old girl was set to advance me 200 scoots anyway. Lloyd knew a flop I could get for 80 a month—the Versailles Apartments on 6th and St. Andrews.
I counted off my 20 days. A probation officer came to see me. He said Judge Waters was set to release me. I would get a suspended sentence and three years’ formal probation. I would have to get a job.
I said I’d look for work pronto. I promised that I’d walk the straight and narrow.
I kept my mouth shut on the tier—and listened. I learned that Romilar-CF cough syrup gave you a righteous high and that strips of tape along window panes denoted alarm systems. The guy at Cooper’s Donuts knew all the hot black hookers. You could score dope at three Norm’s Coffee Shops. The place at Melrose and La Cienega was called Fag Norm’s. The place at Sunset and Vermont was called Normal Norm’s. The place on the south side was called Nigger Norm’s.
Marijuana grew wild in certain parts of Trancas Canyon. Ma Duncan’s son was now a hot criminal lawyer. Doc Finch was up for parole soon. Carole Tregoff turned lez in the joint. Caryl Chessman was a punk—all the guys at Quentin hated him. That Susan Hayward flick
I listened and learned. I read a beat-up copy of
Mary Waters released me two days before Christmas. I boosted some inhalers on my way back to Burns Park.
I got a one-room pad at the Versailles and signed up with a temp agency. They sent me out on some mailroom jobs. My probation officer found my work life satisfactory. He liked my short hair and Ivy League threads. He told me to avoid hippies. They were all strung out on mind-altering substances.
So was I.
I worked my temp gigs Monday to Friday. I killed a half-pint of scotch for breakfast and chased it with Listerine mouthwash. Cruise control got me through to lunch and some wine and/or weed. I got drunk every night and took inhaler trips on the weekends.
Romilar was a good B&E drug. It made common things seem surreal and full of hidden truth. I went on a righteous burglary run behind it. I hit Kathy’s house, Kay’s house and Missy’s house—and concentrated on the medicine chests. I popped every inviting pill I saw on top of my cough syrup. I blacked out and woke up on my bed two times out of three.
I liked appearing clean-cut and cosmetically wholesome. Every freak in ’69 L.A. was a fuzz magnet. They wore long hair and fruitcake clothes and sent out “Bust Me” vibes. I didn’t. I bopped around in my co-existing worlds with relative impunity. I was good at giving people what they wanted to see.
I turned 21 in March. I gave up my pad and moved to a cheap hotel in Hollywood. I got a long-term temp job at KCOP-TV
I worked in the mailroom. People responded to ads for shit like
I spent it all on booze, dope and pizza. I moved to a better place—a bachelor pad at 6th and Cloverdale. I got hopped up on some women there and followed them around the neighborhood.
My insurance money ran out. My mailroom thefts more than covered the loss. I got in a fender bender with the company van and had to admit I had no driver’s license. KCOP fired me. I got some short-term temp gigs and lived ultra-cheap. I got desperate. I broke into Missy’s house and broke a cardinal rule.
I stole all the money in her mother’s purse. There was no going back to that sweet house at 1st and Beachwood.
My pad prowls were starting to scare me more than thrill me. I felt the law of chance on my tail. I’d broken into places maybe twenty times total. My jail stint taught me things that fed my sense of caution.
House burglary was first-degree burglary. It was a penitentiary offense. I knew I could handle county jail time. Prison time would eat me up whole.
The Tate-LaBianca snuffs occurred in August. I felt the ripples all through Hancock Park.
I noticed some tape around Kathy’s windows. I saw more private patrol cars out trawling. I saw security- service signs on front doors.
I stopped B&E’ing cold turkey. I never did it again.
I spent the next year in fantasy limbo. I held down temp gigs and a job at a pornographic bookstore. Hard-core packaged smut was now legal. Unpainted hippie girls were spread out nude in full-color magazines.
The girls didn’t look jaded or degraded. They looked like they were posing for chuckles and some bread. They were engaged in an ugly pandering business. They betrayed their awareness of it with little frowns and glazed eyes.
They reminded me of the Black Dahlia—sans heavy makeup and noir baggage. The Dahlia choked on movieland illusions. These girls were deluded on some junk metaphysical plane.
They bored straight into my heart. I was the porno bookstore clerk out to save them from pornography and take his reward in sex. I hoarded their pictures the way Harvey Glatman hoarded pix of his victims. I gave my girls names and prayed for them every night. I sicced the Dahlia killer on them and saved them as his blade descended. They spread their legs and talked to me when I flew on Benzedrex inhalers.
I didn’t fall for ones with perfect shapes and pert faces. I loved the smiles that didn’t quite work and the sad eyes that couldn’t lie. Mismatched features and oddly shaped breasts hit me hard. I was looking for sexual and psychological gravity.
I stole that bookstore blind. I examined every sex mag that came in and ripped out pictures of the most wrenching women. I worked midnight to 8:00 a.m., tapped the till and went to a bar that screened beaver flicks all day. I got drunk and looked at more hippie girls—and I always studied their faces more than their bodies.
My pornographic season passed too quickly. The bookstore boss got hip to my thefts and fired me. I went back to temp work, built up a surplus roll and went on a gargantuan two-month bender.
