by James Ellroy
The nurse tapped her watch. Mrs. Howell was shaking. Mr. Howell was gasping for breath. Bill and I said goodbye. The nurse showed us out and slammed the door behind us.
I got a glimpse of my own flawed memory. I didn’t remember Eula Lee Lloyd. I didn’t remember Ethel and Tom Ings. The investigation was nine months old. My memory gaps might be impeding our progress. I retrieved a memory. I went to the boat with Ethel and Tom and my mother. It was late May or early June ’58. I thought I had that time microscopically framed. I thought I had every detail culled for analysis. The Howells taught me otherwise. My mother could have said things. My mother could have done things. She could have mentioned people. The cops questioned me and requestioned me. They wanted to trap my recent memories. I had to trap my old memories. I had to split myself in two. The 47-year-old man had to interrogate the 10-year-old boy. She lived in my purview. I had to live with her again. I had to exert extreme mental pressure and go at our shared past. I had to place my mother in fictional settings and try to mine real memories through symbolic expression. I had to relive my incestuous fantasies and contextualize them and embellish them past the shame and the sense of boundary that always restricted them. I had to shack up with my mother. I had to lie down in the dark with her and go—
I wasn’t ready yet. I had to clear a block of time first. I had to track down Lloyd, Bellavia and Zaha and see where they took me. I wanted to go at my mother with a full load of recollective ammo. The Beckett trial was coming up. Bill would be at the prosecution table all day every day. I wanted to see the trial. I wanted to look at Daddy Beckett and put a hex on his worthless soul. I wanted to see Tracy Stewart get her altogether too late and unsatisfactory vengeance. Bill said the trial would probably last two weeks. It would probably conclude in late July or August. I could shack with the redhead then.
We had three hot names. We chased them full-time.
We called Eula Lee Lloyd and got no answer. We knocked on her door and got no answer. We called her and knocked on her door for three days straight and got no answers. We talked to the landlady. She said Eula Lee was holed up with a sick sister somewhere. We explained our situation. She said she’d talk to Eula Lee sooner or later. She’d tell her we wanted to chat. Bill gave her his home number. She said she’d be in touch.
We knocked on Charles Bellavia’s door. His wife answered. She said Charles went to the store. Charles had a heart condition. He took a little walk every day. Bill showed her the canceled check. He said the woman who wrote the check was murdered two months later. He asked her why Charles Bellavia endorsed the check. She said it wasn’t Charles’ signature. I didn’t believe her. Bill didn’t believe her.
She told us to go away. We tried to sweet-talk her. She didn’t buy our act. Bill touched my arm to say back-off-now.
We backed off. Bill said he’d shoot the check to the El Monte PD. Tom Armstrong and John Eckler could brace Old Man Bellavia.
We chased Nikola Zaha.
We drove out to Whittier and hit our first Zaha address. A teenaged girl was home alone. She said Nikola was her grandfather. He died a long time ago. The other local Zaha was her uncle’s divorced wife.
We drove to the other Zaha address and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. We drove to the El Monte Station and dropped the check off with Armstrong and Eckler.
We drove back to Orange County and broke it off for the day. I drove to a Home Depot store and bought another cork-board. I mounted it on my bedroom wall.
I drew a Saturday night/Sunday morning time graph. It started at 756 Maple at 8:00 p.m. It ended at Arroyo High at 10:10 a.m. I placed my mother around Five Points hour by hour. I drew question marks to note her blocks of unaccountable time. I set her death at 3:15 a.m. I pinned the graph to the board. I tacked up a graphic crime scene shot at 3:20 a.m.
I stared at the graph for a good two hours. Bill called. He said he’d talked to Nikola Zaha’s son and ex-daughter-in-law. They said Zaha died in ’63. He was in his early 40s. He had a heart attack. He was a big drunk and a big pussy hound. He was an engineer. He worked at a bunch of manufacturing plants near downtown L.A. He might have worked at Airtek Dynamics. The son and his ex did not know the name Jean Ellroy. The son said his dad was a discreet pussy hound. Bill got two descriptions of Zaha. He looked antithetical to the Swarthy Man.
Bill said goodnight. I hung up and stared at my graph.
Armstrong and Eckler reported. They said they talked to Charles Bellavia. He said the signature on the check was not his signature. He was not convincing. He said he owned a lunch truck biz back in ’58. His trucks serviced factories in downtown L.A. Armstrong had a theory. He figured Jean Ellroy bought some chow. She gave the lunch truck man a check and got ten or twelve bucks back in cash. Bellavia said he did not know Jean Ellroy. He was convincing. The lunch truck man gave Bellavia the check. He endorsed it and deposited it in his business account.
Eula Lee Lloyd’s landlady reported. She said she’d talked to Eula Lee. Eula Lee remembered Jean Ellroy and her murder. She said she had nothing to tell us. Her sister was sick. She had to care for her. She had no time to talk about old homicides.
Bill began pretrial work with the Beckett prosecutor. I holed up with the Jean Ellroy file. The 1-800 line buzzed sporadically. I got O.J. calls and psychic calls. Four journalists called within a two-week period. They wanted to write up the Ellroy-Stoner quest. They all promised to include our 1-800 number. I scheduled time with reporters from the L.A. Times, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Orange Coast magazine and La Opinion.
We got a hot tip. A woman read the LA. Weekly belatedly and called us. Her name was Peggy Forrest. She moved to El Monte in 1956. She wasn’t a psychic. She didn’t think her father killed my mother. She lived a mile from Bryant and Maple—then and now.
She left a provocative message. Bill called her and set up an interview. We drove out to her house. She lived on Embree Drive off Peck Road. It was due north of my old house.
Peggy Forrest was rangy and in her late 60s. She sat us down in her backyard and told us her story.
They found the nurse on a Sunday morning. It was on the radio. Willie Stopplemoor knocked on her door. She wanted to talk about it. “Willie” was short for “Wilma.” Willie was married to Ernie Stopplemoor. They had two sons named Gailard and Jerry. Gailard went to Arroyo High. Ernie and Wilma were 35 to 40. They came from Iowa. They lived on Elrovia. Elrovia was near Peck Road.
Willie was agitated. She said the cops were looking for Clyde “Stubby” Green. They found Stubby’s overcoat on the nurse’s body. The nurse was selling Stubby dope.
Stubby Green lived across the street from Peggy Forrest. He worked at a machine shop with Ernie Stopplemoor. Stubby was 5′11″ and stocky. He had a butch haircut. He was about 30 then. Stubby was married to Rita Green. They came from Vermont or New Hampshire. Rita was blond. She wore a ponytail. Stubby and Rita were barhoppers. Stubby was an “El Monte legend” and a “well-known bad boy.” Stubby and Rita had a son named Gary and a daughter named Candy. They went to Cherrylee Elementary School. They were about six or seven years old in 1958. Peggy saw Stubby sneak home one morning. He was carrying some suits and sports jackets. It just didn’t look right. Willie Stopplemoor did not mention Stubby or the nurse again. Peggy forgot about the whole thing. The kicker to the whole thing was this:
The Greens split for parts unknown a few weeks after the murder. They pulled their kids out of school. They blew off their mortgage and their house. They never returned to El Monte. The Stopplemoors did the same thing. They split unexpectedly. They did not tell a soul that they intended to move. They just up and vanished.
I asked Peggy to describe Ernie Stopplemoor. She said he was very tall and gangly. Willie Stopplemoor was chunky and plain-featured. Bill mentioned the machine shop. Peggy said she didn’t know the name. It was somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley.
I asked her for names. I asked her to link some names to the Green incident. She said her father told her something
. He said Bill Young and Margaret McGaughey knew the dead nurse.
Bill ran Peggy Forrest through her story again. She told it in the same precise manner. I wrote down all the names and ages and physical descriptions. I wrote out a priority list and underlined four things:
El Monte Museum—check ’58 directories.
Check ’59s—see if Greens & Stopplemoors really left El Monte.
Check school records—Green & Stopplemoor kids.
Run Greens & Stopplemoors nationwide and attempt to locate.
It felt like something. I liked the tight local vibe.
I showed Bill my list. He said it was good. We discussed the Green/Stopplemoor story. I said the coat bit was bullshit. The cops found my mother’s coat on her body. Bill said the dope bit was bullshit. Jean probably had no access to salable narcotics. I said I dug the geographical angle. Elrovia was one block from Maple. I started to theorize. Bill told me to stop. We had to get more facts first.
We hit the El Monte Museum. We checked the directories. We found a Clyde Greene on Embree in 1958. His wife was listed as Lorraine, not Rita. We checked the ’59, ’60 and ’61 books. There were no Clyde or Lorraine Greenes listed. We found the Stopplemoors on Elrovia for all four years.
Bill called Tom Armstrong. He ran the story by him and gave him the names and approximate ages of the four Greene and Stopplemoor kids. The Stopplemoors probably stuck around El Monte. The Greenes might have booked out quicksville. Armstrong said he’d check the appropriate school records. He’d try to determine if the Greenes and Stopplemoors yanked their kids.
Bill called Chief Clayton and Dave Wire. He dropped the names Ernie Stopplemoor and Clyde “Stubby” Greene—the “El Monte legend.” The names didn’t ring any bells. Clayton and Wire promised to call some old cops and report back.
They called some old cops. They reported back. Nobody recalled Ernie Stopplemoor or Clyde “Stubby” Greene.
We ran the Greenes, the Stopplemoors and their kids through the state DMV and DOJ computers and the 50-state reverse book. We ran the name Rita Greene and the name Lorraine Greene. We got precious few Greenes altogether. We called all of them. None of them acted suspicious. None of them said they used to live in El Monte. None of the Clydes copped to the nickname “Stubby.” None of the Garys and Candys copped to daddies named Clyde or mamas named Lorraine or Rita.
We tagged three Stopplemoors in Iowa. They were blood kin to old Ernie. They said Ernie and Wilma were dead. Their son Jerry was dead. Their son Gailard was living in Northern California.
Bill got Gailard’s number and called him. Gailard did not recall the Greene family or the Jean Ellroy snuff or anything but hot rods and chicks in El Monte. He did not come off suspicious. He came off somnambulant.
Armstrong got us the school records. They proved that the Stopplemoors stayed in El Monte. They proved that the Greenes pulled their kids out of school in October ’58. Stubby did not rabbit in July. Peggy Forrest had that wrong.
We tried to find Bill Young and Margaret McGaughey. We failed. We kissed the whole tangent off.
We met the LA. Times reporter. We showed her the file. We showed her El Monte. We took her to Valenzuela’s and Arroyo High and 756 Maple. She said she was backlogged. She might not get her piece out before Labor Day.
Bill resumed his trial preparations. I went back to the file. The file was an access road to my mother. I was going into hiding with her soon. The file was preparing me. I wanted to meet her with established facts and rumors synced to my imagination. The file smelled like old paper. I could turn that smell to spilled perfume and sex and her.
I holed up with the file. My apartment was un-air-conditioned and summertime hot. I stared at my corkboard displays. I had my meals delivered. I talked to Helen and Bill on the phone every night and nobody else. I kept the answering machine on. A string of psychics and soul channelers called and said they could help me. I erased the messages. I cooked up some crazy-ass measures and called them in to Bill. I said we could take out a big newspaper ad and request information on the Blonde and Swarthy Man. Bill said it would just attract more freaks and geeks and mystics. I said we could offer a big reward for the same information. It would galvanize the barflies who heard the Blonde’s story. Bill said it would galvanize every greedy cocksucker in Los Angeles County. I said we could go through all the ’58 phone books. We could check the El Monte, Baldwin Park, Rosemead, Duarte, La Puente, Arcadia, Temple City and San Gabriel books and write down every Greek and Italian and Latin-Caucasian sounding male name and run DOJ and DMV checks and take it from there. Bill said it was a screwy idea. It would take a year and result in nothing but bullshit and catastrophic aggravation.
He said I should read the file. He said I should think about my mother. I said I was doing it. I didn’t say some part of me was running like she used to run. I didn’t say my crazy suggestions were some kind of last-ditch effort to avoid her.
The Jean Ellroy reinvestigation was ten months old.
25
Daddy Beckett looked like Santa Claus. He was a hard-charging bad-ass in 1981. He was your white-bearded granddad now. He had a heart condition. He was a born-again Christian.
He went to trial at Division 107, L.A. County Superior Court. Judge Michael Cowles presided. Deputy DA Dale Davidson represented the county. A lawyer named Dale Rubin represented Daddy. The courtroom was wood-paneled and nicely air-conditioned. The acoustics were good. The spectator benches were hard and uncomfortable.
O. J. Simpson was on trial four doors down. The hallway was packed from 8:00 a.m. to closing time every day. We were nine floors up. Every elevator ride ran full capacity. The Criminal Courts Building was a multiplex entertainment center. It featured one hot attraction and some courtroom lounge acts. Media crews, picketers and T-shirt vendors circled the building. The pro-O.J. pickets were black. The anti-O.J. pickets were white. The T-shirt guys were biracial. The parking lot was full of camera trucks and sun-deflecting photo orbs on stilts. School was out. A lot of people brought their kids.
The Beckett trial was a box-office dud. Fuck Daddy Beckett. Daddy was low-rent. He was a schmuck with an accordion and a bad rug. The Main Room was four doors down. O. J. Simpson was the whole Rat Pack in their prime. Fuck Tracy Stewart. Nicole Simpson had bigger tits.
Daddy Beckett sat with Dale Rubin. Bill Stoner sat with Dale Davidson. The jury sat along the right-hand wall and viewed the action sideways. The judge sat on a high perch and viewed the action directly. I sat up against the back wall.
I sat there every day. Tracy Stewart’s parents sat in front of me. We never spoke.
Charlie Guenther flew down for the trial. Gary White flew in from Aspen. Bill stuck close to the Stewarts. He wanted to walk them through the trial and help them retrieve their daughter’s remains. Daddy Beckett said he remembered the dump site. He told the Fort Lauderdale cops that he’d send the Stewarts an anonymous note and reveal the location. He hadn’t done it yet. There was no percentage in it. The act could legally backfire. The Stewarts wanted to bury their daughter. They probably knew the whole concept of “closure” was bullshit. Their daughter vanished one day. They probably wanted to stage a reunion and mark her life with a piece of dirt and a stone.
Bill thought they’d never find the body. His ray of hope was a sham. Robbie Beckett said they drove Tracy south and dumped her near a fence. Nobody found her body. The body should have been found. The body might have been found and misidentified. The body might be buried under some other name. Daddy told Robbie to gut the inside of his van a few days after the murder. The act was irrational. The act implicitly contradicted Robbie’s account of the murder. They hit Tracy with a sap. Daddy strangled her. They made a minimal mess.
The body should have been found.
They might have cut Tracy up in the van. They might have dumped her body parts in different locations.
Bill thought they’d never know. Robbie would stick to his story. Daddy would not send that note. Closure was bullshi
t. They’d convict Daddy. The judge would not impose the death penalty. They needed a body. They needed to prove that Daddy raped Tracy. Robbie said Daddy raped Tracy. It wasn’t sufficient proof. Robbie said that he did not rape Tracy. Bill did not believe him.
Charlie Guenther testified. He described the Tracy Stewart missing-persons case. He described Gary White’s work for the Aspen PD. He consulted a pocket notebook and listed his dates and locations precisely. Daddy Beckett watched him. Dale Rubin challenged a few dates and locations. Guenther checked his notes and corroborated them. Daddy watched. Daddy wore a long-sleeved sport shirt and slacks. His threads complemented his white hair and glasses. His cellmates probably called him “Pops.”
Gloria Stewart testified. She described Tracy’s life and the events preceding her disappearance. Tracy was a shy and fearful girl. Tracy had trouble in high school and dropped out prematurely. Tracy rarely had dates. Tracy ran errands and answered the phone for her parents. Tracy stayed home a lot.
Dale Davidson was gentle. He phrased his questions deferentially. Dale Rubin questioned the witness. He implied that Tracy’s home life was cloistered and extremely neurotic. He came off skittish and unconvinced of his own argument. I watched the jury. I burrowed into their heads. I knew they found the implications unconscionable. Tracy was murdered. Her home life was irrelevant.
Davidson was gentle. Rubin was almost polite. Gloria Stewart was fierce.
She trembled. She cried. She looked at Daddy Beckett. She sobbed and coughed and stumbled over her words. Her testimony said, There is no closure. Her hatred filled the room. She saw Robbie’s trial. She saw him convicted. It was just a passing moment in her hatred. This was one more moment. It was nothing compared to the aggregate force of the hate she sustained every day. She left the witness stand. She veered by the defense table and looked at Daddy Beckett close up. She trembled. She walked to her bench and sat down. Her husband put an arm around her.
