Six

All That Aches

Shortly after noon on July 18, 1966, approximately twelve hours before he was found dead outside the apartment he shared with his mother, Bobby Fuller made a quick stop at Mister Fabulous, an upscale dry cleaners on Sunset and Gardner in West Hollywood. A paid receipt was later found in the right front pocket of his jeans, and, following every lead, two homicide detectives interviewed Carl Reese, the owner of the cleaners, three days later on July 21st.

According to the transcript of this interview, which Gene had read over several times, Bobby and the members of his band frequently had their clothes cleaned at Mister Fabulous.

“They each had four or five matching outfits,” Carl Reese told the detectives, neither of whom were aware that Bobby had performed regularly at P.J.’s, the club Reese co-owned with Jack Havana. “Jackets and pants in bright colors, and shirts with ruffles down the front. Every Saturday, Bobby or his brother Randy would pick up the clothes and pay the bill. They were nice boys,” he added. “Polite. Respectful. Not like all this hippie trash you see everywhere.”

When asked if he noticed anything unusual about Bobby’s behavior on that Saturday, the Saturday he died, Carl Reese said no, but he was lying, because this short, square-shouldered man with the saturnine expression was not working behind the counter on July 18th, from twelve to three. He was down the street knocking down boilermakers at the Body Shop, a topless joint he owned on La Cienega, just north of Melrose.

“Why did he bullshit the cops? Who the fuck knows. My dad had his own reasons. He probably didn’t want me involved,” said Jacob Reese, Carl’s son, nineteen years later, when Gene met with him at Mirabelle, an outdoor café on the western edge of the Sunset Strip.

Gene said, “I take it you were the one working that day.”

“Every Saturday. Ten till six. For three straight summers,” Jacob Reese said, fingering the silver Jewish star that he wore around his neck. “Used to really piss me off when the surf was up.”

“So you waited on Bobby?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you remember?”

“Very little. It was a long time ago.”

Gene, after hesitating a moment, said, “Do you remember anything?”

“Yeah, I remember a couple of things,” Jacob Reese said, glancing down as he flexed the muscle in his right bicep. “He had a chick with him. She stayed in the car while he was inside.”

“You remember what she looked like?”

“She was hot-looking. And she had dark skin.”

“Dark? You mean she was black?”

“No. She wasn’t black,” Jacob Reese said, thinking it out. “She was dark. She had a suntan.”

“What else do you remember?”

Jacob Reese stared at Gene impassively for several seconds with his eyes slightly squinted. Then, shaking his head, he said, “This is fuckin’ weird.”

“What?”

“Trying to remember shit from the sixties.”

“You’re doin’ pretty good.”

“The guy was halfway famous, that’s the only reason. And don’t get me wrong, because I know you’re a big fan and all that, but I could never get into that rockabilly shit. Back then I was groovin’ on the Byrds and the Rolling Stones. You know what I mean?”

“Absolutely. I loved the Stones,” Gene said, with an air of agreement, and a low wind blew over a page in the small spiral binder he was using to take notes. “So back to Bobby. He picks up his laundry and splits. That was it?”

Jacob Reese shook his head and leaned forward in his chair, so he didn’t have to raise his voice over the noise of the traffic. “First the chick got out and opened the trunk. That’s where he put the cleaning, so he could lay it out flat. That way it wouldn’t get wrinkled.”

“Then the girl wasn’t in the car the whole time.”

“Man, I just told you—”

“Take it easy,” Gene said, with authority, and motioned to the waitress for the check. “I’m just trying to get all this info down right. Okay?”

Jacob Reese lapsed into a sullen silence while his knee jiggled nervously underneath the table. Looking away, he said, “He was going to get his car cleaned.”

Gene glanced up from his notebook. “Who?”

“Fuller. I remember he asked me if the Santa Palm Car Wash was right or left on Santa Monica.”

“Santa Palm?” After Gene wrote down the name, he raised his head. “When I was a kid, I used to go there every Sunday with my dad. Once we saw Edward G. Robinson and Natalie Wood on the same day.”

“She came in the cleaners.”

“Natalie Wood?”

“Not just her. Lots of stars. Sal Mineo was a regular,” Jacob Reese said, seemingly unaware that Mineo costarred with Natalie Wood and James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause. “And so was the guy who played Marcus Welby. Dude was always sloshed. I forget his name.”

“My father knew the Rifleman,” Gene said, and Jacob Reese looked at him oddly. “Chuck Connors. The guy who starred in the series.”

The Rifleman. Reese burped quietly as he narrowed his eyes, thinking. “Never heard of it.”

“It was on in the late fifties, early sixties. Connors played this guy, Lucas McCain, a homesteader in the old west. He lived with his son, just the two of them.”

“Wait!” Reese suddenly sat up and slammed his palm on the table, making the silverware bounce. “I remember now. The guy had this trick rifle, a modified Winchester with this big-ass ring which cocked it as he drew.” He brought his arm up fast, demonstrating the action. “Ka-boom!”

Gene was smiling. “That’s the guy.”

“He and your dad were friends?”

“Not friends. Connors used to come by the newsstand he owned in Hollywood. This was back in the late forties, before Connors was an actor, when he played pro baseball for the L.A. Angels in the Pacific Coast League. In those days he had a gambling problem, a big one. After he got in deep with a couple of bookies, my dad offered to bail him out. In return, Connors agreed to coach me for a month, so I had a shot at making Little League. We were supposed to meet at Rancho Park on Sunday mornings, but he never showed up once.”

Jacob Reese thought about this for a moment. “Guy sounds like a dick. What’d your dad do?”

“Nothing. Connors just stopped coming by the newsstand.”

“Never paid him back?”

“Nope.”

“You make the team?”

Gene shook his head, looked away. “I was the last kid cut.”

“Fucker ripped you off,” Reese said. His voice was harsh, disapproving. “That shit would’ve never happened to my dad. He would’ve found a way to get even.”

“I did get even,” Gene said, trying to suppress a smile. “When I was a cop, I pulled him over for speeding. Turns out he was drunk. This was back in ‘66. His show was off the air, but he still worked a lot. He asked me if I’d give him a break. I said sure. Then I told him it would cost five grand. He thought I was bullshitting him until I explained who I was. Fucker started to get nervous right about then.”

“He pay you?”

“He wanted to write me a check.”

Reese started to laugh. “A check? No way.”

“I told him cash or I was taking him to jail. It was around three A.M. Guess who he calls?”

“No idea.”

“Ronald Reagan.”

“Bullshit.”

“Swear to God,” Gene said, raising his right hand and placing it over his heart. “Turns out he and Ronnie are both lifelong Republicans and asshole buddies. So I drive up to Bel-Air, drop him off in front of Reagan’s house, and he goes inside. Ten minutes later he comes back out with an envelope filled with hundred-dollar bills. Then I drive him back to his car and that’s it.”

“The Rifleman bailed out by Ronald Reagan. That’s a great story,” Jacob Reese said, “if it’s true.”

“It is. Every word,” Gene said. “And what was really great about it was this: I had forgotten about everything—Little League, the money he owed my dad, all of it. Then, bingo! There he is on Sunset, shooting past Doheny in a brand-new bright red Bonneville, going sixty in a forty; and there I am with just an hour left on my shift, waiting for the light to change. Weird, huh? No way to explain it.”

“Yeah, there is.”

“How?”

“Karma,” Reese said simply and seriously, rubbing the side of his face as he shifted in his chair. “The dude had bad fuckin’ karma.”

After he paid the check and tipped the waitress, Gene walked Reese up the street to Tower Records, next to the lot where Reese’s car was parked. He was driving a freshly painted 1976 navy-blue Eldorado convertible with the top down.

Gene took in the Caddy with a long slow look. “Cool ride.”

“My old man’s,” Jacob Reese said. “I inherited it when he died.”

“Bobby Fuller drove a Mustang. White, right?”

“White or blue,” Reese said, then shrugged. “I’m not sure.”

“I drove a fifty Olds in high school,” Gene said, and the thought of it made him smile. “Guy in my class, Tony Rubaloff, souped it up for me. Dual carbs, Eski cam, the works. I even had it pinstriped by Von Dutch.” Gene reached down and ran his hand over the Eldorado’s shiny blue fender. “Let me ask you something,” he said, turning his head so he could stare straight into Reese’s face. “A kid who picks up his cleaning and gets his car washed, that doesn’t sound like someone thinking about killing himself. Right? He’s thinking about the future, a future that includes a beautiful girl and a record zooming up the national charts. Suicide doesn’t seem to make any sense, does it?”

Jacob Reese was silent for a moment, still looking Gene in the eye. “Let me ask you something. You think I’m a fucking idiot?”

Gene reached for a cigarette. “What’re you talking about?’

“I mean you’re not doing research for your brother. This is not about some movie project. Is it?”

“Sure it is,” Gene said, conscious of the new tone in Reese’s voice, a roughness that wasn’t there a moment earlier. “Ray Burk. That’s my brother. I told you his credits.”

“Something’s fucked up here,” Jacob Reese said, and he made a disappointed face. “Something else is going on.”

“Nothing’s going on. I was totally up front with you. I told you I used to be a cop. Correct?”

“But you didn’t tell me you investigated Fuller’s death back in 1966. You left that out,” Jacob Reese said slyly, smiling over his shoulder as he climbed inside the Eldorado and slammed the door. “I found that out from Larry Havana. You remember Larry, don’t you?”

Gene was silent.

“Sure you do. When you were kids, you used to push Larry around in his wheelchair. You sold maps to the movie stars’ homes for his dad.”

Gene still remained silent.

“Right. Burk?”

“I never worked for Jack Havana,” Gene said matter-of-factly.

“Really?” Jacob Reese turned over the engine. “According to Larry—”

“Fuck Larry Havana,” Gene said. “His father was the scum of the earth.”

“Why? Because he bought your dad’s newsstand?”

“He turned a legit business into a fucking cesspool.”

Jacob Reese was still smiling energetically as he put the Caddy into gear. “My dad and Jack Havana were partners. Does that make him a scumbag, too?”

“You want an honest answer?”

“Why not?”

Gene kept silent and looked away, pretending to concentrate on the cars whizzing by on Sunset. Then calmly, softly, he said, “No point in opening old wounds. Your father’s dead. I’ll let him rest in peace.”

“If you really wanted him to rest in peace, you wouldn’t have picked up the phone,” Jacob Reese said, leaning back and looking comfortable as he pulled out of the parking lot. “Thanks for lunch.”

Gene remained standing at the curb for several seconds as the Eldorado merged into the traffic moving east on Sunset. Then he turned around and strolled into Tower Records. In the rhythm and blues section, he was both surprised and delighted to find a newly released compilation album by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, one of the great up-tempo, comedy-showtime acts from the 1950s.

Gene had seen them perform live in Daytona Beach back in 1963, after he’d left New Orleans and was making his way down to Key West. It was Spring Break and they were appearing at Johnny B’s, a segregated nightclub that was packed with mostly southern college kids from Georgia and Tennessee.

Hank started off his set with his newer pseudo-soul hits like “Finger-poppin’ Time” and “The Twist,” but the songs that really got the crowd stomping and clapping were his raunchy singles from the fifties, tunes like “Work with Me Annie” and “Sexy Ways.”

After the first show ended, a drunken overweight kid wearing a Vanderbilt sweatshirt and pegged blue denim pants staggered up to the front of the stage and shouted over the din of voices: “Hank Ballard, you are one cool-ass nigger.”

Hank, who was still holding the mike, struggled to appear unfazed as he let his eyes play over the boy’s sweaty face.

“You gonna let him call you a nigger, Hank?” someone said, a voice deep in the crowd.

“I didn’t call him a nigger,” said the drunk kid over his shoulder. “I called him a ‘cool-ass nigger.’”

By now the club had grown silent, and Hank was staring down at the kid with profound disappointment in his yellow-rimmed eyes. Gene remembered that Hank’s gaudy outfit was identical to the one he was wearing on the cover of the album: cranberry silk shirt, green luminescent slacks, contrasting see-through socks decorated with musical notes, and patent leather shoes. Behind him, the Midnighters were dressed in shiny black suits.

After a while the rhythm guitarist in the house band—a white kid wearing a suit made out of a strange blue felted fabric and blue suede loafers—took the mike out of Hank’s hand and whispered in his ear. Hank nodded, still staring at the fat boy’s face, on which there was now an insipid smile, and then he turned around and walked slowly back to his dressing room.

Three months later the Midnighters found the Nation of Islam and, as Black Muslims, refused to play in front of an audience that included whites. Unable to accept their religious beliefs, Ballard left the group and began touring with James Brown, eventually becoming a full-time member of his revue.

When he got home from his meeting with Jacob Reese, Gene went straight into his living room and spent the next two hours sitting on the edge of his couch, making phone calls and chain-smoking Marlboros. On his way into the kitchen for a beer, he stopped in front of the wooden bookcase that was built into the wall next to the fireplace. On a shelf at eye level was a picture of Alice that was taken near the carousel in Griffith Park. She was sitting calmly at a redwood picnic table with a sleeping cat curled in her lap. Gene took down the picture and kissed her slightly parted lips. When he pulled his head back, he thought he detected a tiny movement in her eyelids. Now she seemed to be looking at him appraisingly.

A horn sounded outside, and from the house next door he heard pool noises, kids laughing and splashing. In the months before she died, Alice and Gene had spoken several times about having children, but she was undecided, not convinced she was cut out to be a mom.

“I think I’m too selfish,” she’d told Gene, the last time the subject came up. It was an overcast Sunday in June—a yearly weather pattern that the natives called “the June gloom”—and they were driving back from Zuma Beach, where they had spent most of the gray morning in the ocean, body surfing. “Why don’t we see how we feel in a year?”

“I’m forty-three,” Gene had reminded her.

“That’s still young. We have lots of time,” Alice had said. “First we have to get married.”

Gene replaced the photograph and moved back to the couch, so mad with grief that his blood seemed to fly through his heart. And his house, once a zone of warmth and security, now felt choked and haunted, filling him with destructive urges.

That night they were running several episodes of The Twilight Zone on one of the local television channels. It was part of a tribute to Rod Serling, the writer who created and hosted the series. Gene’s favorite episode came on around ten. It starred Inger Stevens as a troubled young woman taking a road trip by herself, followed by a strange hitchhiker, a deranged-looking man whose scourged face and eerie presence seemed to silently foretell her imminent death.

When the show ended, Gene switched off the television and remained seated on the couch, staring at the pleated folders that were spread out on the coffee table in front of him. Inside was all the written evidence pertaining to the death of Bobby Fuller: transcripts of interviews given by Fuller’s mother, his brother, band members, and his manager, Herb Stelzner; bills, bank statements, and a complete inventory of Bobby’s possessions, including his books and records and several small notepads that were filled with lyrics for songs that he’d yet to record.

After Bobby’s death was ruled a suicide, Gene had continued to investigate the case on his own for several weeks, gathering much information that was not contained in these folders, information that Gene felt was fundamental to solving this case, that only he knew—like the growing affection between Bobby and Nancy Sinatra in the spring and summer of 1966 (following her divorce from teen idol Tommy Sands), and her father’s stern disapproval.

Gene interviewed Dewey Bowen and Deborah Walley, two of the young costars in The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini, and they both separately confirmed that Bobby and Nancy were seeing each other away from the set.

“I used to run into them at the Seawitch, this hangout on the Sunset Strip,” Bowen told Gene. “They were always in a booth in the back. They looked cozy. Were they falling in love? Who knows?”

According to Deborah Walley, one of the drivers on the film, a teamster named Benny Moretti, was one of Frank Sinatra’s boyhood pals. “He told me they grew up on the same block in Hoboken, New Jersey. And it was common knowledge that Frank used his clout to have Benny hired on the movie to keep tabs on Nancy. Once while we were filming late, Nancy asked me to distract Benny so she and Bobby could sneak off the lot for dinner.”

Bowen remembered Frank Sinatra coming by the studio only once. “We were shooting a rock-and-roll number in this haunted mansion. After the last take, Frank yelled out, ‘That was the worst fuckin’ noise I ever heard!’ Then he looked over at Bobby and they just stared at each other for about fifteen seconds. But it seemed more like an hour,” said Bowen. “And no one—cast, crew, director—moved or said word one. Even Boris Karloff just stood there frozen like a goddamn statue. Finally, Bobby just put down his guitar and walked off the set.”

And now, as Gene reviewed the notes he’d made earlier that day, after his conversation with Jacob Reese, he recalled that odd link between Carl Reese and Frank Sinatra—two men with unpredictable impulses and moods that were hard to comprehend—who had a friendship (that was never carefully concealed), dating back to the early 1950s, 1953 to be exact, the year that Sinatra starred in his comeback film, From Here to Eternity.

“They used to go to the fights together,” Reese had told Gene. “Frank, my dad, Jack Havana, and this producer, Max Rheingold. Afterwards they’d hit Ciro’s or the Melody Room. Or sometimes they’d have a late dinner at this joint in Inglewood called the Buggy Whip.”

The Buggy Whip, the steakhouse where Alice’s mother worked back in 1964. How strangely coincidental was that? Without showing his surprise, Gene had asked Jacob Reese if Nancy Sinatra could’ve been the girl with Bobby on the day he came by Mister Fabulous.

Jacob Reese had shrugged. “Could’ve been.”

“But you’re not sure?”

“What difference does it make?” Jacob Reese had said, making it clear with his attitude that he knew far more than he was telling. “It’s a fucking movie. Make up anything you want.”

Gene said nothing.

“Right?”

Gene did not answer right away. His mouth had gone dry, and a thin trickle of perspiration slid slowly down his neck. Finally, he nodded his head. “You’re right, Reese. It’s just a fucking movie.”

Before he went to sleep, Gene reread the taped transcript of the phone conversation he’d had with Lenore McGowan, a few weeks after her article appeared in Tiger Beat. When he told her that he was a detective investigating Bobby Fuller’s death, she seemed startled and her voice became frightened. With a little professional prompting, she quickly admitted that she did not disclose everything that happened on her “dream day” in Los Angeles, leaving out Herb Stelzner’s unexpected appearance at Gold Star Studios.

“Bobby did play me his new single. That was true,” Lenore said. “But then he and Stelzner got into a loud argument over the B-side choice. Stelzner said that he owned the record company, which gave him the right to make the final decision. He also said he didn’t want to record a live album at P.J.’s, that it was way too expensive, and he was thinking about canceling the U.K. tour that had been planned for the fall. Bobby was furious. For a minute I thought they were going to come to blows, but then the engineer quickly jumped between them and walked Bobby outside.”

“Then what happened?”

“Stelzner just laughed everything off. He told me that he and Bobby fought all the time, that it was no big deal.” “Did you believe him?” Gene asked her. “No.”

“Did he know you were going to write an article about your trip?”

“I said I might.”

“And what was his response?”

“He said that as president of the fan club I was part of Bobby’s team, and that I shouldn’t write about anything that could harm his reputation.”

“But he never threatened you?”

“No. But . . .”

“But what?”

“He scared me.”

“Why?”

“Because he was scary.”

Gene said, “What about the phone call Bobby received before he left?”

“That was true.”

“Did he tell you who it was from?”

“Yes. He said it was from a girl, but he couldn’t tell me her name. He said it was a secret.”

“Did he give you a hint?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Try to remember. This is important.”

“Mister Burk, I told you everything. Okay? I swear.”

“I believe you.”

“Then can I get off the phone?”

“Sure, Lenore. You’ve been a big help. Thanks.”

*   *   *

That night Gene had a dream in which his mother appeared for the first time:

She was in her early twenties, no older, and she was sitting at the end of a long bar inside a crowded gambling club. Counting money behind the bar was actor Steve Cochran, who Gene had recently seen on the late show in White Heat, a brutal crime drama that starred James Cagney as a mother-fixated gangster.

Nathan Burk was dealing blackjack at a table in the center of the casino, keeping one eye on the cards and the other on his wife. Among the gamblers at his table was a female impersonator who was seated in a wheelchair. In front of her was a glass of champagne and a dwindling supply of one-hundred-dollar chips.

Carl Reese entered the club wearing a dark blue suit with a gold handkerchief in his breast pocket. After he winked at the silent, big-fisted doorman, he crossed the room and took a seat at the bar alongside Gene’s mother. She greeted him with a kiss next to his lips, while he reached around her to shake Cochran’s hand.

Jack Havana came into the club through a private entrance, accompanied by two gym-toned bodyguards wearing matching gray double-breasted suits that shone like polished armor. At the same time, a band led by Bobby Fuller took the stage in the lounge. His hair was greased into a king-sized pompadour, and his face showed the signs of anxiety and fatigue.

The music started and Carl Reese tapped Gene’s mother lightly on the knee, keeping time. Steve Cochran transferred money from the register into the strongbox below the sink, and then he was joined behind the bar by Bobby’s manager, Herb Stelzner. Nathan Burk dealt himself a blackjack and raked all the money off the table with a quick swipe of his hand. A man with an Irish face muttered a curse and stormed off, and the drag queen, who was Larry Havana, Jack’s son, began to weep silently while Nathan reshuffled the deck.

Jack Havana moved slowly into the bar and sat down heavily next to Gene’s mom. When Carl Reese offered Havana his right hand, his sleeve brushed against Mona Burk’s nipple and his coat fell open, revealing a pearl-handled revolver that was holstered underneath his arm. Gene’s mother lit a cigarette and smiled when Carl Reese pushed a stray hair away from her face. Under his breath, Nathan Burk called his wife a dirty little whore. He said it three more times before he flipped over his hole card—a queen of diamonds to go with the five of clubs that was already showing. He hit himself with a winning six, and the only player left at the table, a hostile-looking black man, pushed his money forward and mock-backhanded Nathan across the face.

Bobby Fuller finished his second song, a punch-out version of “C’mon Everybody,” by one of his idols, singer-songwriter Eddie Cochran. The applause was scattered, nothing like the standing ovations he used to get every weekend at P.J.’s. Gene’s mother was smiling at Carl Reese, her eyes beaming approval as she took a small sip from her brandy glass. Nathan Burk stopped dealing cards. He discarded his apron and started into the bar, but the doorman was blocking the entrance.

Herb Stelzner was standing by the register quartering limes and lemons, using a serrated knife that was as sharp as a razor. Steve Cochran and his scowling eyes were no longer in the dream. He’d disappeared. Jack Havana turned on his stool and stared at his crippled son with a look of utter contempt. Nathan Burk slipped through the doorway while the doorman’s head was turned. Right away he noticed a mole on his wife’s cheek that wasn’t there when they were together. At the same time he saw the knife in Herb Stelzner’s hand, the silver blade glimmering in the smoky blue light.

Carl Reese whispered something to Jack Havana, their uneasiness growing as they watched Nathan Burk move forward, glowering at his wife, ready to split her lips with his fist. When he pulled her off her bar stool, Carl Reese reached for his pistol. The moment his fingers curled around the grip, his eyelids jumped and the knife of his assassin, Herb Stelzner, walked a pathway up the center of his back. Reese took one step to the side, as if he were letting someone pass, then pitched forward on his face.

For the first time in his life Jack Havana looked worried, even though he was flanked by both of his bodyguards. He was staring down at the bloody trench in Carl Reese’s back. His face was as white as a cloud. Gene’s mother told Nathan Burk that she’d learned her lesson. She said she wanted to come home. Fast tears of remorse fell from her eyes and, simultaneously, their hands came together and they walked out of the bar.

Actor Steve Cochran reappeared in the dream. Now he was in the lounge, sitting ringside, singing along with Bobby Fuller and the house band. Larry Havana was there too, in a back booth, now dressed like a man, surrounded by a collection of long-legged, tight-skirted women with devious mouths and secret names that only the waiters knew. In the booth next to them, a bug-eyed Gypsy woman was reading Gene’s palm. She told him that “one’s deepest emotions are always shown in silence.”

And that’s when the song ended in the dream, and Gene woke up.

Feeling restless but not quite panicky, he went into the kitchen and washed the dishes that were piled in his sink. Afterwards he took a hot shower and came back into the living room and switched on the TV. Barbara Hershey was appearing in a late-night rerun of the television series Run for Your Life. In this episode, which was titled, “Saro-Jane, You Never Whispered Again,” Ben Gazzara, who starred as Paul Bryan, a man with only two years to live, searches throughout Los Angeles for a missing teenage girl. He finds her finally in Topanga Canyon, living in a teepee with a bunch of hippies.

Several residents of Topanga—authentic freaks, most of them zonked on psychedelics—were used as extras in this show. Among them was Rachel Cooper, a thirty-two-year-old ex-prostitute who lived on Sandpiper Lane, just down the hill from Gene, in a house that was once rented by Gary Hinman, a musician who was brutally murdered by Susan Atkins and three other members of the Manson family.

At a Fourth of July party that Gene threw in 1985—actually it was more of a housewarming for Alice, who had moved in a few weeks earlier—Rachel told Gene that she knew and occasionally “worked for” Charles Manson back in the late 1950s, when he first came to L.A. with his seventeen-year-old pregnant wife, Rosalie.

“When I first met him,” Cooper said, “he was running chicks out of The Wipeout, this thieves’ bar on South Western that was owned by the mob. I was Charlie’s main lady for six months, until he found Judy, this rich-bitch, Jewish college girl he met one day in Westwood Village. She owned a white T-Bird convertible that she put into his name and bought him a whole new wardrobe. When her dad found out Charlie was turning her out, he went nuts and tracked him down, and Charlie went back to jail. In the two years I knew him, he got popped at least five times. Of course, that’s what he learned in the slam: how to turn out chicks.”

In a later conversation at his house, Rachel Cooper told Gene that Charlie’s mother Kathleen was living in Los Angeles at this time. And that she (Rachel) and Charlie had visited her in 1957, on Christmas eve.

“Her apartment was on Mariposa, just west of the Hollywood Freeway and one block south of Sunset. We got there around nine,” Cooper said. “Charlie brought her a couple of presents—pocket books he got cheap at this secondhand bookstore over on Cherokee. They were westerns, I think, and one had a picture on the front cover of a woman holding a knife to a man’s throat. I wrapped them up in pretty paper that I stole from the Rexall on Gower.”

Cooper said there was a man visiting Kathleen Manson when she and Charles arrived. He was sitting in the center of the couch with his shirt off, drinking beer out of a can. Charlie’s mother, who answered the door in her slip, said hello fast and rushed into the bathroom, where she changed into a skirt and blouse. Charlie put the gift-wrapped books on top of the TV and walked into the tiny kitchenette. He found a beer in the fridge, opened it, and remained out of sight until his mother came back into the living room and sat down on the couch next to the shirtless man. That’s when Charlie reappeared in the living room with a Budweiser in one hand and a steak knife hidden in his pants.

Cooper said, “Charlie told his mom I was a whore, just like she was, the only difference being that I was younger and prettier, and my pussy was tighter. Mind you, these were the first words out of his mouth. Nobody said a thing for about ten seconds. Then the skinny guy put down his beer can and tilted his head to the side, looking at Charlie like he was stone-crazy. He told Charlie it was wrong to say these things about his mother. And Charlie said he would talk about his mama anyway he wanted, that he’d been watching her fuck men since he was five years old. He also told the man that he could fuck me for free, a two-for-one deal since it was Christmas eve. Then he brought the knife out from behind his back and smiled.

“Charlie’s mom put her hand on the man’s jumpy knee and told him to keep still. She said, ‘He ain’t gonna hurt you none. He’s my son.’ Charlie ordered his mother off the couch and told me to take her place next to the bony man. Then he told us to start having sex.

“The man crossed his arms over his chest and told Charlie he was not prepared to do what he said. Charlie said if he didn’t, he would cut him with his knife. His mother began to get upset, saying Charlie had a sick mind. She was talkin’ real loud. When she wouldn’t be quiet, Charlie reached over and slugged her in the forehead with his fist, knocking her to the floor.

“By this time I was out of my clothes, and ‘Mr. No-Sex’ on the couch was staring at me with a little more interest, paying special attention to my seventeen-year-old boobs. I told him I liked people watching me fuck, that it turned me on, and I reached over to unbuckle his pants. Afterwards all four of us went up to Revells and drank and played shuffle pool until the bar closed. On the way home Charlie told me a little bit about his childhood. He never knew his dad but said his last name was Scott. Manson came from one of his stepfathers. He said this Mr. Scott worked as a fry cook at a luncheonette near the bus depot in Louisville. Then he said something really weird. He said that he was black.

“That’s the only thing he told me I didn’t believe.”