My Dark Places - James Ellroy [116]
Woman #2 was named Shirley Ann Miller. Her ex was named Will Lenard Miller. Will allegedly killed Jean Ellroy. Will allegedly babbled, “I shouldn’t have killed her!” in his sleep one night. Will allegedly painted his two-tone Buick a few days after the snuff. Will allegedly torched a furniture warehouse in 1968.
I found a stack of notes on Will Lenard Miller. Most of them were dated 1970. I saw Charlie Guenther’s name a half-dozen times.
Guenther was Stoner’s old partner. Bill said he was living up near Sacramento. He said we should fly up and run the Miller stuff by him.
We discussed Bobbie Long and my mother. We tried to plumb a through line to connect them in life.
They worked a few miles from each other. They fled bad marriages. They were secretive and self-sufficient. They were remote and superficially outgoing.
My mother was a drunk. Bobbie gambled compulsively. Gambling bored my mother. Sex left Bobbie cold.
They never met in life. All our through lines read like speculative fiction.
I spent some time with Bobbie. I turned off the living room lights and stretched out on the couch with pictures of her and my mother. I was close to a wall switch. I could think in the dark and tap the lights to look at Bobbie and Jean.
I resented Bobbie. I didn’t want her to distract me from my mother. I held my mother’s picture to keep Bobbie in her place. Bobbie was a tangential victim.
Bobbie storms to the front of the coffee line. Bobbie gambles herself into debt and rags a friend for playing cards. Gambling was a chickenshit obsession. The big thrill was the risk of self-annihilation and the shot at transcendence through money. Sex obsession was love six times or six thousand times removed. Both compulsions mortified. Both compulsions destroyed. Gambling was always about self-abnegation and money. Sex was a stupid glandular disposition and sometimes the route to big bad love.
Jean and Bobbie were sad and lonely. Jean and Bobbie were up on the same high ledge. You could sift through all the disparate bits of data in their files and say that they were the same woman.
I didn’t believe it. Bobbie was looking to score. Jean was looking to hide and get out of herself and maybe give herself up for something weird or new or better.
Bobbie Long was not our real focus. She was a possible or probable related murder victim and a possible or probable lead on the Swarthy Man’s deteriorating psyche. There were no Long case eyewitnesses. Bobbie’s friends were mid-50-ish in 1959 and were probably all dead now. The Swarthy Man was probably dead. He was probably a hard-living bar habitué. He probably smoked. He probably drank whisky or pure grain spirits. He might have bellied up from cancer in 1982. He might be hooked up to an oxygen mask in scenic La Puente.
I sat in the dark and held the two Identi-Kit portraits. I turned on the lights and looked at them once in a while. I violated Stoner’s rule and reconstructed the Swarthy Man.
Bill saw him as a smooth-talking salesman. I saw him as a slick blue-collar guy. He did odd jobs for extra money. He worked weekend gigs out of his beat-up ’55 or ’56 Olds. He carried a toolbox in the backseat. It contained a length of sash cord.
He was 38 or 39. He liked women older than him. They knew the score on one hand and fell for cheap romance on the other. He hated them as much as he liked them. He never asked himself why this was so.
He met women in bars and nightclubs. He beat a few women up over the years. They said things or did things that got under his skin. He took a few women the hard way. He came on scary and convinced them to give it up before he took it by force. He was fastidious. He was cautious. He could turn on the charm.
He lived in the San Gabriel Valley. He liked the nightspots. He liked the construction-boom scope of the place. He daydreamed a lot. He thought about hurting women. He never asked himself why he was thinking such flat-out crazy shit.
He killed that nurse in June ’58. The Blonde kept her mouth shut. He lived scared for six weeks, six months or a year.