Free Blood on the Moon by James Ellroy Page B

spare change, shoplifting, sleeping in parks, back yards and doorways and generally contributing to a drastic rise in misdemeanor arrests and felony arrests for possession of narcotics.
    Fear of hippie nomads was rife among solid citizen Angelenos, particularly after the Tate-LaBianca slayings were attributed to Charles Manson and his hirsute band. The L.A.P.D. was importuned to come down hard on the destitute minstrels of love; which it did–raiding hippie campgrounds, frequently stopping vehicles containing furtive-looking longhairs and generally letting them know that they were personae non gratas in Los Angeles. The results were satisfying–there was a general hippie move toward eschewing outdoor living and “cooling it.” Then five longhaired young men were shot to death on the streets in Hollywood over a period of three weeks.
    Sergeant Arthur “Dutch” Peltz, then a forty-one year old Homicide detective, was assigned to the case. He had very little to work on, except a strong instinct that the murders of the unacquainted young men were drug related and that the so-called “ritual markings” on their bodies–an xed out letter H–were put there as subterfuge.
    Investigation into the recent pasts of the victims proved fruitless; they were transients existing in a subculture of transients. Dutch Peltz was baffled. He was also an intellectual given to contemplative pursuits, so he decided to take his two-week vacation smack in the middle of his case. He came back from fishing in Oregon clearheaded, spiritually renewed, and pleased to find that there were no new victims of the “Hippie Hunter,” as the press had dubbed him. But dire things were happening in Los Angeles. The basin had been flooded with a particularly high-quality Mexican brown heroin, its source unknown. Instinct told Dutch Peltz that the heroin onslaught and the murders were connected. But he didn’t have the slightest idea how.
    On a cold night around this time, Officer Lloyd Hopkins told his partner he was hungry for sweets, and suggested they stop at a market or liquor store for cookies or cupcakes. His partner shook his head; nothing open this late except Donut Despair, he said. Lloyd weighed the pros and cons of a raging sweet-tooth versus the world’s worst donuts served up by either sullen or obsequious wetbacks.
    His sweet-tooth won, but there were no wetbacks. Lloyd’s jaw dropped as he took a seat at the counter. Donut Despair (or Donut Deelite, open all nite!), as it was known to the world at large, hired nothing but illegal aliens at all its locations. It was the policy of the chain’s owner, Morris Dreyfus, a former gangland czar, to employ illegals and pay them below the minimum wage, but make up the difference by providing them with flop-out space at his many Southside tenements. Now this!
    Lloyd watched as a sullen hippie youth placed a cup of coffee and three glazed donuts in front of him, then retreated to a back room, leaving the counter untended. He then heard furtive whispers, followed by the slamming of a back door and the starting of a car engine. The hippie counterman reappeared a moment later and couldn’t meet Lloyd’s eyes; and Lloyd knew it was more than his blue uniform. He knew something was wrong.
    The following day, armed with a copy of the Los Angeles Yellow Pages, Lloyd, in civilian clothes, made a circuit of over twenty Donut Despairs, to find the counters manned by longhaired white men at all locations. Twice he sat down and ordered coffee, letting the counterman see–as if by accident–his off-duty .38. In both instances the reaction was cold, stark terror.
    Dope, Lloyd said to himself as he drove home that night. Dope. Dope. But. But any streetwise fool would know that anyone as big as I am, with my short haircut and square look is a cop. Those two kids made me for one the second I walked in the door. But it was my gun that scared them.
    It