Four

Ten Miles from Tulsa

After he flew back to Los Angeles and walked inside his silent house, Gene was plunged into a cycle of depression and anxiety that he couldn’t shut off. For two weeks he swam in this sea of suffering, keeping the curtains closed and refusing to answer his phone; and when he was not lost in grief, gasping from pain that was beyond his comprehension, he padded slowly from room to room in his robe and slippers, fighting the nearly overwhelming urge to let go, to kill himself.

On the Sunday morning of the second week, Gene took a long hot shower and brewed a pot of fresh coffee. Then, in a dazed yet matter-of-fact way, he picked up the phone and called Eddie Cornell. After four rings the machine answered, and Gene hung up without listening to the outgoing message. Next he tried dialing his brother, but Barbara, Ray’s girlfriend for the past two years, said that he’d just walked out the door.

“He went for a run. He’ll be back in an hour,” she said, sounding both excited and relieved to hear Gene’s voice. “He’s been trying to reach you for days.”

“Yeah, I know.”

The phone went silent for a moment. Then Barbara said quietly, “How are you, Gene?”

“I’m okay. How’s Ray?”

“Good. He’s doing a polish on The Last Hope. They’re supposed to go into production in May. And it looks like Louie got the lead in an off-Broadway play.”

“That’s great,” Gene said absently, as if she’d lost his attention. “Look, I gotta go.”

“Gene?”

“Yeah?”

“Ray knows what it’s like to lose someone he loves. We both do.”

Gene shook his head but said nothing. He wanted this conversation to end. “Tell him I called,” he said, and he put down the receiver without saying goodbye.

Gene poured a second cup of coffee, turned on the stereo, and began to play With a Little Help from My Friends, the debut album by Joe Cocker. After the third cut, he lost interest and switched it off, sulking a moment before he wandered into his den, where he stood sideways in the doorway for at least a minute, listening to the wind chimes on the deck. Finally, almost mechanically, he took a seat behind his desk and opened the bottom right-hand drawer.

Stacked almost to the top were back issues of teen magazines from the fifties and sixties (Flip, Teenset, Go, etc.), slick monthlies that were part of a memorabilia collection he’d purchased from a dealer in Racine, Wisconsin. He found an issue of Tiger Beat from September 1967. The cover photo, taken backstage at the Monterey Pop Festival, showed Jimi Hendrix standing alongside Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. Janis Joplin was sitting on a folding chair in the corner of the frame, wearing a silver see-through net top and a fur pillbox hat.

Inside the magazine was an article about the Lovin’ Spoonful and an interview with Chris Hillman and Jim McGuinn of the Byrds. There were also more pictures from Monterey Pop, including a candid shot of Monkee Micky Dolenz dressed as an American Indian, clearly stoned out of his mind, dancing with an unquestionably pretty but not too innocent-looking girl who was smiling unattractively. In another photo on the same page, Mama Cass clowned for the camera, holding up a hot dog while she puffed on a huge joint.

Gene’s hands seemed to be shaking a little as he continued to page through Tiger Beat, stopping to stare at a picture of Bobby Fuller posed outside the Hollywood Brown Derby with his arm around the shoulder of a plump teenage girl. The accompanying article, written by Lenore McGowan, the president of the Bobby Fuller Fan Club and the girl in the picture, told of the “dream day” she and Bobby spent together on June 17, 1966, just a month before he died.

According to Lenore, “We met for lunch at the Brown Derby on Vine Street. I had one of their famous chopped salads, and Bobby had a cheeseburger cooked extra rare with a double order of fries. For dessert we both had hot fudge sundaes at C.C. Brown’s, this really cute ice cream parlor up on the boulevard next to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

“Later that afternoon we went to Gold Star, this famous recording studio on Santa Monica Boulevard, and there Bobby played me the single, Ά Magic Touch,’ from his new album. Afterwards, he took me down the hall to watch producer Phil Spector record the Righteous Brothers. There was this huge orchestra with a full horn section, strings, and two drummers. Tina Turner and Ronnie Bennett, the lead singer from the Ronettes, were also in the studio, singing background vocals. What an amazing experience—to watch a record actually being made! Bobby thinks Phil is a genius.

“Before we left the studio, Bobby got a phone call that he took in a private office. He was gone for about twenty minutes, and when he drove me back to my motel on La Brea, he seemed kind of preoccupied. Even so, he came up to my room and recorded an interview that I gave to KWSC, the local rock station in Springfield, Missouri, my hometown. Then he was nice enough to sign fifty of his 8 x 10’s. When he was finished, he called Melanie Novack, this woman who lived in his building and typed up his song lyrics. She and Bobby were close, and the three of us were supposed to have dinner that evening, but Melanie had a cold. I could tell Bobby was really tired, so I said he could take a rain check, too. Then I walked him down to his car, where he said goodbye, kissed me on the cheek, then drove away.

“And that, readers, was my ‘dream day’ with Bobby Fuller.”

Gene put the magazine aside and sat feeling the anguish of loneliness while he doodled on a yellow Post-it with a red felt tip pen. He wrote down Eddie Cornell’s number, circled it twice, and then picked up the phone. This time Eddie answered in the middle of the second ring.

“Cornell here.”

“Eddie, what’s up?”

“Gene! When did you get back?”

“Couple of weeks ago.”

“You alright?”

“Fair.”

Eddie made a commiserating sound. “I was gonna check in. But then I figured I’d give you some space,” he said, and there was a long silence. “What can I do for you?”

“I want to look over the Fuller files.”

“Fuller?”

“Bobby Fuller, the rock and roller who died back in ‘66. It was ruled a suicide, but we were never sure.”

“I was sure. I thought he killed himself.”

“You didn’t work the case, Eddie.”

“I read all the reports.”

Gene could feel himself getting irritated. He rested his forehead on his hand, taking a moment to get his thoughts together. “Eddie, listen to me—”

“I can’t give you the files,” Eddie said, interrupting Gene with considerable force. “You know the regulations.”

“Fuck the regulations.” Gene slammed his fist down on the top of the desk. “I need something to do. I need to take my mind off her.”

“Can’t do it, Gene.”

“Two days. That’s all I need,” Gene said. His voice was weak, almost frightened. “Help me out, Eddie. Please.”

“Jesus-fucking-Christ! You get twenty-four hours!” Eddie roared, giving in unwillingly. “That’s it, amigo. That’s all you get.”

“Twenty-four hours. That’s fine,” Gene said, his expression satisfied as he picked up the magazine and rolled it into a tight cylinder. “I’ll take it.”

“Revells. Monday at four.”

“I’ll be there, Eddie.”

“Gene?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about Alice.” Eddie’s voice was softer and unexpectedly sad. “I know how much you loved her.”

Gene nodded without speaking. “Monday four P.M. sharp,” he said. “I’ll see you then.”

Revells, which was located on the corner of Las Palmas and Selma, one block south of Hollywood Boulevard, had played a minor but distinctive part in L.A.’s most famous unsolved murder. Back in February of 1947, Elizabeth Short, the victim in the brutal Black Dahlia slaying, was observed drinking at the bar several hours before her naked body was found surgically bisected, the two halves placed side by side in a nearby vacant lot.

According to Clyde Phoebe, a Hollywood Stuntman quoted in the Los Angeles Examiner, “She came in alone, but she left with this Spanish looking fella around midnight.” And that, the article concluded, was the last time anyone saw her alive.

Clyde Phoebe was from Claremore, Oklahoma, the same town where singer Patti Page was born. In fact, he and Patti were childhood sweethearts and just about ready to be engaged when he was drafted into the U.S. Army on his eighteenth birthday. Patti abruptly stopped writing to him after basic training, and by the time Clyde was discharged in 1945, she had left Claremore and was already on her way to stardom, singing nightly on the radio in Tulsa. She had also become romantically involved with Leon McCaullife, the guitarist for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

After a three-day drunk that did little to mend his broken heart, Clyde woke up on a Greyhound bus headed down to Los Angeles. Within a week he got a job wrangling livestock on Red River, Howard Hawks’s masterful portrayal of the early west and the cattle drive that opened the Chisholm Trail; and by 1965, the year Sam Peckinpah hired him to coordinate the action sequences and play a U.S. Cavalry trooper in his production of Major Dundee, Clyde was the most sought-after Stuntman in Hollywood. But his career ended on that location in Durango, Mexico, when his horse spooked and fell while jumping a ravine, throwing him hard, shattering several vertebrae in his back and damaging his spinal cord.

When Gene first got to know him in 1967, Clyde was collecting disability and filling in behind the bar at Revells when one of the regular bartenders was sick or on vacation. Now he worked a steady shift from three till midnight and—surprise!—there were twenty-one songs by Patti Page on the jukebox.

“Peckinpah was a helluva guy. A real man’s man,” Clyde told Gene on Monday afternoon, while he was waiting for Eddie Cornell. “But when he got drunk, he went totally off the rails. On Dundee he and Chuck Heston couldn’t stand each other, always arguing about politics. One night Sam nearly shot him outside this local cantina.”

“Heston wasn’t a bad actor.”

“He was okay in Ben-Hur. And I liked him in that Orson Welles picture. Played a Mexican.”

“Touch of Evil.”

“That’s the one.”

Gene drained his beer and Clyde poured him one more, saying it was on the house. In a few moments a girl stepped inside Revells wearing a black T-shirt and tight black jeans. She had an unhappy, slightly beat-up face and blond hair that was combed in bangs to hide the acne scars on her forehead.

She ordered a shot of Jack Daniel’s, paying for her drink with a twenty-dollar bill that she slapped on the bar. When Clyde came back with the change, she scooped up some quarters and swaggered over to the jukebox.

“What do you want to hear?” she asked Gene, as she passed by his shoulder.

“Something by Patti Page.”

The girl reacted with a laugh. “Like we have some choice. Hey!” she yelled over to Clyde, putting some sarcasm into her voice. “Don’t you think it’s time you got over her? Talk about carrying a fucking torch.”

Clyde glanced at the girl while he rinsed a glass, then warned: “Don’t push it, Claudia. I’m not in the mood.”

The girl gave Gene a wink while she fed the change into the machine. “Okay, let’s see,” she said, sticking out her ass as she leaned into the glass. “What shall it be? Old Cape Cod’? ‘Mockingbird Hill’?”

“Play D-6,” Clyde said.

‘"Broken Hearts and a Pillow Filled with Tears.’ That sounds upbeat.”

“Just play the song.”

“My quarter,” the girl said, glancing over her shoulder, and Clyde gave her an unsmiling look. A few seconds later the introduction came on to “Dear Hearts and Gentle People.”

When the girl came back to the bar, Clyde said to Gene, “Comes in every day just to fuck with me.”

“Oh stop it, Clyde,” the girl said, smiling quickly. “You know I think you’re the best.”

Gene took a swallow of beer and looked down at his watch. When he saw that it was already four-fifteen, he felt a rush of anxiety, wondering if Eddie was going to show.

“Did I tell you about the last time I saw Patti?” Clyde said. He was standing in front of the girl while she hummed along with the jukebox. “Stop me if I did.”

“Go ahead,” the girl said, closing her eyes but keeping her face attentive. “Tell me.”

“It was in Vegas,” Clyde said, his deep voice filled with longing, “in the summer of 1959· She was playing the Sands, opening for Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. When she saw me in the audience, she made me stand up. She said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Clyde Phoebe. He’s from my hometown, Claremore, Oklahoma, which is ten miles from Tulsa and the birthplace of Will Rogers. Clyde took me to my senior prom way back in 1943. Let’s give him a nice hand.’ Then everyone stood up and clapped like I was some big-shot high roller, and Patti dedicated her next song to me.”

The girl opened her eyes. She said gently, ‘"Come What May’?”

“Nope. ‘My First Formal Gown.’”

“That is so perfect, Clyde.”

“She brought the microphone into the audience and sang it right into my eyes. Just me and her in the dark with the spotlight shining on our faces. God, she was just as gorgeous as ever.”

At four-thirty Eddie Cornell entered Revells through the rear door, carrying four rust-colored accordion files that bulged with papers. He was wearing off-brand blue jeans, worn sneakers, and a wrinkled white polo shirt that fit him tight across his burly chest.

“Let’s sit over here,” Eddie said to Gene, pointing at a table in the corner of the bar. Then he peeled open a pack of cigarettes and signaled Clyde for a drink. “Double Jack Daniel’s with a beer chaser. And another for my partner.”

“He’s kind of cute,” the girl said, as she watched Gene cross the room.

Clyde shook his head. “Forget it. He’s not for you.”

“How would you know?”

“Trust me.”

Gene took a seat across from Eddie. Neither spoke for several seconds. “I Confess” came on the jukebox and Eddie pointed at the files, which were stacked in the center of the table. With a motion of his hand, he indicated they were now Gene’s property. “But keep in mind,” he said, “I need them back tomorrow by five.”

“Got it.”

Clyde limped over to the table with their drinks on a small tray. Eddie reached for his wallet and Clyde said, “Claudia wants to buy this round.”

Eddie turned his head and glanced at the girl, who smiled nervously before she lowered her eyes.

“Tell her no thanks.”

The girl heard Eddie but showed no irritation or surprise. She almost seemed pleased. As Clyde moved away, Gene said, “I appreciate you doin’ this.”

“No big deal. I just wish you’d get involved in something more

“What?”

“I don’t know. Productive.”

“How do you know I’m not gonna solve this thing.”

“You’re not gonna solve shit,” Eddie said, staring hard at him. “And who cares anyway?”

“I care.”

“I don’t get it. If it was Elvis, I could understand. But this guy, he’s just some footnote, a one-hit wonder.”

Gene was quiet a moment, ignoring Eddie’s deep-sunk eyes. Then he finished his beer and stood up. “I’ll get this one.”

When he got back to the table, Eddie was standing by the pay phone, glancing at a notepad while he punched in a number. After a quick, whispered conversation, he hung up and moved languidly back to his seat.

“We caught a triple homicide last night up in Laurel Canyon,” he said. “Two chicks and a guy. Early twenties. No bullets. Just club and knives. Blood fucking everywhere. Even on the ceiling.”

“Drugs.”

“Most likely. But who knows,” Eddie said and shrugged. He took a long pull on his beer. Then he leaned forward and his face seemed to darken and grow serious. “I got something I have to tell you, Gene. You may not like it, and part you’re not gonna believe.” Eddie stopped and looked down at the table, embarrassed. “I got it on with your brother’s ex-wife before she died.”

Gene looked at Eddie with curiosity while he processed this information. “Sandra? You’re talking about Sandra? You fucked her?”

Eddie nodded. “After you got her the apartment in my building, we kinda became buddies.”

“Does Ray know about this?”

“No. It just went on for a couple of months.”

Gene and Eddie were silent a long time. The tune ended on the jukebox, and the girl turned on her stool and smiled in their direction. Then she lit a fresh cigarette and stood up, saying, “I think I’ll play something by Patti Page.”

“Play ‘Left Right Out of Your Heart,’” said Clyde.

Gene said to Eddie, “Okay, you fucked her. You’re right. I’m not thrilled. Now what’s the part I’m not gonna believe?”

Eddie waited until the music came back on before he spoke. “One night after we had sex, we were just layin’ back, watching Carson, and Sandra starts telling me about doin’ her time up at Frontera. She told me she became friendly with Susan Atkins.”

“Susan Atkins. You mean—”

“The Manson chick. And they got involved romantically,” Eddie said, looking at Gene unsurely, measuring his reaction: Gene returned his stare coldly, distantly. “I don’t know why I’m telling you this. I guess that crazy shit up in Laurel Canyon brought everything back.” Eddie smiled and shrugged, trying to find a sincere expression, an expression that wasn’t in his repertoire. “Anyway, Susan Atkins told Sandra that she and the rest of the girls fucked everyone in Hollywood. Actors, musicians, directors, people that were really famous, like Dennis Hopper and Neil Young. She said Charlie filmed everything.”

“Bullshit.”

“That’s what she said. And she said something else. She said that one of the girls brought a camera inside the house during the Tate murders.”

Drunk talk, Gene thought. Sandra was drunk and decided to make up a story. “We would’ve heard something,” Gene said, after he sat without speaking for a while. “Those murders were the most investigated crime in the history of this city. If there was any chance that—”

“There were rumors, Gene.”

“And they were checked out.”

Eddie nodded. “I know. I didn’t believe her either. And I still don’t,” Eddie assured Gene, as he finished his drink. “The only reason I brought it up is I felt guilty about screwing her. I just wanted to get it off my chest.”

Gene’s eyes drifted toward the bar. Clyde was leaning back against the cash register, rubbing the gray stubble on his chin. Across from him, the girl was chattering away about a summer she spent bumming around Europe in the late 1960s. “When I came back,” the girl was saying, “I moved into this apartment on Shoreham Drive, just south of Sunset. The girl who was in there before me killed herself. I think she was the daughter of someone famous. Anyway, a few weeks later I was waiting tables at the Whiskey a Go Go and hanging out at the Rainbow Bar and Grill up the street. That’s where I met David Carradine, Mr. Kung Fu. He said he’d taken five hundred acid trips.”

Gene picked up the files and got to his feet. “Sandra was bullshitting you,” he said in a mild voice, a voice without judgment, “or Susan Atkins was bullshitting her.”

“I didn’t believe her. I already told you that,” Eddie said, but when he lifted up his drink his fingers were shaking, something they were not prone to do. “What do you think I am—a fucking idiot?”

Claudia followed Gene outside. She was smiling whimsically. “I’m more attractive in the light,” she said. “You agree?”

“You’re very pretty.”

“But not pretty enough for you?”

Gene turned away and started walking north, looking slightly put upon when Claudia fell into step beside him. “Look, I’m not a whore, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m a free fuck,” she said, inclining toward him so her breast touched his arm. Gene turned his head and she shot him a challenging look. “Still not interested?”

“Not today.”

They were standing on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas, the former site of Nate’s News, the newspaper and magazine stand that Gene’s father had owned for twenty-five years. Now it was a sex emporium called the House of Love. Loitering near the entrance was a black teenage hooker wearing silver lamé pants and shiny mirrored sunglasses. Although her body was absolutely perfect, her complexion was marred by vitiligo, a pigmentation disorder that left large, irregular pink and white spots on her face and neck.

“This is mine,” Gene said to Claudia, indicating the dark green Rabbit convertible that was parked by a meter. “I gotta go. I’m sorry I can’t help you out.”

Claudia shrugged. She was using a store window as a mirror to apply lipstick and to fix her hair. “Help? I don’t need help,” she said, “especially from an asshole like you.”

“Look, if I hurt your feelings—”

“You didn’t,” the girl said, staring sullenly at her reflection. “So don’t worry about it.”

Driving home in the thick traffic on the Ventura Freeway, Gene left the radio off while he replayed his conversation with Eddie Cornell. Did it surprise him that Eddie had ended up in bed with Sandra? Not really. Just the opposite. It would’ve been out of character for him not to have slept with her. But his story about the Manson family was much too bizarre to take seriously.

There was, however, something else that did trouble Gene as he left the freeway and took the winding road through the eerie darkness of Topanga Canyon. What bewildered him and yet, strangely, filled him with wonder, were the items he found inside the cardboard carton that he’d brought back from Alice’s funeral in Cedar Rapids.

He read quickly through Alice’s diaries, finding very little that he didn’t already know. Her schoolgirl crushes, her parents’ troubled marriage, the divorce, the drive cross-country, her mom’s subsequent breakdown, it was all here, written unsentimentally and honestly.

Alice had also told Gene about Nick, her first love, a photo journalist who had died in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive; and she had even shown him Nick’s obituary, which she still carried in her wallet. Gene was jealous (and unwilling to believe she once hungered sexually for someone else), but he decided, wisely, not to push it. After all the guy, being dead, was hardly a serious rival.

Still, he was shocked by the photos he found stuffed in the diary, all shot by Nick: eight black-and-white nudes taken outside, in a grove of trees. In each picture she is standing next to or leaning against the same ancient black oak, holding a flower—cherry or apple blossom— between her smallish breasts. Her body looks relaxed, but there is something askew about her expression, imperfect, like the clouds on the horizon, stormy clouds that were different shades of gray and separated by the sky.

*   *   *

And now there were these eight mysterious letters. Letters written to Alice by someone with the same first name, the earliest postmarked from Berkeley in August of 1967. Then: San Francisco in March of 1968; Carefree, Arizona in November of 1969; Amarillo, Texas, February 1971; Springfield, Missouri, August 1971; Moline, Illinois, April 1972; Flagstaff, New Mexico, December 1972; and then back to San Francisco.

Only eight. In plain white envelopes with no return address. Just these three words in the upper left-hand corner: Here and There.

That night Gene woke up and saw the moon outside his bedroom window, baited by a cloud shaped like a barbed fish hook. To himself he said: Don’t dig any deeper. You’re in over your head. Consider getting out, because when you do there will be no evidence that your shoes marked the ground.