phone while she talked to them and called the most dialed number in it. It was her friend Carolyn. I’d met her once or twice. I explained everything to her and she said she would come to the station. I asked her to start telling people about Paul. I also asked if she knew how to arrange a funeral.
“Yeah,” she said bitterly. “I sure do.”
When Carolyn got there the police were still in with Lydia. Carolyn had big curly blond hair and wore a thick layer of makeup and a black dress and a black vintage coat with a white fur collar. She looked angry. I gave her the short version of what had happened.
“Fucking scum,” she said. “They should hang them up by their fucking balls and let them rot.”
That wasn’t exactly how I saw it. But I couldn’t say her view had no validity. I waited until the interview was over and I saw Lydia leave the interview room. Carolyn seemed competent enough and ready to take charge, so I let her.
I drove back home and parked my car in the garage on Stockton where I rented a space by the year. When I shut the door behind me I remembered—Paul’s car. The
victim’s
car, I corrected myself. Where was it? I made a list on the back of an envelope from a parking ticket:
car, house keys, guitars, neighbor.
The gun, the neighbor. Keys, amplifiers. A murderer. A victim.
And the rest of us poor suckers they left behind.
Back at home it was dark and raining. Everything seemed sharp and the lighting in my apartment seemed wrong. It was a big loft with ill-defined areas serving as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, closet. Mostly it was a big space with lots of vintage furniture and too many books and clothes and papers scattered around and a collection of strange things on the walls, like thrift store paintings and old mug shots and a vision chart in Hindustani. Things I thought were beautiful. It was all arranged to do something to me, soothe some kind of raw edges, but it wasn’t working today. In the medicine cabinet I found half a bottle of very soporific cough syrup I’d brought back from Mexico a few years ago: I swallowed a quarter of it and went to bed and slept like a dead woman, without dreams, and I didn’t wake up until almost noon the next day.
Later I pieced together the whole story. Earlier that evening, at approximately six p.m., the victim had packed his car, a 1972 Ford Bronco, with two guitars, an amp, and a small suitcase, and headed toward Los Angeles. He had a small show booked at USC the next night. He’d planned to leave earlier and didn’t; the victim was often late. Lydia hung around the house and went out at about ten p.m. to the Make-Out Room, a club on Twenty-Fourth Street, to see a band called Silent Film. At about midnight a neighbor heard what he thought was a shot and called the police. The police came. The body was found. Lydia came home and saw the scene. Everyone figured Paul’s car had broken down somewhere and somehow he’d gotten a ride back home, but no one knew the exact sequence of events yet. But it made the most sense and I figured it was true. The police figured he’d surprised the thief, who had shot Paul to avoid getting caught.
That part I wasn’t so sure about.
6
A T TWENTY-THREE I WAS LIVING in Los Angeles, if you can call it living. I had nothing else to do. A detective I knew named Sean Risling had me working on an encyclopedia of poisonous orchids he was putting together. I sampled and researched and wrote. At night I bought little twenty-dollar bindles of cocaine and sometimes cheaper bags of heroin wrapped in pages of
Cat Fancy
magazine on Sunset Boulevard. I slept in a series of hotel rooms in Hollywood. When Constance Darling, the famous detective from New Orleans, came to town on the HappyBurger Murder Case and needed an assistant, Sean introduced us. Risling said little and knew much.
Constance was famous—famous to other detectives, at least. Years ago, when we were finished being children, my friend Tracy found a copy
“Yeah,” she said bitterly. “I sure do.”
When Carolyn got there the police were still in with Lydia. Carolyn had big curly blond hair and wore a thick layer of makeup and a black dress and a black vintage coat with a white fur collar. She looked angry. I gave her the short version of what had happened.
“Fucking scum,” she said. “They should hang them up by their fucking balls and let them rot.”
That wasn’t exactly how I saw it. But I couldn’t say her view had no validity. I waited until the interview was over and I saw Lydia leave the interview room. Carolyn seemed competent enough and ready to take charge, so I let her.
I drove back home and parked my car in the garage on Stockton where I rented a space by the year. When I shut the door behind me I remembered—Paul’s car. The
victim’s
car, I corrected myself. Where was it? I made a list on the back of an envelope from a parking ticket:
car, house keys, guitars, neighbor.
The gun, the neighbor. Keys, amplifiers. A murderer. A victim.
And the rest of us poor suckers they left behind.
Back at home it was dark and raining. Everything seemed sharp and the lighting in my apartment seemed wrong. It was a big loft with ill-defined areas serving as bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, closet. Mostly it was a big space with lots of vintage furniture and too many books and clothes and papers scattered around and a collection of strange things on the walls, like thrift store paintings and old mug shots and a vision chart in Hindustani. Things I thought were beautiful. It was all arranged to do something to me, soothe some kind of raw edges, but it wasn’t working today. In the medicine cabinet I found half a bottle of very soporific cough syrup I’d brought back from Mexico a few years ago: I swallowed a quarter of it and went to bed and slept like a dead woman, without dreams, and I didn’t wake up until almost noon the next day.
Later I pieced together the whole story. Earlier that evening, at approximately six p.m., the victim had packed his car, a 1972 Ford Bronco, with two guitars, an amp, and a small suitcase, and headed toward Los Angeles. He had a small show booked at USC the next night. He’d planned to leave earlier and didn’t; the victim was often late. Lydia hung around the house and went out at about ten p.m. to the Make-Out Room, a club on Twenty-Fourth Street, to see a band called Silent Film. At about midnight a neighbor heard what he thought was a shot and called the police. The police came. The body was found. Lydia came home and saw the scene. Everyone figured Paul’s car had broken down somewhere and somehow he’d gotten a ride back home, but no one knew the exact sequence of events yet. But it made the most sense and I figured it was true. The police figured he’d surprised the thief, who had shot Paul to avoid getting caught.
That part I wasn’t so sure about.
6
A T TWENTY-THREE I WAS LIVING in Los Angeles, if you can call it living. I had nothing else to do. A detective I knew named Sean Risling had me working on an encyclopedia of poisonous orchids he was putting together. I sampled and researched and wrote. At night I bought little twenty-dollar bindles of cocaine and sometimes cheaper bags of heroin wrapped in pages of
Cat Fancy
magazine on Sunset Boulevard. I slept in a series of hotel rooms in Hollywood. When Constance Darling, the famous detective from New Orleans, came to town on the HappyBurger Murder Case and needed an assistant, Sean introduced us. Risling said little and knew much.
Constance was famous—famous to other detectives, at least. Years ago, when we were finished being children, my friend Tracy found a copy
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