75

(The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Caribbean Waters, Los Angeles,

Rotations:

The D.R. to L.A. and back. The casino build, the smack biz, Cuban coastal runs. His case wedged in.

He offed Luc Duhamel and the bokur and kept it all zipped. He torched the shack and Luc’s Lincoon and night-walked back to the D.R. Luc plain vanished. Some Tonton ghouls braced Tiger Krew with routine questions. Crutch toughed it out. Word surfaced: Luc got snuffed in a voodoo-sect war. Reprisals followed: spells, machete massacres and zombifications. Crutch laid low and rode it out. His nerves had him noggin-nudged and gored out of his gourd. He had nightmares in Voodoo VistaVision.

He found good homes for Luc’s dogs. Froggy found some Tonton guys to run the Haitian end of the biz. Luc’s inlet remained Tiger Kove. Tiger Klaw was moored there. The Puerto Rican and Cuban jaunts launched from Luc’s old turf.

Work was full-time. His case was part-time. There’s the voodoo-shack epiphany. He’s zombified. His brain broils as his body is bokur-bound and immobile. Emeralds/1964/Celia. Laurent-Jean Jacqueau/America/changed name. His mind melts and morphs to the ARMORED-CAR HEIST.

He tracked the epiphany and validated it. He B amp;E’d the La Banda ops office and found some paperwork. It was cryptic and written in Spanish. He took Minox pix, developed the film and pidgin English-translated. An emerald shipment left Santo Domingo, 2/10/64. Destination: L.A. The sender and recipient-not listed. No mode of transport listed. No names to latch on to. The paper trail dead-ended there.

He tried to track Tonton turncoat Laurent-Jean Jacqueau. He took 6/14/59 as his disappearance date and extrapolated. He checked outbound emigration records. He got nothing. He checked incoming U.S. йmigrйs and got nothing. He started with Jacqueau’s real name. That didn’t work. He tried his initials. That didn’t work. He expanded from there. He checked intake sheets on all Negro Caribbean males and got nothing.

All he got was scuttlebutt and oral history. The Goat and Papa Doc were emerald fiends. He got that and no more. Likewise emeralds and Laurent-Jean Jacqueau. Likewise emeralds, Celia Reyes and Joan Rosen Klein. He raided three file troves: the CIA, La Banda and Ivar Smith’s group. He saw no target names listed. He got no Green Fire leads.

Rotation.

He made sixteen Cuban runs and eight dope runs, all top secret. All accomplished in defiance of Wayne T. Wayne paid Ivar Smith to surveil Tiger Krew and report back to him. Ivar told Froggy this. Froggy and Ivar countermanded Wayne. Ivar double-dealt Wayne for a cut of the dope biz. They developed a warning system. Ivar pre-announced Wayne’s visits. The dope biz and Cuban runs were curtailed then. Tiger Krew anti-Castroized and dope-dealt while Wayne was gone. Tiger Klaw launched from seclusion. The Puerto Rican runs were clandestine. The Tonton spooks ran the conduit to Port-au-Prince.

His dead-Commie count stood at twenty-four now. The coastal runs entailed torpedo lobs. Tiger Klaw slipped in and bomb-slathered the coast. Moored boats went down with scorched Reds on board. The scalp runs got to him more. The body counts were lower and high nightmare quotients resulted. All the runs were nerve-knocking. He fueled up on voodoo herbs. Froggy and the Cubans never suspected.

Le poudre zombie almost killed him. The heist revelation issued from that altered state. He trusted the moment and kept trying to re-capture it. Most voodoo herbs were brain-bracing and benign. He logicked that one out. He snuck into Haiti and scored herbs to rev him and calm him. The shit worked. It buttressed his balls and got him to Cuba and back. It never revived revelations per his case. It helped with his nightmares.

ELECTRIC CHAIR, THE HANDS AND FEET, THE EYE.

Bad dreams kept him up. He dosed himself with voodoo herbs and went peeping. It wore him out. Woman imagery subsumed his dreams most nights.

He dug on voodoo. He didn’t believe in it. He hexed Wayne a million times, anyway. He grooved the ritual. Wayne was too big to fuck with. Voodoo had a power beyond his volition. He grokked that aspect of it.

His life was work. The casino build was go, go, go. Twelve floors were up at all four locations. Heavy rains slowed things down. Slaves died from overwork and required replacement. Froggy and the Cubans bossed the work crews. La Banda goons assisted. Ivar Smith warned them of Wayne’s visits. Froggy brought ringer work crews in. Wayne brought bribe and construction cash. Crutch steered clear of him and hate-hexed him. Froggy and the Cubans oozed mock innocence. They hated Wayne. Wayne required big-time connivance and kid gloves.

Rotation.

Crutch worked in the D.R. and L.A. His case was bifurcated: the Maria Rodriguez Fontonette snuff and the armored-car heist. Celia blew in and out of Santo Domingo. He couldn’t track her down. He ran more paper checks. He surveilled the known safe houses on the La Banda list. He tailed Commie punks from CIA dissident lists in the dumb hope that they knew her. It was futile. He got diverted by random women. Window glimpses swerved him for days at a pop. He had to find Celia. She was his spark point to Joan.

Rotation.

Crutch lied to Froggy. He laid out “Clyde Duber needs me in L.A.” tales. Froggy said sure. He flew to L.A. and prowled. He read Clyde’s heist file a dozen times, got the gist and no more. He called Wells Fargo. He tried to track the emerald shipment and got rebuffed. He went back to Clyde’s file. Scotty Bennett’s obsession with the case was confirmed. That was old news. The new news: Scotty’s filed reports were threadbare.

Omissions. A paper dearth. He knew Scotty. They bullshitted at the wheelman lot. Scotty showed him reports on minor heists-always detail-packed. His reports on 2/24/64-slight by comparison.

He tried to pump Scotty. He came on suuuubtle, but Scotty did not reveal shit. He didn’t tell Scotty that he’d hot-wired Marsh Bowen. Scotty would slam Bowen at the proper time.

A ripe rumor rippled: Bowen snitched a spade named Jomo for some liquor-store jobs. Jomo offed himself in jail. Scotty told Crutch that he was spreading the rumor. Safe bet: Bowen’s queer ass was cooked.

Rotation.

The island was a Zombie Zone. L.A. was a safe zone. He dropped by the wheelman lot and brought beer and pizza. He went by his pad at the Vivian and his downtown file pad. He read his mother’s missing person file. It helped smother his nightmares.

His mother sent him five bucks and a Christmas card. This one was postmarked Kansas City. She split in 1955. She sent her first card that year. She sent a card for Christmas ‘69. It was 1970 now.

She was still alive. Like Celia and Joan. Like Dana Lund and all the Hancock Park girls in windows. His case was stalled. Scotty had to have more paperwork. Dana Lund had new gray hair. She wore the cashmere sweater he’d bought her at Christmas.

Dana’s gray streaks looked like Joan’s. It was all a fucking knife to the heart.