Pete said, “Let’s do it.”
o o o
Dougie Frank Lockhart had the far-right South wired. Gun seekers knew the man to call: carrot-topped Dougie in Puckett, Mississippi.
Santo and Carlos kicked in fifty Gs apiece. Pete took the coin and went gun shopping.
Dougie Frank brokered the deals for a 5% commission. He procured A-1 hand-me-downs hot off the race hate circuit.
Lockhart knew his job. Lockhart knew the Dixie Right was reassessing its weaponry needs.
The Commie Threat had mandated major ordnance. Tommy guns, mortars and grenades fit the bill. Feisty niggers now eclipsed the Red Menace–and small arms handled them best.
The Deep South was one big loony yard sale.
Pete traded junk pistols for brand-new bazookas. Pete bought operational Thompsons for fifty scoots a pop. Pete supplied six campsites with half a million rounds of ammunition.
The Minutemen, the National States Rights Party, the National Renaissance Party, the Exalted Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Royal Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Imperial Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the Klarion Klan Koalition for the New Konfederacy supplied him. He supplied six exile camps, full of expendable backup killers.
Pete spent three weeks gun shopping. He made five Miami– New Orleans circuits.
The fifty grand evaporated. Heshie Ryskind kicked in an additional twenty. Heshie was scared–his doctors diagnosed him with lung cancer.
Heshie whipped up a camp R&R tour to take his mind off his bum health. He brought in Jack Ruby and his strippers, Dick Contino and his accordion.
The strippers stripped and cavorted with exile trainees. Heshie bought entire campsites blow jobs. Dick Contino played “Lady of Spain” six thousand times.
Jimmy Hoffa showed up at the Lake Pontchartrain soiree. Jimmy ranted, railed and raved against the Kennedys nonstop.
Joe Milteer joined the party outside Mobile. He dropped ten grand on the gun fund, unsolicited.
Guy Banister called Old Joe “harmless.” Lockhart said the old boy loved to torch nigger churches.
Pete auditioned backup triggers for the Fidel hit. He laid down his criteria with two simple questions.
Are you an expert marksman?
Would you die to set up Néstor Chasco’s killshot?
He schmoozed up at least a hundred Cubans. Four men made the cut.
CHINO CROMAJOR:
Bay of Pigs survivor. Willing to detonate Castro with a strip-search-proof enema bomb.
RAFAEL HERNANDEZ-BROWN:
Cigar maker/gunman. Willing to slip the Beard a poison panatella and go up in smoke with the man who raped his tobacco fields.
CESAR RAMOS:
Former Cuban Army cook. Willing to whip up an exploding suckling pig and die at Castro’s Last Supper.
WALTER “JUANITA” CHACON:
Sadistic drag queen. Willing to butt-fuck Fidel and go out orgasmic in exile crossfire.
Memo to Kemper Boyd:
Top my shooters–if you can.
73
(Meridian, 1/11/62)
Kemper snorted a coke-”H” speedball. It was precisely his sixteenth taste of dope.
It was his twelfth since the doctor cut off his medication. It averaged out to 1.3 nonaddicted tastes per month.
His head twirled. His brain revved. His shabby room at the Seminole Motel looked almost pretty.
Memo:
Go see that colored preacher. He’s rounding up a group of voting rights complainants.
Memo:
See Dougie Frank Lockhart. He’s got two would-be triggers lined up for you to audition.
The taste hit all the way home.
His collarbone quit throbbing. The pins holding it together meshed clean.
Kemper wiped his nose. The portrait above his desk took on a glow.
It was Jack Kennedy, photographed pre-Pigs. His post-Pigs inscription: “To Kemper Boyd. I guess we both caught a few bullets lately.”
Taste #16 felt high-octane. Jack’s smile was high-test–Dr. Feelgood shot him up before the photo session.
Jack looked young and invincible. The last nine months knocked a lot of that out of him.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco did it. Jack grew up behind a tidal wave of censure.
Jack blamed himself–and the Agency. Jack fired Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell. Jack said, “I’ll smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.”
Jack hates the CIA. Bobby doesn’t. Bobby now hates Fidel Castro like he hates Hoffa and the Mob.
The Bay of Pigs postmortem was painfully protracted. He double-agented as Kemper Boyd, chaperone. He showed Bobby scores of sanitized exiles–the noncriniinal types that Langley wanted him to see.