What does she want? What does she know? Why have we let her in?
Dwight print-dusted the Eagle Rock and Altadena pads. No prints, no diary notes, no guns under pillows.
She’s gone.
His nerves are stripped gears. He stares at the drop-front walls and lets time evaporate. He takes more pills with more booze and sleeps worse commensurately.
He filled the Joan void with Karen. Joan gave him nineteen snitches. He gave Karen the quid pro quo benefit. He bailed her friends out of jail in record numbers. Karen pulled more Quaker woo-woo than ever before. He has Dr. King nightmares. Karen gets a monument-bombing chit the next day. He keeps thinking of Silver Hill. The doctors told him not to think. He stared at the walls and thought anyway.
She’s gone.
He’s got more time to think and stare at walls and wait for the walls to speak back. OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER was in a soul coma. The BTA and MMFL brothers were losing their fire fast. October 18, ‘69. The Panthers ambush two L.A. cops. One cop is wounded, one Panther is wounded, one Panther is dead.
December 8, ‘69: The big pig-Panther shoot-out at Panther HQ. Woundings, no deaths. LAPD reprisals?-probably. Most likely implemented by Scotty B.
Marsh Bowen was useless. The wire was useless. The talk was Revolution 101 for burrheads and dupes. His new Marsh vibe: the fuck had an agenda. The fuck was lying in wait. He should have produced more or plain rabbited from the Jomo thing.
Scotty weighed on him. Scotty had an agenda. Scotty got LAPD to fire Marsh. Scotty put out the word: no reprisals on Marsh. He snitched Jomo, I don’t care, don’t fuck with him or I’ll fuck with you.
The sweat-box room, the hose shots, the Q amp;A. Why the grilling on that armored-car heist?
Suspicion.
It kept aging cops up nights. Their brain compartments seeped. They saw shit that wasn’t there and missed the shit that was. He had phone chats with President Nixon and Mr. Hoover. President Nixon feared Mr. Hoover’s file stash. Mr. Hoover feared President Nixon’s soft line on black militants and Commies. Mr. Hoover was obsessed with Wayne’s black girlfriend and feared that coon-killer Wayne had gone Red. Nixon sent Dwight on a scouting trip to the D.R. He wanted Dwight’s take on the Midget. He wanted to make sure his mob deal wouldn’t boomerang. Dwight dipped down to Santo Domingo. The casino build was going strong. The Midget gave good lunch. La Banda gave good oppression. He called the prez and told him the D.R. looked kosher.
Suspicion.
He called Mr. Hoover and reported the trip. Mr. Hoover was suspicious-”Dwight, did Nixon talk about me?”
Dwight said, “No, Sir. He didn’t.” Mr. Hoover was aghast and relieved. He told a fourteen-minute joke about Dr. King and Lassie. He told a sixteen-minute joke about the prez and Liberace.
Suspicion.
He had downtime in Santo Domingo. He hobknobbed with Tiger Krew and felt shit percolating. His hunch: they were moving smack behind Wayne’s back. He didn’t tell Wayne. Why promote chaos?
The D.R. felt creepy-crawly. L.A. felt good on the rebound.
She’s gone.
His birthday was last week. He turned fifty-three. The prez called and requested a D.R. backup trip. Karen bought him dinner at Perino’s. He got a plain white envelope in the mail.
It came to the drop-front. His name and address were typed on. There was no return address.
He opened the envelope. Inside: a little red flag on a stick.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/8/70. Extract from the privately held journal of Karen Sifakis.
Los Angeles,
3/8/70
My daughters are playing in the next room. Four-year-old Dina is watching fifteen-month-old Eleanora steady herself on a large rubber beach ball and teach herself to walk. At some point, she’ll become jealous of Ella’s rapid progress and push her to the floor; Ella will cry, get up and keep going. It will be the third or fourth time this has happened. I reprimanded Dina the first time. She blamed Dwight for her actions. She had overheard Dwight telling me that Ella was quickly becoming the dominant little girl, and Dina had better “log some payback while she’s able.”
I should have reprimanded Dwight for the statement. He said those words some months ago, and it’s too late for reprimands now. I’m looking back at the past year’s journal pages and feeling disparate events cohere. Dwight has been affording me greater and greater latitude in my political actions and has been bailing out my politically jailed friends at an ever-accelerating pace. The matchup of dates makes it all the more evident: Dwight’s remarkable generosity begins the moment he tells me that Joan has disappeared.
Of course, they are lovers. Of course I could not tell Dwight that Joan’s vanishing acts are very well established, because I have lied to him about the breadth of my friendship with Joan. Dwight asked me about Joan and the USC Freedom School several months ago. Of course I lied about it; of course Dwight knew I was lying. We are in far too deeply with each other to issue reprimands or otherwise revise the rules of a duplicitous, usurious and compartmentalized union. The odd thing? I find myself approving of Dwight and Joan as lovers. I love Dwight more than I ever have, because Joan has served to instill doubt in him. Dwight is beginning to erode. I pray that the process will extend and change him gently, and not take him to grief and madness. A very real fear attends this prayer offering. I am more fully realizing that Joan manipulated me into a meeting with Dwight. Toward what end? This prayer must include all other persons who inhabit their hellishly self-willed orbit.
I had lunch with Joan shortly before she went away. She hinted at a tropical destination and told me she had left Dwight some paperwork. She said that she hoped it wouldn’t go bad, like ‘51, ‘56 and ‘61. I did not ask Joan to embellish her statement. I mentioned Dwight and his penance money and hinted at his personal catastrophe in 1957. Joan told me that she knew the story, but refused to tell me how she knew. And in that moment, I knew that Joan loved Dwight sans all political agendas.
I cried a little. Joan hugged me and gave me a beautiful emerald.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 3/8/70. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen.
Los Angeles,
Fear time.
It’s fear time now, and it’s been fear time for a while. I’ve been fearful for so long that it’s become almost banal. I’m now hyper-alert to the signs of panic expressed by my body. Months of general fear have made me more sensitive to acute and justified fear. I’ve been surviving and buying advantage moment to moment.
An anonymous informant bought me time with Mr. Hoover and Mr. Holly. A nineteen-snitch package, graciously attributed to me. It bought Mr. Holly time with Mr. Hoover, I’m sure of that. It validates OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER, which buys me more time to pursue armored-car heist leads. The MMLF has lost interest in me over time. MMLF members see me at the clubs, alone or with my BTA brothers. They avert their eyes, spit on the floor or make obscene gestures. There are shoving matches as both groups co-opt space at peace marches. I’m apprehensive more than fearful in those contexts. I monitor my body for signs of panic and realize that I’ve been granted time.
Time liberates me and constrains me. A friend on LAPD told me that LAPD had secretly terminated my employment. Mr. Holly and Wayne obviously knew this and never told me. This makes me a Federal operative with no police sanction and no assured position within law enforcement once my assignment concludes. Last week, I found bug wires in my apartment. I did the prudent thing: I let them sit. It had to have been instigated by Wayne and Mr. Holly. They do not trust me. Their distrust is fully justified. I have been very careful in whom I talk to in my home and what I talk about, in person and on the telephone. The discovery of the bug-tap apparatus vouched my justified paranoia and confirmed me in my role of apostatized ex-cop black militant. I assumed that role the moment I rented this apartment and have embellished it with greater and greater flair every moment since. Men with the Bent have to be cautious. I behave as if I do not have the Bent and have done so since Wayne made his “faggot” remark. In my heart, I feel like a radicalized ex-cop, weighing his options in all arenas. My actor’s sense of time and identity has proven invaluable here.