Fascination With L.A. Is Turned to Fear

Alexis de Vilar would occasionally raise his head from his reading to look out the bus window for the landmark Pacific Design Center on Santa Monica Boulevard near his stop.

It was a sunny day and the novelist, visiting from Spain, was looking forward to returning to his West Hollywood apartment in time to get in some tennis.

His head was down when he noticed an approaching shadow. Then came the stunning blow to the back of his head.

When de Vilar looked up, he peered directly into the crazed and frightened eyes of a disheveled man, as the stranger pulled a five-inch blade out of the side of de Vilar’s head.

Friend Murdered

“Why?” de Vilar recalls asking his attacker. “I have done nothing to you.”

The terrifying attack aboard an RTD bus last week came in the wake of the unrelated but equally senseless murder of one of de Vilar’s close friends in April. The spate of random violence has stunned the writer and world traveler. De Vilar is afraid to be alone and seldom leaves the friend’s apartment where he has taken refuge.

And he feels the attack reveals a hideous side of this city. Although he has worked as a war correspondent in Uganda and a free-lance writer in Thailand and China, de Vilar said he has seldom been afraid. “But here there’s a kind of insanity . . . you can feel the danger in the air.

“There’s a kind of monster that is being built here.”

His numerous projects, including adapting two of his books to the screen and finding a publisher to translate his works, have all come to a standstill, said de Vilar, 40, whose novels have received several literary awards in his native country.

Plans to Leave

Although he came to Los Angeles three months ago with the intention of staying, all de Vilar can think of these days is catching a plane back home. He said he will stay only as long as required for court appearances. A 38-year-old man with a history of violence has been charged in the assault.

“Los Angeles is a fantastic place to have an office and to come with projects to sell, but not a place to live,” said de Vilar. The novelist and free-lance writer said he had planned to establish offices in Paris and Los Angeles, and divide his time between the two cities. He had even considered bringing his two small children to spend time here with him, he added, but not anymore.

“This is no Disneyland,” he said.

Police described the man suspected of assaulting him as a transient with a history of mental problems who, according to witnesses, had been babbling incomprehensibly before pulling the knife on de Vilar.

Adding to the writer’s anguish was the slaying of his friend, Charles Washington, who befriended him soon after his arrival. Washington, 61, a Los Angeles car salesman, disappeared after taking a prospective buyer on a test drive last month. A 21-year-old drifter, apprehended while driving the stolen car in Nebraska about a week later, is said to have told authorities he shot Washington and dumped his body on a highway on his way to Palm Springs.

Tribute to a Friend

While riding the bus last week, de Vilar was touching up a free-lance piece he had written about the murder. In it, he referred to his friend as an oddity in Los Angeles, “a Renaissance man” of broad interests, whose spirituality and sweet disposition ran counter to the city’s flagrant materialism.

De Vilar is concerned that in his own case, his attacker may get away with only a minimum sentence. The suspect, Harold Bevoid White, who was arrested as he walked away from the bus after the attack, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted murder. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for the end of the month.

According to investigators, White served time at Patton State Hospital for the criminally insane in San Bernardino in 1987 after he was convicted of cruelty to animals in a case involving the killing of dogs.

On the bus, witnesses said he was talking to himself and railing about not being the anti-Christ, said Detective Joel Brown of the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department Station.

“There’s no doubt the guy is not normal, but how crazy he is,” Brown added, has yet to be determined by the courts.

Near-Fatal Wound

Doctors who treated de Vilar said that the stabbing would have been fatal had the knife struck the jugular vein, which it missed by an inch, Brown said. The wound required 20 stitches but de Vilar did not require hospitalization.

De Vilar’s attorney said he plans to file a claim against the RTD, charging negligence on the part of the transportation agency in not taking the necessary precautions to prevent the attack. De Vilar, who said he has lingering pain from the head wound, added that his main concern is any long-term neurological disability from the injury.

De Vilar, who said he has been “fascinated” by America since first traveling here in 1973, said he plans to write a novel about Los Angeles. He will not paint a rosy picture. De Vilar said he will write about the absence of family ties, the uprootedness and isolation of the city’s inhabitants.

“It’s strange because in many parts of the world, California is seen as the last hope, a place to start a new life,” he said. “But the reality has nothing to do with the dream.”

For de Vilar, the dream ended abruptly aboard an RTD bus last week.