The old girl trusted him. The Operation was secure. The fallback was inviolate. There was no surveillance.

He gave up the tail checks and drove place to place. He was post-crack-up now. He went task to task, un-paranoic. The Operation was incomprehensible. Nobody would suspect their goal or dispute the outcome. A paper avalanche would follow. Media preannounced it. The Event was inevitable.

Joan worked with him, task by task. She understood the level of detail required. They talked, they plotted, they built a giant paper maze. Joan refused to embellish her astonishing statement.

“I’ve wanted to kill him since I was a child, and I won’t tell you why.”

He did not ask her again. He did not ask Karen. He ran more records checks on her known family members. Every file had been lost, misplaced, diverted, destroyed or stolen. He gave up. He wasn’t supposed to know. She’d tell him or she wouldn’t. He found himself less curious. The Operation was theirs. Its brutal scope was their bond.

The Media break-in worked. Karen and her team stayed anonymous. She leaked files through a series of cutouts. The Washington Post hit on March 24. The New York Times and Village Voice followed. A hue and cry escalated. Karen attributed the leaks to the “Citizen’s Committee to Investigate the FBI.” Joe Public got a gander at bland surveillance files. Jane Public got hip to COINTELPRO. Mr. Hoover made flabbergasted remarks. The prez was relieved. The files revealed only pre-Nixon chicanery.

It worked. Joan conceded the point. The event faded in and out of public play. Lefty journos kept teething on it. COINTELPRO was subtextually planted. The Event would etch the concept in blood.

Work was tense. The Operation sustained him ideologically. The Operation drove Joan in a wholly vindictive manner. She saw it as a vendetta. She would not reveal the origin of her journey of revenge. She was running haggard. Lionel Thornton’s death disturbed her. He was a money washer at worst and a political bagman at best. Joan wouldn’t talk about it. She always said what she always said: “I’m not going to.”

Joan slept with him in hotel suites and worked with him at the fallback. She stayed in safe houses the nights he slept with Karen. She was worried about Celia. She was making phone calls and trying to find Celia in the D.R. She refused all his offers to help.

She’d sit by herself on the terrace. She’d sip tea and take herbal capsules. He stole a few and had them analyzed. They were Haitian fertility potions. Joan was almost forty-five and was trying to get pregnant. Her child, his child-it astounded him. There was no chance of conception. He knew it. He never said it. He never mentioned the potions. He watched her face recast itself as she tried to will her body. He reveled in the mad task and in her obduracy.

Karen’s house was down a steep hillside. He trained his binoculars and watched the girls play. Karen debriefed him on Media and told him no more. They formally terminated their snitch relationship. He accepted it. Karen described Media as a debt to Joan and him and respectfully asserted that she had paid it. He said she had. She never returned to the fallback. He carried the picture of her with the girls. She sent him coded night messages. She’d sense him on the terrace and blast Beethoven string quartets. She’d leave a kitchen light on to pinpoint the sound.

The music invaded his dreams. Wayne replaced Dr. King. Crocodiles and rivers in Haiti. Explosions in the D.R. and gaunt black men with wings.

The Operation proceeded. Convergence remained the one obstacle. He flew to Mississippi four times. Bob Relyea remained committed. Bob was training. Bob would keep his mouth shut. Bob would not know the target until hit day.

He B amp;E’d Marsh Bowen’s house six more times. He searched for a hidden diary and found none. Joan was certain that Marsh kept a candid daily journal. His actor’s self-absorption fairly screamed it. Their fake diary was the deus ex machina of the Operation. They had to be certain that a real diary would not be found.

Marsh worked night-watch shifts and gave motivational speeches. Dwight black-bagged him and prowled. Trash runs, desk and drawer runs, fake-panel taps. Numerous art books and Haitian travel brochures. No diary yet.

The file section was now security-fitted. It was a post-Media precaution. It didn’t matter. He was an FBI agent. He had file-shelf keys. Marsh Bowen was now deeply file-inserted. Sergeant Bowen was injudiciously promiscuous. Sergeant Bowen was politically unstable, going back years.

He spent late nights at the office. He chatted with the mordant Jack Leahy. Jack was fixed on the old girl in gasping decline. Media was a pisser. Jack considered it predictable. He was pension-secure and raucous by nature. He didn’t seem to give a shit.

Dick Nixon got raucous behind two highballs. He called Dwight twice a month. Mr. Hoover called twice as much. Nixon was Hoover-tweaked. Hoover was Nixon-tweaked. The prez got half-gassed and vented his frustration. Hoover raged for reassurance amid mental gaffes. Both men found the Enforcer consoling. He was the gunslinger, back from a crack-up.

His consolation? Marsh’s diary.

He’s creating a world of troubled men in extremis. He attributes his dreams to Marsh. Marsh’s discourse is shaped by his discourse with Karen and Joan. Marsh’s diary feels almost Utopian. It rebuts the world that is and prophesies the world that could be. The entries cover the inception of BAAAAD BROTHER and run to the present. Marsh carries guilt for exploiting the “Black-Militant Blastout.” He is determined to kill J. Edgar Hoover. His cop-actor’s role won him glory and spawned death. His moral confusion counterpoints his tortured inner life and day-to-day indulgence of perversion.

He’s added details from his own breakdown. Marsh’s crack-up is his crack-up, hyper-radicalized. He’s created a Holly-Bowen bond that did not exist. The two men discuss crack-up as a call to violent arms and the means to transcend self-serving pathology. He portrays public policy as private nightmare and vehicle of atonement. What it’s like to have to do something so you won’t go insane. His story and Marsh’s story regained.

He’s come to care for Marsh. He won’t regret killing him.

103

(Los Angeles, 3/15/71-11/18/71)

Frustration. Fucking ceaseless, day by day.

The county grand jury nailed the Bostitch boys posthumous. Scotty breathed easy then. The brothers snuffed Mr. Clean and formed a suicide pact. Nice, but the heist gig was stalled flat.

Who’s the Woman?

She was Thornton’s emerald conduit and cutout. A Woman pervaded the Jomo offshoot. Marsh perks when he says Woman. Marsh comes on bifurcated. He’s solid and untrustworthy.

Who’s the Woman? His notion: she was in with OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER. Dandy, but:

He can’t brace Dwight Holly. Dwight is dead smart and subtle and would brace him right back. He can’t brace Jack Leahy. Jack knows about BAAAAD BROTHER. Jack is dead smart and subtle and would brace him right back.

Frustration. Mind-bending, night after night.

They stole the emerald-disbursement clip file and the coded ledger. He tried to crack the code. He spent months on it. He thought about hiring a cryptographer. A pro might crack the code. He finally nixed the idea. The code guy would know then. One more loose end would unfurl.

Federal bank examiners tossed the Peoples’ Bank. Scotty went with them and Jack Leahy. They tore the walls, floors and roof to shreds. They found the vault from Mr. Clean’s drawing. Inside: a dope stash and $89,000.

Cat’s-paw. Long-term stopgap. A hedge against possible exposure.