“Tell me.”

“It was that riot at the Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill. I think it was ‘49. Joan tangled with some Legionnaires.”

Dwight turned on the desk fan. The bedroom air churned and stayed warm.

Karen said, “I saw a news spot on Dr. Hiltz. Remember, you told me you knew him.”

Dwight nodded. “The Bureau bootjacked the investigation.”

“Why?”

“He was a paid informant.”

“Like me?”

“Less effective, more volatile and capricious, less politically astute.”

Karen smiled. “That’s one of the sweetest things you’ve ever said to me.”

“You must love me, then.”

“Well, I’ll think about it.”

They fell toward each other and found the fit. Dwight drifted with that smell, that harsh smile, that gray hair.

39

(Minneapolis, 9/22/68)

HHH in ‘68! HHH in ‘68! HHH in ‘68!

The Twin Cities were Hubert turf. Scando types jammed the Berglund’s Bazaar lot. Four hundred hayseeds. A good midday toll.

Fifty hippies stirred up shit. They were Clyde Duber recruits. They jabbed horror placards high. Dig it: gooks on fire, napalmed kids and U.S. jets trailing ooze.

Cheers and jeers: HHH! and hippie hate. Peace doves and slant kids with flame-flecked hairdos.

Crutch and the Frogman watched. They glommed the protest punks off Clyde’s left-wing front list. They paid them with maryjane and ten-spots. They hosted a poster party last night. Froggy served pizza, beer and weed. Crutch was the art director. He cut up magazines and found some swinging fascist pix.

The rally droned on. The roar accelerated: HHH! HHH! HHH!

Security guys plowed a path to the bandstand. Humphrey and some fatso pols wobbled between them. Crutch yukked. Froggy grinned. Dig it: we slipped THC in your breakfast coffee.

Humphrey charged up the steps and caught his foot on the platform. A security geek rescued him. The veep got his legs. He had blissed-out eyes. His fly was down. His BVDs showed. Chuckles circulated. Hubert addressed the crowd. He slurred his words. He said something like, “My fellow Abyssinians.”

They had a two-bedroom suite in St. Paul. It was full-boat on Howard Hughes. Room service ran twenty-four hours. They noshed New York strips, stuffed mushrooms and peppermint ice cream. The Frogman served Pernod and THC-laced cookies. They always got zorched and talked CUBA.

Mesplede was a broken record. Yeah, but that record spun.

LBJ, Nixon, Hubert-sissified sob sisters all. Heroin. We sell it, we buy guns, we depose Fidel. It worked in Vietnam. Betrayals deep-sixed Tiger Kadre. They’d run a tighter Krew now. Froggy was Wayne Tedrow’s casino front man. He’d be cruising for the right right-wing country. Their sites would be Cuba-close.

We sell Big “H.” We hook an island clientele. We make gun money and run speedboat missions. We rape the coast and kill Reds.

Crutch said, “I want in.”

Froggy said, “My friend, I guarantee it.”

Crutch pointed to his bow tie. Froggy said, “Your numbers will increase, once we determine our casino-site location.”

Crutch swilled Pernod then. His peripheral vision fritzed. Froggy showed him his scalping knife. He’d scalped thirty-one Castroite fucks.

Travel lodging. He festooned the bedroom walls for his two-night stays. He kept his Joan Klein pix in his wallet. He taped up a big Cuba map and tossed darts at militia installations.

Crutch tossed and missed, tossed and hit. The surrounding walls got dart-dinged and pocked. He’d memorized most of the village names and all the roads into Havana. Memo: buy a scalping knife, just like Froggy’s.

Crutch stared at the Joan pix. His Pernod/cookie buzz had him seeing new things. He’d talked to Clyde. Clyde’s take: the Dr. Fred snuff did not play into the Gretchen Farr caper. The Feds usurped the inquiry. Jack Leahy was running it. Jack’s take: it’s that jig heist gang. They robbed that Brentwood house, they hit Dr. Fred next.

Crutch got panic pangs. Dwight Holly said, “Is there anything you’re not telling me?” Crutch lied and said, “No.” Nobody knows about Horror House. Nobody knows about Gretchen Farr as Celia Reyes or about Joan Rosen Klein. He clued Buzz Duber in to one lead: Farlan Brown’s airline-stew revelation. Buzz was working that lead in L.A. now. He was checking airline offices with Crutch’s sketch.

Pernod and THC. The bedroom walls wafting peach to magenta. Still no make on the dead woman’s tattoo. Still no make on the wall markings. He broke into Arnie Moffett’s office again, en route to the airport. He re-ransacked the house-rental files. He got more zero on Gretchen/Celia and Joan. He’d leaned on Arnie baaaaaaad. The cocksucker probably dumped their file post-beating.

His fuck-up-Hubert gig was now three cities in. He’d checked three local PD Intel and Robbery files. Zero-no mentions of Joan Rosen Klein.

Crutch dart-bombed the Bay of Pigs and Havana. His weird high got him all swelled up and misty. He taped the Joan pictures above his bed. The wall colors shifted-magenta to tropic sunrise.

Another shopping mall lot today. Last night’s news: “Exhausted Humphrey makes policy gaffes.” This gig was that gig re-psychedelicized. Froggy said he learned some shit in Chicago.

The crowd ran three hundred. They ran porky and Minnesota blond. They were noisy. They talked liberal rah-rah. HHH emoted on placard fronts. He tried to look studly. He failed. He looked like your pedophile coach.

Crutch and the Frogman stood beside the speaker’s platform. A cheer went up: He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming! Crutch saw Humphrey and some flunkies approaching, stage left. Four cops trailed them by four paces. Mesplede waved three fingers. Three moonlighting Teamsters waved back.

They opened canisters on the QT. They squatted on the QT. They poured liquid wax on the ground beside the platform. The shit was neutral-colored. It slithered and spread.

Four paces, three, two, one-

Humphrey and his flunkies slipped, slid and slalomed up the platform steps. Hubert did Frug and Wah-Watusi moves just to stay upright. The crowd yukked. Two cops pratfalled. The crowd re-yukked. A fat cat hugged Hubert. Hubert’s look said “What’s this shit?” The fat cat spoke into the microphone. More yuks leveled his spiel. Crutch signaled a guy by the platform. The guy toppled and mock-convulsed. The fucker was double-jointed. He kicked his arms and legs out at right angles. Alka-Seltzer foam dripped from his mouth.

Hubert fans yelled for help. Seizure Sid did his shtick. A fat babe jammed a frozen Mars bar over his tongue. Some chumps yelled, “Get a doctor!” and “Man down!” The crowd dispersed. Hubert fumed and tried to express compassion. The fat cat futzed with the platform mike. Reverb went screeeee.

Crutch signaled three groups in mid-crowd. Three fistfights broke out. The crowd re-dispersed. Two skinny nuns bopped the fighters with their PEACE NOW! signs.

Hubert stamped his feet. The cops flailed on liquid wax. Their fat jiggled. They looked like honky pigs in nigger hate cartoons. Hubert did that V-for-victory thing.

Froggy signaled a blonde in go-go boots and tight jeans. Crutch handed her a Nixon sign and boosted her up onstage. Froggy waved to three groups of men. They started whistling and chanting, “Take it off!”

Hubert stood there. The fat cat dry-popped Digitalis. Some fresh cops charged the fistfighters. The peacenik nuns got trampled. Cops charged the platform. Liquid wax sent them sprawling. The blonde waved her Nixon sign. The crowd went nuts. “TAKE IT OFF!” went epidemic. The blonde pulled off her shirt and bra and did the Swim, the Fish and the Mashed Potato topless. Crutch kicked on a hi-fi gizmo under the stage. Dig it: Archie Bell and the Drells with “The Tighten Up.”