'Juliet Kipper. Did we feature her?'
'Who?'
'Kipper. Dead artist. She got murdered.'
'Um,' he said. 'What kind of artist?'
The girl looked at us.
Milo said, 'She was a painter. We've been told you wrote about her, Ms...'
'Patti Padgett.' Big smile. A not-small diamond was inlaid in her left frontal incisor.
Milo smiled back and took out his pad.
'There you go,' Patti Padgett said. 'Always wanted to be part of the official police record. When did we supposedly write about the late Ms Kipper?'
'Within the last few months.'
'Well that narrows it down,' she said. 'We've only put out two issues in six months.'
'You're a quarterly?'
'We're a broke.' Patti Padgett returned to her desk, opened a drawer, began rummaging. 'Let's see if what-shername Julie merited our... how'd she die?'
'Strangled,' said Milo.
'Ooh. Any idea who did it?'
'Not yet.'
'Yet,' said Padgett. 'I like your optimism - the greatest generation and all that.'
Bumblebee-shirt said, 'That was World War Two, Patricia, he's Vietnam.' He glanced at us, as if waiting for confirmation. Received blank stares and put his earphones back on and bopped, dreadlocks swaying.
'Whatever,' said Padgett. 'Here we go. Three months ago.' She placed the magazine in her lap, licked her thumb, turned pages. Not many pages between the covers. It didn't take long for her to say, 'Oka-ay! Here she is right in our "Mama/Dada" section... sounds like someone liked her.'
She brought the article to us.
'Mama/Dada' was a compendium of short pieces on local artists. Juliet Kipper shared the page with an emigrant Croatian fashion photographer and a dog trainer who moonlighted as a video artist.
The piece on Julie Kipper was two paragraphs, noted the promising New York debut, the decade of 'personal and artistic disappointments,' the 'would-be rebirth as an essentially nihilistic conveyor of California dreamin' and ecological schemin'.' Nothing I'd seen in Kipper's landscapes had connoted nihilism to me, but what did I know?
Kipper's work, the writer concluded, 'makes it obvious that her vision is more of a paean to the paradoxical holism of wishful thinking than a serious attempt to concretize and cartograph the photosynthetic dissonance, upheaval, and mulchagitation that has captivated other West Coast painters.'
Author's credit: FS
'Mulchagitation,' mumbled Milo, glancing at me.
I shook my head.
Patti Padgett said, 'I think it means moving dirt around, or something like that. Total foggoma, right?' She laughed. 'Most of the art stuff we print is like that. Would-bes with no ability hitching a ride on the talent train.'
Milo said, ' "Leeches on the body artistic." '
Padgett stared up at him with naked worship. 'You want a gig?'
'Not in this rotation.'
'Hindu?'
'Make-do.'
Padgett told Bumblebee: 'Be threatened, Todd. I'm in love.'
Milo said, 'If you don't like the writing, why do you print it?'
'Because it's there, mon gendarme. And some of our readership digs it.' She spit out another laugh, set off a metal whirligig. 'With our budget, we ain't exactly The New Yawker, honeybunch. Our focus - my focus, cause what I like is what flies - is lots of fashion, some interior design, a little film, a little music. We toss in the finesy-artsy shitsy because some people think it's cool and in our niche market, cool is everything.'
Milo said, 'Who's FS?'
'Hmm,' said Padgett. She returned to Bumblebee and lifted an earphone. 'Todd, who's FS?'
'Who?'
'The credit on the Kipper story. It's signed "FS." '
'How would I know? I didn't even remember Kipper.'
Padgett turned to us. 'Todd doesn't know, either.'
'Don't you keep a file of contributors?'
'Wow,' said Padgett, 'this is getting seriously investigative. What's the deal, a serial vampire killer?'
Milo chuckled. 'What makes you say that?'
'I dig the X-Files. C'mon, tell Patti.'
'Sorry, Patti,' he said. 'Nothing exotic, we're collecting information.' He smiled at her. 'Ma'am.'
'Ma'am,' she said, placing a black-nailed hand over a generous breast. 'Be still my fluttering heart - hey, how about you guys let me follow you around and write up what you do - day in the life and all that. I'm a kick-ass writer, MFA from Yale. Same for Todd. We're as dynamic a duo as you could hope to encounter.'
'Maybe one day,' said Milo. 'Do you keep a contributor file?'
'Do we, Todd?'
Off came the earphones again. Padgett repeated the question. Todd said, 'Not really.'
'Not really?' said Milo.
'I've got a quasi file,' said Todd. 'But it's random -data inputted as it comes in, no alphabetization.'
'In your computer?' said Milo.
Todd's stare said, Where else?
'Could you please call it up?'
Todd turned to Padgett. 'Isn't there a First Amendment issue, here?'
'Puh-leeze,' said Padgett. 'These guys are going to let us ride with them, we'll do a kick-ass law enforcement issue - use that strung-out Cambodian model for the cover, whatshername with the sixteen-syllable name, doll her up in a tight blue uniform, give her a riding crop, a gun, the works. We'll rock.'
Todd cleared his screen of graphics.
It took a second. 'Here it is. FS - Faithful Scrivener.'
Milo hunched lower and stared at the screen. 'That's it? No other name?'
'The proverbial "what you see," ' said Todd. 'This is how the submission came in, this is how I log it.'
'When you paid, what name did you put on the check?'
'Right,' said Todd.
'Ha-ha-ha,' said Padgett.
'You don't pay.'
Padgett said, 'We pay the cover models and the photographers as little as we can. Sometimes if we get someone with a genuine resume - a screenwriter with a credit - we can scratch up something - like a dime a word. Mostly we don't pay because no one pays us. Distributors refuse to advance us the wholesale price until returns are calculated - we get royalties only for issues sold, and that takes months.' She shrugged. 'It's a sad day for entrepreneurship.'
Todd said, 'She was an undergrad econ major at Brown.'
'As a sop to Daddy,' said Padgett. 'He runs cor-po-ra-tions.'
'How long have you been publishing?' I said.
'Four years,' said Todd. Adding with pride: 'We are currently four hundred thousand in the hole.'
'In hock to my daddy,' said Padgett. 'To appease him, we maintain a job.'
'Jaguar Tutorials,' said Milo. 'Which is?'
'SAT preparation,' said Padgett, lifting a business card from her desk and flashing it at us.
Patricia S. Padgett, B.A. (Brown) MFA (Yale) Senior Consultant, Jaguar Tutorials
'Our mission, should we accept it,' she said, 'is to educate the offspring of anxiety-ridden social climbers in the fine points of college entrance exams.'
Milo said, 'Jaguar as in...'
'The connotation,' said Todd, 'is of mastery and swiftness.'
'Also,' said Padgett, 'of upscale. As in Jag-oo-ar motorcars. We can't afford Beverly Hills rent, but we want to pull in the B.H. kids.'
Todd said, 'The Ivy League thing helps.'
Padgett said, 'Todd did his undergrad at Princeton.'
'So,' said Milo, turning back to the screen, 'this Faithful Scrivener person sent you a piece under a pseudonym, and you printed it and never paid.'
'Looks that way,' said Todd. 'This notation - OTT -means an over-the-transom submission.'
Padgett said, 'That's publishing-speak for we didn't solicit it, it just showed up.'
'You get a lot of that?'
'Plenty. Mostly garbage. Real garbage - I'm talking illiterate.'
'Has "FS" written any other pieces for you?'
'Let's see,' said Todd. He scrolled. 'Here's one. All the way back at the beginning.' To Padgett: 'Back in Issue Two.'
Milo read the date. 'Three and a half years ago.'
She said, 'The halcyon days - look at this: evidence, clues, red herrings - we're stylin' and sleuthin', Todd -hey, Officer, can we get cool badges, too?'
She went and got a copy of Issue Two. Faithful Scrivener's first piece was in a section entitled 'Pits and Peaches.' Brutal reviews alternating with mindless raves.
This one, a Peach. Two paragraphs singing the praises of a promising young dancer named Angelique Bernet.
Review of a ballet concert at the Mark Taper, in L.A. Experimental piece by a Chinese composer entitled 'The Swans of Tianenmen.'
Two months before Bernet's murder in Boston.
The company had been to L.A., first.
Angelique had been part of a trio of ballerinas featured during the final act. FS had picked her out because of 'slap-in-the-face cygnian grace so fully synched with the tenor of the composition that it tightens one's scrotum. This is DANCE as in paleo-instinctuo-bioenergetics, so right, so real, so unashamedly erotic. Her artistry sets her apart from the palsi-form pretenders that comprise the rest of la compagnie allegement.'
'Ouch,' said Padgett. "We really need to be more selective.'
' "Cygnian," ' said Milo.
Todd said, 'It means swanlike. It's on the advanced SAT vocab list.'
' "Tight scrotum," ' said Padgett. 'He had the hots for her. What are we dealing with, some kind of sexual psycho?'
Milo said, 'Could you print copies of both articles? And as long as we're at it, have you ever run anything by someone named Drummond?'
Padgett pouted. 'I ask, he doesn't answer.'
'Please?' said Milo, smiling at her again, but talking in
the low, threatening tones of a bear emerging from its cave.
Padgett said, 'Yeah, yeah, sure.'
'First name?' said Todd.
'Check any Drummond.'
'Check Bulldog,' said Padgett.
No one laughed.
No record of Kevin or Yuri or any other Drummond showed up in the SSA contributor files. No articles on Baby Boy Lee or China Maranga, either, but Todd did find a write-up of a recital given by Vassily Levitch. Another 'Pits and Peaches' entry, one year ago. Levitch had played one piece at a group recital in Santa Barbara.
'Another Over The Transom,' said Milo.
The byline: E. Murphy.
The hyperbolic, sexually loaded prose evoked Faithful Scrivener: Levitch was 'lithe as a harem houri' as he 'stroked Bartok's tumescent etude' and 'squeezed every drop from the time/space/infinity between notes.'
Padgett rotated her chin stud. 'Boy, do we print crap, this walk down memory lane is not making me proud.'
Todd said, 'Keep your perspective, Patti. Your old man markets toxic chemicals.'
Patti Padgett photocopied the articles and walked us to the door. Sticking close to Milo.
He said, 'Ever hear of GrooveRai?'
'Nope. Is it a band?'
'A zine.'
'There are hundreds of those,' she said. 'Anyone with a scanner and a printer can do one.'
Her smile began fresh, ended up old, sad, defeated. 'Anyone with a rich dad can take it a step higher.'
As we got back in the car, Milo's cell phone chirped the first seven notes of Fur Elise. He slapped it to his ear, grunted, said, 'Yeah, I'll be there ASAP, treat her nice.'
To me: 'Vassily Levitch's mother flew in last night from New York and is waiting for me at the station. Maybe she'll know something that ties Levitch to Drurn-mond beyond "E. Murphy" - so what was that all about? Drummond using pen names? And if he's got his own zine, why send stuff to Patti and Todd?'
'The Bernet piece was written before GrooveRat was started - if Kevin was the author, he would've still been a sophomore. Maybe he sent the others because Patti and Todd were getting distribution and he wasn't.'
'The need for exposure,' he said. 'Lots of sex in the prose. He wants to screw them.'
'He wants to own them,' I said. 'And he traveled to do it. Levitch's recital was in Santa Barbara. Angelique Bernet was reviewed in L.A. but murdered in Boston. If you could verify his presence in Boston at the time, that would be grounds for a warrant.'
