Blood's a rover

6

(Las Vegas, 6/20/68)

Another hotel suite. Another bum room-service meal.

Mr. Hoover told him to stay perched in Vegas. The Wayne Senior snuff vexed him. He wanted Wayne Junior mollified and assessed. Thus the bullshit layover. Thus the time at LVPD. Thus the limp salad and gristly steak.

Dwight pushed his plate away. Food taxed him. It slowed him down and sapped the jolt he got off nicotine and coffee. The Chicago guys owned the Stardust. The FBI was allegedly anti-mob. They kept a vouchered suite there anyway. Mr. Hoover had no beef with organized crime. That was strictly Bobby K.’s bкte noire and downfall. Mr. Hoover hated Commies, jigs and lefty gadflies. Mr. Hoover probably loved limp salads and gristly steaks.

The fucking Stardust. Four thousand slot machines and velvet-flocked suites. The Chicago guys were hot to dump the joint on Howard Hughes. Count Dracula was hot to buy it. The guys would skim the Count blind.

And Wayne Tedrow Junior is facilitating it. Wayne’s fucking his dying stepmom. They killed Wayne Senior. Dwight and Senior went waaaaay back. Dwight grooved Junior as a wiiiiild piece of work. Now he’s out to get Junior a skate on Murder One.

Cluster fuck.

It was 114° outside. The wall vents spritzed ice. Dwight got that hotel-captive feeling and paced the suite.

Shit kept crisscrossing. Buddy Fritsch was too nervous. The Vegas SAC said Junior-killed-Senior rumors were fouling the desert air. Mr. Hoover was losing it. Mr. Hoover still had it to some degree. Sirhan Sirhan was foaming at the mouth in L.A. Jimmy Ray was foaming and fighting extradition. The Grapevine Tavern issue was percolating. He saw an ATF teletype this morning. Mr. Hoover telexed it in a tizzy. ATF might put the Grapevine under surveillance. Cracker habituйs were moving dope and guns. Inter-agency grief. The Grapevine bug backfired and inspired conspiracy talk. Most conspiracy talk was dismissible. This might not be. It might require interdiction. Interdiction would not work with ATF hovering.

Proximity. Jimmy Ray’s loose talk. Loose talk at the Grapevine. Valid loose talk-Jimmy Ray’s brother owned a piece of the place.

Cluster fuck.

His nerves were frayed. His sleep was thin. Memphis spiked through at 3:00 a.m. nightly. Car noise sounded like gunshots. Little bed aches felt like someone hitting him.

Dwight walked to the bedroom window. Hotel suites made him miss Karen. Hotel suites got him torqued for real bedrooms. He’d black-bagged Karen’s house a half dozen times. He wanted to stand still there with her absent. He wanted instinctive evidence that she had no other lovers. He found the quiet he was looking for and got his evidence confirmed. She tapped his D.C. suite once. He found some entry signs, rolled for prints and got two Karen Sifakis latents. She saw his anonymous check-writing kit. She read through his journal. He wrote “I fucking love her” just two days before.

They’ve told each other “I’ve prowled you” obliquely. He’s read her journal. She probably hides the pages she doesn’t want him to see. She’s pestered him about the checks. He might tell her one day.

Dwight poured his one drink a night early. Twilight came and went. The dark sky pulsed and clashed with all the Vegas neon.

January ‘57. Icy roads on the Merritt Parkway. He was working the New York City office. He was driving a Bureau car, blitzed. He was en route to a Cape Cod weekend with his girlfriend. He plowed a divider and hit an oncoming car. He killed the two teenaged daughters of Mr. and Mrs. George Diskant.

He suffered minor injuries. Mr. Hoover chilled all inquiries with the Connecticut State Police. He checked into a sanitarium near New Caanan. He segued from sobbing fits to long stints of silence. He stayed at Silver Hill for one month and four days. He got his nerves back and returned to work. He stayed away from women until Karen.

Dwight sipped his one drink slowly. The sky show started chafing him. He got out his black-militant file and read through it.

The second read confirmed the first. The Panthers and US-too known and too infiltrated. The Black Tribe Alliance and Mau-Mau Liberation Front-obscure, with big exposure potential.

Karen could find him an informant. He or she could be white or Negro. He or she could rat out both groups politically. The infiltrator had to be a male Negro. He could rat out all criminal actions justified politically.

Maybe a cop. Maybe an ex-cop. Maybe a cop or ex-cop with a dicey past. Again, that notion: check hate-mail subscriber lists.

Wayne Junior had access to Wayne Senior’s lists. Wayne Junior said he was out of the hate biz. Dr. Fred Hiltz was a Bureau informant. He was tight with that L.A. private eye Clyde Duber. Clyde was tight with the L.A. SAC.

A doorbell rang down the hallway. Dwight jumped out of his skin.