My Dark Places - James Ellroy [8]
Bruton walked back to the interview room and laid out the news. Whittaker was thrilled. He said, Can I go home now?
Bruton told him he’d have to submit a formal statement within 48 hours. Whittaker agreed. Jack Lawton apologized for the heavy treatment and offered him a lift to his rooming house.
Whittaker accepted. Lawton drove him to his place and dropped him off at the curb.
His landlady had dumped his belongings out on the front lawn. The front door was latched and bolted.
She didn’t want no fucking murder suspects under her roof.
It was 2:30 a.m., Monday, June 23, 1958. The Jean Ellroy job—Sheriffs Homicide File #Z-483-362—was now 16 hours old.
2
The San Gabriel Valley was the rat’s ass of Los Angeles County—a 30-mile stretch of contiguous hick towns due east of L.A. proper.
The San Gabriel Mountains formed the northern border. The Puente-Montebello Hills closed the valley in on the south. Muddy riverbeds and railroad tracks cut through the middle.
The eastern edge was ambiguously defined. When the view improved, you knew you were out of the valley.
The San Gabriel Valley was flat and box-shaped. The mountain flank trapped in smog. The individual towns—Alhambra, Industry, Bassett, La Puente, Covina, West Covina, Baldwin Park, El Monte, Temple City, Rosemead, San Gabriel, South San Gabriel, Irwindale, Duarte—bled together with nothing but Kiwanis Club signs to distinguish them.
The San Gabriel Valley was hot and humid. Wicked winds kicked dust off the northern foothills. Packed-dirt sidewalks and gravel-pit debris made your eyes sting.
Valley land was cheap. The flat topography was ideal for grid housing and potential freeway construction. The more remote the area, the more land your money got you. You could hunt coons a few blocks off the local main drag and nobody would give you any grief. You could fence in your yard and raise chickens and goats for slaughter. You could let your toddlers run down the block in their shit-stained diapers.
The San Gabriel Valley was White Trash Heaven.
Spanish explorers discovered the valley in 1769. They wiped out the indigenous Indian population and established a mission near the Pomona Freeway-Rosemead Boulevard juncture. La Mision del Santo Arcangel San Gabriel de los Temblores predated the first L.A. settlement by ten years.
Mexican marauders took over the valley in 1822. They kicked out the Spaniards and appropriated their mission land. The United States and Mexico fought a brief war in ’46. The Mexicans lost and had to fork over California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico.
The White Man got business going. The San Gabriel Valley enjoyed a long agriculture boom. Confederate sympathizers moved west after the Civil War and bought a lot of valley land.
The railroad shot through in 1872 and sparked a real-estate boom. The valley’s population increased by 1,000%. L.A. was becoming a good-sized burg. The valley cashed in on it.
Real-estate profiteers annexed the valley into small cities. A development boom followed and continued straight through the 1920s. City populations grew exponentially.
Housing bans were enforced valley-wide. Mexicans were restricted to slum districts and tin-roof shantytowns. Negroes were not allowed on the streets after dark.
Walnut crops were big. Citrus crops were big. Dairies were a real moneymaker.
The Depression put the skids to San Gabriel Valley growth. World War II resurrected it. Returning GIs got hip to westward migration. Real-estate developers got hip to their hipness.
Tracts and subdivisions went up. Walnut groves and orchards were blitzed to make room for more and more of them. City boundaries expanded.
The population skyrocketed through the ’50s. The agriculture biz declined. Manufacturing and light industry flourished. The San Bernardino Freeway stretched from downtown L.A. to south of El Monte. Automobiles became a necessity.
Smog arrived.