L.A. Noir Read Online Free Page B
Author: John Buntin
con men were then known) preyed on the unwitting, selling naive newcomers nonexistent stocks, gold mines, oil fields, and real estate. “Boulevard sheiks” prowled for and preyed on the growing number of working girls making their homes in Los Angeles. Among this teeming underworld’s victims was a seventeen-year-old emigrant from Deadwood, South Dakota, William H. Parker III.
IT’S HARD to imagine better preparation for 1920s Los Angeles than turn-of-the-century Deadwood, a town devoted, as one wag put it, “to gold, guns, and women.” Parker was born into a family that had played a large part in cleaning it up. His grandfather—the first William H. Parker—had arrived in the spring of 1877, less than a year after General Custer and the 210 men under his direct command were killed by Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at Little Big Horn, a hundred miles south of the mining camp. College educated, a former colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War who was later appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to be the first federal collector for tax revenue and the assistant U.S. attorney in the Colorado territory, Parker cut an imposing figure. Within days of arriving in the frontier settlement, he was made captain of a hastily assembled town militia, formed to protect the booming mining camp. In 1902, he became the district attorney, a position he occupied until 1906, when he was elected to Congress. His willingness to enforce closing hours on casinos and brothels earned him a reputation as a reformer. Prosperous, fierce (“a good hater,” said one acquaintance), aloof (“to many he may have appeared unapproachably chilly,” noted one friend in a memorial address to the Deadwood bar), Congressman Parker was one of Deadwood’s most imposing citizens—“dauntless, proud, imperious.”
Congressman Parker’s position should have ensured that his grandson would grow up as a member of one of Deadwood’s most respected families. Instead, as he was returning home by train from his first year in Washington, the new congressman was suddenly afflicted with terrible abdominal pain. He stopped in Chicago. There a surgeon cut into the freshman representative and discovered that Parker suffered from advanced cirrhosis of the liver—a condition often associated with heavy drinking. He died two months later at the age of sixty-one, leaving behind a family of five sons and two daughters. Bill Parker would not grow up with his grandfather’s wealth or prestige. Instead, he would inherit his temperament and, in time, his fondness for whiskey.
As a child, Bill grew up in a house divided. His mother, Mary Kathryn Moore, was a spirited, independent woman who was both deeply religious and good humored. By all accounts, she was intensely proud of Bill, her oldest son, who was born on June 21, 1905. Bill’s father, William Henry Parker Jr., had a personality that can only be called dour. He also had a violent temper. At school, one of Parker’s sisters was once asked what her father did. She answered, “Oh, my father gets up in the morning to fix breakfast and throws pots and pans around in the kitchen.”
These troubles were not debilitating, at least not at first. As a young boy, Parker was diligent and bright, a dogged athlete and a gifted orator. (The Deadwood High School yearbook reported that Parker won the senior year first prize in rhetoric for his stirring recitation of William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech—an interesting selection for a gold-mining town.) His final report card in 1922 reveals an excellent student, with an aptitude for math and rhetoric, who enjoyed the high opinion of his teachers.
“I consider William Parker to be an unusually bright young man, endowed with mental energy and capabilities which, if properly directed, will enable him to carve out for himself a name of which all concerned may be justly proud,” the principal of Deadwood High School wrote on Parker’s
IT’S HARD to imagine better preparation for 1920s Los Angeles than turn-of-the-century Deadwood, a town devoted, as one wag put it, “to gold, guns, and women.” Parker was born into a family that had played a large part in cleaning it up. His grandfather—the first William H. Parker—had arrived in the spring of 1877, less than a year after General Custer and the 210 men under his direct command were killed by Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors at Little Big Horn, a hundred miles south of the mining camp. College educated, a former colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War who was later appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant to be the first federal collector for tax revenue and the assistant U.S. attorney in the Colorado territory, Parker cut an imposing figure. Within days of arriving in the frontier settlement, he was made captain of a hastily assembled town militia, formed to protect the booming mining camp. In 1902, he became the district attorney, a position he occupied until 1906, when he was elected to Congress. His willingness to enforce closing hours on casinos and brothels earned him a reputation as a reformer. Prosperous, fierce (“a good hater,” said one acquaintance), aloof (“to many he may have appeared unapproachably chilly,” noted one friend in a memorial address to the Deadwood bar), Congressman Parker was one of Deadwood’s most imposing citizens—“dauntless, proud, imperious.”
Congressman Parker’s position should have ensured that his grandson would grow up as a member of one of Deadwood’s most respected families. Instead, as he was returning home by train from his first year in Washington, the new congressman was suddenly afflicted with terrible abdominal pain. He stopped in Chicago. There a surgeon cut into the freshman representative and discovered that Parker suffered from advanced cirrhosis of the liver—a condition often associated with heavy drinking. He died two months later at the age of sixty-one, leaving behind a family of five sons and two daughters. Bill Parker would not grow up with his grandfather’s wealth or prestige. Instead, he would inherit his temperament and, in time, his fondness for whiskey.
As a child, Bill grew up in a house divided. His mother, Mary Kathryn Moore, was a spirited, independent woman who was both deeply religious and good humored. By all accounts, she was intensely proud of Bill, her oldest son, who was born on June 21, 1905. Bill’s father, William Henry Parker Jr., had a personality that can only be called dour. He also had a violent temper. At school, one of Parker’s sisters was once asked what her father did. She answered, “Oh, my father gets up in the morning to fix breakfast and throws pots and pans around in the kitchen.”
These troubles were not debilitating, at least not at first. As a young boy, Parker was diligent and bright, a dogged athlete and a gifted orator. (The Deadwood High School yearbook reported that Parker won the senior year first prize in rhetoric for his stirring recitation of William Jennings Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech—an interesting selection for a gold-mining town.) His final report card in 1922 reveals an excellent student, with an aptitude for math and rhetoric, who enjoyed the high opinion of his teachers.
“I consider William Parker to be an unusually bright young man, endowed with mental energy and capabilities which, if properly directed, will enable him to carve out for himself a name of which all concerned may be justly proud,” the principal of Deadwood High School wrote on Parker’s
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