Hillside Stranglers (18 page)

While Kenny was telephoning, Angelo was lurking in the stacks, menacing a woman he had spotted in there, just for the fun of it. He peered at her around corners and through the shelves of books. He was excited, thinking about the new scam that would go down later. Just when the woman would think he had disappeared, he would maneuver up behind her in her blind spot; then she would notice him, give a start, and he would glare at her like a predator stalking its prey in a forest. The woman cut short her visit to the library, but Angelo saw her again in the parking lot and pointed her out to Kenny, telling him gleefully about the game inside. Bianchi, wanting in on the thrills, walked over to her car and stared at her through her window. As she drove off, Kenny and Angelo climbed into the Mustang and laughed about the woman. It
would probably be a while before she felt like doing more research at that library.

At 1950 Tamarind, Angelo, as they had discussed before-hand, parked the Mustang in the basement garage and went out front to await the girl’s arrival. Kenny slipped in through the sliding glass door of apartment 114 and lit a candle he had left there. The apartment was furnished, but the electricity had been shut off. He waited there in the candlelight, rehearsing his part, until he heard a knock at the door.

She was a blonde but rather larger than Kenny had expected, about five foot eight and stocky. She gave her name as Donna. He ushered her into the apartment, apologizing for the lack of lights, saying he had forgotten to pay his bill. Within seconds Angelo appeared; they showed their badges and told Donna that she would have to come with them.

“This is a bust,” Angelo said, taking her hands and quickly slipping on the cuffs, grabbing her purse, and then shoving the purse into her cuffed hands behind her. They started to lead her out the door.

But in the hallway, Donna suddenly tried to wrench free and screamed, “Help-help-help!” Angelo quickly took hold of her, one long arm around her waist and the other up between her legs, and hurled her back into the apartment. Her purse flew down the hallway; her body crashed against the apartment wall, and her head hit the floor as she fell. Angelo crawled frantically back into the hall and gathered up her purse and its scattered contents, while Kenny held her down inside, covering her mouth with his hand and telling her that if she uttered one more sound, she would be dead. Just as Angelo got the door shut again, they heard noises in the hallway, doors opening, voices. He joined Kenny on the floor with Donna. He took out his keys and pushed one into her back. “Feel this? It’s a knife. One sound and you’ve had it.” Donna, her head bleeding, said no more.

They waited, panting, not moving, until they heard the voices cease and the doors shut again. Again threatening Donna with death, they led her out the sliding glass door and down to the basement parking garage, and they were off to Glendale.

“I’m sorry I screamed,” Donna said in the car. “I was just scared. I’ll do anything you want. Please don’t hurt me. I have a little boy. He’s at home waiting for me.”

“Just shut up,” Angelo said, glaring at her through the rear-view mirror as he drove.

Beside her in the cramped backseat, Kenny advised, “It’s probably best that you just sit there and don’t say anything.”

Angelo won the coin toss again. “Lousy fuck. Just lousy,” he said when he was done. After Kenny had finished, Donna asked if she could go to the bathroom. Angelo, figuring it was the simplest way to guard against soiling his carpet, led her into the bathroom, unhandcuffing her so that she could use the toilet paper. Meanwhile Kenny was in the living room, rummaging through her belongings. He snuck her gold ram’s-horn necklace into his pocket, figuring he would present it to Kelli, telling her it was an Italian good-luck charm. That might win her back.

No experiments this time. They dumped her on a steeply inclined vacant lot along a little-traveled extension of Alvarado Street, not far from Landa, on a hill within sight of City Hall.

It had been a close call, and they knew it. They took pleasure from the front-page photograph of Kimberly Diane Martin, Donna’s real name, lying spread-eagled on her back halfway down the slope in the morning light. It was said that the body seemed to be pointed right at City Hall. Was the Strangler getting bolder? Was he mocking the authorities, the city itself? All this pleased them, but they knew that her screams at Tamarind could have been fatal for them. Angelo blamed Kenny for a scheme that had almost betrayed them, and he said that this would be the last scam, at least for the time being.

When the police came to interview everyone at 1950 Tamarind—it had been easy for them to get the address from Climax, and, as the paper reported, they were also trying to talk to everyone who had been at the Hollywood library that night, where Climax’s records told them that the phone call summoning Kimberly Martin had been made—Bianchi had to agree with Angelo that at least a break in the killings would be a good idea. Kenny told the police officer who talked to him at his third-floor apartment that yes, he had heard something going
on the previous evening. He had heard screams. But it was nothing unusual. Wife-beating was not all that uncommon, sad to say. When the screams had stopped, he had gone to sleep. Of course he would contact the police if he learned anything more or heard any rumors. His story jibed with that of many of the other residents, although he was the only person on the third floor who reported hearing screams.

A week later Kenny moved out of his apartment. He had been fired from his job at Stewart West Coast Title for missing work too often; his employer had finally checked out Kenny’s chemotherapy excuses, found Kenny a healthy liar, and dismissed him. It was a tough Christmas for Kenny. It would have been worse for him but that Kelli took pity and invited him to accompany her up to her hometown, Bellingham, Washington, to visit her parents. The excursion raised his spirits a little, made him feel somewhat wanted, but when they returned to Los Angeles, Kelli still refused to live with him. He hoped his luck would change soon. If it did not, he might even lose his Cadillac. He got to feeling pretty sorry for himself.

He moved in with Kelli’s brother’s two close male friends, on Corona Street in the Glendale hills. He did not, he told Angelo, like the idea of living with men he was sure were homosexuals, but with no money and no job, what other choice did he have? Angelo just laughed at him and ignored the hint—that he should take his cousin in again. If he did, he might never get rid of him. Kenny had begun to get on Angelo’s nerves more than usual. If the near-disaster of the Kimberly Martin scheme was any indication, Kenny was not as clever as all his faked degrees and fast talk might indicate. They had almost been caught, and then the police had interviewed Kenny.

To tell the truth, Angelo thought, the guy was a little nuts. He had no home; he couldn’t hold a job; he let the broads run him around; he sometimes got a wild look in his eyes; he was beginning to wear thin. Lately he had begun pursuing his two-bit movie-talent-scout scam again, telling Marlene Katz, the daughter of the deli owner across the street, and a friend of hers that he was going to get them parts in the
Star Wars
sequel and
in commercials for General Motors and Dial soap. He had sent the girls Christmas poinsettia plants, like some Hollywood big shot. They would catch on to him.

He and Kenny had carried out some great shit together, but the way Angelo was beginning to feel, if the guy weren’t a relative, he would tell him to kiss off. Kenny took too much pleasure in all the Strangler publicity, Angelo thought. What did he think he was, a fucking starlet? He could sit all day at Angelo’s reading the papers and waiting for more Strangler news on the TV.

Both of them got a kick out of all the reward money that was being posted by the City Council, the County Board of Supervisors, station KTTV, and a Glendale lawyer, more than a hundred thousand dollars all told, and they enjoyed Police Lieutenant Ed Henderson’s description of Los Angeles as “a city of concern,” but Kenny, in Angelo’s sober view, was getting off on all this stuff too much. He was acting as though he would like to start making public appearances, maybe get himself a shot on the Johnny Carson show. Angelo was particularly incensed when Kenny told him that three days after they had murdered Kimberly Martin, he had gone on an LAPD ride-along, still trying to join a police force, and had asked the officers to show him the Hillside Strangler sites. Fortunately neither officer knew them, or Kenny might have spilled something. Angelo told Kenny not to do anything that stupid again.

Meanwhile like a sap he was making a fuss about this kid of his that fat bitch Kelli Boyd was about to deliver. Kenny was sounding like one fucked-up bimbo. Angelo told Julie Villa-señor, son Danny’s girlfriend, who would sometimes spend the night with Angelo, leaving her kid in the spare bedroom while she shared the water bed, to stay away from Kenny. “He’s nutty,” Angelo said.

Nor were the holidays any picnic for Angelo. His mother died after the New Year, done in at last by the disease that had begun in her vagina. Angelo mourned. Jenny might have been a cunt, but she was his mother; he had been so close to her, had visited her faithfully, had never in his life lived more than a couple of miles from her, had relied on her, he knew, for comfort
during the traumas of his divorces. No matter what—trouble with cops or women—Jenny had been there. Now of the immediate family only Cecilia was left.

But Angelo was not a guy to let life’s inevitable changes of course get him down. He had plenty of upholstering to do. He had his house to tidy, the fish to feed, the rabbits to stroke, and he had the faithful Sparky, who was always there to greet him and to roll at his feet. Of course there was plenty of female company, too. Peaches moved in just after Christmas and stayed for most of January, other girls came by for quickies, and in the evenings Angelo would scout the waitresses at the Robin Hood Inn or the Red Vest. Henry’s, his favorite, had closed, but there were always new hunting grounds. And he comforted himself by finishing work on a new Excalibur car he had built for himself from a kit. Cream-colored with a tan canvas top, a long hood, running boards, and gleaming chrome reminiscent of the glory days of motoring, the Excalibur bucked Angelo up. It was probably the only Excalibur in Glendale, the sort of car only a millionaire would normally drive, and here he had put it together with his own deft hands. He was so pleased with it that he rented a separate garage for it. Angelo was blessed with what a psychologist would call a healthy mechanism for accepting and adjusting to grief.

Weeks passed. Heavy rains came to Southern California, ending a three-year drought. Even had Angelo and Kenny been inclined to another murder, the wet weather would have put a crimp in their scam. Kenny found a menial job at Alma Lodge, a nursing home. Kelli returned to Los Angeles, quitting her job so that she could collect government assistance to care for the expected baby, still refusing to live with Kenny. But she was pleased that he seemed so excited about “the little person,” as he affectionately termed the fetus, which was due in the middle of February. He even attended natural-childbirth classes with her, proving to her that he really cared and showing evidence that he was willing to assume the role of a truly contemporary father, involved, above stereotypical role models, announcing that when the time came he would be happy to change a diaper. They discussed names for the little person. They decided that
if it turned out a boy, they would call him Ryan, after the title of their favorite soap opera,
Ryan’s Hope.

Kenny also got a kick out of the idea of calling his son by the same name he had used to ensnare Kimberly Martin, but he kept that little joke to himself.

He kept quiet to Kelli about his other women, too, content to appear to her the downcast, faithful lover, waiting for the word that she had forgiven him for his aberrant act of violence toward her, promising that his only interest now lay in his new family, trumpeting his belief in traditional family values. “I want nothing but the best for you and the little person. That gives me something to strive for.” But away from Kelli he fended off celibacy by getting in touch with Sheryl Kellison, his first California girlfriend, who, so he told her, still occupied a special place in his heart. Sheryl was delighted to resume their relationship; Kenny was the most interesting man she had ever met, so sensitive, and it was no trouble at all to forgive wandering in a man who was deeply engaged in finding himself. When Kenny was with neither Kelli nor Sheryl, he followed Angelo’s example and made inroads into the Glendale high school scene. He brought high school girls over to the Corona house to smoke pot and watch pornographic movies. He took girls into a deserted house he had discovered on Vista Superba, a dark, big place, ideal for a clandestine rendezvous, sex, and the inhaling of Rush, a bottled stimulant then popular with teenagers.

One night Kenny enjoyed a memorable double date with Liz Ward, a fourteen-year-old, and a teenage couple. The rain had paused, it was a starry night, the kids suggested a drive to a secluded place. They loved riding in Kenny’s Cadillac, and they gave him directions up into the mountains on the Angeles Crest Highway north of Glendale, passing around a bottle of sloe gin. About four miles up they told him to park the car at a turnout.

Pine forests, rough granite boulders, chaparral and manzanita bushes and fragrant sage, the city a blanket of light below, the sky an astronomer’s dream, California offering its everything above the crowded city. In the chill, dark January
air, in a hollow on a hiker’s path just off the road, young Liz Ward warmed Kenny up with oral sex. So remote and desolate and dark—Kenny thought what a great place it would be to dump a body.

But then the Cadillac days ended. At the beginning of February the car was repossessed. Since Sabra Hannan and Becky Spears had deprived him of extra income by their disobedient departures months before, Kenny had been unable to make the payments, and only his moving around had enabled him to keep the car as long as he had. He did not have the heart to tell his mother that he had lost it.