Lawdy-it’s 2/24/64 redux.

116

(Los Angeles, 3/19/72)

He was running prone or rolling aloft. His back grew legs and propelled him. He didn’t know how this could be.

Green walls tumbled. A red film held his eyes away. His right arm pulsed. A green man ran with a bottle and stayed in front of him.

I think I get it.

He remembered crawling and the sidewalk and the old black guy. The picture in his pocket. Her phone number on the back.

The green walls grew white lights. His legs were wheels. The red film dissolved and let faces in. More green men with bottles. Not the faces he wanted to see.

You know who you are. One last time, please.

He started grabbing and blinking. The red returned. He brushed things and knocked over things. He heard them crash. His hands were weightless. They were more like wings.

His legs stopped rolling him. Someone wiped the red away. Someone grabbed his hands and squeezed life in them. He saw river borders around Karen.

She said, “They are your children, Dwight. I swear it is true.”

The rivers compressed and swam over her. She pushed through them and held in close. He reached for it and found it and got it out full voice.

“Do you love me?”

The rivers came in darkening. The green walls faded to pinpoints. She said, “I’ll think about it” as the lights stopped.

(Los Angeles, 3/23/72)

Uncle Gibb’s Liquor-again.

The southside record holder. Twenty-nine 211’s since 1963. Old Gibb always shook his head. “Mr. Scotty, I gots a dark cloud over me.”

The tip came in an hour back. It was a solid phoner. A colored lady heard street talk. Two no-good boys with shotguns. Mr. Scotty, you stop this.

Scotty perched in the alley. The back door was adjacent. He brought his civilian wheels. He’d bag them going in.

His letter ploy worked. Dwight Holly’s death went unreported. The bank cash and Jack Leahy, the Enforcer’s low-down past. As planned-the Bureau buried it.

Joan soon. She’d be tractable. He’d sidestep Jack and approach her direct. She’d see the sense in the split.

It was misty. The windshield beaded over. Scotty kicked the ignition key and ran the wiper blades.

A woman walked up. She was tall and red-haired. She didn’t quite look lost. She looked darktown-out-of-place.

He rolled down his window. She came around the car and leaned in. He prepped a baby-you’re-lost spiel. She put her hand on the window ledge. She clicked as off-kilter then.

She raised a little snubnosed revolver. She shot him six times in the face.

DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/24/72. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.

The following pages will serve as my confession, should it come to that. I am not going to run. I am not going to lie if I am officially confronted. I am not going to offer personal or political justifications for the horrible thing that I did. I did it because I loved Dwight Holly to the bottom of my soul and because the other woman he loved lacked the will to do it. I am determined to survive without Dwight and pray for the strength to do so, in our children’s name.

I performed the act in a state of rage. I did not pause to pray or summon moments of reflection. I walked to Dwight’s little bungalow and found a single throwdown gun in a box. I killed in the spirit of wanton apostasy. I refuse now and will always refuse to abdicate my personal responsibility for this act. Dwight scuttled his operation and spared a life. My persistent preaching of non-violence influenced his decision. His deeply sure rebuke of his own vile deeds compelled me to violently acknowledge the price he paid to revoke his past and seek transcendence. I could not have lived with myself had I not formed a circle back to that brave man and the woman I sent forth to teach him. The bond of the three of us must continue to flourish within me. My action was an attempt to settle all debts and hold us together, with one of us now incapacitated and one of us dead. I see through the grandiosity and speciousness of these statements even as I write them. I am past caring at this moment. I will always stand by what I have done.

I feel the urgency of Dwight’s patrimony now. I will not dwell on whether I should have told him earlier. He knew for a conscious flicker and he will know in the world that follows this one. I will change our daughters’ names to Holly at an appropriate time.

Dwight cared more for Marshall Bowen than he ever admitted. Bowen died in Haiti a few months ago. I am going to have his body shipped to the States and interred with Dwight’s. I will be sure that they are laid to rest near some tame goats.

118

(Los Angeles, 3/26/72)

She was inside. She never left. He’d been watching for days.

He talked to Clyde last night. Scuttlebutt was raging. Dwight Holly was dead. Some heist men shot Scotty. Clyde ran down all the theories. They were bogus. He had X-ray eyes. Only he knew what it meant.

She stayed inside. He slept in his car and watched the windows. He saw her once, two days ago. She looked in the closet where the boxes used to be. She wore frayed jeans and one of Dwight’s suit coats.

He started counting the days since he first saw her. He stopped at one thousand. He looked at the dashboard pix and got all raw. He ran up and jiggled the door.

It swung open. She was sitting on the floor. Her face was blotchy and tear-streaked. She’d twisted some strands of her hair out. Her wrists were blood-crusted. A knife was stuck in the far wall. She wrote the word No in blood beside it.

He almost stepped on her glasses. She squinted at him. He picked her glasses up and walked over. She pushed herself away from him and braced her back on the wall.

He handed her the glasses. She put them on. Her eyes focused past her tears. She looked up at him.

“Miss Klein, my name is Donald Crutchfield. I’ve been following you for a very long time, and I’d be grateful if you’d talk to me.”

____________________

Part VI

March 26, 1972-May 11, 1972

____________________

Joan Rosen Klein

(Los Angeles, 3/26/72)

She’d seen him. He was a pop-up face and a blur, persistent. It was intermittent. He felt like a shape-shifter. He’d go away and reappear, changed.

So I’ll tell you. It’s the story I should have told him.

She cleaned up and bundled into Dwight’s tweed coat. She made them a pot of tea. Clouds rolled in low. A spring storm hovered.

It began with the stones. “Green Fire,” “Green Death.” Colombia, mid-15-something. Spanish settlers conquer the Muzo Indians and rape their emerald mines. The Spanish become Colombians. The Muzos become slave labor. The tradition extends to now. Mining companies rape the Itoco Mountains. They’re near Bogota.

Her grandparents were German-Jewish йmigrйs. They came to America and settled in New York. Isidore Klein traveled to South America and became immersed in Green Fire lore.

He was a borderline mystic. He was every inch a Red.

Red bandits hit the Muzo Valley mines. The men called themselves quaqueros. It meant “treasure hunters.” They dug tunnels into the mining companies’ tunnels and dug out stones for themselves. They warred with company goon squads. They looted emeralds routinely and were routinely trapped, tortured and killed. There were dozens of quaquero bands. Some were politically identified. Isidore Klein bought his emeralds exclusively from them. He earmarked a portion of his ultimate profits to South American insurgent groups. He sold his emeralds in fine jewelry stores throughout the United States. He grew wealthy. He gave away small fortunes to anarchist cabals and left-wing labor organizations. He lived comfortably. He lived more modestly than other immigrant arrivistes. His rise to wealth matched a young lawyer’s rise to power. The man’s name was John Edgar Hoover. He was a Justice Department drone. He was brilliant and sensed opportunity in wildly unfolding events.