Karen asked, “Do you think Pat told Leslie what happened the night before they went into LaBiancas’?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I’ll remember to ask her. You’re right. Pat had taken an active part in what came to pass with Sharon Tate and the others. Leslie knew nothing about it until after the others were through carrying out orders. Charlie told the killers to keep shut, but the word went around anyway.”
“Are you fucking nuts? You can’t be serious!” Richard pushed. “How can you say all that and still possibly defend what she did?”
Karen pressed one hand on his forearm, trying to settle him down.
“He’s as crazy as she was,” he told her.
Karen said, “Let’s cut the crap, shall we? Can we just be quiet or else go back to discussing The Passenger for a moment?”
“Or let’s just call it a night,” he said.
“Not a chance,” I said, stepping in front of them both and making them stop. “Listen, Dick. Let me ask you something. Based on what you think you know. Would you say that what the Manson gang did is something rational people would do? If the answer is ‘no,’ then that’s partly Leslie’s defense. Capisca?
“Leslie wasn’t the perpetrator of any crime. The guilt for that belongs solely to Manson,” I said in a far more gentle tone.
“I think you’re daft,” Richard snapped back.
“Richard, I don’t know you. Since we just met, I’ll try to forget how rude I find your attitude.”
After thinking this over, I had a change of heart and added, “No. On second thought, I won’t forget. So why don’t you just go fuck yourself? Because if you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to hurt more than your feelings.”
He and Karen both looked alarmed. I turned and stormed off in the opposite direction.
My real problem wasn’t just a quick and often unreasonably violent temper—though I did inherit a lot of bad blood from my father’s side of the family. That’s just the background. My real frustration was that I didn’t yet know enough about Leslie’s case to speak confidently about it. Don’t look back, I thought, only I did one last time to see Dick and Karen had disappeared into the underground, cursing. Hearing their echoes bounce off the tiles in the subway put a smile on my face. I didn’t like him.
On Monday, May 16th, I posted another letter to Leslie which began, “I’ll be there to see you in person before you even receive this …”
A letter from her arrived the same day, which included a reminder of her friend Linda’s address on Victory Boulevard in Woodland Hills and Leslie’s sister Betsy’s telephone number in Hermosa Beach. That same day, I took fifteen hundred dollars out of the bank in American dollars (enough to get me through a month or more in LA on my own) and booked my flight (with an open return) with an Air Canada agent in the same mall.
One week later, the day after high jumper Carl Georgevski’s wedding at Saint Clement’s Church and the last time I would ever see Buck Buchanan again, I took a cab out to Pearson airport just after sun up. I went from gray overcast skies when I left that morning in Toronto to an afternoon downpour when I landed at LAX around noon. That famous Los Angeles sunshine was on hold. As we taxied to the Air Canada terminal, I caught a glimpse of the old control tower that looked like a tacky spaceship, yet never failed to excite me. Stepping outside the cabin, I felt the difference of two thousand miles, three time zones and more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit.
There she was. Dressed a pale yellow blouse and powder blue skirt with braided leather sandals, a beaming Tricia Woodbridge was standing there smiling brightly. I could see her long lanky arm wave from a distance. Trish looked very happy to greet me. We began with a rock solid kiss and embrace.
Pressing her face, breasts and hips close to mine, she said, “It’s been a year, Peter. Please tell me you’ve missed me.”
8
Los Angeles Times
The City of Los Angeles still is the second largest metropolis on the continent, although landing at airports shrouded in rain makes most modern cities look the same. This vast mountain basin of desert hills on the Pacific coast only averages a foot or so of annual precipitation with little overcast from November to April, so storms and showers this late in May were fairly uncommon—a symbolic greeting but no grave worries for me. Tricia and I were soon out of the wet inside the parking lot across from terminal one kissing against the side of her car. I felt like having her then and there in the back of her Ford Mustang.
“First of all, Nurse Woodbridge, let me say that it’s thrilling to see you again. And second,” I told the long tall strawberry blonde, “I love what you’ve done with your hair.”
She’d cut it by ten inches or more since a year ago, but kept a few flyaway ringlets and tangles. I liked Trish a lot because she was very bright, liberal minded and incredibly sexy.
Tricia tossed me the keys to her Mustang II, climbed in on the pilot’s side and lifted her hips and legs over the console. That was a treat.
I climbed in, and she said, “I’ll navigate, you drive. Just don’t be a madman as usual.”
The engine was still warm, so we pulled out into airport traffic straight away without warming her up. The brakes were long and the suspension felt slushy and soft. All of the millions of poorly sealed oil pans dripping on to the roadways made the water bead up and the tires aquaplane on the pavement. Whenever I tried putting the spurs to her lackluster one hundred and five horses, there was no torque in response. Even in the dry, the Ford Mustang II handled about as well as a sofa on coasters.
The rain let up. It was still a windy gray day but warm and nice just the same. Even the ugly parts of LA have palm trees and yuccas enhancing its rows of stucco dwellings. They aren’t all glamorous, though many are nicely adorned with red Spanish tile. At night, under the lights, everything in this desert terrain looks entirely different. And, right as night is falling, the lights from behind the bars on people’s windows cast shadows like prisons. But, for now, it was easy to ignore any unsightliness. It was noon in LA, and I was focused instead on the pretty girl who was seated next to me.
We sat idle in northbound traffic on Lincoln for half an hour. At least we got to hold hands and catch up on recent events. Trish told me where to turn, and we found a spot to park near her favorite delicatessen—somewhere close to the beach at Santa Monica and Ocean Avenue.
Seated in the booth next to ours were two supersized fellows with thick German accents and necks as swollen as oak trees. Tricia recognized one of the men and whispered to me that he was “Mr. Olympia.”
He was apparently a bodybuilder who’d appeared in a couple of movies I’d never heard of—some thirty-year-old aspiring actor.
“His name is Arnold Schwarzenegger,” she said in a low tone. “Or something like that.”
“Big world, small café,” I whispered back, turning my head in another direction.
“Huh? What was that?”
“Nothing,” I replied, “just ask Roman Polanski.”
“Peter, did you take something on the plane? Are you still high?”
“Wish I had, but no. It’s just a bad habit I’ve picked up,” I said, tapping the side of my head.
“You did take something. I knew it!” she insisted. “I can get us some grass if you want help calming down? My friend, Joanne, can score us an ounce of some pretty good stuff.”
“Thanks babe. Maybe later. But where should we head next? The beach sound good to you? When are you next due to be working?”
“Not ’til tomorrow. Hey, I know...let’s take you shopping first.”
“The UCLA bookstore!”
So that’s where we headed for tube socks, cotton sweats, no-tears shampoo, razor blades, size 8 Puma trainers, Epsom salts and a medium-soft toothbrush that, in those days, I had to use manually.
Tricia talked about her new job at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and I was duly impressed. She was just right for the job and deserved to be on her way in a noble profession. I envied her, because I respect nurses a lot. On the personal side, Trish said she was still stinging from a breakup she had told me about over the phone and in one or two letters. No sense dwelling on that. She asked me how I felt about teaching and graduate school. I explained how I had hoped for more but would settle for a teaching assistantship at OISE.
Eventually, as always, I led the discussion around to my interest in Leslie Van Houten. I did that with just about everyone, but with Trish it was something we’d already talked about. She wasn’t surprised that was the reason I’d come to LA that summer. She told me she’d been reading about Leslie’s new trial in the Los Angeles Times, and, since I’d already mentioned that as well as my coming to town over the phone, she kept copies so I could read them when I arrived. I told her how much I appreciated her friendship. That wasn’t all. It went deeper than that, but neither of us knew how far to take things. In a sense, I knew instinctively to leave enough space in my heart just for Leslie.
After running errands that day and into the evening, we drove back to the flat on South Sepulveda Boulevard that Trish shared with her roommate Joanne. Our stylish picnic cost each of us no more than a couple of bucks. We cooked up a stir-fry of tofu with chow mein noodles and vegetables drenched in garlic and sesame oil. It was as outstanding to eat as it smelled. The three of us shared two bottles of sparkling rosé and smoked an eighth of pot outside on the balcony while listening to music. Predictably, Tricia and I stayed up late and made out like a couple of wildcats. Somewhere, someone was playing a record by Roxy Music that I’ve hung on to because of that night “for your pleasure…” And it crossed my mind where Leslie was in all of this. She wasn’t entirely unimagined. Sometimes, I would talk to myself as if she was there to hear me.
“We are, after all, passionate, confused and irrational creatures,” I mumbled at some point. “Driven by dark forces we don’t dare often dream of...”
Sure, I must have been stoned out of my gourd when I said it. Tricia moaned as a way of thankfully cutting me off.
Soon after making love, I recall one of us saying, “It’s been a long time for me too.”
It hardly mattered which one of us said it first.
“Some things bear repeating.”
We didn’t sleep in. We couldn’t. My watch was still on Toronto time, and Trish had an early shift to get on with. I dropped her off at Cedars after a quick stop for coffee, newspapers, and pastries for breakfast. I kept the car to myself and headed back to the flat to change into the more supple flats I bought the day before in Westwood.
I ran a couple laps around Mar Vista Park as a warm up before finding a payphone to call Leslie’s girlfriend, Linda Grippi. No answer at first. Then, I tried making a long-distance call to Toronto. There was no reply there either. I was hoping Jean might have Martin Bijaux’s telephone number or street address in LA. But I’d try again later.
After a drive to the beach and sprinting sets of acceleration runs on the sand, I stopped at another payphone at Venice and Tuller, right across from Madame Paulyn’s Mystic Temple. This time, I got through to Linda’s high school switchboard in Calabasas. We agreed to meet on Wednesday. She said something about my needing to have the sheriff’s approval before I could get on Leslie’s visitor’s list. I was one step closer to being face-to-face with the girl of my faraway dreams.
Wednesday, May 25th. Linda picked me up where I asked her to in front of the Century Wilshire Hotel. She drove an entry-level BMW—not exactly the 630 CSi but what the hell. Sure beat my tiny MG or Trish’s gelded Mustang. Cars are important, I reminded myself. They can teach you a lot if you know how to use them. They can also do substantial harm. I knew this from first-hand experience.
Linda Grippi was the first in a gauntlet of gatekeepers who kept watch over Leslie. She was about my age—twenty-six or twenty-seven tops. I could see she was protective of Leslie and wary of me. But who wouldn’t be? I thought it a sensible stance for her to take under the circumstances. We drove east along Highway 10 to near where it intersects with the 710.
The Sybil Brand Institute served as the Los Angeles County Jail for women. Inmates from the California Institution for Women sixty miles away in Frontera were housed here whenever summoned to appear in superior court, as was the case for Leslie. From a distance, I thought the site resembled Bergen-Belsen without all the smokestacks. Closer up it looked more like a large high school fortress, given the way it sat on top of the hill where City Terrace Drive turns into Sheriff Road.
Linda and I sat parked in the car talking until it was time to line up with the others. She explained how the earliest I could get in to see Leslie might be the next day, on Thursday. But, first, I had to fill out a battery of forms, have my picture and fingerprints taken, and promise to abide by the rules—of which there were many.
Before turning and walking in the opposite direction for her own visit with Leslie that day, Linda said she would tell Les I was there and that I’d be back tomorrow. Then, a male deputy took me into a sparsely-kept room to be captured on film shot with a cheap Polaroid camera. No wonder the pictures all turned out so terribly wrong no matter how many he took. So I had to show everyone my passport photo again and again as I passed from station to station. Meanwhile, Linda and Leslie had an additional twenty minutes to chat while I waited out by the car taking notes in my diary.
On the way back to the Century Wilshire, Linda and I talked some more about Leslie.
“Do you mind if I ask you something, Peter? What are you expecting to get out of this?”
The way she asked wasn’t harsh, but she was very direct. That put me off-balance.
Feeling nervous I said something trite like, “I jus’ wanna show my support. I’m expecting to meet Leslie. No more than that.”
There was a lot more to it than that—more than I could say—but already I could see her eyes glossing over.
“How do you see this whole Charlie Manson business, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I think the whole ‘Helter Skelter’ myth was a scam invented for reasons of Manson’s own sacred devotions. Leslie was almost as much a victim as were the LaBiancas,” I said, bumping into myself coming and going.
“Well, I’ve never heard it put quite like that before,” Linda said.
It wasn’t a put-down, but I took it that way regardless. Sounding quite scattered and all over the place, I continued.
“From what I’ve read, Manson wanted to be a big rock star. There’s little distinction in that. He might’ve been a master manipulator, but magical mystery mastermind he’s not. Sadly, he won’t be the last false prophet to herald the Apocalypse in times to come…”
Yes it’s true, I was an incoherent, nervous wreck who liked to hear himself talk. A bad combination.
“And what about Leslie?” she asked me.
“Like I said...it wasn’t just the people he had killed whose lives Manson ruined. And despite all she’s been through...I’m sure you feel the same way...I think Leslie is one of the most sincere and honest people I’ve ever gotten to know, even if only through letter writing.”
Linda said nothing, but nodded.
“What do I expect?” I continued, “I guess I expect I’ll get to know Leslie and her friends, like you, better. That’s all. I want to continue to support her as much as I can.”
If I tried to tell her the truth about my expectations, she might have tried to keep me at a distance from Leslie—at least the thought occurred to me.
“Yes, well...I know she’s been looking forward to meeting you too,” Linda said.
“You’ve known Leslie since school and during the time when all of this happened. Does she seem much different to you now than befo
re?” I asked. “I’m sorry, Linda, I know this is none of my business.”
“I can tell you this much...she wasn’t her true self at the time this whole Manson business started and for a long time after she’d been to prison. But she’s back with us now. It took her years of hard work to find her way...that’s how far she had gone. It took years for her to reemerge.”
Pulling her car up in front of the hotel, Linda and I had a minute more to discuss arrangements concerning my visits to superior court.
“What’s going on at the moment?” I asked.
“Last week Dr. Ditman, a psychiatrist Max called to testify in Leslie’s defense, said the combined effect of LSD and cult beliefs were prime factors in what happened. Leslie really believed Manson was Jesus Christ. You know? Ditman also said how incredibly strong and healthy Leslie is now. You can see for yourself tomorrow.”
That evening, Tricia traded another nurse at her work for a shift later the next day on Thursday. We wandered near the beach in Santa Monica and found a nice outdoor place where we sat drinking wine while sharing a pot full of steamed mussels. After a second bottle of wine, we went for a walk in the surf, and I still recall how good it felt to be getting my feet wet. At some point, Trish and I talked about my going out with Linda again the next day to meet Leslie in person.
When we got back to her flat, I used Tricia’s phone to try calling Jean again for Martin’s number. Still no luck. But I did manage to get Linda at home, and we arranged to meet again the next day at the same spot in front of the Century Wilshire.
“Who was that on the phone?” Tricia asked, carrying in clean clothes from the laundry.
“Leslie’s friend, Linda,” I said.
“Okay, tell me about it.”
Trish was a fair-minded person and genuinely supportive of Leslie, having listened to me rant for so long and reading about the new trial in the Los Angeles Times.
No Journey's End: My Tragic Romance with Ex-Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten Page 11
