Jonathan Kellerman - Alex 03 - Over the Edge

by Over the Edge

  'Information.'

  'Don't count on it. The kid's not into helping others.'

  I told her she was probably right and thanked her for letting me come up.

  ' Do you mind if I look around his place?'

  'Why should I care?'

  'Could you keep Nureyev and Baryshnikov at bay while I do it?'

  'Sure. They're really sweethearts anyway.'

  I left, and she called out after me:

  'For your sake, I hope you've got nasal congestion.'

  Her parting shot was more than bombast. The studio smelled like an undermaintained outhouse. Most of the space was a jumble of rancid clothing, clotted food, and nasty-looking stains. The toilet was stopped up, and brownish gunk had overflowed onto the unpainted plank floor. The furniture, if you could call it that, had been knocked together from plywood and sawhorses. Whoever had broken in had upended and shattered most of it. A workbench, similarly fashioned, held an acetylene torch, an assortment of templates and moulds, fish bones, a decapitated Barbie doll with the head lying off to one side, and charred chunks of plastic. One corner of the studio was devoted to six-foot piles of newspaper, sodden and mildewed, another to a collection of roach-infested cookie boxes and empty soda cans. I poked around for a few seconds, finding nothing, before the stench overtook me.

  I exited to more basil, hollered a good-bye, and walked stiffly between the Dobermans. They grinned and growled but didn't move as I made my way down the stairs. Once outside, I inhaled hungrily; even the smog smelled good.

  As I unlocked the Seville, a hand settled on my shoulder. I whipped around and came face-to-face with one of the winos, a black man whose tattered clothes had grimed to the point where they matched his skin. The boundaries between cloth and flesh were indistinguishable, and he resembled some naked feathered cave creature.

  His eyeballs were the colour of rancid butter; the irises, filmy and listless. He was anywhere between forty and eighty, toothless, stooped, and emaciated, the caved-in face

  coated with an iron-filing beard. His head was covered with a greasy ski cap worn over his ears. Pinned to it was one of those cute I LOVE L.A. buttons with a heart substituted for the word love.

  Slapping his hands on his knees, he laughed. His breath was a blend of muscatel and overripe cheese. I winced; this was the morning for olfactory torture.

  'You ugly,' he cackled.

  'Thanks,' I said, and edged away.

  'No, man, you really ugly.'

  I turned, and the hand landed on my shoulder again.

  'Enough,' I said, annoyed, shoving it away.

  He laughed harder and did a little dance.

  'You ugly! You ugly!'

  I turned the doorkey. He came closer. I compressed my nostrils.

  'You ugly, you ugly. You also rich.'

  Oh, Jesus, what a morning. I reached into my pocket and gave him whatever change I found. He examined it and smiled woozily.

  'You real ugly! You real rich! I got somethin' for you if you got somethin' for me.'

  He was breathing on me now, showing no inclination to leave. We were ignored by the other winos, already locked in alcoholic torpor. A pair of Mexican boys walked by and laughed. He leaned closer, giggling. I could have pushed him aside, but he was too pathetic to manhandle.

  'What do you want?' I asked wearily.

  'You lookin' for that li'l Jap kid wit' the nails in his hayed, right?'

  'How'd you know that?'

  'You ugly, but you not smart.' He tapped his scrawny chest. 'Mudpie heah be smart.'

  Ceremoniously he held out his palm, a palsied mocha slab, mapped with black lines.

  'All right, Mudpie,' I said, pulling out my wallet and peeling off a five, 'what is it you want to tell me?'

  'Sheeit,' he said, snapping up the bill and secreting it among the shapeless contours of his rags, 'that buy a song

  an" dance. You ugly an' you rich, so why don' you give Mudpie his due?'

  Ten dollars and some haggling later he let it out: 'Fust you come yesterday; then you be back, sniffin' and snoopin'. But you not the only one. There be these other whi'e boys lookin' for the Jap, too. Ugly but not li'e you. They real ugly. Whupped with a ugly stick.'

  'How many were there?'

  'Dose.'

  'Dose?'

  'Li'e in spic talk - Uno, dose, you unnerstan'?'

  'Two.'

  'Righ'.'

  'When was this?'

  'At nigh', mebbe the full moon, mebbe the half-moon.'

  'Last night?'

  'Seems to be so.'

  'How can you be sure they were looking for the Japanese boy?'

  'Mudpie be sittin' round the back, in the dark, havin' dinnah, you unnnerstan', an' they walk by, be talkin' gonna get that lil slant. Then they go in and jimmy that doah and come out later sayin' "aw, shit, aw, fuck." '

  He laughed, cleared his throat, and shot a gob of phlegm toward the boulevard.

  'What did they look like?'

  'Ugly.' He cracked up. 'Li'e two whi'e boys.'

  Another ten changed hands.

  'One be skinny, the other be plump, you unnerstan'? They be wearin' black leathah.'

  'Bikers?'

  He looked at me with stuporous incomprehension.

  'Motorcycle riders?' I pressed. 'Like Hell's Angels?'

  'Seems to be.'

  'Were they driving motorcycles?'

  'Could be.' He shrugged.

  'You didn't see what they were driving?'

  'Mudpie be makin' himself scarce; they Nazi types, you unnerstan'?'

  'Mudpie, is there anything else you remember about them - how tall they were, the way they talked?' He nodded sombrely. 'A'solutely.' 'What is it?' 'They ugly.'

  I found a phone booth near Little Tokyo and put a call in to Milo. He was out, and I left a message. Half a phone book dangled from a chain in the booth. Fortunately it was the second half, and I found Voids Will Be Voids listed on Los Angeles Street, just south of the garment district. I called the gallery and got a taped message, an adenoidal male sneeringly informing the listener that the place didn't open until 4:00 P.M. That left six hours. I had a light sushi lunch and headed over to the main Public Library on Fifth Street. By 12:30 I was seated at the microfilm viewer, squinting and spinning dials. It took a while to get organised, but soon after that I found what I wanted.

  THE MARRIAGE of Miss Antoinette Hawes Simpson of Pasadena to Colonel John Jacob Cadmus of Hancock Park had been the main feature of the July 5, 1947, Los Angeles Times social pages. Accompanying the rapturous description of the nuptials, which had taken place in the rose garden of the newlyweds' newly built 'vanilla-hued manse,' was a formal portrait of a storybook couple - the groom tall, heavily moustached, and square-jawed; the bride ten years younger, raven-haired, and Renoir-soft, clutching a bouquet of white tea roses and baby's-breath to a modest bosom. Among the ushers were a city councilman, a senator, and assorted scions. The best man, Major Horace A. Souza, Esq., had escorted the maid of honour, the bride's sister, Lucy, whom - the writer simpered - he'd recently squired at the Las Flores Debutante Ball.

  It had been evident early on that the relationship between Souza and the Cadmus family extended beyond professionalism, a situation not uncommon for the very rich and their retainers. But nothing, until now, had

  suggested romantic entanglement. Souza had bristled when I'd brought up the topic, and I wondered if he'd been reacting to more than violation of privacy. Something personal, perhaps, like unrequited love.

  After obtaining several more spools of microfilm, I searched for additional pieces about him and Lucy. The search led nowhere initially, with neither of them mentioned in print until a June 1948 item appeared and confirmed my hunch: the announcement of Lucy's Newport, Rhode Island, wedding to Dr. John Arbuthnot of New York City and Newport, Rhode Island.

  I allowed myself a moment's satisfaction at having played armchair detective successfully, then reminded myself that Souza's love life had nothing
to do with why I was there. There was a spirit to resurrect: that of another Simpson girl, a shadowy, tormented figure. The donor, according to the attorney, of whatever defective DNA laced Jamey's chromosomes.

  Backtracking, I scanned the films for anything I could find about Antoinette. Unsurprisingly, nothing emerged to foreshadow psychosis: a spring engagement announcement and, prior to that, the expected puffery associated with coming-out parties, fund-raising balls, and the kind of chaperoned altruism considered fashionable for proper young ladies of the privileged classes.

  But something unexpected did surface in a September 1946 description of a midnight yacht party that had set out from San Pedro and floated languidly to Catalina.

  The cruise had been organised to benefit wounded war veterans, a 'gay, gala affair, featuring the renowned Continental cuisine of Chef Roman Galle of the Santa Barbara Biltmore and the sprightly sounds of the Freddy Martin Band.' The guest list had been lifted straight out of the L.A. blue book, and among the revellers had been 'the lovely Miss Antoinette Hawes Simpson, dancing the night away in the arms of her admiring beau, Major Horace A. Souza, Esq., recently home from the European front.'

  Intrigued, I kept digging and came up with three more articles that paired the future Mrs. Cadmus with Souza. All of them had been written during the summer of '46, and from the reporter's breathless tone, the couple had been a serious item: holding hands in the winner's circle at Santa Anita; enjoying a champagne supper at the Hollywood Bowl; weathering an August heat wave by watching the tide roll in from the air-conditioned lounge of the Albacore Club. But as summer faded, so, apparently, had the romance, for Antoinette was not to be linked in print to another man until her betrothal to Jack Cadmus, several months later.

  Unrequited love, of quite another sort. So Souza's relationship with the Cadmuses was more tangled than I'd imagined. I wondered what had transformed him from suitor to spectator. Had there been competition for the lady's hand, or had Jack Cadmus simply stepped in over the embers of a dead romance? That Souza had served as Cadmus's best man indicated the absence of rancour. But that didn't mean there'd been no joust. Perhaps his worship of John Cadmus had made the victory seem rightful; the better man truly had won. That kind of rationalisation worked best within a context of low self-esteem, and the Souza I'd met seemed anything but self-effacing. Nevertheless, a lot could change over four decades, and I couldn't dismiss the possibility that once upon a time the attorney had possessed a hearty appetite for crow.

  Now he'd elevated Jack Cadmus to godlike status while casting Antoinette as a pathetic misfit, biologically responsible for her grandson's psychosis and, by extension, his crimes. Was that assessment the result of a never-healed wound, or had Souza buried enough of his pain to be objective? I went around with it for a while before giving up. Any way I turned it, it sounded like ancient history, with no clear relevance to Jamey's plight.

  I loaded up the viewer with spools of more recent vintage. Predictably, the society pages had nothing to say about the union of Peter Cadmus and Margaret Norton, aka Margo Sunshine. Dwight's marriage to the former Heather Palmer had, however, attracted some attention, even though the wedding had taken place in Palo Alto. The bride boasted some pedigree: her mother was a stalwart of the DAR, and her late father had been a diplomat of note, serving in Colombia, Brazil, and Panama, where the new Mrs. Cadmus had been born. Nothing I hadn't already known.

  I returned the microfilms and left the library at three forty-five. Downtown traffic, always viscous at that hour, had congealed into static bands of steel. Orange-vested construction crews were ripping up the streets - some contractor had a friend at City Hall - and detour signs had been laid on the asphalt with sadistic randomness. It took forty minutes to travel the half mile to Los Angeles Street, and by the time I got there I was tense and hostile. The proper attitude, I supposed, for a confrontation with new-wave art.

  Voids Will Be Voids was a one-storey storefront painted a flat black that the elements had streaked watery grey. Its sign was an exercise in dysgraphia - cramped black letters over turquoise plywood windows, frosted with dirt. The other buildings on the block were discount clothing outlets, and the gallery appeared to have served that same purpose before the days of artistic enlightenment. Most of the shops were closed or closing, darkened facades hiding behind accordion grilles. A few remained open, luring bargain hungers with racks of downscale threads that clogged the sidewalk. I parked the Seville in a U-Pay lot, dropped a couple of dollars into the slotted box, and went in.

  The place was a studied attempt at anti-aesthetics. The floor was filthy linoleum, sticky and peppered with discarded cigarette butts. A stale clothes-cumin odour filled the air. The ceiling was low and sprayed with something that looked like spoiled cottage cheese. The alleged artwork hung haphazardly and crookedly from unpainted drywall, lit from above by bare fluorescent tubes that made some pieces glare reflectively while obscuring others. Cheap stereo speakers blared forth something that sounded like a robot mating dance - synthesised squeaks and squeals over a shifting metallic drumbeat. In the rear right-hand corner sat a man at a school desk, doodling and cutting newspaper. He ignored my entry.

  The stuff on the walls was crude and mean-spirited. No doubt some art critic would find it primally raw and pulsing with vibrant youthful hostility, but to my unschooled eye it was just as David Krohnglass had guessed: of the emperor's clothing genre.

  Someone named Scroto had created a set of primitive pencil drawings - stick figures and jagged lines. Develop-mentally at the four-year level, but no four-year-old I'd ever met had gleefully portrayed gang rape and mutilation. The pictures were drawn on cheap pulp paper so thin that the pencil had ripped through in several places - part of the message, no doubt - but the frames were another story: ornate, carved gilt, museum quality.

  A second collection featured sloppily done acrylic portraits of pin-headed men with idiotic facial expressions and enormous penises shaped like salamis. The artist called her/himself Sally Vador Deli and used a tiny green pickle for the letter l. Next to the salami men was a sculpture consisting of an aluminium rod taken from a pole lamp, bedecked with paper clips and staples, and entitled The Work Ethic. Beyond that hung a huge shellacked collage of recipes snipped from supermarket magazines and frankly gynaecologic Hustler centrefolds.

  Gary Yamaguchi's works were at the back. He now called himself Garish, and his art consisted of a series of tableaux utilising Barbie and Ken dolls and other assorted objects encased in amorphous rocks of clear plastic. One featured the all-American couple sitting in the body cavity of a rotted fish teeming with maggots and was titled Let's Eat Out Tonight in Japtown: Sashimi Trashimi. Another showed two pairs of dolls sitting, decapitated, in a red convertible, the four heads lined up neatly on the hood, a cardboard mushroom cloud filling a black crepe background. Double Date and Heavy Petting: Hiroshima-Nagasaki. In a third, Barbie had been given an Asian appearance - black geisha wig, slant accents around the eyes - and dressed in an aluminium foil kimono. She sat

  spread-legged on the edge of a bed, smoking and reading a book, oblivious of the attentions of a combat-fatigued Ken's mouth to the juncture of her plastic thighs. Ooh, Lookie-Lookie! Kabookie Nookie!

  But it was the last and largest piece - a chunk of Lucite two feet square - that caught my attention. In it Gary had constructed a sixties teenage bedroom scene in miniature. One-inch scraps of notepaper became lipstick-stained love letters; triangular snips of felt made football pennants; a tiny Beatles stamp served as a poster. The floor was a litter of thimble-sized pill vials, tiny photos of Barbie, and a disproportionately large cracked leather book upon which had been scrawled 'Diary' in lavender grease pencil.

  Amid this clutter was the centrepiece: a Ken doll hanging from a Popsicle stick rafter, a noose around its neck. Red paint had been used to simulate blood, and there was plenty of it. Someone had believed that mere hanging was too good for Ken; a toy knife jutted from the doll's abdomen. Small pink hands clu
tched its handle. In case anyone missed the point, a pile of bloody viscera was coiled at the corpse's feet. The intestines were fashioned from rubber tubing and glazed with something that simulated slime. The effect was disturbingly real.

  The title affixed to this bit of self-expression was Oh, Dearie, Round-Eyes Hara-Kiri: The Wretched Act. Price tag: $150.

  I turned away and walked to the man at the school desk. He had short dark hair striped maroon and electric blue on the sides, elfin ears through which safety pins had been inserted, and a hard, hungry shark face dominated by narrow, empty eyes. He was in his late twenties - too old for the teen-age rebel game - and I wondered what he'd played at before discovering that in L.A., looking bizarre could camouflage a host of bad intentions.