His fuck-up-Hubert gig was now three cities in. He’d checked three local PD Intel and Robbery files. Zero-no mentions of Joan Rosen Klein.
Crutch dart-bombed the Bay of Pigs and Havana. His weird high got him all swelled up and misty. He taped the Joan pictures above his bed. The wall colors shifted-magenta to tropic sunrise.
Another shopping mall lot today. Last night’s news: “Exhausted Humphrey makes policy gaffes.” This gig was that gig re-psychedelicized. Froggy said he learned some shit in Chicago.
The crowd ran three hundred. They ran porky and Minnesota blond. They were noisy. They talked liberal rah-rah. HHH emoted on placard fronts. He tried to look studly. He failed. He looked like your pedophile coach.
Crutch and the Frogman stood beside the speaker’s platform. A cheer went up: He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming! Crutch saw Humphrey and some flunkies approaching, stage left. Four cops trailed them by four paces. Mesplede waved three fingers. Three moonlighting Teamsters waved back.
They opened canisters on the QT. They squatted on the QT. They poured liquid wax on the ground beside the platform. The shit was neutral-colored. It slithered and spread.
Four paces, three, two, one-
Humphrey and his flunkies slipped, slid and slalomed up the platform steps. Hubert did Frug and Wah-Watusi moves just to stay upright. The crowd yukked. Two cops pratfalled. The crowd re-yukked. A fat cat hugged Hubert. Hubert’s look said “What’s this shit?” The fat cat spoke into the microphone. More yuks leveled his spiel. Crutch signaled a guy by the platform. The guy toppled and mock-convulsed. The fucker was double-jointed. He kicked his arms and legs out at right angles. Alka-Seltzer foam dripped from his mouth.
Hubert fans yelled for help. Seizure Sid did his shtick. A fat babe jammed a frozen Mars bar over his tongue. Some chumps yelled, “Get a doctor!” and “Man down!” The crowd dispersed. Hubert fumed and tried to express compassion. The fat cat futzed with the platform mike. Reverb went screeeee.
Crutch signaled three groups in mid-crowd. Three fistfights broke out. The crowd re-dispersed. Two skinny nuns bopped the fighters with their PEACE NOW! signs.
Hubert stamped his feet. The cops flailed on liquid wax. Their fat jiggled. They looked like honky pigs in nigger hate cartoons. Hubert did that V-for-victory thing.
Froggy signaled a blonde in go-go boots and tight jeans. Crutch handed her a Nixon sign and boosted her up onstage. Froggy waved to three groups of men. They started whistling and chanting, “Take it off!”
Hubert stood there. The fat cat dry-popped Digitalis. Some fresh cops charged the fistfighters. The peacenik nuns got trampled. Cops charged the platform. Liquid wax sent them sprawling. The blonde waved her Nixon sign. The crowd went nuts. “TAKE IT OFF!” went epidemic. The blonde pulled off her shirt and bra and did the Swim, the Fish and the Mashed Potato topless. Crutch kicked on a hi-fi gizmo under the stage. Dig it: Archie Bell and the Drells with “The Tighten Up.”
A fuckload of cops charged the platform. Mesplede walked away. Crutch grabbed the discarded bra and sprinted.
Back to L.A.
Crutch killed time at the airport. The Frogman split to Miami on an earlier flight. The boarding gate featured a phone bank. Crutch called Clyde Duber Associates collect.
The secretary put Buzz on. Buzz said, “We got a lead.”
“What are you-”
“That picture you drew. I got a make. PSA Airways, the fourth place I hit. The personnel director said, ‘Bingo, that’s Janet Joyce Sherbourne, and she was one all-time no-goodnik.’ ”
Crutch got out his notepad. “Slow, now. Tell me the story.”
“It’s some story, and it hooks in to the Dominican Republic. Remember? Gretchen Farr got those answering-service calls from the Dominican consulate.”
Buzz knew that part. Buzz knew shit per Gretchen as Celia or Celia’s Dominican-
“Hey, are you there?”
“I’m here. Come on, tell-”
“Okay, the Sherbourne cooze was a bilingual stewardess. She worked the L.A. to Santo Domingo run exclusively, right up until that fucked-up little war in ‘65, when LBJ sent the marines in. Okay, so there’s a layover in Mexico City, and the Sherbourne cooze gets caught with a gun and a half-dozen fake passports. Okay, she fucking wiggles out of custody, and nobody knows how, and then she vanishes off the face of the earth. Now, here’s the good part, the part that is just so fucking perfectly Gretchie. It turns out that the cooze’s job application was a complete fake, her fucking address was some kind of Commie safe house, and her personnel file got snatched from the PSA office.”
Crutch let the phone drop. Buzz talked to dead air. Things went haywire. He saw Joan kiss Gretchen/Celia in slow motion.
The downtown library was near his file pad. The books were too big to steal. The Dominican Republic: maps, pix, history.
Memo: the D.R. was close to Cuba. Memo: the mob grooved the D.R. as a would-be gambling site.
Crutch lugged books over to a table. Dozing winos competed for space. He scoped out the map pages. He grokked the layout. The island of Hispaniola. The D.R. and Haiti on one slab of land. The Caribbean Sea, close to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Close to Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Dominican connection: all over his fucking case.
The D.R. bordered Haiti eastbound. The Massacre River formed the dividing line. Inlets dotted the coasts of both countries. All the city names were spooky spic and frog.
Crutch skimmed summary chapters. The race shit hit him quick. The Dominicans were light-skinned beaners. They grooved on their Spanish roots. Dark-skinned Dominicans were dйclassй. It was like the U.S.: white is all right!
Rafael Trujillo had long political legs. He ruled from ‘30 to ‘61. He quashed dissent. He oppressed Haitians and slaughtered the fuckers en masse. He was pro-U.S. and anti-Red. He fucked lots of women and tortured and suppressed his political rivals. A Commie group called the 6/14 Movement tried to oust his ass in ‘59. Their “revolution” went pfft. Trujillo went schizo and veered out of line. He was sacking the country too overtly. JFK and the CIA thought he might go Red. The CIA whacked him in ‘61. The Frogman allegedly assisted. A less garish despot named Juan Bosch took over. “Free elections” and all the standard spic-reform bullshit. It looked like Bosch was veering Red. LBJ sent some marines in and nipped that shit in the bud. The current despot was a pint-size punk named Joaquin Balaguer. The D.R. was nothing but coups, revolts, plots, intrigue, slaughter.
Crutch hit a section on Haiti. Woooo!-baaad nigger juju! French-speaking spooks. Dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier-Godzilla to Trujillo’s Rodan. More oppression, coups, revolts, plots, intrigue, slaughter. Voodoo-oh, yeah!
Voodoo rites, voodoo rituals, voodoo curses, voodoo priests. Mind-blowing voodoo liquor and voodoo herbs. American spooks ate fried chicken. Haitian spooks fucked chickens and drank their hot blood.
Woooooo!
Crutch flipped pages. This voodoo shit was a gas. He hit a photo section. Spooks were capering and bopping around in chicken-feather hats. Woooo, then there’s this-
This photo. This light-skinned Negro guy. This weird tattoo on his right arm.
Geometric patterns. Crosshatched. Like the tattoo on the dead woman in Horror House-
40
(Las Vegas, 9/26/68)