by James Ellroy
His disappointment grew. The deaths of Angela Stimka, Laurette Powell, Carla Castleberry, and Marcia Renwick were relegated to quartercolumn obscurity. “Tragic” was the adjective both papers used to describe all four “suicides”; “Funeral arrangements pending” and the names and addresses of the next of kin took up the bulk of the print space. Lloyd rolled up the microfilm, placed it on the librarian’s desk and walked outside into the sunlight. Sidewalk glare and eyestrain from his hours of squinting combined to send a pounding up his neck into his head. Willing the pain down to a murmur, he considered his options. Interview the next of kin? No, sad denials would be the common denominator. Visit the death scenes? Look for indicators, chase hunches? “Legwork!” Lloyd shouted out loud. He ran for his car, and the headache disappeared altogether.
*
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Lloyd drove to West Hollywood and scouted the first three June 10th killing grounds.
Angela Stimka, D.O.D. 6/10/77, had lived in a mauve-colored ten-unit apartment house, fifties building-boom ugly, an obviously jerry-built structure whose one claim to prestige was its proximity to the gay bars on Santa Monica and the cross-sexual nightlife on the Sunset Strip. Lloyd sat in his car and wrote down a description of the block, his eyes perking only once—when he noticed an “Illegal Nighttime Parking” sign across the street from the 1167 Larrabee address. His gears clicked twice. He was in the heart of the gay ghetto. His killer had probably chosen the Stimka woman for the location of her dwelling as well as for her physicality, somehow wanting to run a gauntlet of subconscious denial by choosing a victim in a largely homosexual neighborhood; and the West Hollywood sheriffs were demons on parking enforcement.
Lloyd smiled and drove two blocks to the small wood-framed house on Westbourne Drive where Laurette Powell had died of Nembutal ingestion and “self-inflicted” knife wounds. Another “Illegal Nighttime Parking”
sign, another click, this one very soft.
The Tropicana Motel yielded a whole series of clicks, resounding gearmashings that went off in Lloyd’s mind like gunshots that tore ceaselessly at innocent bodies. Carla Castleberry, D.O.D. 6/10/80, the means of death a
.38 slug through the roof of the mouth and up into the brain. Women never blew their brains out. Classic homosexual symbolism, perpetrated in a sleazy
“Boy’s Town” motel room.
Lloyd scanned the sidewalk in front of the Tropicana. Crushed amyl nitrate poppers on the ground, fruit hustler junkies holding up the walls of the coffee shop. His thesis exploded in his mind. When its symbiotic thrust dawned through the noise of the explosion, he was terrified. He ignored his terror and ran for a pay phone, dialing seven familiar digits with shaking hands. When an equally familiar voice came on the line, sighing, “Hollywood Station, Captain Peltz speaking,” Lloyd whispered, “Dutch, I know why he kills.”
*
*
*
An hour later, Lloyd sat in Dutch Peltz’s office, sifting through negative information that had him slamming his best friend’s desk top in frustration. Dutch stood by the door, watching Lloyd read through the teletypes that had just come in from both the L.A.P.D. and Sheriff’s central computers. He wanted to stroke his son’s hair or smooth his shirtfront, anything to ease
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the anguish that had Lloyd’s features contorted in rage. Feeling meek in the wake of that rage, Dutch said, “It’s going to be all right, kid.”
Lloyd screamed, “No, it’s not! He was assaulted, I’m certain of that, and it happened on a June 10th when he was a juvenile! Juvenile sex-offense records are never shredded! If it’s not on the computer, then it didn’t happen in L.A. County or it was never fucking reported! There’s nothing on these fucking juvie vice printouts except fruit shakedown and backseat blow jobs, and you don’t become a fucking mass murderer because you let some old man suck your cock in Griffith Park!”
Lloyd picked up a quartz bookend and hurled it across the room. It landed on the floor next to the window that overlooked the station parking lot. Dutch peered out at the nightwatch officers revving up their black-andwhites, wondering how he could love them all so much, yet not at all when compared to Lloyd. He placed the bookend back on his desk and ruffled Lloyd’s hair.
“Feel better, kid?”
Lloyd gave Dutch a reflex smile that felt like a wince. “Better. I’m beginning to know this animal, and that’s a start.”
“What about the printout on the parking tickets? What about F.I. cards on the dates of the killings?”
“Negative. No parking tickets at all on the applicable dates and streets, and the only Sheriff’s F.I. cards were filled out on women—hookers working the Strip. It was a long shot at best, and our department wasn’t computerizing F.I.s when the Renwick woman was killed. I’m going to have to start from scratch again, send out sub-rosa queries to old-time juvie dicks, see if I can get some feedback on old assault cases that never made the files.”
Dutch shook his head. “If this guy got molested or porked or whatever around twenty years ago, like you figure, most of the dicks who might know something would be retired by now.”
“I know. You send out the feelers, will you? Pull some tails, call in some favors. I want to keep moving out on the street; that’s where it feels right.”
Dutch took a chair across from Lloyd, trying to gauge the light in his eyes. “O.K., kid. Remember my party Thursday night, and get some rest.”
“I can’t. I’ve got a date tonight. Janice and the girls are probably hanging out with their fag buddy, anyway. I want to keep moving.”
Lloyd’s eyes flickered; Dutch’s eyes bored in. “Anything you feel like telling me, kid?”
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Lloyd said, “Yeah. I love you. Now let me get out of here before you get sentimental about it.”
On the street, without his paperwork to refer to and with three hours to kill before meeting Joanie Pratt, Lloyd recalled that his subordinates had yet to canvass the Hollywood area bookstores.
He drove to a pay phone and leafed through the yellow pages, finding listings for one poetry bookshop and one specializing in feminist literature: New Guard Poetry on La Brea near Fountain and the Feminist Bibliophile on Yucca and Highland.
Deciding on a circuit that would allow him to hit both stores and then head toward Joanie’s house in the Hollywood Hills, Lloyd drove first to New Guard Poetry, where a bored, scholarly looking man in incongruous farmer overalls told him that no, there had been no suspicious browsers or sales of feminist prose collections to strongly built men in their middle to late thirties, for the simple reason that he did not stock feminist poetry—it was aberrantly anti-classicist. Most of his customers were academics of long standing who preferred to order from his catalog, and that was that. Lloyd thanked the man and swung his unmarked Matador north, pulling up in front of the Feminist Bibliophile at precisely six o’clock, hoping that the small, converted-house bookstore would still be open. He trotted up the steps just as he heard the door being bolted from inside, and when he saw the lights in the windows going off he rapped on the doorjamb and called out, “Police. Open up, please.”
The door swung open a moment later, and the woman who opened it stood silhouetted against the light in a challenging attitude. Lloyd’s body gave a slight shudder as he felt the pride in her pose, and before she could voice any challenge out loud he said, “I’m Detective-Sergeant Hopkins, L.A.P.D. Could I talk to you for a moment?”
The woman remained silent. The silence was unnerving, so to keep himself from doing an embarrassed little foot-dance, Lloyd memorized her physicality, maintaining a probing eye contact that the woman returned without flinching. A rigid angularity trying to hold reign over a soft, strong body, he decided; thirty-four to thirty-six, the slight traces of make-up a concession to awareness of her age; the brown eyes, pale skin, and chestnut hair some
how denoting breeding; the severe tweed suit a coat of armor. Smart, contentious, and unhappy. An aesthete afraid of passion.
“Are you with the Intelligence Division?”
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Lloyd gawked at both the non sequitur and the force in the woman’s voice. Recovering, he shifted his feet and said, “No, why?”
The woman smiled mirthlessly and spat out her challenge: “The L.A.P.D. has a long history of trying to infiltrate causes they deem subversive, and my poetry has been published in feminist periodicals that have been highly critical of your department. This bookshop carries a list of titles that includes many volumes that explode myths surrounding the macho mentality.”
The woman stopped when she saw that the big cop was beaming broadly. Aware that a parity of discomfiture had been achieved, Lloyd said, “If I wanted to infiltrate a feminist bookstore, I would have come in drag. May I come in, Miss—”
“My name is Kathleen McCarthy,” the woman said. “I prefer Ms., and I won’t let you in until you tell me what this is all about.”
It was the question Lloyd was hoping for. “I’m the most honored homicide detective on the West Coast,” he said softly. “I’m investigating the murders of close to twenty women. I discovered one of the bodies. I won’t insult you by describing how it was mutilated. I found a blood-stained book at the crime scene, Rage in the Womb. I’m certain that the killer is interested in poetry—maybe feminist poetry in particular. That’s why I came here.”
Kathleen McCarthy had gone pale, and her challenging posture had slumped, then tensed up again as she grabbed the doorjamb for support. Lloyd moved in, showing her his badge and I.D. card. “Call the Hollywood Station,” he said. “Ask for Captain Peltz. He’ll verify what I’ve told you.”
Kathleen McCarthy motioned Lloyd inside, then left him alone in a large room filled with bookshelves. When he heard the sound of a phone being dialed he slipped off his wedding band and examined the books that covered the four walls and spilled over onto chairs, tables, and revolving metal bookracks. His respect for the strident poet grew—she had placed her own published works in preeminent spots throughout the room, alongside volumes by Lessing, Plath, Millett and other feminist icons. An out-front ego, Lloyd decided. He started to like the woman.
“I apologize for judging you before I heard you out.”
Lloyd turned around at the words. Kathleen McCarthy was not chagrined by her apology. He started to feel her, and threw out a line calculated to secure her respect. “I can understand your feelings. The Intelligence Division is overzealous, maybe even paranoid.”
Kathleen smiled. “May I quote you on that?”
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Lloyd smiled back. “No.”
An embarrassed silence followed. Sensing the mutuality of the attraction deepen, Lloyd pointed to a book-strewn couch and said, “Could we sit down? I’ll tell you about it.”
In a low voice and with a deliberately cold deadpan stare, Lloyd told Kathleen McCarthy how he had discovered Julia Lynn Niemeyer’s body and how a blood-smeared copy of Rage in the Womb, along with the poem sent to Julia’s post office box, had convinced him that his assumed one-time killer was in reality a mass murderer. Ending with a recounting of his chronological work-up and the psychological profile he had deduced, he said, “He’s brilliant beyond words, and going completely out of control. Poetry is a fixation with him. I think that he wants subconsciously to lose control, and that he may view poetry as his means to that end. I need your feedback on Rage in the Womb, and I need to know if any strange men—
specifically men in their thirties—have been coming here to your store, buying feminist works, acting furtive or angry or in any way out of the ordinary.”
Lloyd sat back and savored Kathleen’s reaction of cold, hard, muscleconstricting rage. When she was silent for a full minute, he knew that she was mustering her thoughts into a severe brevity, and that when she spoke her response would be a perfect model of control, devoid of rhetoric or expressions of shock. He was right. “Rage in the Womb is an angry book,” Kathleen said softly.
“A polemic, a broadside against many things, violence on women in specific. I haven’t stocked it in years, and when I did, I doubt if I ever sold a copy to a man. Beyond that, the only male customers that I get are men who come in with their girlfriends and college students—young men in their late teens and twenties. I can’t remember when I’ve had a single man in his thirties in the store. I own the store, and run it by myself, so I see all my customers. I—”
Lloyd cut Kathleen off with a wave of his hand. “What about mail orders?
Do you do a catalog business?”
“No, I don’t have the facilities for mailings. All my business is done here in the shop.”
Lloyd muttered “Shit,” and punched the arm of the couch. Kathleen said,
“I’m sorry, but listen . . . I have a lot of friends in bookselling. Feminist literature, poetry, and otherwise. Private dealers you’ve probably overlooked. I’ll call around. I’ll be persistent. I want to help.”
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“Thank you,” Lloyd said. “I could use your help.” Feigning a yawn, he added, “Do you have any coffee? I’m running on empty.”
Kathleen said, “One moment,” and departed into the back room. Lloyd heard the sounds of cups and saucers being readied, followed by the electric crackle of a radio and the blare of some kind of symphony or concerto. When the music picked up tempo, he called out, “Would you turn that off, please?” Kathleen called back, “All right, but talk to me.”
The music diminuendoed, then died altogether. Lloyd, relieved, blurted out, “What shall I talk about, police work?”
Kathleen came into the living room a moment later, bearing a tray with coffee cups and an assortment of cookies. “Talk about something nice,” she said, clearing books from a low end table. “Talk about something dear to you.” Scrutinizing Lloyd openly, she added, “You look pale. Are you feeling sick?”
Lloyd said, “No, I feel fine. Loud noise bothers me; that’s why I asked you to turn off the radio.” Kathleen handed him a cup of coffee. “That wasn’t noise. That was music.” Lloyd ignored the statement. “The things that are dear to me are hard to describe,” he said. “I like poking around in sewers, seeing what I can do about justice, then getting the hell out and going someplace where it’s gentle and warm.”
Kathleen sipped coffee. “Are you talking about being with women?”
“Yes. Does that offend you?”
“No. Why should it?”
“This bookstore. Your poetry. 1983. Pick a reason.”
“You should read my diaries before you judge me. I’m a good poet, but I’m a better diarist. Are you going to catch this killer?”
“Yes. Your reaction to my being here impresses me. I’d like to read your diaries, feel your intimate thoughts. How far do they date back?”
Kathleen flinched at the word “intimate.” “A long time,” she said, “since my days with the Marshall Clarion. I . . .” Kathleen stopped and stared. The big policeman was laughing and shaking his head delightedly. “What is wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing, except that we went to the same high school. I had you all wrong, Kathleen. I figured you for East Coast Irish money, and you turn out to be a mick from the old neighborhood. Lloyd Hopkins, Marshall High Class of ’59 and cop of Irish Protestant grandparents meets Kathleen McCarthy, one-time Silverlake resident and Marshall High graduate, Class of . . .”
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Kathleen’s features brightened with her own delight. “Class of ’64,” she finished. “God, how funny. Do you remember the rotunda court?” Lloyd nodded. “And Mr. Juknavarian and his stories about Armenia?” Lloyd nodded again. “And Mrs. Cuthbertson and her stuffed dog? Remember, she called it her muse?” Lloyd doubled over, consumed with laughter. Kathleen continued, throwing nostalgia out between
her own gleeful squeals. “And the Pachucos versus the Surfers, and Mr. Amster and those T-shirts he had made up? ‘Amster’s Hamsters’? When I was in tenth grade someone tied a dead rat to his car antenna and put a note under the wipers. The note said,
‘Amster’s Hamsters bite the big weenie!’ ”
Lloyd’s laughter crescendoed into a coughing fit that had him in fear of spewing coffee and half-digested cookies all over the room. “No more, no more, please, or I’ll die,” he managed to get out between body-wracking coughs. “I don’t want to die this way.”
“How do you want to die?” Kathleen asked playfully. As he wiped his tear-stained face, Lloyd sensed a probing intent behind the question. “I don’t know,” he said, “either very old or very romantically. You?”
“Very old and wise. Autumnal serenity long gone into deep winter, with my words carefully prepared for posterity.”
Lloyd shook his head. “Jesus, I don’t believe this conversation. Where did you live in Silverlake?”
“Tracy and Micheltorena. You?”
“Griffith Park and St. Elmo. I used to play ‘chicken’ on Micheltorena when I was a kid. Rebel Without a Cause had just come out and chicken was in. Being too young to drive, we had to play it on sleds with little rubber wheels attached. We started at the top of the hill above Sunset, at twothirty every morning that summer; ’55 I think it was. The object of the game was to sled all the way across Sunset against the light. At that time of the morning there was just enough traffic out to make it slightly risky. I did it once a night, all summer long. I never dragged my feet or hit the hand brakes. I never turned down a dare.”
Kathleen sipped her coffee, wondering how bluntly she should phrase her next question. To hell with it, she decided and asked, “What were you trying to prove?”
“That’s a provocative question, Kathleen,” Lloyd said.
“You’re a provocative man. But I believe in parity. You can ask me anything you like, and I’ll answer.”