It's a phrase Jamey used to describe suicide.'
'And the artist is another one of those geniuses from the university.'
'Right. A kid named Gary Yamaguchi. According to the others, the closest thing Jamey had to a friend. He was seen going off with Jamey and Chancellor.'
'Tell me more about the toys inside the plastic.'.
'I realised that I hadn't looked at the sculpture that closely. Concentrating, I tried to recall the details of the scene.
'It was a takeoff on a teenager's bedroom. Football pennants, a diary, miniature pill vials - empty ones - a toy knife, fake blood.'
He frowned.
'Doesn't sound like something worth bidding for. Anything else?'
'Let's see - some photos of Barbie, an Elvis poster, love letters.'
'What kind of love letters?'
'Miniatures. One-inch scraps of paper with 'I Love You' all over them.'
'All that to dress up Ken with a knife in his gut, huh?' He shook his head. 'Art.'
We walked a bit.
'The bikers,' I said, 'they keep cropping up.'
'Uh-huh.' , 'Doesn't that put a new cast on the Slasher case?'
'It complicates matters, but if you mean, does it help Cadmus, the answer is no. All it might boil down to is that Chancellor and Cadmus's little cutting club had two more members than we thought. Which makes sense - we never found anyone who saw Chancellor cruising Boystown, and a guy like him would be damned conspicuous. He was an executive type, used to delegating odd jobs. So he could have sent the bikers to snare pretty boys and bring them to the mansion, then let them stay for the party.'
'Which means the bikers may have killed him.'
'We found the knife in Cadmus's hand. What does that make him, an innocent bystander?'
'A psychotic bystander.'
'Then why wasn't he killed, too? You're reaching, Alex.'
'Maybe,' I said, 'but what's Radovic's connection to all of it?'
'Could be he found out what was going on during his
nights off, and when he tried to blackmail the bikers, things got out of hand.'
'Then why was he following me? And why was he so intent on buying The Wretched Act?'
He sighed.
'Look, I'm not saying that's the way it actually went down. Just that it's goddamned complicated and far from a reprieve for Cadmus.' He clenched his jaws and breathed in deeply. 'Maybe Radovic really was trying to clear Chancellor's name - even assholes have bursts of altruism -and he thought you might know something useful because you were Cadmus's therapist. Or maybe his motives were impure, and he thought you might be able to give him some dirt for the same reason.'
'I hadn't treated Jamey in five years.'
'How was he supposed to know that? What if Cadmus rambled on about what a great doc you were and Radovic thought you were still in the picture?'
I remembered what Andrea Vann had told me that first night at Canyon Oaks: that Jamey had spoken of me fondly. When he was lucid.
'That still doesn't explain why the bikers ransacked Gary's place.'
'You want me to play Answer Man? Okay, Yamaguchi was a member of the cutting club, too.'
My mind rebelled at the thought of another Project 160 member indicted for murder.
'That's ridiculous.'
'Why? You yourself said he was seen going off with Chancellor and Cadmus.'
'If he were a murderer, he wouldn't advertise it in a sculpture.'
'It's been known to happen. Few years back one of those British crime writers made a good case for a painter named Sickert being Jack the Ripper. The guy did paintings that were damned close to some of the murder scenes. And from what you told me about Yamaguchi, rationality isn't his strong suit. Shoot enough speed, and the old cerebral cortex starts to look like Swiss cheese.'
'When I saw him, he was hostile, but he was rational - '
'Point is, Alex, I could stand here and theorise all day, which would be a great parlour game for the whodunit crowd. But without evidence the whole thing translates to bullshit. Bikers, Cadmus, back to bikers again. A goddamn roller coaster. And roller coasters always make me puke.'
He lengthened his stride and jammed his hands in his pockets.
'What really gripes me,' he said, 'is that we've already done a damned good search for those assholes. Spent weeks running down dozens of leads and listening to Whitehead's pearls of wisdom. Visited every S and M bar in L.A. and saw enough leather to upholster the state. We even pulled a couple of guys out of undercover - guys Narco'd taken a lot of time to plant in the outlaw gangs. All for nothing.'
'You've got a physical description to go on now.'
'What? One fat, one skinny? For some reason -undoubtedly sociological - those assholes tend to fall into two categories: gordos disgustos or speed freak anorexics. Fat and skinny eliminates exactly zero percent of the population.'
'The old man saw them. Couldn't he tell you more?'
'Sure. The fat one was bald - or maybe he had real short hair - with a big or maybe medium beard that was either black or brown. The skinny one had long hair that was straight or wavy or curly and a moustache - no, make that a moustache and a beard.' He sighed disgustedly. 'Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate when it comes to physical description, and this one's an eighty-year-old depressive coming out of a heavy drunk. I'm not even totally convinced he heard any of the conversation he reported. I need something solid, Alex. I've put in an order to have Pacific Division go down to the marina and toss Radovic's boat. Maybe we'll even find the sculpture and learn that it's crammed full of emeralds. Or coke.'
'Just like in the movies.'
'Hey' - he grinned - 'this is L.A. Anything's possible, right?' The grin faded. 'I want to talk to Yamaguchi. Where can I find him?'
'He drifts around downtown. I got to him through the gallery, but it sounded as if he were planning to leave L.A. He may be gone by now.'
He took out his book and wrote down Gary's name and the address of Voids Will Be Voids. I thought of something.
'There was a little blonde girl with him who looked as if someone might have eared for her once upon a time.'
'Name?'
'He called her Slit.'
'Sweet. I'll run a check with Juvie. Let's head back. I want to put a couple of calls through.'
We turned around and walked back toward the cafe. When we reached the Matador, Milo got in and began talking into the radio. While I waited, I peered inside the cafe. A small, shrivelled man in a plaid flannel shirt and overalls stood behind the counter, scouring the chrome-lipped top with a wet rag. The counter stools were chrome- legged mushrooms with red leather tops. An inert Black Forest cuckoo clock hung on the knotty pine wall, next to a third-rate oil painting of Lake Tahoe. Strains of country music - George Jones lamenting that his blood could start a still - floated forth from a cheap transistor radio.
The music was overtaken by engine sounds from the north. I turned and saw a jeep appear to float over the horizon. It sped on and slowed down at the cordon. The driver stared at the crime techs, then coasted to a halt in front of the cafe, turned off the motor, and got out. The jeep bore the emblem of the Parks Department, and the man wore a ranger uniform. He was in his forties, skinny, and sun-cured with generous features, round wire-rim eyeglasses, and an Abe Lincoln beard. Wisps of yellow hair sneaked out from under the brim of his Smokey the Bear hat. The back of his neck was the colour of steak tartare. 'Sergeant Sturgis?' he asked. 'That's him over there.'
'Bill Sarna.' He extended a hand as hard and dry as rawhide.
'Alex Delaware.'
