American tabloid

7

Darleen Shoftel faked a mean climax. Darleen Shoftel had whore pals over for shop talk.

Darleen was a bigggg name dropper.

She said Franchot Tone dug bondage. She called Dick Contino a champion muff diver. She dubbed B-movie man Steve Cochran “Mr. King Size.”

Phone calls came in and went out. Darleen talked to tricks, hooker chums and Mom in Vincennes, Indiana.

Darleen loved to talk. Darleen said nothing to explain why two Feds wired her crib.

They attached the Fed apparatus four days ago. 1541 North Alta Vista was miked up floor to rafters.

Fred Turentine piggybacked the Boyd/Littell setup. He heard everything the FBI heard. The Feds ranted a listening-post house down the block; Freddy monitored his hookups from a van parked next door and kept Pete supplied with tape copies.

And Pete smelled money and called Jimmy Hoffa-maybe a bit premature.

Jimmy said, “You got a good sense of smell. Come down to Miami on Thursday and tell me what you got. If you got nothing, we can go out on my boat and shoot sharks.”

Thursday was tomorrow. Shark shooting was strictly for geeks. Freddy’s pay was two hundred a day-steep for a crash course in extraneous sex jive.

Pete moped around the watchdog house. Pete savored the hints he dropped on Mr. Hughes: I know you lent Dick Nixon’s brother some coin. Pete kept playing the piggyback tapes out of sheer boredom.

He hit Play. Darleen moaned and groaned. Bedsprings creaked; something headboard-like slammed something wall-like. Dig it: Darleen with a big fat porker in the saddle.

The phone rang-Pete grabbed it fast.

“Who’s this?”

“It’s Fred. Get over here now-we just hit paydirt.”

o o o

The van was crammed with contraptions and gadgets. Pete banged his knees climbing in.

Freddy looked all hopped up. His zipper was down, like he’d been choking the chicken.

He said, “I recognized that Boston accent immediately, and I called you the second they started screwing. Listen, this is live.”

Pete put on headphones. Darleen Shoftel spoke, loud and clear.

“…you’re a bigger hero than your brother. I read about you in Time magazine. Your PT boat got rammed by the Japs or something.”

“I’m a better swimmer than Bobby, that’s certainly true.” 3-cherry jackpot: Gail Hendee’s old squeeze, Jack the K.

Darleen: “I saw your brother’s picture in Newsweek magazine. Doesn’t he have like four thousand kids?”

Jack: “At least three thousand, with new ones popping up all the time. When you visit his house the little shits attach themselves to your ankles. My wife finds Bobby’s need to breed vulgar.”

Darleen: “‘Need to breed’-that’s cute.”

Jack: “Bobby’s a true Catholic. He needs to have children and punish the men that he hates. If his hate instincts weren’t so unerring, he’d be a colossal pain in the ass.”

Pete clamped his headset down. Jack Kennedy talked, postfuck languid:

“I don’t hate like Bobby does. Bobby hates with a fury. Bobby hates Jimmy Hoffa very powerfully and simply, which is why he’ll win in the end. I was in Washington with him yesterday. He was taking a deposition from a Teamster man who’d become disgusted with Hoffa and had decided to inform on him. Here’s this dumb brave Polack, Roland something from Chicago, and Bobby takes him home for dinner with his family. You see, uh…”

“Darleen.”

“Right, Darleen. You see, Darleen, Bobby’s more heroic than I am because he’s truly passionate and generous.”

Gadgets blinked. Tape spun. They hit the royal flush/Irish Sweepstakes jackpot-Jimmy Hoffa would SHIT when he heard it.

Darleen: “I still think that PT boat thing was pretty swell.”

Jack: “You know, you’re a good listener, Arlene.”

Fred looked ready to DROOL. His fucking eyes were dollar-sign dilated.

Pete made fists. “This is mine. You just sit tight and do what I tell you to.”

Freddy cringed. Pete smiled-his hands put the fear out every time.

o o o

A Tiger Kab met his plane. The driver talked Cuban politics nonstop: El grande Castro advancing! El puto Batista in retreat!

Pancho dropped him off at the cabstand. Jimmy had the dispatch shack commandeered-goons were packing up life jackets and Tommy guns.

Hoffa shooed them out. Pete said, “Jimmy, how are you?”

Hoffa picked up a nail-studded baseball bat. “I’m all right. You like this? Sometimes the sharks get up close to the boat and you can give them a few whacks.”

Pete opened up his tape rig and plugged it into a floor outlet. The tiger-stripe wallpaper made his head swim.

“It’s cute, but I brought something better.”

“You said you smelled money. That’s gotta mean my money for your trouble.”

“There’s a story behind it.”

“I don’t like stories, unless I’m the hero. And you know I’m a busy-”

Pete put a hand on his arm. “An FBI man braced me. He said he had an ‘in’ on the McClellan Committee. He said he made me for the Gretzler job, and he said Mr. Hoover didn’t care. You know Hoover, Jimmy. He’s always left you and the Outfit alone.”

Hoffa pulled his arm loose. “So? You think they’ve got evidence? Is that what that tape’s all about?”

“No. I think the Fed’s spying on Bobby Kennedy and the Committee for Hoover, or something like that, and I think Hoover’s on our side. I tailed the guy and his partner up to a fuck pad in Hollywood. They bugged and wired it, and my guy Freddy Turentine hooked up a piggyback. Now, listen.”

Hoffa tapped his foot like he was bored. Hoffa brushed tigerstriped lint off his shirt.

Pete tapped Play. Tape hissed. Sex groans and mattress squeaks escalated.

Pete timed the fuck. Senator John F. Kennedy: 2.4-minute man.

Darleen Shoftel faked a climax. There, that Boston bray: “My goddamn back gave out.”

Darleen said, “It was goooood. Short and sweet’s the best.”

Jimmy twirled his baseball bat. Goose bumps bristled up his arms.

Pete pushed buttons and cut to the good stuff. Two-Minute Jack rhapsodized:

“…a Teamster man who’d become disgusted with Hoffa this dumb brave Polack, Roland something from Chicago.”

Hoffa popped goose bumps. Hoffa choked up a grip on his bat.

“This Roland something has working-class panache… Bobby’s got his teeth in Hoffa. When Bobby bites down he doesn’t let go.”

Hoffa popped double goose bumps. Hoffa went bug-eyed like a fright-wig nigger.

Pete stood back.

Hoffa let fly-watch that nail-topped Louisville Slugger GO-

Chairs got smashed to kindling. Desks got knocked legless. Walls got spike-gouged down to the baseboard.

Pete stood way back. A glowing plastic Jesus doorstop got shattered into eight million pieces.

Paper stacks flew. Wood chips ricocheted. Drivers watched from the sidewalk-Jimmy roundhoused the window and glassblasted them.

James Riddle Hoffa: heaving and voodoo-eyed stuporous.

His bat snagged on a doorjamb. Jimmy stared at it-say what?

Pete grabbed him in a bear hug. Jimmy’s eyes rolled back, catatonic-style.

Hoffa flailed and squirmed. Pete squeezed him close to breathless and baby-talked him.

“I can keep Freddy on the piggyback for two hundred a day. Sooner or later we might get something you can fuck the Kennedys with. I’ve got some political dirt files, too. They might do us some good someday.”

Hoffa focused in half-lucid. His voice came out laughing-gas squeaky.

“What… do… you… want?”

“Mr. Hughes is going nuts. I was thinking I’d get next to you and cover my bets.”

Hoffa squirmed free. Pete almost choked on his smell: sweat and bargain-basement cologne.

His color receded. He caught his breath. His voice went down a few octaves.

“I’ll give you 5% of this cabstand. You keep the piggyback going in L.A. and show up here once in a while to keep these Cubans in line. Don’t try to Jew me up to 10%, or I’ll say ‘fuck you’ and send you back to L.A. on the bus.”

Pete said, “It’s a deal.”

Jimmy said, “I’ve got a job in Sun Valley. I want you to come with me.”

o o o

They took a Tiger Kab out. Shark-shoot goodies bulged up the trunk: nail bats, Tommy guns and suntan oil.

Fulo Machado drove. Jimmy wore fresh threads. Pete forgot to bring spare clothes-Hoffa’s stink stuck to him.

Nobody talked-Jimmy Hoffa sulking killed chitchat. They passed buses filled with Teamster chumps headed for the suckerbait tract pads.

Pete did mental arithmetic.

Twelve cab drivers working around-the-clock. Twelve men with Jimmy Hoffa-sponsored green cards-taking short-end taxi-fare splits to stay in America. Twelve moonlighters: stickup men, strikebreakers, pimps. 5% of the top-end money and whatever else he could scrounge-this gig packed potential.

Fulo pulled off the highway. Pete saw the spot where he whacked Anton Gretzler. They followed a bus convoy to the bait cribs-three miles from the Interstate easy.

Movie spotlights gave off this huge glow-extra-bright, like a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese. The cosmetic Sun Valley looked good: tidy little houses in a blacktop-paved clearing.

Teamsters were boozing at card tables-at least two hundred men squeezed into the walkways between houses. A gravel parking lot was crammed with cars and buses. A bar-b-que pit stood adjacent-check that spike-impaled steer twirling and basting.

Fulo parked close to the action. Jimmy said, “You two wait here.”

Pete got out and stretched. Hoffa zoomed into the crowd- toadies swarmed him right off the bat.

Fulo sharpened his machete on a pumice stone. He packed it in a scabbard strapped to the backseat.

Pete watched Jimmy work the crowd.

He showed off the pads. He gave little speeches and wolfed bar-b-que. He seized up and flushed around a blond Polack type.

Pete chain-smoked. Fulo played the cab radio: some Spanish-language pray-for-Jesus show.

A few buses took off. Two carloads of hookers pulled in- trashy Cuban babes chaperoned by off-duty state troopers.

Jimmy huckstered and hawked Sun Valley applications. Some Teamsters grabbed their cars and fishtailed off drunk and rowdy.

The Polack bagged a U-drive Chevy and burned gravel like he had a hot date somewhere.

Jimmy walked up fast-stubby legs chugging on overdrive. You didn’t need a fucking road map: the Polack was Roland Kirpaski.

They piled in to the tiger sled. Fulo gunned it. The radio geek cranked up a donation plea.

Lead-foot Fulo got the picture. Lead-foot Fulo went 0 to 60 inside six seconds.

Pete saw the Chevy’s taillights. Fulo floored the gas and rammed them. The car swerved off the road, clipped some trees and stalled dead.

Fulo brodied in close. His headlights strafed Kirpaski- stumbling through a clearing thick with marsh grass.

Jimmy got out and chased him. Jimmy waved Fulo’s machete. Kirpaski tripped and stood up flashing two fuck-you fingers.

Hoffa came in swinging. Kirpaski went down flailing wrist stumps gouting blood. Jimmy swung two-handed-scalp flaps flew.

The radio clown jabbered. Kirpaski convulsed head to toe. Jimmy wiped blood from his eyes and kept swinging.