We knocked on Lavonne Chambers’ door. A man opened up. Bill badged him and explained our situation. The man said Lavonne was his mother. She was at the Washoe County Medical Center. She had these bad asthma attacks.
The man remembered the murder. He was just a toddler then. He said he’d call his mother and prepare her.
He gave us directions to the hospital. We got there inside ten minutes. A nurse walked us to Lavonne Chambers’ room.
She was sitting up in bed. She had an oxygen tube in her nose. She didn’t look sick. She looked tough and sturdy.
She looked astonished.
Bill and I introduced ourselves. Bill stated his police affiliation. I said I was Jean Ellroy’s son. Lavonne Chambers stared at me. I shaved 36 years off of her and put her in a red-and-gold Stan’s Drive-in outfit. I felt a little shaky. I took a chair uninvited.
Bill sat down beside me. The bed was a few feet in front of us. I got out a notepad and pen. Lavonne said my mother was beautiful. Her voice was strong. She didn’t gasp or wheeze.
I thanked her. She said she felt so darn guilty. Carhops were supposed to jot down license plate numbers. The procedure helped the cops apprehend check dodgers. She never wrote down that plate number. My mother and the man looked respectable. She never regretted anything one iota as much.
I asked her how well she remembered that evening. She said she remembered it good. She used to replay her memories like a broken record. She wanted to be sure she remembered everything.
Bill asked her some background questions. I knew he was testing her. Her answers jibed with the background details in the file.
Bill said, Let’s go back. Lavonne said okay. She described my mother and the Swarthy Man for starters. She said my mother had red hair. She said she served my mother and the Swarthy Man twice. She couldn’t put their visits in chronological perspective. The cops thought the killer was local. She kept glancing around every night she worked at the drive-in. She kept her eyes peeled for years.
Bill mentioned the Bobbie Long murder. Lavonne said she didn’t know it. I said the same man might have killed Bobbie Long. Lavonne asked me when she was killed. I said 1/23/59. Lavonne said she talked to the cops all that summer. They fell out of touch way before January.
Bill mentioned the ’62 lineup. Lavonne’s memories clashed with established Blue Book facts. She said it was a one-man lineup. She said she was the only witness. She confirmed her basic Blue Book statement. She wasn’t sure the man she saw that day was the man with my mother.
Bill showed her two Jim Boss Bennett mug shots. She couldn’t place Jim Boss in any context. I showed her the two Identi-Kit portraits. She placed them immediately.
Bill said, Let’s go back. Lavonne said okay. She ran us through that night again. I interposed spatial questions. I wanted to know exactly where she was standing every time she saw the Swarthy Man. Lavonne said customers flashed their lights to signal for the check. I saw cars and darting high beams and Lavonne slinging trays and two- second profile blips of a man about to kill a woman.
I mentioned the Swarthy Man’s car. Bill cut me off. He asked Lavonne how well she knew cars back then. Most carhops knew all the makes and models. Did she know cars that well?
Lavonne said she was bad at cars. She was no good at distinguishing different makes and models. I saw where Bill was going. I asked Lavonne how she identified the Swarthy Man’s car.
Lavonne said she heard a news broadcast. The dead woman sounded like that redhead she served Saturday night. She stewed about it. She tried to remember the car the redhead was in. She talked to her boss. He pointed out different cars. She narrowed down the car that way.
I looked at Bill. He gave me the cutoff sign. He handed Lavonne a copy of the Jean Ellroy Blue Book and asked her to read through her statement. He said we’d be back later to discuss it.
Lavonne said we should come back after dinner. She told us to avoid the casinos. You just can’t beat the house odds.
We ate dinner at a steakhouse in the Reno Hilton. We discussed the car issue at length.
I said Lavonne’s car ID might be contaminated. Her boss might have confused her. Her Blue Book statement was emphatic. The Swarthy Man was driving a ’55 or ’56 Olds. Maybe Lavonne tagged the wrong car. Maybe the ID was faulty from the gate. Maybe Hallinen and Lawton got hip to the fact. Maybe that explained the low punch-card count in the file.
Bill said it was possible. Witnesses convinced themselves that certain things were true and stuck to their statements hell or high water. I asked him if we could check old car registration records. He said no. The information wasn’t computerized. The hand-filed records were destroyed a long time ago.
We finished our dinner and walked through the casino. I got a wild urge to shoot craps.
Bill explained the bets to make. The combinations confused me. I said “Fuck it” and put a hundred dollars on the pass line.
The shooter made four straight passes. I won $1,600.
I gave the croupier a hundred dollars and cashed in the rest of my chips. Bill said I should change my name to Bobbie Long Jr.
Lavonne waited up for us. She said she read her old statement. It didn’t spark any fresh recollections.
I thanked her for her diligence—then and now. She said my mother really was very beautiful.
The Reno trip taught me some things. I learned how to talk in a soft register. I learned how to rein in aggressive body language.
Stoner was my teacher. I knew I was shaping my detective persona to his exact specifications. He knew how to subordinate his ego and make people tell him things. I wanted to develop that skill. I wanted to develop it fast. I wanted old people to tell me things before they died or went senile.
