November 18, 1971-March 26, 1972
____________________
(Puckett, 11/18/71)
“So, who’m I gonna kill?”
“You’ll know him when you see him.”
“You picked a date yet?”
“Next summer’s our best shot. It has to happen in L.A.”
“These political hits stir up lots of shit. Various patriotic groups get scrutinized pretty good.”
The kampground was krowded. Mi kasa es su kasa. The Exalted Knights invited some kolleagues. Sleepover kamp. Klan klods, Cuban exiles, South American fascistas.
The bunkhouse was full. The gun range did brisk biz. The county sheriff dressed a four-point elk. His deputies built a cook pit.
Bob said, “You want the conspiracy talk. I’m just afraid my name’ll pop up on the suspect list.”
Dwight shook his head. “It won’t. The fall guy’s taking all the bows on this one. Nobody will want to look past him. We’ve built him from the ground up. The more you look, the more you’ll want to keep looking.”
Bob got sulky. He scooched low in his chair. His sheet brushed the dirt. It was mid-fall hot. Dusk came on. Exiles propped up arc lights. Some beat-on Klan frau prepped a buffet.
Dwight shut his eyes. It cued Bob to split. You’re a loser assassin, please go away.
Bob meandered. Dwight opened his eyes. The kampsite was deklassй. His daddy’s Klan was high-swank compared to this. Indiana, the ‘20s. Nativist gabfests and pyramid schemes. Eugenics readings. A ladies’ string kwartet.
Full night hit. Bugs bombed the arc lights. The roast elk smelled good. The nuts hit the snack buffet for sour mash and Cheetos.
Dwight walked away from the party. The arc lights glowed wide and hot. The kampsite was dirt-floored. The Klan klowns mingled. Their sheets were soiled to the knees.
Joan worried him. She was haggard. She was chain-smoking and knocking back double scotches at night. She was vicious per Mr. Hoover. It was un-utilitarian and very un-Joan. She refused to explain her invective. She stonewalled his queries with looks and “I’m not telling you.” It was frustrating. Their time frame was “insanely protracted.” She knew Mr. Hoover was elderly and traveled far less. He had been somewhat discredited. He did fewer public gigs. Doctor’s visits preempted his recent jaunts. The White House was telexing an updated schedule. Joan was worried about Celia. He stiffed an unscheduled call to the prez and requested help. Nixon rebuffed him. “You’ve been to that well, kid. You can’t keep coming back.”
Odd things moved her. Lionel Thornton’s death stuck and held. She refused to say why. Scotty Bennett worked the case and closed the case, toot sweet. Scotty vaguely troubled him. Scotty had a tweaky friendship going with Marsh. Peeper Crutchfield reported it before the “Blastout.” Marsh’s life would be fine-tooth-combed postmortem. It begged a question: should they insert Scotty in the fake diary?
Flying bugs bombed the arc lights. The nuts ate, drank and ignored him. They knew he was FBI. Their bias was misdirected. They were punk punsters. FBI: Federal Bureau of Integration.
The diary defined the Operation. He worked on it while Joan or Karen slept. He utilized Marsh’s verbal style and emphasized a political language he’d evolved in his head. He attributed his own childhood memories to Marsh. Alchemy and transposition. He was a sand-kicking Klan kid. Marsh was a sand-kicked-in-the-face black boy. He was building a sympathetic portrait. He was creating Marsh’s non-existent crush on Agent Holly himself. It was distorting Marsh’s work on OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER. He knew nothing of the Marsh-Scotty relationship. The diary must etch Scotty with verismo. The Scotty sections must withstand public scrutiny and Scotty’s bellicose rebuttals. The theme should be authority. Marsh hates it ideologically, but cannot let it ago. He’s like his old chum Mr. Holly that way.
The Klanfest picked up steam. Story fragments drifted over. Emmett Till was a Commie agent. Rosa Parks turned tricks for a Zionist cabal. Dr. King was a hermaphrodite.
A Klan tot brought Dwight food and a Jax lager. He thanked her and watched her skip off. Fat spritzed off the elk meat and killed his appetite. He lit a cigarette.
Joan kept taking the fertility pills. He never told her that he’d had them analyzed. She turned forty-five last month. It couldn’t happen. He fucked with the notion, despite that. It was a pipe dream. It felt good for a while. It ran in shorter and shorter arcs. It reminded him what his life was. It took him to Karen’s kids and dropped him somewhere cold in the rain.
Klan kliques pulled chairs up nearby him. They balanced paper plates and told tales. A guy sold Che Guevara’s dick to Josef Mengele. The Fourth Reich would rise from Paraguay. A guy told a story of right-wing coups and mystic emeralds.
Joan drank tea in bed. The herbs flushed through her skin, bitter. He noticed new gray in her eyebrows.
Her robe was open. The herbs made her sweat. Dwight kissed the sheen off her breasts.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
“That I should relent. That you should call your phone pal and have him make some calls for Celia.”
Dwight shook his head. “I called from Mississippi. He said no.”
Joan rolled away from him. He pulled off their robes and curled around her. She put his fingers in her mouth for a second and tucked his hand under her head.
“It’s all taking too long.”
“He’ll probably be in L.A. next summer. I’ll be getting his revised schedule soon.”
“Suppose he doesn’t stay at the Beverly Wilshire?”
“He will. We’ll have to lease the perch soon, and start laying in the evidence.”
Joan coughed. “The black kid who leases it will be a witness.”
“We’ll work him through a cutout. If he comes forward, he’ll be considered a nut. People want to crash history. There were four-thousand-odd false witnesses on Jack alone.”
Her pillow was sweated through. Dwight pulled it out and tucked a fresh one under her head.
Joan grabbed a capsule off her nightstand. Dwight passed her his water glass.
She swallowed the capsule. Her hair was wet. Dwight stroked it dry with a bedsheet.
She started dozing. She fell asleep tucked into his hand.
He worked late. Midnight meant Marsh-as-me time. He recalled a cop barter, 1953. Cleveland PD wanted a Fed file. A grand larceny suspect was Red-tinged. The SAC refused a file trade. The PD sent a cop’s ex-wife to lube the Enforcer. She liked random men. He liked random women then. They spent the night at the Shaker Heights Plaza. She brought champagne. He brought the file. They enjoyed each other. She read the file in the morning. Cleveland PD nailed the guy-six-count indictment.
Okay, now-Marsh Bowen’s perspective.
The time was now. Marsh is working the Hollywood night car. He’s alone. He’s trolling. Marsh shits where he eats. He spots a hunky male prosty. He pat-searches him and gets a hard-on. The prosty notices it.
Marsh F.I.-cards the kid and warrant-checks him. He comes back dirty: possession and deuce. Marsh says, “How do you want to handle this?” Fade to the crude back-alley embrace.
He couldn’t sleep. Joan was dead out. Marsh was sleeping over in Ventura. The Black Leadership Council brought him up. Keynote speech: “The Minority Officer’s Role in Team Policing.”
It was 2:14 a.m. He got in with tungsten bolt-snaps and wore infrared shades. He carried his Minox mini. He prowled in rose-tinted dark.
He opened drawers and tapped panels. He got status quo. He scanned the bedroom walls. Marsh had a new Rothko print. He checked the stereo rack. New sides by Chet Baker and the Dresden Stattskapelle. He checked the kitchen trash. Marsh had a new yen for gourmet TV dinners. There’s an airline boarding ticket. Marsh recently traveled to Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Educated guess: he shits out of harms way. Afro fruit retreat.
Dwight walked back to the living room. More status quo. The steel-brushed frames, the neat work desk, the address book by the phone.
He skimmed the pages. Ah, at B: Scotty’s home and work numbers. He skimmed C to M. Ah, there’s a new one.
Sal Mineo. A West Hollywood-prefix listing.
Logical: Sal’s a fag, Sal’s a horndog, Sal’s got a well-traveled chute.
But:
He deployed Sal in a fruit squeeze, four-plus years ago. He saw Sal’s name on a Bureau snitch roster.
Status quo? Probably, but-
One agent dozed in the squadroom. The file keys were hooked to a corkboard. Dwight grabbed them and walked straight back.
The CBI files were five-digit-coded and ran ceiling high. Dwight skimmed the directory. There: “Mineo, Salvatore”/02108. There: third shelf up, two rows over.
Dwight unlocked the panel, stood on his tiptoes and snagged it. It was skimpy. Four pages total. Simple narrative gist.
August, ‘66. Sal’s got a co-star gig. He’s the sidekick in a crime turkey. It’s called Southside Crackdown. It plays low-rung drive-in circuits and disappears. It’s loosely based on the famous 1964 heist.
So far-snore.
Jack Leahy visits the set. Jack braces Sal and the rest of the actors and crew. Suspicious guys loitering? Suspicious queries on the real-life heist?
Sal knew buppkes. Ditto everyone else. Jack charmed Sal and popped his snitch cherry. Sal ratted out queer actors for occasional chump change.
Snore, yawn, status quo-but don’t dismiss it yet.
Dwight stood there. Dwight heard a whole box of pins drop.
The Bureau worked the heist for ten seconds. It was LAPD’s case and Scotty B.’s fixation. Scotty and Marsh, tight now. The heist: Clyde Duber’s soft-line fixation. Marsh worked for Clyde. Scotty grilled Jomo C. about the heist. It made no sense then. It might make sense now. Jomo killed Fred Hiltz, Jomo’s a heister. There’s Joan hovering. She false-snitched Jomo. She ratted Marsh’s fruitness. What do Marsh and Scotty want? Red file tab, red flag. The Marsh-Scotty bond must not impede the Operation.
Dwight put the file back. The pin drop went to pins and needles.
Sicko Sal never slept. He closed fruit bars and debriefed in coffee shops. His milieu was the pre-dawn hen party. The fry cook at the Klondike said try Arthur J.’s.
Dwight bombed over. Sodomy Sal was ensconsed with three trannies. He was tattling. I browned James Dean on Rebel Without a Cause. He was hung like a light switch. I packed him the pork till he squealed.
The trannies tittered. Salacious Sal ragged on Rock Hudson. He was hung like a microbe. I tickled his tonsils till he trilled.
Dwight loomed by the table. The trannies gulped and get-awayed. They left their coffee and pancakes. Dwight helped himself.
Sal fondled his spit curl. “Hello, Mr. Holly.”
“What’s shaking, Sal?”
“Not you again, I hope.”
Dwight poured coffee. “Nothing like that.”
“No entrapment? No victimizing some poor champion of social justice who just happens to dig boys?”
Dwight wiped lipstick off his coffee cup. “Summer ‘66. You were working on Southside Crackdown. Jack Leahy came around with some questions.”
Sal buttered his hash browns. “So? We’re dealing with ancient history. That flick was a loser. I had to sue to get my per diem.”
“You started informing for Jack.”
“Well…”
Dwight snagged a bread stick and scratched his neck. Redd Foxx and that shyster fuck Chick Weiss walked in. A Tiger Kab geek propped them up.
“So, I’m assuming there’s more to the story. ‘Jack Leahy came around.’ You take it from there.”
Sal shrugged. “So, another cop comes around, asking the same kind of questions.”
Dwight said, “Scotty Bennett?”
Sal rolled his eyes. “Oh, yes. Scotty.”
Dwight snapped the bread stick. “Let me drop a name on you. I want to see how you react.”
“It’s a little early for name games, but I’ll play.”
Dwight said, “Marshall Bowen.” Servile Sal seized up and queased up. Oh, yeah-he’s green at the gills.
“Tell me about it.”
Sal fucked with his spit curl. “Why should I?”
“I’ll buy you breakfast if you do. I’ll hang stat rape on you if you don’t. There’s a perv honking boys at Berendo Junior High. You match the description.”
Sal popped a Valium and coffee-chased it. Sal took a get-it-over-with breath.
“Okay, sweetie. I’ve got another fruit shake going. Freddy O. recruited me. A cop’s bankrolling it, but I don’t know his name. Bowen’s the mark, but I cannot get him to loosen his wig and rock ‘n’ roll with me. Some guys are just like that. I’m dying to give up some prime slash, but the boy just will not bite.”
Scotty B. Marsh. Running ubiquitous now.
“Who else is in on it?”
“Fred T.’s the bug man. The charmless Peeper Crutchfield is watch-dogging me.”
“Bowen. What’s going on there?”
Sal rolled his eyes. Sal tossed his spit curl. Sal did fag exasperation shtick.
“He just won’t biiiiite. I’ve got plenty to bite onto, but he just wooooooon’t. It’s craaaaazy. Marsh is sure-as-shit gay, but he just won’t plaaay. He’s sooooo weird. He just sits there or runs all these weird riffs on Haiti, of all fucking places.”
Dwight rubbed his eyes. His feelers twitched. More pins dropped, more pins stuck and held.
Okay, Jack Leahy. He knows about Marsh and BAAAAAD BROTHER. Jack’s tweaked on Mr. Hoover. It’s untoward and impolitic. He just B amp;E’d Marsh Bowen’s pad. He saw plane tix to Haiti. Joan’s Haitian herbs. The recent shit in the D.R. and Haiti. Celia’s there. Peeper Crutchfield was there. The persistent Peeper rumor: he’s searching for some runaway woman. She bilks men. She may have Red ties. Peeper’s a loser, let him do his own thing.
Tie-in: Celia as the bilker. Toss the net, take the leap. Wider now, say it.
Joan’s 211 background. The things she won’t say. Wider, now: Jack redacted Joan’s file. They were in on the armored-car heist.
A rainstorm hit. The windows drummed. Raindrop-pins fell. Three drag queens walked in. They wore soaked-through prom dresses. Their chest hair showed. They saw Sal and waved. They saw Dwight and ran away.
Sal pouted. Sal scolded Dwight with his fork.
“Mr. Holly, you are fucking with my love life.”