My Dark Places - James Ellroy [123]
Bill showed her two Jim Boss Bennett mug shots. She couldn’t place Jim Boss in any context. I showed her the two Identi-Kit portraits. She placed them immediately.
Bill said, Let’s go back. Lavonne said okay. She ran us through that night again. I interposed spatial questions. I wanted to know exactly where she was standing every time she saw the Swarthy Man. Lavonne said customers flashed their lights to signal for the check. I saw cars and darting high beams and Lavonne slinging trays and two-second profile blips of a man about to kill a woman.
I mentioned the Swarthy Man’s car. Bill cut me off. He asked Lavonne how well she knew cars back then. Most carhops knew all the makes and models. Did she know cars that well?
Lavonne said she was bad at cars. She was no good at distinguishing different makes and models. I saw where Bill was going. I asked Lavonne how she identified the Swarthy Man’s car.
Lavonne said she heard a news broadcast. The dead woman sounded like that redhead she served Saturday night. She stewed about it. She tried to remember the car the redhead was in. She talked to her boss. He pointed out different cars. She narrowed down the car that way.
I looked at Bill. He gave me the cutoff sign. He handed Lavonne a copy of the Jean Ellroy Blue Book and asked her to read through her statement. He said we’d be back later to discuss it.
Lavonne said we should come back after dinner. She told us to avoid the casinos. You just can’t beat the house odds.
We ate dinner at a steakhouse in the Reno Hilton. We discussed the car issue at length.
I said Lavonne’s car ID might be contaminated. Her boss might have confused her. Her Blue Book statement was emphatic. The Swarthy Man was driving a ’55 or ’56 Olds. Maybe Lavonne tagged the wrong car. Maybe the ID was faulty from the gate. Maybe Hallinen and Lawton got hip to the fact. Maybe that explained the low punch-card count in the file.
Bill said it was possible. Witnesses convinced themselves that certain things were true and stuck to their statements hell or high water. I asked him if we could check old car registration records. He said no. The information wasn’t computerized. The hand-filed records were destroyed a long time ago.
We finished our dinner and walked through the casino. I got a wild urge to shoot craps.
Bill explained the bets to make. The combinations confused me. I said “Fuck it” and put a hundred dollars on the pass line.
The shooter made four straight passes. I won $1,600.
I gave the croupier a hundred dollars and cashed in the rest of my chips. Bill said I should change my name to Bobbie Long Jr.
Lavonne waited up for us. She said she read her old statement. It didn’t spark any fresh recollections.
I thanked her for her diligence—then and now. She said my mother really was very beautiful.
The Reno trip taught me some things. I learned how to talk in a soft register. I learned how to rein in aggressive body language.
Stoner was my teacher. I knew I was shaping my detective persona to his exact specifications. He knew how to subordinate his ego and make people tell him things. I wanted to develop that skill. I wanted to develop it fast. I wanted old people to tell me things before they died or went senile.
A reporter from the L.A. Weekly called me. She wanted to do a story on the new investigation. I asked her if she’d include a toll-free tip-line number. She said she would.
Bill’s Social Security contact reported. He said Jim Boss Bennett died of natural causes in 1979. Billy Farrington reported. He said Jack Lawton’s widow was still alive. She promised to check her garage for Jack’s old notebooks and call if she found them. The clerk at the Bureau called Bill. She said she received Michael Whittaker’s rap sheet. The sheet ran ten pages. She ran down the details.
They were pathetic and horrific. Whittaker was 60 years old now. He was a hophead, a hype and a 30-year junkie. He danced with my mother at the Desert Inn.
I met Bill at the Bureau. We discussed Whittaker.