My Dark Places

September 18th. I hit my father up for a bicycle. We conned a C-note out of my aunt and bought a candy-apple-red Schwinn Corvette.

I customized that bike to the nines. I added gooseneck handlebars, plastic saddlebags, rhinestone-studded mud flaps and a speedometer that tapped out at 150 miles an hour. My father called my bike a “nigger wagon.” It was beautiful—but very heavy and slow. I had to walk it up hills.

I had a vehicle now. My new school was three miles from my pad. My roaming turf expanded exponentially.

I rode my bike down to 39th and Norton several times. Houses covered the vacant lot where Betty Short was found. I tore them down with my imagination. I laid bicycle skid marks on the sidewalk near that hallowed spot.

I still had Dahlia nightmares. I conjured the Dahlia up to combat schoolroom boredom. I kept rereading The Badge. It kept me zeroed in on L.A. crime.

1949: the Brenda Allen vice scandal. Call girls jungled up with corrupt cops. Colorful mobster Mickey Cohen. The 1951 “Two Tonys” snuff. Marie “the Body” McDonald and her fake kidnap caper. The “Bloody Christmas” police brutality scandal.

I was developing a tabloid sensibility. Crime jazzed me and scared me in roughly equivalent measure. My brain was a police blotter.

I followed the Ma Duncan case on TV. Ma Duncan had a possessive passion for her son Frank. Frank married a hot young nurse and made Ma jealous. Ma hired two Mexican winos to rub the nurse out. They abducted her on November 17, ’58. They drove her into the Santa Barbara hills and strangled her. Ma shortchanged the guys on their hit fee. Ma shot her mouth off and told a friend about the whole thing. The Santa Barbara fuzz busted Ma and the Mexicans. They were currently embroiled in legal proceedings.

I followed the Bernard Finch/Carole Tregoff case. Finch was a playboy physician. Tregoff was his slinky girlfriend. Finch had a lucrative West Covina practice. His wife was filthy rich—and Finch was her sole heir. Finch and Tregoff faked a burglary and snuffed Mrs. Finch in July ’59. The case was a local sensation.

I followed Caryl Chessman’s fight to beat the gas chamber. My father told me Chessman bit a woman’s nipples off and drove her insane.

My father co-signed my crime obsession. He never tried to derail my one-track tendency. I could read what I wanted to and watch unlimited TV He talked to me like a pal. He shot me choice gossip gleaned from his years as a Hollywood bottom-feeder.

He told me Rock Hudson was a fag and Mickey Rooney would fuck a woodpile on the off-chance a snake might be inside. Rita Hayworth was a nympho—he knew that from personal experience.

We were poor. Our apartment reeked of dogshit. I ate cookies and milk for breakfast every morning and hamburgers or frozen pizza for dinner every night. I wore ratty clothes. My father talked to himself and told TV commentators to “fuck off” and “suck my dick.” We hung around in our undershorts. We subscribed to skin magazines. Our dog bit us occasionally.

I was lonely. I was friendless. I had a hunch that my life wasn’t quite kosher.

But I knew things.

My parents named me Lee Earle Ellroy. They sentenced me to a life of tongue-tripping l’s and e’s—and “Leroy”s by default. I hated my given names. I hated being called “Leroy.” My father conceded that the “Lee Earle” and “Ellroy” combo stunk. He said it was a nigger-pimp name.

He employed a part-time alias himself. He went by “James Brady” and worked some drugstore gigs under that name as a tax-evasion measure. I made up my mind early: Someday I’d ditch the “Lee Earle” and keep the “Ellroy.”

My name brought me grief at school. Bullies knew the way to get my goat. They knew I was a timid kid. They didn’t know that hurled “Leroy”s turned me into Sonny Liston.

There weren’t many bullies at John Burroughs Junior High School. A few punk confrontations killed the “Leroy” epidemic.

John Burroughs was known as “J.B.” It stood at 6th and McCadden—the southwestern edge of Hancock Park. I honed my warped cognizance there.

The student body was 80% Jewish. Rich Hancock Park kids and general kid riffraff formed the other 20%. J.B. had a hot reputation. A brilliant bunch of youngsters matriculated there.

My father called Jews “pork dodgers.” He said they were smarter than regular people. He told me to stay alert—Jewish kids were competitive.

I stayed alert in school. I manifested my alertness perversely.

I teamed up with some fellow losers. We smuggled in skin magazines and jerked off in adjoining toilet stalls. We tormented a retarded kid named Ronnie Cordero. I gave oral book reports on books that did not exist—and hipped selected kids in my English class to the ruse. I took a controversial classroom stand on the capture of Adolf Eichmann. I compared Eichmann to the Scottsboro Boys and Captain Dreyfus.

I coveted my Jew-baiter rep. I took my mother’s antipapist line and ragged John Kennedy’s presidential efforts. I cheered Caryl Chessman into the gas chamber. I urged my classmates to dig the atom bomb. I drew swastikas and Stuka airplanes all over my notebooks.

My antics were meant to shock. They were inspired by the brightness and erudition I encountered at school. My reactionary fervor was kinship twisted inside-out.

That brightness rubbed off on me. I got good grades with minimum effort. My accountant father did my math homework and prepared test crib sheets for me. I was free to read and dream away my off-school hours.

I read crime novels and watched crime TV shows. I went to crime movies. I built model cars and blew them up with firecrackers. I stole books. I crashed a ban-the-bomb rally in Hollywood and chucked eggs at pinko placard wavers. I developed a big throbbing love of classical music.

Dahlia nightmares came in intermittent bunches. My day flashes cohered around one image.

Betty Short was pinned to a revolving target board. A man’s hand spun the board and slashed Betty with a