James Ellroy - American tabloid

WJL: Yes, Sir.

JEH: Has Miss Jahelka resumed her normal life?

WJL: She’s going to, Sir. At the moment she’s on a Mexican vacation with a French-Canadian friend of ours.

JEH: I hope they don’t procreate. They would produce morally deficient offspring.

WJL: Yes, Sir.

JEH: Good day, Mr. Littell.

WJL: Good day, Sir.

DOCUMENT INSERTS : Consecutively dated FBI wiretap outtakes. Marked: “ TOP SECRET! CONFIDENTIAL/DIRECTOR’S EYES ONLY” and “NO DISCLOSURE TO OUTSIDE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT PERSONNEL .”

Chicago, 6/10/62. BL4-8869 ( Celano’s Tailor Shop ) to AX8-9600 (home of John Rosselli ) (THP File #902.6, Chicago Office). Speaking: John Rosse]ii, Sam “Mo,” “Momo,” “Mooney” Giancana (File #480.2). Conversation nine minutes in progress.

SG: So fucking Bobby found out on his own.

JR: Which frankly, did not surprise me.

SG: We were helping him out, Johnny. Sure, it was mostly cosmetic. But the basic fucking truth of the whole thing was that we were helping him and his brother out.

JR: We were good to them, Mo. We were nice. And they kept fucking us and fucking us and fucking us.

SG: Some sort of fucking shakedown pre-pre-pre-what’s that word that means set up?

JR: Precipitated, Mo. That’s the word you want.

SG: Right. Some cocksucking shakedown precipitated Bobby finding out. The word is Jimmy and Frenchman Pete were in on it. Somebody got careless, and Jewboy Lenny killed himself.

JR: You can’t fault Jimmy and Pete for trying to fuck the Kennedys.

SG: No, you can’t.

JR: And it turned out Lenny was a faggot. Can you believe that?

SG: Who would have believed it?

JR: He was Jewish, Mo. The Jewish race has a higher percentage of homos than regular white people.

SG: That’s true. Heshie Ryskind’s no queer, though. He’s had like sixty thousand blow jobs.

JR: Heshie’s sick, Mo. He’s real sick.

SG: I wish the Kennedys caught his fucking disease. The Kennedys and Sinatra.

JR: Sinatra sold us a bill of goods. He said he had influence with the brothers.

SG: He’s useless. The Haircut kicked his guinea ass off the White House guest list. Asking Frank to plead our case with the brothers is useless.

Non-applicable conversation follows.

Cleveland, 8/4/62. BR1-8771 ( Sal’s River Lounge ) to BR4-0811 ( Bartolo’s Ristorante pay phone ). Speaking: John Michael D’Allesio (TEP File #180.4, Cleveland Office), Daniel “Donkey Dan” Versace (File #206.9, Chicago Office). Conversation sixteen minutes in progress.

DV: Rumors are just rumors. You got to consider the source and take It from there.

JMD: Danny, you like rumors?

DV: You know I do. You know I love a good rumor as much as the next guy, and I don’t particularly care if it’s true or not.

JMD: Danny, I got a hot rumor. DV: So tell. Don’t be a fucking cock tease.

JMD: The rumor is J. Edgar Hoover and Bobby Kennedy hate each other.

DV: That’s your rumor?

JMD: There’s more.

DV: I hope so. The Hoover-Bobby feud is stale bread.

JMD: The rumor is Bobby’s racket squad guys are turning snitches. The rumor is Bobby won’t let Hoover near his fucking prospects. Furthermore, I heard the fucking McClellan Committee’s gearing up to go into session again. They’re getting ready to fucking keester the Outfit again. Bobby’s working on turning this major informant. When the committee sessions start, this guy’s supposed to come on as the starring fucking attraction.

DV: I heard better rumors, Johnny.

JMD: Fuck you.

DV: I prefer sex-type rumors. Haven’t you heard any good sex-type shit?

JMD: Fuck you.

Non-applicable conversation follows.

New Orleans, 10/10/62. KL4-0909 ( Habana Bar pay phone ) to CR8-8107 ( Town amp; Country Motel pay phone ). Note: Carlos Marcello (no THP file extant) owns the Town amp; Country . Speaking: Leon NMI Broussard (THP File #88.6, New Orleans Office) and unidentified (assumed Cuban) man. Conversation twenty-one minutes in progress.

LB: So you shouldn’t give up hope. All is not lost, my friend.

UM: It feels as if it is.

LB: That is simply not true. I know for a fact that Uncle Carlos is still very much a believer.

UM: He is alone, then. A few years ago many of his compatriots were just as generous as be has remained. It is troubling to see powerful friends abandoning the Cause.

LB: Like John F-for-fuckhead Kennedy.

UM: Yes. His betrayal is the worst example. He continues to prohibit a second invasion.

LB: So the fuckhead doesn’t care. I’ll tell you this, though, my friend. Uncle Carlos does.

UM: I hope you are right.

LB: I know I am. I have it on very good authority that Uncle Carlos is financing an operation that could blow the whole Cuban thing to bits.

UM: I hope you are right.

LB: He’s bankrolling some men who want to hit Castro. Three Cuban guys and an ex-French paratrooper. The leader’s an ex-FBI/CIA man. Uncle Carlos said he’d die himself just to make the hit.

UM: I hope this is true. You see, the Cause has become scattered. There are hundreds of exile groups now. Some are CIA-financed and some are not. I hate to say it, but many of the groups are fined with crackpots and undesirables. I think direct action is needed, and with so many factions working at cross-purposes, this will be hard to accomplish.

LB: The first thing somebody should accomplish is cutting the Kennedy brothers’ balls off. The Outfit was very fucking generous to the Cause until Bobby Kennedy went nuts and cut off all our fucking ties.

UM: It is hard to be optimistic these days. It is hard not to feel impotent.

Non-applicable conversation follows.

Tampa, 10/16/62. OL4-9777 (home of Robert “Fat Bob” Paolucci ) (THP file #19.3, Miami Office) to GL1-8041 (home of Thomas Richard Scavone ) (File #80.0, Miami Office). Speaking: Paolucci and Scavone. Conversation thirty-eight minutes in progress.

RP: I know you know most of the story.

TS: Well, you know how it is. You pick up bits and pieces here and there. What I know specific is that Mo and Santo ain’t talked to their Castro contacts since the heist.

RP: It was some heist. Something like fifteen fucking deaths. Santo said the heist guys probably ran the boat out to sea and blew it up. Two hundred pounds, Tommy. Can you estimate the fucking re-sale value?

TS: Off the graph, Bobby. Off the fucking graph.

RP: And it’s still out there.

TS: I was just thinking that.

RP: Two hundred pounds. And somebody’s got it.

TS: I heard Santo won’t give up.

RP: This is true. Pete the Frenchman clipped that Delsol guy, but he was just the tip of the iceberg. I heard Santo has got Pete out there looking around, you know, sort of informal. They both figure some crazy spic exiles were behind the heist, and Pete the Frog’s out there looking for them.

TS: I’ve met some of them exiles.

RP: So have I. They’re all fucking crazy.

TS: You know what I hate about them?

RP: What?

TS: That they think they’re as white as Italians.

Non-applicable conversation follows.

New Orleans, 10/19/62. BR8-3408 (home of Leon NMI Broussard ) (THP File #88.6, New Orleans Office) to Suite 1411 at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, Texas . (Hotel records indicate the suite was rented by Herschel Meyer Ryskind ) (File #887.8, Dallas Office). Conversation three minutes in progress.

LB: You always had a thing for hotel suites, Hesh. A hotel suite and a blow job was always your idea of heaven.

HR: Don’t say heaven, Leon. You’re giving me a pain in the prostate.

LB: I get it. You’re sick, so you don’t want to think about the thereafter.