Crutch kept it zipped. He’d been talking D.R. like Froggy talked Cuba. “Keep it zipped.” Dwight Holly told him that. He obeyed, so far. Marsh Bowen was a fruit. He kept that zipped. He bombed by Miami-Dade PD last night. He did file checks on Gretchen/Celia and Joan Rosen Klein. Froggy asked him where he went. He kept it zipped.
He was learning. His killer pals would respect that.
They drove to a rinky-dink airfield outside Miami. The crew was all Cuban. They were all diced and sliced from sugarcane work. Mesplede signed some papers and rented a two-seater plane. They took off and torched a joint at three thousand-plus feet.
Crutch got scared. The altitude cross-wired his high to acid-trip dimensions. He kept seeing people who weren’t there. His mom did the Twist with Dana Lund. Blow-job Bev Shoftel blew Sal Mineo.
They flew low over Little Havana. Mesplede hit a lever and cut five thousand Nixon signs loose. Kids plucked them out of the air and flipped the plane off. Misplede dipsy-doodled south. They flew over a string of bridgeways and keys. Mesplede served Dexedrine chased with hash-spiked schnapps. Dig those brown cubes floating in white liquid.
Crutch imbibed. The cocktail re-cohered him. They flew out over the Caribbean. They passed two refugee rafts and dumped Nixon signs on them. The cocktail kept Crutch un-airsick. Mesplede pointed behind the seats. Crutch saw a Tommy gun with a hundred-round drum. He popped a bullet out. The tip had been dumdum-gouged and stuffed with rat poison.
Crutch got flutters. The cocktail had him anesthetized short of real fear. This big brown shape loomed. Froggy grinned at him. Crutch blinked. Now the shape’s a pancake-flat island.
Froggy pushed the stick and brought them in low. They skimmed waves and water-bumped their wheels. Crutch saw the beach and some brownshirt spies ringed by sandbags. The spies were hunched over a.50-caliber machine gun. The thing had a vented barrel, feeder belts and a 360 swivel.
Froggy diversion-dipped and dove straight at them. The spies fired over, under and wide. Froggy came in ultra-low. The spies swiveled, re-swiveled and sent off panic shots. The noise was like typewriter clack meets the A-bomb.
Crutch rested the Tommy gun on his window ledge. Froggy got see-their-eyes low. Crutch head-counted eight. They were ducking and trying to swivel their machine gun in tight.
Crutch fired. He saw two heads explode. He saw one guy’s ribs blow out of his chest and blood-blast a sandbag. Froggy cut through some low trees. Fronds buffeted the airplane and blocked their frontal view. Crutch fired behind him. Stitch shots, very precise. He got four guys standing together. He saw a tall guy’s glasses shatter as his head pitched off.
Froggy pulled the stick back. Crutch saw Cuba upside down and held in his cookies. They flew backward over the ocean. He saw his eight new kills and that guy’s head rolling toward the surf line.
Hangover.
Blackout.
He didn’t remember the flight back or the ride to the hotel. He woke up in his bed. Mesplede was still asleep. He walked down to the restaurant and sat outside. He ordered pancakes and a Bloody Mary and kept it all down. He re-wired his head and grooved the awe of it. He killed two Cuban Reds in Chicago. He’d just killed eight more. Two plus eight was ten. He was moving toward Scotty Bennett’s toll.
A shade tree loomed over his table. Lovers had carved initials and honeymoon dates on it. Crutch got out his pocketknife and stabbed in “D.C.” and “10.”
He walked back upstairs. His bedroom door was open. Mesplede was sitting on the bed. His briefcase had been pried open. The summary report on his case was out in plain view. Mesplede was on page 43.
Froggy had his gun out. Crutch gulped and brain-stalled for some lies. Froggy said, “You’ve withheld information twice. Your fixation on the Dominican Republic was a non sequitur that aroused my suspicion, so now you must tell me everything.”
So he did.
He started with the Dr. Fred/thieving girlfriend caper. He layered in Farlan Brown, Gretchen/Celia and Joan. Add Horror House. Add all his futile cop work. Add Celia’s Dominican roots and Haiti. Add the dead woman’s tattoo and the tattoo on the voodoo guy in the picture book.
Mesplede pulled out Crutch’s pocket atlas. It was open to the Caribbean page. He said, “Our agendas merge.” He drew a straight line between the D.R. and Cuba.
46
(Los Angeles, 10/25/68)
Black Cat Cab featured black velvet walls and a black-history tribute. The time line spanned the Black Jesus to the Black LBJ. The flocked-on icons were peeling. The air conditioning ran twenty-four hours and messed with the motif. The boss weighed 428 pounds. The hut was stalactite-cold, per his orders.
Cordell “Junior” Jefferson: entrepreneur, Teamster-loan defaulter.
Wayne said, “The Boys are calling in their paper, Mr. Jefferson. There’s some good news within that context.”
Jefferson squirmed in his chair. It was triple-wide. The room ran 50°. He was sweating.
“You’re tellin’ me I’m about two months behind, so I gots to take this?”
Wayne shivered. “You’re three years behind, sir. Three years, but my news is not all bad.”
Jefferson spooned ice cream from a half-gallon drum. Some Panther types walked through the hut and evil-eyed Wayne. A big white man followed them. He radiated Cop. He wore a gray suit and a plaid bow tie.
Jefferson waved his spoon. “What’s all this motherfuckin’ good news you talkin’ about, while you tryin’ to pull the motherfuckin’ rug out from under me?”
Wayne opened his briefcase and tossed ten grand in Jefferson’s lap. Jefferson fondled it, smelled it and rubbed his face on it.
He snapped the rubber band holding it. He squeezed it into the world’s fattest flash roll.
Wayne said, “You hold the deed on the biz. We bring in a white guy named Milt Chargin to help you run things, you help some cop friends of mine out with information and dry-clean some cash, for which you get 7% of the action.”
“Suppose I says no?”
“Sir, you’re smarter than that.”
Jefferson ate ice cream and ruffled the roll. Wayne checked out the wall icons. He recognized the Black FDR and nobody else. A man with a triple-wide Afro walked in. He sneered at Wayne and went to the switchboard. Wayne pulled out a snapshot of Reginald Hazzard and flashed it at Fats. Fats shook his head no.
The Afro man tossed Fats a fresh tub of ice cream. Fats said, “Big Boy Cab is crowding my business. If my business is our business, then I could use some of your help.”
Wayne smiled.
Mary Beth was asleep. The covers were up over her back. One leg was exposed.
Wayne watched her. She always fell asleep before he did. She kissed him and burrowed off by herself and gave him something to see.
He pulled a chair up to the bed and touched her knee. He waited. He liked to see her turn her head on the pillow.
The lab phone rang. Wayne got up and ran for it. He grabbed the call two rings in.
“Yes?”
“It’s Dwight, Wayne.”
“Yes, and at midnight.”
“I’ve got a chemistry question.”
“All right.”
“Can redacted file paper be stripped to expose the typed words underneath?”
Wayne leaned on a shelf. It was crammed with heroin components.
“Maybe. I’ll try, if you get me some C-4 explosive.”
(Los Angeles, 10/26/68)
Darktown-85th and Central. An Afro-pride strip. A night club, a hair salon, a mosque. Street loafers at 2:14 a.m.
Among them: Jomo Kenyatta Clarkson.
Male negro, age thirty-nine. MMLF stalwart. Black Cat Cab dispatcher. “Propaganda Minister.” Hate-lit scribe. Suspected rapist/armed robber.