The Cold Six Thousand (69 page)

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 1/26/67. Las Vegas
Sun
headline:

HUGHES-DESERT INN NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUE

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 2/4/67. Denver
Post-Dispatch
subhead:

FEDERAL INDICTMENTS ON CASINO SKIM-COURIERS

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 2/14/67. Las Vegas
Sun
headline and subhead:

WHERE’S DOM DELLACROCIO?
VEGAS POLICE BAFFLED

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: 2/22/67. Chicago
Tribune
subhead:

KING PREDICTS “VIOLENT SUMMER” IF NEGROES DO NOT GET “FULL JUSTICE”

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 3/6/67. Denver
Post-Dispatch
subhead:

SKIM COURIERS PLEAD GUILTY

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 3/6/67. Las Vegas
Sun
subhead:

HUGHES SPOKESMEN CITE SKIM PLEAS
AND PLEDGE TO WORK FOR “CLEAN LAS VEGAS”

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 3/7/67. Los Angeles
Times
headline and subhead:

HOFFA ENTERS PRISON
58-MONTH SENTENCE LOOMS

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 3/27/67. Las Vegas
Sun
headline:

HUGHES-DESERT INN DEAL FINALIZED

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 4/2/67. San Francisco
Chronicle
subhead:

KING ATTACKS “RACIST” WAR IN VIETNAM

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 4/4/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.

Location: Office/Mike Lyman’s Restaurant/Los Angeles/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Unidentified Males #1 & #2, presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 2.6 minutes in progress.)

UM #1: … under Truman and Ike you had order. You had Hoover, who bore us no ill fucking will. Fucking Bobby and Jack changed all that.

UM #2: LBJ’s got schizophilia. He don’t take no shit from the Reds in Vietnam, but he sucks up to that King like he’s his long lost soul brother. The policy guys back east see this correlation. King comes to Harlem, gives these speeches and gets all the pygmies hopped up. They quit playing the numbers, our policy banks take it in the shorts, and the fucking pygmies get agitated and start feeling their oats.

UM #1: I see the correlation. They quit betting policy, their minds wander. They start thinking about Communism and raping white women.

UM #2: King likes white women. I heard he’s a pig for it.

UM #1: All the niggers want it. It’s the fruit of the forbidden fucking tree.

(Non-applicable conversation follows.)

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 4/12/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.

Location: Rec room/St. Agnes Social Club/Philadelphia/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Steven “Steve the Skeev” DeSantis
& Ralph Michael Lauria, organized-crime associates. (Conversation 9.3 minutes in progress.)

SDS: … Ralphie, Ralphie, Ralphie, you can’t talk to them. You can’t reason with them like they’re regular people.

RML: This is not news to me. I have been a landlord for many fucking years.

SDS: You’re a slumlord, Ralphie. Do not try to shit a well-known shitter like me.

RML: You’re talking like that nigger fuck King, which is just the point I wanted to make. I run to my buildings on the first, the welfare checks are out and it’s payday for the few shvoogies who work. Now, one old nigger lady shows me Time Magazine with King on the cover and says, “I don’t gots to pay no rent ’cause the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Junior says you a slumlord who is exploiting me.” This fuck two doors down demands his civil rights, which he fucking describes as “I don’t have to pay no rent until all my peoples is free.”

SDS: They’re way out of line. As a fucking race, I mean.

RML: That King’s got them hopped up. You got a whole race of overstimulated people.

SDS: Someone should clip that hump King. They should slip him a poison watermelon.

RML: We should join the Ku Klux Klan.

SDS: You’re too fat to wear a sheet.

RML: Fuck you. I’ll join anyway.

SDS: Forget it. They don’t take Italians.

RML: Why? We’re white.

(Non-applicable conversation follows.)

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 4/21/67. Listening-post report. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.

Location: Suite 301/El Encanto Hotel/Santa Barbara/listening-post-accessed.

Sirs,

During the 1st monitoring period (4/2/67–4/20/67), Subject RFK was not in residence at the target location. Subject RFK rents the suite on a yearly basis & it remains empty during his absences. The (voice-activated) mounts have thus far picked up
only the non-applicable conversations of El Encanto caretakers & other employees. Per orders, the listening post will continue to be manned full-time.

Respectfully,

SA C. W. Brundage

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 5/9/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.

Location: Card room/Grapevine Tavern/St. Louis/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Unidentified males #1 & #2, presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 1.9 minutes in progress.)

UM #1: … Klan’s willing to stand up and be counted, which means you’ve got to call them our shock troops.

UM #2: I’m for segregation, don’t get me wrong.

UM #1: St. Louis is a good example. One, it’s hillbilly. Two, it’s got lots of Catholics. I ain’t ashamed to say I’m a hillbilly, you’re sure as hell an Italian and a Catholic, we work together good ’cause you so-called Mafia guys are white men who worship Jesus just like me, which means we hate alike, too, so you got to concede that the Klan’s got some answers, and if they put their anti-Catholic shit aside you’d be the first to make some big donations.

UM #2: That is true. I sub-contract to you because you okies, no offense, think and hate like we do.

UM #1: If Nigger King walked in here right now, I’d kill him.

UM #2: I’d fight you for the right. King and Bobby Kennedy, those are the shitbirds I hate. Bobby fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked and fucked the Outfit until we had no place left to bleed. King’s doing the same thing right now. He’ll fuck this country in the keester and fuck us and fuck us and fuck us and fuck and fuck us and fuck us while the other boogies overbreed and turn this country into a welfare-state shithole.

UM #1: I’m 3rd-generation Klan. There, I said it, and you ain’t shocked. You may take your orders from Rome, but I don’t care. You’re a white man, just like me.

UM #2: Fuck you. I take my orders from a fat dago with a pinkie ring.

(Non-applicable conversation follows.)

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 5/28/67. Bug-extract transcript. Marked: “Confidential”/“Stage-1 Covert”/“Eyes Only”: Director, SA D. C. Holly.

Location: Card room/Grapevine Tavern/St. Louis/listening-post-accessed. Speaking: Norbert Donald Kling & Rowland Mark DeJohn, paroled felons (Armed Robbery/Bunco/GTA) & presumed organized-crime associates. (Conversation 3.9 minutes in progress.)

NDK: … like a kitty, I mean.

RMDJ: I get it. Guys pitch in, you watch the kitty grow.

NDK: We don’t pitch in. Guys with real coin do, until you got a big enough pot to attract a guy who can do it.

RMDJ: Right. It’s a bounty. The word goes out that it’s there, you do the job, you prove you did it, you collect.

NDK: Right. You attract a pro, and he gets away with it. It’s not like Oswald, you know, with Kennedy.

RMDJ: Oswald was a Commie and a psycho. He wanted to get caught.

NDK: Right. And people loved Kennedy.

RMDJ: Well, some people. Personally, I hated the son-of-a-bitch.

NDK: You know what I’m saying. With King you got a nigger that everyone hates. The only white people who don’t hate him are some Jews and pinkos, but every other white person knows that integration will put this country in the toilet, so you get rid of Public Nuisance Number One and nip that eventuality in the bud.

RMDJ: He’s dead, the country rejoices.

NDK: You put the word out. That’s the thing.

RMDJ: Yeah, the bounty.

NDK: We ain’t got the scratch, but there’s guys around here who do.

RMDJ: He’s begging for it.

NDK: That’s the part I like. You beg for it, you get it.

(Non-applicable conversation follows.)

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 6/14/67. 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 1 (of 19):

DEAR SENATOR KENNEDY,

I KNOW THAT YOU & THE ZIONIST WORLDWIDE PIG ORDER HAVE PUT THE PUS IN THE JEWISH CANCER MACHINE AND GAVE ME HEADACHES, NOT FALLS FROM HORSES AS DR’S BELIEVE. YOU SAY THAT ALLAH DRIVES AN IMPALA BUT I KNOW THAT THE JEWISH CONTROL APPARATUS CONTROLS AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION IN DETROIT AND BEVERLY HILLS. YOU ARE A PUS PUPPET IN THE CONTROL OF THE JEWISH VAMPIRE AND MUST STOP EMITTING HEADACHES IN THE NAME OF THE CHIEF RABBI OF LODZ AND MIAMI BEACH AND THE PROTOCOLS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION.

DOCUMENT INSERT
: 7/5/67. Hate-mail extract. Compiled by: FATHER RABBIT. Sealed and marked: “Destroy Without Reading in the Event of My Death.”

Mail sender: Anonymous. Postmark: St. Louis, Missouri. Recipient: Dr. M. L. King. From page 1 (of 1):

Dear Nigger,

You better fear the ides of July and June;
There’s going to be a bounty on you, Coon;
You’re a traitor and a Commie and an evil ape;
All you do is lie, steal and rape;
But the White Man’s wise to your evil ways;
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 the mail he picks up, since those hate-mail guys never put their return addresses on the envel—

BR: It’s redundant. The mail teams dust the incomings. Everything’s been wiped by the time he sees it.

FR: Shitfire. My boy’s a chemist. He sprays the pages with some goop called ninhydrin and brings up partial prints all the time. He said he’s working out his technique, and one of these days he’ll be able to bring up completes.

BR: Okay. He’s good. You’ve convinced me.

FR: And he’s careful.

BR: He’d better be. We do not want it known that outside eyes saw that mail.

FR: I told you. He’s care—

BR: What about prospects?

FR: None so far. All he’s got are a bunch of lunatics who sound like they’re one step ahead of the net.

BR: Bob’s got a prospect. We might not need Wayne’s help on that end.

FR: Bob should have told me. Shitfire, I’m his runner.

BR: You’re his Daddy Rabbit. There’s things he won’t tell you for just that reason.

FR: All right. You tell me.

BR: The guy escaped from the Missouri State Pen in April. Bob knew him when he worked as a guard there. They were jungled up in Bob’s right-wing foolishness.

FR: That’s all you’ve got?

BR: Bob’s pouching me a memo. I’ll forward it to you.

FR: Shit, Dwight. You know I’ve got a veto on this.

BR: Yeah, you do, and we won’t use the guy unless we both agree that he’s perfect.

FR: Come on. You owe me more—

BR: He’s on the lam. He was afraid to stay at Bob’s compound, so he split to Canada. Bob’s got a line on him. If we agree that he’s the guy, I’ll send Fred Otash up to work him.

FR: Hands-on? I thought we’d bring in some cutouts.

BR: I made Freddy lose 60 pounds. He was tall and heavy, now he’s tall and thin.

FR: He looks different.

BR: Completely. He’s Lebanese, he speaks Spanish, we can pass him off as some kind of beaner. Bob said the prospect is malleable. Freddy eats up that kind of guy.

FR: You like the guy.

BR: He’s a strong prospect. Read the memo and let me know what you think.

FR: Shit. This is taking time.

BR: All good things do.

FR: Someone might beat us to it.

BR: If they do, they do.

FR: What’s Mr. Hoover been—

BR: He’s afraid that Marty and Bobby will team up. It’s all he talks about. BLACK RABBIT’s been up in the air since the shakedown flopped. Hoover knows I’m “exploring more radical means,” but he hasn’t asked me a single question about it since I made the proposal.

FR: That means he knows what you’re planning.

BR: Maybe, maybe not. Second-guessing the old poof gets us nowhere.

FR: Dwight, Jesus.

BR: Come on. Remember what I told you? He can’t read minds and he can’t patch scrambled calls.

FR: Still.

BR: What about Durfee? Have your LAPD guys turned up anything?

FR: Nothing. They’ve got covert bulletins out, but they haven’t got a single goddamn bite.

BR: First we’ve got to find him. Then we’ve got to rig it so Wayne doesn’t know that we’re handing him up.

FR: That’s easy. We stiff a call through Sonny Liston, who’s allegedly got people out looking for Durfee, not that that impresses—

BR: I want that wedge. I’m not bringing Wayne any closer without one.

FR: I owe him Durfee. I have a debt to repay to him, and Durfee will settle it.

BR: I’ll put my sources on him. Between yours and mine, we might hit.

FR: Let’s try. I owe Wayne that.

BR: I’m glad I never had any kids. They end up killing unarmed Negroes and pushing heroin.

FR: The Gospel According to Dwight Chalfont Holly.

BR: Enough. Let’s discuss ops money.

FR: I’m in for two hundred cold. You know that.

BR: Otash wants fifty cold.

FR: I’m sure he’s worth it.

BR: Bob’s putting in a hundred.

FR: Shitfire. He hasn’t got that kind of money.

BR: Are you sitting down?

FR: Yes. Why—

BR: I was down in New Hebron. I saw Bob dipping the numbers off some flamethrowers he was getting ready to route to the Gulf. They had triple-zero prefixes, which I just happened to know designates CIA-disbursement lots. I asked Bob about it. He lied, which was the wrong thing to do under the circumstances.

FR: You’re talking Swahili, Dwight. I’ve got no idea where this is going.

BR: I leaned on Bob. He gave it up.

FR: Gave what up?

BR: His Cuban gun-running gig is nothing but a shuck. Carlos Marcello and that CIA guy John Stanton cooked it up. The guns have been going to Castro sources inside Cuba, with Marcello’s best wishes. The Outfit’s been sucking up to Castro, so he’ll help them implement some plan they’ve got to plant casinos in Latin American countries. Castro’s got juice with leftist insurgents in the countries the Outfit’s looking at, and he’s sending them the guns that Bob and the other guys smuggle in. That way, if the lefties implement takeovers in their countries, they’ll let the Outfit in. If they don’t take over, the Outfit will grease the right-wing guys still in power.

FR: I’m seeing visions, Dwight. I’m seeing all the Latter-day Saints.

BR: It gets better.

FR: It couldn’t. And you don’t need to warn me not to tell Wayne, because we both know this would drive the boy insane.

BR: The Outfit’s covered on both ends. Castro’s sacrificed X-number of Militia troops to the venture, because Bondurant, Wayne and their guys have been boating in and taking scalps with impunity. Castro’s making money, it’s worth a few Soldiers of the Revolution in the long run, it all goes to fuel the Commie agenda in Latin America.

FR: Dwight, I’m flabber—

BR: Stanton and the other CIA guys involved have been kicking back Bondurant’s dope profits to an Agency source. He’s been supplying Bob with CIA disbursement weaponry, which fucking Bob has been passing off as ordnance stolen from armory heists and Army pilferings. Stanton and Marcello have diverted millions in profit overflow, and they’ve paid Bob and these guys Laurent Guery and Flash Elorde percentage cuts to work the scam from the beginning. Only Bondurant, your son, and some guy named Mesplede think the whole thing is for real. They’re the stupes and the true believers.

FR: My lord. All the Saints and the Angel Moroni.

BR: Bob’s socked away a hundred cold. He’ll kick it into our operation, if we let him shoot or play back-up to our fall guy.

FR: I wouldn’t deny him. Not after a story like that.

BR: He’s in, then. He kept all that covert for years, so I think we can trust him.

FR: We’ve got to keep this quiet. If Bondurant or my son find out, it all hits the—

BR: I’ve got Bob’s balls. He won’t talk to anyone else.

FR: Dwight, I should …

BR: Yeah, go. Have a drink and talk to your saints.

FR: Visions, Dwight. I mean it.

BR: I almost went into civil law. Can you believe it?