The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [220]
DIR: Thrillingly ironic. CRUSADER bugs his savior and my bete noire. Unwitting complicity of a high order.
BR: Yes, Sir.
DIR: How long will it take to recruit men to man the listening posts?
BR: A while, Sir. We’ve got sixteen locations.
DIR: To continue. Update me on WILD RABBIT.
BR: He’s doing well, Sir. You’ve seen the results. We keep getting mail-fraud indict—
DIR: I know what we keep getting. I know that we do not come close to getting anything remotely resembling satisfaction in the matter of one Martin Luther King, aka RED RABBIT, aka the Minstrel Antichrist. Our attempts to dislodge him and subsume his prestige have consumed tens of thousands of man-hours and have garnered nil results. He has turned us into dung beetles and rare, indigenous African birds who peck through elephant shit, and I am woefully sick and tired of waiting for him to discredit himself.
BR: Yes, Sir.
DIR: You’re a rock, Dwight. I can always count on you to say “Yes, Sir.”
BR: I would like to seek more radical means to nullify RED RABBIT. Do I have your permission to bring in a trusted friend and explore the possibilities?
DIR: Yes.
BR: Thank you, Sir.
DIR: Good day, Dwight.
BR: Good day, Sir.
DOCUMENT INSERT: 1/14/67. Telephone call transcript. Taped by: BLUE RABBIT. Marked: “FBI-Scrambled”/“Stage-1 Covert”/ “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.” Speaking: BLUE RABBIT, FATHER RABBIT.
BR: Senior, how are you? How’s the connection?
FR: I’m hearing some clicks.
BR: That’s my scrambler. The beeps mean we’re tap-proof.
FR: We should be talking in person.
BR: I’m down in Mississippi. I can’t get away.
FR: You’re sure it’s—
BR: It’s fine. Jesus, don’t go cuntish on me.
FR: I won’t. It’s just that—
BR: It’s just that you think he’s got superhuman powers, and he doesn’t. He can’t read minds and he can’t tap scrambled frequencies.
FR: Well, still …
BR: Still, shit. He’s not God, so quit acting like he is.
FR: He’s something similar.
BR: I’ll buy that.
FR: Did he—
BR: He said yes.
FR: Do you think he knows what we’re planning?
BR: No, but he’ll be glad to see it happen, and if he thinks it’s us, he’ll make sure the investigation obfuscates.
FR: That’s good news.
BR: No shit, Sherlock.
FR: People hate him. King, I mean.
BR: Those that don’t love him, yeah.
FR: What about the bug—
BR: We’re A-OK on that front. I talked him into letting me wire sixteen spots. He’ll read the transcripts, hear the hate building and get his rocks off.
FR: There’s a scapegoat aspect here.
BR: That is correct. Guinea hoods hate coloreds and civil-rights fucks, and they love to talk about it. Hoover hears the hate, the whole thing starts feeling inevitable, pow, then it happens. The whole Mob-hate thing serves to muddy the waters and gets him thinking that it’s too big to mess with.
FR: Like Jack Kennedy.
BR: Exactly. It’s coming, it’s inevitable, it’s accomplished and it’s good for business. The nation mourns and hates the clown we give them.
FR: You know the metaphysic.
BR: We all went to school on Jack.
FR: How long will it take to get the bugs in place?
BR: About six weeks. You want the punch line? I had Ward Littell do the mounts.
FR: Dwight, Jesus.
BR: I had my reasons. One, he’s the best bug man around. Two, we may need him somewhere down the line. Three, I needed to throw him a bone to keep him in the game.
FR: Shitfire. Any game with Littell in it is a game to fix from the get-go.
BR: I threw Hoover a bone. He hates Bobby K. almost as much as he hates King, and he shares all his dirt with LBJ. I had Littell bug one of Bobby’s hotel suites.
FR: I’m getting chills, Dwight. You keep dropping the “Mister” off “Hoover.”
BR: Because I trust scrambler technology.
FR: It’s more than that.
BR: Okay, it’s because he’s slipping. Why mince words? King’s the one guy he wanted to break the most, and King’s the one guy he can’t break. Here’s another punch line for you. Lyle liked King. He worked against him and admired him anyway, and I’m starting to feel the same way. That grandiose cocksucker is a jigaboo