My Dark Places - James Ellroy [143]
We knocked on Charles Bellavia’s door. His wife answered. She said Charles went to the store. Charles had a heart condition. He took a little walk every day. Bill showed her the canceled check. He said the woman who wrote the check was murdered two months later. He asked her why Charles Bellavia endorsed the check. She said it wasn’t Charles’ signature. I didn’t believe her. Bill didn’t believe her.
She told us to go away. We tried to sweet-talk her. She didn’t buy our act. Bill touched my arm to say back-off-now.
We backed off. Bill said he’d shoot the check to the El Monte PD. Tom Armstrong and John Eckler could brace Old Man Bellavia.
We chased Nikola Zaha.
We drove out to Whittier and hit our first Zaha address. A teenaged girl was home alone. She said Nikola was her grandfather. He died a long time ago. The other local Zaha was her uncle’s divorced wife.
We drove to the other Zaha address and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. We drove to the El Monte Station and dropped the check off with Armstrong and Eckler.
We drove back to Orange County and broke it off for the day. I drove to a Home Depot store and bought another cork-board. I mounted it on my bedroom wall.
I drew a Saturday night/Sunday morning time graph. It started at 756 Maple at 8:00 p.m. It ended at Arroyo High at 10:10 a.m. I placed my mother around Five Points hour by hour. I drew question marks to note her blocks of unaccountable time. I set her death at 3:15 a.m. I pinned the graph to the board. I tacked up a graphic crime scene shot at 3:20 a.m.
I stared at the graph for a good two hours. Bill called. He said he’d talked to Nikola Zaha’s son and ex-daughter-in-law. They said Zaha died in ’63. He was in his early 40s. He had a heart attack. He was a big drunk and a big pussy hound. He was an engineer. He worked at a bunch of manufacturing plants near downtown L.A. He might have worked at Airtek Dynamics. The son and his ex did not know the name Jean Ellroy. The son said his dad was a discreet pussy hound. Bill got two descriptions of Zaha. He looked antithetical to the Swarthy Man.
Bill said goodnight. I hung up and stared at my graph.
Armstrong and Eckler reported. They said they talked to Charles Bellavia. He said the signature on the check was not his signature. He was not convincing. He said he owned a lunch truck biz back in ’58. His trucks serviced factories in downtown L.A. Armstrong had a theory. He figured Jean Ellroy bought some chow. She gave the lunch truck man a check and got ten or twelve bucks back in cash. Bellavia said he did not know Jean Ellroy. He was convincing. The lunch truck man gave Bellavia the check. He endorsed it and deposited it in his business account.
Eula Lee Lloyd’s landlady reported. She said she’d talked to Eula Lee. Eula Lee remembered Jean Ellroy and her murder. She said she had nothing to tell us. Her sister was sick. She had to care for her. She had no time to talk about old homicides.
Bill began pretrial work with the Beckett prosecutor. I holed up with the Jean Ellroy file. The 1-800 line buzzed sporadically. I got O.J. calls and psychic calls. Four journalists called within a two-week period. They wanted to write up the Ellroy-Stoner quest. They all promised to include our 1-800 number. I scheduled time with reporters from the L.A. Times, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Orange Coast magazine and La Opinion.
We got a hot tip. A woman read the LA. Weekly belatedly and called us. Her name was Peggy Forrest. She moved to El Monte in 1956. She wasn’t a psychic. She didn’t think her father killed my mother. She lived a mile from Bryant and Maple—then and now.
She left a provocative message. Bill called her and set up an interview. We drove out to her house. She lived on Embree Drive off Peck Road. It was due north of my old house.
Peggy Forrest was rangy and in her late 60s. She sat us down in her backyard and told us