The Cold Six Thousand - James Ellroy [48]
Chuck popping rounds. Chuck’s special load—poison buckshot.
The man froze. Glass spritzed him. He covered his eyes. He ran blind. He bumped chairs. He coughed glass.
Pete fired. Pete missed. Chuck vaulted the window. He ran up fast. He nudged the man—BOO!—he shot the man in the back.
The man flew. Pete caught shell wads and BBs. Chuck ran south. Chuck blew out door #3.
Pete ran back. Chuck hit the lights. Light hit a man under the bed. He sobbed. His legs stuck out. He wore paisley PJs.
Chuck aimed low. Chuck blew his feet off. The man screamed. Pete shut his eyes.
The wind died. The day sparkled. The cleanup dragged.
They stole the jeeps. They drove the stiffs to the plane. They found a cave and drove the jeeps in. They fucked with some bats. They hit their horns. They evicted them. The bats bumped their windshields. They ran their wipers. They bumped the cocksuckers back.
They dumped kerosene. They torched the jeeps. The fire burned and died. The cave contained the fumes.
They walked to the plane. They wrapped the stiffs in straitjackets. They gunnysacked them. They pried their jaws out. They poured honey in. It lured hungry crabs.
Pete snapped four Polaroids—one per victim—Carlos wanted proof.
They flew low. They hit North Texas. They saw small lakes forever. They dumped three stiffs. Two splashed and sunk. One cracked hard ice.
Chuck skimmed tracts. Chuck flew low. Chuck steered with his knees.
He had a master’s degree. He read comic books. He blew JFK’s brains out. He lived with his parents. He stuck to his room. He built model planes and sniffed glue.
Chuck skimmed tracts. His lips moved. Pete caught the gist: The KKK klarifies a kontroversy. White men have the biggest dicks!
Pete laughed. Chuck dipped over Lake Lugert. Pete tossed Jack Z. in the drink.
22
(Las Vegas, 1/4/64)
The Summit. The penthouse at the Dunes—one big table.
Decanters. Siphons. Candy and fruit. No cigars—Moe Dalitz was allergic.
Littell swept for bugs first. The Boys watched TV. Morning cartoons—Yogi Bear and Webster Webfoot.
The Boys took sides. Sam and Moe liked Yogi. Johnny R. liked the duck. Carlos liked Yogi’s dumb pal.
Santo T. snoozed—fuck this kiddie shit.
No bugs—let’s proceed.
Littell chaired the meet. The Boys dressed down—golf shirts and Bermuda shorts.
Carlos sipped brandy. “Here’s the opening pitch. Hughes is non compos mental, and he thinks he’s got Ward in his pocket. We sell him the hotels and make him keep our inside people. They step up the skim. He don’t suspect anything, ’cause we show him some low profit figures before he buys.”
Littell shook his head. “His negotiators will audit every tax return filed for every hotel, going back ten years. If you refuse to submit them, they’ll try to subpoena them or bribe the right people for copies. And you can’t submit doctored returns with low figures, because it will bring down your initial asking prices.”
Sam said, “So?”
Littell sipped club soda. “We need the highest possible set purchase prices, with the buyout money dispersed over eighteen months. Our long-term goal is to establish the appearance of legitimately invested money, diverted into legitimate businesses and laundered within them. My plan is—”
Carlos cut in. “The plan—get to it, and lay it out in words we can understand.”
Littell smiled. “We have the buyout and skim money. We purchase legitimate businesses with it. The businesses belong to recipients of pension-fund loans. They are the most specifically profitable and cosmetically noncriminal businesses that originated with loans from the ‘real’ books. Thus, the origin of the money is obscured. Thus, the recipients are prone to extortion and will not protest the forced buyouts. The recipients will continue to run their businesses. Our people will oversee the operations and divert the profits. We funnel the money into foreign hotel-casinos. By ‘foreign’ I mean Latin-American. By Latin-American I mean countries under military or strongly