American tabloid

60

He took three shots a night-no more, no less.

He switched from whisky to straight gin. The bum compensated for the scant volume.

Three shots tweaked his hatreds. Four shots and up cut those hatreds all the way loose.

Three shots said, You project danger. Four shots or more said, You’re ugly and you limp.

He always drank facing his hallway mirror. The glass was chipped and cracked-his new apartment was furnished on the cheap.

Littell knocked the shots back, one-two-three. The glow let him spar with himself.

You’re two days shy of forty-eight years old. Helen left you. J. Edgar Hoover fucked you-you fucked him and he fucked you back much more efficaciously.

You risked your life for nothing. Robert F. Kennedy shunned you. You went to hell and back for a form-letter rejection.

You tried to contact Bobby in person. Yes-men showed you out. You sent four notes to Bobby. All four went unanswered.

Kemper tried to get you work at the Justice Department. Bobby nixed it-the alleged Hoover hater kowtowed to Hoover. Hoover put the fix in: No law firm or law school will employ you.

Kemper knows you’ve got the Fund books. His fear defines your bond now.

You went to a Jesuit retreat in Milwaukee. Newspapers lauded your burglary daring: MYSTERY ART THIEF TEARS LAKE GENEVA ESTATE DOWN! You did odd jobs for the monsignor and imposed your own code of silence.

You boiled the booze out. You put on some muscle. You studied cryptography texts. Prayer told you who to hate and who to forgive.

You read a Chicago Trib obit: Court Meade died of a massive heart attack. You toured old haunts. The foster homes you grew up in were still churning out Jesuit robots.

You’re licensed to practice in D.C. Hoover left you an escape hatch-in his own backyard.

The move east was invigorating. Washington law firms seeking applicants were shocked by your Commie pedigree.

Kemper comes through. Egalitarian Kemper was still friendly with old car-thief confreres. Car thieves were prone to Federal indictments and always in need of cheap representation.

Car thieves brought you occasional work-enough to sustain an apartment and three shots a night.

Kemper called to chat. He never mentioned the Fund books. You can’t hate a man so high up on a ledge. You can’t hate a man so immune to hatred himself.

He gave you great gifts. They compensate for his betrayals.

Kemper calls his civil rights work “moving.” It’s that cheap noblesse oblige the Kennedys evince so condescendingly.

You hate the mass seduction that Joe Kennedy financed. Your foster fathers bought you one cheap toy per Christmas. Joe bought his sons the world with cancerous money.

Prayer taught you to hate falsehood. Prayer gave you insight. Prayer was like a choke hold on mendacity.

You see the President’s face and see through it. You see Jimmy Hoffa skate on Sun Valley charges-a newsman cites insufficient evidence.

You hold numbers to reverse that injustice. You hold numbers to indict the Kennedy seduction.

You can break the remaining Fund code. You can expose the Robber Baron and his son the Priapic Boy Fьhrer.

Littell got out his cryptography books. Three shots a night taught him this:

You’re down, but you’re capable of anything.