(Managua, 1/28/69)
This beaner bin on a lake. Statues of notable führers. Peasants, urban spics and cops with Sten guns. Threadbare overall.
No Hughes flights in. They took La Nica Air to Xolotlán Airport. It was winter muggy. Kids swarmed the cab and hawked baseball cards. Parrots swerved and shit-bombed monuments.
Traffic was slow. Exhaust fumes were thick. The cars ran to pre-’60s belchers. Most street names noted dates: Calle 27 de Mayo to Calle 15 de Septiembre. Froggy said it all pertained to quashed revolution.
Side show, getaway, breather. Nicaragua was a no-sale deal and a sterile stopover. The D.R. was next.
One bright spot loomed. Froggy had a line on an ex–marine colonel. The guy was here now. He lived in the D.R full-time. He’d been in Santo Domingo since the ’65 war. Froggy’s merc network set up a meeting later.
The guy’s name was Ivar Smith. He agreed to write the pro-D.R. report to Wayne and the wops. Smith called the Frogman yesterday. He said he knew four anti-Castro Cubans. They were eeeeevil. They’d looooove to do wet work out of the D.R.
The cab swerved around a peon with an oxcart. Froggy picked his nose and tossed chump change at beggars. Crutch fingered his lapel pin and re-ran some recent head tapes.
D.C., inauguration night, the Hay-Adams. There’s Sam G. and Gretchen/Celia. Mesplede knows Sam. Mesplede does not know her. Two-second intros, auf wiedersehen.
He told Froggy later: it’s that thieving babe. Froggy shrugged and said the one word: “Cuba.”
A parrot zoomed down and landed on the window ledge. Crutch fed him Fritos out of the bag. He re-punched his replay button and spooled back to Christmas Eve.
Horror House, the hidey-hole, the Commie meeting ledger. The date: 12/6/62. The names: Bergeron, Narduno, Joan.
The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce owned the house then. Three Commies got access. He went by the Chamber and chatted up a clerk. Bum news: the house went unrented in fall/winter ’62.
The parrot ate all the Fritos and squawked for more. Crutch tried to pet him. The cocksucker bit his hand and flew off.
He foot-tailed Sam and Gretchen/Celia to the Willard Hotel. They had separate suites there. He burgled Gretchen/Celia’s suite the next day. He located her address book. He brought an evidence kit and dusted the cover right there. He got one Joan Rosen Klein latent.
The book pages were coded: weird letters, numbers and symbols. He Minox-photographed every page and put the book back where he found it. He took a biiiiig risk and told Froggy what he’d done. Froggy called a CIA pal in Virginia. A code-breaking manual should arrive in Managua this week. He checked outbound D.C. flights. Sam went back to Vegas. Celia Reyes: Santo Domingo–bound.
“Donald, your hand is bleeding.”
“A parrot bit me.”
“Was it red?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should have killed it.”
The Hotel Lido Palace was lake-close. United Fruit guys hogged the bar and talked golf and oppression. The jukebox played the Chiquita banana song non-stop. UF ran Nicaragua and deployed their Somoza-family puppets. Dissent was a persistent woe akin to parrot shit. UF had a snitch network and a police force. Their mandate: rebuff Red revolt.
Crutch and Froggy settled in and moseyed down to the bar. The waitresses wore hoop skirts and banana-bunch hairdos. Froggy said the country was on Red Alert. Commies were bug-bombing fruit fields. Puppet Man Somoza had pledged reprisals soon.
They glommed an outside booth by a koi pond. Cats perched and drooled for fish dinners. They pawed and snapped and never got close. The koi had sonar and radar.
Ivar Smith was a tall guy in golf togs. He was a gasbag right-winger fueled on pre-noon Singapore Slings. He was the D.R.’s boastmaster general and welcome wagon. He ran a security firm. It assisted Bossman Balaguer’s goon squads. Balaguer craved those U.S. casinos and ached for a fat tourist trade. Yeah, I’ll write that report. The D.R. is ripe fruit. Yanqui, sí, Commie, no. We want your biz.
Pay me. I’m the conduit. I’ll grease Balaguer. The CIA contingent—all boozed-up snatch hounds. Balaguer was a subtle fascisto. He raped pubescent tots in private and evinced public decorum. He was anti-Trujillo that way. The D.R. boded tourist bonanza. Smith’s boys and the La Banda thugs ran pesky jigs back to Haiti routinely. Balaguer had a dual agenda: circumvent due process and eugenically bleach the country three shades lighter. The casinos would attract the swells. Smith’s boys and La Banda would serve as street cleaners and dump trucks.
Yeah, Haiti was close. The Massacre River formed the aptly named dividing line. Smith riffed off Haiti and voodoo. Papa Doc Duvalier raped Haiti like Trujillo raped the D.R. They called Trujillo “the Goat.” He blitzkrieged Haitian settlements within the D.R. It was race shit. Pale-skinned Dominicans have Spanish roots. They hate ink-black Haitians, with their chicken-fucking religion and French affect. The Haitians have leftist allies. There’s a Commie group called the 6/14 Movement. Smith and La Banda suppress it for kicks and grins.
Wooooo—six Singapore Slings and still on!
There’s a small town on the north D.R.-Haiti shore. A corrupt Tonton Macoute man runs it. It’s a good Cuban-ops staging point. Secluded inlets up the wazoo.
Smith segued to those eeeeevil Cubans. They were in Managua now. They were all stone killers. They’ve got a boocoo heroin CV. They conduit stolen pharmacy dope through a group of UF stockholders in Miami. There’s some ex-CIA in the group. A big member: Dick Nixon’s pal, Bebe Rebozo.
Bad apples. They target pharmacies owned by comsymps. They pulled jobs in Guatemala and Honduras. They’re allegedly ripping off a pharmacy here tonight.
Smith faded out talk-wise. His face went rumdum red. Mesplede took over.
I want to meet the Cubans. I can get them construction-boss jobs. I have heroin credentials. I want to stage anti-Castro ops.
Smith staggered out of the bar. He pulled a banana off a waitress’s head and bit in, peel and all.
• • •
The phone book was en español. Crutch pulled out the page listing farmacias. Managua was Podunk-size. Six drugstores, no más. The city was laid out grid-style. Calles and avenidas crossed. He’d never seen a pharmacy rip-off. Froggy was snoozing. Let’s check out the Cubans at work.
The desk clerk gave him a street map. Downtown Managua was small and walkable quicksville. It was peon-packed. Mamacitas cooked meat pies on bar-b-q’s built from chain links and trash cans. It was pigeon meat. Pigeons perched everywhere. Kids shot them with BB guns and tossed them in paper sacks.
Some nice trees, a lake breeze, garish-colored buildings. Jackbooted cops with barbed wire–wrapped saps.
The grid made it easy. Crutch found four pharmacies fast. They looked innocuous: bright walls, narrow aisles, white-coat spics at back counters. Big cardboard ads for Listerine and Pepsodent. No rob-me vibes.
Crutch schlepped down Calle Central to Avenida Bolívar. Little spic-lets waved dead pigeons. Crutch tossed them American dimes and watched the brawls that ensued.
Número 5: a joint with a big red cross and a jumbo Coke machine. No vibe. It was pushing 6:00, closing time—trabajo, finito.
Crutch turned down an alley. Eye magnet: Gonzalvo Farmacia. A quiet little place with a big, loud poster.
Diseased kids begging. Nixon with fangs. Bright red Commie slogans. Mucho exclamation points.
Four cholos across the street, in a ’55 Merc. Yeah, they look eeeevil. Their sled looks satanic. Lake pipes, fender skirts, car-antenna scalps.
The reeeeall thing. Dark Latin hair, rawhide-cured, stitching on the skin flaps.
Crutch cut back to the main drag. He reconnoitered and found a walk path behind the building row. Four down to the pharmacy, maybe a side window loose.
He got low and crouch-walked. He hit the rear of the pharmacy and peeped windows. The back ones were barred. He saw the dope shelves and three pharmacists working. The side windows were un-barred. One was air-cracked. A big cardboard sign on an easel covered it.
Crawl space, hiding place.
Crutch cracked the window two more inches and vaulted in. His knees banged the sign. He grabbed the easel part and kept it upright.
He peered around it. The sign was for Noxzema skin cream. A good-looking chiquita salved her bare arms and went ooh-la-la. A boss type shooed out two customers. The three pharmacists stood at the counter and tallied receipts.
Prime view. There’s the clock, it’s 5:58, the four bandidos walk in.
The boss type looks pissed. The guys fan out. One guy scopes the Brylcreem, three guys walk to the rear. The boss type turns his back and tidies the candy shelf. The Brylcreem guy pulls a silencered revolver and walks straight up. The boss type turns around and goes “Oh.” The Brylcreem guy sticks the barrel in his mouth and blows off the top of his head. Silencer thud, brain and skull spray. No crash—the boss type just slides down the shelf row and dies.
The pharmacists keep working. One guy walks up with Ipana toothpaste. One guy walks up with Clearasil. One guy walks up with Vick’s VapoRub. The pharmacists catch the drift. One man starts weeping. One man clutches his saint’s medal. One man tries to run.
The Ipana guy pulled his piece and shot them all twice. They fell in a clump. Their shrieks and gurgles got jumbled up. The Clearasil guy jumped the counter and made for the heavy-dope vault.
Blood dripped off a shelf of asthma products. The VapoRub guy dipped his finger in. He found a white wall space. He wrote “MATAR TODOS PUTOS ROJOS.”
Crutch walked back to the Lido Palace. Wobble legs got him there. The heist guys were in and out quick. He left his hiding spot shaky and sobbing. He stole a Coke and some Bromo and chugged it to keep his bile down. He wobble-walked to the bar, had three scotches and weaved up to his room.
Someone had placed a brown-wrapped box on the bed. The postmark was Langley, Virginia. He unwrapped it. Froggy delivered—here’s the code-breaking book.
He got out his pix of Gretchen/Celia’s address book. He arrayed them on the desk. He skimmed the codebook and turned to the table of contents. He saw a “Symbol Index” listed. He turned to it. Lots of fucking symbols, alphabetically described. The geographic and political distinction in bracketed text.
Crutch scanned his Minox pix. Gretchen/Celia’s symbols: stick figures circled with X marks and artful slashing backgrounds. He skimmed the codebook. No numbers or letters corresponded to Gretchen/Celia’s numbers and letters. He went back to the “Symbol Index” and started at A.
He hit the H listings. He saw “Hexes” and “Haitian Voodoo.” He saw numbers linked to drawings linked to letters. A few of the numbers and letters matched Gretchen/Celia’s shit. He saw variants of her stick figures and X marks. He read the text: “The voodoo priest’s depiction of spiritual chaos while a subject/victim is hexed.”
Horror House, last summer. The markings there, the symbols here, the derivation expressed.
Call it: Gretchen/Celia’s pages were a paper curse and a voodoo book of the dead.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 1/29/69–2/8/69. Extract from the journal of Marshall E. Bowen.
Los Angeles
It was a minor knife fight with major political implications for two extremely minor political groups. But, I facilitated it and it occurred on Wayne Tedrow’s first day as my cutout.
Jomo suffered minor lacerations and Leander received chest bruises when Jomo’s knife blade snapped off. Wayne got Jomo to Daniel Freeman Hospital; he was stitched up and released within a few hours. I got Leander to Morningside Hospital. He confounded the doctors by swallowing several Haitian herb pills in the emergency room. The placebos calmed him down somewhat. Jomo is MMLF; Leander is BTA. Which way do I jump? My personal dilemma, certainly. As always, I abut that maddening disjuncture: the viable construction of black identity and the dubious construction of revolution, as implemented by criminal scum seeking to cash in on legitimate social grievance and cultural trend.
I now sense this: Mr. Holly knew I would succeed as his infiltrator because I am too smart to accede to the rhetoric of revolution and too hip to buy the simpleminded reactionary response. Mr. Holly understands that ambivalence shapes performance and that actors are, in the end, self-centered and solely concerned with their performing context. He’ll let me walk a thin ideological line and actually risk a black-militant conversion, because he knows how selfishly motivated I am. Brilliant Mr. Holly. A nonpareil talent scout with a superb eye for acting ensembles. Casting Wayne Tedrow as my cutout plays to my strengths and Wayne’s strengths and has paid off immediately. An ex-cop with enormous racial baggage is overseeing Tiger Kab; the brothers think he’s rogue and rather dig him. And nobody suspects that he’s FBI-adjunct.
Both men are pressuring me: Wayne wants me to align myself unilaterally with either the BTA or the MMLF; Mr. Holly wants me to somehow facilitate the dope-pushing arm of OPERATION BAAAAAD BROTHER, an aspect of my duties that Wayne disapproves of with almost Calvinistic fervor. Heroin is scarce around here; I credit some form of black consciousness for its relative scarcity, if not black militancy itself. Thus, I cannot rat out BTA or MMLF members for the procurement or sale of it anytime soon. There have been more southside liquor-store robberies, replete with rumors of black-militant suspects, but my subtle queries on that topic have yet to turn up names. I’m hoping the Jomo-Leander fracas will fester among the BTA/MMLF leadership and produce some exploitable discontent. In the meantime, I’m making the scene.
I have party-crashed a mélange of political poseurs. They are recreating a dank form of New York café society, circa 1930. El Morocco, the Stork Club and ‘21’ then; Sultan Sam’s Sandbox, the Scorpio Lounge and Rae’s Rugburn Room now. The skin tone has darkened, the fashions have changed, the cultural bar has been vulgarized and revitalized. These people love to see and be seen. Ezzard Donnell Jones, Joan Klein, Benny Boles, Joe McCarver and Claude Torrance club-hop most evenings. I always rate a “Right on” or “Hey, brother,” because I am a celebrity, martyr and prized commodity in one package. They sense that I want to be one of them, and I think they see my lack of one-group allegiance as a sign of coyness and of understandable reluctance. We gots to let the brother choose. Sheeeeit, brother was a motherfuckin’ pig just a few months ago.
There has been an unsettling barrage of hate cartoons flooding the southside for the past several weeks. The chief targets have been the Panthers and US, along with street-art salvos directed at BTA and MMLF. My cartoonist and hate-tract writing friend Jomo ridicules the artistry and has convinced me it did not spring from his hand—“Not my style, brother. This is Mr. Hoover’s work for goddamn sure.” Mr. Holly disputes that—convincingly—because he’s given to blunt confirmations or denials, sees me as a brother cop on his side and would not try to disingenuously assert that the Bureau is above such tactics. Dwight Chalfont Holly, social realist, a man who calls a spade a spade and sometimes a spook, shine, dinge, coon, jungle bunny or smoke. The master of the mixed message. A critic of the LAPD’s vilely abusive conduct on the southside. A man who sadly admits that suppression never works, expresses a rather haunted respect for Martin Luther King and enjoys making me the straight man in impromptu Amos ’n Andy routines. I despise the hackneyed expression “a piece of work,” but that is Mr. Holly defined. The same phrase applies to his tortured aide-de-camp and quasi–kid brother, Wayne Tedrow—perhaps even more so. How odd that Wayne is the true killer of the two; how odd that he seems to be much less driven by racial animus and appears to be more capable of sustaining equitable relationships with blacks. I like Wayne; I’ve enjoyed the several cutout/operatee meetings that we’ve had. I’ve spread the word on how he killed the three black junkies and psycho rapist Wendell Durfee. Of course, the brothers loved it. Wayne has become the stuff of ambiguous ghetto lore already. Ooooh, that Wayne T.—he baaaaad.
And something else.
I arrived early for one of our meetings. Wayne was caught unprepared. I saw him looking at a photograph of a black woman. Wayne was quite obviously embarrassed. He put the photo down and gave me a look that brusquely stated Don’t Ask. I didn’t ask Wayne; I asked Mr. Holly, who replied, “Wayne goes deep with you dark motherfuckers,” and cut the topic off there.
I did some Las Vegas newspaper research and identified the woman as a union steward named Mary Beth Hazzard. She’s a decade older than Wayne and is the mother of a long-missing son named Reginald. Reginald Hazzard is the young man in the photograph that Wayne showed me on the day we met; Wayne has been showing the photograph to almost everyone he encounters on the southside and seems determined to find the young man, come hell or high water. My newspaper research also revealed this: a West Las Vegas dope addict killed Mrs. Hazzard’s minister husband last year, then killed himself. Astonishingly, the dope addict was posthumously indicted for the murder of Wayne’s father in June of ’68. More astonishingly: the Vegas rumor is that Wayne and his late stepmother/lover killed Wayne Senior themselves.
Wayne and Mr. Holly absorb me on several levels. They are not rogue cops à la Scotty Bennett—they are rogue authoritarians. And Wayne miraculously entered my life just as all my subtle queries on the armored-car heist had panned out fruitlessly and I found myself once again at the start-over point. In that moment, I meet Wayne. He casually asks me if I’ve heard stories of black folks receiving emeralds anonymously. He shows me a photograph of the young black man he’s looking for. The young man vaguely resembles the burned-faced man I met on 2/24/64. I feel like I’m entering a serendipitous dream state. What does all of this mean?
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/11/69. Verbatim FBI telephone call transcript. Marked: “Recorded at the Director’s Request”/”Classified Confidential 1-A: Director’s Eyes Only.” Speaking: Director Hoover, Special Agent Dwight C. Holly.
JEH: Good morning, Dwight.
DH: Good morning, Sir.
JEH: Wayne Tedrow and the sullen Negress Mary Beth Hazzard. I would be remiss in not expressing my horror and delight.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Guilt assumes many forms. Mrs. Hazzard is not a comely Negress in the Lena Horne mode. She is undoubtedly given to phrases like “power to the people” and predisposed to the music of Archie Bell and the Drells.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: You are being deliberately obtuse this morning, Dwight. You went through a spell like that when I deported Emma Goldman in 1919.
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Sirhan Sirhan is on trial and the formal James Earl Ray proceedings should begin in April. Would you say the Bureau is covered there?
DH: Yes, Sir.
JEH: And the Dr. Fred Hiltz homicide?
DH: Again, Sir. We’re covered. Jack Leahy has the case buried.
JEH: Jack Leahy is the Alger Hiss to my HUAC and the Costello to my Abbott. He is a traitor and an unfunny nightclub comedian who has ridiculed my penchant for antiques.
DH: Yes, Sir. No one has ever quite figured Jack out.
JEH: He was your partner in ’23. You worked the Milwaukee Office with him.
DH: Yes, Sir. I remember.
JEH: I’m appalled by those hate cartoons circulating in South Los Angeles. I want you to determine their origin immediately and send me copies of all such works of filth extant.
DH: I’ll get on it, Sir.
JEH: Wayne Tedrow as Marshall Bowen’s cutout. Do you still defend the choice?
DH: Vehemently, Sir.
JEH: Why, pray tell? Because the dusky widow of the preacher he killed has imbued young Wayne with a surfeit of soul?
DH: Yes, Sir. In part.
JEH: And our Congolese cuties the BTA and MMLF? Will they cooperate with our agenda and push heroin sooner or later?
JEH: And the infant daughter of informant 4361?
DH: Lively and healthy, Sir.
JEH: And your newer informant/inamorata?
DH: She’s in my thoughts, Sir.
JEH: As you are in mine, Dwight.
DH: Thank you, Sir.
JEH: Good day, Dwight.
DH: Good day, Sir.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/13/69. Pouch communiqué. To: Wayne Tedrow. From: Colonel Ivar S. Smith, USMC (Retired). President, ISS Security Limited, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Marked: “Hand Pouch Deliver Only”/”Destroy Upon Reading.”
Dear Mr. Tedrow,
This letter follows up your colleague Jean-Philippe Mesplede’s recent trip to the D.R. to view casino-site locations and to discuss the possibility of building said hotel-casinos in this country. I am pleased to tell you that President Joaquín Balaguer is very anxious to have your businesses here and has pledged considerable resources in an effort to convince you to come. A brief history will give you a sense of the D.R. and our island neighbor Haiti and will, above all, convince you that this is a safe place for American tourists and your overseers and their hotel-casino personnel.
The D.R. comprises the eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, and Santo Domingo, discovered by Columbus in 1492, is considered to be the oldest city in the Western world. Innumerable coups involving Spain, France and Holland led to the current Dominican secession from Spain; numerous battles between indigenous Negroes and the French resulted in independence for Haiti. Relations have remained strained between the D.R. and Haiti; this stands as the case today. Haiti, however, exists in a state of dire poverty, while the D.R. is developing into the very model of a safe and sane, pro-U.S., anti-Communist republic. The Haitian border is heavily patrolled by Dominican forces, assisted by agents of President Balaguer’s personal intelligence unit La Banda, in collaboration with my security firm. Informant networks have been recruited by the above agencies; the Haitian population of the D.R. and illegal Haitian immigration into the D.R. has been well interdicted and suppressed. The Haitians are a primitive race of people, heavily reliant on their practice of voodoo and made tractable by their addictive use of klerin liquor and mind-altering herbs. The president of Haiti, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier, came to power as a voodoo proponent and keeps his people suppressed by allowing voodoo to flourish. His private police force, the Tonton Macoute, are recruited from voodoo societies and enforce voodoo as President Duvalier’s chief means to retain the societal status quo and keep himself in power. Under Dominican President Trujillo’s rule (1930–1961), there were several Dominican army slaughters of unruly Haitian émigrés; on June 14, 1959, a Castroite group called the 6/14 Movement staged a failed invasion of the D.R.’s shores. The brief 1965 Civil War was, in fact, a farce, sternly resolved when President Johnson sent in a marine contingent to restore order to a nation seeking to establish free elections. A leftist named Juan Bosch was fraudulently elected and held power briefly. A truly free election was held in 1966. Bosch was deposed and pro-U.S. President Balaguer was honorably elected. The last official marine unit withdrew from the D.R. on 8/19/68.
President Balaguer is no flamboyant Rafael Trujillo, but President Balaguer knows how to keep dissent at a low roar and understands the importance of maintaining a tidy nation that American and European tourists will want to visit. He is on superbly good terms with the military, should crack-downs or clean-ups of Haitians or left-wing insurgents be required. And President Balaguer is willing to proactively invest in your hotel-casino foray by pledging land free of charge for casino sites in Santo Domingo proper and outside of it (see addendum report for structural studies and soil-composition studies). He will grant Hughes Air the exclusive flight rights to reserved VIP landing strips at the Santo Domingo Airport, will build extra runways for the increased air travel free of charge and will supply un-skilled Haitian and Dominican peasant workers for the casino build. A construction company that he is part owner of will supply building materials at a reduced cost and my security firm and La Banda stand ready to provide 24-hour security for the building sites. I am recommending four Cuban men—WILTON MORALES, FELIPE GÓMEZ-SLOAN, CHIC CANESTEL and CRUZ SALDÍVAR—as casino-site work bosses. They are Cuban mercenaries, Spanish- and English-fluent, and have pre-existing work relationships with the operatives in my security firm and the agents in La Banda. Again, I will stress: the threat of revolt or the shenanigans of left-wing gadfly groups will pose no threat to the casino build, and the presence of unruly Haitian émigrés and Dominican peasants will be curtailed before it can reach the point where it might upset visiting tourists. As of this writing, President Balaguer is preparing an addendum incentive package as his way to say “¡Bienvenidos!” to you and your investors’ group.
In summation, I can only state that you and your people would be well advised to say “¡Sí!” to our proposal. You will be welcomed to a country with a stable political climate, a solid economy and a leadership anxious to lend a helping hand.
Sincerely,
Ivar S. Smith, USMC (Retired)