About the Book
About the Author
Also by James Ellroy
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Then
Now
Then
Part I: Cluster Fuck
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part II: Shit Magnet
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part III: Zombie Zone
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Part IV: Coon Cartel
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 102
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Part V: Throwdown Gun
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Part VI: Comrade Joan
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
Now
Copyright
It’s 1968. Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King are dead. The Mob, Howard Hughes and J Edgar Hoover are in a struggle for America’s soul, drawing into their murderous conspiracies the damned and the soon-to-be damned.
WAYNE TEDROW JR: parricide, assassin, dope cooker, mouthpiece for all sides, loyal to none. His journey will take him deeper into the darkness.
DWIGHT HOLLY: Hoover’s enforcer and hellish conspirator in terrible crimes. As Hoover’s power wanes, his destiny lurches towards Richard Nixon and self-annihilation.
DON CRUTCHFIELD: a kid, a nobody, a wheelman and a private detective who stumbles upon an ungodly conspiracy from which he and the country may never recover.
All three men are drawn to women on the opposite side of the political and moral spectrum; all are compromised and ripe for destruction.
Blood’s a Rover is an incandescent fusion of fact and fiction, and is James Ellroy’s greatest masterpiece.
James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. He is the author of the acclaimed LA Quartet: The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz, as well as the first two parts of his Underworld USA trilogy: American Tabloid and The Cold Six Thousand, which were both Sunday Times bestsellers.
ALSO BY JAMES ELLROY
THE UNDERWORLD U.S.A. TRILOGY
American Tabloid
The Cold Six Thousand
Blood’s a Rover
THE L.A. QUARTET
The Black Dahlia
The Big Nowhere
L.A. Confidential
White Jazz
MEMOIR
My Dark Places
The Hilliker Curse
SHORT STORIES
Hollywood Nocturnes
JOURNALISM/SHORT FICTION
Crime Wave
Destination: Morgue!
EARLY NOVELS
Brown’s Requiem
Clandestine
Blood on the Moon
Because the Night
Suicide Hill
Killer on the Road
To
J. M.
Comrade: For Everything You Gave Me
Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman
Los Angeles, 2/24/64
SUDDENLY:
The milk truck cut a sharp right turn and grazed the curb. The driver lost the wheel. He panic-popped the brakes. He induced a rear-end skid. A Wells Fargo armored car clipped the milk truck side/head-on.
Mark it now:
7:16 a.m. South L.A., 84th and Budlong. Residential darktown. Shit shacks with dirt front yards.
The jolt stalled out both vehicles. The milk truck driver hit the dash. The driver’s side door blew wide. The driver keeled and hit the sidewalk. He was a fortyish male Negro.
The armored car notched some hood dents. Three guards got out and scoped the damage. They were white men in tight khakis. They wore Sam Browne belts with buttoned pistol flaps.
They knelt beside the milk truck driver. The guy twitched and gasped. The dashboard bounce gouged his forehead. Blood dripped into his eyes.
Mark it now:
7:17 a.m. Winter overcast. This quiet street. No foot traffic. No car-crash hubbub yet.
The milk truck heaved. The radiator blew. Steam hissed and spread wide. The guards coughed and wiped their eyes. Three men got out of a ’62 Ford parked two curb lengths back.
They wore masks. They wore gloves and crepe-soled shoes. They wore utility belts with gas bombs in pouches. They were long-sleeved and buttoned up. Their skin color was obscured.
Steam covered them. They walked up and pulled silencered pieces. The guards coughed. It supplied sound cover. The milk truck driver pulled a silencered piece and shot the nearest guard in the face.
The noise was a thud. The guard’s forehead exploded. The two other guards fumble-grabbed at their holsters. The masked men shot them in the back. They buckled and pitched foreword. The masked men shot them in the head point-blank. The thuds and skull crack muffle-echoed.
It’s 7:19 a.m. It’s still quiet. There’s no foot traffic and car-crash hubbub yet.
Noise now—two gunshots plus loud echoes. Muzzle flare, weird-shaped, blasts from the armored car’s gun slit.
The shots ricocheted off the pavement. The masked men and the milk truck driver threw themselves prone. They rolled toward the armored car. It blitzed firing range. Four more shots popped. Four plus two—one revolver load.
Masked Man #1 was tall and thin. Masked Man #2 was midsized. Masked Man #3 was heavyset. It’s 7:20 a.m. There’s still no foot traffic. This big blimp up in the sky trailed department-store banners.
Masked Man #1 stood up and crouched under the gun slit. He pulled a gas bomb from his pouch and yanked the top. Fumes sputtered. He stuffed the bomb in the gun slit. The guard inside shrieked and retched very loud. The back door crashed outward. The guard jumped and hit the pavement on his knees. He bled from the nose and the mouth. Masked Man #2 shot him twice in the head.
The milk truck driver put on a gas mask. The masked men put gas masks on over their face masks. Gas whooshed out the back door. Masked Man #1 popped gas bomb #2 and lobbed it inside.
The fumes flared and settled into acid mist—red, pink, transparent. A street hubbub started perking. There’s some window peeps, some open doors, some colored folks on their porches.
It’s 7:22 a.m. The fumes have dispersed. There’s no second guard inside.
Now they go in.
They fit tight. It was a cramped space. Cash bags and attaché cases were stacked in wall racks. Masked Man #1 made the count: sixteen bags and fourteen cases.
They grabbed. Masked Man #2 had a burlap bag stuffed down his pants. He pulled it out and held it open.
They grabbed. They stuffed the bag. One attaché case snapped open. They saw mounds of plastic-wrapped emeralds.
Masked Man #3 opened a cash bag. A C-note roll poked out. He tugged on the bank tab. Ink jets sprayed him and hit his mask holes. He got ink in his mouth and ink in his eyes.
He gasped, he spit ink, he rubbed his eyes and tripped out the door. He shit in his pants and stood around flailing. Masked Man #1 stepped clear of the door and shot him twice in the back.
It’s 7:24 a.m. Now there’s hubbub. It’s a jungle din confined to porches.
Masked Man #1 walked toward it. He pulled four gas bombs, popped the tops and lobbed them. He threw left and right. Fumes rose up red, pink and transparent. Acid sky, mini–storm front, rainbow. The porch fools whooped and coughed and ran inside their shacks.
The milk truck driver and Masked Man #2 stuffed four burlap bags tight. They got the full load: all thirty cash sacks and cases. They walked to the ’62 Ford. Masked Man #1 opened the trunk. They dumped the bags in.
7:26 a.m.
A breeze kicked up. Wind swirled the gas clouds into wild fusing colors. The milk truck driver and Masked Man #2 gawked through their goggles.
Masked Man #1 stepped in front of them. They got pissy—Say what?—don’t block the light show. Masked Man #1 shot them both in the face. Slugs blew up their goggle glass and gas-mask tubes and doused their lights in a second.
Mark it now:
7:27 a.m. Four dead guards, three dead heist men. Pink gas clouds. Acid fallout. Fumes turning shrubs gray-malignant.
Masked Man #1 opened the driver’s side door and reached under the seat. Right there: a blowtorch and a brown bag stuffed with scald-on-contact pellets. The pellets looked like a bird feed/jelly bean hybrid.
He worked slow.
He walked to Masked Man #3. He dropped pellets on his back and stuffed pellets in his mouth. He tapped his blowtorch and blazed the body. He walked to the milk truck driver and Masked Man #2. He dropped pellets on their backs and stuffed pellets in their mouths and blowtorched their bodies.
The sun was way up now. The gas fumes caught rays and made a small stretch of sky one big prism. Masked Man #1 drove away, southbound.
He got there first. He always did. He bootjacked niggertown robbery squawks off patrol frequencies. He packed his own multiband squawk box.
He parked by the armored car and the milk truck. He looked down the street. He saw some coons eyeballing the carnage. The air stung. His first guess: gas bombs and a faked collision.
The coons saw him. They evinced their standard “Oh shit” looks. He heard sirens. The overlap said six or seven units. Newton and 77th Street—two divisions rolling out. He had three minutes to look.
He saw the four dead guards. He saw two scorched dead men near the east curb back a few car lengths.
He ignored the guards. He checked out the burned men. They were deep-scorched down to crackle skin, with their clothes swirled in. His first guess: instant double cross. Let’s fuck up IDs on expendable partners.
The sirens whirred closer. A kid down the street waved at him. He bowed and waved back.
He had the gestalt already. Some shit you wait your whole life for. When it lands, you know.
He was a big man. He wore a tweed suit and a tartan bow tie. Little 14’s were stitched into the silk. He’d shot and killed fourteen armed robbers.
AMERICA:
I window-peeped four years of our History. It was one long mobile stakeout and kick-the-door-in shakedown. I had a license to steal and a ticket to ride.
I followed people. I bugged and tapped and caught big events in ellipses. I remained unknown. My surveillance links the Then to the Now in a never-before-revealed manner. I was there. My reportage is buttressed by credible hearsay and insider tattle. Massive paper trails provide verification. This book derives from stolen public files and usurped private journals. It is the sum of personal adventure and forty years of scholarship. I am a literary executor and an agent provocateur. I did what I did and saw what I saw and learned my way through to the rest of the story.
Scripture-pure veracity and scandal-rag content. That conjunction gives it its sizzle. You carry the seed of belief within you already. You recall the time this narrative captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not at all what you think.
You will read with some reluctance and capitulate in the end. The following pages will force you to succumb.
I am going to tell you everything.
June 14, 1968–September 11, 1968
(Las Vegas, 6/14/68)
HEROIN:
He’d rigged a lab in his hotel suite. Beakers, vats and Bunsen burners filled up wall shelves. A three-burner hot plate juked small-batch conversions. He was cooking painkiller-grade product. He hadn’t cooked dope since Saigon.
A comp suite at the Stardust, vouchered by Carlos Marcello. Carlos knew that Janice had terminal cancer and that he had chemistry skills.
Wayne mixed morphine clay with ammonia. A two-minute heating loosened mica chips and silt. He boiled water to 182°. He added acetic anhydride and reduced the bond proportions. The boil sluiced out organic waste.
Precipitants next—the slow-cook process—diacetyl morph and sodium carbonate.
Wayne mixed, measured and ran two hot plates low. He glanced around the suite. The maid left a newspaper out. The headlines were all him.
Wayne Senior’s death by “heart attack.” James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan in stir.
His front-page ink. No mention of him. Carlos had chilled out Wayne Senior. Mr. Hoover chilled out the backwash on the King/Bobby hits.
Wayne watched diacetyl mass build. His blend would semi-anesthetize Janice. He was bucking for a big job with Howard Hughes. Hughes was addicted to pharmaceutical narcotics. He could cook him up a private blend and take it to his interview.
The mass settled into cubes and rose out of the liquid. Wayne saw photos of Ray and Sirhan on page two. He’d worked on the King hit. He’d worked it high up. Freddy Otash ran fall guy Ray for King and fall guy Sirhan for Bobby.
The phone rang. Wayne grabbed it. Scrambler clicks hit the line. It had to be a Fed safe phone and Dwight Holly.
“It’s me, Dwight.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“‘Heart attack,’ shit. ‘Sudden stroke’ would have been better.”
Wayne coughed. “Carlos is handling it personally. He can frost out anything around here.”
“I do not want Mr. Hoover going into a tizzy over this.”
“It’s chilled. The question is, ‘What about the others?’ ”
Dwight said, “There’s always conspiracy talk. Bump off a public figure and that kind of shit tends to bubble. Freddy ran Ray covertly and Sirhan up front, but he lost weight and altered his appearance. All in all, I’d say we’re chilled on both of them.”
Wayne watched his dope cook. Dwight spieled more news. Freddy O. bought the Golden Cavern Casino. Pete Bondurant sold it to him.
“We’re chilled, Dwight. Tell me we’re chilled and convince me.”
Dwight laughed. “You sound a little raw, kid.”
“I’m stretched a bit thin, yeah. Patricide’s funny that way.”
Dwight yukked. The dope pots started boiling. Wayne doused the heat and looked at his desk photo.
It’s Janice Lukens Tedrow, lover/ex-stepmom. It’s ’61. She’s twisting at the Dunes. She’s sans partner, she’s lost a shoe, a dress seam has ripped.
Dwight said, “Hey, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And I’m glad to hear we’re chilled on your end.”
Wayne stared at the picture. “My father was your friend. You’re going in pretty light with the judgment.”
“Shit, kid. He sent you to Dallas.”
Big D. November ’63. He was there that Big Weekend. He caught the Big Moment and took this Big Ride.
He was a sergeant on Vegas PD. He was married. He had a chemistry degree. His father was a big Mormon fat cat. Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right. He did Klan ops for Mr. Hoover and Dwight Holly. He pushed high-line hate tracts. He rode the far-Right zeitgeist and stayed in the know. He knew about the JFK hit. It was multi-faction: Cuban exiles, rogue CIA, mob. Senior bought Junior a ticket to ride.
Extradition job, with one caveat: kill the extraditee.
The PD suborned the assignment. A Negro pimp named Wendell Durfee shivved a casino dealer. The man lived. It didn’t matter. The Casino Operators’ Council wanted Wendell clipped. Vegas cops got those jobs. They were choice gigs with big bonus money. They were tests. The PD wanted to gauge your balls. Wayne Senior had clout with the PD. He had JFK hit knowledge. Senior wanted Junior there for it. Wendell Durfee fled Vegas to Dallas. Senior doubted Junior’s balls. Senior thought Junior should kill an unarmed black man. Wayne flew to Dallas on 11/22/63.
He did not want to kill Wendell Durfee. He did not know about the JFK hit. He got paired up with an extradition partner. The cop’s name was Maynard Moore. He worked Dallas PD. He was a redneck psycho doing gofer jobs on the hit.
Wayne clashed with Maynard Moore and tried not to kill Wendell Durfee. Wayne blundered into the hit plot in post-hit free fall. He linked Jack Ruby to Moore and that right-wing merc Pete B. He saw Ruby clip Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.
He knew. He did not know that his father knew. It all went blooey that Sunday.
JFK was dead. Oswald was dead. He tracked down Wendell Durfee and told him to run. Maynard Moore interceded. Wayne killed Moore and let Durfee go. Pete B. interceded and let Wayne live.
Pete considered his own act of mercy prudent and Wayne’s act of mercy rash. Pete warned Wayne that Wendell Durfee might show up again.
Wayne returned to Vegas. Pete B. moved to Vegas for a Carlos Marcello gig. Pete followed up on Durfee and logged tips: he’s a rape-o shitbird and worse. It was January ’64. Pete heard that Wendell Durfee had fled back to Vegas. He told Wayne. Wayne went after Wendell. Three colored dope fiends got in the way. Wayne killed them. Wendell Durfee raped and murdered Wayne’s wife, Lynette.
It was his very own free fall. It started in Dallas and spun all the way up to Now.
Wendell Durfee escaped. Wayne Senior and the PD worked to get Wayne a walk on the dope fiends. Mr. Hoover was amenable. Senior’s old chum Dwight Holly was not. Dwight was working for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics then. The dope fiends were pushing heroin and were targeted for prosecution. Dwight squawked to the U.S. attorney. Wayne Junior fucked up his investigation. He wanted to see Wayne Junior indicted and tried. The PD fabricated some evidence and snowed the grand jury. Wayne got a walk on the killings. It left him hollow. He quit the PD and entered The Life.
Soldier of fortune. Heroin runner. Assassin.
Lynette was dead. He vowed to find Wendell Durfee and kill him. Lynette was his best friend and sweetheart and the wall to shut out his love for his father’s second wife. Janice was older, she watched him grow up, she stayed with Senior for his money and clout. Janice returned Wayne’s love. The longing went both ways. It stayed there and plain grew.
Wayne fell in with Pete and his wife, Barb. Pete was tight with a mob lawyer named Ward Littell. Ward was ex-FBI and the point man for the JFK hit. He was working for Carlos Marcello and Howard Hughes and playing both ends back, front and sideways. Wayne had Pete and Ward as teachers. He learned The Life from them. He blew through their curriculum at a free-fall pace.
Pete was hopped up on the Cuban exile cause. Vietnam was getting hot. Howard Hughes was nurturing crazy plans to buy up Las Vegas. Wayne Senior got in with Hughes’ Mormon guard. Ward Littell developed a grudge against Senior. A rogue CIA man recruited Pete for a Saigon-to-Vegas dope funnel, profits to the Cuban cause, vouchsafed by Carlos Marcello. Pete needed a dope chemist and recruited Wayne. Ward’s hatred of Wayne Senior grew. Ward fucked with Senior. He informed Wayne that his father sent him to Dallas.
Wayne reeled and grabbed at air and barely stayed upright. Wayne fucked Janice in his father’s house and made sure that Wayne Senior saw it.
“The Life,” a noun. A haven for Mormon burnouts, rogue chemists, coon killers.
Wayne Senior divorced Janice. He beat her with a silver-tipped cane to offset the cost of the settlement. Janice limped from that day on and still played scratch golf. Ward Littell sold Howard Hughes Las Vegas at the mob’s inflated prices and began a sporadic love affair with Janice. Wayne Senior increased his pull with Howard Hughes and sucked up to former veep Dick Nixon. Dwight Holly left the Bureau of Narcotics and went back on the FBI. Mr. Hoover directed Dwight to disrupt Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Dwight deployed Wayne Senior in anti-Klan mail-fraud ops, a sop to sob sisters at Justice.
Wayne cooked heroin in Saigon and ran it through to Vegas. Wayne chased Wendell Durfee for four years. The country blew up with riots and a shitstorm of race hate. Dr. King trumped Mr. Hoover on all moral fronts and wore the old man down just by being. Mr. Hoover had tried everything. Mr. Hoover whined to Dwight that he had done all he could. Dwight understood the cue and recruited Wayne Senior. Wayne Senior wanted Wayne Junior to be in on it. Senior thought they needed a recruitment wedge. Dwight went out and found Wendell Durfee.
Wayne got a pseudo-anonymous tip. He found Wendell Durfee on L.A. skid row and killed him in March. It was a put-up job. Dwight gathered forensic evidence and coerced him into the hit plan. Wayne worked with his father, Dwight, Freddy Otash and pro shooter Bob Relyea.
Janice was diagnosed with last-stage cancer. Her beating injuries cloaked early detection of the disease. The Saigon dope deal factionalized and blew into chaos. On one side: mob ghouls and crazy Cuban exiles. On the other: Wayne, Pete and a French merc named Jean-Philippe Mesplede. April and May were pure free fall. The election hovered. King was dead. Carlos Marcello and the boys decided to clip Bobby Kennedy. Pete was coerced in. Freddy O. waltzed over from the King hit. Ward Littell was still working angles on Carlos and Howard Hughes. Ward had inherited an anti-mob file. He left it with Janice for safekeeping.
Wayne went to see Janice on June 4. The cancer had taken her strength and her curves and had rendered her slack. They made love a second time. She told him more about Ward’s file. He searched her apartment and found it. The file was very detailed. It specifically indicted Carlos and his New Orleans operation. Wayne sent it to Carlos, along with a note.
“Sir, my father was planning to extort you with this file. Sir, could we discuss that?”
Robert F. Kennedy was shot two hours later. Ward Littell killed himself. Howard Hughes offered Wayne Senior Ward’s job as mob fixer/liaison. His first assignment: purchase the loyalty of GOP front-runner Dick Nixon.
Carlos called Wayne and thanked him for the heads-up. Carlos said, “Let’s have dinner.”
Wayne decided to murder his father. Wayne decided that Janice should beat him dead with a golf club.
Carlos kept a mock-Roman suite at the Sands. A toga-clad geek played centurion and let Wayne in. The suite featured mock-Roman pillars and sack-of-Rome art. Price tags drooped from wall frames.
A buffet was laid out. The geek sat Wayne down at a lacquered table embossed with SPQR. Carlos walked in. He wore nubby silk shorts and a stained tuxedo shirt.
Wayne stood up. Carlos said, “Don’t.” Wayne sat down. The geek spooned food on two plates and vanished. Carlos poured wine from a screw-top bottle.
Wayne said, “It’s a pleasure, sir.”
“Don’t make like I don’t know you. You’re Pete and Ward’s guy, and you worked for me in Saigon. You know more about me than you should, plus all the shit in that file. I know your story, which is some fucking story compared to the other dickhead stories I heard lately.”
Wayne smiled. Carlos pulled two bobbing-head dolls from his pockets. One doll represented RFK. One doll represented Dr. King. Carlos smiled and snapped off their heads.
“Salud, Wayne.”
“Thank you, Carlos.”
“You’re looking for work, right? This ain’t about a handshake and a thank-you envelope.”
Wayne sipped wine. It was present-day liquor-store vintage.
“I want to assume Ward Littell’s role in your organization, along with the position in the Hughes organization that my father has just inherited from Ward. I have the skills and the connections to prove myself valuable, I’m prepared to favor you in all my dealings with Mr. Hughes, and I’m aware of the penalties you dispense for disloyalty.”
Carlos speared an anchovy. His fork slid. Olive oil hit his tux shirt.
“Where’s your father going to be throughout all of this?”
Wayne toppled the RFK doll. A plastic arm fell off. Carlos picked his nose.
“Okay, even if I’m fucking susceptible to favors and prone to like you, why should Howard Hughes go outside his own organization full of suck-asses he feels comfortable with to hire a fucked-up ex-cop who goes around shooting niggers for kicks?”
Wayne flinched. He gripped his wine glass and almost snapped the stem.
“Mr. Hughes is a xenophobic drug addict known to inject narcotics into a vein in his penis, and I can concoct—”
Carlos yukked and slapped the table. His wine glass capsized. Pepper chunks flew. Olive oil spritzed.
“—drugs that will stimulate and sedate him and diminish his mental capacities to the point that he will become that much more tractable in all his dealings with you. I also know that you have a very large envelope for Richard Nixon, should he be nominated. Mr. Hughes is putting in 20%, and I plan to raid my father’s cash reserve and get you another five million cold.”
The toga geek walked in. He brought a sponge and swabbed the mess presto-chango. Carlos snapped his fingers. The toga geek disappeared.
“I keep coming back to your father. What’s Wayne Tedrow Senior going to be doing while Wayne Tedrow Junior sticks him the big one where it hurts the most?”
Wayne pointed to the dolls and back up to heaven. Carlos cracked his knuckles.
“Okay, I’ll bite.”
Wayne raised his glass. “Thank you.”
Carlos raised his glass. “You get two fifty a year and points, and you jump on Ward’s old job straight off. I need you to oversee the buyouts of legitimate businesses started with Teamster Pension Fund loans, so we can launder it and funnel it into a slush fund to build these hotel-casinos somewhere in Central America or the Caribbean. You know what we’re looking for. We want some pliable, anti-Communist el jefe type who’ll do what we want and keep all the dissident hippie protest shit down to a dull roar. Sam G.’s running point now. We’ve got it narrowed down to Panama, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. That’s your main fucking job. You make it happen and you make your hophead pal keep buying our hotels, and you make sure we get to keep our inside guys, who just might help us out with some skim.”
Wayne said, “I’ll do it.”
Carlos said, “Daddy won’t see you coming.”
Wayne stood up too fast. His mock-Roman world swirled. Carlos stood up. His shirt was spattered working on soaked.
“I’ll see that you’re covered on it.”
Janice kept a mock-casbah suite at the Dunes. Wayne supplied round-the-clock nurses. Janice stuck to the hotel now.
The p.m.-shift nurse was on the terrace, smoking. The view was half light show, half desert haze. Janice was bundled up in bed, with the air conditioner blasting. Her system was schizy. She either half-froze or half-broiled.
Wayne sat with her. “There’s some golf on TV.”
“I think I’ve had all the golf I can take for a while.”
Wayne smiled. “Touché.”
“The Hughes meeting. Isn’t that coming up?”
“In a few days.”
“He’ll hire you. He’ll figure you’re a Mormon, and that your father taught you some things.”
“Well, he did.”
Janice smiled. “Who are you meeting with? The Hughes man, I mean.”
“His name’s Farlan Brown.”
“I know him. His wife was the club champ at the Frontier, but I closed her out nine and eight the one time I played her.”
Wayne laughed. “Anything else?”
Janice laughed. It made her cough and sweat. She tossed off her covers. Her nightgown flew up. Wayne saw new slack spots and hollows.
He wiped her brow with his shirtsleeve. She nuzzled his arm and play-bit it. Wayne made a play Ouch! face.
“I was about to say that he drinks and chases women, like all good Mormons. There’s a trinity for men like that. Showgirls, cocktail waitresses and stews.”
The room was ice-cold. Simple talk had Janice soaked. She bit her lip. Her temples pulsed. She touched her stomach. Wayne tracked the circuit of pain.
Janice said, “Shit.”
Wayne opened his briefcase and prepped a spike. Janice held her arm out. Wayne found a vein, swabbed it and made a hand tourniquet. Needle and plunger, there now.
In one beat—
She tensed and lulled. Her eyelids fluttered. One yawn and out.
Wayne took her pulse. It tapped light and ran steady. Her arm weighed almost nil.
The L.A. Times was open on the nightstand. It showed a photo triptych: JFK, RFK, Dr. King. Wayne folded them out of sight and watched Janice sleep.
(Los Angeles, 6/15/68)
WOMEN:
Two bevies walked by the lot. The first group looked like shop girls. They wore Ivy League threads and modified bouffants. The second group was pure hippie. They wore patched-up jeans, peacenik shit and long straight hair that swirled.
They came and went. The wheelmen waved. The shop girls waved back. The hippie chicks flipped off the wheelmen. The wheelmen wolf-called.
The Shell Station lot, Beverly and Hayworth. Four pumps and a service bay/office. Three wheelmen sprawled in their sleds.
Bobby Gallard had a Rocket Olds. Phil Irwin had a 409 Chevy. Crutch had a ’65 GTO. He was the rookie wheelman. He had the boss ride: 390, Hurst 4-speed, coon maroon paint.
Bobby and Phil were midday-blitzed on high-test vodka. Crutch was residual torqued on the girl show. He scanned the street for more walk-bys. Ziltch—just some old hebes loping to shul.
Back to the paper. Yawn—more jive on James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan. Snore—“America Grieves”/“Accused Assassin’s Lair.” Ray vibed pencilneck. Sirhan vibed towelhead. Hey, America, I got your grief swingin’.
Crutch flipped pages. He hit flyweights at the Forum and a grabber—Life magazine offers million scoots for Howard Hughes pix! A redhead walked by. Crutch waved at her. She scowled like he was a dog turd. Wheelmen emitted baaaad vibes. They were low-rent and indigenously fucked-up. They perched in the lot. They waited for work from skank private eyes and divorce lawyers. They tailed cheating spouses, kicked in doors and took photos of the fools balling. It was a high-risk, high-yuks job with female-skin potential. Crutch was new to it. He wanted to groove the job forever.
The paper called Howard Hughes a “billionaire recluse.” Crutch got a brainstorm. He could starve himself down to bones and shimmy up a heat shaft. Snap—one Polaroid and vamoose.
The lot dozed. Bobby Gallard skimmed beaver mags and slurped Smirnoff 100. Phil Irwin wiped his 409 with a chamois cloth. Phil worked tail jobs and stooge gigs for Freddy Otash. Freddy O. was a shakedown artist and freelance strongarm. He was ex-LAPD. He lost his PI’s license behind some horse-doping caper. Phil was his pet wheelman/lapdog.
The lot dozed. No work, no walk-by cooze, gas station ennui.
It was hot and humid. Crutch yawned and aimed the AC vent at his balls. It perked him up and got him head-tripping. Gas station blahs, adieu.
He was twenty-three. He got expelled from Hollywood High for candid-camera stunts in the girls gym. His old man lived in a Goodwill box outside Santa Anita. Crutch Senior panhandled, bet all day and ate pastrami burritos exclusive. His mom vanished on 6/18/55. Crutch was ten. She up and split and never returned. She sent him a Christmas card and a five-spot every year, different postmarks, no return address. He built his own missing person file. It filled up four big boxes. He killed time with it. He called around the country and ran PD checks, hospital checks, obit checks. He kicked off the quest in junior high school.
Nothing—Margaret Woodard Crutchfield was still stone gone.
The wheelman gig fell on his head. It happened like this:
He kept up with his high-school pal Buzz Duber. Buzz shared his passion for pad prowls. Soft prowls, like this:
Hancock Park. Big dark houses. Preppy girls’ lairs. Knock, knock. Nobody’s home? Good.
You enter undetectably, you carry a penlight, you dig some plush cribs. You walk through girls’ bedrooms and exit with lingerie sets.
He did it a few times with Buzz. He did it a lot by himself. Buzz’s dad was Clyde Duber. Clyde was a big-time PI. He did divorce jobs and got celebs out of the shit. He installed college kids in left-wing groups and got them to rat out subversion. The fuzz popped Crutch on a panty prowl. They snagged him with some black lace undies and a sandwich he glommed from Sally Compton’s fridge. Clyde bailed him out and got his record expunged. Clyde got him wheelman and chump surveillance gigs. Clyde said window-peeping was kosher, but nixed B&E. Clyde said, “Kid, I’ll pay you to peep.”
The lot dozed. Bobby Gallard spray-painted an iron cross on his Olds. Phil Irwin popped some yellow jackets with an Old Crow chaser. Crutch daydreamed per Howard Hughes. Brainstorm: assault his swank penthouse! Gain entry by grappling hook!
An unmarked cruiser pulled in. The lot revitalized. Crutch caught a flash of a red tartan tie and smelled pizza.
Beeline—Crutch followed Bobby and Phil. Scotty Bennett got out of the car and kicked blood in his legs. He was six-five. He weighed 230. He worked LAPD Robbery. His tie had 18’s stitched in the weave.
The backseat was stuffed with six-packs and pizza. Bobby and Phil jumped in and helped themselves. Crutch looked in the car and checked the dashboard. Still there: the crime-scene photos, all taped up and yellowed.
Scotty’s fixation: that big armored-car job. Winter ’64. Still unsolved. Dead guards and scorched heist men—still unidentified. Looted cash bags and emeralds.
Scotty pointed to the photos. “Lest I forget.”
Crutch gulped. Scotty always loomed. He carried two .45’s and a beaver-tail sap on a thong. Bobby and Phil guzzled beer and snarfed pizza. They turned the backseat into a zoo trough. Crutch pointed to Scotty’s tie.
“You had 16’s last time.”
“Two male Negroes robbed a liquor store at 74th and Avalon. I just happened to be in the back, holding a Remington pump shotgun.”
Crutch laughed. “It’s the record, right? Fatal shootings in the line of duty?”
“That’s correct. I’m six up on my closest competitor.”
“What happened to him?”
“He was shot and killed by two male Negroes.”
“What happened to them?”
“They robbed a liquor store at Normandie and Slauson. I just happened to be in the back, holding a Remington pump shotgun.”
The air smelled like ripe cheese and sud spray. Scotty wrinkled his nose. Phil was hunkered down to nosh, legs on the pavement. His pants rode low. His ass crack was exposed. Scotty pulled him up by his waistband.
Phil went airborne. Phil got that “Save me” look that Scotty inspired. Phil came to earth feetfirst and snapped to attention. Bobby gulped and snapped to. Scotty winked at Crutch.
“I’m looking for two male Caucasians driving a powder blue ’62 T-Bird with dark blue fender skirts. They’re clouting steak houses, they’re robbing cash receipts, they’re holding patrons hostage and forcing women to give them blow jobs. I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your eyes peeled.”
Crutch said, “Physical descriptions?”
Scotty smiled. “They wore masks. The female victims described them as being ‘normally endowed.’ ”
“Endowed”—huh?—Bobby and Phil slack-jawed it. Crutch smirked. Scotty grabbed the beer and pizza debris and fobbed it off on him. A sausage morsel hit Scotty’s suit coat. Phil trembled and flicked it off.
Scotty got in his car and peeled out eastbound. Crutch eyeballed a blonde at the gas pumps.
Phil said, “He thinks he’s tough, but I know I could take him.”
The lot re-dozed. Bobby landed a rope job. His pet Jew lawyer came by and fed him the gist. It’s a horny hubby-hooker parlay. The wife’s the client. Rent a hot-sheet room and find hubby at his favorite gin mill. Facilitate a chance meeting. Get me snapshots and film.
Buzz Duber cruised by. Crutch ran the Hughes deal by him. Buzz got a brainstorm. He said he knew this nigger midget. The guy played pygmies in jungle flicks. They could send him up to Howard Hughes’ lair in a room-service cart.
Freddy Otash cruised by. He’d lost some weight. He bragged up this low-roller hotel he’d bought in Vegas. He threw Phil a tail job. Phil drove off, half-blitzed.
Crutch and Buzz got dozy from too much beer and pizza. Crutch got doze blips of Dana Lund, softly window-lit.
A horn blared way too loud. Crutch opened his eyes. Shit—there’s Phil’s pet shyster, Chick Weiss.
With his kike-kayak Cadillac. With his frizzy-ass hairdo and his British fop suit. With his fucked-up Caribbean-art fixation.
Weiss said, “I got a fruit gig for you. The guy likes to brown well-hung Filipinos, and I got a mutant packing 10½ inches. The wife wants a divorce, and who can blame her?”
The hubby had a fuck pad at the Ravenswood. Crutch brought a Rolleiflex with a flashbulb bar. Buzz wore door-kicker shoes.
The Mutant met them in the lobby. He had a door key. Crutch was miffed. He craved some kick-the-door-in action. They huddled. Crutch told the Mutant to get hubby in the sack pronto. Buzz told him to provide decent lighting. The Mutant told them to get his schvantz in the pix. He serviced spouses of both genders. He wanted more divorce work. He wanted his heavy-hung status proclaimed.
They cooked up a four-minute countdown. The Mutant skedaddled to apartment 311. Crutch futzed with the camera and secured it A-OK. Buzz ticked seconds off on a stopwatch.
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1—go.
They ran up the stairs. They cut down hallways and found 311. Buzz opened the door. Crutch hoisted the camera. They followed love grunts to a doorway and let fly.
It was all Greek. The Mutant poured hubby the pork with his monster meat in plain view. Crutch tripped the shutter. Pop pop pop pop—the bedroom went flashbulb-white blind. Hubby wailed the fruit-gig standard How Could You? blues. The Mutant pulled on his pants and went out the fire escape. Buzz saw a bag of weed on the dresser and swiped it. Crutch thought, This is the life.
Buzz said, “It had to be a yard long.”
Crutch said, “Under a foot. Remember, Chick Weiss gave us the measurement.”
Clyde Duber said, “We could use him again. Did you get his number?”
Buzz said, “We can find him through the Screen Actors Guild. He’s playing the sidekick on some TV show.”
Clyde Duber’s office, Beverly Hills. Knotty-pine walls, golf trophies and red leather. Dig the wall frieze:
It pertained to that big armored-car heist. Clyde grooved on it. The case was one big bug up his ass. There’s an ink-stained bill behind glass. There’s framed photos of blowtorched stiffs and loose emeralds. There’s Sergeant Scotty Bennett. He’s manhandling two male Negroes.
Clyde kept an amateur file on the case. It was his pet project. Scotty indulged him with knickknacks. Clyde loved Scotty’s sweat-room tapes. They featured male Negroes screaming.
Crutch said, “Freddy Otash bought some hotel in Vegas.”
Clyde poured a triple scotch. “Freddy’s a dipshit. Rumors are circulating, and that’s all I can say about that.”
Buzz said, “Tell Dad about the Hughes deal.”
Crutch scratched his balls. “Life magazine’s offering a million bucks for a photo of Howard Hughes. I think we can do it.”
Clyde made the jack-off sign. Kids—this white man’s burden. Kid wheelmen, kid infiltrators, kid stakeout geeks.
Buzz nudged Crutch. “You got plans tonight?”
“I thought I’d drive around.”
“Shit, you’re going to peep Chrissie Lund.”
Clyde said, “Who’s Chrissie Lund?”
“She’s USC frosh. She’s got Crutch all wired.”
Clyde sipped scotch. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Like 459 PC, breaking and entering.”
Crutch blushed and checked the wall frieze. Memo: buy some tartan bow ties and get a Scotty Bennett crew cut.
Buzz seltzer-spritzed his scotch. “Get us a decoy job, Dad. Send us in to some Commie group.”
“Nix that. You’re too green and you look too square. You’ve got to be able to talk Commie lifestyle shit to make those gigs work. You kids don’t know from social upheaval. All you kids know from is this college-girl gash you can’t get.”
Buzz laughed. Crutch blushed. Memo: study your file and prowl for Scotty’s blow-job freaks.
“Who commissions those infiltration jobs?”
Clyde kicked his chair back. “Right-wing nuts with gelt. They’re all doctors and kings. You’ve got Dr. Charles S. Toron, the Eugenics King. You’ve got Dr. Fred Hiltz, the Hate-Pamphlet King, and Dr. Wesley Swift, the Nazi-Bible King.”
Buzz said, “Dr. Fred’s a dentist. The other guys have mail-order degrees, like all those coon preachers.”
Clyde said, “Defrocked dentist. He got strung out on anesthetic cocaine and started fucking peoples’ teeth up.”
Crutch thought of Dana Lund. Memo: bring a soft-focus lens. Buzz whipped out that bag of weed. Clyde rolled his eyes—kids.
“That reminds me. Dr. Fred’s got a job for us. A woman stole some money from him and absconded.”
Buzz looked at Clyde. Crutch looked at Clyde. Both looks said Me. Clyde flipped a coin. Buzz called tails. The coin hit the floor heads.
Crutch had a flop at the Vivian Apartments. It was a walk-up dive just south of Paramount. Grips and stagehands lived there. Bit players turned lunchtime tricks in a jumbo mop closet. Crutch crammed all his shit into two rooms.
His file shit, his camera shit, his car shit, his bug-and-tap shit. Clyde taught him surveillance. He had phone cords and wire mounts up the ying-yang. He had a full run of Playboy magazine. He had Car Craft back to ’52. His wallpaper was forty-one Playboy Playmates.
He settled in for the night. He updated his notes on his mother’s last known location. Christmas ’67—Margaret Woodard Crutchfield writes from Des Moines. Every known records check—zero. Backtrack to ’66—a Christmas card from Dubuque. Every in-between town, full records checks, zero.
Crutch got antsy. Buzz was who-knows-where, blitzed on who-knows-what. Buzz had this mean streak that he lacked. Buzz carried a fake cop’s badge and coerced head out of hookers. Nix that. Holding it in was better.
It was warm out. A summer storm brewed. Crutch took a drive. He circled up to Hollywood Boulevard and out to the Strip. He looked at people. The longhaired girls jazzed him and the longhaired guys rubbed him wrong. He trawled for that ’62 Bird and Scotty’s blow-job bandits. He saw two fags in a ’61 Bird and no more.
He drove east to Hancock Park. He cut his lights and perched at 2nd and Plymouth. That big Spanish house held him.
Window glow flickered, upstairs and down. He saw Chrissie in USC sweats—one glimpse and gone. He saw Dana tie her hair back in the kitchen.
Buzz didn’t get it. Nobody got it. That’s why he never told anyone. It wasn’t Chrissie Lund. It was always Dana Lund, and she was fifty-three years old.
(Washington, D.C., 6/16/68)
SPOOKS:
The restaurant was thick with them. Mr. Hoover ran a head count. Dwight watched his eyes click. Colored waiters, colored lobbyist, colored baseball ace. The old poof was frail. He slurped his soup palsy-style. He’d lost some beats, his brain still sparked, his circuits cranked on HATE.
Harvey’s Restaurant, midtown D.C., the big lunch rush. A big be-seen spot. Big eye-click action.
Mr. Hoover said, “Did Wayne Tedrow Jr. kill Wayne Tedrow Sr.?”
“Yes, Sir. He did.”
“Extrapolate, please.”
Dwight pushed his plate back. “Carlos Marcello bought off LVPD and the Clark County coroner. A blunt-force trauma homicide was ruled a heart attack.”
Mr. Hoover smiled. “Stroke would have affirmed the golf aspect.”
Dwight lit a cigarette. “I won’t ask for more details, Sir. I’ll commend your sources and move on.”
“Captain Bob Gilstrap and Lieutenant Buddy Fritsch viewed the crime scene. They were aware of the animus between Tedrow père and fils, and both officers are beholden to Mr. Marcello.”
“Mr. Marcello is a wonderful friend to the Nevada law-enforcement community, Sir. He sends lovely gift baskets at Christmas.”
Mr. Hoover beamed. “Really?”
“Yes, Sir. The false bottoms cover casino chips and hundred-dollar bills.”
Mr. Hoover glowed. “Did Junior take part in any recent Memphis operations that you might have heard about?”
Dwight winked. My lips are sealed. Mr. Hoover snagged a toast point and shooed off a waiter.
“You are an eloquent man, Dwight. You understand your audience and play to them inimitably.”
“I rise to the occasion of you, Sir. There’s no more to it than that.”
Spook action stage left. A spook waiter sucked up to the spook baseball cat. Mr. Hoover tuned the banter out and tuned in to the spooks. He was seventy-three. His breath reeked. His cuticles bled. He lived off digitalis and skin-pop amphetamine. A Dr. Feelgood supplied daily injections.
Click—he’s back again. Click—he’s back to you.
“Our other homicides. The gaudier and more scrutinized ones likely to inspire loose talk.”
Dwight stubbed out his cigarette. “Ray and Sirhan are psychopaths, Sir. Their statements confirm their paranoia, and the American public has come to expect grandstanding delusion in its assassins. There will be loose talk, but it will be replaced by public indifference over time.”
“And the Tedrows? Are we exposed there? Reassure me in your most bluff-hearty manner.”
Dwight said, “Senior’s death is in no way suspect. Yes, he ran Klan ops for us, but it’s never become public knowledge. Yes, he peddled hate pamphlets, but he was never as publicly voluble as our hate-pamphleteering chum, Fred Hiltz. Yes, he was slated to take over Ward Littell’s job for Howard Hughes, which might have created speculation. Yes, I think Junior will get the job now. No, I don’t think that any of it will serve to expose us in any significant way.”
Mr. Hoover speared his last toast point. His hand trembled. Some table-hopping pols eyeballed him.
“Power. Was that Junior’s motive?”
“I’ve known him all his life, Sir. I think ‘fully justified hatred’ describes it best.”
A spook preacher braced the pols. Yuks and backslaps circulated. The guy wore cowboy boots with his clerical suit. Dwight recognized him. He hosted telethons for some spook disease and espoused leftist shit.
Mr. Hoover said, “Prince Bobby and Martin Lucifer King have departed, leaving the morally impaired disconsolate and providing the sane with dear relief. Operation Black Rabbit did not achieve the results we had hoped for, and toxic clouds of black nationalism are quite evidently aswirl. I would like you to assess the Black Panther Party and the United Slaves, also known as ‘US,’ as potential targets for a disruption program. I am thinking of a full-scale Cointelpro. There are also two lesser known cabals in Los Angeles that may also require scrutiny. Mark their lurid names: The Black Tribe Alliance and Mau-Mau Liberation Front.”
Dwight got goose bumps. “I have an informant in L.A. I’ll fly out and talk to her.”
“Her, Dwight? Confidential Bureau informant number 4361?”
Dwight smiled. “Yes, Sir. We may be looking for an inside plant, and she knows every duplicitous left-winger in captivity.”
“All left-wingers should reside in captivity.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Stop by Las Vegas as well. Assess Wayne Tedrow Jr.’s mental health.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“The Mau-Maus were an African cannibal sect with no valid grievance. They diddled baboons and ate their own young.”
“Yes, Sir. I know about them.”
“Your knowledge does not surprise me. You’re my obedient Yalie thug.”
He lived in hotel suites. Roving agents had Bureau-vouchered digs nationwide. He liked the Statler in L.A. and the Sheraton Chicago. The D.C. Mayflower was dud-ritz. The room service tanked, the pipes hissed, the bed creaked.
His study files and plane tickets were there on the desk. Mr. Hoover had them sent during lunch. Panthers/US/Mau-Mau/Tribe. Mr. Hoover wanted this. His L.A. flight left in two hours.
It was chilledhis