December 5, 1970-November 18, 1971
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RMN: Good morning, Edgar,
JEH: Good morning, Mr. President.
RMN: How are you feeling? You looked a little under the weather at the American Legion brunch.
JEH: I assure you that I am fit as a fiddle, Mr. President. And, as you know, I am always “ready to sing.”
RMN: “Sing for your supper.” You understand that old saw when you run the goddamn country.
JEH: Yes, Sir. And, while we’re on the topic, let me state that I would devoutly hope that I would be able to sing well into your second term.
RMN: Edgar, you’re a rare old turd. Anyone who underestimates you should have their head examined.
JEH: Thank you, Mr. President. I would also add that we have been friends since 1914.
RMN: I was born in 1913, Edgar. We must have met at a party in my bassinet.
JEH: (Six seconds’ silence.) Well… er… yes, Sir.
RMN: You’ve probably got a file on it. You open a file every time some left-winger cuts a fart.
JEH: If I consider the person subversive, then, yes.
RMN: What’s shaking in the black-militant universe? My guys at Justice are saying that that foolishness is on the wane.
JEH: Perhaps so, Sir. The Panthers and US are heavily infiltrated and caught up in litigation, and the admittedly minor BTA and MMLF are kaput. Sixteen felony indictments, Sir. A small FBI operation, but a gem.
RMN: That “Blastout” was a home run.
JEH: Yes, Sir. And I would have called it a grand slam.
RMN: Hmmm.
JEH: (Coughing spell/eight seconds.)
RMN: Are you all right, Edgar?
JEH: I’m getting over a cold, Sir.
RMN: I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the congressional last month. You lose a seat here, a seat there, and before you know it, they add up. I might ask you for a little help before the ‘72 general rolls around. The Democrats will field a good team. I’d like to get some derogatory poop on them in a timely fashion.
JEH: Uh… what type of-
RMN: “Black-bag job,” Edgar. Don’t go coy on me. Don’t pretend you didn’t pull that shit with Lyndon Johnson.
JEH: Uh… yes, Sir.
RMN: Dwight Holly would be a good man for that.
JEH: Dwight proffered a bluff in our names, Sir. He advanced a no-foreign-casinos edict to our Italian friends. The notion is sound, but the very act itself was quite cheeky.
RMN: Dwight’s my main man. We jaw on the phone sometimes. You’re right, the plan is A-OK. I keep the Boys at arm’s length and pardon their guys out of jail at the proper intervals. It’ll all look kosher that way.
JEH: Yes, Sir. I agree.
RMN: Big Dwight’s a pisser. You said he’s taking some kind of rest cure, right?
JEH: That’s correct, Mr. President. He’ll be returning to the Los Angeles Office next month.
RMN: Dwight’s salty. I like that about him.
JEH: (Coughing spell/fourteen seconds.)
RMN: Are you all right?
JEH: Yes, Sir. I’m fine.
JEH: (Coughing spell/twelve seconds.)
RMN: Jesus, Edgar.
JEH: I assure you, Mr. President. I’m in the pink.
RMN: If you say so.
JEH: I should be run-
RMN: Bebe Rebozo told me a pisser of a story the other day. He was hobknobbing with some pols in Paraguay. They told it to him.
JEH: Uh, yes, Sir.
RMN: It’s some kind of myth. This secret stash of emeralds has been financing right-wing coups since God was a pup. Have you ever heard-
JEH: (Coughing spell and muffled comment/transcript ends here.)
Scotty Bennett
(Los Angeles, 12/7/70)
Among the many things I learned during my time undercover is that inherent criminality is inherent criminality, regardless of the racial or political grievance that serves as its justification, regardless of the soundness or unsoundness of the ideology expressed.”
The spiel got applause. Mayor Yorty and Chief Davis clapped. Scotty clapped along. Marsh looked good. Sergeant’s stripes on new blues. A close-cut Afro.
Full house: the Academy gym, cops and politicians. No Feds-big surprise there.
“The LAPD has superbly interdicted the criminal aspects of black nationalism as it has honored the legal right of black-nationalist civil address, while concurrently opening its arms to a new generation of minority police officers.”
Scotty yukked internal. He hit up Marsh back in March. He let time simmer. Today was the day: the big heist summit.
The fucker could speak. He chose his words and rocked with the rhythm. He eschewed a homo aesthetic.
The chief dug him. Rank and filers resented him. Sam Yorty grooved his Uncle Tom act.
Marsh cranked it. Woooo, some crescendo! He stabbed the air like JFK. He hit the MLK note of redemption. He got a standing ovation.
The audience swarmed the lecturn. Marsh was Mr. Gracious. Scotty winked on his way out.
Armed Robbery-211 PC. His den treasure-troved it.
Eighteen wall pix. Eighteen kills documented. The twelve Panthers went unsung. You can’t photograph the dead-and-buried.
Liquor-store jobs and market rips. Sitting-duck ambushes and shoot-outs. Eighteen dead male Negroes.
Marsh thought he hated black folks. Marsh was wrong. He never said the word nigger. He hated killers, dope-pushers and heisters. Black militants were up there. His all-black kill sheet was luck and demographic. Shit played out that way.
Ann and the kids were in Fresno. The house was a stag-party zone. Scotty laid out booze, dip and Fritos. Scotty pulled all his files out.
Marsh Bowen tweaked him from the get-go. Marsh passed that ink-stained cash. Marsh worked at the Peoples’ Bank briefly. Marsh got on LAPD. All tweakers, but inconclusive.
Then Marsh goes Fed and fucks him. Then Marsh starts making heist queries. Then he runs a DMV check and gets 84th and Budlong.
Scotty snarfed Fritos and bean dip. The wall photos spoke.
Rydell Tyner said, “Jesus, Scotty.” He said, “Son, I warned you.”
Bobby Fisk bled out at All-American Liquor. He gave Bobby’s flash roll to his grandma.
Lamar Brown had a pencil neck. Triple-aught buck severed his head.
The basement bell rang. Scotty opened up. Marsh was back in civvies.
“Hello, partner.”
“Hello, Scotty.”
“Make yourself at home. If you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”
Then to now: six years and ten months. Marsh kicked it off. He was there that day.
There was a third robber. He was black. The lead guy shot him, chemically scalded him and left him for dead. The third man crawled to an alley and hid. Marsh lived on that block then. He saw the third man. He saw his bulletproof vest and extra precautionary gauzing. He figured it saved the man’s life. LAPD was out bruuutal. Marsh was outraged. He took the man to a doctor neighbor’s house and hid him there. The doctor treated the man’s wounds and burns. The man refused to discuss the heist-killings and never revealed his identity. He left two days later. He gave the doctor twenty thousand dollars in ink-stained cash. The doctor deposited it in the Peoples’ Bank of South Los Angeles. He told Lionel Thornton to leak the cash back to the community. Charity donations: do it prudently. Small amounts of cash surfaced in the black community. Scotty leaned on the passers. The doctor died in ‘65. Marsh got obsessed with the case. He got a job at the bank, learned zero and quit.
Scotty took over. He was there that day. He sensed the case as The Case from Jump Street. He beat the bluesuits to the crime scene. He found nicked shells from a jammed automatic and pocketed them. The armored-car guards fired revolvers. Likewise the milk-truck driver, the lead guy and the two dead heist men. Thus: a third man had come and gone. He fired with the jammed automatic.
A third man-logic now physically confirmed.
Scotty walked the crime scene. He saw a blood trail leading away from it. The trail stopped near that alley. He blotted up a blood sample and got enough to type. He found some chemical-scalding pellets a few feet away. They were saliva-coated. He figured the third man spat them out.
They both knew that day: a third man escaped.
Scotty had the blood tested, covertly. The type: rare AB-. The other dead men had different blood types. The nicked shells: no go, brother. He jam-tested and test-fired every automatic in LAPD custody. Then to now: every booked-in mid-size auto. The results: all negative. He had the pellets tested. Shit-no chemical make.
Marsh jumped ahead. I’ve got a new lead. I’ll tell you at the wrap-up. I’ll drop some confirmation now. I checked the files at University and 77th. I discovered bogus routing numbers. I know you’ve got a private paper stash.
Scotty pointed to his file trove. Scotty refueled their drinks and took off.
He tracked the emerald shipment and made some progress. It started in the Dominican Republic, all government-vouched. The government stonewalled LAPD. Scotty tried everything. Other cops tried with less gusto. Nobody could track the stones’ provenance. Scotty’s take: the origin was dirty, the jewels were rogue. The senders decided against diplomatic-courier shipping. They chose Wells Fargo instead.
And:
The shipment records vanished from the Wells Fargo office a week after the heist. It was a pro B amp;E. The Wells Fargo execs went stonewall. They refused to talk to LAPD at all.
Marsh cut in. He’d heard rumors-black folks in need receive emeralds, anonymously. Scotty knew the rumors. Ghetto legend, who knows, I can’t verify it.
Scotty revved up to the good part. This is the glue. It all sticks together here.
He glommed a partial eyeball witness six months after the heist. The guy said the lead robber was white. Okay, he’s Caucasoid. Okay, there’s the black robber rumors. Oreo teams in ‘64-veeeeery rare indeed. The witness had no further description. Scotty got frustrated there. You win, you lose. He built a lead sheet on a Wells Fargo exec. It never bloomed past speculation.
The guy’s name was Richard Farr. He disappeared after the heist and the Wells Fargo B amp;E. Farr was half Anglo, half Dominican. Scotty culled paper on him. No lead tweakers resulted. The D.R. connection was a tweaker. Sub-tweaker: Farr might be some kind of Commie.
Scotty poured refills. Marsh took on a schoolboy look-sir, please teach me.
The investigation sandbagged. Nothing popped. Leads melted to sludge. Scotty worked the ID angle. It took years. He brought in his coroner pal, Tojo Tom Takahashi.
Tojo Tom froze flesh grafts from the scorched bodies. He isolated skin cells off one guy and lab-tested them. He found diseased leukocytes. The disease was indigenous to white men only.
Scotty did a fifty-state paper check. It took years. Paydirt, late ‘69. The place: Dogdick, Alabama. The man: Douglas Frank Claverly.
Dougie had that skin disease. Dougie was a Klanned-up ex-armed robber. Exhaustive background check-zero. Yeah, but: Dougie disappeared in 1/64-one month pre-heist.
Scotty redeployed Tojo Tom. Tojo ID’d the bogus milk-truck driver. A melted good-luck ring did it. The ring was embedded in a skin cavity.
Tojo extracted the ring and lab-tested the skin cells attached. Okay, it’s a black guy. Tojo brought in chemicals and microscopes and raised words off the ring: JJL amp; CV.
Scotty traced the ring to Modesto. It took fucking weeks. Jerome James Wilkinson ordered the ring. He was a male Negro. He had no criminal record and no family. He worked as a strikebreaker. He vanished 1/64, one month pre-heist.
Enter Dr. Fred Hiltz. Punch line: the emeralds were going to him.
Marsh drop-jawed that one. He used to work lefty groups for Dr. Fred and Clyde Duber. Scotty said he knew that. Scotty contradicted long-held heist text.
The stones were allegedly headed to a Wells Fargo vault. The cash was a bank-deposit load. The stones were really being sent to Dr. Fred himself. A dummy corporation would hold them. A Dr. Fred stooge would play courier. Dr. Fred craaaaved the stones. There was some nutso right-wing emerald myth he creamed for.
Dr. Fred was offed in ‘68. Marsh said he knew the basic facts. Scotty laid out the inside scoop.
He popped Jomo C. for that liquor-store spree. Someone pretended to be Marsh himself. The fake Marsh offered up the liquor-store snitch and a snitch on a major gun stash. That shit brought Marsh ghetto peril. Marsh knew that all too well. Marsh knew that Jomo confessed to the Dr. Fred snuff and to whacking his crime partner. Here’s the shit Marsh didn’t know.
Scotty Q amp;A’d Jomo with Dwight Holly present. Big Dwight heard Jomo’s Hiltz-case confession. He did not see Scotty’s second go-round.
The L.A. County Jail. The isolation cell block. Jomo’s one-man cell.
Jomo feared him now. Jomo called him “Mr. Scotty.” Jomo folded from two kidney shots.
He said a “cutout” fed him the Hiltz heist. You’ll find a bomb shelter. Steal the cash. Don’t kill Dr. Fred. Warn Dr. Fred. Tell him not to reveal shit per February ‘64. He’ll know what you mean.
Jomo had no heist knowledge. Scotty determined that. Jomo clammed up. Jomo refused to state the cutout’s name. Cutout: an intelligence-agency term.
Scotty pressed. Scotty rubber-hosed Jomo. Jomo screamed and held his mud. Scotty hit Jomo too hard and killed him. Scotty rigged a toilet water-soaked bedsheet and faked a suicide.
Marsh got the shakes. Son, did I scare you? Scotty built him a highball and dumped fresh chips on his plate.
It fortified him. He spilled the rest of his tale.
Guilt-tripper Wayne Tedrow. His Find Reginald Hazzard quest. The boy looked like the third man. Marsh just checked an LVPD file. The kid had chemistry knowledge. Marsh thought about it. An old vibe resurfaced: the deep-burned bodies meant chemical skills. The pellets and chemical scaldings-Scotty agreed.
He dipped a Frito. “We have to make the Hazzard kid’s blood type.”
Marsh air-drew dollar signs. Scotty air-drew 50-50. Marsh said, “This should be fun.”