James Ellroy_Underworld U.S.A. 03 by Blood's a Rover

convinced the guards that it was real. The robbery gang knew what the armored car would be transporting, and we’ve never determined exactly how they got that information. More importantly, we’ve never determined whether the heist gang was comprised of white men or Negroes.”
    Sergeant Bennett sipped coffee and continued. “The heist was conceived and executed boldly,” he said. “And I believe that the leader of the gang decided beforehand to kill his underlings at the scene and obscure their identities, and their races, by burning their bodies past recognition. All fine and good, but obscuring racial identification requires more than burning the surface of the skin, and the man first dosed the bodies with a chemical accelerant that greatly enhanced the tissue damage of the burning. We’ve never been able to identify the chemical that he used, which is another reason why the heist has remained such a baffler.”
    Some other reasons?
    â€œWell,” Sergeant Bennett said, “we know that many of the cash stacks stolen from the armored car were wrapped with ink-exploding bands, and ink spill was found at the crime scene. Also, ink-stained bills have surfaced periodically in south Los Angeles, so I’m convinced that there was at least a partial Negro component to the gang. Also, the origin of the emeralds remains undetermined. It was a very valuable cargo, and intermediaries for the consigner and the consignee signed secrecy waivers with Wells Fargo, which has impeded the investigation.”
    And the persistent rumor that the emeralds hailed from Central America or the Caribbean?
    Sergeant Bennett said, “Just that, a rumor. Entirely unsubstantiated.”
    And the rumor that black-militant organizations plotted and executed the heist?
    Scotty Bennett laughed heartily. “Why mince words? Black militants are grandstanders who always claim credit for their deeds. The Panthers and US are informant-infiltrated, and we would have picked up leads by now. We’ve got two rowdy militant groups causing woo-woo in L.A. now, the Black Tribe Alliance and the Mau-Mau Liberation Front, but for the life of me I can’t see them executing anything more complex than a liquor-store job or a purse snatch.”
    And the leader of the gang? The ruthless mastermind who killed his own men at the scene?
    Scotty Bennett laughed even more heartily. “Tell him this,” he said. “When I let that buckshot go, there’s no taking it back.”
    DOCUMENT INSERT : 7/27/68. Internal FBI memorandum. Marked: “ Stage-1 Covert”/“Director’s Eyes Only”/“Destroy After Reading .” To: Director Hoover. From: SA Dwight C. Holly.
    Sir,
    The following states the design and goals of our COINTELPRO aimed at discrediting and disrupting the black-militant movement at large and more circumscribed and localized black-nationalist groups in specific. Pending your approval, I have named the program OPERATION BAAAAD BROTHER . It is a nod to our less-than-successful OPERATION BLACK RABBIT and ironically celebrates the Negro verbal tic of using “bad” to mean “good.” Male Negroes often address each other as “brother,” which I thought you mightappreciate. As I’m sure you know, a Negro extremist group called the “Black Nationalists of New Libya” precipitated racial violence in Cleveland, Ohio, this past week that left eleven dead, including three white policemen. This is the perfect time to initiate a physically small-scaled COINTELPRO that may well achieve large-scale national results.
    It is my firm belief that both the BLACK PANTHER PARTY (BPP) and the UNITED SLAVES (US) are too well known and well infiltrated already. I believe that our goals would be better served by operating the Los Angeles–based BLACK TRIBE ALLIANCE (BTA) and MAU-MAU LIBERATION FRONT (MMLF). Our COINTELPRO could put them on the map and wholly discredit them