Blood's a rover

67

(Los Angeles, 4/3/69)

Milt C. had a puppet named Junkie Monkey. He did dreary shtick with him. It regaled the brothers. Sonny and Jomo howled on cue.

The switchboard was flooded. Jomo juggled calls. Jordan High was battling Washington. All-city eager-folks needed kabs.

Junkie Monkey wore a pimp hat and a checkerboard suit. A dope spike dangled from one arm. Milt moved his ape lips.

“Dese LAPD pigs hassle me. I be smack-back on ma fron’ porch, an’ it be a muthafuckin’ humbug roust. Dey say, ‘What you doin’ wid dat hypodermic needle?’ An’ I say, ‘You white muthafuckas got de needle dicks, an’ I gots dat tar paper throbbin’ a hard fuckin’ yard.’ ”

Junior yukked. Jomo plugged calls and yukked. Sonny said, “Junkie Monkey’s a jallhouse sissy and a draft dodger. Muhammad Ali fucked his simian ass.”

Wayne checked his watch. Marsh was due now. He just got a phone-drop message. Another brain click clicked him. More memory loss and tug.

A month ago. The fight with Mary Beth. Reginald, the “Freedom School,” why that soft click?

He was swamped. Drac and the Boys overbooked him. His cutout job added to it. He couldn’t work on the click just yet.

Junkie Monkey said, “The Beatles bop down to da muthafuckin’ ghetto to score some black trim. Dey meets dese two unhealthy-lookin’ sistahs name of Carcinoma an’ Melanoma an’-”

Wayne looked out the window. Marsh walked by outside. Wayne got up and followed him back to the fleet lot. Sixteen Tiger kabs glowed.

Marsh was cool-day sweaty. Wayne gave him his handkerchief.

“Tell me.”

“I was with Jomo two nights ago. He beat up the counterman at a liquor store and 211’d him. I’m fairly sure the man recognized me.”

“Why’d you wait this long to tell me?”

“It’s my tendency. I tend to wait things out.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“Scotty. Every liquor-store proprietor on God’s green earth knows him and owes him.”

Motown blared. Some fool goosed the dispatch-hut hi-fi. Wayne steered Marsh over to the alley fence.

“He hasn’t called Scotty. You’d have heard by now.”

“Yes. That’s what I’m thinking.”

Wayne said, “Give me something.”

Marsh wiped his forehead. “What do you mean?”

“Give me a lead for Dwight. Tell me something to convince him you’re working.”

Marsh sighed. “Liquor-store heists. There’s been a bunch of them.”

Wayne mimicked the sigh. “We’re back to liquor stores?”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m saying I may have something.”

Wayne sighed harder. “Liquor-store jobs in South L.A. with black suspects? Can you give me something more original than that?”

Marsh wiped his forehead. “Jomo’s been talking up this big coin he’s got, but he won’t reveal the source.”

Wayne shook his head. “That’s insufficient. I’ll frost your deal two nights ago, but you’re going to start working harder.”

“Jesus, Wayne.”

Wayne pushed him into the fence. “You’re going with BTA. You’re going to suck up to Leander Jackson and pick a public fight with Jomo. I’m going to the Dominican Republic. We’ll stage it when I get back. You’re going to level Jomo over the liquor-store deal. You’re going to call him a ‘punk-ass, evil, no-account nigger,’ and I’ll be there to watch you do it.”

“Jesus. Just give me-”

A kab pulled in and up. Wayne stepped back and cleared a space.

“You’ll do it. I’ll tell the world that you’re a faggot if you don’t.”

The liquor store was close by. The counterman was bandaged from the eyebrows up. Wayne walked in and bought a bag of potato chips. The man sniffed fuzz.

“LAPD?”

“Ex-LVPD. I retired.”

The man rang the sale. “Why’d you retire?”

“I shot some unarmed black guys and it got out of hand.”

“Did they deserve it?”

Wayne gave him a dollar. “Yes.”

The man gave him change. “Did you feel bad about it?”

“Yes, I did.”

The man smiled. Wayne pointed to his bandage and tossed him a cash roll. Two grand in fifties, rubber band-wrapped.

“Did you call Scotty?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“That Scotty’s a pisser.”

“He’s all of that. These same brothers robbed me on six different occasions, so I called up Scotty, independent. I told him the regular LAPD wasn’t doing their job. Scotty said he’d take care of it, which he did.”

“That must have been some sight.”

“It was. They came in with ski masks and went out under sheets. Scotty shoots double-aught with little spiky things attached. Wasn’t much left of them.”

Wayne ate a potato chip. “You’ve got a certain loyalty to Scotty.”

“Yeah, like I suspect you got for that Marshall Bowen guy.”

Wayne tossed cash roll #2. The man fanned it.

“Bowen must be jungled up with some money guys. ‘High-level informant.’ Does that sound right?”

“Your mortgage is way in arrears. I’m prepared to cover it.”

“My electric bill’s behind, too.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah, one more thing. I want one of those tiger limousines for my daughter’s sweet sixteen.”

USC was close by. His schedule was tight. Drac had requested a phone chat. Yes, sir. Nuclear fallout will kill you. No, sir-no time soon. Yes, we should ban the Bomb. No, the world powers will not accede on your say-so.

Wayne parked and strolled the campus. The student body was half square kids, half longhairs all aggrieved. Left- and right-wing flyers covered signboards. YAF vs SDS, VIVA vs SNCC. Kids with guitars, kids in letter sweaters, a few black kids in dashikis.

Wayne walked and braced passersby. The “Freedom School”? Beats me. He checked the campus directory. No, no listing.

He kept at it. He pay-phoned Farlan and postponed the Drac chat. He saw some custodians on a smoke break and walked over.

They were black. They sniffed cop. Wayne sniffed ex-con labor. He laid out ten-spots and pitched them, smiling.

“There was something called the ‘Freedom School.’ It was here on campus six or seven years ago.”

Three guys blank-faced it. One guy said, “Defunct, man. Tapped out before the Watts uprising.” One guy said, “There’s some bungalows catty-corner from the rec center. Nobody uses them. Look for this dusty old door with this faded-out poster.”

Wayne said thanks and strolled. The walkways were tree-lined. Clandestine pot fumes swirled here and there. He found the rec center and the bungalows. He saw the postered door.

Fall, ‘64. SAVE THE RUMFORD FAIR-HOUSING ACT! “PROPERTY RIGHTS” MEANS “RACISM”!!!!

The door looked flimsy. Wayne shoulder-popped it easy. He stepped in. A back window provided light. The room was wall-to-wall boxes.

He went through them. They held stacks of flyers and polemics. Huelga!, Hands Off Cuba!, fruit-picker strikes. Support Al Fatah, the PLF, the 6/14 Movement. Remember Leo Frank, Emmett Till and the Scottsboro Boys. Civil-rights rants, black-power screeds. Malcolm X, Franz Fanon, Free the Rosenbergs. Free Algeria! Free Palestine! Down with the evil Goat Trujillo, Uncle Sam’s insect. United Fruit: Do you know what that banana on your plate just cost?

He hit a group photograph. It was dated 9/22/62. It looked like a faculty shot.

Seven men and women outside the bungalow. Three are white, four are black. Two white women off to the side. One woman is tall and red-haired. The other woman is shorter. She’s mid-to-late thiryish. She has dark, gray-streaked hair and black-framed glasses.

Click. Blip. Maybe, probably, not quite.

The click clicked on and clicked off short of Eureka! The blip took a weird form. Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, three months ago. Smoke rings and a back view of streaked hair just like that.

Wayne squinted at the photo. The woman wore long sleeves. No scars stood out. Reginald went to this school. Reginald got popped in the redneck town. Maybe, not quite probably-the woman bailed him out.

Drac Air flew him in. The plane landed on the private Hughes runway. Cops with bullwhips supervised the VIP lounge build.

Joaquin Balaguer sent a limousine and four flanking motorbikes. The vehicles were mid-Trujillo vintage. All five were jackhammer-loud.

They drove into Santo Domingo. The windows were smoked. Bright colors filtered in monochromatically. The limo lurched through traffic. The pictures were sepia-soaked. It was a pauper-nation newsreel. Kids pulled rickshaws, beggars begged, goons chased sign-waving youths. It was a quick-shutter slide show. Blink and you see oppression. Blink and it’s gone.

Wayne was bleary-eyed. Slide show: he kept seeing that woman’s face. The glasses, the streaked hair-the slide jammed and re-ran her image. He read the 6/14 tract on the airplane. It decried Dominican despots and innocent Haitians slaughtered. It prophesied future despots more savvy than the Goat. It predicted U.S.-Dominican collusion in the interest of a Yankee tourist trade.

Reginald meets the Haitian man. They discuss voodoo herbs. Click- memory tug and loss. The woman, the “Freedom School,” mental gears stripped short of connection.

Wayne rolled down his window. The monochrome newsreel went eye-burning bright. The colors assaulted. The salt air burned. Cops chased protestors down a dead-end alley and pinned them to a wall. Wayne saw a single nightstick raised and heard a single scream.

The limo dropped him at the El Embajador. A toady ensconced him in a plush suite. He had a wide view. The Rio Ozama was due west. Black kids dove and fought each other for fishing-boat chum. The skin tone shifted district to district. He saw occasional red flags on sticks.

He walked down to Mesplede’s suite, knocked and got no answer. He walked to Dipshit’s suite and saw the door ajar.

He breezed in. It was a kid’s crib. Magazines were tossed pell-mell. Dip-shit dug Playboy and Guns amp; Ammo. Dipshit was a picture punk. He had a Polaroid camera. He had ad-lib pix of women up the ying-yang.

Brown bottles on a nightstand. White-labeled, what’s-

Sulfur oxide precipitant, ammonia, acetic anhydride.

“Hi, Wayne. What’s shaking?”

Dipshit wore a Colt Python with Bermuda shorts. Dipshit licked an icecream cone. Dipshit had acne.

Wayne smiled and walked up. Dipshit stuck his hand out. Wayne bent his fingers, proned him out and kicked him in the balls. Dipshit dropped his ice-cream cone and went blue.

“No heroin. You don’t make it, you don’t buy it, you don’t sell it. I’ll kill anyone who does.”

Dipshit puked butter brickie and cone shreds. A shadow hit the wall.

“Зa va, Wayne. C’est fini, l’hйroпne.”

Balaguer negotiated. The payouts and contingency plans favored the Fьhrer. The overall deal favored the Boys. Balaguer haggled and conceded. Wayne took the same tack. They chatted in a parlor at the Palacio Nacional and worked from scratch sheets. Mesplede and Dipshit were off boozing. Smith and Brundage were off golfing. The Cubans were off whoring.

Building costs, labor costs, airport kickbacks. Reduced fares for U.S.-D.R. flights. Incentive payments. No-customs-interference chits. Stateside money-wash details. Inspection tours by Dwight Holly, President Nixon’s liaison.

The last point bugged Balaguer. Wayne mollified him. Sir, the tours would be by and large cosmetic.

Der Fьhrer liked that. Wayne bait-and-switched behind it. Tourism only works in peaceful settings. Too much evidence of poverty will turn tourists off. President Nixon understands that, sir. He is your typical tourist writ more politically astute. Visitors will find your enforcement efforts confusing. Goon squads and roving dissidents are greek to them. They cannot extrapolate. They will be shocked by what they see.

Balaguer bristled through the discourse. Wayne forfeited three money points to cut him slack. The chat took six hours. Balaguer stood up to bid adios.

Wayne said, “No whips, sir. I’m afraid I have to insist.”

Cosmetic.

He saw it fast: food giveaways and less hurt from La Banda. The slide show felt marginalized. His shutter popped quicker. He saw or didn’t see at an accelerated rate. The monochrome view helped: Mesplede’s car had smoked windows.

The Santo Domingo sites were plowed and construction-ready. They were police-guarded. They were in half-decent areas. Airport shuttles could take tours through good neighborhoods. Tour packages would be all-inclusive. Guests would be urged to stay inside and spend.

Santo Domingo was Jim Crow. Light-skinned people, dark-skinned people and a stratified mix. Wayne remembered Little Rock, ‘57. The 82nd Airborne and forced desegregation.

Mesplede drove and chain-smoked. Dipshit sat in the backseat and worried his dipshit lapel pin. Radio music stifled conversation. Caribbean jazz, brassy and repetitive.

The Autopista ran them north. The road was bad. The cane fields and glades de-saturated the existing monochrome. Black people ran across the road. Mesplede swerved around them.

The Piedra Blanca site was construction-vetted and guarded. The high-rise view would take in a few shacks and encompass wide greenery. The site felt rapidly vacated. Wayne saw bloodstains on a discarded two-by-four.

They stayed a few minutes and split for Jarabacoa. C’est fini, l’hйroпne-nobody talked.

The ride took three hours. Wayne rolled down his window and de-smoked and jazzed the car. The bright colors hurt his eyes. He smelled jungle rot and gunpowder.

Jarabacoa was identical. The guards were servile and offered them cervezas. Wayne saw a bullwhip stashed behind a bush.

A black man sprinted past a cane field. His face was all open-sored ooze.

Wayne said, “Jean-Philippe, you go back. Crutchfield, you’re driving me into Haiti.”

Mesplede tossed his cigarette. “We have only the one car, Wayne.”

“There’s a bus station a mile back. We’ll drop you.”

The air conditioner tanked. They climbed the Cordillera Central in a mobile sauna. The open windows got them hot air and bugs like Godzilla. They crossed south of Dajabуn. A wobbly pylon bridge spanned the Plaine du Massacre. Fasciste border guards waved good-bye and hello. Gators sunned on the Haitian banks, surrounded by leg bones.

Skin tone darkened. The bright colors held as the poverty index spiked. Rusted tin-roof shacks and mud huts. Blood-marked trees and lynched roosters dripping entrails.

Dipshit drove. His hand trembled on the shifter. Wayne shut his eyes and put his seat back full supine. The upholstery was sweat-slick. Moisture pooled at the piping.

“No more fuckups. I’ll kill you next time.”

Dipshit said, “Okay.”

“Your fail-safes are bullshit. Nobody would believe you. You’re a jerkoff. You eat ice-cream cones and perv on women. Mesplede’s soft for you, but I’m not.”

Dipshit said, “Okay.” His voice squeaked and broke.

“I’ll say this once. You don’t get out of The Life unmaimed or alive. Killing Communists and working for guys like me gets you nothing but your next nightmare.”

Dipshit said, “Sure”-this whisper-squeak.

Wayne opened his eyes. The road was dirt now. Jalopies, oxcarts and a village: thatched huts and pastel cubes flying voodoo-sect flags.

Rhinestone-rock walls. Murals on easeled signboards. A tavern called Port Afrique.

Wayne said, “Stop the car.”

Dipshit pulled over. Wayne got out. Black folks milling about got magnetized.

“Go back to Santo Domingo. I’ll get back on my own.”

Dipshit shrugged and screeched off. Wayne walked into Port Afrique. He smelled ammonia base, semi-toxics and untreated alcohol. The place was rectangular. There was a stand-up bar with bottle shelves behind it and no more. French slogans covered the side walls: “By the power of the saint star, walk and find.” “Sleep without knowing or sleeping.”

The barman looked at him. Three other men followed his eyes. They held sequined goblets. Fumes rose out of them. High acidity, low alkaline content. Klerin liquor, certainly. Odds on semi-poisonous reptile-gland compounds.

Wayne walked to the bar and bowed to show respect. The three men walked away. The shelf bottles were transparent and tape-marked in French. Colored talc, tree bark, pharmacologically active snake powder.

The barman bowed. Wayne pointed to an empty goblet. The barman’s look said Are you sure?

“S’il vous plaоt, monsieur. Je suis chimiste, et voudrais essayer votre plus potion.”

The barman bowed. “Comme vous voulez, monsieur. Mais vous comprenez q’il y a des risques.”

Wayne said, “Oui.” The barman opened bottles and dipped a spoon. Fungible plants, bark, puffer-fish liver. Bufo marinus: a sea snake’s porotoid gland. Klerin liquor from a siphon. An unknown liquid that made it all foam.

The fizz increased. It smelled like a volatile component bond. The barman served the goblet with blessing gestures. Wayne bowed and placed U.S. cash on the bar.

The three men walked over. One toasted him, one blessed him, one handed him a sect card. The foam burned the air all around them. Wayne drank the potion in one gulp.

It scorched his throat and shuddered through him. The barman said, “De rien, monsieur. Bonne chance.”

He found a shady spot outside the village. He stood there and turned off external noise. He heard the air breathe and knew he brought belief to the moment. He felt the soil under him swirl.

His pulse beat and wired his limbs to the trees surrounding him. His peripheral vision expanded and allowed him to see from the back of his head. His eyes watered. He saw Dr. King and the Reverend Hazzard swimming. Dr. King had Mary Beth’s coloring. The pastor had Marsh Bowen’s eyes. Birds perched inside him. Their chirps resounded as those mind clicks he kept hearing back in the world. The sun turned into the moon and dropped into his pocket. He kept seeing the woman with the dark, gray-streaked hair.