Self-Defense (12 page)

He gave another frightful laugh. In the
bad light he looked homicidal.

“She didn’t say a thing for a while. Just
let her hands drop and stared at me as if I was the biggest goddamn
disappointment in her eighteen-year life. She didn’t have it easy. Her whole
family was a bunch of assholes, brothers in jail, father a drunken shit who
slapped her around from time to time, maybe worse. And here I was, the last
straw.”

He rubbed his eyelids. “She kept staring
at me. Finally shook her head and said, “Oh, Milo, you’re going to end up in
Hell.’ No anger. Sympathetic. Then she patted her brand-new Tonette and got out
of the car and that’s the last I saw her. Next week she shipped off to a
convent in Indianapolis. Five years ago my mother wrote me she was murdered,
over in El Salvador. She and a bunch of other nuns washing clothes in a
stream.” He threw up his hands. “Let’s do a screenplay.”

“Lucy reminds you of her that strongly.”

“They could be
sisters,
Alex. The
way she carries herself—the vulnerability.”

“The vulnerability’s definitely there,” I
said. “Given what I’ve learned of her childhood, it’s no surprise. Her mom died
right after she was born; her father deserted the family. She’s functionally an
orphan.”

“Yeah, I know. She was talking to me about
Shwandt, once. Said he had two parents, nice home, father who was a lawyer, so
what was his excuse? Said her own father was a lowlife.”

“Did she tell you who her father is?”

He looked up. “Who?”

“M. Bayard Lowell.”

Staring, he put his hands around his beer
glass. “What
is
this, Big Fucking
Surprise
Day? The goddamn moon in Pisces with
Herpes or something? Lowell as in Mr. Belles
Lettruh
?”

“None other.”

“Unbelievable. He still alive?”

“Living in Topanga Canyon. His career died
and he moved to L.A.”

“I read him in school.”

“Everyone did.”

“She’s his daughter? Unreal.”

“You can see why he’d have impact, even
being absent.”

“Sure,” he said. “He’s just there, like
the goddamn Ten Foot Gorilla.”

“Lucy compared it to being the President’s
kid. I can understand her looking for a benevolent authority figure. Maybe your
thoughts about a big brother weren’t all that far from the truth.”

“Great. And now I disappoint her, too....
So how do I handle this? Visit or keep my distance?”

“Let’s see how she does during the next
few days.”

“Sure. Head in the oven.... No idea what
could have led her to it?”

I shook my head. “She was upset, but
nothing that pointed to suicide.”

“Upset about me.”

“That, but we’d also started to get into
other things—the prostitution, feelings toward her father. And the dream she
mentioned to you. That’s something else I want to talk to you about.”

I described the buried girl story.

He said, “I’m no shrink, but I hear,
“Daddy scares the shit out of me.’ ”

“She started having it midway through the
trial, right after you testified about Carrie. I figured all that horror raised
her anxiety level and released long-buried feelings toward Lowell—seeing
herself as some kind of victim. His last poems are viciously anti-woman; she
may have read them and had a strong reaction. And the last time we discussed
the dream she said she’d felt her soul entering the dark-haired girl’s body—as
if she were being buried too. Explicitly identifying with the victim. But
something the half brother told me in the hospital makes me wonder if there’s
even more. She claims she’s had no contact with Lowell her entire life, but the
brother said twenty-one years ago she spent the summer with him in Topanga. All
four of his kids did. Lucy was four years old at the time—the age she feels in
the dream. And Lowell’s place has log buildings, exactly what she describes.
Now, the newspapers did cover the opening of the retreat, down to the
architecture; I found the clippings so she could’ve also. Or she could have
heard about it from her brother Peter. He did some family research and filled
her in. If that’s the case, she’s flat out denying being there. But the
alternative is that she really
doesn’t
remember. Maybe because something
traumatic happened that summer.”

His jaw flexed. “Daddy did something to
her?”

“Like I said, his last poems are grossly
misogynistic. If he abused her, I can see why the trial might kick in the
memories—sex and violence thrown together. One thing’s for sure, she’s
struggling with something major. The recurrent nature of the dream and its
intensity—when she talks about it she actually seems to experience it—she’s trancelike.
Almost as if she’s going into hypnosis by herself. That tells me her ego
boundaries are weakening; this is something potent. So maybe I should’ve been
more careful. But there was no profound depression, no hint she’d do this.”

“What about the other two guys in the
dream?”

“Could be that part’s fantasy, or maybe
what happened to her wasn’t a solo act. And I’ve got another possible
participant. That summer, Lowell had a protégé living with him named Terry
Trafficant. Career criminal, history of attempted rape, assault, manslaughter.
Locked up long-term till Lowell helped him get parole and publish his jail
diary. It became a best-seller.”

“Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t a cop yet, still in
college, but I remember thinking how asinine.”

“So did a lot of other people. The last
cop who arrested him called him a stick of dynamite waiting to go off. There
was a stink about Lowell’s patronage, then Trafficant disappeared. A guy like
that, all those years in confinement, stick him in Topanga Canyon with a cute
little girl running around, who knows.”

He grimaced. “Trafficant’s record include
pedophilia?”

“I don’t remember reading that, but a guy
like him might very well not be repulsed by sex with a little girl.”

“Yeah. The other possibility, Alex, is
that nothing happened directly to her but she saw something. And not even
criminal violence—maybe wild sex, some kind of orgy. A girl and three guys—that
would freak out a four-year-old, right? What if the grinding was exactly what
she first thought it was and her mind ran away with it? Like you said, sex and
violence are all mixed up in her head.”

I thought about that. “It’s sure possible.
The half brother said the kids were at the retreat for the opening. A big party
took place. The papers described it as a pretty wild scene. And in the dream,
Lucy talks about noise and lights the night she leaves the cabin. She could’ve
seen something X-rated.”

“Involving Daddy. He and a couple of
buddies having their way with a girl,” he said. “Not the kind of thing a little
kid could handle easily.”

“And the trial reawakens it.... On the
other hand, what if she did witness violence and
that’s
why hearing
about Shwandt evoked memories of a crime? Maybe—unconsciously—she was motivated
to be a juror in order to right some kind of wrong. Maybe that’s the toughness
the prosecutors sensed.”

“Possible,” he said.

“Trafficant
was
an attempted rapist, Milo. And he dropped
out of sight right after the party.”

“On the lam?”

“Why else would he disappear at the height
of his celebrity? All those years behind bars, then he’s a best-seller; it
wouldn’t have made sense to quit unless he had something to hide. He
and
Lowell—the publicity would have been devastating. So maybe he took the money
and ran. For all we know, he’s on some tropical island living off his
royalties.”

He rubbed his face and contemplated the
table light. “For that to make sense, there would have to be no witnesses,
meaning violence taken all the way.”

“Maybe Lucy actually did witness a burial.
Lowell and Trafficant and someone else getting rid of the body.”

He thought a long time. “It’s a helluva
leap based on a dream. For all we know, Trafficant disappeared because he died.
Blew all his dough on dope and OD’d. He was a psychopath loser. Don’t they
always end up doing something self-destructive?”

“Usually. But still, the idea of him and
Lucy, up there at the same time, her blocking out that summer, and now she’s
dreaming about a dead girl.... I could call Trafficant’s publisher and see if
they know where he is. If you feel up to it, you could run a background check.”

“Sure, why not.... Best-seller.” Shaking
his head. “What is it with these intellectuals anyway? All those fools marching
for Caryl Chessman as if he was a saint. Norman Mailer with
his
pet
creep, William Buckley rooting for that asshole Edgar Smith—beat a
fifteen-year-old girl to death with a baseball bat.”

I thought about that. “I suppose artists
and writers can lead a pretty insulated life,” I said. “No freeway jams or time
cards. Getting paid to make things up, you could start to confuse your
fantasies with reality.”

“I think there’s more to it, Alex. I think
the so-called creative bunch believe they’re
better
than everyone else,
don’t have to play by the same rules. I remember once, when I was first on the
force, I pulled jail duty down at the Hall of Justice, and some sociology
professor was leading a tour—earnest students, pens and notebooks. They walked
past one asshole’s cell and it was full of drawings—bloody stuff but very well
done; the guy had real talent. Not that it stopped him from robbing liquor
stores and pistol-whipping the owners. Prof and the kids were totally blown
away. How could someone that talented be in there. Such injustice! They started
talking to the guy. He’s a stone psychopath, so he immediately smells an
opening and plays them like guitars: Mr. Misunderstood Artist, poor baby robbed
’cause he couldn’t afford paints and canvas.”

He shook his head. “Goddamn professor
actually came up to me and
demanded
to know who the guy’s parole officer
was. Letting me know it was
criminal
for such a gifted fellow to be
shackled. That’s
the equation they make, Alex: If you’re talented, you’re
entitled to privileges. Every few years you see another bullshit article, some
idealistic fool setting up a program teaching inmates to paint or sculpt or
play piano or write fucking short stories. Like that’s going to make a damn bit
of difference. Truth is, there’s always been plenty of talent in jail. Visit
any penitentiary, you’ll hear great music, see lots of nifty artwork. If you
ask me, psychopaths are
more
talented than the rest of us. But they’re
still fucking psychopaths.”

“There’s actually a theory to that
effect,” I said. “Psychopathy as a form of creativity. And you’re right,
there’s no shortage of artistically brilliant people who had low moral IQ’s:
Degas, Wagner, Ezra Pound, Philip Larkin. From what I hear Picasso was pretty
hard to live with.”

“So why are people so goddamn stupid?”

“Naiveté, wanting to believe the best
about others—who knows? And it’s not just the creative bunch who buys into it.
Years ago, social psychologists discovered something called the halo effect.
Most people have no trouble believing that if you’re good at one thing it
transfers to unrelated areas. It’s why athletes get rich endorsing products.”

“Yeah,” he said. “Trafficant shoulda stuck
around. Somebody would have paid him to endorse cutlery.”

“Lowell set him loose on society. Dropped
him in a totally unstructured situation full of booze, dope, groupies. And cute
little kids.”

He laughed wearily. “Get us together,
feeling like failures, and we do build a nice house of cards. I’ll grant you
it’s interesting—scumbag on the loose almost always spells some kind of
trouble. But like you said, Lucy could have read about him or heard about him
from her brother. Maybe the goddamn dream is pure fiction.”

“Could be,” I admitted. “He got plenty of
media coverage.”

“Much as I like her, she’s got problems,
right? The head in the oven, this paranoid talk about someone trying to kill
her. And those hang-up calls. I feel like a bum saying this, but now that I
know she’s been wanting to get close to me, I’d be an idiot not to wonder if
she made them up to get attention. Even the way she tried to kill herself has a
touch of that, doesn’t it? Gas, with the drapes open?”

He gulped down the rest of his beer and
looked at me.

“Yes, there is a hysterical quality to
it,” I said. “But let’s be charitable and assume that even if she is making
things up it’s out of neediness rather than manipulation. That still doesn’t
eliminate the possibility that something traumatized her that summer. Don’t
forget, she’s not trumpeting herself as a victim or trying to make anything out
of the dream. On the contrary, she tends to minimize things, just as she did
with the hang-ups. She’s an ostrich, Milo, blocking out that entire summer. My
gut tells me
something
happened when she was four and it’s stuck down in
her unconscious. Something that relates—directly or indirectly—to Lowell. She’s
not the only one with strong feelings about him. The half brother called him a
total sonofabitch.
He’s
in the real estate business and his big
fantasy’s foreclosing on Dad’s land. Maybe that summer was bad for all the
Lowell kids.”