Blood's a rover

45

(Miami, 10/23/68)

Hubert Humphrey deployed pidgin Spanish. Bilingual pols urged him on. The crowd was half white, half spic and all non-plussed. They were heat-wilted. The parking lot was sun-smacked and Hubert was a noon snooze. They craved cold beer and some yuks.

Mesplede stood mid-crowd. Crutch stood at the rear. They waved to the driver of a tarp-covered truck.

The truck pulled up to the edge of the parking lot. Crutch cued the driver. Three, two, one-the invasion force rolls out.

Two dozen out-of-work actors. More Clyde Duber plants. “Guerrilla Troupe” hambones done up as Fidel.

The beard, the boots, the green fatigues, the fat cigars-

“Fidel loves Hubert! Fidel loves Hubert! Hubert loves Fidel!”

Hubert stood there with his thumb up his ass. Eight Nixon-shirt guys jumped out of the truck and dispensed free beers. The Fidels circulated and passed out free cigars. The crowd went nuts. Crutch and Mesplede howled.

CUBA, CUBA, CUBA-Froggy talked it trilingual and trиs grande non-stop. Crutch kept thinking D.R. They rent-a-carred through Little Havana. They shared a reefer. Froggy kept saying “Cessna” and “coast run.” Crutch kept seeing that photo in the library book.

The voodoo guy. The tattoo. The pattern like the dead chick in Horror House.

Mesplede passed the reefer back. Crutch took a last hit and ate the roach. They hit Flagler Street. The exile storefronts flew Cuban flags. Straw Castros hung from lightposts. Kids ran up and stuck pocket-knives in.

Crutch kept it zipped. He’d been talking D.R. like Froggy talked Cuba. “Keep it zipped.” Dwight Holly told him that. He obeyed, so far. Marsh Bowen was a fruit. He kept that zipped. He bombed by Miami-Dade PD last night. He did file checks on Gretchen/Celia and Joan Rosen Klein. Froggy asked him where he went. He kept it zipped.

He was learning. His killer pals would respect that.

They drove to a rinky-dink airfield outside Miami. The crew was all Cuban. They were all diced and sliced from sugarcane work. Mesplede signed some papers and rented a two-seater plane. They took off and torched a joint at three thousand-plus feet.

Crutch got scared. The altitude cross-wired his high to acid-trip dimensions. He kept seeing people who weren’t there. His mom did the Twist with Dana Lund. Blow-job Bev Shoftel blew Sal Mineo.

They flew low over Little Havana. Mesplede hit a lever and cut five thousand Nixon signs loose. Kids plucked them out of the air and flipped the plane off. Misplede dipsy-doodled south. They flew over a string of bridgeways and keys. Mesplede served Dexedrine chased with hash-spiked schnapps. Dig those brown cubes floating in white liquid.

Crutch imbibed. The cocktail re-cohered him. They flew out over the Caribbean. They passed two refugee rafts and dumped Nixon signs on them. The cocktail kept Crutch un-airsick. Mesplede pointed behind the seats. Crutch saw a Tommy gun with a hundred-round drum. He popped a bullet out. The tip had been dumdum-gouged and stuffed with rat poison.

Crutch got flutters. The cocktail had him anesthetized short of real fear. This big brown shape loomed. Froggy grinned at him. Crutch blinked. Now the shape’s a pancake-flat island.

Froggy pushed the stick and brought them in low. They skimmed waves and water-bumped their wheels. Crutch saw the beach and some brownshirt spies ringed by sandbags. The spies were hunched over a.50-caliber machine gun. The thing had a vented barrel, feeder belts and a 360 swivel.

Froggy diversion-dipped and dove straight at them. The spies fired over, under and wide. Froggy came in ultra-low. The spies swiveled, re-swiveled and sent off panic shots. The noise was like typewriter clack meets the A-bomb.

Crutch rested the Tommy gun on his window ledge. Froggy got see-their-eyes low. Crutch head-counted eight. They were ducking and trying to swivel their machine gun in tight.

Crutch fired. He saw two heads explode. He saw one guy’s ribs blow out of his chest and blood-blast a sandbag. Froggy cut through some low trees. Fronds buffeted the airplane and blocked their frontal view. Crutch fired behind him. Stitch shots, very precise. He got four guys standing together. He saw a tall guy’s glasses shatter as his head pitched off.

Froggy pulled the stick back. Crutch saw Cuba upside down and held in his cookies. They flew backward over the ocean. He saw his eight new kills and that guy’s head rolling toward the surf line.

Hangover.

Blackout.

He didn’t remember the flight back or the ride to the hotel. He woke up in his bed. Mesplede was still asleep. He walked down to the restaurant and sat outside. He ordered pancakes and a Bloody Mary and kept it all down. He re-wired his head and grooved the awe of it. He killed two Cuban Reds in Chicago. He’d just killed eight more. Two plus eight was ten. He was moving toward Scotty Bennett’s toll.

A shade tree loomed over his table. Lovers had carved initials and honeymoon dates on it. Crutch got out his pocketknife and stabbed in “D.C.” and “10.”

He walked back upstairs. His bedroom door was open. Mesplede was sitting on the bed. His briefcase had been pried open. The summary report on his case was out in plain view. Mesplede was on page 43.

Froggy had his gun out. Crutch gulped and brain-stalled for some lies. Froggy said, “You’ve withheld information twice. Your fixation on the Dominican Republic was a non sequitur that aroused my suspicion, so now you must tell me everything.”

So he did.

He started with the Dr. Fred/thieving girlfriend caper. He layered in Farlan Brown, Gretchen/Celia and Joan. Add Horror House. Add all his futile cop work. Add Celia’s Dominican roots and Haiti. Add the dead woman’s tattoo and the tattoo on the voodoo guy in the picture book.

Mesplede pulled out Crutch’s pocket atlas. It was open to the Caribbean page. He said, “Our agendas merge.” He drew a straight line between the D.R. and Cuba.