Over the Edge

19

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 clutched 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.

He drew triangles and crossed them out, continuing to ignore me.

"I'm interested in one of your artists," I said.

Grunt.

"Garish."

Snort.

"You gotta talk to the owner. I just sit here and watch the place." It was the sneering voice of the phone message.

"Who's the owner?"

"Doctor from Encino."

"When does he come in?"

An apathetic shrug punctuated by a yawn.

"Never."

"He never comes in at all?"

"No, man. This is like… a hobby."

Or a tax writeoff.

"I don't get down here too often," I said, "so I'd appreciate if you'd call him and say I'd like to buy one of Garish's tableaux."

He looked up, stared, and stretched. I noticed old needle marks on his arms.

"The one with the suicide scene," I continued. "The Wretched Act. I'd also like to talk to the artist."

"Tableaux." He grinned. His mouth was a disaster zone, several teeth missing, the few that remained, chipped and brown. "That's life, man. That's garbage. Not any tableaux."

"Whatever. Would you make the call, please?"

"Not supposed to. He's like in surgery all the time."

"How about cash-and-carry and an extra hundred thrown in for commission?" I took out my wallet.

At that he grew sullen.

"Yeah, sure. Cash for trash." He feigned apathy, but his eyes had come alive with anticipation, and he held out a grubby hand. "You want it that bad, it's yours for two fifty."

"Talking to Garish is part of the deal. Find him for me, and we're in business."

"This is Voids," he whined, "not any freaking missing persons scam."

"Have him here by six, and the commission goes up to one fifty."

He licked his lips and tapped his pencil against the desktop.

"Think you can buy me, huh, man?"

"I'm betting on it."

"Trying to put me in your tableau, Mr. Suit?"

I ignored him and feigned nonchalance.

"I can find him without you," I said, "but I want to see him today. If you can arrange it, the hundred and fifty's yours."

The striped head bobbed and weaved. "Why the freak should I know where he is?"

"You're exhibiting his stuff on consignment. If I buy the piece, you'll owe him his share. Something tells me you communicate once in a while."

He followed that with a furrowed brow, I wondered how often he sold anything.

"Get him here by six," I said. "Tell him Alex Delaware wants to buy The Wretched Act and talk to him."

He shook his head.

"No messages, man. I can't remember all that."

"Delaware," I said slowly, "like in the state. He knows me."

He shrugged, defeatedly, and I left knowing he'd hustle for the money.

There was a phone booth in one corner of the parking lot. The door had been ripped off, and traffic sounds blotted out the dial tone. I covered one ear and punched in my service number. The only message of interest was a call-back from Milo.

I reached him just as he was leaving for County General Hospital.

"Heard your boy did himself up pretty good," he said.

"It was ugly. He had to have been incredibly despondent."

"Guilt can do that to you," he said, but the glibness was forced, and he softened his voice. "What's on your mind, Alex?"

I told him about the bikers breaking into Gary's loft.

"Uh-huh. And you heard this from a wino."

"He was cleverer than he looked."

"Hey, I'm not knocking it. Some of my best info's come from juiceheads." Pause. "So you're connecting it with what I told you about the Slasher victims hanging out with bikers."

"It does seem coincidental."

"Alex, this Yamaguchi kid is a punker, right?"

"Right."

"Which means ten to one he's into nasty drugs, like glue and speed. Outlaw bikers are one of the main sources of illegal speed in this state. They call it crank. You don't need much of an IQ to cook it up, which sticks it right in those scumbags' bailiwick. Yamaguchi was probably buying from them and didn't pay on time."

"He was dealing," I said.

"Even better. It was a business deal gone sour. The leather boys tend to favour violent retribution over binding arbitration."

"All right," I said, "I just thought you should know."

"You were right to call, and if you think of anything else, don't hesitate to give a toot — that is, if Souza doesn't get bent out of shape about your fraternising with the enemy."

I considered telling him about The Wretched Act but knew it could be dismissed as nothing more than a pseudoartist's conception of murder, gleaned from the papers. Instead, I said:

"Souza fired me this morning."

"No use for you anymore, huh?"

"That's the general picture."

"Makes sense. The kid's got progressively worse since the arrest, and with the suicide attempt there's probably enough to back up a temporary incompetence order. Given sufficient shilly-shallying, the case may never come to trial."

"What kind of shilly-shallying?"

"Paper games. One delay after another."

"How long can that last?"

"Keep paying a guy like Souza, and he'll figure out how to delay sunrise. All he's got to do is keep the kid out of the public eye until nobody gives a shit about the case anymore. Great system, isn't it?"

"Terrific."

"Cheer up, pal. It's pretty clear Cadmus shouldn't be walking the streets. At least this way he'll have soft walls."

"Yeah. I guess so."

"Anyway, now that we're not on opposite sides of the skirmish, how about dinner and amusing conversation sometime?"

His voice was buoyant, and I made a silent guess.

"Two or four?"

"Uh, four." Pause. "He called, and he's coming back tomorrow."

"I'm glad for you, Milo."

"Yeah, I know that. Thanks for the shoulder when I needed it."

"Anytime."

I returned to Voids Will Be Voids just before dark. When Stripehead saw me, he jumped up and began bobbing his head nervously.

"All set?" I asked.

He bobbed at a blank space on the wall where The Wretched Act had hung.

"Someone came in, after you were gone and outbid you, man."

"I thought we had a deal."

"Hey, man, free enterprise—"

"Who bought it?"

"Some suit."

"You can do better than that."

"That's it, man. I never look at their faces."

"How much did he pay?"

"What's the diff? You like that kind of shit, take another one."

I could have pushed it, but purchasing the sculpture had just been a ploy to get to its creator. And Stripehead was still my only link to Gary.

"That's okay. Are we still in business on the other matter?"

"Sure." Palm out. "Two hundred."

"One fifty added to the price of the sculpture. Since you ripped me off, it goes down to one twenty-five."

He screwed up his face, shoved his hands in his pockets, and paced. The promise of temporary affluence had heightened his appetite for a chemical dream.

"Fuck, no. One fifty."

I took three fifties out of the wallet, gave him one, and withheld two.

"When I see him, you get the rest."

Cursing, he snapped up the money and went back to his desk.

"Wait here. I'll tell you when it's time."

He went back to his doodling, and I spent ten stuporous minutes walking around the gallery. Nothing looked better at second glance. Finally he stood, motioned, and led me through a rear door through a storage area and out to the darkening alley. Wiping his nose on his sleeve, he held out his hand.

"Give."

"Where's Gary?"

"He'll be here soon, man."

"Then you'll get paid soon."

"Up yours," he hissed, but he backed off and stood in the shadows.

I looked around. The alley was a band of lacerated asphalt, checkered with tilting, overflowing dumpsters. Garbage confettied the ground, and potholes full of waste water glistened stagnantly. More stink. I thought of Jamey's use of the word and wondered what kind of decay had fuelled his visions.

Within seconds there was movement from behind one of the Dumpsters and scratching, rodent sounds.

Two shadows slid along the backs of buildings, then stepped out into the open. A bare bulb above the gallery's rear door spat a triangle of cold light onto the asphalt. The shadows stood away from it but absorbed enough illumination to be rendered three-dimensional.

The larger of the two was Gary. His thick black hair had been sheared off except for a Mohawk centre strip, dyed aquamarine. Roofing nails had been glued to the strip and lacquered stiff, creating a high, jagged cock's comb. He wore a vest of chain mail over bare skin and filthy black jeans gouged with holes and tucked into black plastic rain boots. A rusty razor blade dangling from a steel chain formed a necklace that came to rest over his sternum, and a feathered earring stretched one lobe. His belt was a section of rope, and from it hung a clasp knife. I remembered him as severely myopic, but his glasses were gone. I wondered if he was wearing contact lenses, or did physical correction clash with his new set of values?

The girl next to him was no more than fifteen and tiny — four feet ten or eleven. She had a petulant, snub-nosed, baby-doll face gravelled with acne and topped by a Medusa mop the colour of borscht. Her face was powdered white, and dark rings had been pencilled around her eyes, but bad living had begun to etch its own shadows. She had an overbite that made her lips hang slightly open; her lipstick was black, and beaming through the inky flesh was the silvery glint of orthodonture. I wondered if whoever had paid for the braces was still looking for her.

Despite the getup and a studied attempt at surliness, both of them looked soft and innocent, Hansel and Gretel corrupted by the witch.

"Okay, man?" pressed Stripehead.

I handed him the pair of fifties, and he scurried back inside. "Gary?"

"Yes?" His voice was soft and flat, as emotionless as the music blaring inside the gallery.

With anyone else I'd have made an attempt at rapport, using small talk and the reeling in of memories sweetened by time. But the old Gary and I had never had much to do with one another, and the creature before me obviously had no appetite for chit-chat.

"Thanks for coming. I want to talk to you about Jamey." He folded his arms across his chest and the chain mail tinkled.

I took a step forward, and he backed away. But his retreat was cut short as he stumbled in a rut and lurched backward. The girl caught his arm and prevented him from falling. Once he was stabilised, she held on to him protectively. Up close I saw that his eyes were strained and unfocused. No contacts.

"What do you want?" he asked. The bare bulb backlit the spikes in his hair.

"You know about the trouble he's in."

"Yes." Unmoved.

"I've been asked by his attorney to evaluate his mental status. But I'm also trying — personally — to understand what happened."

He stared at the blur that was my face, silent and impassive. His inflection and manner were mechanical, as if his personality had been excised, fed into a synthesiser, and ejected as something only partially organic. He'd never been easy to talk to, and the punk armour was yet another layer to peel. I continued, without much hope of success.

"The others at the project said that you were friends, that he talked to you more than to any of them. Do you remember his saying or doing anything that could relate to what happened?"

"No."

"But the two of you did talk."

"Yes."

"About what?"

He shrugged.

"Don't remember?"

"That's the past. Extinct."

I tried the direct approach.

"You did a sculpture that combined elements of his father's suicide and the Lavender Slashings."

"Art imitates life," he recited.

"You titled it The Wretched Act, Gary. That's a phrase Jamey used to describe suicide."

"Yes."

"Why? What does it all mean?"

A faint smile tiptoed across his lips, then vanished.

"Art speaks for itself."

The girl nodded and clutched him tighter.

"He's a genius," she said, and I noticed for the first time how thin they both were.

"Sometimes," I said, "geniuses aren't appreciated in their time. What percentage of each sale does Voids give you?"

He pretended not to hear the question, but something that looked like hunger filled the girl's eyes.

Starting to feel like a minifoundation, I reached into my wallet and peeled off some bills. If Gary saw the money, he chose to ignore it. But the girl reached out and took it, examined it, and tucked it in her waistband. It didn't guarantee cooperation by a long shot, but maybe they'd use some of it for food.

"Gary," I asked, "was Jamey on drugs?"

"Yes."

The casual answer threw me.

"How do you know?"

"He tripped."

"Like on acid?"

"Yes."

"Did you ever actually see him drop acid?"

"No."

"So you're just inferring it from his behaviour."

He touched the feathered fringe of his earring.

"I know tripping," he said.

"Dr. Flowers and the others were sure he was straight."

"They're low-level androids."

"Is there anything else you can tell me about his drug use?"

"No."

"Did you ever see him take anything other than acid?"

"No."

"Do you think he did?"

"Yes."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Speed. Downers. Hog."

"TCP?"

"Yes."