A reporter from the
Bill’s Social Security contact reported. He said Jim Boss Bennett died of natural causes in 1979. Billy Farrington reported. He said Jack Lawton’s widow was still alive. She promised to check her garage for Jack’s old notebooks and call if she found them. The clerk at the Bureau called Bill. She said she received Michael Whittaker’s rap sheet. The sheet ran ten pages. She ran down the details.
They were pathetic and horrific. Whittaker was 60 years old now. He was a hophead, a hype and a 30-year junkie. He danced with my mother at the Desert Inn.
I met Bill at the Bureau. We discussed Whittaker.
Bill said he was probably up in Frisco or in jail somewhere. I said he might be dead from AIDS or general attrition. Bill told the clerk to run a public utilities check. He wanted to pin Whittaker down. We had to find him. We had to find Margie Trawick.
I got out our reverse book printout. I said I could call all our Margie Phillips numbers. Bill said we should run an employment check first.
I had the name and address memorized. Margie Trawick worked at Tubesales—2211 Tubeway Avenue. Bill checked a Thomas Guide. The address was five minutes away.
We drove over. The place was a big warehouse and office building combined. We found the personnel boss. We talked to her. She checked her files. She said Margie Trawick worked here from ’56 to ’71. She said all personnel files were strictly confidential.
We persisted. The woman sighed and wrote down Bill’s home number. She said she’d call some old employees and ask them about Margie.
Bill and I drove back to the Bureau. We checked the Ellroy Blue Book and found three more names to run.
Roy Dunn and Al Manganiello—two Desert Inn bartenders. Ruth Schienle—the Airtek personnel director.
We ran the names through the DMV computer. We got four Roy Dunns, no Ruth Schienles and an Al Manganiello in Covina. We ran the names through the DOJ computer. We got three negative hits. We ran Ruth Schienle through the reverse book and got a possible hit in Washington State.
Bill called Al Manganiello. He got an extended dial tone. I called Ruth Schienle. A woman answered the phone.
She was 28 years old and unmarried. She had no relatives named Ruth Schienle.
Bill and I drove back to Orange County. We split up for the day. I took the file. I wanted to know every word in it. I wanted to forge connections that nobody else ever saw.
Bill called me that night. He said Margie Trawick died in 1972. She had terminal cancer. She was sitting in a chair at a beauty shop and collapsed from a brain hemorrhage.
We tracked Michael Whittaker down in San Francisco. We traced him to a dive in the Mission District. Bill called him. He said he wanted to discuss the Ellroy murder. Whittaker said, “All I did was dance with her!”
We took a cab to his hotel. Whittaker wasn’t there. The desk clerk said he boogied out with his wife a few minutes ago. We waited in the lobby. Dopers and hookers bopped through. They gave us weird looks. They sat around and bullshitted. We heard a dozen riffs on O. J. Simpson. The consensus was split two ways: O.J. was framed and O.J. offed the bitch justifiably.
We waited. We saw a ruckus at the projects across the street. A black kid ran in and sprayed the playground with some kind of assault weapon.
Nobody got hurt. The kid ran off. He looked like a delighted child trying out a new toy. The cops came and poked around. The desk clerk said stuff like that happened every day. Sometimes the little humps shot each other.
We waited for six hours. We walked down to a doughnut shop and got some coffee. We walked back. The desk clerk said Mike and his wife just snuck upstairs.
We walked up and knocked on the door. I was pissed off and dead tired. Whittaker let us in.
He was bony and potbellied. He wore his hair in a biker ponytail. He didn’t look scary. He looked weak. He looked like a freak who came to San Francisco to score dope and grow old on welfare.
The room was 9’ x 12’ tops. The floor was covered with pill vials and paperback crime novels. Whittaker’s wife weighed about 300 pounds. She was sprawled on a narrow daybed. The room smelled. I saw bugs on the floor and a line of ants around the baseboard. Bill pointed to the books and said, “Maybe you’ve got some fans here.”
I laughed. Whittaker stretched out on the bed. The mattress sagged and hit the floor.
There were no chairs. There was no bathroom. The sink smelled like a urinal.
Bill and I stood by the door. A breeze blew down the outside hallway. Whittaker and his wife came on obsequious. They started to justify their life and the pill bottles out in plain sight. I cut them off. I wanted to get to that night and hear Whittaker’s version. His formal statement made no sense. I wanted to take a hot knife to his brain.
Bill knew I was getting impatient. He gave me a let-me-talk sign. I moved back and stood in the doorway. Bill laid out a little I’m-not-here-to-judge-you/you’re-in-no-trouble rap. He sucked Whittaker and his wife right in.
Bill talked. Whittaker talked. His wife listened and looked at Bill. I listened and looked at Whittaker.
He ran down his 44 arrests. He did time for every dope charge in the fucking penal code.
Bill took him back to June ’58. Bill walked him to the Desert Inn that night. Whittaker said he went there with a “fat Hawaiian guy who knew karate.” The fat Hawaiian guy “beat a few guys up.” It was pure bullshit.
He didn’t remember the Blonde or the Swarthy Man. He didn’t remember the victim so good. He ran down his drunk arrest later that night. He said the cops questioned him the night after the murder and again two days or so later. He was on methadone now. Methadone fucked with his mind. He only went to that okie bar once. He never went back. The place put a hex on him. He had a pal named Spud then. He knew these guys the Sullivan brothers. They came from his hometown—McKeesport, Pennsylvania. His own brother died of cirrhosis. He had two sisters
