The spies grapple-hooked the bow and tied Tiger Klaw tight. The fit held: machine-gun mounts cinched to rock fissures. The Krew hopped off. Sand sucked at their socks. The P.R. spies looked like the Cubans. They all had that macho-maimed visage. Names went around. Crutch kept it zipped. The spies bowed to Luc. It was his pedigree. Six-foot-eight voodoo priest and Tonton cop. Luc was an all-time rare turd.
The Krew followed the spies. Jungle brush pressed up to the beach. Night bugs swarmed. The lantern light killed most of them dead in the air. Crutch saw a fishing shack. Two spies door-guarded it. The inside was eight by eight. Powder bricks sat on a table.
Saldivar brought the money in a knapsack. Luc brought sucrose filler, a razor blade and a hypodermic syringe. The spies crossed themselves and blessed his test flight.
Gomez-Sloan slit the bricks. Saldivar spooned powder into a purple solution. It turned yellow. Froggy went voilа! The spies went arriba! Luc swabbed his spike, stretched a tourniquet and geezed up.
All eyes on Luc. He’s at Cape Coonaveral. He’s heading for liftoff.
Luc tapped the plunger. Blood hit the syringe. Luc listed, lulled, levitated and left them for Cloud 9.
The water was cold. Waves banged the hull and sudsed the foredeck. Crutch had watch duty. He had to get wet. He brain-tripped. The Dominican women kiss. It takes him back to Joan and Gretchen/Celia and their kiss last summer.
The voodoo death book. Tattoo vanishes that summer. She’s a 6/14 traitor. Joan and Gretchen/Celia want her dead. Slasher homicide-or maybe something else.
“You perv on women.”
The Cubans didn’t scare him. Luc didn’t scare him. Froggy, Scotty and Dwight Holly-nix. Wayne scared him. Wayne didn’t scare the other guys. Froggy defied Wayne. Froggy said they could keep the dope biz clandestine. Wayne killed Martin Luther King and several lesser-known niggers. Wayne had a black girlfriend. Wayne was scary because he processed evil shit and fed it back to you, uninvited.
He dropped Wayne off in hellhole Haiti. Wayne came back three days later, gaunt and head-tripped. He okayed a transfer: bucks from the Boys to the Midget. The jail crew and slave crew were working now. The Cubans and La Banda cracked the whip. Tiger Krew’s work ran non-stop. They supervised the sites. They maintained Tiger Klaw. They straw-bossed the build on a full-mooring berth. Luc’s voodoo slaves were gouging an inlet space. Froggy called it “Tiger Kove.” Luc had dope coonections in Port-au-Prince. Tonton spooks would lay the smack on the dealers. Boss spook Papa Doc would glom a big cut.
Wayne said no smack. The Krew contradicted. Wayne scared him. He hated Wayne. He had a picture of Wayne shaking hands with the Midget. Luc taught him a voodoo hex. He cursed Wayne with it. He stuck pins in a dead chicken. He drew his blood and stuck the pin in Wayne’s picture face.
A wave doused him. It fucked with his brain pix. Crutch fired tracer rounds at the sky.
The CIA guys were golf nuts. Terry Brundage shot scratch. His flunkies had low handicaps. Their office was the ex-caddy shack on the Midget’s private golf course. La Banda ran a torture bunker under the ninth hole.
Crutch walked in. The floor was synthetic grass. Cocktail glasses served as golf holes. Terry and his flunkies wore T-shirts and nubby-silk knickers.
Terry said, “Hola, pariguayo.”
Crutch laughed. One flunky blew a putt. One flunky sunk a loooong one. The place was messy. Three desks, short-wave radio, teletype machine. A file bank with drawers overstuffed.
The watercooler held a cup dispenser and pre-mixed daiquiris. Crutch grabbed a cup and pulled a short slurp.
Terry twirled his putter. “Did Mesplede send you?”
“No, it was my idea. I thought I’d check your dissident file. I think there’s been some Commies nosing around the sites.”
The flunkies packed their golf bags. They shoved shotguns in with their sticks.
Terry filled a thermos with rum goo. “There’s some skin mags in the John. If you’re looking for chicks, you’ll be better off there.”
The file bank was chaos. Four cabinets, sixteen drawers, no system. Dumped folders, loose snapshots. No tracking or routing numbers. Nothing alphabetized.
Crutch worked drawer-to-drawer. He locked himself in the office. He had four hours. Golf and boozy hoo-haw took that long. He dumped drawers and skimmed documents. He scanned for anything Joan Klein/Celia Reyes/6-14-related. He got name lists, membership lists, suspect lists, interrogation lists and assumed-dead lists. He saw a shitload of Commie acronyms and lists in Spanish. He saw a fourteen-thousand-name enemy list for Rafael “the Goat” Trujillo. He saw a list of suspected safe houses in Santo Domingo and half-ass memorized it. He saw fragments of a 6/14/59 time line. The narrative was fractured. Half the pages were missing.
He knew the basic facts already. The new shit was horrific. The Goat machete-murdered 6/14 sympathizers en masse. He wiped out border villages. He fed children to the gators in the Plaine du Massacre. A list followed: 6/14 members captured. No Joan, no Gretchen/Celia, no Maria Rodriguez Fontonette.
The narrative ended. Non sequitur pages followed. Crutch dumped three more drawers and got this:
A fractured string of paragraphs on an un-numbered page. The name Maria Rodriguez Fontonette. Her moniker, “Tattoo.”
She’s 6/14. She’s a turncoat. She ratted out the invasion. La Banda knew. Countermeasures were swiftly prepared and effected. A Tonton Macoute traitor assisted the rebels and escaped to parts unknown. His name: Laurent-Jean Jacqueau.
Crutch re-read the page. He read the pages following it and behind it and re-skimmed every page he’d read already. Nothing revised or enhanced the fractured narrative. Three and a half hours to this.
He dumped four more drawers. He got more names, names and names. He dumped two more drawers. He saw a file folder. “Reyes, Celia” was typed on the front. The folder was empty.
He slurped rum goo straight from the spout. He dumped another drawer. He saw a million photos of Commie-looking spies. He saw a pic marked 6/14/59. He heard screams somewhere under the golf course. The room light dimmed for two seconds and came back on strong.
He turned the photo over. It’s an aerial shot. There’s a rocky beach. Soldiers hold guns on scruffy rebels.
He blinked and squinted. He looked very close. He saw one woman in with thirty-odd men. It was Joan Rosen Klein. Her right fist was raised.
Smoke whiffed out a cooling shaft. A stink followed. The invasion was ten years ago. Joan’s hair was all dark.
More smoke and stink. Another scream-pure Kreole French. More stink-pure scalded flesh.
70
(Los Angeles, 4/13/69)
Junkie Monkey ragged Sonny Liston. It pushed Sonny’s buttons. Sonny shot his wad on drag queens and had no oomph for Ali. His manhood got de-jizzified.
Jomo plugged calls. Junior snarfed cognac-dipped moon pies. Milt’s shtick was protracted. Wayne and Marsh watched Sonny seethe.
It was raining. The roof leaked. The stripedy wallpaper peeled. A Dr. Feelgood owed Tiger Kab 350. He paid off in Desoxyn and Dilaudid. Sonny and Jomo were speedbally pissed.
Junkie Monkey was fey today. Junkie Monkey preened his Afro and pursed his lips.
“Ali be so pretty. That young man can rhyme and play the dozens like no one else this girl has ever seen. ‘Liston’s gonna flee. He’ll go down in three.’ ‘This ain’t no jive. He be out by round five.’ ‘He can’t last to four, ‘cause he be out fuckin’ whores.’ ‘He ain’t got no hope with his arm full of dope.’ ”