My Dark Places - James Ellroy [98]
I was stalling. The brown folder scared me. I knew Stoner was leading me up to it.
We talked. We traded L A. crime tales. Stoner’s perceptions were sharply lucid and devoid of commonly held police ideology. He called the LAPD a racist institution and spun stories with a vivid sense of drama and theme. He said “fuck” as routinely as I did and used profane language to peak effect. He described the Beckett case and took me straight into Tracy Stewart’s terror.
We talked for two hours. We stopped almost on cue.
Stoner left the room. I quit stalling.
The file contained envelopes and teletype sheets and odd notes scrawled on odd slips of paper. It contained a Sheriff’s Homicide “Blue Book.” The book ran fifty pages. It contained typed reports in chronological order.
The dead body report. The coroner’s report. Reports on exonerated suspects. Three interviews transcribed verbatim.
The Blue Book was flimsy and musty. Two names were typed on the cover. I didn’t recognize them. Sergeants John G. Lawton and Ward E. Hallinen.
The men who asked me who my mother was fucking. One of them bought me a candy bar a million years ago.
The file was badly maintained. It was bulging with loose note slips dropped in and forgotten. The sloppy look offended me and hit me as symbolic. This was my mother’s lost soul.
I imposed order on it. I formed a line of neat paper stacks. I put the envelope marked “Crime Scene Picts.” off to one side. I skimmed the first set of Blue Book reports and noted odd details.
My El Monte address was 756 Maple. Two witnesses saw my mother at the Desert Inn bar. The name stunned me. The papers said she went to a local cocktail lounge. They never got more specific.
I skimmed a few reports. A Desert Inn witness called my mother’s male companion a Mexican. The fact surprised me. Jean Ellroy was right-wing and obsessed with appearances. I couldn’t see her out in public with a cholo.
I skimmed the back section and saw two handwritten letters. Two women snitched off their ex-husbands. They wrote to John Lawton and detailed their rationales.
Woman #1 wrote in 1968. She said her ex worked with Jean at the Packard-Bell plant. He had affairs with Jean and two other Packard-Bell women. He acted suspicious after the killing. Woman #1 asked him where he was that night. He hit her and told her to shut up.
Woman #2 wrote in 1970. She said her ex had a grudge against Jean Ellroy. Jean refused to process an injury claim he submitted. It sent him “off the deep end.” Woman #2 included a postscript: Her ex torched a furniture store. They repossessed a dinette set he bought and sent him “off the deep end” again.
Both letters read vindictive. John Lawton attached a memo slip to letter #2. It said both tips were checked out and judged invalid.
I zigzagged through the book. I caught little blips of data.
Harvey Glatman was questioned and cleared as a suspect. I remembered the day he went to the gas chamber. A Desert Inn witness disputed the Mexican bit. She said the guy with the blonde and the redhead was a “Swarthy White Man.” My mother worked at Airtek Dynamics from 9/56 on. I thought she was still at Packard-Bell then. The autopsy report noted semen in my mother’s vagina. There was no mention of internal bruising or vaginal abrasions. There was no speculation on rape versus consensual sex. My mother was menstruating. The autopsy surgeon found a tampon in her vagina.
Facts hit me rapid-fire. I knew I had to contain the barrage. I got out my pen and notebook and flipped to the transcribed statements. The first one blew me out the fucking door.
Lavonne Chambers hopped cars at Stan’s Drive-In—five blocks from the Desert Inn. She served my mother and her male companion twice that Saturday night and Sunday morning.
She said the man was Greek or Italian. He was driving a two-tone ’55 or ’56 Olds. He brought my mother in around 10:20 p.m. They ate in the car. They talked. They left and returned at 2:15 a.m.
The man was quiet and sullen. My mother was “quite high.” She “chatted gaily.” The top of her dress was down and one