BY JAMES ELLROY
THE UNDERWORLD U.S.A. TRILOGY
American Tabloid
The Cold Six Thousand
Blood’s A Rover
THE L.A. QUARTET
The Black Dahlia
The Big Nowhere
L.A. Confidential
White Jazz
MEMOIR
My Dark Places
SHORT STORIES
Hollywood Nocturnes
JOURNALISM/SHORT FICTION
Crime Wave
Destination: Morgue!
EARLY NOVELS
Brown’s Requiem
Clandestine
Blood on the Moon
Because the Night
Suicide Hill
Killer on the Road
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by James Ellroy
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
A portion of this work originally appeared in Playboy.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ellroy, James, [date]
Blood’s a rover / by James Ellroy.—1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-27303-1
1. Nineteen sixties—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. 3. Noir fiction. 4. Political fiction. I. Title.
PS3555.L6274B57 2009
813’.54—dc22 2009024460
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
v3.1
To
J.M.
Comrade: For Everything You Gave Me
Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not keep.
Up, lad: when the journey’s over
There’ll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman
THEN
Los Angeles, 2/24/64
SUDDENLY:
The milk truck cut a sharp right turn and grazed the curb. The driver lost the wheel. He panic-popped the brakes. He induced a rear-end skid. A Wells Fargo armored car clipped the milk truck side/head-on.
Mark it now:
7:16 a.m. South L.A., 84th and Budlong. Residential darktown. Shit shacks with dirt front yards.
The jolt stalled out both vehicles. The milk truck driver hit the dash. The driver’s side door blew wide. The driver keeled and hit the sidewalk. He was a fortyish male Negro.
The armored car notched some hood dents. Three guards got out and scoped the damage. They were white men in tight khakis. They wore Sam Browne belts with buttoned pistol flaps.
They knelt beside the milk truck driver. The guy twitched and gasped. The dashboard bounce gouged his forehead. Blood dripped into his eyes.
Mark it now:
7:17 a.m. Winter overcast. This quiet street. No foot traffic. No car-crash hubbub yet.
The milk truck heaved. The radiator blew. Steam hissed and spread wide. The guards coughed and wiped their eyes. Three men got out of a ’62 Ford parked two curb lengths back.
They wore masks. They wore gloves and crepe-soled shoes. They wore utility belts with gas bombs in pouches. They were long-sleeved and buttoned up. Their skin color was obscured.
Steam covered them. They walked up and pulled silencered pieces. The guards coughed. It supplied sound cover. The milk truck driver pulled a silencered piece and shot the nearest guard in the face.
The noise was a thud. The guard’s forehead exploded. The two other guards fumble-grabbed at their holsters. The masked men shot them in the back. They buckled and pitched foreword. The masked men shot them in the head point-blank. The thuds and skull crack muffle-echoed.
It’s 7:19 a.m. It’s still quiet. There’s no foot traffic and car-crash hubbub yet.
Noise now—two gunshots plus loud echoes. Muzzle flare, weird-shaped, blasts from the armored car’s gun slit.
The shots ricocheted off the pavement. The masked men and the milk truck driver threw themselves prone. They rolled toward the armored car. It blitzed firing range. Four more shots popped. Four plus two—one revolver load.
Masked Man #1 was tall and thin. Masked Man #2 was midsized. Masked Man #3 was heavyset. It’s 7:20 a.m. There’s still no foot traffic. This big blimp up in the sky trailed department-store banners.
Masked Man #1 stood up and crouched under the gun slit. He pulled a gas bomb from his pouch and yanked the top. Fumes sputtered. He stuffed the bomb in the gun slit. The guard inside shrieked and retched very loud. The back door crashed outward. The guard jumped and hit the pavement on his knees. He bled from the nose and the mouth. Masked Man #2 shot him twice in the head.
The milk truck driver put on a gas mask. The masked men put gas masks on over their face masks. Gas whooshed out the back door. Masked Man #1 popped gas bomb #2 and lobbed it inside.
The fumes flared and settled into acid mist—red, pink, transparent. A street hubbub started perking. There’s some window peeps, some open doors, some colored folks on their porches.
It’s 7:22 a.m. The fumes have dispersed. There’s no second guard inside.
Now they go in.
They fit tight. It was a cramped space. Cash bags and attaché cases were stacked in wall racks. Masked Man #1 made the count: sixteen bags and fourteen cases.
They grabbed. Masked Man #2 had a burlap bag stuffed down his pants. He pulled it out and held it open.
They grabbed. They stuffed the bag. One attaché case snapped open. They saw mounds of plastic-wrapped emeralds.
Masked Man #3 opened a cash bag. A C-note roll poked out. He tugged on the bank tab. Ink jets sprayed him and hit his mask holes. He got ink in his mouth and ink in his eyes.
He gasped, he spit ink, he rubbed his eyes and tripped out the door. He shit in his pants and stood around flailing. Masked Man #1 stepped clear of the door and shot him twice in the back.
It’s 7:24 a.m. Now there’s hubbub. It’s a jungle din confined to porches.
Masked Man #1 walked toward it. He pulled four gas bombs, popped the tops and lobbed them. He threw left and right. Fumes rose up red, pink and transparent. Acid sky, mini–storm front, rainbow. The porch fools whooped and coughed and ran inside their shacks.
The milk truck driver and Masked Man #2 stuffed four burlap bags tight. They got the full load: all thirty cash sacks and cases. They walked to the ’62 Ford. Masked Man #1 opened the trunk. They dumped the bags in.
7:26 a.m.
A breeze kicked up. Wind swirled the gas clouds into wild fusing colors. The milk truck driver and Masked Man #2 gawked through their goggles.
Masked Man #1 stepped in front of them. They got pissy—Say what?—don’t block the light show. Masked Man #1 shot them both in the face. Slugs blew up their goggle glass and gas-mask tubes and doused their lights in a second.
Mark it now:
7:27 a.m. Four dead guards, three dead heist men. Pink gas clouds. Acid fallout. Fumes turning shrubs gray-malignant.
Masked Man #1 opened the driver’s side door and reached under the seat. Right there: a blowtorch and a brown bag stuffed with scald-on-contact pellets. The pellets looked like a bird feed/jelly bean hybrid.
He worked slow.
He walked to Masked Man #3. He dropped pellets on his back and stuffed pellets in his mouth. He tapped his blowtorch and blazed the body. He walked to the milk truck driver and Mas
ked Man #2. He dropped pellets on their backs and stuffed pellets in their mouths and blowtorched their bodies.
The sun was way up now. The gas fumes caught rays and made a small stretch of sky one big prism. Masked Man #1 drove away, southbound.
He got there first. He always did. He bootjacked niggertown robbery squawks off patrol frequencies. He packed his own multiband squawk box.
He parked by the armored car and the milk truck. He looked down the street. He saw some coons eyeballing the carnage. The air stung. His first guess: gas bombs and a faked collision.
The coons saw him. They evinced their standard “Oh shit” looks. He heard sirens. The overlap said six or seven units. Newton and 77th Street—two divisions rolling out. He had three minutes to look.
He saw the four dead guards. He saw two scorched dead men near the east curb back a few car lengths.
He ignored the guards. He checked out the burned men. They were deep-scorched down to crackle skin, with their clothes swirled in. His first guess: instant double cross. Let’s fuck up IDs on expendable partners.
The sirens whirred closer. A kid down the street waved at him. He bowed and waved back.
He had the gestalt already. Some shit you wait your whole life for. When it lands, you know.
He was a big man. He wore a tweed suit and a tartan bow tie. Little 14’s were stitched into the silk. He’d shot and killed fourteen armed robbers.
NOW
AMERICA:
I window-peeped four years of our History. It was one long mobile stakeout and kick-the-door-in shakedown. I had a license to steal and a ticket to ride.
I followed people. I bugged and tapped and caught big events in ellipses. I remained unknown. My surveillance links the Then to the Now in a never-before-revealed manner. I was there. My reportage is buttressed by credible hearsay and insider tattle. Massive paper trails provide verification. This book derives from stolen public files and usurped private journals. It is the sum of personal adventure and forty years of scholarship. I am a literary executor and an agent provocateur. I did what I did and saw what I saw and learned my way through to the rest of the story.
Scripture-pure veracity and scandal-rag content. That conjunction gives it its sizzle. You carry the seed of belief within you already. You recall the time this narrative captures and sense conspiracy. I am here to tell you that it is all true and not at all what you think.
You will read with some reluctance and capitulate in the end. The following pages will force you to succumb.
I am going to tell you everything.
THEN
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Part I - Cluster Fuck
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Part II - Shit Magnet
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Part III - Zombie Zone
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Part IV - Coon Cartel
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Chapter 101
Chapter 103
Chapter 104
Part V - Throwdown Gun
Chapter 105
Chapter 106
Chapter 107
Chapter 108
Chapter 109
Chapter 110
Chapter 111
Chapter 112
Chapter 113
Chapter 114
Chapter 115
Chapter 116
Chapter 117
Chapter 118
Part VI - Comrade Joan
Chapter 119
Chapter 120
Chapter 121
Chapter 122
Chapter 123
Chapter 124
Chapter 125
Chapter 126
Chapter 127
Chapter 128
Chapter 129
Chapter 130
Chapter 131
A Note About the Author
Part I
CLUSTER FUCK
June 14, 1968–September 11, 1968
1
Wayne Tedrow Jr.
(Las Vegas, 6/14/68)
HEROIN:
He’d rigged a lab in his hotel suite. Beakers, vats and Bunsen burners filled up wall shelves. A three-burner hot plate juked small-batch conversions. He was cooking painkiller-grade product. He hadn’t cooked dope since Saigon.
A comp suite at the Stardust, vouchered by Carlos Marcello. Carlos knew that Janice had terminal cancer and that he had chemistry skills.
Wayne mixed morphine clay with ammonia. A two-minute heating loosened mica chips and silt. He boiled water to 182°. He added acetic anhydride and reduced the bond proportions. The boil sluiced out organic waste.
Precipitants next—the slow-cook process—diacetyl morph and sodium carbonate.
Wayne mixed, measured and ran two hot plates low. He glanced around the suite. The maid left a newspaper out. The headlines were all him.
Wayne Senior’s death by “heart attack.” James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan in stir.
His front-page ink. No mention of him. Carlos had chilled out Wayne Senior. Mr. Hoover chilled out the backwash on the King/Bobby hits.
Wayne watched diacetyl mass build. His blend would semi-anesthetize Janice. He was bucking for a big job with Howard Hughes. Hughes was addicted to pharmaceutical narcotics. He could cook him up a private blend and
take it to his interview.
The mass settled into cubes and rose out of the liquid. Wayne saw photos of Ray and Sirhan on page two. He’d worked on the King hit. He’d worked it high up. Freddy Otash ran fall guy Ray for King and fall guy Sirhan for Bobby.
The phone rang. Wayne grabbed it. Scrambler clicks hit the line. It had to be a Fed safe phone and Dwight Holly.
“It’s me, Dwight.”
“Did you kill him?”
“Yes.”
“ ‘Heart attack,’ shit. ‘Sudden stroke’ would have been better.”
Wayne coughed. “Carlos is handling it personally. He can frost out anything around here.”
“I do not want Mr. Hoover going into a tizzy over this.”
“It’s chilled. The question is, ‘What about the others?’ ”
Dwight said, “There’s always conspiracy talk. Bump off a public figure and that kind of shit tends to bubble. Freddy ran Ray covertly and Sirhan up front, but he lost weight and altered his appearance. All in all, I’d say we’re chilled on both of them.”
Wayne watched his dope cook. Dwight spieled more news. Freddy O. bought the Golden Cavern Casino. Pete Bondurant sold it to him.
“We’re chilled, Dwight. Tell me we’re chilled and convince me.”
Dwight laughed. “You sound a little raw, kid.”
“I’m stretched a bit thin, yeah. Patricide’s funny that way.”
Dwight yukked. The dope pots started boiling. Wayne doused the heat and looked at his desk photo.
It’s Janice Lukens Tedrow, lover/ex-stepmom. It’s ’61. She’s twisting at the Dunes. She’s sans partner, she’s lost a shoe, a dress seam has ripped.
Dwight said, “Hey, are you there?”
“I’m here.”
“I’m glad to hear it. And I’m glad to hear we’re chilled on your end.”
Wayne stared at the picture. “My father was your friend. You’re going in pretty light with the judgment.”
“Shit, kid. He sent you to Dallas.”
Big D. November ’63. He was there that Big Weekend. He caught the Big Moment and took this Big Ride.
He was a sergeant on Vegas PD. He was married. He had a chemistry degree. His father was a big Mormon fat cat. Wayne Senior was jungled up all over the nut Right. He did Klan ops for Mr. Hoover and Dwight Holly. He pushed high-line hate tracts. He rode the far-Right zeitgeist and stayed in the know. He knew about the JFK hit. It was multi-faction: Cuban exiles, rogue CIA, mob. Senior bought Junior a ticket to ride.