Scotty walked out then. He did not take questions or linger for a slice of pizza and an ice-cold brew.

My admiration and hatred of Scotty Bennett run roughly equal. He was there on February 24, 1964. He has no idea that I was there, too.

I was nineteen. I had graduated Dorsey High School two years earlier and was living with my parents at 84th and Budlong. The sky was the first thing I saw. There were weird prisms of color and a gas stench in the air. I stood on the roof of my house and saw streams of police cars approaching. The siren noise was near deafening. I saw a crashed-up armored car and a milk truck and dark shapes emitting fumes on the ground. I saw a very tall man in a tweed suit and bow tie drive up and survey the scene.

My father made me abandon my perch. Three dozen policemen roped off the street. Rumors soon flooded the neighborhood: the dead robbers were white; the dead robbers were black; the bodies were scorched past recognition and were racially unidentifiable. The absence of the robbers’ vehicle meant that at least one man got away.

Two men got away. I know this as fact. Scotty Bennett may know it, as well. I cannot prove Scotty’s knowledge. I simply sense it.

LAPD was out in brutal force. Scotty was running viciously indiscriminate roundups of local “suspects” at 77th Street Station. The local citizenry was outraged. I was outraged. I went roaming the alleyways behind my house, a kid looking for adventure, coveting my proximity to history. That is when I saw the second man.

He was hiding behind a row of trash cans. He was young, in his teens or early twenties, and he was black. His face was chemically scalded, but extra precautionary gauzing, a mouthpiece and a bulletproof vest had saved his life. I took the man to an elderly doctor neighbor; he was in shock and refused to discuss the robbery-killings at all. The doctor treated the man’s burns, fed him morphine and let him rest. Scotty continued to steamroll his investigation. Detained and released “suspects” came home bruised and pissing blood. The doctor decided not to turn the wounded man over. He had saved the man’s life and could not now condone physical abuse that might well result in his death.

The man left the doctor’s house after two days of care and never divulged his identity. He left the doctor with $80,000 in ink-stained cash. The doctor deposited it in the Peoples’ Bank of South Los Angeles and told the manager, Lionel Thornton, to leak it back to the community in charity donations, if it could be done safely, with no harm to the recipients. Thornton somehow found a way to partially obscure the ink markings; the bills surfaced sporadically in southside Los Angeles. Scotty Bennett tracked that money assiduously. He detained and leaned on the innocent people passing the bills in his unique and uniquely persistent manner. The case remained unsolved. The racial identity of the heist gang’s leader and the other dead heist men has never been determined. Scotty had become obsessed with the case, and so had I.

The doctor died in ‘65. The ink-stained bills continued to circulate through southside L.A. I maneuvered my way into a menial job at the Peoples’ Bank, learned nothing substantive and quit. Scotty Bennett fascinated me. I wanted to test my courage by going up against him and to see if he would reveal information within the brutal context of a back-room interrogation. I had pilfered a stack of ink-stained twenties from the bank and began passing them. Scotty found me, toot sweet.

The room was ten by ten feet and walled with soundproof baffling to keep screams at a dull roar. I protested my innocence. Scotty was genial when he wasn’t beating me. He deployed a phone book and a rubber hose; he loosened my teeth and decimated my kidneys. I stoically asserted my innocence. Scotty revealed no inside knowledge of the case. I refused to scream. After two hours, I got my pro forma phone call. I called a friend; the friend called his friend Clyde Duber; Clyde made some calls of his own and got me out.

Clyde liked me. Clyde had his own fixation on “the Case.” It’s a hobby for him, no more. It’s a consuming quest for Scotty and me.

I entered Clyde’s kid-private-eye world and began infiltrating left-wing groups for his rich and richly paranoiac right-wing clients. I became a fine actor, prevaricator, dissembler, spy and snitch. I learned how to improvise, extrapolate and work off of Clyde’s rough scripts. I have never had a role as demanding as the one Dwight Holly has prepared for me, and I have never had a scriptwriter as brilliant as Mr. Holly.

I joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1967. Scotty tried to quash my appointment and failed. “The Case” remains unsolved. I remain determined. I’m convinced that the answer resides in southside L.A. I choose to believe a persistent ghetto legend: here and there, black folks in trouble receive a single, very valuable emerald anonymously in the mail.

I think Scotty knows more about the events of 3/24/64 than the rest of the LAPD combined. I think he wants the money and the lovely green stones for himself. I view OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER as nothing but a godsend, despite Mr. Hoover’s draconian intent. I have the perfect southside cover now. People will tell a radically reconfigured black militant things that they would never tell a cop. I must be very bold and very cautious, and work my way around Mr. Holly with the utmost circumspection.

42

(Los Angeles, 10/18/68)

Spot tail:

Marsh Bowen’s pad, 54th and Denker, lace-curtain Niggertown.

It was Night #6. Dwight Holly hired him, through Clyde Duber. Clyde was unsure of Big Dwight’s motive. Maybe Bowen vibed comsymp or security risk.

Bowen’s sled was out front. He drove a ‘62 Dodge. Candy-ass wheels. Bowen was a nosebleed. He went to doofus parties and played Zulu chief. Bowen fucked with Scotty Bennett and got sacked off LAPD. It got him clout with loser liberals and showbiz Jews.

Crutch yawned. He’d clocked in at midnight. It was 2:06 now. He tilted the car seat back and scoped his dashboard frieze. He got the idea from Scotty.

Scotty had his heist pix all taped up. Crutch rigged his own version. There’s Joan, there’s a groovy D.R. beach, there’s voodoo-vile spooks in Haiti.

The Bowen job torqued him and distracted him. It diverted work on his case and his dirty-tricks gig with Mesplede. Bowen was half-ass tail-savvy. It was like he sensed a car frogging him.

Crutch played the radio low. The tunes vexed him. It was all peacenik pap and jungle jive. Brainstorm: rig Bowen’s car with a voice box and night-light.

He got out his toolbox, squatted down and ran over. He took a corkscrew and popped a hole in the left taillight. He taped a 9-volt battery voice box under the right wheel well and flipped the dial to Frequency 3. He ran back to his car and got out the receiver. Click-there’s Channel 3 and current ambient sounds.

Crutch re-settled and re-zoned his head. He shined his penlight on the Joan pix. He had the knack now. He knew how to make those gray streaks glow.

Bowen walked out and got in his car. Night owl-2:42 a.m.

He pulled out. Crutch long-distance frogged him. That taillight hole supplied range and direction.

They drove. Crutch hovered six car lengths back. Coontown hopped. Bowen slow-cruised all-night rib cribs and bars locking up. LAPD was out BIG. Sidewalk dice games vaporized as The Man passed. Bowen drove by two black-power storefronts-BTA and MMLF. You be window-shoppin’? What be wrong wid you?

Street noise bopped off Channel 3. The jungle be late-nite loud. Bowen U-turned and shagged ass westbound on Slauson and northbound on Crenshaw.

Now, it’s more white. Now, it’s more civilized. Channel 3 is amping down. He’s heading west on Pico, north on Queen Anne Place, right by the park.