James Ellroy - Blood's a rover

More street rousts, more toxic rodents, more Haitian dispossessed. More sap-twirling fascistas and more skin-color gaps.

More heat. More flying insects. More stump-legged black guys on rolling planks. No casino-build cosmetics. More baaaaad juju and less dissent.

Crutch cabbed into Borojol. He had four hundred K and a silencered piece. Customs let him in easy. He wasn’t red-tagged. He had his memory lists. Joan got him two forged passports: one for Celia, one for Reggie.

Too familiar meets evil. Everything brought back something he tried to forget. He passed the golf course. His X-ray eyes revived. There’s the torture bunker and the electric chair.

The New York Times diverted him. Doofus Democrats and Nixon. J. Edgar’s latest gaffe. A street flash de-diverted him. Surging fuzz crush a leaflet-passing cabal.

He’d spent four nights with Joan. They talked and made love. He’d leave for short stretches, just to take deep breaths. He didn’t mention His Idea. He couldn’t risk the word “No.” He didn’t sleep much. He curled around her and smelled her hair on the pillow. She held his hands to her breasts.

The cab pulled into Borojol. The More got Worse. More iron-heel bullshit. More skateboard beggars. More barefooted Haitians traipsing through rat dung and broken glass.

There’s the open-front bodega. There’s the safe house.

Crutch paid the driver and got out. The safe house looked innocuous. He knocked and got no answer. No footsteps inside and no sounds of flight.

He shouldered the door. Sunlight through broken glass supplied the upshot.

The walls were bullet-holed. Spent shells covered the floor. One wall was blood-sprayed and pellet-flecked, all laced with dark hair.

Flies buzzed around a doctor’s smock, soaked red on a chair.

Stay awake. It’s a last look. Go get more of the More. Lefty lifestyle rules curtailed him. Joan knew her comrades mostly by first names. Dr. Sanchez had no phone listed. That meant drive and peep.

Crutch rented a junker and cruised the safe-house list. He’d memorized fourteen addresses. He started in Gazcue and worked west.

The first three pads were empty. He door-knocked to no avail and broke in. He saw telltale cleanup signs. He smelled ammonia with blood undertones. He ran his penlight and saw the casings the cleanup guys had missed.

Santo Domingo by night: 82° and still fascist-oppressed.

He drove around. He got lost in the details. He saw three women he’d peeped a while back.

The black kids eating boat chum in the Rio Ozama. The old casino sites with squatter bands and cracker-box cribs going up.

He hit four more addresses. Two houses weren’t there. He talked to a street fool. The guy said La Banda torched them. It got to him. He wanted them to be speakeasies. Knock, knock. A peephole slides. He says, “I’m a friend. Comrade Joan sent me.”

He looped around. He hit the next seven places. He met two square families at the outset. We just rented the dump. We don’t know no Celia, no Reds.

He cruised the last five pads. He got one torch job and four clean-outs. A wino said those La Banda humps were fucking firebugs. He saw pellet pocks and maggot mounds on gristle. He saw a shot-to-shit Afro wig.

He got Another Idea.

Ivar Smith said, “ Hola, pariguayo .”

Terry Brundage said, “I never thought we’d see your peeping ass back here.”

The bar at the El Embajador. 8:00 a.m. Bloody Marys affixed with celery sticks. Both guys had aged. Both guys looked prematurely sclerotic.

Crutch cleared table space. Brundage Tabasco’d his drink. Smith pointed to the briefcase.

“ Quй es esto ?”

Crutch said, “Four hundred G’s.”

Brundage said, “Oh, shit. He’s working for the Boys again.”

Smith said, “As if Wayne Tedrow and the Tiger Krew weren’t enough.”

Brundage said, “Just what we need. More mob grief and Commie sabotage.”

Smith said, “Wayne killed Mormonism for me. I used to think they were all good right-wing white men.”

Brundage noshed his celery stick. “I hate fucking wops.”

Smith noshed his celery stick. “I hate fucking left-wing converts with chemistry expertise.”

Crutch flashed his show pix: Reggie and Celia Reyes.

Brundage said, “Who’s the chiquita? I dig her eyes.”

Smith said, “Sambo looks like Chubby Checker. ‘Come on, baby. Let’s do the Twist.’ ”

Crutch dipped into the briefcase and tossed them both ten grand. Smith gagged and almost sprayed. Brundage dropped his celery stick.

Crutch said, “They’re Commies, sure as shit. I want to find them and take them back to the States.”

Brundage fanned his cash stacks. “Why?”

Crutch said, “I’m not telling you.”

Smith fanned his cash stacks. “Put motive aside for a moment. How much of the money do we keep?”

Crutch patted the briefcase. “All of it. You pay everybody who needs to get paid, and you keep the rest.”

Brundage said, “Explain this to me. I’m not saying no, but give me more of a hint.”

“I’m all out of leads. You’ve got the files, the informants and the manpower. It’s a roundup. You find them or you find the Commies who know where they are.”

Brundage salted his drink. “Detentions.”

Smith peppered his drink. “Interrogations. We bring in La Banda.”

Crutch said, “They could be in Haiti.”

Brundage rolled his eyes. “That means the Tonton.”

Smith rolled his eyes. “Evil, chicken-fucking primitives, who do not work cheap.”

Brundage chomped his celery stick. “Papa Doc will want a taste.”

Smith chomped his celery stick. “So will the Midget.”

Crutch fanned a cash roll. “It’s a lot of money.”

Brundage said, “I’ve got Jew blood. We’ll do it for five.”

Smith said, “I’m getting more Jewish by the moment. Five closes the deal.”

Crutch shook his head. “Four hundred big ones, over and out.”

Brundage sighed and looked at Smith. Smith salted his drink and sighed back.

“This could get raw. You’re dealing with hard-core subversives.”

Crutch tapped the show pix. “I don’t care, as long as they don’t get hurt.”

He stayed awake. Sleep scared him. His nightmares would eclipse shit that flared real-time. He copped dexies at a quick-script farmacia . He leveled his fuel with klerin-laced sno cones. The fruit base cut down dehydration.

Smith and Brundage culled files and built a name list. The cash split went down. Papa Doc and the Midget hogged the green. They got a hundred each. Smith and Brundage got fifty each. The rest went for ops costs and goons. La Banda and the Tonton supplied shake-the-trees guys.

Flying squads: the D.R. and Haiti. Rural-jail detention sites flanking the river. Polygraph machines, Pentothal, coercion. Hard boys with phone books and saps.

The planning took three days. Smith’s office served as command post. Crutch stayed awake and sat in. Brundage and Smith scanned KA lists. They found nineteen Celia listings and zero Reggie listings. That limited their targets. Smith said, let’s keep it tight. Detain, interrogate, press and/or release. Brundage disagreed. The Reds all know each other. Let’s build a big snitch-out pool.

The argument extended. Crutch sided with Brundage. More was better. Smith argued for a less-meets-more combo. Don’t overcrowd the jails. Don’t let the fuckers huddle and collude. Weed out the lice who don’t know Celia or Reggie at the get-go. Offer rat-out cash. Restrict the interrogations to likely suspects.

They agreed on thirty-four names. Twenty-three lived in the D.R., eleven lived in Haiti. They had four La Banda teams with squad cars. They had three Tonton teams with squad cars. The jail sites were mid-island, near Dajabуn. A walk-bridge provided foot access. The Plaine du Massacre was croc-infested there. The fuckers dined on dumped garbage and errant Haitians on voodoo-herb trips.