by James Ellroy
The new Bulldogs were multiracial and bi-gender. They were up against high-tech murder and public accountability and racial polarization and overpopulation and a jurisdiction in gradual decline. The old Bulldogs were white men with bottles in their desks. The odds were stacked in their favor. They were up against low-tech murder in a stratified and segregated society. Everybody respected them or feared them. They could employ coercive methods with impunity. They could work a dual-world scheme without the fear of dual-world overlap. They could work murders in Niggertown or wetback El Monte and go home to the safe world where they stashed their families. They were bright men and driven men and men susceptible to the fleshpot temptations of their on-duty world. They were bright men. They weren’t prescient thinkers or dystopian futurists. They couldn’t predict that their on-duty world would swallow their safe world one day. There were 14 Bulldogs in 1958. There were 140 today. The increased number said there was no place to hide. The increased number contextualized my old horror. It implied that my old horror still packed some clout. My old horror lived in pre-tech memories. The Blonde told people. Barstool talk was still floating around. Memories meant names.
The holidays ended. Helen went home. Bill and I went back to work.
Chief Clayton gave us some names. The El Monte Museum director gave us some names. We checked them out. They went nowhere. We hit the two El Monte bars still in operation since 1958. They were redneck joints then. They were Latin joints now. They’d changed hands a dozen times. We tried to trace the ownerships back to ’58. We ran into missing records. We ran into missing names.
We chased names around the San Gabriel Valley. People moved to the San Gabriel Valley and rarely moved out. Sometimes they moved to skunk towns like Colton and Fontana. Bill made me drive every day. Freeway driving made him retire. I made him unretire. This meant I had to play chauffeur. This meant I had to stand abuse for my poor driving skills.
We drove. We talked. We spun off our case and encapsulated the whole criminal world. We drove freeways and surface streets. Bill pointed out body dump locales and riffed on his old cases. I described my pathetic crime exploits. Bill described his patrol years with picaresque zeal. We both worshipped testosterone overload. We both reveled in tales of male energy displaced. We both saw through it. We both knew it killed my mother. Bill saw my mother’s death in full-blown context. I loved him for it.
It rained like a motherfucker all through January. We sat out rush-hour traffic and freeway floods. We hit the Pacific Dining Car and ate big steak dinners. We talked. I started to see how much we both hated sloth and disorder. I lived it for 20 years solid. Bill lived it once-removed as a cop. Sloth and disorder could be sensual and seductive. We both knew it. We both understood the rush. It came back to testosterone. You had to control. You had to assert. It got crazy and forced you to capitulate and surrender. Cheap pleasure was a damnable temptation. Booze and dope and random sex gave you back a cheap version of the power you set out to relinquish. They destroyed your will to live a decent life. They sparked crime. They destroyed social contracts. The time-lost/time-regained dynamic taught me that. Pundits blamed crime on poverty and racism. They were right. I saw crime as a concurrent moral plague with entirely empathetic origins. Crime was male energy displaced. Crime was a mass yearning for ecstatic surrender. Crime was romantic yearning gone bad. Crime was the sloth and disorder of individual default on an epidemic scale. Free will existed. Human beings were better than lab rats reacting to stimuli. The world was a fucked-up place. We were all accountable anyway.
I knew it. Bill knew it. He tempered his knowledge with a greater sense of charity than I did. I judged myself harshly and passed the standards of my self-judgment on to other people. Bill believed in mitigation more than I did. He wanted me to extend a sense of mitigation to my mother.
He thought I was too hard on her. He liked my partner-to-partner candor and disliked my lack of son-to-mother sentimentality. I said I was trying to contain her presence. I was running a dialogue on her. It was mostly internal. My external mode was all critique and mock-objective appraisal. She took full flight inside me. She vexed me and vamped me. I put on a white smock and addressed her publicly as a clinician. I voiced blunt comments to provoke blunt responses. We had a two-faced relationship. We were like illicit lovers living in two worlds.
I knew Bill was falling for her. It wasn’t a hard spill like the one he took for Phyllis “Bunny” Krauch. It wasn’t a resurrection fantasy. It didn’t play like his longing to see Tracy Stewart and Karen Reilly exhumed beyond victimhood. He was falling into the redhead’s blank spaces. He wanted to solve the riddle of her character as much as he wanted to find her killer.
We drove. We talked. We chased names. We went off on anthropological tangents. We hit the car lot across the street from the Desert Inn site. We took some names and traced the ownership back to ’58. The old owner’s son owned a Toyota franchise. He gave us four names. We traced two to the morgue and two to car lots in Azusa and Covina. Bill had a hunch that the Swarthy Man was a car salesman. We worked that hunch for ten days straight. We talked to a shitload of old car salesmen. They were all fossilized locals.
None of them remembered our case. None of them remembered the rockin’ Desert Inn. None of them ever noshed at Stan’s Drive-ln. They did not look like clean-living men. Most of them looked downright sodden. They all denied knowledge of the freewheeling El Monte bar scene.
We drove. We talked. We chased names. We rarely strayed out of the San Gabriel Valley. Every new lead and tangent brought us straight back. I learned all the freeway routes from Duarte to Rosemead to Covina and up to Glendora. I learned surface street routes in and out of El Monte. We always passed through El Monte. It was the shortest route to the 10 freeway east and the 605 freeway south. El Monte became dead familiar. The Desert Inn became Valenzuela’s. The food was bad. The service was indifferent. It was a slop chute with a mariachi band. Repetition killed the joint for me. It lost its shock value and charm. It did not exist to chaperone me on mental dates with my mother. There was only one magnetic force field left in El Monte. It was King’s Row by night.
They shut me out sometimes. I’d drive up around midnight and find the gate locked. King’s Row was a high-school access road. It did not exist to reinject me with horror.
I’d find the gate open sometimes. I’d drive in and park with my lights out. I’d sit there. I’d get scared. I’d imagine all sorts of 1995 horror and sit still waiting for it. I wanted to put myself at physical risk in her name. I wanted to feel her fear in this place. I wanted her fear to meld with mine and transmogrify. I wanted to scare myself into a heightened awareness and come away with lucid new perceptions.
My fear always peaked and diminished. I never quite scared myself all the way back to that night.
The L.A. Weekly came out. The Ellroy-Stoner piece was beautifully executed. It laid out the Ellroy and Long cases in significant detail. It emphasized the Blonde. It omitted the fact that my mother was strangled with two ligatures. It stated that she was strangled with a silk stocking only. The omission was crucial. It would help us eliminate false confessions and confirm legitimate ones. The true facts were already published in GQ and in old newspaper accounts. The LA. Weekly omission was a stopgap measure.
They printed our tip-line number in bold black type.
Calls came in. I kept my answering machine on 24 hours a day. I played my messages periodically and logged in the precise time that each call hit the line. Bill said 1-800 phone bills identified all incoming phone numbers. We could log in the time suspicious calls arrived and trace the callers through our monthly bills.
Forty-two people called and hung up the first day. Two psychics called and solicited business. A man called and said he could throw a seance and summon up my mother’s spirit for a nominal fee. A movie-biz fuckhead called and said he saw my life as a big-budget feature. A woman called and said her father killed my mother. Four people called and said O. J. Simpson did it.
An old buddy called and hit me up for a loan.
Twenty-nine people called and hung up the next day. Four psychics called. Two people called and snitched off O.J. Nine people called and wished me good luck. A woman called and said my books were sexy and let’s get together. A man called and said my books were racist and homophobic. Three women called and said their fathers might have killed my mother. Two of them said their fathers molested them.
The calls continued.
We got more hang-ups and more O.J. calls. We got more psychic calls and more good-luck calls. We got two calls from women with repressed memory syndrome. They said their fathers abused them. They said their fathers might have killed my mother. We got three calls from one woman. She said her father killed my mother and the Black Dahlia.
Nobody called and said they knew the Blonde. Nobody called and said they knew my mother. No old cops called and said, I popped that swarthy motherfucker.
The call count dropped day by day. I cut down our callback list. I crossed off the nuts and the psychics and the Black Dahlia lady. Bill called the other women who snitched off their fathers and asked them some make-or-break questions.
Their answers cleared their fathers. Their fathers were too young. Their fathers were in prison in 1958. Their fathers did not look like the Swarthy Man.
The women wanted to talk. Bill said he’d listen. Six women told the same story. Their fathers beat up their mothers. Their fathers molested them. Their fathers blew the rent money. Their fathers skeeved on underaged females. Their fathers were dead or atrociously booze-impaired.
The fathers ran to a type. The women ran to a type. They were middle-aged and in therapy. They defined themselves in therapeutic terms. They lived therapy and talked therapy and used therapeutic jargon to express their sincere belief that their fathers really could have killed my mother. Bill taped three interviews. I listened to them. I believed every specific sex-abuse indictment. The women were betrayed and abused. They knew their fathers were rapists and killers at heart. They thought that therapy gave them preternatural insights. They were victims. They saw the world in victim-predator terms. They saw me as a victim. They wanted to create victim-predator families. They wanted to claim me as a brother and anoint my mother and their fathers as our dysfunctional parents. They thought the traumatic force that shaped their insights superseded plain logic. It didn’t matter that their fathers did not look like the Swarthy Man. The Swarthy Man could have dropped my mother off at the Desert Inn. Their fathers could have snatched her in the parking lot. Their grief was all-inclusive. They wanted to take it public. They were writing the oral history of ravaged kids in our time. They wanted to include my story. They were evangelical recruiters.
They moved me and scared me. I replayed the tapes and nailed the source of my fear. The women sounded smug. They were entrenched and content in their victimhood.
The tip-line calls died out. The Day One producer called me. He said they couldn’t run our 1-800 number. It violated their Standards and Practices Code. The on-camera host would drop a few words at the end of our segment. He’d tell potential tipsters to call Sheriff’s Homicide. He would not include the Sheriff’s Homicide phone number.
I was pissed. Bill was pissed. The code restriction fucked up our access to nationwide information. Sheriff’s Homicide was not a toll-free number. Hinky people would call a 1-800 line. Hinky people would not call the fuzz. Poor people and cheap people would call a 1-800 line. Poor people and cheap people would not call long-distance.
Bill predicted 500 tip-line calls. He predicted 10 calls to Sheriffs Homicide.
I spent a week alone with the Jean Ellroy file. I read all the reports and note slips 14 dozen times. I zeroed in on one little detail.
Airtek Dynamics belonged to the Pachmyer Group. Pachmyer and Packard-Bell were phonetically similar. I thought my mother worked at Packard-Bell up to June ’58. The Blue Book said no. I might have dreamed up Packard-Bell 40 years ago. It might be a dyslexic memory glitch.
Bill and I discussed the point. He said we should contact my relatives in Wisconsin. Uncle Ed and Aunt Leoda might still be alive. They could settle the Packard-Bell point. They might have some names. They might have my mother’s funeral book. It might have some names in it. I said I talked to the Wagners in ’78. I called Leoda and apologized for all the times I scammed her. We argued. She said my cousins Jeannie and Janet were married and why wasn’t I? She patronized me. She said caddy work didn’t sound very challenging.
I blew the Wagners off right then. I blew them off permanently. I told Bill I didn’t want to contact them now. He said, You’re scared. You don’t want to revive Lee Ellroy for even two seconds. I said, You’re right.
We chased names. We found a 90-year-old woman. She was spry and lucid. She knew El Monte. She gave us some names. We traced them back to the morgue.
I spent two weeks alone with the Ellroy and Long files. I inventoried every note on every slip of paper. My inventory ran 61 pages. I Xeroxed a copy and gave it to Bill.
I found another crumpled note we both overlooked. It was a canvassing note. I recognized Bill Vickers’ handwriting. Vickers talked to a waitress at the Mama Mia Restaurant. She saw my mother at the restaurant “about 8:00 p.m.” Saturday night. She was alone. She stood in the doorway and checked the place out “like she was looking for someone.”
I went over my inventory. I found a companion note. It said that Vickers called the Mama Mia waitress. She mentioned a redheaded woman. Vickers said he’d bring a photo of the victim in. The note I just found was the follow-up note. The waitress looked at the photo. She said the redheaded woman was my mother.
It was a major reconstructive lead.
My mother was “looking for someone.” Bill and I extrapolated that “someone.” She was looking for the Blonde and/or the Swarthy Man. At least one relationship existed prior to that night.
The Day One show aired. The Ellroy-Stoner segment was punchy and straight to the point. The director squeezed the story into ten minutes’ screen time. He got the Blonde in. He showed the Identi-Kit portraits of the Swarthy Man. Diane Sawyer told potential tipsters to call Sheriffs Homicide.
The Black Dahlia lady called. Four more women called and said their fathers could have killed my mother. A man called and snitched off his father. A man called and snitched off his father-in-law. We called the callers. Their information played out 100% bogus.
I spent another week with the Ellroy and Long files. I forged no new connections. Bill cleared out his desk at the Bureau. He found an envelope marked Z-483-362.
It contained:
A name-and-address calling card for John Howell of Van Nuys, California.
Jean Ellroy’s car payment book. She sent her last payment in on 6/5/58. Her payments ran $85.58 a month.
A canceled check for $15. The check was dated 4/15/58. Jean Ellroy signed the check on her 43rd birthday A man named Charles Bellavia endorsed it.
A sheet of paper with a gummed scratch-pad border and a note on one side. The note read: “Nikola Zaha. Vic’s boyfriend? Whittier.”
We ran the new names through the DMV and DOJ computers. We got no DOJ hits. We got no DMV hit on Zaha. We got DMV hits on John Howell and Charles Bellavia. They were old men now. Bellavia lived in West L.A. Howell lived in Van Nuys. Bellavia was a rare name. We figured we had the right guy. We knew we had the right John Howell. His current address was a few digits off his calling card address.
We checked the reverse book for Zahas. We found two in Whittier. Zaha was a rare name. Whittier adjoined the San Gabriel Valley. The two Zahas were probably related to our Zaha.
I remembered my mother’s old boyfriend Hank Hart. I found them in bed together. Hank Hart had one thumb. I found my mother in bed with another man. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know the name Nikola Zaha.
Nikola Zaha might be a crucial witness. He might explain my mother’s precipitous move to El Monte.
Bill and I drove out to Van Nuys. We found John
Howell’s house. The door was wide open. We found Howell and his wife in the kitchen. A nurse was preparing their lunch.
Mr. Howell was hooked up to a respirator. Mrs. Howell was sitting in a wheelchair. They were old and frail. They looked like they wouldn’t live much longer.
We talked to them gently. The nurse ignored us. We explained our situation and asked them to think back a ways. Mrs. Howell made the first connection. She said her mother was my old babysitter. Her mother died fifteen years ago. She was 88. I fought for the woman’s name and snagged it.
Ethel Ings. Married to Tom Ings. Welsh immigrants. Ethel worshipped my mother. Ethel and Tom were in Europe in June ’58. My mother drove them to the Queen Mary, My father called Ethel and told her my mother was dead. Ethel was distraught.
Mr. Howell said he remembered me. My name was Lee— not James. The cops found his calling card at my mother’s house. They questioned him. They got pretty raw.
The nurse pointed to her wristwatch and held up two fingers. Bill leaned toward me. He said, “Names.”
I saw an address book on the kitchen table. I asked Mr. Howell if I could look through it. He nodded yes. I looked through the book. I recognized one name.
Eula Lee Lloyd. Our next-door neighbor—circa ’54. Eula Lee was married to a man named Harry Lloyd. She lived in North Hollywood now. I memorized her address and phone number.
