He inhaled, and a quarter of the joint glowed. When he finally exhaled, nothing came out but a paroxysm of dry coughing. After it stopped, he licked his moustache and smiled.
'What kind of guy was Peter?' I asked.
'Stone-beautiful. We used to call him Peter the Cad. 'Cause he was a righteous badass - an Errol Flynn, a fucking musketeer, you know? Dark and wild and beautifully dangerous. Ready for anything, man. Heavily into risk taking.'
'What kinds of risks did he take?'
He waved his hand impatiently.
'Head games. Sticking one foot off the cliff and dangling, exploring the outer limits of the sensorium. A psychic pioneer. Like Dr. Tim.'
He reflected on that and toked on the joint.
'Was Margo into games, too?'
He smiled blissfully.
'Margo was soft. Beautiful. Heavily into giving and
sharing. She could boogie all night to just a drum and a tambura. Like a Gypsy lady, mystical and magical.'
He went through two more king-sized joints before showing signs of intoxication, talking incessantly as he tooted. But it was dope talk, loosely associated and disjointed. About concerts that had taken place two decades ago, the scarcity of high-quality dope because the 'mind police' had poisoned the fields with paraquat, a scheme to reassemble the original members of Big Blue Nirvana in order to plan a comback ('Except Dawg, man. He's a fucking lawyer with MGM. Stay away from that noise'). Cannabis dreams that told me nothing.
I sat patiently, trying to pry loose morsels of information about Peter and Margo, but he just repeated that they were beautiful, then veered off into more self-satisfying meanderings about the good old days, followed by indignant diatribes about the heartlessness of the contemporary music scene.
'A hundred fucking dollars to see Duran Duran in a society where heavy blues men with righteous chops eat out of garbage cans. Fucked up.'
The third joint was out. He opened his mouth and swallowed the roach.
'Roily, do you remember anything about Peter's father visiting him?'
'Nope.'
'How about Margo's pregnancy? Any memories of that?'
'Just that she was sick, man. She'd try to get up and dance, but after a couple of seconds she'd turn all greenish pale and start to heave. Bummer.'
'How did she and Peter feel about the pregnancy?'
'Feel?' he was starting to mumble, and his head drooped drowsily.
'Emotionally. Were they happy about it?'
'Sure.' His eyelids fluttered shut. 'It was a happy time. Except for the war and the shit El BJ kept trying to pull, everything was a fucking giggle.'
Suppressing a sigh, I played a long shot.
'You said the Angels hung around the concerts given by the Swine Club.'
'Yeah. They were cool. This was before Jagger pulled that Altamont shit.'
'Did Peter or Margo have any special relationship with the Angels or any other bikers?'
He yawned and shook his head. 'No relationship was special. Everyone was loving. Equal.'
'Did they hang out with bikers?'
'Unh-unh.'
He was drifting off to sleep, and there was one question I had to ask. One that I'd been sitting on for the last hour.
'Roily, you've described Peter as someone with a real lust for life - '
'He lived to live, man.'
'All right. But a few years later he ended up committing suicide. What could have led to that?'
That woke him up. He opened his eyes and glared at me angrily.
'Suicide is bullshit, man.' His head bobbed like that of a toy dog on the rear deck of a low rider.
'What do you mean?'
'It doesn't happen,' he said, whispering conspiratorially. 'A fucking figment. The establishment uses it as a label to make rockers and head saints look like cop-outs. Janis, Jimi, Morrison, the Bear. Janis didn't off herself; she died from the pain of being. Jimi didn't off himself; the government shot him up with some kind of napalm because he knew too much truth and they wanted to shut his mouth. Morrison and the Bear aren't even dead. For all I know, Buddy Holly's with 'em. They're probably partying somewhere in the Greek isles. Suicide is bullshit, man. It doesn't happen.'
'Peter-'
'Peter didn't off himself, man. He died in a head game. Like I told you.'
'What kind of head game?'
'An ecstasy trip. Exploring the boundaries.'
'Tell me more about it.'
'Sure.' He shrugged. 'Why not? He used to play it all the time. Get naked, climb up on a chair, make this noose out of a silk rope, and put it around his neck. Bring his weight down on it so it was tight and stroke his cock till he came. He was something to see, moaning, like Jesus in ecstasy.' He ran a stubby tongue over his lips and imitated a street-black patois: 'He used to say the pressure heightened the pleasure.'
He was mumbling, nearly incoherent, but I was listening acutely. He was describing a phenomenon known as eroticised hanging or autoerotic asphyxia, one of the more arcane sexual kinks, custom-designed for those who consider flirtation with death an enhancement to orgasm.
Eroticised hangers masturbate while a rope or other binding constricts their carotids, gradually increasing the pressure so that at the point of climax, the arteries are shut down completely. Some use complex systems of pulleys to hoist themselves to the noose. Others fold into bizarre contortions. Any way it's done, it's a quirky game and a dangerous one: If the masturbator loses consciousness before removing the rope or positions himself in such a way that liberation is prevented or unduly delayed, death by asphyxiation is inevitable.
'A game, you dig?' Oberheim smiled. 'He liked to play games. And one day he lost. But that's cool.'
I LEFT him snoring in his office, a flaccid monument to self-absorption: The interview had been foggy and off kilter, but I'd picked up another tidbit of Cadmus's psycho-pathology: Peter had been an eroticised hanger, his death very possibly a kinky accident. I wondered if Souza had known about the hanging game all along and decided that he probably hadn't; in his hands, the knowledge would have been used strategically, as evidence that sexual perversion, as well as mental disturbance, ran in the family.
As I drove north on La Brea, I thought of how downbeat I'd been with Robin and realised that Oberheim wasn't the only one with a self-absorption problem. I'd been so wrapped up in the case and the guilt it had unearthed that I'd neglected her, using her as a sounding board without considering that she might need some attention herself.
Determined to make amends, I made a three-point turn at a gas station on Fountain, drove south to Wilshire, and headed west, into Beverly Hills. There was about an hour left before the shops closed, and after parking in a city lot on Beverly Drive, I spent it like a gameshow winner on a spree, buying an antique lace blouse at a boutique on Canon, perfume and bath soap at Giorgio, a quart of Friisen Gladje raspberry chocolate ice cream, an enormous gourmet basket at Jurgensens, the copper skillet she'd wanted at Davis-Sonoma, a dozen coral roses arranged with leather fern and baby's breath. It was no solution, just a start in the right direction.
Manoeuvering through a sea of Mercedes, I drove away from the high-rent district and made one more stop - at a fish market near Overland - before heading home. When I got there, at six-thirty, Robin's truck was nowhere in sight, and she'd left word with the service that she'd be home by seven forty-five.
'There's another one, too, Doctor?' said the service operator. 'Do you want it?'
'Sure.'
'A Jennifer Leavitt called at three. She left two numbers.'
I copied them on a scrap of paper. One was a university extension; the other, a Fairfax District exchange. I was curious about what Jennifer wanted but not curious enough to interrupt my plans. Making a mental note to call
