Deep breath now.

Sal said, “Really, dear heart. Have you ever heard such fantasia?”

96

(Los Angeles, 3/6/71)

Print work and ink work. Get the details.

Homo napkin notes. Fake diary excerpts. Print transfers to fag porn novels and propaganda texts.

The fallback was quiet. Dwight worked alone. He bar-hopped last night. He hit the Jaguar, the Tradesman and the Falcon’s Lair. He laid down dollar bills and snatched the napkins. The fruits smelled fuzz en masse.

He printed herky-jerky. “Love your hair!” “Anytime, sweet” and a phone-number smudge. “I saw you on TV!!!! Can’t believe I saw you here!”

Varied print styles. Crinkly paper. Pocket debris, lifestyle minutae.

“The Hard and the Hung” by Lance Greekman. “AmeriKKKan Gestapo” by Richard T. Saltzman, Ph.D. “Blow the Man Down” and “Semen Demon.” Dissertations on Mr. Hoover’s war on Dr. King.

Dwight applied print strips. Marsh mock-touched book covers. Dwight wrote queer crush notes. Smeared phone numbers, napkin rips, words half-obscured. Marsh: “I’ve got 9 inches. How about you?”

He kept his desk neat. He worked with rubber gloves. He plastic-bagged his piecework. He brainstormed a fake diary entry.

Think it through. Type it in. You’ve got an identical Underwood. Remember: tool-gouge the small C and J.

You’ll be there at the convergence. Joan will insert the fake diary.

That means more B amp;E runs. He might have a real diary.

Dwight cleared desk space. He bagged the books and notes and got out a scratch pad. The Silver Hill photo was up against a lamp. Karen, Dina, Ella. Their address/phone number. “If this man is lost, please return him.”

He covered it with a handkerchief. He mock-Marsh-ascribed:

“My process of radicalization truly began when I realized I could not control my perceptions. Physical symptoms manifested in direct proportion to my attempts to keep them suppressed. It was as if a virus had swept through me. It was significantly more discomfiting than the panic I endured when I became fully aware of my homosexuality a decade ago. A self-hatred took hold then and a politically defined and outwardly directed hatred has taken hold now. My hatred has lingered on immediate targets-the brutish Scotty Bennett, the imperviously exploitative Agent Holly and my racist alma mater, the LAPD-and it has gradually and inexorably ascended to an ineluctable plane. I cannot halt the spread of the virus until I dose myself with the anti-toxin that only JEH’s death will create.”

He read it through again. He covered the desk with a drop cloth and walked out to the terrace.

Clouds top-framed Silver Lake. A haze covered Karen’s house. Their fight rescrolled. It scared Dina. Ella seemed to study it. He kicked around a notion. Ella knew things that he didn’t. Ella got them from Joan.

Shit stirs in the spiritus mundi. Karen tells Joan about him. Comrade Tommy’s in Memphis hit day. Karen read his dreams and held him through his nightmares. Joan just understood.

A squirrel perched on the terrace ledge. Dwight soft-lobbed him acorns. He shagged them with his paws and skedaddled.

The door gizmo buzzed. Dwight looked through the side window. Eleanora hopped on the porch.

Dwight ran through the front room and opened the door. Ella stormed his legs. He scooped her up with one arm. Ella play-bit his neck.

Karen leaned on a porch post. Dwight said, “You could have broken in.”

“I was saving it for Media.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.”

Ella wriggled. Dwight put her down. She ran into the front room.

“How’d you find it?”

Karen stepped inside. “I tracked the binocular glint. I thought, I detect a voyeuristic presence, and applied spatial geometry.”

Dwight laughed. Karen draped an arm around him. He walked her away from the desk. Ella peeked in a cardboard box. Dwight grabbed her and whisked her off.

She broke free and pointed. She made a What? face.

Dwight said, “They’re throwdown guns, sweetie.”

Karen dropped her purse and kicked it. Dwight said, “Do you love me?” Karen said, “Yes, goddamn you.”

Inserts:

He worked in the file section. He kept loose inside. He was nonchalant and late-night-clandestine.

He pulled Vice files and tattle files. He found field interrogation cards and inked in Marsh Bowen’s name. Marsh at three fruit-bar sweeps, Marsh at a drag ball, Marsh at a hate-whitey bash.

He walked to the subversive-file bank. He dropped in a chemically aged file.

Joan created it. He supplied the perspective. A now-dead agent wrote the file, late ‘66. Marsh worked for Clyde Duber then. Marsh worked against Clyde for the Black Muslims. The agent had suspicions. Clyde never knew.

He cashed in stock. He secured Bob Relyea’s down payment. He needed Mr. Hoover’s travel schedule. Tomorrow a.m.: he flies to Media.

He skimmed the snitch-file index. Names sideswiped him. Bill Buckley snitched neocons. Chuck Heston snitched potheads. Sal Mineo snitched rump rascals wholesale. Salacious Sal: botched bait for the Bayard Rustin squeeze.

He found more F.I. cards. He blue-inked one in cursive. He block-printed two in black. Busy bee Marsh-’66 and ‘67. Fistfights at the Klondike. Lewd shit with hippie boys at Griffith Park love-ins.

Dwight packed up his briefcase and walked out. He saw Jack Leahy at the elevator.

“Don’t tell me. You can’t sleep, and you’re starting to dig on the files.”

Dwight smiled. “You’re the only Fed on earth who has ever said the words dig on.”

“True enough, but you haven’t answered my question.”

Dwight pushed the down button. “Dirt files are addictive. Ask you-know-who about that.”

Jack laughed. “I haven’t spoken to the old girl in a dog’s age. I outrank you, but she talks to you much more than to me.”

“You’re being impolitic, Jack. You’re forgetting who you’re talking about and who you’re talking to.”

The doors opened. They stepped inside. The doors jerked and shut.

“Is there a spot tail on me, Jack? As long as we’re being insubordinate, I’d appreciate an answer.”

Jack shook his head. “Dwight ‘the Enforcer’ Holly. Buzzed on coffee and cigarettes for the twenty years I’ve known him, and finally starting to see things.”

He walked into the drop-front. The phone was ringing, persistent. He dumped his briefcase and fumble-caught the receiver in the dark.

Karen said, “Nobody dies,” and hung up.

97

(Los Angeles, 3/8/71)

Ali! Ali! Ali!

The Congo coursed with it. Bootleg broadcasts beamed from liquor stores and pool halls. They got the full TV monte. Sidewalk gangs got portable-radio squelch. Jugs and joints circulated. The groups ran ten to one hundred. Central Avenue was cooncaphony.

Cathode light bounced out windows. Pirate hookups: Mosque 19, Sultan Sam’s, Cedric’s Hair Process. The scene ran inside and outside. Parking-lot action boomed. Stacked-heel pimps laid down round-by-round bets.

Scotty cruised by Tiger Kab. The hut was SRO and boob tube-bright. The Krew was rapt. Fred O., Milt C., Peeper Crutchfield. Countless south-side Zulus. Junkie Monkey in boxing mitts, atop the TV set.

And Lionel D. Thornton-with a zippered cash sack.

Scotty idled by the lot. Marsh got in. He wore crepe-soled shoes and gloves. Scotty grabbed his gloves off the dashboard. They eyeballed the hut.

The radio fluttered. The signal cut in and out. Marsh tweaked the dial. Static and verdict-Frazier gets the nod.