Loose Diamonds Read Online Free PDF

robbery and spend two years in jail
before she was pardoned by President Carter. But I don’t want to get ahead of
myself here by speaking about Squeaky Fromme and presidents.
    We had a strange talk about ecology that was way
ahead of its time, about waste and our dependence on oil and corporate greed,
but there was an undercurrent of anger to it that was surprising in its
conviction and, as I later realized, a precursor of what was to come.
    There was a look of sadness somewhere between her
eyes and her cheekbones—that I don’t think Charlie had initially put there—that
had been there for some time, and might be always. So even though Charlie told
her she was pretty, she was smart enough (and insecure enough) to think that
that meant in Charlie’s eyes she was, but maybe not in anyone else’s, and that
was why she stayed. She was definitely in need of an intervention. But the
problem was, there wasn’t anyone there to intervene.
    I wanted to tell her to come with me, now. Get in
the car and leave. The problem was Tex Watson, who would be charged six weeks
later and jailed for the murders of the LaBiancas and later convicted. His
booming Southern voice could still be heard from somewhere inside the house,
engaged now, in a heated argument with someone on the other end of the phone.
And I thought if I convinced her to come with me, Tex would probably come after
her. And me, for taking her with me. And there was the specter of Shorty Shea’s
body buried somewhere out on the range.
    Clem was circling around the barn now, eyeing us
from a distance. Steve “Clem” Grogan, whose other nickname was “Scramblehead.”
And the courthouse rumor (which would turn out to be true) was that he was about
to be arrested for the murder of Shorty Shea. Clem walked over and asked if I
wanted to have sex with him. I gave him one of those looks you give people in a
situation like that, sort of quizzical, one of those, “You are kidding, aren’t
you?” looks, softened by a smile because he sort of scared me. Even my Italian
friend was getting nervous, now. I looked around at the ranch, isolated,
abandoned, like a dead zone that had somehow closed itself off from any existing
society. I cut the interview with Squeaky short and we got in the car and
left.
    But I kept hoping that she’d come to her senses,
stop trying to be the spokesman for a cause that didn’t make any sense at all,
and I couldn’t get over how strange it was that a chance encounter on a street
corner had changed her life inalterably.
    Six weeks later, Charlie showed up in court with an
X carved into his forehead, some metaphorical statement that he had been X’d out
of society. The next day Squeaky showed up on the courthouse steps with an X
carved into her forehead, too, and I knew that she was lost—that there would be
no turning back—and that any chance she had for a normal life no longer
existed.
    Four years later, in 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme would
point a .45 Colt semiautomatic pistol at President Gerald Ford, in a bizarre
assassination attempt for what she claimed were ecological reasons, made
even stranger by the fact that there were no bullets in the gun. But the
psychological underpinnings of the statement that she made in court
resonates with me still. “I stood up and waved a gun,” she said, “for a
reason. I was so relieved not to have to shoot it, but, in truth, I came to
get life. Not just my life but clean air, healthy water and respect for
creatures and creation.”
    Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was
sentenced to life in prison for the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford
and was released on parole in 2009.
    Charles Manson was denied
parole for the tenth time in 2008. He refused to go to his parole
hearing.

Five
    Champagne by the Case
    I have a theory that single women who buy champagne by the case rarely end well.
    Disclaimer: I’ve been known to make generalizations based on a case study of four.
    Honey Hathaway was the