My Dark Places

by James Ellroy

  I never felt her kind of hatred. I never had a flesh-and-blood target.

  The Beckett trial continued. The Simpson trial continued four doors down. I saw Johnnie Cochran every day. He was a perfectly groomed and tailored little man. He dressed better than Dale Davidson and Dale Rubin.

  Sharon Hatch testified. She was Daddy Beckett’s squeeze in ’81. She said she dumped Daddy. Daddy flipped out. He threatened her and her kids. Sharon Hatch looked at Dale Davidson. Daddy looked at Sharon Hatch. She said Daddy never hit her. He never threatened her before she dumped him. I followed Davidson’s logic. He was establishing Daddy’s psyche pre- and post-breakup. Daddy was calm before. Daddy wigged out after. I distrusted the before-and-after line. It was a coded cause-and-effect indictment aimed at an innocent woman. The line might hit the men on the jury square in the gonads. They might commiserate with Daddy. The poor guy got fucked by a cold-hearted cunt. I looked at Sharon Hatch. I tried to read her. She seemed passably smart. She probably knew that Daddy was wigged out well in advance of their breakup. He was a strongarm loan collector. He was an armor fetishist. His chivalry to women was a symptom of his hatred for women. He was a sex psycho hibernating. He knew that he wanted to rape and kill women. The breakup gave him a justification. It was based on one part rage and two parts self-pity. You could not date his gender-wide hatred to the moment Sharon Hatch said, “Walk, sweetie.” Daddy Beckett was working toward his explicative flashpoint already. He was like the Swarthy Man in the spring of ’58. I felt a little jolt of empathy for the Swarthy Man. I felt a big jolt of hate for Daddy Beckett. My mother was 43 years old. She was caustic. She could put weak men in their place. Tracy Stewart was utterly helpless. Daddy Beckett trapped her in his bedroom. She was a lamb in his slaughterhouse.

  Dale Davidson and Sharon Hatch worked well together. They set Daddy up as a frayed fuse about to unravel. Dale Rubin raised some objections. Judge Cowles overruled some and sustained some. The objections pertained to points of law and flew right over my head. I was back in the South Bay in 1981. I was a half-step from that night 23 years before.

  The judge called a recess. Daddy walked to his holding booth outside the courtroom. Two plainclothes cops brought Robbie in. He was handcuffed and shackled. He was wearing jail denims. The cops sat him down in the witness box and uncuffed and unshackled him. He saw Bill Stoner and Dale Davidson and waved. They walked up to him. Everybody started smiling and talking.

  Robbie was rough trade. He was tall and broad. His body fat ran about .05%. He had long brown hair and a long, droopy mustache. He looked like he benched 350 and ran a hundred yards in 9.6 seconds.

  Court reconvened. The plainclothes cops sat near the jury box. A bailiff waltzed Daddy in. He sat down beside Dale Rubin.

  Robbie looked at Daddy. Daddy looked at Robbie. They checked each other out and looked away.

  The clerk swore Robbie in. Dale Davidson approached the witness stand. He asked Robbie some preliminary questions.

  Robbie talked with a swagger. He was here to vent a patricidal grudge. He emphasized words like “ain’t” and phrases like “He didn’t have no.” He was saying, I know better and I don’t give a fuck. The implication was, I’m me and my father made me who I am.

  Daddy watched Robbie. The Stewarts watched Robbie. Davidson led Robbie back to Redondo Beach and Tracy’s house and Daddy’s apartment. Dale Rubin raised several objections. The judge overruled or sustained them. Rubin looked bewildered. He couldn’t divert Robbie’s momentum. Robbie started looking straight at Daddy.

  Davidson worked slowly and deliberately. He took Robbie right up to the moment. Robbie started stuttering and crying. He walked Tracy into the bedroom. He gave her to Daddy. Daddy started touching her—

  Robbie lost it. He faltered and tripped over his words. Dale Davidson paused. He suspended his questions for a superbly calculated little pocket of time. He asked Robbie if he could talk now. Robbie wiped his face and nodded. Davidson fed him some water and told him to continue. Robbie plugged away at his story like a trouper.

  He got drunk. Daddy raped Tracy. Daddy said, We’ve got to kill her. They walked her downstairs. He hit her with the sap—

  Robbie faltered again. He faltered on cue. Nobody fed him the cue. He pulled an internal boo-hoo number and choked himself up. He wept for his own misspent life. He didn’t intend to kill a girl that night. His father made him do it. He wasn’t weeping for the girl he killed. He was weeping for his own forfeiture.

  Robbie was good. Robbie understood dramatic displacement. He reached for the old self-pity and pulled out some tears and hit the old redemption seeker chord molto bravissimo. He was bad—but not as bad as his father. His wretched character and beautifully feigned remorse gave him instant charisma and credibility. I time-traveled back to 8/9/81. A man had to kill a woman. A boy had to please his father. Daddy only killed women with other males present. Daddy needed Robbie. Daddy couldn’t kill Tracy without him. Robbie knew what Daddy wanted. Did you rape her, too? Did you rape her because Daddy raped her and you hated him and you couldn’t stand to see him have more fun than you? Did you rape her because you knew Daddy would kill her and what’s one more rape then? Did you lay out some garbage bags and dismember her in the back of the van?

  Davidson led Robbie through the rest of the night and his initial mop-up procedures. Robbie stuck to his often-told and formally recorded story. Davidson thanked him and turned him over to Dale Rubin. Robbie got real then. This was Robbie versus Daddy—with no expendable piece of ass to distort the goddamn issue.

  Rubin tried to discredit Robbie. He said, Didn’t you bring Tracy home for yourself? Robbie denied it. Rubin rephrased the question repeatedly. Robbie denied it repeatedly. Robbie raised his voice with each denial. Robbie was all pride now. He strutted from a sitting position. He said “No” with exaggerated inflections and bobbed his head up and down like he was talking to a fucking retard. Rubin asked Robbie if he got in fights back then. Robbie said he was a red-blooded guy. He liked to kick ass. He learned it from his father. He learned all the bad things he knew from his father. Rubin asked Robbie if he beat up on his girlfriends. Robbie said no. Rubin expressed disbelief. Robbie told Rubin he could think what the hell he liked. Robbie bobbed his head harder and harder each time he said “No.” Rubin persisted. Robbie persisted with much greater flair. He had at least ten stock readings for the word “No.” He stared at Daddy Beckett. He smiled at Dale Rubin. The smiles said, You can’t win because I’ve got nothing to lose.

  Daddy Beckett stared at his hands. He looked up and locked eyeballs with Robbie a few provocative times. He always looked down first. He didn’t look down from fear or shame. He looked down because he was tired. He had a bad heart. He was too old to play mind games with young buck convicts.

  Robbie spent a day and a half in the box. He was questioned and cross-questioned and coddled and badgered. He endured. He never wavered. He never appeared to dissemble. It was patricidal performance art. Robbie was bravura. Robbie sang grand opera. Robbie probably overestimated the effect on his father. Daddy Beckett was yawning a lot.

  Davidson brought up the Sue Hamway case. Robbie told the court what he knew. Davidson brought up Paul Serio. Robbie portrayed him as a quiff and Daddy Beckett’s stooge. Rubin brought up Serio. Robbie satirized the quiff’s body language and worked it into his head-bob routine. Rubin could not shake Robbie. His hate filled the room. It was generically infantile hatred reasoned out over time. Robbie was starring in his own life story. Tracy Stewart was the ingenue lead. Robbie felt nothing for her. She was just a bitch who sideswiped two men and made things go blooey.

  Robbie finished his testimony. The judge called a recess. I almost applauded.

  Daddy’s first ex-wife testified. She said Daddy was an awful daddy. He was brutal with Robbie, David and Debbie. David Beckett testified. He pointed to Daddy in open court and called him a “piece of shit.” Dale Rubin cross-examined David. He said, Aren’t you a convicted child molester? David sa
id he was. He pointed to Daddy and said he learned it from him. He didn’t elaborate. Debbie Beckett could not testify. She was dead of AIDS attributed to intravenous drug use.

  Paul Serio testified. He described his part in the Susan Hamway murder. He laid all the blame on Daddy. He didn’t know it was a hit. He thought it was a debt shakedown. Daddy iced Sue Hamway solo. Daddy whipped out a dildo and said, Let’s make it look like a sex snuff.

  Serio pitched some regret for Sue Hamway’s baby. The baby starved to death while Sue Hamway decomposed.

  Bill Stoner testified. He described the Beckett investigation from day one on. He was calm and authoritative. He counterbalanced Robbie’s histrionics. He was an independent auditor called in to itemize and total up the cost. Dale Rubin tried to ruffle him. Dale Rubin failed.

  The defense called three witnesses. Two of Robbie’s old pals testified. They said Robbie used to pound on total strangers for no reason. Rubin controlled his witnesses. They sketched a nice picture. The pre-Tracy Robbie was impetuous and unpredictably violent. The revelation lacked punch. Robbie’s preemptive strike nullified it. Robbie drew the same picture. He drew it more dramatically and in the first person.

  Rubin called his last witness. Another old pal testified. He said Robbie said he raped Tracy Stewart. I believed him. I couldn’t read the jury. I figured their response was, So what? Robbie’s in prison already. You can’t discredit Robbie. He upstaged you with his self-immolation. We’re tired. We want to go home. Thanks for the ride. We’ve got jury box whiplash. It was fun. It was groovier and less protracted than the Simpson mess. We got sex and family discord. We bypassed the scientific shit and the specious rants on race. The lounge act blitzed the Main Room show.

  The trial was almost over. Bill predicted a fast guilty verdict. Gloria Stewart could stand up in court and confront Daddy Beckett. She could abuse him. She could beg for Tracy’s body. The Victim Confrontation was new legal stuff. It promoted victim’s rights and psychological cleansing. I told Bill I didn’t want to see the closing arguments and the Stewart confrontation. Daddy would yawn. Gloria would say her piece and go on grieving. The confrontation law was passed by morons hooked on daytime TV I didn’t want to see Gloria’s audition. I didn’t want to see her as a professional victim. Bill never introduced us. He never told her who I was or who I lost in June ’58. He knew we’d have nothing to say to each other. He knew I never hurt like she did.

  The Beckett trial lasted two weeks. Bill and I drove up in separate cars every day. Bill went out with Dale Davidson and Charlie Guenther most nights. They’d hook up with Phil Vanatter sometimes. Vanatter was famous now. He worked the murder case of the century. The Beckett crew went out to celebrate the end of the trial. Vanatter went with them. Bill invited me. I took a pass. I wasn’t a cop or a deputy district attorney. I didn’t want to talk shop with pros. I didn’t want to commiserate or discuss the farcical aspects of the Simpson case. I was running low on white man’s outrage. The LAPD kicked indiscriminate black ass for 50-plus years. Mark Fuhrman was Jack Webb with fangs. DNA was unassailably precise and confusing. Racist conspiracies carried more dramatic weight. Bill knew it. He was too gracious to rub it in Phil Vanatter’s face. Marcia Clark needed a black Robbie Beckett. A black Robbie could indict OJ. with home-grown soul. Justice was politics and theater. O. J. Simpson wasn’t Emmett Till or the Scottsboro Boys. Victimhood was exploitable. I wasn’t Gloria Stewart.

  I drove out to West L.A. I wanted to find a private pay phone and call Helen. I wanted to talk about Tracy and Geneva.

  I remembered the phone bank at the Mondrian Hotel. It was rush hour. Sunset Boulevard was probably jammed. I turned north on Sweetzer. I crossed Santa Monica Boulevard and saw where I was.

  I was driving through a murder zone.

  Karyn Kupcinet died at 12-something North Sweetzer. It was late 11/63. Jack Kennedy was four or five days dead. Somebody strangled Karyn in her apartment. She was nude. Her living room was a mess. She was facedown on the sofa. Sheriff’s Homicide handled the case. Ward Hallinen worked it. They looked at Karyn’s actor boyfriend and one of Karyn’s freaky neighbors. Karyn’s father was Irv Kupcinet. He was a big talk-show host and columnist in Chicago. Karyn moved to L.A. to score as an actress. Her dad was floating her. She wasn’t making it. Her boyfriend and his friends were. Karyn ran a few pounds over svelte. She took diet pills to control her weight and fly. Charlie Guenther thought she died accidentally. They found a book on the coffee table near her body. It was all about nude dancing. You could dance like a wood nymph and free your inhibitions. Guenther figured she was bombed. She was dancing stark nude. She fell down and broke her hyoid bone on the coffee table. She crawled up on the couch and died. Bill thought she was murdered. It could have been the boyfriend or the freaky neighbor or some geek she picked up at a bar. They got a lot of tips in ’63. They still got tips. An FBI guy called in a tip recently. He said he got it off a wiretap recording. A mob guy said he had the real goods. Karyn was giving a guy some skull and choked to death on his dick.

  I turned west at Sweetzer and Fountain. I saw the El Mirador building. Judy Dull lived there. She was 19. She had an estranged husband and a kid already. She posed for cheesecake pix. Harvey Glatman found her. Glatman was a Jean Ellroy suspect. Jack Lawton cleared him on Ellroy and nailed him on Dull.

  I turned north on La Cienega. Georgette Bauerdorf’s apartment house stood right there. Georgette Bauerdorf was murdered on 10/12/44. A man broke into her pad. He stuffed a bandage roll in her mouth and raped her. She choked to death on the roll. They never found the killer. Ray Hopkinson worked the case. Georgette was 19—like Judy Dull. Georgette had money—like Karyn Kupcinet. Georgette volunteered at the USO Canteen. Her family was back in New York. Her friends said she was nervous and smoked too much. She lived all by herself. She drove around L.A. impulsively.

  Karyn was running on dope and hiding out behind her father’s money. Judy was running from too much life too fast. Georgette got cabin fever and ran to the boys at the USO Canteen. Tracy hid out at home. Robbie picked her up there. Jean picked the wrong town to hide in.

  I saw their faces. I formed them into a group shot. I made my mother their mother. I placed her in the middle of the frame.

  Tell me why.

  Tell me why it was you and not somebody else.

  Take me back and show me how you got there.

  26

  My mother said she saw the Feds gun down John Dillinger. She was a nursing school student in Chicago. Dillinger was killed on 7/22/34. Geneva Hilliker was 19 then. My father said he was Babe Ruth’s trainer. He had a display case full of medals he didn’t really win. Her stories were always more plausible. He was more desperate and anxious to impress. She lied to get what she wanted. She understood the limits of verisimilitude. She could have been three blocks away from the Biograph Theater. She could have heard gunshots. She could have made the jump from sound to sight through pure imagination. She could have filled in the details over bourbon highballs and convinced herself that they were true. She could have told me the story in good faith. She was 19 then. She could have been saying, Look how bright and hopeful I was.

  My father was a liar. My mother was a fabricator. I knew them for six years together and four years apart. I spent seven more years with my father. He brought my mother up and shot her down. His stories were self-inflated and spiteful. His stories were suspect. He defamed my mother at leisurely whim for the last seven years of his life.

  I stayed in touch with my aunt Leoda. She told me things about Geneva. She praised Geneva. She lauded her. I couldn’t remember a thing she said. I hated Leoda. I was the con man and she was the mark with the cash.

  I had lies to build from. I couldn’t discount them. I wanted to build perception from contradictory viewpoints. I had my own memory. It was in sound working order. I test-fired it after the Beckett trial. I remembered the names of old classmates. I remembered every park and jail I ever crashed out in. I had my chronological life
with my mother mapped out year by year. I remembered the names of old dope connections and all my junior-high teachers. My mind was sharp. My memory was strong. I could counter synaptic failures with fantasy riffs. I could run alternative scenes in my head. What if she did this. Maybe she did that. She might have reacted thusly. The literal truth was crucial. It might come in limited quantities. My memory wasn’t repressed. My memory might lack resiliency.

  I had no family photographs. I had no pictures of her at 10, 20 and 30. I had pictures of her at 42 and on her way down and pictures of her dead. I didn’t know much about our ancestry. She never mentioned her parents or her favorite aunts and uncles.

  I had a strong mental will. I remembered my thoughts from light years ago. I could strip-mine my brain and replay my old thoughts about her. My imagination might help me. It might hinder me. It might shut down at lustful junctures. I had to get explicit. I owed her that. I had to take her further.

  Bill was up in L.A. He was waiting out the Beckett verdict. I told him I wanted to get lost for a while. He said he understood. He had Tracy Stewart on the brain bad.

  I was test-fired and ready. I unplugged the phone and turned the lights off. I stretched out on the bed and closed my eyes.

  She came from Tunnel City, Wisconsin. Tunnel City was a railroad stop and not much else. She moved to Chicago. She moved to San Diego. My father said he met her at the Del Coronado Hotel. He said it was 1939. He said they heard the second Louis-Schmeling fight together. The fight occurred in ’38. She was 23 then. He was 40. He dressed to the nines. He wore prewar suits all the time I knew him. They looked incongruous in 1960. They got more and more raggedy as our living standard declined. They were au courant in ’38. He looked good. She fell hard. He had a hot girl-woman he thought he could control forever. He probably took her to the bullfights down in T.J. He spoke fluent Spanish. He ordered all her food in Spanish. He took her to Mexico to woo her and control her. They drove down to Ensenada. She took me to Ensenada in 1956. She wore a white off-the-shoulder dress. I watched her shave her underarms. I wanted to kiss her there. He got her torched on margaritas. She wasn’t a drunk yet. He poured salt and squeezed lime juice on her hand and licked it off. He was desperately attentive. She didn’t have his number yet. She got it over time. I worked on a time-lost/time-regained dynamic. She viewed her lost time as unregainable. She pinned her loss on my father. She lowered her sights. Bourbon highballs made machine-shop studs controllable and alluring. She never asked herself why she craved weak and cheap men.