My Dark Places - James Ellroy [9]
You had Dust Bowl refugees and their teenage kids. You had pachucos with duck’s-ass haircuts, Sir Guy shirts and slit-bottomed khakis. Okies hated spies the way the old cowboys hated Indians.
You had a big influx of men fucked up by World War II and Korea. You had packed suburbs interspersed with large rural patches. You could walk down the Rio Hondo Wash and catch fish with your hands. You could jump into the Rosemead cattle pens and shoot yourself a cow. You could carve yourself a nice fresh steak right there.
You could go drinking. You could hit the Aces, the Torch, the Ship’s Inn, the Wee Nipee, the Playroom, Suzanne’s, the Kit Kat, the Hat, the Bonnie Rae or the Jolly Jug. You could see what was shaking at the Horseshoe, the Coconino, the Trade-winds, the Desert Inn, the Time-Out, the Jet Room, the Lucky X or the Alibi. The Hollywood East was good. The Big Time, the Off-Beat, the Manger, the Blue Room and the French Basque were okay. Ditto the Cobra Room, Lalo’s, the Pine-Away, the Melody Room, the Cave, the Sportsman, the Pioneer, the 49’er, the Palms and the Twister.
You could belt a few. You might meet somebody. The ’50s divorce boom was peaking. You could draw from a big pool of at-the-ready women. El Monte was the ’58 hub of the valley. Early settlers called it “the End of the Santa Fe Trail.” It was a shitkicker town and a good place to have fun. Recent settlers called it “the City of Divorced Women.” It was a honky-tonk place with a more-than-distinct western atmosphere.
The population hovered around 10,000. It was 90% white and 10% Mexican. The city was five miles square. Unincorporated county land bordered it.
The population expanded on Saturday nights. Out-of-towners drove in to prowl the cocktail joints on Valley and Garvey. The El Monte Legion Stadium featured Cliffie Stone and Hometown Jamboree—broadcast live on KTLA-TV
The audience wore cowboy garb: Stetsons and pipestem pants for the men; starched hoop skirts for the women. The Stadium ran doo-wop dances on Cliffie’s off-Saturdays. Pachucos and white punks slugged it out in the parking lot regularly.
The San Berdoo Freeway cut through El Monte. Motorists exited and took Valley Boulevard eastbound. They stopped to eat at Stan’s Drive-in and the Hula-Hut. They stopped to drink at the Desert Inn, the Playroom and the Horseshoe. Valley was the Saturday night thoroughfare. Eastbound motorists ended up dawdling there whether they planned to or not.
The action strip ended at Five Points—the juncture of Valley and Garvey. Stan’s and the Playroom stood at the prime northeast corner. Crawford’s Giant Country Market was just across the street. A dozen restaurants and juke joints were jammed together off the intersection.
Residential El Monte ran north, south and west of there. Houses were small and came in two styles: faux-ranch and stucco cube. Mexicans were isolated in a strip called Medina Court and a shack town named Hicks Camp.
Medina Court was three blocks long. The houses there were made of cinderblock and scavenged wood. Hicks Camp was just across the Pacific-Electric tracks. The houses there had dirt floors and were built from lumber ripped off of old boxcars.
The movie Carmen Jones was shot at Hicks Camp in ’54. A Mexican slum was recast as a Negro sharecropper slum. The set designers did not have to change a single detail.
Medina Court and Hicks Camp were full of winos and hop-heads. A favored Hicks Camp form of murder was to get your victim drunk and lay him on the railroad tracks for an oncoming freight to decapitate.
The El Monte PD handled patrol calls and investigated all crimes short of murder. The roster listed twenty-six cops, a matron and a parking meter man. The department had a relatively clean reputation. Local merchants kept the boys well lubed with foodstuffs and liquor. El Monte cops always shopped in their uniforms.
The guys patrolled in one-man cars. The work vibe was friendly—captains