James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 Read online

  Extradition job, with one caveat: kill the extraditee.

  The PD suborned the assignment. A Negro pimp named Wendell Durfee shivved a casino dealer. The man lived. It didn’t matter. The Casino Operators’ Council wanted Wendell clipped. Vegas cops got those jobs. They were choice gigs with big bonus money. They were tests. The PD wanted to gauge your balls. Wayne Senior had clout with the PD. He had JFK hit knowledge. Senior wanted Junior there for it. Wendell Durfee fled Vegas to Dallas. Senior doubted Junior’s balls. Senior thought Junior should kill an unarmed black man. Wayne flew to Dallas on 11/22/63.

  He did not want to kill Wendell Durfee. He did not know about the JFK hit. He got paired up with an extradition partner. The cop’s name was Maynard Moore. He worked Dallas PD. He was a redneck psycho doing gofer jobs on the hit.

  Wayne clashed with Maynard Moore and tried not to kill Wendell Durfee. Wayne blundered into the hit plot in post-hit free fall. He linked Jack Ruby to Moore and that right-wing merc Pete B. He saw Ruby clip Lee Harvey Oswald on live TV.

  He knew. He did not know that his father knew. It all went blooey that Sunday.

  JFK was dead. Oswald was dead. He tracked down Wendell Durfee and told him to run. Maynard Moore interceded. Wayne killed Moore and let Durfee go. Pete B. interceded and let Wayne live.

  Pete considered his own act of mercy prudent and Wayne’s act of mercy rash. Pete warned Wayne that Wendell Durfee might show up again.

  Wayne returned to Vegas. Pete B. moved to Vegas for a Carlos Marcello gig. Pete followed up on Durfee and logged tips: he’s a rape-o shit-bird and worse. It was January ’64. Pete heard that Wendell Durfee had fled back to Vegas. He told Wayne. Wayne went after Wendell. Three colored dope fiends got in the way. Wayne killed them. Wendell Durfee raped and murdered Wayne’s wife, Lynette.

  It was his very own free fall. It started in Dallas and spun all the way up to Now.

  Wendell Durfee escaped. Wayne Senior and the PD worked to get Wayne a walk on the dope fiends. Mr. Hoover was amenable. Senior’s old chum Dwight Holly was not. Dwight was working for the Federal Bureau of Narcotics then. The dope fiends were pushing heroin and were targeted for prosecution. Dwight squawked to the U.S. attorney. Wayne Junior fucked up his investigation. He wanted to see Wayne Junior indicted and tried. The PD fabricated some evidence and snowed the grand jury. Wayne got a walk on the killings. It left him hollow. He quit the PD and entered The Life.

  Soldier of fortune. Heroin runner. Assassin.

  Lynette was dead. He vowed to find Wendell Durfee and kill him. Lynette was his best friend and sweetheart and the wall to shut out his love for his father’s second wife. Janice was older, she watched him grow up, she stayed with Senior for his money and clout. Janice returned Wayne’s love. The longing went both ways. It stayed there and plain grew.

  Wayne fell in with Pete and his wife, Barb. Pete was tight with a mob lawyer named Ward Littell. Ward was ex-FBI and the point man for the JFK hit. He was working for Carlos Marcello and Howard Hughes and playing both ends back, front and sideways. Wayne had Pete and Ward as teachers. He learned The Life from them. He blew through their curriculum at a free-fall pace.

  Pete was hopped up on the Cuban exile cause. Vietnam was getting hot. Howard Hughes was nurturing crazy plans to buy up Las Vegas. Wayne Senior got in with Hughes’ Mormon guard. Ward Littell developed a grudge against Senior. A rogue CIA man recruited Pete for a Saigon-to-Vegas dope funnel, profits to the Cuban cause, vouchsafed by Carlos Marcello. Pete needed a dope chemist and recruited Wayne. Ward’s hatred of Wayne Senior grew. Ward fucked with Senior. He informed Wayne that his father sent him to Dallas.

  Wayne reeled and grabbed at air and barely stayed upright. Wayne fucked Janice in his father’s house and made sure that Wayne Senior saw it.

  “The Life,” a noun. A haven for Mormon burnouts, rogue chemists, coon killers.

  Wayne Senior divorced Janice. He beat her with a silver-tipped cane to offset the cost of the settlement. Janice limped from that day on and still played scratch golf. Ward Littell sold Howard Hughes Las Vegas at the mob’s inflated prices and began a sporadic love affair with Janice. Wayne Senior increased his pull with Howard Hughes and sucked up to former veep Dick Nixon. Dwight Holly left the Bureau of Narcotics and went back on the FBI. Mr. Hoover directed Dwight to disrupt Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. Dwight deployed Wayne Senior in anti-Klan mail-fraud ops, a sop to sob sisters at Justice.

  Wayne cooked heroin in Saigon and ran it through to Vegas. Wayne chased Wendell Durfee for four years. The country blew up with riots and a shitstorm of race hate. Dr. King trumped Mr. Hoover on all moral fronts and wore the old man down just by being. Mr. Hoover had tried everything. Mr. Hoover whined to Dwight that he had done all he could. Dwight understood the cue and recruited Wayne Senior. Wayne Senior wanted Wayne Junior to be in on it. Senior thought they needed a recruitment wedge. Dwight went out and found Wendell Durfee.

  Wayne got a pseudo-anonymous tip. He found Wendell Durfee on L.A. skid row and killed him in March. It was a put-up job. Dwight gathered forensic evidence and coerced him into the hit plan. Wayne worked with his father, Dwight, Freddy Otash and pro shooter Bob Relyea.

  Janice was diagnosed with last-stage cancer. Her beating injuries cloaked early detection of the disease. The Saigon dope deal factionalized and blew into chaos. On one side: mob ghouls and crazy Cuban exiles. On the other: Wayne, Pete and a French merc named Jean-Philippe Mesplede. April and May were pure free fall. The election hovered. King was dead. Carlos Marcello and the boys decided to clip Bobby Kennedy. Pete was coerced in. Freddy O. waltzed over from the King hit. Ward Littell was still working angles on Carlos and Howard Hughes. Ward had inherited an anti-mob file. He left it with Janice for safekeeping.

  Wayne went to see Janice on June 4. The cancer had taken her strength and her curves and had rendered her slack. They made love a second time. She told him more about Ward’s file. He searched her apartment and found it. The file was very detailed. It specifically indicted Carlos and his New Orleans operation. Wayne sent it to Carlos, along with a note.

  “Sir, my father was planning to extort you with this file. Sir, could we discuss that?”

  Robert F. Kennedy was shot two hours later. Ward Littell killed himself. Howard Hughes offered Wayne Senior Ward’s job as mob fixer/liaison. His first assignment: purchase the loyalty of GOP front-runner Dick Nixon.

  Carlos called Wayne and thanked him for the heads-up. Carlos said, “Let’s have dinner.”

  Wayne decided to murder his father. Wayne decided that Janice should beat him dead with a golf club.

  Carlos kept a mock-Roman suite at the Sands. A toga-clad geek played centurion and let Wayne in. The suite featured mock-Roman pillars and sack-of-Rome art. Price tags drooped from wall frames.

  A buffet was laid out. The geek sat Wayne down at a lacquered table embossed with SPQR. Carlos walked in. He wore nubby silk shorts and a stained tuxedo shirt.

  Wayne stood up. Carlos said, “Don’t.” Wayne sat down. The geek spooned food on two plates and vanished. Carlos poured wine from a screw-top bottle.

  Wayne said, “It’s a pleasure, sir.”

  “Don’t make like I don’t know you. You’re Pete and Ward’s guy, and you worked for me in Saigon. You know more about me than you should, plus all the shit in that file. I know your story, which is some fucking story compared to the other dickhead stories I heard lately.”

  Wayne smiled. Carlos pulled two bobbing-head dolls from his pockets. One doll represented RFK. One doll represented Dr. King. Carlos smiled and snapped off their heads.

  “Salud, Wayne.”

  “Thank you, Carlos.”

  “You’re looking for work, right? This ain’t about a handshake and a thank-you envelope.”

  Wayne sipped wine. It was present-day liquor-store vintage.

  “I want to assume Ward Littell’s role in your organization, along with the position in the Hughes organization that my father has just
inherited from Ward. I have the skills and the connections to prove myself valuable, I’m prepared to favor you in all my dealings with Mr. Hughes, and I’m aware of the penalties you dispense for disloyalty.”

  Carlos speared an anchovy. His fork slid. Olive oil hit his tux shirt.

  “Where’s your father going to be throughout all of this?”

  Wayne toppled the RFK doll. A plastic arm fell off. Carlos picked his nose.

  “Okay, even if I’m fucking susceptible to favors and prone to like you, why should Howard Hughes go outside his own organization full of suckasses he feels comfortable with to hire a fucked-up ex-cop who goes around shooting niggers for kicks?”

  Wayne flinched. He gripped his wine glass and almost snapped the stem.

  “Mr. Hughes is a xenophobic drug addict known to inject narcotics into a vein in his penis, and I can concoct—”

  Carlos yukked and slapped the table. His wine glass capsized. Pepper chunks flew. Olive oil spritzed.

  “—drugs that will stimulate and sedate him and diminish his mental capacities to the point that he will become that much more tractable in all his dealings with you. I also know that you have a very large envelope for Richard Nixon, should he be nominated. Mr. Hughes is putting in 20%, and I plan to raid my father’s cash reserve and get you another five million cold.”

  The toga geek walked in. He brought a sponge and swabbed the mess presto-chango. Carlos snapped his fingers. The toga geek disappeared.

  “I keep coming back to your father. What’s Wayne Tedrow Senior going to be doing while Wayne Tedrow Junior sticks him the big one where it hurts the most?”

  Wayne pointed to the dolls and back up to heaven. Carlos cracked his knuckles.

  “Okay, I’ll bite.”

  Wayne raised his glass. “Thank you.”

  Carlos raised his glass. “You get two fifty a year and points, and you jump on Ward’s old job straight off. I need you to oversee the buyouts of legitimate businesses started with Teamster Pension Fund loans, so we can launder it and funnel it into a slush fund to build these hotel-casinos somewhere in Central America or the Caribbean. You know what we’re looking for. We want some pliable, anti-Communist el jefe type who’ll do what we want and keep all the dissident hippie protest shit down to a dull roar. Sam G.’s running point now. We’ve got it narrowed down to Panama, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. That’s your main fucking job. You make it happen and you make your hophead pal keep buying our hotels, and you make sure we get to keep our inside guys, who just might help us out with some skim.”

  Wayne said, “I’ll do it.”

  Carlos said, “Daddy won’t see you coming.”

  Wayne stood up too fast. His mock-Roman world swirled. Carlos stood up. His shirt was spattered working on soaked.

  “I’ll see that you’re covered on it.”

  Janice kept a mock-casbah suite at the Dunes. Wayne supplied round-the-clock nurses. Janice stuck to the hotel now.

  The p.m.-shift nurse was on the terrace, smoking. The view was half light show, half desert haze. Janice was bundled up in bed, with the air conditioner blasting. Her system was schizy. She either half-froze or half-broiled.

  Wayne sat with her. “There’s some golf on TV.”

  “I think I’ve had all the golf I can take for a while.”

  Wayne smiled. “Touché.”

  “The Hughes meeting. Isn’t that coming up?”

  “In a few days.”

  “He’ll hire you. He’ll figure you’re a Mormon, and that your father taught you some things.”

  “Well, he did.”

  Janice smiled. “Who are you meeting with? The Hughes man, I mean.”

  “His name’s Farlan Brown.”

  “I know him. His wife was the club champ at the Frontier, but I closed her out nine and eight the one time I played her.”

  Wayne laughed. “Anything else?”

  Janice laughed. It made her cough and sweat. She tossed off her covers. Her nightgown flew up. Wayne saw new slack spots and hollows.

  He wiped her brow with his shirtsleeve. She nuzzled his arm and play-bit it. Wayne made a play Ouch! face.

  “I was about to say that he drinks and chases women, like all good Mormons. There’s a trinity for men like that. Showgirls, cocktail waitresses and stews.”

  The room was ice-cold. Simple talk had Janice soaked. She bit her lip. Her temples pulsed. She touched her stomach. Wayne tracked the circuit of pain.

  Janice said, “Shit.”

  Wayne opened his briefcase and prepped a spike. Janice held her arm out. Wayne found a vein, swabbed it and made a hand tourniquet. Needle and plunger, there now.

  In one beat—

  She tensed and lulled. Her eyelids fluttered. One yawn and out.

  Wayne took her pulse. It tapped light and ran steady. Her arm weighed almost nil.

  The L.A. Times was open on the nightstand. It showed a photo triptych: JFK, RFK, Dr. King. Wayne folded them out of sight and watched Janice sleep.

  2

  Don Crutchfield

  (Los Angeles, 6/15/68)

  WOMEN:

  Two bevies walked by the lot. The first group looked like shop girls. They wore Ivy League threads and modified bouffants. The second group was pure hippie. They wore patched-up jeans, peacenik shit and long straight hair that swirled.

  They came and went. The wheelmen waved. The shop girls waved back. The hippie chicks flipped off the wheelmen. The wheelmen wolf-called.

  The Shell Station lot, Beverly and Hayworth. Four pumps and a service bay/office. Three wheelmen sprawled in their sleds.

  Bobby Gallard had a Rocket Olds. Phil Irwin had a 409 Chevy. Crutch had a ’65 GTO. He was the rookie wheelman. He had the boss ride: 390, Hurst 4-speed, coon maroon paint.

  Bobby and Phil were midday-blitzed on high-test vodka. Crutch was residual torqued on the girl show. He scanned the street for more walk-bys. Ziltch—just some old hebes loping to shul.

  Back to the paper. Yawn—more jive on James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan. Snore—“America Grieves”/“Accused Assassin’s Lair.” Ray vibed pencilneck. Sirhan vibed towelhead. Hey, America, I got your grief swingin’.

  Crutch flipped pages. He hit flyweights at the Forum and a grabber—Life magazine offers million scoots for Howard Hughes pix! A redhead walked by. Crutch waved at her. She scowled like he was a dog turd. Wheelmen emitted baaaad vibes. They were low-rent and indigenously fucked-up. They perched in the lot. They waited for work from skank private eyes and divorce lawyers. They tailed cheating spouses, kicked in doors and took photos of the fools balling. It was a high-risk, high-yuks job with female-skin potential. Crutch was new to it. He wanted to groove the job forever.

  The paper called Howard Hughes a “billionaire recluse.” Crutch got a brainstorm. He could starve himself down to bones and shimmy up a heat shaft. Snap—one Polaroid and vamoose.

  The lot dozed. Bobby Gallard skimmed beaver mags and slurped Smirnoff 100. Phil Irwin wiped his 409 with a chamois cloth. Phil worked tail jobs and stooge gigs for Freddy Otash. Freddy O. was a shakedown artist and freelance strongarm. He was ex-LAPD. He lost his PI’s license behind some horse-doping caper. Phil was his pet wheelman/lapdog.

  The lot dozed. No work, no walk-by cooze, gas station ennui.

  It was hot and humid. Crutch yawned and aimed the AC vent at his balls. It perked him up and got him head-tripping. Gas station blahs, adieu.

  He was twenty-three. He got expelled from Hollywood High for candid-camera stunts in the girls gym. His old man lived in a Goodwill box outside Santa Anita. Crutch Senior panhandled, bet all day and ate pastrami burritos exclusive. His mom vanished on 6/18/55. Crutch was ten. She up and split and never returned. She sent him a Christmas card and a five-spot every year, different postmarks, no return address. He built his own missing person file. It filled up four big boxes. He killed time with it. He called around the country and ran PD checks, hospital checks, obit checks. He kicked off the quest in junior high
school.

  Nothing—Margaret Woodard Crutchfield was still stone gone.

  The wheelman gig fell on his head. It happened like this:

  He kept up with his high-school pal Buzz Duber. Buzz shared his passion for pad prowls. Soft prowls, like this:

  Hancock Park. Big dark houses. Preppy girls’ lairs. Knock, knock. Nobody’s home? Good.

  You enter undetectably, you carry a penlight, you dig some plush cribs. You walk through girls’ bedrooms and exit with lingerie sets.

  He did it a few times with Buzz. He did it a lot by himself. Buzz’s dad was Clyde Duber. Clyde was a big-time PI. He did divorce jobs and got celebs out of the shit. He installed college kids in left-wing groups and got them to rat out subversion. The fuzz popped Crutch on a panty prowl. They snagged him with some black lace undies and a sandwich he glommed from Sally Compton’s fridge. Clyde bailed him out and got his record expunged. Clyde got him wheelman and chump surveillance gigs. Clyde said window-peeping was kosher, but nixed B&E. Clyde said, “Kid, I’ll pay you to peep.”

  The lot dozed. Bobby Gallard spray-painted an iron cross on his Olds. Phil Irwin popped some yellow jackets with an Old Crow chaser. Crutch daydreamed per Howard Hughes. Brainstorm: assault his swank penthouse! Gain entry by grappling hook!

  An unmarked cruiser pulled in. The lot revitalized. Crutch caught a flash of a red tartan tie and smelled pizza.

  Beeline—Crutch followed Bobby and Phil. Scotty Bennett got out of the car and kicked blood in his legs. He was six-five. He weighed 230. He worked LAPD Robbery. His tie had 18’s stitched in the weave.

  The backseat was stuffed with six-packs and pizza. Bobby and Phil jumped in and helped themselves. Crutch looked in the car and checked the dashboard. Still there: the crime-scene photos, all taped up and yellowed.