American Tabloid - James Ellroy [169]
Guy Banister called Old Joe “harmless.” Lockhart said the old boy loved to torch nigger churches.
Pete auditioned backup triggers for the Fidel hit. He laid down his criteria with two simple questions.
Are you an expert marksman?
Would you die to set up Néstor Chasco’s killshot?
He schmoozed up at least a hundred Cubans. Four men made the cut.
CHINO CROMAJOR:
Bay of Pigs survivor. Willing to detonate Castro with a strip-search-proof enema bomb.
RAFAEL HERNÁNDEZ-BROWN:
Cigar maker/gunman. Willing to slip the Beard a poison panatella and go up in smoke with the man who raped his tobacco fields.
CÉSAR RAMOS:
Former Cuban Army cook. Willing to whip up an exploding suckling pig and die at Castro’s Last Supper.
WALTER “JUANITA” CHACÓN:
Sadistic drag queen. Willing to butt-fuck Fidel and go out orgasmic in exile crossfire.
Memo to Kemper Boyd:
Top my shooters—if you can.
73
(Meridian, 1/11/62)
Kemper snorted a coke-“H” speedball. It was precisely his sixteenth taste of dope.
It was his twelfth since the doctor cut off his medication. It averaged out to 1.3 nonaddicted tastes per month.
His head twirled. His brain revved. His shabby room at the Seminole Motel looked almost pretty.
Memo:
Go see that colored preacher. He’s rounding up a group of voting rights complainants.
Memo:
See Dougie Frank Lockhart. He’s got two would-be triggers lined up for you to audition.
The taste hit all the way home.
His collarbone quit throbbing. The pins holding it together meshed clean.
Kemper wiped his nose. The portrait above his desk took on a glow.
It was Jack Kennedy, photographed pre-Pigs. His post-Pigs inscription: “To Kemper Boyd. I guess we both caught a few bullets lately.”
Taste #16 felt high-octane. Jack’s smile was high-test—Dr. Feelgood shot him up before the photo session.
Jack looked young and invincible. The last nine months knocked a lot of that out of him.
The Bay of Pigs fiasco did it. Jack grew up behind a tidal wave of censure.
Jack blamed himself—and the Agency. Jack fired Allen Dulles and Dick Bissell. Jack said, “I’ll smash the CIA into a thousand pieces.”
Jack hates the CIA. Bobby doesn’t. Bobby now hates Fidel Castro like he hates Hoffa and the Mob.
The Bay of Pigs postmortem was painfully protracted. He double-agented as Kemper Boyd, chaperone. He showed Bobby scores of sanitized exiles—the noncriminal types that Langley wanted him to see.
The Study Group called the invasion:
“Quixotic,” “undermanned” and “based on specious intelligence.”
He agreed. Langley disagreed.
Langley thought he was a Kennedy apologist. They considered him politically unsound.
John Stanton told him this. He silently agreed with the appraisal.
He vocally agreed: Yes, JM/Wave will prove efficacious.
He silently disagreed. He urged Bobby to assassinate Fidel Castro. Bobby disagreed. He said it was too gangster-like and inimical to Kennedy policy.
Bobby was a bully with strong moral convictions. His guidelines were often hard to gauge.
Bully Bobby set up racket squads in ten major cities. Their one goal was to recruit organized-crime informants. The move enraged Mr. Hoover. Independent Mob-busters might upstage the Top Hoodlum Program.
Bully Bobby hates Bully J. Edgar. Bully J. Edgar reciprocates. It was unprecedented hatred—the Justice Department seethed with it.
Hoover staged protocol slowdowns. Bobby trashed FBI autonomy. Guy Banister said Hoover placed illegal bug/taps in Mob venues coast to coast.
Bobby had no inkling. Mr. Hoover knew how to keep secrets.
So did Ward Littell. Ward’s best secret was Joe Kennedy’s Teamster Fund “malfeasance.”
Joe had a near-fatal stroke late last year. Claire said it “devastated” Laura.
She tried to contact her father. Bobby prevented it. That three-million-dollar buyoff was binding and permanent.
Claire graduated from Tulane magna cum laude. The NYU law school accepted her. She moved to New York City and took an apartment near Laura.
Laura rarely mentioned him. Claire