The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [17]
WJL: No.
JEH: The Attorney General has requested periodic updates. What do you suggest that I tell him?
WJL: That a fatuous young psychopath killed his brother, and that he acted alone.
JEH: The Dark Prince is no cretin. He must suspect the factions that most insiders would.
WJL: Yes, Sir. And I’m sure he feels complicitous.
JEH: I hear an unseemly tug of compassion in your voice, Mr. Littell. I will not comment on your protractedly complex relationship with Robert F. Kennedy.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: I cannot help but think of your blowhard client, James Riddle Hoffa. The Prince is his bête noire.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: I’m sure Mr. Hoffa would like to know what the Prince really thinks of this gaudy homicide.
WJL: I would like to know myself, Sir.
JEH: I cannot help but think of your brutish client, Carlos Marcello. I suspect that he would enjoy access to Bobby’s troubled thoughts.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: It would be nice to have a source close to the Prince.
WJL: I’ll see what I can do.
JEH: Mr. Hoffa gloats in an unseemly manner. He told the New York Times, quote, Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now, unquote. It’s a felicitous sentiment, but I think there are those in the Italian aggregation who would appreciate more discretion on Mr. Hoffa’s part.
WJL: I’ll advise him to shut his mouth, Sir.
JEH: On a related topic. Did you know that the Bureau has a file on Jefferson Davis Tippit?
WJL: No, Sir.
JEH: The man belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, National States’; Rights Party, National Renaissance Party and a dubious new splinter group called the Thunderbolt Legion. He was a close associate of a Dallas PD officer named Maynard Delbert Moore, a man of similar ideological beliefs and a reportedly puerile demeanor.
WJL: Did you get your information from a DPD source, Sir?
JEH: No. I have a correspondent in Nevada. He’s a conservative pamphleteer and mail-order solicitor with very deep and diverse connections on the right flank.
WJL: A Mormon, Sir?
JEH: Yes. All the Nevadan führer manqués are Mormons, and this man is arguably the most gifted.
WJL: He sounds interesting, Sir.
JEH: You’re leading me, Mr. Littell. I know full well that Howard Hughes wets his pants for Mormons and has two greedy eyes on Las Vegas. I’ll always share a discreet amount of information with you, if you broach the request in a manner that does not insult my intelligence.
WJL: I’m sorry, Sir. You understood my design, and the man does sound interesting.
JEH: He’s quite useful and diversified. For example, he runs a hate-tract press covertly. He’s planted a number of his subscribers as informants in Klan groups that the Bureau has targeted for mail-fraud indictments. He helps eliminate his hate-mail competition in that manner.
WJL: And he knew the late Officer Tippit.
JEH: Knew or knew of. Judged or did not judge as ideologically unsound and outré. I’m always amusingly surprised by who knows who in which overall contexts. For example, the Dallas SAC told me that a former Bureau man named Guy Williams Banister is in town this weekend. Another agent told me, independently, that he’s seen your friend Pierre Bondurant. Imaginative people might point to this confluence and try to link men like that to your mutual chum Carlos Marcello and his hatred of the Royal Family, but I am not disposed to such flights of fancy.
WJL: Yes, Sir.
JEH: Your tone tells me that you wish to ask a favor. For Mr. Hughes, perhaps?
WJL: Yes, Sir. I’d like to see the main Bureau file on the Las Vegas hotel-casino owners, along with the files on the Nevada Gaming Commission, Gaming Control Board, and the Clark County Liquor Board.
JEH: The answer is yes. Quid pro quo?
WJL: Certainly, Sir.
JEH: I would like to forestall potential talk on Mr. Tippit. If the Dallas Office has a separate file on him, I would like it to disappear before my less trusted colleagues get an urge to take the information public.
WJL: I’ll take care of it tonight, Sir.
JEH: Do you think the single-gunman consensus will hold?
WJL: I’ll do everything I can to insure it.
JEH: Good