Morty said, “The Hazzard kid hitchhiked out of Vegas. I’m talking like Christmas ‘63 or into the new year. He gets popped for vag at some little pissant shitkicker town on the California border, and don’t ask me the name, because there’s a zillion little bumfuck towns like that and I really can’t remember. Sooo, Reggie’s got a gun on him. Sooo, the cops book him for vag and a gun charge and beat the piss out of him. Soooo, this white woman shows up and bails him out, and Reggie and the white woman abscond, never to be seen again. It was a cash bail and a fake ID, and the case went cold and Cedric and Mary Beth ran out of coin. I told Cedric this, but he said, ‘Don’t you tell Mary Beth, ‘cause all of this would just kill her.’ ”
Wayne said, “More details.” Morty held up two fingers. Wayne dropped two yards on his chest.
Morty chewed a hangnail. “Soooo, it’s a fucked-up little redneck PD. They don’t keep records. The cops come and go and run wetback fruit-picking crews on the side. They live to drink home brew and beat up beaners and coloreds, and whatever paperwork they had got lost, misplaced or stolen. Those cops comprised a grim experience for me, and that’s all the news that’s fit to print.”
Wayne stood up. “Did you get a description of the white woman?”
“That I can give you. She was supposedly pale and in her late thirties, she wore glasses, had long dark hair with gray streaks, and a cop said something about a bad scar on one of her arms.”
41
(Los Angeles, 10/1/68)
Minstrel Show.
Marsh Bowen worked. He owned Vince amp; Paul’s. The white cops’ bar done got BAAAAAAAAD BROTHERED.
Marsh was seven nights in. He spawned racial tsuris with soulful aplomb. The white cops knew he was a cop. That got him in. That did not excuse his black-power stud behavior.
Marsh with the muscle-man tank top. Marsh with the modest Afro. Marsh all over the white chicks-but no hard moves yet.
Dwight watched.
It was his seventh night. He perched near the bar and played tourist from Des Moines. No cops recognized him. Who’s that big goofball? He sure likes this place. He wears sandals and high-water pants.
Hate was building. Dwight tracked it. Who dot bell-bottomed Mandingo? Scotty Bennett showed up every night. Scotty boozed, Scotty eyeballed Marsh, Scotty acted covetous and puerile. Scotty radar-tracked Marsh and his barmaid girlfriend every spare moment.
Dwight picked at a cheese puff. Marsh chatted up two cop-groupie stews. He shagged hors d’oeuvres off their plates and sipped their drinks uninvited. The girls looooved it.
Dwight watched. The Marsh Bowen gestalt intensified. Marsh was a preener and a player. Marsh might be duplicitous. Marsh should be preemptively spot-tailed. Tail-job prospect: that half-smart Crutchfield kid.
Dwight yawned. His stomach growled back. Food fucked with his mental momentum. Niggertown was seething. Jack Leahy fed him gossip. All this militant shit gored the LAPD’s gonads. Off-duty cops were indulging klantics. Station-house tune-ups. Panthers waylaid and shit-kicked. Trumped-up dope busts, trumped-up drunk rousts, trumped-up warrant checks and-
A woman walked into the bar. Dwight saw gray streaks and glasses and clenched up. It kept happening. Wisps, blips-and it’s never Her.
Marsh walked toward Scotty’s girlfriend. He touched his chin-the signal/it’s now. Scotty was eye-locked: back and forth, his babe/the buck slave.
Dwight got up and stood closer. Marsh swooped on the girlfriend. There, he’s nuzzling her neck. There, he’s licking her ear. There, he’s tugging her earring with his too-bright teeth.
Scotty ran up behind him and grabbed his hair. Scotty kidney-punched him, two-handed. Marsh doubled over and spun around with an arm bar raised. He caught Scotty moving in. The jolt knocked him into the bar. Scotty grabbed his neck and sucked air in. He kicked out. He missed Marsh. He flailed at the bar top and grabbed a steak knife. Marsh stepped directly in front of him. Marsh smashed his nose with one flat palm and sent blood pluming. Dwight heard bones break. Scotty dropped the knife, wiped his eyes and came at Marsh biting. A dozen white cops got to him first.
Los Angeles,
October 16, 1968
I’ve tasted Scotty Bennett’s blood now. It was a much-belated revenge for the whipping Scotty put on me in April of 1966, a year before I joined the LAPD. I provoked that beating by passing several ink-stained bills from the robbery, and I provoked this beating of Scotty and my subsequent beating by his LAPD comrades under the flag of Special Agent Dwight C. Holly. On both occasions I assumed the dual roles of victim and provocateur. Two events, with two and a half years between them. The defining event of the robbery-murders, now four years and eight months in the past. Two confrontations fueled by one motive: I want to solve the robbery-murder case anonymously and keep the remaining cache of money and emeralds for myself.
I have never told a soul about my intention and have deliberately delayed the commitment of writing a journal. I was awaiting the fortuitous moment where my quest might appear truly feasible. That moment is now. I could have described my immersions in left-wing organizations for Clyde Duber, where I learned the acting skills, dissembling skills and poise that brought me to this point, but I’m pleased that I did not indulge that level of self-congratulation. I’ve always enjoyed being an underestimated black man, and now I’m a locally famous and somewhat over-praised and over-scrutinized black man. This is the adventure that I want to describe and dissect as I live it; this current confluence of events is surely the one story I have to tell.
I was severely beaten by somewhere between twelve and sixteen of my brother LAPD officers and spent four days at Central Receiving Hospital. My broken nose, facial lacerations and asymmetrically bent ears have enhanced my rather bland good looks and have added to my incipient black-militant cachet. I have Mr. Holly to thank for that. Mr. Holly sensed my gameness and willingness to play, and I will reward him with hard work and a very commanding performance as I pursue my own goals within the context of this operation.
The local newspapers, radio and television picked up the story of the horrible fracas between a black and a white policeman at a “convivial watering hole frequented by LAPD personnel.” Mr. Holly served as the unseen publicity director for this event. The LAPD launched an internal investigation, and-of course-all the eyewitnesses lied, stating that I sexually accosted the barmaid and attacked Sergeant Robert S. Bennett proactively. Scotty got a broken nose and one week’s “compassionate leave”; I was bound over for an interdepartmental trial board-i.e., a kangaroo court. Mr. Holly hired me a jabbery and flamboyant black lawyer reminiscent of Algonquin J. Calhoun of Amos ‘n Andy fame. The lawyer spouted more racially charged malapropisms than the worst mail-order black preacher ever to bang a pulpit for power and profit. I was hosannaed as the “Black Jesus”; Scotty Bennett was excoriated as the “White Judas Iscariot.” I was, of course, summarily fired from the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Holly later told me that the lawyer was a defrocked minister with a sinecure as a public defender in Visalia County. Gorgeous black-and-white collusion: white judges and prosecutors hire this man to assure the convictions of black clients they need to get off the streets.
I then became an oracle of racial bias, memorizing the blindingly articulate scripts that Mr. Holly wrote for me, withering critiques of institutional racism and the authoritarian mind-set- full of indignation, social rigor and righteous fury, all penned by a white lawyer cop with roots in the Ku Klux Klan. Mr. Holly read me through the scripts, well in advance of my speaking them. I was astonished and almost swoony. Mr. Holly is a big, handsome man and a powerful public speaker. I got the uncanny feeling that he actually believed the words he wrote as he was speaking them.