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
