American Tabloid - James Ellroy [100]
Fourteen squatters were now in residence. More exiles were fleeing Cuba every day. There were more CIA campsites pending—with forty-odd projected by mid-1960.
Castro would survive—just long enough to make Boyd and him rich.
The cross burned high and wide. Pete caught the glow from half a mile out.
A dirt road veered off the highway. Signs pointed the way: “Nigger stay out!” “KKK—White Man Unite!”
Bugs popped in through his air vents. Pete swatted them off. He saw a barbed-wire fence and Klansmen at parade rest.
They wore white robes and hoods with purple piping. Dig their kanine kompanions: sheet-swaddled Doberman pinschers.
Pete flashed Banister’s gate pass. The pointy-heads checked him out and waved him in.
He parked beside some trucks and went strolling. The cross lit up a segregated pine-forest clearing.
Cubans milled around on one side. Whites boogie-woogied on the other. A row of sign-plastered trailers divided them.
On his left: Klan bake sale, Klan rifle range, vendors hawking Klan regalia. On his right: the Blessington campsite duplicated.
Pete strolled the redneck side. Pointy-hoods bobbed his way—Hey, man, where’s your sheet?
Bugs buzz-bombed the cross. Rifle shots and target pings overlapped. The humidity was close to 100%.
Nazi armbands went for $2.99. Jew rabbi voodoo dolls—a steal at 3 for $5.00.
Pete walked by the trailers. He saw a sandwich board propped up against an old Airstream: “WKKK—Rev. Evans Anti-Communist Crusade.”
A hi-fi speaker was bolted to the axle. Sound sputtered out—pure crackpot gibberish.
He looked in the window. He saw twenty-odd cats pissing, shitting and fucking. A tall geek was screaming into a microphone. A cat was clawing some short-wave wires, about to get French-fried to kingdom come.
Pete scratched one prospect and kept walking. All the Caucasoids wore hoods—he couldn’t match Hudspeth or Lockhart to their mug shots.
“Bondurant! Down here!”
It was Guy Banister’s voice, booming up from below ground level.
A hatch snapped out of the dirt. A periscope thingamajig popped up and wiggled.
Guy had rigged himself a fucking bomb shelter.
Pete dropped down into it. Banister pulled the hatch shut behind him.
The space was twelve-by-twelve square. Playboy pinups covered the walls. Guy had socked in a shitload of Van Camp’s pork & beans and bourbon.
Banister retracted the telescope. “You looked lonesome all by yourself with no sheet.”
Pete stretched. His head grazed the ceiling.
“It’s sweet, Guy.”
“I thought you might like it.”
“Who’s paying for it?”
“Everybody.”
“Which means?”
“Which means I own the land, and the Agency put up the buildings. Carlos Marcello donated three hundred thousand for guns, and Sam Giancana put up some money to buy off the State Police. The Klan folks pay to enter and sell their wares, and the exiles work four hours a day on a road crew and kick back half their pay to the Cause.”
An air cooler hummed full-blast. The shelter was a goddamn igloo.
Pete shivered. “You said Hudspeth and Lockhart would be here.”
“Hudspeth was arrested for grand theft auto this morning. It’s his third offense, so there’s no bail. Evans is here, though. And he’s not a bad fellow, if you stay off the topic of religion.”
Pete said, “He’s got to be psycho. And Boyd and I don’t want psychos working for us.”
“But you’ll employ more presentable psychos.”
“Have it your way. And if it’s Lockhart by default, I want a few minutes alone with him.”
“Why?”
“Any man who parades around in a sheet has got to be able to convince me he can keep things compartmentalized.”
Banister laughed. “That’s a big word for a guy like you, Pete.”
“People keep telling me that.”
“That’s because you’re dealing with a higher type of person now that you’re Agency.”
“Like Evans?”
“Point taken. But offhand, I’d say that that man