Bowen bumped the curb and took the center walkway. Fuck-no way to frog close.
Crutch doused his lights and perched at the east curbside. The park was all wet grass, shrubs and trees. He eyeball-tracked the taillight hole and saw Bowen slow-weaving.
The light went off. The car sounds died. Crickets chirped on Channel 3.
Silence. Bowen’s car door opening and closing. It’s dark. It’s all audio now.
More silence. Then two male voices. Then zippers snag and belt buckles rattle and all these scary moans.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 10/19/68. Verbatim FBI telephone call transcript. Marked: “Recorded at the Director’s Request”/”Classified Confidential 1-A: Director’s Eyes Only.” Speaking: Director Hoover, Special Agent Dwight C. Holly.
JEH: Good morning, Dwight.
DH: Good morning, Sir.
JEH: Do you feel like some campaign chat? The swing states appear close, but our boy Dick seems to be surging.
DH: I think he’ll win, Sir.
JEH: He applied to the Bureau in 1939. I saw his application photo and thought, That young lawyer did not shave closely this morning.
DH: And you altered the course of American history in the process, Sir.
JEH: I alter the course of American history every day, Dwight.
DH: You certainly do, Sir.
JEH: Update me on the shenanigans of our murderous French bonbon J. P. Mesplede and Clyde Duber’s upstart charge Crutchfield.
DH: They’re effective in a gadfly way, Sir. They’re due in Miami next, and I’m sure Mesplede will not be able to resist the lure of that pissant island 90 miles offshore.
JEH: You consider the Cuban Cause to be entirely moribund and existentially futile, don’t you, Dwight?
DH: Yes, Sir. I do.
JEH: I most assuredly do not. Castro has been in power since 1926, and he is a worse tyrant than his predecessors Chaing Kai-shek and Cardinal Mindszenty.
DH: Uh, yes, Sir.
JEH: You sound dubious, Dwight. You do not normally falter during our snappy repartee.
DH: I’m fine, Sir.
JEH: You subsist on coffee and cigarettes. They have dulled your memory for established historical facts.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Would another rest cure at Silver Hill suit you? You might recall the first one. I pulled you off the Dillinger case in ‘34. You were drunk and killed those Negro tourists from Indiana.
DH: Uh, yes, Sir.
JEH: “Uh” twice in one conversation? I think you do require a rest cure of some sort.
DH: I’m fine, Sir.
JEH: Moving along, then. Please update me on the Dr. Fred Hiltz case.
DH: It’s covered, Sir. Jack Leahy is overseeing the investigation for the Beverly Hills PD. There’s no way the Bureau will be embarrassed.
JEH: I think the robber-killers are black militants on a rampage. They may well be consorts of a criminal cartel called Archie Bell and the Drells.
DH: I don’t think so, Sir. Archie Bell and the Drells are a musical ensemble, and Jack Leahy thinks-
JEH: Jack Leahy is a duplicitous agent with a seditious sense of humor reminiscent of the late heroin addict/comedian, Lenny Bruce. I track cocktail-party chitchat, you know. When I went in for my gallbladder operation, Jack Leahy told a Chicago agent that I was having a hysterectomy. This was in 1908, and I remember it well.
DH: So do I, Sir.
JEH: I know you do. You were working the Cleveland Office, then.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: And OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER? Unwittingly facilitated by the fearsome Sergeant Robert S. Bennett?
DH: My infiltrator and informant are both in place, Sir. I’m sure they’ll be approached soon. I don’t think my infiltrator is entirely trustworthy, so I’ve had Don Crutchfield spot-tailing him. Bowen’s done nothing irregular, so I’m pulling the tail as of tonight.
JEH: Ah, young Crutchfield. Clyde Duber’s most persistently voyeuristic foundling.
DH: He is that, Sir.
JEH: And Wayne Junior? Persistently homicidal and racially unlucky? How is he faring?
DH: I’m seeing him tomorrow, Sir. I would guess that he’s grappled with this most recent mishap and has moved on.
JEH: We must all move on. Persistence and tenacity cure all one’s ills in the end.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Good day, Dwight.
DH: Good day, Sir.
43
(Las Vegas, 10/20/68)
She looked through you and saw you anyway. She made you look back.
He told her his Morty Sidwell story. He stressed the redneck jail, the bailout, the scarred woman. Reginald’s gun charge. Reginald’s books. Her son’s troika: chemistry, left-wing texts, Haitian voodoo herbs.
They perched at the rest stop. They sat in Wayne’s car for more legroom. Mary Beth brought sandwiches and coffee. It was pouring. The rain covered them-nobody shot them cheap looks.
Mary Beth said, “What will you do now?”
“Keep going. Build a file. Learn what I can about this secondary life your son had.”
“You wanted to say ‘secret life.’ ”
“Yes, I did.”
“Because you’ve got one yourself?”
Wayne sipped coffee. The cup burned his hands. Mary Beth got it fires-of-hell hot.
“I was reading you the whole time. The entire story was news to you.”
“We’ve never discussed your occupation. You talked to Howard Hughes and broke the color line, but I don’t know what you do the rest of the time.”
A gust hit them. The car swayed. Mary Beth grabbed the dashboard bar.
Wayne said, “I facilitate things for Mr. Hughes and some gentlemen with similar interests. I spend a fair amount of my time with police officers and political operatives.”
Mary Beth sighed. “ ‘Secret life’ is a euphemism. I’m seeing a secret world here.”
“I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“You deal with people I’d disapprove of. Let’s leave it there.”
Wayne messed with the defroster. It was a jumpy-hands task. The car got too cold or too hot. Mary Beth hit the Off slide and held his hand there.
“Last summer?”
“Yes.”
“Three of our loved ones died. The man who killed my husband was posthumously indicted for killing your father.”
Wayne slid his hand back. Mary Beth pinned it there.
“We never discuss it. You always bring up Reginald. You haven’t allowed me to mourn, and you haven’t done much mourning yourself.”
Wayne coughed. Mary Beth laced their fingers up. His legs fluttered.
“I don’t want us to live with all these dead people. We’ve had too much of that. I’ll be spending some time in southside L.A. soon, and I’ll be putting out some feelers on your son. He’s nineteen, he’s armed, he gets popped at a town on the Nevada-California border. My instincts are telling me LA”
Hailstones hit the car. Wayne jumped. Mary Beth said, “Why are you so afraid of me?”
Dwight said, “Hoover’s slipping. The old girl is in precipitous fucking decline. He’ll be shacking up with Liberace by this time next year.”
Wayne smiled. “You could retire and go into corporate law.”
Dwight smiled. “You could retire and teach basic chem at BYU.”
The Dunes lounge was mock-soothing. The mock-oasis look cohered. Mock sand drifts, mock camels at a chlorinated spring.
Wayne said, “The Dr. Fred job. What’s the status on that?”
Dwight tiki-torched a cigarette. “The same jigs robbed a house in Newport Beach. No fatalities, but the same glove prints and identical fibers at the scene. I think they saw Dr. Fred’s anti-spook shit. Things just escalated from there.”
Wayne sipped club soda. “I could use some help on the L.A. end of my business. The Peoples’ Bank and Black Cat Cab have defaulted their Teamster loans, so we’re taking them over. I think Black Cat would be a good informant hub for you. I was thinking you could get Mr. Hoover to frost potential trouble there.”