The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [141]
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: This endeavor will be Stage-1 Covert. I have dubbed it OPERATION BLACK RABBIT. The title bows to the sex drive, prowess and heedlessly puerile demeanor of our long-eared friends. You will receive copies of most memoranda, because you are a deft extrapolator of complex data. Code names have been assigned to the key personnel. You will use them in place of real names. They derive from the rabbit motif and hint at the inherent psyches of the subjects.
WJL: You’ve whetted my appetite, Sir.
JEH: Martin Luther King will be RED RABBIT. Bayard Rustin will be PINK RABBIT. Lyle Holly will be WHITE RABBIT. You will be most appropriately known as CRUSADER RABBIT.
WJL: It’s a witty touch, Sir.
JEH: I want you to learn what King has planned in the south. Your data will supplant Lyle Holly’s. I’m going to launch a White-Hate Cointelpro in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi, and I want information to complement that incursion.
WJL: You’ve targeted the Klan, Sir? For mail-fraud indictments?
JEH: I’ve targeted the most violent, inept, felony-prone and altogether outlandish Klan groups in that three-state vector. God will punish them for lynchings and castrations, should He lapse on the side of compassion and find them unjustified. I will punish them for Federal Mail Fraud.
WJL: You’ve divided the punishment well, Sir.
JEH: The Cointelpro will begin in June, ’65. Your old chum Wayne Senior has recruited a man to form his own splinter Klan. The man will return from Army service and begin his assignment in May.
WJL: Will Wayne Senior run—
JEH: Wayne Senior will be code-named FATHER RABBIT. The Klan runner will be named WILD RABBIT. I have withdrawn the funding for all of Wayne Senior’s long-standing informant Klans, with his approval. I want to consolidate my anti-Klan broadside under the banner of WILD RABBIT’s stalwart group, the Regal Knights of the KKK.
WJL: The name packs a punch, Sir.
JEH: You’re being egregiously flip, Mr. Littell. I know you are delighted, and I know you disapprove as well. Do not underline the latter.
WJL: I apologize, Sir.
JEH: To continue. Both operations will be run by Dwight Holly, who will be code-named BLUE RABBIT. Dwight has resigned from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and has transferred back to the Bureau. I chose him because he is a brilliant operative. He is also Lyle Holly’s brother, and Lyle knows the SCLC better than any white man alive.
WJL: I’m confused, Sir. I thought Dwight was estranged from Wayne Senior.
JEH: Estrangement comes and goes. Dwight and Wayne Senior have reconciled. The Negroes that Wayne Junior killed were simply a temporary roadblock. Wayne Senior is estranged from Wayne Junior now, in the manner of the patriarchy worldwide.
WJL: Will I need to deal with Wayne Sen—
JEH: Not directly. You trumped him on your courier arrangement, and he’s sustained a simmering grudge.
WJL: Dwight Holly has never been a friend to me, Sir.
JEH: Dwight acknowledges your gifts, however reluctantly. You saved him face on the dead-Negro front, which indebted him to you. That said, I must observe that Dwight Chalfont Holly hates indebtedness and was having you spot-tailed by agents of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, as part of an ill-conceived plan to build a derogatory profile against you. He considered you a dangerous presence in Nevada.
WJL: Given Dwight’s nature, that’s a compliment.
JEH: It pained him to pull the tails. He gives up very badly. You share that trait.
WJL: Thank you, Sir.
JEH: Thank me with hard work on OPERATION BLACK RABBIT.
WJL: I will, Sir. In the meantime, would you like me to pull any of the bugs you’ve placed against the SCLC?
JEH: No. They might get careless and talk.
WJL: That’s true, Sir.