A fuckload of cops charged the platform. Mesplede walked away. Crutch grabbed the discarded bra and sprinted.
Back to L.A.
Crutch killed time at the airport. The Frogman split to Miami on an earlier flight. The boarding gate featured a phone bank. Crutch called Clyde Duber Associates collect.
The secretary put Buzz on. Buzz said, “We got a lead.”
“What are you-”
“That picture you drew. I got a make. PSA Airways, the fourth place I hit. The personnel director said, ‘Bingo, that’s Janet Joyce Sherbourne, and she was one all-time no-goodnik.’ ”
Crutch got out his notepad. “Slow, now. Tell me the story.”
“It’s some story, and it hooks in to the Dominican Republic. Remember? Gretchen Farr got those answering-service calls from the Dominican consulate.”
Buzz knew that part. Buzz knew shit per Gretchen as Celia or Celia’s Dominican-
“Hey, are you there?”
“I’m here. Come on, tell-”
“Okay, the Sherbourne cooze was a bilingual stewardess. She worked the L.A. to Santo Domingo run exclusively, right up until that fucked-up little war in ‘65, when LBJ sent the marines in. Okay, so there’s a layover in Mexico City, and the Sherbourne cooze gets caught with a gun and a half-dozen fake passports. Okay, she fucking wiggles out of custody, and nobody knows how, and then she vanishes off the face of the earth. Now, here’s the good part, the part that is just so fucking perfectly Gretchie. It turns out that the cooze’s job application was a complete fake, her fucking address was some kind of Commie safe house, and her personnel file got snatched from the PSA office.”
Crutch let the phone drop. Buzz talked to dead air. Things went haywire. He saw Joan kiss Gretchen/Celia in slow motion.
The downtown library was near his file pad. The books were too big to steal. The Dominican Republic: maps, pix, history.
Memo: the D.R. was close to Cuba. Memo: the mob grooved the D.R. as a would-be gambling site.
Crutch lugged books over to a table. Dozing winos competed for space. He scoped out the map pages. He grokked the layout. The island of Hispaniola. The D.R. and Haiti on one slab of land. The Caribbean Sea, close to Cuba and Puerto Rico. Close to Jamaica and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The Dominican connection: all over his fucking case.
The D.R. bordered Haiti eastbound. The Massacre River formed the dividing line. Inlets dotted the coasts of both countries. All the city names were spooky spic and frog.
Crutch skimmed summary chapters. The race shit hit him quick. The Dominicans were light-skinned beaners. They grooved on their Spanish roots. Dark-skinned Dominicans were dйclassй. It was like the U.S.: white is all right!
Rafael Trujillo had long political legs. He ruled from ‘30 to ‘61. He quashed dissent. He oppressed Haitians and slaughtered the fuckers en masse. He was pro-U.S. and anti-Red. He fucked lots of women and tortured and suppressed his political rivals. A Commie group called the 6/14 Movement tried to oust his ass in ‘59. Their “revolution” went pfft. Trujillo went schizo and veered out of line. He was sacking the country too overtly. JFK and the CIA thought he might go Red. The CIA whacked him in ‘61. The Frogman allegedly assisted. A less garish despot named Juan Bosch took over. “Free elections” and all the standard spic-reform bullshit. It looked like Bosch was veering Red. LBJ sent some marines in and nipped that shit in the bud. The current despot was a pint-size punk named Joaquin Balaguer. The D.R. was nothing but coups, revolts, plots, intrigue, slaughter.
Crutch hit a section on Haiti. Woooo!-baaad nigger juju! French-speaking spooks. Dictator “Papa Doc” Duvalier-Godzilla to Trujillo’s Rodan. More oppression, coups, revolts, plots, intrigue, slaughter. Voodoo-oh, yeah!
Voodoo rites, voodoo rituals, voodoo curses, voodoo priests. Mind-blowing voodoo liquor and voodoo herbs. American spooks ate fried chicken. Haitian spooks fucked chickens and drank their hot blood.
Woooooo!
Crutch flipped pages. This voodoo shit was a gas. He hit a photo section. Spooks were capering and bopping around in chicken-feather hats. Woooo, then there’s this-
This photo. This light-skinned Negro guy. This weird tattoo on his right arm.
Geometric patterns. Crosshatched. Like the tattoo on the dead woman in Horror House-
40
(Las Vegas, 9/26/68)
The Boys sported golf shorts with high black socks. They wore their cleated golf shoes indoors.
Carlos set the trend. It was his mock-Roman suite. He paced and punctured the carpets. Sam G. had dull cleats. He did minor damage. Santo T. had sharp cleats. His spikes raped the rugs.
Wayne stood by a covered easel. The Boys sat with 10:00 a.m. Kahlъas. Carlos twirled a five-iron. Wayne caught the Wayne Senior subtext.
Sam said, “We’ve got a 10:40 tee time.”
Santo said, “Carlos, put the club down. Do not drag Wayne through memory lane in a way that might tend to torment him.”
Carlos said, “I have no such intention. I’m just loosening up my fibular bones.”
Sam said, “Have two more drinks. You’ll leave your swing on the driving range and a grand a hole in my pocket.”
Santo said, “Chop, chop, Wayne. You’ve got this tendency to perch, like there’s a dark cloud over your head at all times.”
Sam said, “There is. As much as I admire his rough edges, Wayne is a shit magnet.”
Carlos twirled his club. “Go, Wayne. We came to listen.”
Wayne cleared his throat. “The fall is going our way. Nixon’s ahead in the polls, our dirty-tricks squad is doing good work, Mr. Hughes is pleased with his hotel purchases and is waiting for Mr. Nixon’s Justice Department to loosen up a few anti-trust statutes, so that he can buy some more. Jean-Philippe Mesplede is ready to start scouting casino sites, so we’re on-go there.”
Sam said, “My friend Celia keeps lobbying for the D.R. She’s relentless on the topic.”
Carlos said, “Sam’s relentless on the topic of that island-bred snatch.”
Santo said, “Sam’s relentlessly pussy-whipped. It’s a disease of the weak mind and spirit.”
Sam grabbed his crotch. “I got your disease hanging ten inches.”
Wayne undraped the easel. The graph was cross-columned. It listed buyout businesses linked to profit projections.
“Three supermarket chains, all in the Midwest, all owned by the in-laws of made men and Teamster stewards. We purchase at five cents on the dollar and sell the land to mall developers. I think we’ll realize fifteen million in profit.”
Sam clapped. Santo clapped. Carlos twirled his golf club.
Wayne said, “The Peoples’ Bank of South Los Angeles. They’re way in arrears, but I think we should let them continue to operate, while we take a greatly enhanced profit percentage. One, it’s a money-laundering front. Two, they can launder our money. Three, Lionel Thornton, the president, is mobbed up all over the map, and I think we can control him. Four, it’s close to the hub for the Hughes flights to our casino sites, so we can fly cash straight in, unimpeded.”
Carlos said, “I like it.”
Santo said, “I like it, but I don’t like the jungle-bunny aspect.”
Sam said, “I like it, with a proviso. We keep Wayne off the premises, so he don’t shoot all the customers.”
Wayne flushed. Santo and Sam laughed. Carlos twirled his golf club.
Wayne tapped the easel. “Two more South L.A. businesses, with on-site illegal gambling that we can take at least 50% of, while resuming ownership of both enterprises. The first one is a nightclub named Sultan Sam’s Sandbox. The second is a lesbian bar named Rae’s Rugburn Room.”