My Dark Places - James Ellroy [97]
I wrote three sequels to The Black Dahlia and called the collective work “The L.A. Quartet.” My critical reputation and public profile snowballed. I met a woman, married her and divorced her within three years. I rarely thought about my mother.
I closed out L.A. in the ’50s and traded up to America in Jack Kennedy’s era. The jump goosed my geographic and thematic scope and pushed me halfway though a wild new novel. L.A. in the ’50s was behind me. Jean Ellroy wasn’t. I met a woman. She pushed me toward my mother.
The woman’s name was Helen Knode. She wrote for a lefty rag called the LA. Weekly. We met. We coupled. We wed. It was extravagant love. It was two-way recognition running at 6,000 RPM.
We flourished. It got better and better. Helen was hyper-brilliant. Helen was high rectitude and profane laughter. Our imaginations melded and collided.
Helen was obsessed with the whole perplexing man-woman question. She dissected it and satirized it and de- and reconstructed it. She played it for laughs and lampooned my melodramatic take on the subject.
She zoomed in on my mother. She called her “Geneva.” We concocted scenarios featuring my mother and some celebrated men of her era. We laughed our tails off. We put Geneva in bed with Porfirio Rubirosa and critiqued misogynist America. Geneva turned Rock Hudson straight. Geneva pussy-whipped JFK and turned him monogamous. We riffed on Geneva and my dad’s monolithic whanger. We wondered why the fuck I didn’t marry a redhaired woman.
Helen found that picture. Helen urged me to study it. She was my mother’s advocate and agent provocateur.
She knew me. She quoted a dead playwright and called me a bullet with nothing but a future. She understood my lack of self-pity. She knew why I despised everything that might restrict my forward momentum. She knew that bullets have no conscience. They speed past things and miss their marks as often as they hit them.
She wanted me to know my mother. She wanted me to find out who she was and why she died.
15
I parked outside the Homicide Bureau. I drank some coffee in my car and stalled a little. I thought about the crime scene photos.
I’d see her dead. I’d see her for the first time since I saw her alive. I kept no pictures of her. All I had were mental portraits of her clothed and nude.
She was tall. I was tall. I had her features and my father’s coloring. I was going gray and bald. She died with a full head of brilliant red hair.
I walked up and rang the bell. A speaker above the door crackled. I asked for Sergeant Stoner.
The door clicked open. Bill Stoner walked up and introduced himself.
He ran about 6’ and 180. He had thin brown hair and a big mustache. He was wearing a dark suit and a striped shirt-and-tie ensemble.
We shook hands and walked back to Unsolved. Stoner flashed a copy of my book White Jazz. He asked me why all the cops were extortionists and perverts. I said good cops made for bad fiction. He pointed to the dust jacket photo. My bull terrier was sprawled across my lap.
He said the dog looked like a bleached pig. I said his name was Barko. He was a smart motherfucker. I missed him. My ex-wife got custody.
Stoner laughed. We sat down at adjoining desks. He passed me a brown accordion folder.
He said the crime scene shots were graphic. He asked me if I wanted to see them.
I said yes.
We were alone in the office. We started talking.
I said I did some county time in the ’60s and ’70s. We discussed the merits and drawbacks of Biscailuz Center and Wayside Honor Rancho. I said I loved the stuffed bell peppers on the county lunch menu. Stoner said he ate them when he worked Wayside.
He had a soft inquisitor’s voice. He laced his monologues with brief pauses. He never interrupted. He held steady eye contact.
He knew how to draw people out. He knew how to extract intimacies. I felt him leading me. I didn’t resist. I knew he’d nailed my exhibitionist