(Los Angeles, 9/8/68)
Crutch Senior lived behind Santa Anita. He ruled a cardboard-box encampment. Winos and racetrack bums. Hooverville updated. Bet all day, booze all night. The California Lifestyle Supreme.
Crutch came with gifts: a good-bye C-note and a Reuben sandwich. Hey, Dad-I’m a dead man. I know all this top secret shit.
Fred Turentine called him yesterday. Fred Otash found some bug-tap debris in suite 307 and traced it back to him. Fred O. leaned on Fred T. Fred T. gave Crutch up for the bug job. Fred T. convinced Fred O. that he wasn’t there, it was only doofus Crutchfield. Fred T. showed Crutch his broken fingers. “Kid, I don’t know what you heard, but you better run.”
He read the St. Louis papers. Seven dead at the Grapevine. Tavern “Hoodlum brawl escalates.” He did some checking. James Earl Ray’s brother was part owner. Killers. His Frogman pal on the grassy knoll. Bug talk: Sirhan amp; King, Memphis amp; Dallas.
The campground was behind the parking lot. The geezers lived in stereo boxes rain-treated with shellac. A big tarp covered twenty-odd Magnavox Mansions. Empty bottles covered the common yard.
Crutch knocked on Crutch Senior’s box. Crutch Senior crawled out with a racing form and a short dog. Crutch gave him some room. Crutch Senior stood up, whipped it out and took a big piss. He aimed straight at Crutch’s shoes.
“Hello, Dad.”
Crutch Senior squinted. “Donald, right?”
“Right.”
“The kid I had with Maggie Woodard.”
“That’s me.”
“I remember Maggie. She was from Bumfuck, Wisconsin.”
“Yeah, she’s the one.”
“She was a good lay.”
“Come on, Dad. That’s not nice.”
Crutch Senior re-zipped. He was fifty-four. He wore a sweat-soaked Beatle suit and a Beatle wig. He was half-dead from open-sore cancers.
“You’re in the shit and you need a touch. Sorry, but I’m tapped.”
Crutch displayed the C-note and Reuben. Crutch Senior grabbed the bill and ignored the sandwich. He killed the short dog and tossed it on the empty pile. He swung the racing form and swatted Crutch in the face.
“You never found Maggie. You told me you would, and you didn’t. I laid her the first time on Pearl Harbor day, and you never found her.”
Bluff.
He worked out the plan yesterday. It predicted the knock on his door and the death sentence. Yeah, he put it all together. But, it was all instinct. Bug sputter, squelch, static and some words mixed in. He knew. They knew he knew. Fred O. would tell the others. Wayne would be pissed at the Frogman. Froggy let him live. It would blow up from there.
It was too big and played too preposterous. Clyde wouldn’t believe him. Scotty Bennett wouldn’t believe him. He could go on The Joe Pyne Show and air his inside scoop from the Beef Box. Joe Pyne would scoff at him. Some left-wing Jews and paranoid hippies might believe him. The hebes would turn on him in a hot tick. He was pro-Cuban Freedom Cause. The hippies would scoff at his crew cut and Scotty Bennett tie. No hippie girls would shoot him some trim.
Bluff.
He put the fail-safes in place yesterday. He devised the plan off his one ray of hope. They didn’t know his bug gear was defective. They knew they talked assassination. They would not recall exactly what they said. They did not know how credible his testimony would play.
Crutch waited at the Vivian. The pad was near-empty. He moved his mother’s file and his personal shit to the Elm Hotel yesterday. His case file was there. Buzz knew the location. He’d find the files and pursue or not pursue all relevant leads.
He waited. He skimmed old Car Crafts and Playboys. He went to I. Magnin’s yesterday. He bought Dana Lund a beautiful cashmere sweater. He had it gift-wrapped and placed a valentine card in the box. He didn’t sign his name. He told Dana that he’d always loved her. He had to run now. He killed two men and knew some things that he shouldn’t.
Magnin’s delivered the gift. He parked across the street. He watched Dana open the box and read the card. The sweater delighted her. The note seemed to scare her. She looked around and slammed her door in a rush.
Joan Rosen Klein was out in the ether. He couldn’t get her a good-bye gift. It broke his fucking heart.
Crutch skimmed the November ‘67 Playboy. Kaya Christian smiled from the foldout. She was his aptly named sweetheart. He knew her from Trinity Lutheran Church a million years back.
The southbound view beckoned. Crutch walked to the window and looked out. He saw Sandy Banner’s house and Barb Cathcart’s house and Gail Miller on Lon Ecklund’s front porch.
All those shrubs that served as his perch spots. New shrubs blocking windows he’d peeped.
He leaned out the window. He caught smog in the air. He leaned too far. He started to drop. He heard noise behind him. A force slammed him down and pulled him back up.
He was on the floor. He was foot-pinned. He was blurry-eyed, half there and half not. He smelled oil on metal and knew they’d greased the door lock.
The half there expanded. The blur decreased. A full there came on. He saw Wayne Tedrow with a silencered gun and the Frogman holding a pillow. He clutched his Saint Christopher medal and prayed the Gloria Patria.
Their feet were dug in. The Frogman sweat-oozed nicotine. Wayne said, “You dipshit cocksucker.”
Froggy dropped the pillow on his head. Crutch thrashed it off and gulped in air to say it.
“I’ve got four tape copies, plus depositions. Four bank safe-deposit boxes. I show up in person, six-month intervals. They verify me at the sites with photo and fingerprint checks. If I don’t show, you know what.”
Wayne looked at Mesplede. Mesplede looked at Wayne. Wayne picked up the pillow and foot-mashed it down on his head. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t hear. No voices, no gunshot, no pain or white clouds. Breath spurts and heartbeats-dear God, am I dead?
Then light and air and the model airplane dangling from his ceiling. Then some breath. Then Wayne’s gun with the silencer untapped.
A red Fokker triplane. Historically cool. He built it and sniffed the glue the day JFK got whacked.
Crutch said, “I want in. I’ll take whatever you’ve got.”