Destination (10 page)

He's mid-sized. He's lean. He's sweating.

A glass wall enclosed him. It bisected two cubicles.

His. Ours. Wall phones for conversation.

We settled in. Graham had his phone. Rick and I shared ours.

We explained our purpose. We stated our credentials.

Rick said he was ex-LAPD. Rick said he'd never file a one-wit case.

We schmoozed Graham. We lubed him. Rick called him “Shaka.” I called him “Mr. Sankofa.”

Rick asked him when he went Muslim. Graham bristled. He said “Sankofa” was an African name.

We shitcanned the pap. Graham consulted a defense summary.

He spieled.

His epic raw deal. His fucked-up trial. The Hollywood cats out to spring him.

He spoke precisely. He spoke grammatically.

I diverted his spiel. I wanted to contextualize 5/13/81.

Will he see the date as a demarcation line? Will he know which events pre- and postdated it—because he killed a man that night? Will he reveal his guilt through this chronology?

I asked questions. Rick asked questions. We passed our phone back and forth.

Graham revealed shit.

He said he pulled his spree bombed.

He boozed. He sniffed coke. He smoked weed. He popped black mollys.

He consulted his summary. He said he copped to ten heists. He could not recall dates. He could not recall his accomplices.

I mentioned weapons. Graham stressed his .22. The cops exonerated it.

Rick mentioned other weapons.

Graham said he used a shotgun. Graham said he used a “.45 Mag.” Graham said he bought them on the street.

Graham admitted that he used other weapons. Graham undermined his seized-gun logic.

He could have had another .22. He could have shot Lambert with it.

Graham got pissed. He had a canned pitch. He wanted to revive it.

Rick mentioned his shotgun assault. Graham lied. Graham said the guy grabbed the gun. The gun popped accidental.

I mentioned the rape. Graham lied. Graham said it was consensual sex.

The woman claimed she was raped. He didn't contest it. The D.A. never filed.

I explained why.

They had you for murder. They had you for ten heists.

Graham protested. Graham offered this story:

A friend drove him to a club. He met the woman. They drove to her pad.

They got drunk. They had consensual sex. They got in a beef.

He fell asleep. He woke up. The cops were there.

The woman said he stole her money. It was bullshit.
His
money was gone.

Rick took over. Rick let Graham talk.

I stared at him. Rick and I shared the receiver.

Graham said he stayed at his grandma's house. He had a '65 Mustang. The engine was out.

Graham described his trial. Graham described his appeals. Graham described his “community support.”

His syntax lapsed. He malapropped. He reverted to street jive.

I sat back. I let Rick talk and listen.

I studied Graham. I watched his lips. I waived guilt versus innocence. I waived his arguably unjust ordeal.

He was a thieving, raping, misanthropic sack of shit. He was meretricious appetite and cunningly justified self-pity. He was conscienceless and remorseless. He was monstrously empty.

The PR man showed. Our time was up.

RICK HAD FRIENDS near Houston. We detoured for dinner.

We discussed Gary Graham. Rick shared my assessment.

We discussed guilt versus innocence. We both leaned toward guilt. We both had doubts.

Rick's friends were great. We laughed and bullshitted. We rehashed historical crimes.

We dined at a golf club. I phased in and out of the talk.

Culture shock grabbed me. The fairway view and death row.

I said, “Fuck the death penalty.”

4.

Witness Skillern dodged us.

We traced her to her daughter's house. We left a card.

Rick called the daughter. The daughter ran point.

No. She won't see you.

The press burned her. The activists burned her. Call her lawyer.

We bagged it.

Rick flew home. I flew home.

We flew home sans indictment. We flew home sans exoneration.

I flew home apostatized.

I didn't thank or blame Gary Graham. I thanked and blamed spatial perspectives. I thanked and blamed skewed memories and height variance.

It takes two minutes and $86.08 worth of sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride to execute a prisoner.
(Copyright © Guy
Koppenburg, 2003)

I thanked Chester Thornton. I perched that grave man near my heart.

He taught. He explicated. He worked in ellipsis.

He ran anti-blues riffs. No rhetoric on racism. No vote for reparation. No glorified black victimhood à la Jesse Jackson.

He didn't know if Graham did it. He shared blame for Graham's plight. He indicted the systemic corruption he worked in. He set his polemic in Harris County, Texas.

He layered in statistics. He let me extrapolate.

The full house on Huntsville death row. The Harris County Wing. DNA reversals. Sixty-odd convicts released nationwide.

Joe Stalin said it:

“One death is a tragedy. A thousand deaths is a statistic.”

I extrapolated. It was easy. My bottom-line resistance dissolved.

A flawed system. A proven nondeterrent. A proven vouchsafe of judicial error. The empirically based evidence that some innocent fry.

A mass-market palliative. A sop to the fatuous notion of “closure.” A dialogue diverted and subsumed by details of wantonly afflicted murder. The institutional catharsis of human sacrifice.

Thornton lectured well. Thornton sermonized interactively. He withheld Sacco and Vanzetti. He placed me under night lights and let me develop conclusions.

I labored with the prosaics. A prosecutor's appellate brief helped.

A woman named Roe Wilson wrote it. The brief rebutted the defense summary with stern force.

It dissected the contradicting eyewits. It buttressed Witness Skillern's account. It trashed the alibi wits' affidavits. It portrayed them as jerry-rigged and possibly collusive. It logically rebutted the defense critique of the photo-spread procedure.

Ms. Wilson thought Graham did it. His appellate defense disagreed.

Ron Mock thought Graham did it. The cops agreed. Rick Jackson leaned that way.

I leaned that way. Logic took me there. Legal doubts detoured me. The solo ID constrained my full vote.

From the Holy Bible. Deuteronomy 17:6:

“On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses, he that is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.”

Gary Graham might die this year. This piece is my petition to spare his wretched life.

Postscript: Gary Graham was executed on 6/22/2000.

1.

A hippie fuckhead did my horoscope. We shared some T-Bird and discussed it. He said my chart was a bummer.

Pisces meant passive. My Scorpio moon meant sex and hot passion. He saw potential conflict. I was born under a baaad sign.

It was 1967. I was 19. I stood 6′3″ and weighed 140. My father had a 16″ shlong. I labored under this Oedipal trauma. I had severe acne. Pizza-pit pustules on my back and forehead. I had short hair in the Summer of Love.

I lived in L.A. My parents were dead. I was a draft-exempt dropout. I was kicked out of school in '65. My father let me join the Army. I bopped to Fort Polk, Louisiana.

I hated the Army. It scared me. I regretted my enlistment and plotted my escape. My father had two strokes. I exploited his illness and faked a nervous breakdown.

My psycho act worked. The Army shitcanned me. I was free, white, and seventeen. I returned to L.A. I forged my father's last three Social Security checks and cashed them. I found a cheap pad at Beverly and Wilton.

The old man was profane and sex-obsessed to the end. I watched him die. His last discernable words were: “Try to pick up every waitress who serves you.”

I did not fulfill his last wish. I freaked out on sex in my own unique manner.

Beverly and Wilton was downscale and wholly prosaic. It adjoined Hancock Park. Hancock Park was high swank and alluring. It was full of well-scrubbed girls in pleated skirts and cashmere sweaters. They lived in big Spanish and Tudor houses. I wanted in.

I worked busboy and dishwasher gigs. I got a C-note a month off my mother's insurance. My aunt in Wisconsin sent me the money.

I read crime novels and went to crime movies. I shoplifted food, books, and liquor. I got popped once. I was six months short of eighteen. I was too old to adopt and too young to live solo. I did two days at Georgia Street Juvie. The court declared me an “emancipated juvenile.”

The decree included formal probation. I met my PO once a month and snow-jobbed him. I had three pals named Lloyd, Fritz, and Daryl. I was their stooge. They lived with their parents. I was parent-free and had my own pad. They dug me for that reason. We boozed and smoked weed at my crib. They teased me. They ragged on my zits and sad-sack demeanor. I ignored them and popped off to a fantasy cloud.

James Ellroy's mug shot, from a 3/10/71 drunk-driving bust.
(Photo courtesy of the LAPD)

The cloud was SRO. Hancock Park girls joined me. The white wisps billowed.

I turned 18. It was March '66. I was a street-legal adult with no stated agenda. I got off probation. I drank and smoked weed and took time shares on that cloud. The cloud was a motel/love shack. It housed the Sexcapades of 1966.

My time shares passed too quickly. Masturbation took 3.4 minutes. Booze and weed sparked and hindered my fantasies. I could not sustain narrative lines. I could not give myself to all the women I craved.

Women and girls scared me. I could not address them drunk, stoned, or sober. I torched for Fritz's sister Heidi. She did not reciprocate. I torched for her friend Kay. She did not reciprocate. I torched for girls named Missy, Julie, and Kathy. I torched Hancock Park to the ground.

Hancock Park was a magnet. The pull was affluence and sex. I grew up poor and enticingly adjacent. My father worked intermittently. Our pad stunk. Our dog shat on the floors. Women were pictures in magazines and silhouettes in windows. I saw my mother nude. I saw her in bed with men. I caught my father in bed with a classmate's mother and framed a close-up of the mechanics. Hancock Park was a paint-by-numbers work in progress. I had some colors and instincts. My brushstrokes were too broad for the compartments.

Fritz was in college. The grind wore him thin. He found some Dr. Feelgoods and copped amphetamine scripts. The shit jacked him up for long cram sessions.

He gave me his excess stash. I found my narrative voice. Uppers gored my gonads and scaled my skull and cleared my climb to Cloud 9.

The high lasted 12-plus hours. It allowed me to brain-screen epic fantasies. I courted and captured my crush objects and worked in some sleazy scenes. Uppers torqued my imagination. Euphoric narratives resulted. Uppers dried up my zits and gave me my father's shlong.

I jacked off for twelve hours a pop. Climax was not an option or a possibility. My dope-depleted dick shriveled and flopped in my hand.

My fantasies conformed to set lines. Love and sex got equal play. I laid on the tenderness. I etched explicit details softly.

I lusted for a murder victim named Elizabeth Short. She was known as the Black Dahlia. I discovered her in the wake of my mother's murder. Betty was my mother transposed. I knew it on a pop-psych level. I traveled back to '46 and rescued her. We coupled at the Biltmore Hotel. Betty showed me the nude pics she allegedly posed for. I got off on them as I condemned them.

I loved a TV actress named June Harding. She was a high-end ingenue. She had a steady gig on
The Richard Boone Show.
She did a few guest shots on
The Fugitive
and costarred in some lox about nuns.

June Harding was tallish and slender. She had dark hair and eyes. She vibed brainpower and self-knowledge. She was wholesome. She was a dare. She was young. She didn't know what she wanted.

She secretly wanted Yours Truly. Dexedrine and Dexamyl convinced me. I gave her access to the secret thoughts I withheld from God and my buddies. She dug the whole quilt. Crime books, dogs, and classical music. Sports cars. Victory in 'Nam. The Lutheran Church wasn't that bad. Don't you pray when you get scared?

We got married. We made love a great deal. We got a big pad in Hancock Park. June starred in TV shows. I chased the Dahlia killer full-time.

I had my Hancock Park harem. Soul mates on a cloud. Kathy and Kay rated marriage. Julie and Missy rated dates at the Swinger Motel.

I was picking up pop-culture vibes. Experimentation was in. The swinger ethos transcended class strictures. It had to be true. Hugh Hefner said so.

Hancock Park was rife with fortyish women. I observed them obsessively. They lounged by backyard pools and abused their Latin domestics. They were upper-class moms with teenaged daughters and time on their hands. They were bored, vexed, and horny—sirens from the pens of my favorite “mainstream” authors, Harold Robbins and Irving Wallace.

I watched them shop on Larchmont. Their skirts hiked and stretched. I memorized their faces and gave them my mother's body. I gave them a yen for young flesh.

Mine. Julie's and Missy's.

Hancock Park rocked to our fervor. Three-ways reigned. It was a sordid and joyous ode to inclusion. Sex was divine and dirty concurrent. It was everything. It was a freakish glandular disposition. I reveled in God's joke. I shared it with my body.

Comedowns ended my stories. The dope morphed out of my system. I became a widower and libertine bereft.

Fly, crash and burn. Dehydration. Sleeplessness and exhaustion. Mental fatigue. Itchy skin. The Hancock Park Eviction Blues. The punch line to God's Big Joke.

I drank my way out of it. I screened women's faces until the screen went black.

Fritz lost his upper script. I lost Hancock Park.

I tried to score my own prescriptions. I went to some Dr. Feelgoods and said I had to lose weight. They didn't buy it. They said I should
gain
weight. I put out bad vibes. I couldn't con the collusively inclined.

The widower bereft. The libertine shackled.

Fritz took pity. He got me a date with his sister. Heidi drove. I squirmed and chewed Clorets to kill my booze breath.

Heidi cut me off at date one. She set me up with her loser friend Cathy. She billed me as a tall guy with his own apartment.

Cathy was still in high school. She was dowdy and plump. She dragged me to
The Sound of Music.

I killed a short dog of T-Bird at intermission. Cathy asked me if I drank to forget. Her parents were drunks. She knew the drill and knew my story. My mother was murdered. My father was dead. She was hot to mother me and cosign my shit.

We went out six or seven times. I described my shoplifting exploits. Cathy scolded me. We parked and kissed sans tongue.

Cathy held the line there. She refused to escalate. I tried everything short of brute force. My theatrics exhausted her. She put up roadblocks. She dragged me to her friends' pads for little soirees. She knew she could muzzle me in their presence.

Her plan backfired.

I met some new Hancock Park girls. I coopted Cathy's pedigree and acted like Hancock Park was my birthright. I saw some Hancock Park interiors. I dug the wood-paneled walls and arched doorways. I met some fortyish mothers. They smiled and glowed and showed me their bodies in motion. I memorized some fresh fantasy backdrops.

I visited bathrooms and checked out medicine chests. I saw pills galore. I memorized labels. I started to get An Idea.

I called one of Cathy's friends and promoted a date. We saw the flick
Harper
and necked in Fern Dell Park. The girl shot me some tongue.

I dumped Cathy. The tongue girl dumped me. I called Heidi. She blew me off. I called her friend Kay. She told me to get bent and die.

I was a teenage leper. I was an acquired taste that no one ever acquired. I acted on That Idea.

Christmas '66.

I broke into Fritz and Heidi's house. The family was gone. I entered through the kitchen door. I reached into the pet-access hole and tripped the inside latch.

I prowled in the dark. I knew the floor plan. I hit the upstairs bathrooms and tapped the medicine chests. I stole two painkillers and bopped downstairs for a chaser. I hit the liquor tray and poured a stiff scotch.

I hit Heidi's bedroom. I stretched out on her bed and picked up her scent. I stole a pair of white panties.

The downers and booze kicked in. I got scared. I didn't want to weave and bump things. I left the house in sloooow motion.

I BROKE INTO Kay's house and Kathy's house. I established a simple procedure.

I walk by first. I pack a flashlight. I look for cars in the driveway and lights on inside. Lights and cars mean ABORT. Their absence means GO TO PHASE TWO.

I walk to a pay phone and call my targets. It's '66 and '67. Phone machines don't exist. People shag all their calls.

Someone picks up. I disguise my voice and fake a wrong number. No answer means GO.

I walk back. I check the downstairs windows for loose screens and half-open panes. I bend back nails, remove screens, and vault up and in. I find unscreened windows and climb in unfettered.

I hit Kay's house and Kathy's house just like that. I got in the first times I tried.

Kay's folks were abstemious. I couldn't find any liquor or pills. I hit the icebox and snarfed some cold cuts and fruit. I explored Kay's bedroom. I stole a panty-and-bra set.

Kathy's house confused me. I couldn't determine her bedroom. I guzzled out of all the jugs on a sideboard. I stretched out on all the upstairs beds and screened some fantasies. I picked up the smells and textures of high-end life in repose. I hit a chest of drawers and an armoire. I stole two sets of panties and bras. I had to make sure I had hers.

They smelled intimate. Detergent as an aphrodisiac. Fabrics that touched
her.

I scored some downs. I popped them with a sweet liqueur. I staggered home and passed out in a heartbeat.

'67 WAS A RUSH. I was the Hancock Park Phantom.

I hit my targets at odd intervals. I stuck to my entry plan and stole things that wouldn't be missed. Underwear and cold cuts. Shots from the jug. I deployed exit plans and stopped stealing pills. I employed restraint. I didn't want to blow future prowls. I hit Julie's house and Missy's house. I hit Kathy's house and Kay's house repeatedly.

The thrill was sex and secret knowledge. Small details accreted and filled my image bank. Schoolgirl bedrooms. Unmade beds. Panties discarded and kicked under the sheets.

I never questioned my right to steal, break and enter. I never justified or rationalized it with the rhetoric of rebellion. My buddies tried to hip me to the wild winds of change. I ignored their broadsides on peace, love, and revolt. It was feckless horseshit and piffle for a coddled generation. I never told my buddies that I broke into houses. They would have tagged the act as hippie aggression. They would point to my poor-ass origins and conclude that I coveted Hancock Park from an aggrieved perspective. They wouldn't get it. I plundered private worlds with no rancor. Scents. Tactile pleasures. Soiled panties as perfume. My own country clubs—in and out windows.

My unspoken credo was MORE. My appetite fed off that word. My mandate was sexual excitement. My major course of study was women. My focus was faces read and assessed for signs of my own hunger. My release was the maternal bond corrupted. Women, girls, and me. Reconstructed families abed in Hancock Park. A warm hearth and a plaque inscribed MORE.