American Tabloid - James Ellroy [157]
Carlos liked fresh seafood. Carlos liked to throw big dinner parties. Littell had 500 Maine lobsters air-shipped to Guatemala daily.
Carlos turned crack troopers into salivating gluttons. Carlos turned said troopers into coolies—trained exile guerrillas shined his shoes and ran his errands.
Boyd was running the Marcello operation. Boyd gave Pete one direct order: LEAVE LITTELL ALONE.
The Bondurant-Littell truce was Boyd-enforced and temporary.
Pete chain-smoked. Cigarettes and bennies had him parched. His hands kept doing things he didn’t tell them to.
They kept circuiting. Stanton sweated his clothes wringing wet.
PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS! PIGS!
They parked by the dock and watched troops climb the boarding plank. Six hundred men hopped on in just under two minutes.
Their short-wave set sputtered. The needle bounced to the Blessington frequency.
Stanton plugged in his headset. Pete lit his zillionth cigarette of the day.
The troop ship creaked and waddled. A fat Cubano puked over the stern.
Stanton said, “Our government-in-exile’s in place, and Bissell ended up approving those far-right boys I recommended. That’s good, but that fake-defector charade we cooked up backfired. Gutiérrez landed the plane at Blessington, but the reporters that Dougie Lockhart called in recognized Ramón and started booing. It’s not a big thing, but a fuck-up’s still a fuck-up.”
Pete nodded. He smelled vomit and bilge water and oil off six hundred rifles.
Stanton unhooked his headset. His Saint Christopher was fretted shiny to dull.
They kept circuiting. It was gas-guzzling Benzedrine bullshit.
Please, Jack:
Send some more planes in. Give the orders to send the boats out.
Pete got wild-ass itchy. Stanton blathered on and on about his kids.
Hours took decades. Pete ran lists in his head to shut Stanton out.
The men he killed. The women he fucked. The best hamburgers in L.A. and Miami. What he’d be doing if he never left Quebec. What he’d be doing if he never met Kemper Boyd.
Stanton worked the radio. Reports crackled in.
They heard that the air strike fizzled. The bombers nailed less than 10% of Fidel Castro’s air force.
Bad-Back Jack took the news hard. He responded in cuntish fashion: no second air strike just yet.
Chuck Rogers squeaked a call in. He said Marcello and Littell were still in Guatemala. He dropped some late-breaking stateside info: the FBI invaded New Orleans in response to fake Carlos sightings!
It was Boyd’s doing. He figured erroneous phone tips would keep Bobby diverted and help cover Marcello’s tracks.
Chuck signed off. Stanton clamped his headphones down and kept his ears perked for stray calls.
Seconds took years. Minutes took fucking millenniums.
Pete scratched his balls raw. Pete smoked himself hoarse. Pete shot palm fronds off of trees just to shoot something.
Stanton rogered a call. “That was Lockhart. He says our government-in-exile’s close to rioting. They need you at Blessington, and Rogers is flying in from Guatemala to pick you up.”
They detoured by the Cuban coast. Chuck said it added nil time to their flight plan.
Pete yelled, “Let’s get low!”
Chuck throttled down. Pete saw flames from two thousand feet and half a mile out.
They swooped below radar level and belly-rolled along the beach. Pete jammed binoculars out his window.
He saw aircraft wreckage—Cuban and rebel. He saw smoldering palm groves and hose trucks parked on the sand.
Air-raid sirens were blasting full-tilt. Dock-mounted spotlights were pre-dusk operational. Pillboxes had been set up just above the high tide line—fully manned and sandbagged.
Militiamen crowded the dock. Dig those little geeks with Tommy guns and aircraft ID guides.
They were eighty miles south of Playa Girón. This stretch of beach was red-alert ready. If the Bay of Pigs was this fortified, the entire invasion was fucked.
Pete heard muzzle pops. Little chickenshit pepperings went bip-bip-bip.
Chuck caught on—they’re shooting at us.