AMERICAN TABLOID by James Ellroy

Hoover accepted him now. Their courtly moments were over. Hoover reverted to his standard curt behavior.

Hoover expected him to beg.

Please reinstate Helen Agee in law school. Please let my leftist friend out of prison.

He’d never beg.

Pete was nervous. He had a hunch that Kemper Boyd forced Pete into things he couldn’t control.

Boyd collected acolytes. Boyd felt at one with Cuban killers and poor Negroes. Kemper’s gloss seduced Pete. The Cuban mess pushed them far beyond their ken.

Carlos said they cut a deal with Santo Trafficante. Their potential profit made Carlos laugh. He said Santo would never pay them that much money.

Carlos embraced the Cuban mess. Carlos said Sam and Santo wanted to cut their losses.

Net loss. Net gain. Profit potential.

He had the Fund books. He needed to clear a stretch of time and develop a strategy to exploit them.

Littell turned his chair around and looked out the window. Cherry blossoms brushed the glass–close enough to touch.

The phone rang. Littell tapped the speaker switch. “Yes?”

A man said, “This is Howard Hughes.”

Littell almost giggled. Pete told these hilarious Dracula tales–

“This is Ward Littell, Mr. Hughes. And I’m very pleased to talk to you.”

Hughes said, “You should be pleased. Mr. Hoover has shared your impeccable credentials with me, and I intend to offer you $200,000 a year for the privilege of entering my employ. I will not require you to move to Los Angeles, and we will communicate solely by letter and telephone. Your specific duties will be to handle the writ work in my painfully protracted TWA divestment suit, and to help me purchase Las Vegas hotel-casinos with the profits I expect to accrue when I finally divest TWA. Your Italian connections will prove invaluable in this regard, and I will expect you to ingratiate yourself with the Nevada State Legislature and help me devise a policy to insure that my hotels remain Negroand germ-free–”

Littell listened.

Hughes continued.

Littell didn’t even try to respond.

81

(Los Angeles, 5/10/62)

Pete held the flashlight. Freddy replaced the dial housing. The work went down bite-your-nails nervous and slow.

Freddy fucked with some loose wires. “I hate Pacific Bell phones. I hate night jobs and working in the dark. I hate bedroom extensions, because the goddamn cords get tangled up behind the goddamn bed.”

“Don’t complain, just do it.”

“My screwdriver keeps jamming. And are you sure Littell wants us to tap both extensions?”

Pete said, “Just do it. Two extensions and a pickup box outside. We’ll stash it in those shrubs by the driveway. If you quit complaining, we can be out of here in twenty minutes.”

Freddy gouged his thumb. “Fuck. I hate Pacific Bell phones. And Lenny don’t have to use his home phones to rat us. He can rat us in person or rat us from a pay phone.”

Pete gripped down on the flashlight. The beam wiggled and jumped.

“You fucking stop complaining, or I’ll shove this fucking thing up your ass.”

Freddy flinched and bumped a shelf. A Hush-Hush clipping file went flying.

“All right, all right. You been jumpy since you got off the airplane, so I’ll only say it once. Pacific Bell phones are the shits. When you tap their lines, half the time the incoming callers can hear clicks. It’s fucking unavoidable. And who’s going to monitor the pickup box?”

Pete rubbed his eyes. He was nursing an on-and-off migraine since the night he killed Wilfredo Delsol.

“Littell can get some Feds to watch the box. We only need to check it every few days.”

Freddy bent a lamp over the phone. “Go watch the door. I can’t work with you standing over me.”

Pete walked into the living room. His headache popped him right between the eyes.

He popped two aspirin. He washed them down with Lenny’s cognac, straight from the bottle.

The stuff went down smooth. Pete knocked back a short refill.

His headache de-torqued. The veins above his eyes stopped pulsing.

Santo bought the charade so far. Santo never said how Delsol fucked him.

Santo said Sam G. got fucked, too. He didn’t mention hijacked dope or fifteen dead men. He didn’t say some big Outfit guys cozied up to Fidel Castro.

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