to follow some Freedom Riders. He said, “Just observe, and call for help if Klansmen or whoever get rowdy. Remember, you’re still convalescing.”
He observed. He got up closer than reporters and camera crews.
He saw civil rights workers board buses. He tailed them. Hymns roared out of wide-open windows.
Shitkickers tailed the buses. Car radios blared “Dixie.” He badged a few rock throwers off, with his gun arm still in a sling.
He stopped in Anniston. Some rednecks slashed his tires. A white mob stormed the depot and pelted a Freedom Bus out of town.
He rented an old Chevy and played catch-up. He zoomed out Highway 78 and caught a mob scene.
The bus had been torched. Cops, Freedom Riders and crackers were tangled up off the roadside.
He saw a colored girl batting flames off her pigtails. He saw the torch artist peel rubber. He ran him off the road and pistol-whipped him half-dead.
I take a few tastes now and then. It’s just to help me keep things straight.
“… And the best thing about what I’m proposing is that you won’t have to testify in open court. Federal judges will read your depositions and my accompanying affidavits and go from there. If any of you are called to testify, it will be in closed session, with no reporters, opposing counsel or local police officials present.”
The pretty little church was SRO. The preacher rounded up sixty-odd people.
Kemper said, “Questions?”
A man yelled, “Where you from?” A woman yelled, “What about protection?”
Kemper leaned over the pulpit. “I’m from Nashville, Tennessee. You might recall that we had some boycotts and sit-ins there in 1960, and you might recall that we’ve made great strides toward integration, with minimum bloodshed. I realize that Mississippi is a whole lot less civilized than my home state, and as far as protection goes, I can only say that when you go to register to vote, you’ll have numbers on your side. The more people who offer depositions, the better. The more people who register and vote, the better. I’m not saying that certain elements will take kindly to your voting, but the more of you who vote the better your chance of electing local officials who’ll keep those elements in line.”