American Tabloid - James Ellroy [172]
Flash and Juan stripped to the waist and used their shirts to swat off mosquitos. Both men were torture-scarred from the hips up.
Kemper whistled and signaled Lockhart: Send them over, now.
Dougie Frank rounded them up. Kemper leaned against an old Ford half-ton. The bed was jammed with liquor bottles and guns.
They walked over. Kemper came on courtly and genteel.
Smiles and bows went around. Handshakes went down. Flash and Juan pulled their shirts on—a sign of respect for the Big Bwana white man.
Kemper cut the niceties off. “My name is Boyd. I have a mission to offer you.”
Flash said, “Sí, trabajo. Quién el—”
Juan shushed him. “What kind of mission?”
Kemper tried Spanish. “Trabajo muy importante. Para matar el grande puto Fidel Castro.”
Flash jumped up and down. Juan grabbed him and restrained him.
“This is not a joke, Mr. Boyd?”
Kemper pulled out his money clip. “How much would it take to convince you?”
They crowded up to him. Kemper fanned out hundred-dollar bills.
“I hate Fidel Castro just as much as any Cuban patriot. Ask Mr. Banister or your friend Laurent Guéry about me. I’ll pay you out of my own pocket until our backers come through, and if we succeed and get Castro, I’ll guarantee you large bonuses.”
The cash hypnotized them. Kemper went in for the close.
He slipped a hundred to Flash and a hundred to Juan. One to Flash, one to Juan, one to Flash—
Canestel squeezed his hand shut. “We believe you.”
Kemper snagged a bottle out of the truck. Flash beat mambo time on the back fender.
A Klansman yelled, “Save some for us white men!”
Kemper took a drink. Flash took a drink. Juan chug-a-lugged half the bottle.
The cocktail hour segued into get-acquainted time.
Kemper bought Flash and Juan some clothes. They moved their gear out of Lockhart’s shack.
Kemper called his broker in New York. He said, Sell some stock and send me five thousand dollars.
The man said, Why? Kemper said, I’m hiring some underlings.
Flash and Juan needed lodging. Kemper braced his friendly desk clerk and asked him to revise his WHITES ONLY policy.
The man agreed. Flash and Juan moved into the Seminole Motel.
Kemper called Pete in New Orleans. He said, Let’s arrange a Whack Fidel audition.
They brainstormed.
Kemper set the budget at fifty grand per shooter and two hundred grand for general overhead. Pete suggested severance pay—ten Gs for each rejected shooter.
Kemper agreed. Pete said, Let’s do the gig at Blessington. Santo can put Sam G. and Johnny up at the Breakers Motel.
Kemper agreed. Pete said, We need a spic fall guy—non-CLA/non-Cadre-connected. Kemper said, We’ll find one.
Pete said, My boys are braver than your boys.
Kemper said, No, they’re not.
Flash and Juan felt like drinking. Kemper took them to the Skyline Lounge.
The bartender said, They ain’t white. Kemper slipped him twenty dollars. The bartender said, They are now.
Kemper drank martinis. Juan drank I.W. Harper. Flash drank Myers’s rum and Coke.
Flash spoke Spanish. Juan translated. Kemper learned the rudiments of slave prostitution.
Flash kidnapped the girls. Laurent Guéry got them hooked on Algerian horse. Juan broke the virgins in and tried to perv them into digging random sex.
Kemper listened. The ugly things drifted away, compartmentalized and non-applicable.
Juan said he missed his balls. He could still get hard and fuck, but he missed the total shoot-your-load experience.
Flash raged against Fidel. Kemper thought: I don’t hate the man at all.
The six wore starched fatigues and camouflage lampblack. It was Pete’s idea: Let’s turn our shooter candidates out scary.
Néstor built a range behind the Breakers parking lot. Kemper called it a jerry-rig masterpiece.
It featured pulley-mounted targets and chairs scrounged from a demolished cocktail hut. The audition weaponry was CIA-prime: M-1s, assorted pistols, and scope-fitted .30.06’s.
Teo Paez fashioned straw-stuffed Castro targets. They were life-size and realistic—replete with beards and cigars.
Laurent Guéry crashed the party. Teo said he blew France