My Dark Places - James Ellroy [125]
Bill knew I was getting impatient. He gave me a let-me-talk sign. I moved back and stood in the doorway. Bill laid out a little I’m-not-here-to-judge-you/you’re-in-no-trouble rap. He sucked Whittaker and his wife right in.
Bill talked. Whittaker talked. His wife listened and looked at Bill. I listened and looked at Whittaker.
He ran down his 44 arrests. He did time for every dope charge in the fucking penal code.
Bill took him back to June ’58. Bill walked him to the Desert Inn that night. Whittaker said he went there with a “fat Hawaiian guy who knew karate.” The fat Hawaiian guy “beat a few guys up.” It was pure bullshit.
He didn’t remember the Blonde or the Swarthy Man. He didn’t remember the victim so good. He ran down his drunk arrest later that night. He said the cops questioned him the night after the murder and again two days or so later. He was on methadone now. Methadone fucked with his mind. He only went to that okie bar once. He never went back. The place put a hex on him. He had a pal named Spud then. He knew these guys the Sullivan brothers. They came from his hometown—McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His own brother died of cirrhosis. He had two sisters named Ruthie and Joanne—
I gave Bill the cutoff sign. He nodded and gave Whittaker a let’s-slow-down-now gesture.
Whittaker stopped talking. Bill said we had to get to the airport. He pointed to me and said I was the dead woman’s son. Whittaker oohed and aahed. His wife did a big gee-whiz number. I thawed out a little and slipped them a hundred dollars. It was crap-table money.
Billy Farrington reported. He said Dorothy Lawton couldn’t find Jack’s notebooks. He said he’d contact Jack’s sons and see if they had them.
I got a 1-800 line hooked up to my regular phone line. I changed the message on my answering machine. It went, “If you have information on the murder of Geneva Hilliker Ellroy on June 22, 1958, please leave a message at the tone.” I had two phone numbers and one answering machine. Every incoming caller got the murder message.
A producer from the Day One show called me. He said he read my GQ piece. He talked to some people at GQ and heard about the new investigation. He wanted to film a segment about it. It would run on prime-time network TV.
I said yes. I asked him if he’d run our tip number. He said yes.
I started to get a little queasy. The redhead was stepping out on a big new public scale. She lived in compartmentalized secrecy and shunned all public displays. Publicity was our most direct route to the Blonde. I had to justify my public displays that way.
Bill and I spent four days with the LA. Weekly reporter. We spent a week with the Day One crew. We took them to Arroyo High and Valenzuela’s Restaurant and the old stone cottage on Maple. We ate a lot of bad Mexican food. The folks at Valenzuela’s wondered who the hell we were and why we were always here with camera people and that old file and all those gory black & white pictures. They didn’t speak English. We didn’t speak Spanish. We tipped extravagantly and made Valenzuela’s our El Monte HQ. Bill and I called the place the Desert Inn. That was its righteous name. I started to love the place. That first nighttime visit scared me. My subsequent visits hit me sweet and soft. My mother danced on this spot. I was dancing with her now. The dance was all about reconciliation.
We met the man who owned my old house. His name was Geno Guevara. He bought the house in ’77. A preacher sold it to him. The Kryckis were long gone already.
Geno loved the media people. He let them tromp around his yard and take pictures. I spent some time inside the house. The interior was altered and enlarged. I shut my eyes and tore down the alterations. I stood in my bedroom and my mother’s bedroom the way they were then. I felt her. I smelled her. I smelled Early Times bourbon. The bathroom was intact from 1958. I saw her nude. I saw her run a towel between her legs.
Arroyo High became a public staging ground.