James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 (49 page)

Scotty swung the hose chunk. Jomo screamed. Perfect kidney shot.

Dwight said, “Confess.”

Scotty said, “Confess.”

Jomo spat blood on the table. Jomo
gasped
, “Fuck you.”

Scotty swung the hose chunk. Jomo screamed.

Dwight said, “Confess.” Scotty said, “Confess.”

Jomo spat blood on the table. Jomo
sobbed
, “Fuck you.”

Scotty swung the hose chunk. Jomo screamed.

Dwight said, “Confess.”

Scotty said, “Confess.”

Jomo spat blood on the table. Tissue chunks were laced in. Jomo rolled his head upright and took a big breath.

“Okay, I did them jobs. Me and a nigger named Leotis Waddrell. Leotis ripped me off. Went to Vegas and blew our stash on coke and roulette. I snuffed him. He's out in the desert. You let me cop to Homicide-Two, I give you the fucking body.”

Scotty said, “He confessed.”

Dwight said, “I'll verify it.”

Scotty said, “I've got a few more questions.”

Dwight shook his head. “Get him an ambulance. He tried to escape and you nailed him. You can post-date the confession.”

Scotty shook his head. Scotty tickled Jomo's chin with the hose chunk.

“February 24, '64. The armored-car heist on 84th and Budlong. I'm sure you've heard about it. Dead guards, dead robbers, a very large take in cash and emeralds. The lead robber killed his own men and burned their bodies past recognition. He got away, and I'm halfway convinced that a second man may have gotten away, as well. While I have you here, may I ask if you know anything about that?”

Dwight blinked. It didn't track, it didn't play, it didn't pertain—

Jomo blinked. Blood dripped down his chin.

“Man, why you askin' me this? That case is age-old stale bread.”

Scotty swung the hose chunk. Jomo screamed. Perfect kidney shot.

Dwight stood up. Jomo lolled his head on the table. Scotty grabbed his hair and jerked it. The tabletop was blood-smeared.

“Rumors, scuttlebutt, anything you might have heard. I asked a civil question and I expect a civil answer.”

Jomo pulled his head away. His Afro came loose. It was a paste-on wig. Scotty laughed and threw it on the floor.

“One last time. The events of February 24, 1964. Tell me what you know about—”

“Man, I don't know shit! Rumors is rumors! Maybe it's BTA before they was BTA, maybe it's white guys! Man, I don't fucking know!”

Scotty stroked Jomo's scalp with the hose chunk. Dwight said, “Enough.”

Scotty stuck the hose chunk in his waistband. Scotty said, “As you wish.”

“Call an ambulance. Get him to Morningside.”

Scotty winked. “Sure, Dwight. I'll call an ambulance, and we'll say good night now.”

Dwight walked to the door. His ring was gone. His feet were numb. He smelled bile and blood.

Scotty said, “I still owe Marsh Bowen one.”

Dwight got out the door and downstairs. His feet were gone. He hit the parking lot shaking. Joan was leaning against his car.

Dawn at the fascist cop shop. Black & whites parked all around her. The Red Goddess in a pea coat and scuffed boots.

“I'm as good as you are. Are you convinced now?”

Dwight said, “Yes.”

It was cold. Joan shivered and jammed her hands in her pockets.

“Word will spread. Marsh handed up Jomo. We certified Marsh and got Jomo off the street in one go. It's why I let the MMLF store guns in a BTA safe house. The BTA and MMLF will take it from there.”

“You knew Marsh was my infiltrator.”

Joan nodded. “
Off a fight with Scotty Bennett
? It was so fucking bold that it had to be you.”

Dwight shivered. “ ‘Nobody dies.' Remember?”

“There's some guns that won't hurt anyone.”

“It might not be that simple.”

“Which should not impede our actions.”

Two cops walked by. Dwight stepped toward Joan. He took her hands with his cop world in view.

“Why this? And why now?”

“We both have blood on our hands. Maybe I've got more than you.”

“What do you mean?”

Joan said, “There's things I know about you.”

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 4/21/69. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.

Los Angeles,  
April 21, 1969

The outside world infringes on the quiet home life I've tried to create for my children. The newspaper lands on my door every morning, and I can't help but look. Then Dwight knocks on my door and tells me what the newspapers have omitted.

Two Panthers were charged with non-fatal assaults on two police officers in Brooklyn; legal actions against the Panthers are proceeding in a dozen cities. Dwight thinks the Panthers are self-destructing. They are riddled with FBI and municipal police informants, who are creating internal discord, which leads to intra-group violence, which gets large-scale publicity, which leads to large-scale public censure, which leads to more publicity-seeking violence. The Panthers, and occasionally US, get the headlines, while Dwight continues to hammer at the lowly BTA and MMLF, because he considers their antics to bode as a fully contained media event that he can orchestrate at whim. In that sense, he is the quintessential “Man with a Job,” and “the Job” appears to be getting to him.

The newspapers tell me that “black-militant firebrand” Jomo Kenyatta Clarkson, “who admitted to a daring series of liquor-store holdups,” committed suicide while in custody at the Los Angeles County Jail. The incident has sparked a revitalized hatred between the BTA and MMLF. I've heard street talk about this. It's considered gospel: ex-policeman Marshall Bowen, now an avid BTA supporter, ratted off Clarkson for the robberies. I came to a realization belatedly: Bowen must be Dwight's infiltrator.

Dwight has never named the man. He protects the identities of his cutouts, infiltrators and informants. He has done that with me, although Mr. Hoover, in his declining state, has spoken injudiciously about my relationship with Dwight. Mr. Hoover is a celibate homosexual prone to crushes on rugged and assertive men. My intimate accord with Dwight, suffused with conflicting ideology, must confuse and appall the old man no end.

The Clarkson matter weighs on Dwight. The machination—
whatever went down with Clarkson and Bowen—had to have been at Dwight's instigation, perhaps with Joan Klein's involvement. I've seen Dwight twice recently. We made love, but he seemed to want the consolation more than the sex. He kept bringing up the topic of heroin and how leftist radicals view it as a political tool. I smelled Joan all over that construction.

Dwight sleeps even more fitfully now. I can feel him twitching his way through nightmares. When he awakens, he peers at me almost suspiciously. It's as if he's wondering what I know about him and what I've told other people. We've burgled each other's homes. He's read my much less candid journal. I've seen his check-writing kit, and have mentioned it to him elliptically. My black-bag jobs are a subtext of our relationship, one that Dwight accepts. I've often wondered about the specific nature of Dwight's debt to Mr. Hoover. Last week, I did some checking and came up with an answer of sorts.

I recalled the starting date of Dwight's check ledger: spring 1957. I knew the check recipient's names: Mr. and Mrs. George Diskant of Nyack, New York. I did some newspaper microfilm research then, and learned the story.

It was January '57. A man traveling north on the Merritt Parkway hit a center divider. He was drunk. The collision killed Mr. and Mrs. Diskant's two teenaged daughters. The man was not named, nor was he ever criminally charged.

I can only assume that Mr. Hoover pulled strings. I would also be foolish to assume that Dwight's horrible bond with that man was shaped by a single incident and no more.

Joan has told me that she knows things about Dwight. She leaves it at that. I wonder if she knows more about him than I do, despite their shorter-term dealings. I may be granting Joan a prescient quality that she does not really possess. Still, I swear that I can smell her on Dwight.

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 5/1/69. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen.

Los Angeles,
5/1/69         

It's May Day. I'm standing on the roof of my building, observing traffic jams on the San Diego and Harbor freeways and an
anti-war march downtown. The BTA and MMLF are passing out leaflets along the march route. I declined to participate. I expect that there will be skirmishes and that I will be viewed as the cause.

I'm very frightened. It's an escalating feeling that has me coming out of my skin. It started last month, when Wayne told me to confront Jomo—“I'll tell the world that you're a faggot if you don't.” Oh, yes, the threat worked. I confronted Jomo and Jomo is dead, and I'm a direct link in the cause and effect.

If Wayne knows, who else knows and how did they find out? Does Mr. Holly know? Do Scotty Bennett or the LAPD at large know? Does the FBI know? Do men within the BTA and MMLF know?

How did I reveal myself? Was it the absence of women in my life that led Wayne to an informed supposition?
I am not in the least effeminate and have always gone to great lengths to rid myself of the affect that men with the Bent generally possess. Do I swish? Do I assume hands-on-hips poses unconsciously? Do I lisp? Are my shit-kicking/black male mannerisms butch queer in some codified manner? Has some two-second anonymous trick out of my very circumspect past come forth to recognize me as a local celebrity and rat me off for police favors? Do people simply sense auras in the sexually charged/dream-state world I inhabit
?

All of this frightens me. The upshot of the Jomo situation is much more perilous.

Scotty Bennett popped Jomo for that liquor-store spree that I suspected him of. Mr. Holly, who appeared oddly shocked by the incident, told me that Scotty beat Jomo half-dead at 77th Street Station and sent him to Morningside Hospital with severe kidney damage. Jomo hung himself in his cell several days later. That latter part of the story made the papers and got brief coverage on TV. Mr. Holly told me the story that never received public exposure: that Jomo confessed to a series of high-stakes residential robberies and the Dr. Fred Hiltz murder of last year.

The crimes netted an estimated $750,000 and were committed with a partner in no way aligned with the BTA or MMLF. The man blew all of the money on cocaine, gambling and prostitutes in Las Vegas. Jomo learned of this, killed the man and body-dumped him in the desert. Mr. Holly interviewed Jomo in the L.A. County Jail the day before he killed himself. Jomo told Mr. Holly that his half of the robbery take was earmarked for a “buy heroin” fund for the MMLF. Vicious and hapless criminal fools: Jomo pulls daring
high-line jobs
and
clouts liquor stores. Jomo trusts his whore-chasing, dope-fiend partner. The MMLF's dope seed money is squandered. I beat up Jomo, Jomo gets popped tangentially and offs himself. I should be grateful that Scotty busted Jomo—because Jomo would have come after me sooner or later. Jomo's
dead
? All the better. Unfortunately, it's playing out much differently.

The word is out: I gave Jomo up to Scotty.

It isn't true.

Everyone who counts believes it anyway.

My new BTA brothers are glad. Right on, Brother Marsh: that nigger Jomo was stone
-baaaad
and stone-anti-BTA. I'm covered with them and uncovered everywhere else.

I told Wayne I didn't snitch Jomo. He said he believed me, but I'm not sure he does. I told Mr. Holly I didn't do it. Mr. Holly said he
didn't
believe me, but his disbelief was not fully convincing. Scotty knows I'm not the informant, but he came by Tiger Kab yesterday and
hugged me
in full view of the crew.

Scotty wants people to think it. I've lost all sane track of what Wayne and Mr. Holly want people to think.

I've been hung out to dry. I don't know who did it. I don't think Scotty simply attributed the snitch-out to me as a means to avenge Mr. Holly's staged beating. Somebody did this to me. I don't know who, but it has to be politically motivated. Nobody knows I'm a plant, except Wayne, Mr. Holly and a very few people in the FBI and on LAPD.

It could be any black-militant street fool or fool ideologue. It could be some marginalized or factionalized BTA or MMLF fool with a fool's gut instinct.

I've started wearing a bulletproof vest. The MMLF allegedly has a “bounty” out on me. Some MMLF fools saw me on Central Avenue and tossed brim-full malt-liquor cans at me.

I'm frightened. I wear that vest and spend hours standing in front of my bedroom mirror, perfecting mannerisms.
Have I betrayed the Bent unconsciously? I am not in the least effeminate. Did someone prescient within my overall dream state simply discern the Bent in me
?

I've stopped making queries on the armored-car heist. My lust for the money and emeralds has been subsumed by a survivor's instinct. I'm sitting still for now, but Wayne and Mr. Holly are demanding results. Mr. Holly has been talking up the BTA as a heroin conduit. He wants me to proffer the notion to my BTA brothers, who are too motherfucking dumb to score heroin at a
yard sale at a poppy farm in Thailand, which Mr. Holly can't quite grasp.

I'm scared. I'm sitting still. I'm waiting. I'm wearing that vest. I'm studying dead-straight men and practicing their moves and masculine craft in my mirror.

Per dead-straight, there's one bright spot in my life right now: my crazy Haitian friend, Leander James Jackson. Leander loves me, but he's
stone
straight, so tough luck there. He had that knife fight with Jomo—which Wayne and I provoked—so he
loves
me for my alleged snitch-out, which resulted in Jomo's death. I told Leander that I didn't do it. Leander laughed and said, “Baby boy, I don't believe you.”