American Tabloid - James Ellroy [138]
Thirdly, bravo for your appointment as roving Justice Department counsel. My contacts tell me you’ll be concentrating on voting rights abuse in the south. How fitting! Now you’ll be able to champion left-inclined negroes with the same tenacity that you embrace right-wing Cubans!
I think you’ve found your metier. I would be hard-pressed to conceive of work more suitable for a man with such a lenient code of loyalty.
I hope we’ll get the chance to be colleagues again.
As always,
JEH
58
(New York City, 1/20/61)
She’d been crying. Tear streaks had ruined her makeup.
Kemper stepped into the foyer. Laura cinched her robe and stepped away from him.
He held out a small bouquet. “I’m going down to the Inaugural. I’ll be back in a few days.”
She ignored the flowers. “I figured that out. I didn’t think you put on that tuxedo to impress me.”
“Laura …”
“I wasn’t invited. Some neighbors of mine were, though. They donated ten thousand dollars to Jack’s campaign.”
Her mascara was running. Her whole face looked off-kilter.
“I’ll be back in a few days. We’ll talk things over then.”
Laura pointed to an armoire. “There’s a check for three million dollars in the top drawer. It’s mine, if I never contact the family again.”
“You could rip it up.”
“Would you?”
“I can’t answer that question.”
Her fingers were cigarette-stained. She’d left overflowing ashtrays out in plain sight.
Laura said, “Them or me?”
Kemper said, “Them.”
Part III
PIGS
February–November 1961
DOCUMENT INSERT: 2/7/61. Memorandum: Kemper Boyd to John Stanton. Marked: CONFIDENTIAL/HAND POUCH DELIVER.
John,
I’ve been subtly pressing Little Brother and a few White House aides for information, and I am sad to report that as of this date the President is ambivalent about our invasion plans. The imminent nature of the plans apparently has him waxing indecisive. It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to deal with something so pressing this early in his administration.
The President and Attorney General Kennedy have been briefed by Director Dulles and Deputy Director Bissell. Little Brother attends many high-level presidential briefings; it is obvious that he is becoming the President’s chief advisor on all urgent matters. Little Brother (to the consternation of some friends of ours) remains fixated on Organized Crime and seems to be uninterested in the Cuban issue. My contacts tell me that the President hasn’t updated him on the “at-ready” status of our invasion plans.
The Blessington campsite stands pre-invasion ready. Recruit training cycles have been suspended; as of 1/30/61, the forty-four bunks have been filled with graduate troops culled from other induction camps: men specifically trained in amphibious warfare tactics. These men now stand as the Blessington Invasion Force. Pete Bondurant and Douglas Frank Lockhart are putting them through rigorous daily maneuvers and report that their morale is very high.
I visited Blessington last week, to assess its at-ready status prior to Mr. Bissell’s 2/10/61 inspection. I’m happy to report that Pete and Lockhart have whipped things into top-flight shape.
Landing crafts are now docked at camouflaged inlets built by laborers recruited from Lockhart’s Klan Klavern. Chuck Rogers gave Ramon Gutierrez a refresher flying course as part of a Bondurant-devised plan to have Gutierrez portray a Castro defector and fly into Blessington on Invasion Day with doctored anti-Castro atrocity photographs to be leaked to the press as genuine. Weapons and ammunition stand inventoried and at-ready. An in-let a half mile from the campsite is being prepared to house the troopship that will carry the Blessington invasion force. It should be at-ready by 2/16/61.
I am now free to spend occasional time in Florida, chiefly because the brothers believe the falsehood that I established over a year ago: that Mr. Hoover has coerced me into spying on anti-Castro groups in the Miami area. My current Justice Department assignment (investigating the accusations of Negroes denied voting rights)