The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [139]
“Donkey Dom drives me to work. He wonders why he can’t keep boyfriends, esp. considering his ‘equipment.’ I said, ‘Maybe it’s because you’re a male prostitute.’ ”
The cat bit a maid. The cat clawed a couch. The cat bit her drummer.
“I miss you … I miss you … I get crazy when you’re gone because you’re the only one who knows what I do & so I go up & down & get a little crazy pretending I’m talking to you & wondering where I’ll be in 5 yrs., when my regulars trade me in for a newer model & I’m not so useful. Have you ever thought about that?”
Pete read the letter. Pete smeared the ink. He smelled Barb. He felt Barb. “Up & down” fucked him up.
The camp soared. Pete jeeped through. Pete toured.
Kall it one kamp now. Straight acres—marked by fence posts and huts.
Forested borders. Clay underbrush. Bulb rows/furrows/walkways. Refinery huts and guard huts. Slave jails and ops huts.
Magic beasts roamed the forest. White tigers prowled boocoo.
Pete dug cats. Pete dug tigers. Pete dug nifty names. Pete konkokted “Tiger Kamp.”
Flash sketched for kicks. Flash dug on tigers. Flash tigerized the huts. Flash painted tiger fangs and tiger stripes.
Pete cruised the walkways. Pete cruised the bulb rows. Pete watched.
Slaves raked. Slaves tilled. Slaves pulled rickshaws. Shackle lines—twelve slaves per—slaves fueled by meth.
Slaves worked. Slaves paused too long. Guards popped rubber rounds.
Laurent waved. Flash waved. Mesplède waved. Laurent urged speed—di thi di—Mesplède flexed his tattoos.
Pete counted stalks. Pete multiplied: bulbs per stalk/yield per bulb/sap-to-M-base. Stalks blew by. Pete blew the count. Pete mismultiplied.
He hit Ops North. The Congs took his jeep. He walked in. He saw Chuck and Bob. He saw their canned smorgasbord:
Chili and kraut. Franks and beans. Tokay/T-Bird/white port.
Chuck said, “We’re losing Bob.”
Pete grabbed a chair. “Why?”
“It’s not like we’re losing him altogether, it’s more like he’s relocating to help out a kindred soul.”
Bob sipped T-Bird. “Chuck set me up with Wayne’s daddy, unbe-fucking-knownst to Wayne, of course. His people offered me a chance to take over a snitch-Klan in Mississippi when the Army cuts me loose.”
Chuck sipped Tokay. “The Feds are bankrolling his klavern. That means official sanction and discretionary leeway as to how much rowdy shit he can pull.”
Pete cracked his knuckles. “It’s bullshit. You’d give up our thing for the chance to torch a few churches?”
Chuck noshed beans. “Pete’s got these gaps in his political education. He don’t think much past Cuba.”
Bob belched. “I like the discretionary part and the leadership part. I get to recruit my own Kluxers, pull my own shit and get me some mail-fraud indictments that can’t be traced back to me.”
Chuck snarfed franks. “How far can you go?”
“That’s the $64,000 Question, so I gotta assume that ‘discretionary’ means according to the guidelines my handler sets up, along with shit he don’t know about. Wayne Senior said I’m supposed to start with a show of force, you know, to establish my rep, which suits me just fine.”
Pete lit a cigarette. “Don’t let Wayne know that you’re in touch with his father, and don’t talk that Klan shit in front of him. He’s off the deep end on niggers, and that kind of talk scares him.”
Chuck laughed. “Why? He’s a coon killer.”
Pete laughed. “He’s afraid he’ll start liking your crazy shit too much.”
Chuck snarfed chili. “Statements like that are politically suspect. I think you been spending too much time with Victor Charlie.”
Rain hit. Bob shut the window.
“Here’s why all this don’t mean goodbye to the kadre. One, Mississippi runs down to the Gulf Coast. Two, you got lots of Cubans down there. Three, I could work liaison with Chuck, funnel our profits into guns, and shoot them down to the Gulf.”
Pete said, “I like it. If you can get a hands-off policy going with the cops and Feds down there.”
Thunder hit. Chuck cracked the window. Pete looked out. Slaves whooped. Slaves danced. Slaves did the Methedrine Mambo.
Chuck said, “This fucking