No Journey's End: My Tragic Romance with Ex-Manson Girl, Leslie Van Houten

by Peter Chiaramonte

  “Good night and good luck.”

  Outside by the sculpted hedges surrounding the parking lot, Lisa and I sat and chatted while my modest 1.8-liter roadster warmed up.

  “Do you want to get high?” she asked me, very nonchalantly. In those days, it wasn’t an uncommon presumption to make about someone my age with a mane, even at places like the Valley Hunt Club.

  I said, “Of course. But I don’t have anything with me.”

  “I have a friend who can get us whatever we want. Do you know how to find your way to Echo Park?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I wouldn’t admit this.

  “Do you mind if we stop at my place first? I’d like to get some cash to score an ounce if your friend has any good grass to spare. I’d also like to change out of this shirt.”

  She said, “Do it now.”

  You had to love the way that she said it. But I’d learned the hard way before—girls say a lot of things, don’t they?

  After a quick stop at the condo for a further change of wardrobe (two UCLA sweatshirts and blue jeans), we wound our way back along Echo Park Avenue to a house near the top of Park Drive. That’s where Lisa told me to stop the car. There was a rock and sand garden with a path leading to the side entrance of a beige stucco house where her friend lived. I could hear music inside and sirens far off in the distance. The lone occupant took his time answering the door, but, when he did, he sure smiled at Lisa. He and I exchanged looks of suspicion, which I thought a prudent response.

  Lisa’s friend Lynn was a tall skinny guy with a black ponytail tied tight with a postman’s elastic. He reminded me of a cross between Geddy Lee (the lead singer in Rush) and the comic book character Ol’ Injun Joe in Tom Sawyer. Inside the house, the main living space was cluttered with predictable drug paraphernalia. There were plenty of pipes, candles and grinders lying about on the tables. Other than that, it was a plain, empty space with one stupendous exception. In what would normally be called a “living room” hung a mattress on a plywood slab that was bolted with chains to beams in the ceiling. The whole contraption swung like a hammock four feet off the floor. There were also stereo speakers hung in a similar fashion from each of the room’s corners. That was something I hadn’t seen before.

  Lisa told Lynn that I needed to pick up an ounce of pot and that we were in a hurry. I thought that was brusque. He took out his scales from a cupboard inside the kitchen and left for another room down the hall. A minute later he was back carrying a mustard jar full of golden brown bud in one hand and a box of plastic bags in the other. He weighed out an ounce of marijuana and asked me for fifty bucks. I offered to roll us a joint if he had some papers, but Lynn said not to bother.

  He turned back around and passed me a glass water pipe with the bowl already loaded. I passed this to Lisa, but she waved it back. Handing me her lighter, she said, “You go ahead. Lynn knows what I want.” Lynn gave her a nod. I hit the pipe and offered it back to him. He signaled for me to relax, which was easy. Although still buzzed from wine at dinner, I thought this was a complementary high and began to settle back and take in the scenery.

  Lisa got up off the sofa and put a Tom Petty disc on the table. Then I watched her follow Lynn down the hall and heard them go into one of the washrooms. That left me alone getting high with the quadraphonic sound of the Heartbreakers playing. I had faint premonitions of excitement and trouble to go with the traces of petroleum ether that suddenly breezed in the air.

  Lisa and Lynn came back into the living room before the end of side one. This time, Lynn was carrying a plate of something that looked like a polished slab of Petrified Forest. He laid the slate flat on the table in front of where Lisa and I had been seated together. From his hip pocket he took out an amber vial and knocked some rock and powder into a metal grinder. After a dozen turns of the crank, Lynn unscrewed the bottom and tapped out the fluffy pinkish-white powder onto the plate. Then, with a carpenter’s blade, he drew out six long, thick, parallel lines of cocaine hydrochloride.

  In the meantime, Lisa rolled a twenty-dollar bill she’d taken out from her cross-body wallet. She drew each of two lines up her nostrils, one right after the other. Ladies first. Then Lynn signaled to me it was my turn. Lisa passed me her straw.

  “Peruvian flake,” Lynn announced, gesturing toward the glittering ridges of crystals. First, I turned to watch Lisa sink back into the cushions. She was smiling, and her eyes glistened brightly. Once I drew the lines up into my bloodstream, it took a moment for the drug to breach the brain barrier. The sense I had then was of blowing myself into thousands of pieces. It was a far more full-on, whole-body rush than I could have expected. Never before had I experienced anything so prime or so sudden—nothing so pared to the bone.

  Just as I began to regain some semblance of conscious control of my senses, my conscience besieged me with ruinous thoughts. Floodgates of passion gave way to panic. What will Leslie or Max’s friends think when they hear of this night’s misadventures? Depends on what happens next, I supposed.

  For the second time in ten or fifteen minutes, Lisa stood up and followed Lynn down the hall. I heard the far-way ringing of water pipes and the echoes of voices. When they came back a few minutes later, I could see that some form of seduction protocol had begun. Lynn held her close for a kiss, and I couldn’t blame him for trying. I pretended to pay no attention at first, but, in a way, I was grateful for the chance to get away clean and leave Lisa to her friend’s care—such as it was. But what happened next came as no real surprise. I watched Lynn piece her off with a gram she tucked away in her wallet.

  Then, Lisa turned towards me and announced, “It’s time for us to be leaving. Ready?”

  Yes I was, especially now since I knew she was holding. Seems we both had what we came for.

  Reaching out for the crook at her elbow, Lynn pulled Lisa back for another kiss. When he finally released her, I heard her say, “Your kisses taste bitter with coca.”

  Hearing this as encouragement, Lynn tried once again to embrace her.

  This time, all she said was, “Please Lynn, let me go.”

  And he did right away. Saved me having to whack him.

  “Buenos noches, Injun Joe,” I said as we left in a hurry.

  Following Lisa’s directions, I took the Hollywood Freeway north to Ventura Highway headed west. My trip odometer already had fifty miles on it by the time Lisa told me to turn south on to Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I knew from the maps in the pages of Helter Skelter that we were only a few miles in either direction from the old Spahn Ranch site and Gary Hinman’s house.

  “You’re going too fast…you’re going to miss it!” Lisa shouted into the wind that tangled her wispy blonde hair.

  She was right, of course. I should have slowed to a stop and turned about instead of trying to hold tight in the corner. The back end broke loose, and my rear wheel spun on to a side bank of gravel. We didn’t hit anything, but we came pretty close to a tall mountain pine near the end of her driveway.

  I turned off the engine, and we walked arm-in-arm up the steps of the grassy embankment leading to Lisa’s house. Once inside the front hall, she turned on the light. I could see from our mirrored reflections just how much we’d each taken on a pasty-like pallor. Lisa drew out a few fat lines for herself and two for me on a mirror. I didn’t like the look of myself up the nose. Right after the cocaine rush plateaued a bit in my bloodstream—like the gentleman I was—I said my goodnights to the lady.

  Lisa thanked me for the ride with a cutesy peck on the lips, and I stumbled down the black path to my car. I drove two and a half miles back up Topanga Canyon Road and parked at the foot of the hill below number nine-sixty-four, Gary Hinman’s old address and the place where he died. I did this all on the spur of the moment without premeditation. It was dark all around, and the only ghosts on the prowl were my own demons. When the coke
started wearing off, I thought about heading back to Lisa’s to pick up my sweatshirt.

  After a prolonged scalding shower first thing in the morning, I had coffee with Judy on the balcony at Micheltorena. We went together to visit Leslie from eight until nine. As far as we knew, there was nothing happening on the plea-bargain front. Max was still meeting with the district attorney. We didn’t discuss much of anything else. I kept quiet about my time spent with Lisa. On the way back to her place, Judy asked whether I’d made contact yet with Glen Peters’ friend at Cal State Dominguez Hills. I told her I hadn’t. She also asked about my night out with Lisa. I left out the part about Echo Park and my visit to Hinman’s.

  When she called later, I didn’t tell Leslie that part about Hinman either, but I did mention everything else. I was compelled to be brutally honest and begged for her forgiveness.

  “No, nothing happened,” I said over the phone. “Just some negligent, semi-anaesthetized driving unbecoming someone who should’ve known better. No sweat. I got the girl home safely before midnight, Cinderella.”

  I promised Les I’d play it safer from now on, subject to the whims of the gods or rules of good conscience.

  “I could tell something was up with Jude,” Leslie said. “I think she could be jealous.”

  “Of what? Not a chance. She’s always uptight about something. It comes with her self-righteous religion.”

  Just as I put the phone on its cradle and was about to walk down to Sunset Boulevard and take in the local sights, Max and Judy came through the front door of the condo.

  “Hey, Max, what’s up? How did things go with Van de Kamp?”

  I was curious to hear of this meeting.

  “Nothing to shout about.” Max said, looking tired and disappointed. “I was just saying to Judy how I hoped he’d have more to say than he did.”

  “Can I get you a drink?” Judy asked him while starting to fix him bourbon and water.

  “Don’t you think Van de Kamp’s made his decision yet?” Judy asked.

  “Impossible to say,” Max sighed, taking a seat at the dining room table.

  “I heard what Stephen Kay had to say to the press,” she said. “He’s claiming the last jury followed their emotions instead of the law.”

  I laughed. “What’s he trying to say? That it wasn’t his fault?”

  “Emotions, hah,” Max snorted. “This coming from the guy who fixated the jury on the most gruesome pictures of the crime scenes imaginable, including those he knows Leslie never laid eyes on.”

  “Do you mind if I go with Max tonight to see Leslie?” Judy asked me.

  “That’s fine with me,” I said. “I just got off the phone with her when you stepped in. She’ll be anxious to hear about Van de Kamp.”

  I excused myself and went for the walk I had planned along Sunset. When I got back, Judy and Max were gone. So I rolled a couple of joints from the stuff I got from Lynn. I put on Marc Bolan’s Tanx pretty loud and sat on the balcony writing notes for a letter to Leslie.

  Ever since Judge Hinz declared a mistrial in August 1977, more people than ever were interested in visiting Leslie Van Houten. There’s no denying I felt the pangs of a general wariness stirring. At first, I felt obliged to stay away to make time for the old guard who knew Leslie longer than I did. There were some of her old friends that I became close with, though sometimes I begrudged them the time lost with my girl. Among those I got along best with was one of Les’s college teachers from when she was in state prison at Frontera, Professor Michael Malone.

  Michael had been an adjunct to several English departments in City College and prison programs when he met Leslie in the mid-seventies. He looked to me like a grey-haired, fifty-something Richard Burton, and his wife, Jane, had a kind of Liz Taylor thing going as well. Leslie said that Michael was her favorite teacher. So, if for no other reason, I accepted the Malones’ invitation to spend a week at their home on a hill near the coast of Laguna Nigel, fifty miles south of Los Angeles. Les had their number and called us every evening. I wished I could have stayed with them longer, but I promised to be back to LA to meet with Mr. Glen Peters.

  The Lawry’s Center was on the historic site of the old spice packing plant northeast of Los Angeles Dodger Stadium. The center had several lush flower gardens, water fountains and a hacienda-style restaurant only minutes away from downtown LA. It so happens that District Attorney John Van de Kamp’s grandfather, Walter, was one of the original Van de Kamp’s Bakeries and Lawry’s Restaurants founders. Small café, eh? Glen arrived before me and pretended to be friendly for the first ten minutes I got there. But I could see his shoulders starting to tighten when I ignored him to chat with tourists at the next table, who said they were on vacation from their government jobs in Montreal.

  “Judy tells me you and she were at dinner with Maxwell Keith at the Hunt Club...that you were drinking and driving.”

  “Is that what she said?” I asked calmly.

  “She said you were drunk when you left the restaurant with a guest’s daughter.”

  “What’s all the fuss about, Glen? I know it’s rude to say this, but who appointed you guardian of everyone’s business? I wasn’t the only one who had wine with dinner.”

  “She said you’d all had a lot to drink. That’s not the point.”

  “Then why bring it up?”

  No reply for a second.

  “I’m concerned with what I see as your self-destructive nature, Peter. I’m worried for Leslie’s sake. You two are like moths drawn to a fire. You’re gonna get burned, let me tell you.”

  I frowned as he said it, but stopped short of growling.

  “Aren’t you concerned where all this could be leading?”

  “What would you know about it?”

  Glen suddenly blinked in rapid succession. “I know you take too many chances. You’ve admitted as much to Judy.”

  “Have I? You do or don’t approve, which is it?”

  “What if Leslie were to get out of prison a year from now? Will you still be around then looking for trouble?”

  “Look, Glen. What happens then will be up to Leslie.”

  I started speed-eating my tortilla casserole to keep my tongue tied. I decided that moment I’d had enough of Glen Peters. The feeling was mutual. No need to shout about it.

  “Look at me, will you? Would you try and take her away from her friends and her family? Is that the plan?” he persisted.

  I wanted to sock him right in the guacamole.

  “My plans are my own to decide. The same goes for Leslie.”

  “What happened at Dominguez Hills? Did you see Brad like I told you?” Glen asked.

  “Forget that,” I said. “Please tell your pal, Brad, thanks all the same, but I’ve decided to apply elsewhere for grad school.”

  Folding my table napkin, I added, “I’ve got to get going, Glen. Why do we always part the same way? Thanks awfully for lunch. I hope you’ll excuse me.”

  I tossed the napkin on my chair and turned away.

  “Which ‘elsewhere’ might you be going to, might I ask? Back to Toronto?”

  He only wished.

  “UC Santa Barbara,” I said, glancing back nonchalantly over my shoulder.

  “Good luck getting in there,” Glen said with a simper.

  I couldn’t hear what more he said after that since I was halfway out the door when he said it. To myself I put it this way: We have to stop meeting and parting this way. Adrenaline clouded my judgment. When I finally found my car, I drove off right away without warming her up. I didn’t get high until later. That’s when I sobered up.

  Leslie’s siblings, David and Betsy, had first dibs on the next morning’s visit to see their sister at Sybil Brand. I met up with them later for lunch at their mother Jane’s house. After that
, I gave Betsy a lift back to her apartment in Hermosa Beach. It was a fair-size three-bedroom second-floor flat close to the ocean, near the corner of 34th Street and Palm. I stayed a couple of hours that afternoon while Betsy unpacked some of her moving boxes. In exchange for my help, Betsy shared the secret to her sensational coffees. She had one of those steam-lever Gaggias and used to top off her lattés with shaved chocolate and sugar crystals that dissolved in the foam. I wrote to Leslie to say we’d need to get one like it for our place soon enough.

  That evening, Betsy and I went with her roommate, Sara’s boyfriend, to a Hollywood cinema to see Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, starring Robert de Niro. What impressed me more than the bloody ending everyone was raving about was how creatively the end of the film strange-looped back to the beginning. I remember afterwards reading screenwriter Paul Schrader’s remark that the last frame of the film could be spliced to the first and the movie started all over. I wrote to Leslie suggesting she might find it worth exploring the way writers use this structure as a narrative form, much like the way surrealist Julio Cortázar did with his novel Hopscotch. I promised to hunt down a copy and send her my notes.

  Betsy Van Houten called the next day and asked if I still wanted to move out of Judy’s. I’d spoken with her about this before. She said I could stay at 122 34th Street in Hermosa Beach and share the apartment with her and her roommate Sara—at least until things sorted themselves out with her sister. Later that evening, I drove over to Sybil Brand with Max Keith to tell Leslie the news. We only had forty-five minutes to talk, so I promised to relay the rest of my thoughts when I had time to write it all down in a letter.