The tall man sighed. “This wasn’t Mr. Hoover’s idea. Let’s just say he had to go along. It’s a standard, across-the-board order, and I don’t think you’ll be in custody that long.”
Pete stuck his hands out. The cuffs wouldn’t fit around his wrists.
The rest of the browsers vanished. A kid boosted a TV set and hightailed it.
Pete said, “I’ll go peacefully.”
o o o
The booking tank was triple-capacity packed. Pete shared floor space with a hundred pissed-off Cubans.
They were crammed into a thirty-by-thirty-foot stinkhole. No chairs, no benches-just four cement walls and a wraparound piss gutter.
The Cubans jabbered in English and Spanish. Dig the bilingual gist: Jack the Haircut sicced the Feds on the Cause.
Six campsites were raided yesterday. Weapons were seized. Cuban gunmen were arrested en masse.
It was some sort of first salvo. Jack was out to ram all non-CIA-sanctioned exiles.
He was CIA. He got popped anyway. The Feds jerry-rigged a plan and went off half-cocked.
Pete leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. Barb twisted by.
Every time with her was good. Every time was different. Every place was different–two people always moving hooking up in odd locations.
Bobby never harassed her. Barb figured a fix was in. She said she didn’t miss Two-Minute Jack.
She gave her sister her shakedown fee. Margaret Lynn Lindscott now owned a Bob’s Big Boy franchise.
They met in Seattle, Pittsburgh and Tampa. They met in L.A., Frisco and Portland.
He ran guns. She fronted a cheap dance show. He chased nonexistent dope thief/killers.
She said the Twist was burning out. He said his Cuban hard-on was, too.
She said, Your fear gets to me. He said, I’ll try to tamp it down. She said, Don’t–it makes you less frightening.
He said he did something very stupid. He said he didn’t know why he did it.
She said, You wanted to force yourself out of the Life.
He couldn’t argue.
Barb had a busy autumn pending. She had long club stints in Des Moines and Sioux City and a big Texas run through Thanksgiving.
She added lunch shows to her performance slate. The Twist was phasing out–Joey wanted to wring it dry.
He met Margaret in Milwaukee. She was meek and scared of just about everything.
He offered to kill the cop rape-o. Barb said no.
He said, Why? Barb said, You don’t really want to.
He couldn’t argue.
He had Barb. Boyd had hatred: Jack K. and the Beard as one fucked-up, pervasive thing. Littell had powerful friends.
Like Hoover. Like Hughes. Like Hoffa and Marcello.
Ward hated Jack on a par with Kemper. Bobby fucked them both–but they bypassed him to hate Big Brother.
Littell was Dracula’s new Field MarshaL The Count wanted him to buy up Las Vegas and render it germ-free.
You could read Littell’s eyes.
I have friends. I have plans. I have the Fund books memorized.
The holding tank smelled. The holding tank boomed with John F Kennedy hatred.
A guard cranked the door and pulled men out for phone calls. He yelled, “Acosta, Aguilar, Arredondo–”
Pete got ready. A dime would get him Littell in D.C.
Littell could rig a Federal release writ. Littell could hip Kemper to the campsite raids.
The guard yelled, “Bondurant!”
Pete walked up. The guard steered him down the tier to a phone bank.
Guy Banister was waiting there. He was holding a pen and a false-arrest waiver.
The guard walked back to the tank. Pete signed his name in triplicate.
“I’m free to go?”
Banister looked gleefuL “That’s right. The SAC didn’t know you were Agency, so I informed him.”
“Who told you where I was?”
“I was out at Sun Valley. Kemper gave me a note for you, so I went by the stand to deliver it. Some kids were stealing hubcaps. They told me the big gringo got arrested.”
Pete rubbed his eyes. A four-aspirin headache started pounding.
Banister pulled out an envelope. “I didn’t open it. And Kemper sure seemed anxious for me to make the transmittal.”
Pete grabbed it. “I’m glad you’re ex-Bureau, Guy. I might’ve had to stay here awhile.”
“Don’t fret, big fella. I have a hunch all this Kennedy bullshit is just about to end.”