AMERICAN TABLOID by James Ellroy

JM/Wave was grad school for geeks.

Fetch, CIA, fetch. Monitor your exile groups, but don’t act boldly–it might fuck with Jack the Haircut’s poll standings.

Boyd still loved Jack. He was in too deep to see through him. Boyd said he loved his civil rights work–because there was no subterfuge involved.

Boyd had trouble sleeping. It’s a blessing, Kemper–you don’t want my claustrophobic nightmares.

71

(Washington, D.C., 6/61–11/61)

He loved his office. Carlos Marcello bought it for him.

It was a spacious three-room suite. The building was very close to the White House.

A professional furnished it. The oak walls and green leather nearly matched Jules Schiffrin’s study.

He had no receptionist and no secretary. Carlos did not believe in sharing secrets.

Carlos brought him full circle. The ex–Chicago Phantom was now a Mafia lawyer.

The symmetry felt real. He hitched his star to a man who shared his hatreds. Kemper facilitated the union. He knew that it would jell.

John F. Kennedy took Kemper full circle. They were two charming, shallow men who never grew up. Kennedy sicced thugs on a foreign country and betrayed them when he saw how it looked. Kemper protected certain Negroes and sold heroin to others.

Carlos Marcello played the same rigged game. Carlos used people and made sure they knew the rules. Carlos knew that he would pay for his life with eternal damnation.

They walked hundreds of miles together. They went to mass in jungle towns and contributed extravagant church tithes.

They walked alone. No bodyguards or back scratchers walked with them.

They ate in cantinas. They bought entire villages lunch. He wrote deportation briefs on tabletops and phoned them in to New York.

Chuck Rogers flew them to Mexico. Carlos said, “I trust you, Ward. If you say ‘Turn yourself in,’ I’ll do it.”

He fulfilled that trust. Three judges reviewed the evidence and released Marcello on bond. The Littell writ work was consideredaudaciously brilliant.

Grateful Carlos set him up with James Riddle Hoffa. Jimmy was predisposed to fondness–Carlos handed the Fund books back to him and described the circumstances behind their return.

Hoffa became his second client. Robert Kennedy remained his sole adversary.

He wrote briefs for Hoffa’s formal litigators. The results confirmed his brilliance.

July ‘61: A second Sun Valley indictment is dismissed. Littell writs prove the grand jury was improperly impaneled.

August ‘61: A South Florida grand jury is cut off at the knees. A Littell brief proves that evidence was obtained through entrapment.

He’d come full circle.

He quit drinking. He rented a beautiful Georgetown apartment and finally cracked the Fund book code.

Numbers and letters became words. Words became names–to track against police files, city directories and every financial listing in the public domain.

He tracked those names for four months straight. He chased celebrity names, political names, criminal names and anonymous names. He ran obituary checks and criminal record checks. He quadruple-checked names, dates and figures, and cross-referenced all salient data.

He tracked names linked to numbers linked to public stockholder reports. He assessed names and numbers for his own investment portfolio–and amassed a staggering secret history of financial collusion.

Among the Teamster Central States Pension Fund lendees:

Twenty-four U.S. senators, nine governors, 114 congressmen, Allen Dulles, Rafael Trujillo, Fulgencio Batista, Anastasio Somoza, Juan Perón, Nobel Prize researchers, drug-addicted movie stars, loan sharks, labor racketeers, union-busting factory owners, Palm Beach socialites, rogue entrepreneurs, French rightwing crackpots with extensive Algerian holdings, and sixty-seven unsolved homicide victims extrapolatable as Pension Fund deadbeats.

The chief cash conduit/lender was one Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.

Jules Schiffrin died abruptly. He might have sensed uncharted Fund potential–machinations past the grasp of the common mobsters.

He could implement Schiffrin’s knowledge. He could put the full force of his will behind that one thing.

Five months stone-cold sober taught him this:

You’re capable of anything.

Part IV

HEROIN

December 1961–September 1963

72

(Miami, 12/20/61)

Agency guys called the place “Suntan U.” Girls in shorts and halter tops five days before Christmas–no shit.

Big Pete wants a woman. Extortion experience preferred, but not mandat–

Boyd said, “Are you listening to me?”

Pete said, “I’m listening, and I’m observing. It’s a nice tour, but the coeds are impressing me more than JM/Wave.”