“Under no circumstances.”

Dwight popped two aspirin. Joan pushed her seat back and rested her legs on the window ledge. An ankle bracelet rode up her calf, over the boot top. A little red flag on a gold chain.

Dwight smiled. Joan smiled. They blew lousy smoke rings and fumed up the car. Two LAPD sleds zoomed by. Black dudes were cuffed in the backseats.

Joan said, “There’s a gym teacher at Manual Arts High School. His name is Berkowitz. He’s a pedophile. I think you should reprimand him.”

“Is this related to our operation?”

“Yes.”

“I’d like more of an explanation.”

“People tell me things that require me to respond. In part, that’s why I’m working for you. I’m hoping you’ll be amenable.”

Dwight said, “I’ll take care of it.”

Joan said, “I’d like to see proof.”

Dwight nodded. Joan drew her legs up and banged the horn by mistake. The noise was startling. They both laughed.

They met at a coffee cave on Hillhurst. It was near Karen’s pad and the drop-front. It featured a kid’s play alcove. Dwight dug it. It made him feel quasi-married.

Dina lounged in the alcove. Kids brought their stuffed animals. Karen kvetched her fate as the world’s oldest mother. Dwight chewed gum. He quit smoking around Karen. It tempted her. He didn’t want to mess up Eleanora.

Karen held her belly. She looked incongruous-this lean woman with this big bulge.

Dwight crumbled two aspirin and dropped them in his coffee. A new approach to stress headaches. Jack Leahy explained it. Vascular constriction, blah blah.

Karen said, “Nixon’s going to win. He won’t institute instant repression or do much of anything, which will infuriate my comrades fucking up the Humphrey campaign.”

“It’s all a little too convoluted for me.”

Karen nibbled a sweet roll. “It’s entirely understandable to you, which means that something’s on your mind, or you wouldn’t be making such blandly disingenuous comments.”

Dwight laughed. “My infiltrator is running cocky. I’m going to have to knock him down a notch or two.”

Karen crossed herself. Hybrid faith. The Greek Orthodox girl gone Quaker. A waiter brought fresh coffee. Dwight crumbled fresh aspirin.

“Why’s Joan’s file so heavily redacted?”

“I don’t know. Have you asked her?”

“She won’t tell me.”

“Then let it go.”

“Her entire KA section has been blacked out.”

“Then some handler in her past did her a favor.”

“She said she’d never informed Federally before. There’s things she won’t tell me, something about-”

Karen knocked over his coffee cup. His hands got doused. His aspirin tin went flying.

“You’re tweaked on that woman. I know you. I’ve been reading you for months. Every instinct I have tells me that you’ve done some very bad shit lately, even by your fucked-up fascist stand-”

Dwight heard Dina crying. She’d heard Karen yell. Dina kicked at a mound of toys and ran from the other children. Karen chased after her.

45

(Miami, 10/23/68)

Hubert Humphrey deployed pidgin Spanish. Bilingual pols urged him on. The crowd was half white, half spic and all non-plussed. They were heat-wilted. The parking lot was sun-smacked and Hubert was a noon snooze. They craved cold beer and some yuks.

Mesplede stood mid-crowd. Crutch stood at the rear. They waved to the driver of a tarp-covered truck.

The truck pulled up to the edge of the parking lot. Crutch cued the driver. Three, two, one-the invasion force rolls out.

Two dozen out-of-work actors. More Clyde Duber plants. “Guerrilla Troupe” hambones done up as Fidel.

The beard, the boots, the green fatigues, the fat cigars-

“Fidel loves Hubert! Fidel loves Hubert! Hubert loves Fidel!”

Hubert stood there with his thumb up his ass. Eight Nixon-shirt guys jumped out of the truck and dispensed free beers. The Fidels circulated and passed out free cigars. The crowd went nuts. Crutch and Mesplede howled.

CUBA, CUBA, CUBA-Froggy talked it trilingual and trиs grande non-stop. Crutch kept thinking D.R. They rent-a-carred through Little Havana. They shared a reefer. Froggy kept saying “Cessna” and “coast run.” Crutch kept seeing that photo in the library book.

The voodoo guy. The tattoo. The pattern like the dead chick in Horror House.

Mesplede passed the reefer back. Crutch took a last hit and ate the roach. They hit Flagler Street. The exile storefronts flew Cuban flags. Straw Castros hung from lightposts. Kids ran up and stuck pocket-knives in.

Crutch kept it zipped. He’d been talking D.R. like Froggy talked Cuba. “Keep it zipped.” Dwight Holly told him that. He obeyed, so far. Marsh Bowen was a fruit. He kept that zipped. He bombed by Miami-Dade PD last night. He did file checks on Gretchen/Celia and Joan Rosen Klein. Froggy asked him where he went. He kept it zipped.

He was learning. His killer pals would respect that.

They drove to a rinky-dink airfield outside Miami. The crew was all Cuban. They were all diced and sliced from sugarcane work. Mesplede signed some papers and rented a two-seater plane. They took off and torched a joint at three thousand-plus feet.

Crutch got scared. The altitude cross-wired his high to acid-trip dimensions. He kept seeing people who weren’t there. His mom did the Twist with Dana Lund. Blow-job Bev Shoftel blew Sal Mineo.

They flew low over Little Havana. Mesplede hit a lever and cut five thousand Nixon signs loose. Kids plucked them out of the air and flipped the plane off. Misplede dipsy-doodled south. They flew over a string of bridgeways and keys. Mesplede served Dexedrine chased with hash-spiked schnapps. Dig those brown cubes floating in white liquid.

Crutch imbibed. The cocktail re-cohered him. They flew out over the Caribbean. They passed two refugee rafts and dumped Nixon signs on them. The cocktail kept Crutch un-airsick. Mesplede pointed behind the seats. Crutch saw a Tommy gun with a hundred-round drum. He popped a bullet out. The tip had been dumdum-gouged and stuffed with rat poison.

Crutch got flutters. The cocktail had him anesthetized short of real fear. This big brown shape loomed. Froggy grinned at him. Crutch blinked. Now the shape’s a pancake-flat island.

Froggy pushed the stick and brought them in low. They skimmed waves and water-bumped their wheels. Crutch saw the beach and some brownshirt spies ringed by sandbags. The spies were hunched over a.50-caliber machine gun. The thing had a vented barrel, feeder belts and a 360 swivel.

Froggy diversion-dipped and dove straight at them. The spies fired over, under and wide. Froggy came in ultra-low. The spies swiveled, re-swiveled and sent off panic shots. The noise was like typewriter clack meets the A-bomb.

Crutch rested the Tommy gun on his window ledge. Froggy got see-their-eyes low. Crutch head-counted eight. They were ducking and trying to swivel their machine gun in tight.

Crutch fired. He saw two heads explode. He saw one guy’s ribs blow out of his chest and blood-blast a sandbag. Froggy cut through some low trees. Fronds buffeted the airplane and blocked their frontal view. Crutch fired behind him. Stitch shots, very precise. He got four guys standing together. He saw a tall guy’s glasses shatter as his head pitched off.

Froggy pulled the stick back. Crutch saw Cuba upside down and held in his cookies. They flew backward over the ocean. He saw his eight new kills and that guy’s head rolling toward the surf line.

Hangover.

Blackout.

He didn’t remember the flight back or the ride to the hotel. He woke up in his bed. Mesplede was still asleep. He walked down to the restaurant and sat outside. He ordered pancakes and a Bloody Mary and kept it all down. He re-wired his head and grooved the awe of it. He killed two Cuban Reds in Chicago. He’d just killed eight more. Two plus eight was ten. He was moving toward Scotty Bennett’s toll.