An Underwood electric. Typewriter paper stacked beside it.

Dwight rolled in a sheet and typed out all the letters, numbers and symbols. They looked naked eye-correct. He photo-snapped the keyboard and the strike pads. There might be strike-pad flaws. They would have to tool mark-duplicate them. Forensic teams would examine the machine. They had to create a sound verisimilitude.

He tapped more wall panels. He got no hollow sounds. It was a first prowl. He didn’t trust his ears yet.

Hiding spots. The forensic teams would tear up the place. Marsh must be pungently revealed postmortem. He was wildly ingenious and resourceful. The pad should explode with late-breaking finds.

Plant paper here. Plant paper there. It’s his life refracted. He hoards paper for Mr. Hoover. He looks for paper-plant slots on the job.

He was a month in. Mr. Hoover gave him a pay-level raise. The file section was all scandal skank. Most of it was L.A.-based. Marsh was an L.A. native. Every L.A. Office file would be combed for mention after his death.

He skimmed files and looked for data-insert points. It was operational subtext. You hide age-yellowed data. It implies an emerging political imbalance and closet-queer pathology. The FBI’s file mania indicts Marshall Bowen. Non sequitur files are combed diligently. Mr. Hoover is postmortem-indicted. The file compilation is prissy tedium and officially sanctioned scatology. Moral horror and titillation will war in the public arena. Special Agent D. C. Holly will state what it all means.

He spent hours in the file-storage unit. Jack Leahy found it odd. He found Jack odd. Jack was always cracking wise about the old girl’s health. Jack didn’t know that she was still more lucid than not.

Files:

Joan disdained the Records Center raid in Pennsylvania. She thought it would exposit file mania too soon. She thought he was exploiting Karen. She was making a Quaker pacifist a death accessory.

They stopped discussing it. It just sat there, unsaid.

Dwight went through hall closets. He saw Marsh’s pressed uniforms and a gun belt rolled up on a shelf.

Find some actors. Cop-dress one up. Grab a patrol car. Rig a Griffith Park backdrop. There’s a fake Marsh in uniform. His head is averted. A handcuffed suspect is blowing him. Marsh has a gun to his head.

Age-fade the snapshot. Drop it in a frayed uniform. It’s a forgotten knickknack.

Score some street uppers. Tuck them behind his underwear. Marsh is jacked-up on duty and cruising for sport.

Dwight walked out the back door. Marsh had a lovely view. The location was sweet. Marsh was twenty-six. He had a year to live, tops.

Room service brought New York steaks and a too-fat Bordeaux. He was drinking less. Joan was drinking more. Their sleep stints had reversed.

They ate in their robes. Fat rain drummed the windows. They burned a synthetic log in the fireplace.

Joan said, “I don’t like the break-in. It’s precipitous.”

“You’re worried about the convergence.”

“Yes, I am.”

“It’s the one thing we can’t force.”

“They have to be voluntarily in the same place at the same time.”

Dwight slouched in his chair. “The same city, with the perch pre-established. It should be in L.A. He’s stayed at the Beverly Wilshire the last six times he’s been here. He always requests a suite with a north-window view. You’ve got seven two- and three-story buildings directly across the street. Two have office-rental signs up. The other buildings are boutiques and restaurants. They have second- and third-floor storage rooms facing the hotel.”

Joan lit a cigarette. “Keep going. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking we should find a black kid about Marsh’s age. A close resemblance is crucial. He should rent an office and we should decorate it. It’s where he goes to fuck boys, use drugs and hoard guns. I’ll steal semen tubes from a hospital. We’ll lay in the fluids gradually. Marsh is cracking up. His drug use is escalating. I’ll have the shooter skin-pop him full of coke on his way out. I’ll show him how to boot toxins into his liver to approximate long-term drug abuse.”

Joan blew a smoke ring. “You are so astonishingly gifted, comrade.”

Dwight took her hands. “You’re worried about Celia.”

“I don’t want to talk about it. She’s always understood the risks.”

“I could make a few phone calls.”

“I don’t want you to.”

Dwight smiled. “When I connected you to Tommy Narduno, I thought you were coming after me.”

Joan smiled. “I considered it. Tommy thought he could reveal the Grapevine aspect of your operation and create a media ruckus. He was always naive that way. He was a muckraking journalist at heart. He was wearing a wire on the night you killed him.”

Dwight trembled. Joan pointed to the wine. Dwight shook his head.

“What convinced you to pass on it?”

“Karen convinced me. She implied that you were ready. She quoted Goethe at one point. The phrase she used was ‘the fall upward.’ ”

Dwight opened a window. Hailstones brushed his face.

“Jomo and the thing with Marsh. What was your reasoning?”

A gust shook the panes. Joan turned her chair and let the wet hit her.

“There were your ends and my ends. They were both synchronous and inimical. I knew that Marsh had to be your plant. Your pathology showed itself in your choice. It was bold, grandiose and self-destructive. I spent time with Marsh and found him to be weak and almost fawningly self-serving. He cruised men when he thought I wasn’t looking, which was true actor’s faux pas, dramatically unsound and narcissistic. So, I called Scotty Bennett and revealed his inclination. So, I called Scotty again and mediated Marsh’s betrayal of Jomo Clarkson. It was a two-fold strategy. I wanted to put Marsh in jeopardy and force him into allegiance with the BTA. I considered Jomo to be evil, and I was fairly sure that Scotty wouldn’t be able to resist killing him.”

Wind tossed the tablecloth and dumped the Bordeaux. Dwight pulled Joan out of her chair.

Puckett, Mississippi. Six trailer parks and nine Klan kampgrounds.

Bob Relyea ran the Exalted Knights Klavern. He pandered to the local cops and snitched to ATF. He sold magic mushrooms and hate tracts. He robbed gas stations. Bob was ex-Tiger Krew. He pushed heroin in Saigon and worked with Wayne Tedrow. He shot Martin Luther King.

It was kool and klear. The kampground konsisted of a korrugated bunkhouse and a K-9 kennel. Four fucks stood around the shooting range. The targets were department-store dummies. They wore Eldridge Cleaver masks.

Bob saw the car pull up. Dwight braked and stopped short of the kampground. Bob jogged the rest of the way.

Dwight popped the passenger door and the glove box. A C-note roll rolled out. Bob caught it and tucked it under his sheet.

“And that’s just for talking?”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t tell me. If I shoot somebody, there’s lots more where that came from.”

Dwight said, “That’s right.”

Bob said, “Wooo, boy.”

Dwight lit a cigarette. “You get fifty thousand. You take out the target and the fall guy right there. It’s two easy shots. That part doesn’t worry me at all. It’s bringing the two together. I’ll abduct the fall guy and position him if I have to, but I’d rather not.”

Bob picked his nose. “The target guy’s a big deal?”

Dwight winked. Bob said, “Talk’s gonna bubble.”

“I want it to. There’s a subtext here.”

“Who’s the target?”

Dwight laughed. “You’ll know him when you see him.”

DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/6/71. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.

Los Angeles,

February 6, 1971