“Not a word where she was going?”

“Nope. Just fuck-you’s all around. We figured she’d be back, the way she always was. Tantrums were a way of life for her.” He pulled out another cigarette and ignited it with a Donald Duck lighter.

“The opposition,” he said, brandishing the lighter before snapping it shut.

I said, “What happened to the sides you cut that night?”

“They’re worthless. I tried to peddle them, but without China to tour, no one- not Gittleson or any of the others- wanted to know us. A few months later, we were ancient history.” Another cackle. “Serious pathos, huh? I coulda been a contender? Like that Swedish ship, the Wasa, ever hear of it?”

I shook my head.

“I was in Sweden last year, doing some business, they’re maybe going to franchise The Lumpkins over there. So this Swedish animator is taking me around Stockholm. Weird city, all these big blond zombies lurching around looking like they haven’t slept in years. Cause of the light thing they’ve got. Summertime, it never gets dark. Winter, it’s dark all the time. This was summer, we get out of a club at midnight, and it’s still broad daylight. Anyway, the next day this guy takes me to this ship, the Wasa. Big old wooden Viking warrior ship, built hundreds of years ago, huge, the Swedes loaded it with cannons for this war they were fighting with the Danes. Problem is, they overloaded it with cannons so when they launched it, the sucker sank right in the North Sea. They salvaged it forty years ago, pulled it up intact and built a museum around it. You can climb in and pretend you’re Leif Ericson, get drunk and eat herring, whatever. Anyway, this guy who’s taking me around, after we leave the museum, he turns to me with tears in his eyes, this incredible wistfulness, and says, ‘Paul, my friend, if the Wasa hadn’t sunk, Sweden would be a world power.’ “

Three rapid drags on the fresh smoke. He held his breath, closed his eyes, broke out into a ragged coughing fit. Seemed comforted by the spasm. “We’re the musical Wasa. If China hadn’t been murdered, we would’ve been Aerosmith, ha-ha-ha.”

“What else can you tell me about China?”

“She could’ve used you. Mentally unstable. We all were. I’m on lithium and antidepressants for bipolar. Four screwed-up personalities, and then we augmented it with endless dope.”

Rib-tickling situations.

I said, “Christian Bangsley, too?”

“Mr. Corporate? Especially Chris. He was more thrashed than the rest of us. Had a very rich family and no moral fiber. As opposed to us, who merely had weak moral fiber.”

“He sold out?”

“He didn’t sell out,” said Brancusi. “That’s an asinine concept. What’s the difference how you make your way through life- playing music or being a CPA or building warehouses or whatever? It’s all one gray death march. Chris shifted gears, that’s all.”

“Where’s Squirt?”

“Dead,” he said, as if that made perfect sense. “Went over to Europe and OD’d on heroin. Some park in Switzerland. Living like a bum, it took weeks before they identified him.”

“You’re not surprised.”

“Squirt was riding the needle pretty hard before China got killed. Afterward, he just started shoveling the stuff in.”

“Traumatized by China’s death.”

“Probably. He was the most intense. Not counting China.”

“Apart from China’s general abrasiveness, was there anyone she had a run-in with during the week or so before her murder?”

“Not that I know about, but it wouldn’t surprise me. She was just instinctually unpleasant, would get into this Greta Garbo mode-’I vant to be alone and fuck you for trying to relate to me.’ “

“What about a stalker?”

He threw up his hands. “I don’t think you get it. We weren’t stars, no one cared. That’s what really got to China. For all her talk about alienation, all that hermit posturing, she was a Palos Verdes princess who’d gotten tons of attention as a kid and still craved it. That’s why it was monumentally stupid for her to blow off Gittleson. Ms. Schizo. One minute, she’d be seething because the band wasn’t getting the respect it deserved, the next she’d be cussing out anyone who actually wanted to focus on the band- like journalists. She went out of her way to alienate them, called them butthole lickers, imposed a strict no-interview policy.”

Out came the pack of Rothmans. Another chain light. “I’ll give you an example: There was this zine, dinky little rag that wanted to do a story on us. China told him to fuck himself. They did the piece anyway, without talking to us. So what does China do? She phones the editor and gives it to him.”

He shook his head. “I was there, listening to her end. ‘Your mother fucks scabrous Nazi dicks and drinks Hitler’s cum.’ Granted she’d told them no, but what was the logic behind that?”

“Remember the name of the zine?” I said.

“You think some journalist type murdered China because she talked mean to him? Give me a break.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said. “But if the editor was a fan, maybe he’s got some ideas.”

“Whatever,” he said. “You’ve obviously got plenty of spare time… Groove something-GrooveRut or GrooveRat. He sent us a copy, and we chucked it. Cheap little desktop deal, probably out of business by now.”

“What was the gist of the article?”

“We were geniuses.”

“Did you keep a clipping?”

“Oh, sure,” he said. “Along with my Grammys and my platinum records.”

He shot to his feet, smoked and coughed and walked, hunch-shouldered to the grape-jelly door. Shoved it hard and went back to work.

I drove to a magazine stand on Selma Avenue off Hollywood Boulevard, and looked for GrooveRat. Fifty feet of stand, containing plenty of alternative publications and newspapers in two dozen languages, but no sign of the zine. I asked the turbaned Sikh proprietor, and he said he’d never heard of it but I might have some luck at the comics store/piercing parlor three blocks up the boulevard.

I cruised by the shop, found a CLOSED sign barely visible behind an accordion-grated front, and returned home wondering if Paul Brancusi’s comment about too much leisure time had been on target.

The more I thought about it, the weaker the links between the cases seemed. I considered the three other murders I’d found Web-surfing.

The only other L.A. killing was the old saxophonist, Wilfred Reedy, and there’d been no suggestion he’d been on the verge of a comeback or career-climb. The killer of Valerie Brusco, the Oregon potter, had been caught and jailed, and Angelique Bernet, the ballet dancer- a young woman who had been offered a potential career boost- had died three thousand miles away in Massachusetts.

Subtotal: zero. Still no reason to bother Milo; he had his hands full investigating Everett Kipper- by my own reckoning the best bet for Julie’s murderer.

The dinner hour was approaching, but I had no appetite. Another human voice would be palliative, but Allison was working at the hospice tonight.

I might do well by following her example: do some gut-wrenching clinical work that drew me miles from my own self- the kind of work I’d done years ago on the cancer wards of Western Pediatric Hospital.

I’d spent nearly a decade on those wards, a too-young, newly minted psychologist, pretending to know what he was doing. Seeing too much, too soon, feeling like nothing but an impostor.

Paying dues. But that was rubbish; oncologists and oncology nurses devote entire lives to the cause, so who the hell was I to self-aggrandize?

Allison’s husband had died of cancer, and she spent one night a week with the terminally ill.

Not a comforting line of thinking. I returned to pondering China Maranga’s death. Her verbal assault had been business as usual, but some people don’t take well to abuse. And when I’d asked Robin to speculate about the case, her first instinct had been that China had run into someone on the street, accepted a ride, shot her mouth off one time too many.