The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [224]
The bounty means you’d better pray and count your days;
You can’t dodge bullets like Superman;
You can’t run away from the White Man’s Plan;
When you get this letter you better hide;
Because you can’t escape the White Man’s fearless tide.
Signed,
U.W.M.A. (United White Men of America)
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/21/67. Hate-mail extract. Compiled by: FATHER RABBIT. Sealed and marked: “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.”
Mail sender: Anonymous. Postmark: Pasadena, California. Recipient: Senator Robert F. Kennedy. From page 2 (of 16):
[And] YOU HAVE BETRAYED THE ARAB PEOPLE AND STOLEN OUR LAND OF MILK AND HONEY TO MILK PUS FROM THE WORLDWIDE ZIONIST PIG ORDER AND THE JEWISH CANCER MACHINE. BAYER ASPIRIN AND BUFFERIN AND ST. JUDE’S HOSPITAL CANNOT STOP MY HEADACHES FROM THE PUS INFLICTED BY THE JEWISH VAMPIRE AND CANNOT HEAR ME SAY RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE RFK MUST DIE!!!!!!!!!!!
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/23/67. Boston Globe headline and subhead:
RIOTS SWEEP CITY
ARSON, LOOTING, REIGN
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/29/67. Detroit Free Press headline and subhead:
RIOTS ROCK DETROIT
DEATHS AND DAMAGE MOUNT
DOCUMENT INSERT: 7/30/67. Boston Globe headline and subhead:
KING TO PRESS:
RIOTS “MANIFESTATIONS OF WHITE RACISM”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/2/67. Washington Post subhead:
RIOT DAMAGE MOUNTS; POLICE CALL DISTRICT “COMBAT ZONE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/5/67. Los Angeles Times headline and subhead:
KING ON RIOTS:
“THE FRUIT OF WHITE INJUSTICE”
DOCUMENT INSERT: 8/6/67. 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, hi.
FR: How are you, Dwight? It’s been a while.
BR: Don’t mind the clicks. My scrambler’s on the fritz.
FR: I don’t mind. I’d rather talk than mess with pouches.
BR: Have you been watching the news? The natives are restless.
FR: King predicted it.
BR: No, he promised it, and now he’s gloating.
FR: He’s making enemies. There’s times I think we might not get there first.
BR: There’s times I agree. The Outfit hates him, and every cracker in captivity has got his tits in a twist. You should hear my listening-post tapes.
FR: Shitfire, I’d like to.
BR: There’s a joint in St. Louis. A dump called the Grapevine. Outfit guys and sub-lease hoods frequent it. They’ve been talking up a fifty-grand bounty. It’s starting to feel like a giant wet dream out there in the spiritus mundi.
FR: You slay me. “Wet Dream” and “Spiritus Mundi” in the same sentence.
BR: I’m a chameleon. I’m like Ward Littell that way. I alter my vocabulary to suit the company I’m with.
FR: At least you know it. I can’t say Littell’s that much in control of his effects.
BR: He is and he isn’t.
FR: For instance?
BR: For instance, he watches for tails everywhere he goes. Mr. Hoover’s been running spots on him off and on for years, and he knows it. He catches 90% and misses 10. He’s probably got just enough hubris to think he’s batting a hundred.
FR: Hubris. I like it.
BR: You should. I picked it up at Yale Law.
FR: Boola, boola.
BR: Tell me about the intercepts. By my lights, your son should be twelve weeks in.
FR: More like eight. You know how he travels for Bondurant. It took him months to set up his system.
BR: Tell me about it.
FR: He rented a place in D.C. He’s pulling mail off King, Barry Goldwater, and Bobby Kennedy. The Bureau’s running normal intercepts, and all their mail comes addressed to the SCLC headquarters and the Senate Office Building. There’s a four-agent team running a mail drop at 16th and “D.” The night shift goes home at 11:00, so Wayne lets himself in at 1:00, pulls the mail, copies it and returns it at 5:00. He shuttles down from New York when he rotates in from Saigon.
BR: How does he get in?
FR: He made a mold of the door lock and had duplicate keys made.
BR: And he picks up at irregular intervals?
FR: Right. All synced to his rotations. He print-dusts