It takes me two days to recover from Vertigo. The walk through the party of sneering guests seems more like a nightmare than a lived experience. I doubt it lasted three minutes, but in my memory it seems to go on and on. It was everything I dread and fear and thus I welcome it into the mental space where I store extreme experiences for later use in performance.
Searching out Clarence in his office, I find him at his desk wearing a tank top. The walls are covered with his collection of California wine labels. I gather he lives in an adjoining windowless basement apartment.
He looks up at me with a grin. ‘Hey, Tess, how’s it goin’?’ And before I can answer: ‘Come in, sit down. What’s your gripe?’ This is what he always asks, his way of saying he’ll be happy to fix whatever needs fixing.
I ask him about the detectives who brought the news about Chantal. I tell him I’ve heard they weren’t nice.
‘Ramos, the Hispanic one, seemed like a hardass. But Scarpaci, the one with the sad eyes, struck me as sweet. They play the old good cop/bad cop routine, like anyone still falls for that.’
He passes me their business cards. I can copy down the info, then go back upstairs, phone Scarpaci, and introduce myself.
‘You’re a what?’ he asks.
‘Performance artist.’
‘Call me stupid, but what’s that?’ As I start to explain, he interrupts. ‘So you perform monologues?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Tell stories?’
‘Yep.’
‘So you’re a storyteller.’
‘There’s a French word for it: diseuse.’
‘I like that! Why not just say so instead of spouting this performance artist jive?’
‘Excuse me?’
He guffaws. ‘Sorry. Don’t mean to give you a hard time. Just seems like everyone’s called an artist these days. Robbers are rip-off artists. Pickpockets practice the art of the lift. Bottom line – are you a femdom? I ask because I hear they call themselves artists too.’
‘I told you, I’m an actress.’
‘And they’re not actresses?’
‘All I’m saying—’
‘Yeah, I get it, you’re a real actress, a thespian.’ He pronounces the word carefully. ‘OK, we got that settled, what can I do for you, Ms Berenson?’
I tell him I’m now living in Chantal Desforges’s old loft and as a result I’ve gotten interested in her lifestyle and very sad end.
‘You’re a journalist?’
‘No.’
‘Did you know her?’
‘Slightly.’
‘Kinda monosyllabic, aren’t we?’ He pauses. ‘Why so interested?’
‘I’m thinking I might construct a piece about her. Haven’t decided yet.’
‘So what can I do for you?’
‘I’m hoping you’ll give me an update on your investigation.’
‘Why would I wanna do a dumb thing like that?’
An excellent question which I decide to answer with a dare.
‘Because you want to solve this murder, and I might know a few things that could help.’
‘Do I understand you’re proposing some kind of trade?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Hmm. Interesting.’
‘So, you won’t mind updating me?’
He laughs. ‘You’re a clever one!’
I tell him that if he wants to see just how clever, he’ll meet me for coffee. ‘We’re both curious so let’s meet and see if we can satisfy all this free-floating curiosity.’
‘Sounds good. I’ll check with my partner and get back to you.’
‘I’d rather meet you alone.’
‘Got a problem with Detective Ramos?’
‘I hear he was kinda cold about Chantal, like he thought she brought what happened upon herself.’
‘Don’t recall him saying that, but, yeah, he can be an asshole.’
We set up a meet at Downtown Café, just three blocks from the Buckley.
As we sit down and engage in pleasantries, it’s clear each of us is trying to psych out the other.
‘You can call me Leo,’ Scarpaci says. ‘May I call you Tess?’ I nod. ‘OK, we interviewed some of Chantal’s domme friends, picked up a few crumbs, but most of ’em wouldn’t tell us squat. So I was kinda hoping you were a domme. A cooperative one. Hope that doesn’t offend you.’
I shake my head. Actually I’m pleased. ‘The idea you might take me for a domme gives me a little tingle.’
He laughs. ‘What’s your angle here, Tess? You mentioned something about working up a monologue.’ He searches my eyes. ‘That strikes me as, well, a pretext.’
Peering back at him, I find myself agreeing with Clarence’s assessment. I see sadness in Scarpaci’s eyes, a sadness I connect with numerous middle-aged, world-weary detectives I’ve seen in movies, a type I’ve always found attractive. He has a long face, sunken cheeks, prominent cheekbones, and there’re circles under his I’ve-seen-it-all eyes. He doesn’t wear the typical cop mustache or have a cop’s typical husky build. He’s tall, gaunt, and slightly bent over. I have a feeling he eats sparingly and there’s more sinew than muscle beneath his baggy suit.
I decide to come clean with him. As I tell him about meeting Chantal at kickboxing class, he raises his eyebrows as if in mock appreciation of my prowess. But he gets interested when I describe my decision to keep the artifacts Chantal left behind in the loft.
‘Like I said, I might work up a piece about her, or someone like her. Living where she lived, I’ve become fascinated by her. My shrink’s worried about me. She thinks I’m getting obsessed. She says I’m overidentifying with Chantal. She could be right.’
Scarpaci nods. ‘I used to see a shrink. Police contract shrink, actually. I was involved in a shooting couple years back. Drug case. There was an exchange of gunfire and the other guy, a mid-level dealer, got killed. When that happens they assume you’re suffering PTSD, so they send you to this lady doc and she decides whether you get your gun back and go back on the street, or get assigned a desk job in the Cold Case Division collating stuff stowed in smelly old evidence cartons. Some of my buddies who’d been through it told me how to game her – admit to stress, then describe how hard you’re struggling to deal with it. I told her my priest was helping me cope.’ He grins. ‘Truth is I didn’t have a priest, but a cousin of mine, who became one, backed me up. So here I am, working OPD Homicide. Pretty sorrowful gig, you wanna know. Times I think I’d be better off behind a desk.’
I like him. He’s open, and, best of all, seems real. I have a feeling he likes me too.
‘I hear Chantal had a brother in Vermont.’
Scarpaci nods. ‘I talked to him. He said all the right stuff, but didn’t seem like he was grieving much. Most folks ask questions – how was she killed? do you have any leads? who could have done such a terrible thing? He didn’t ask any of that. Seemed like he couldn’t wait to get off the phone. He said if I faxed him documents he’d sign authorization to release her body to a funeral home where a friend of hers would arrange for cremation. I faxed him the forms, he signed them, and we released her. The friend was the same one ID’d her body. Lives in your building. Maybe you know him. Some kind of commercial artist.’ Scarpaci shakes his head. ‘He wasn’t much help. Worse than her domme friends in a way. I can understand why they didn’t want to talk. They’re in a sketchy situation. But her friend – what’s he worried about?’
Josh ID’d Chantal! He never mentioned that, another of his omissions. I shouldn’t be surprised. Josh, it seems, has but the barest acquaintanceship with full disclosure.
Scarpaci peers at me like now it’s my turn to confide, so I mention I’ve been in contact with Lynx, one of Chantal’s close domme friends, who told me Chantal had a barter arrangement with the owner-sensei at San Pablo Martial Arts. I suggest that might be a lead worth following. I also offer to try and persuade Josh Garske to cooperate.
‘If you’re interested, that is.’
‘Oh, I’m interested. I have a heavy case load. Gang shootings mostly. A few domestic killings. But this case … something haunting about it. We talked to Lynx. She didn’t tell us much.’
‘She doesn’t like cops. She told me there was a domme murdered in San Jose last year. She heard rumors the killer dug out the bullets. To her that spells cop.’
‘I wonder where she heard that. That’s not the kind of info that gets released.’
‘She told me dommes have cop clients. Maybe one of them mentioned it.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, thanks for the tip on the kickboxing coach. I’ll look into it.’
He grins at me. I like the way his expression shifts from dour to cheerful in a second.
‘Generally speaking, we don’t like civilians playing cop. But if you were to become a confidential informant … that’d be another story.’
Confidential informant – I like the sound of that.
‘Sure, why not,’ I tell him.
‘So, game on!’ He raises his coffee mug, gestures for me to raise mine, then we click. ‘To my new CI,’ he toasts.
I like his style. Like a good actor he knows how to play on people’s sympathies. I called him today thinking he might help me. Now I feel like I want to help him.
‘If I talk to Lynx again what in particular do you want me to find out?’
‘Anything about Chantal’s slaves, clients, whatever she called them. From what we hear, most guys into that scene don’t give real names and the dommes don’t ask questions for fear the client’ll be scared off.’ He pauses. ‘But one thing we did find out about Chantal. She had a specialty that attracted a particular type most dommes aren’t comfortable dealing with. So if Lynx knows anything that could identify these guys, that could be helpful.’
‘What type’re you talking about?’ I ask, thinking he means psychological domination. But then Scarpaci says something that catches me off guard.
‘We heard she dabbled in Nazi role-play.’
‘Huh?’
‘Yeah, “Huh?”. That’s what I wanted to know. So I asked around. Seems there’s this subset of pervs who want to submit to women who dress up in SS uniforms – boots, insignia, swastika armbands, all that, then prance around with a riding crop and give them a hard time. Sometimes a very hard time. They use a German accent and play old Nazi songs in the background. The more elaborate the props, the more convincing the scene. Or so I’m led to believe.’
German accent! I use one in my Weimar piece. Again, I’m struck by the parallels in our lives.
‘Chantal did that?’ But even as I express disbelief, I realize that what he’s described fits perfectly with many of her books and the swastika armband I found folded inside one.
‘Two sources told me so. Said when they had clients who expressed an interest in that kind of play, they passed them on to Chantal. In return Chantal paid them referral fees.’ Scarpaci scratches one of his sunken cheeks. ‘Seems it’s a specialty most dommes won’t touch. Too inflammatory, too much chance the guy’ll freak out.’ He peers at me. ‘You’re Jewish, right?’ I nod. ‘I figured that from your name. I ask because I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.’
‘You won’t,’ I assure him. ‘One of my monologues involves a proto-Nazi sex serial murder case. I’m kinda inured to German anti-Semitism, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
He searches my face. ‘I hesitated because there’s a really weird aspect to this. At least I thought so at first. Seems the guys these two women sent to Chantal were both Jewish. The men insisted that abuse by a Nazi female was an essential ingredient in their fantasies.’ He shakes his head. ‘As I said, this struck me as pretty sick, but after I thought about it, it started making sense. Like you’re going to be transgressive, why not go all the way? Say a Jewish guy wants to be abused. A domme acting the part of a sadistic female concentration-camp guard … well, I could see how that might work for him.’
I study Scarpaci. His expression’s thoughtful. He strikes me as a man who worked very hard to comprehend something totally foreign to his experience. I’m impressed by that. It’s probably that quality, I decide, that makes him a good detective.
What he says next confirms this. He looks up at me. ‘“Nothing human is alien to me” – the Roman playwright Terence wrote that.’
He quotes from Terence! This is one erudite cop!
‘Now my partner, Ramos – if I quoted that to him he wouldn’t know what I was talking about. Hector believes in pure evil. To him everything’s black and white. Me – I look for the grays. So if some Jewish guy wants to hire a woman to dress up like an SS guard and abuse him, it’s my job to understand where he’s coming from. Because maybe … just maybe … he’s the guy I’m looking for, the guy who did this woman in.’
‘Why would he turn on her if she was giving him what he wanted?’
‘Maybe because she was giving him what he wanted, too much of it. Maybe the scene they created was so shameful he couldn’t bear the thought he’d exposed his darkest desires to her. She’d have witnessed the most secret side of him, something his rational side believed was evil. So he did what some people do when there’s a witness who can really damage them, chilled her so no one else would ever find out.’
‘You see this as a psychological crime?’
‘I do. But of course there’s a problem with that, something Ramos keeps pointing out. Her body was in the trunk of a stolen car. That’s like a scene you see in a movie, an old-fashioned gang-style killing. My gut feeling is that this was a psychological crime, a crime of passion, and stashing her in the car trunk was an attempt to throw us off.’
There’s something so disturbing about what he’s telling me that I have trouble coming to grips with it. While we sit there talking calmly and sipping coffee, I work hard to stay composed. But soon as we part on the street, I begin to shake. For me being Jewish has never been an issue. My family’s been secular for three generations. I had little experience with the anti-Semitism prevalent in my grandparents’ time. But still the notion of Jewish men paying to be humiliated by a domme decked out as an SS guard – on a rational level, there’s something appalling about that. And yet on the dark counter-intuitive level of psycho-erotic excitement, it makes a certain amount of sense. Thinking about it I’m repelled … and also, I admit, fascinated.
I stride swiftly back to the Buckley. Soon as I’m home I go straight to the shelves where I’ve arranged Chantal’s books. Gazing at them anew, I view them as a research collection assembled by Chantal in order to learn how to effectively enact Nazi role play.
My reaction to this verges on revulsion. A side of me wants to be done with Chantal. But I know that’s impossible. I’ve gone too far, probed too deep; she’s become part of me now. I recognize too that Dr Maude may be right – my obsession with her could be pathological.
And yet as repelled as I am by what I learned from Scarpaci, I feel compelled to learn even more. Surely Josh knew about Chantal’s specialty. How could he not, since he monitored her sessions? And I don’t doubt that Lynx knew too. I decide to call her and put it to her straight.
‘Sure, I knew!’ Lynx tells me. ‘Everyone in the scene did. It wasn’t a secret. Chantal wanted other dommes to know so we’d send over clients who had that fetish.’
‘Is there some reason you didn’t tell me about this?’
‘For one thing, you didn’t ask.’ Lynx pauses. ‘I also figured you’d find it disturbing.’
‘I do, but never mind. The cops think it could be relevant.’
‘Then they should look into it.’ She pauses. ‘Actually, I didn’t mention it because it’s something of a sore point with me, part of the reason Chantal and I decided to go separate ways. I don’t like racial humiliation. I get requests for it – white guys who want to be enslaved by a black woman. Reverse plantation-slave treatment. Some black dommes get off on that, but for me race play cuts too close. Chantal was fascinated by what she called Nazi/Jewish dynamics. And that always struck me as deeply weird because Chantal’s mother was Jewish.’
There it is again, more mirroring!
‘Did she try and cover it up?’
‘No way! She was proud of it. She identified as Jewish. Summer of her freshman year at SF State she signed on for some kind of birth-right tour of Israel. She told me she got a lot out of it.’
I know about those free cultural enrichment visits. At one time I considered applying for one myself, but in the end opted for a summer theater workshop in the Berkshires. My secular background was typical for a participant, but I didn’t like the Israel-right-or-wrong orientation and I was turned off by rumors that the intention behind the tours was to groom future pro-Israel supporters.
‘I don’t get how she could play a sadistic Nazi if she really felt Jewish,’ I tell Lynx.
‘But, see, that’s not what she did. When clients said they wanted that, Chantal would act like she was willing to go along. Then she’d flip the script on them, put them through what she called a “denazification drill”. Say a Jewish guy wanted her to wear a swastika armband. Instead she’d dress up in one of her tailored Israeli paratrooper uniforms, interrogate him, then inscribe a Star of David on him, sometimes by dribbling hot wax. This was her way to work them through their fetish and instill Jewish pride. It was tough but in the end the guys loved her for it. They’d come to her for ethnic humiliation. Instead she’d give them an ethnic boost. I doubt anyone who played that game with her would ever want to harm her. I think he’d be too grateful.’
‘What if the guy wasn’t Jewish?’
‘Then she’d do some real denazification. Then she’d use the whip.’
Lynx tells me that this denazification ritual was something Chantal learned during her apprenticeship with Gräfin Eva.
‘She said there were these real neo-Nazi types in Vienna. Eva taught her how to handle them. As for working with Jewish guys, she liked doing that. She felt like she was taking a sick desire and turning it into a healing experience.’
Denazification – that at least is something I can relate to.
Lynx goes on: ‘We had a number of conversations about this. You have to understand how Chantal viewed herself. “I’m a healer, Lynx,” she’d tell me. She told me that if she didn’t feel that way, didn’t feel she was helping people, she would never be able to do domme work. Not just the denazification stuff, but any of it.’
Before ending our call, I ask Lynx if she knows what happened to Chantal’s chariot, the one she posed in for Josh’s Queen of Swords painting.
‘That old thing. I remember seeing it at her tag sale, but I don’t think anyone bought it. A couple of the ladies were intrigued, but it was too big and heavy. You’d need a van to haul it off. So maybe she just left it in the loft and the landlord kept it, or maybe put it out on the street.’
I decide to give in and call Jerry. Now that Gräfin Eva’s name has come up again, I think it’s important to discover what’s in her letters, filed between the pages of a book about the traditional coffee houses of Vienna.
Jerry’s cool at first, but he warms up when I explain why I’m calling.
‘It would take me too long to write out full translations,’ he says, ‘but I can read through the letters, summarize them, then orally translate the parts that interest you.’
I’m so pleased by his willingness to help I decide to offer him a reward. Wealthy as he is, I remember how much he likes getting stuff free.
‘I’ll be performing in San Francisco fairly soon in the ballroom of a mansion in Presidio Heights. Tickets’ll run two hundred fifty, but if you want to come I can get you comped.’
‘Thanks. That’d be great!’ he says.
Dr Maude, I can see, is restraining herself. I know her well enough to feel the degree of her revulsion even as she tries to conceal it.
‘Chantal was half-Jewish yet she played these scenes with her Jewish submissives because she thought they could be healing experiences! What do you really think about that, Tess?’
‘I find her denazification concept extremely fascinating. Maybe doing it was also healing for her.’
‘I think what she did was extremely dangerous. She was opening up serious wounds. Like the detective told you, something like that can spark a violent response.’
‘You think he could be on to something?’
‘I think it’s something he should investigate. But what concerns me is your reaction. If I understand you, you’re saying that when you first heard about this you were repulsed, but when you learned she “flipped the script” you saw some merit in it.’
‘Don’t know about seeing merit. What Chantal did was definitely perverse.’
She nods. ‘It was. And as you’ve told me many times you’ve always been attracted to the perverse. What I’d like us to consider is where this fascination of yours comes from. I believe the more deeply we examine that, the more profitable our sessions will be. Please think about it.’
I nod. Then I decide to engage with her.
‘OK,’ I tell her, ‘you’re Jewish, I’m Jewish. The Nazis are our worst nightmare. And here we have a half-Jewish woman who played around with that, reversed it, eroticized it. Troubled people paid her to play this game with them because by playing it they found some degree of peace. Detective Scarpaci quotes to me from Terence: “Nothing human is alien to me.” I’d think that as a humanist and an experienced shrink you’d be open to understanding my fascination.’
‘Oh I am, Tess. More than open to it. My hope would be to use this fascination you feel as a key to unlock an attic room in your mind. There are powerful unconscious feelings in you that drive your creativity. Let’s explore those feelings and everything that surrounds them. Much as I like and respect your performance work, I think with such an understanding you’ll be able to create even more powerful performances.’
So, I think, getting up to leave, now the hunt is on. A double hunt actually: Scarpaci’s hunt for Chantal’s killer, in which I’m to participate as his confidential informant, and Dr Maude’s hunt for what drives my art.
There’s a thunderstorm tonight. It comes suddenly, waking me up. Even though we’re entering the dry season, I know from years of living in the Bay Area how fierce these late-spring showers can be.
I check my bedside clock: 1:20 a.m. I turn onto my back, look up at the skylight high above my bed. It’s not the bubble type you find on new structures, but the old-fashioned kind built like a little house with glass walls and a pitched glass roof. No leaks; the old panes are well grouted or I wouldn’t sleep beneath them. It’s exciting to stare up as sheets of rain splash across the glass like wild rivers in the night.
Flashes of distant lightning are followed seconds later by thunder, the intervals narrowing as the storm moves toward downtown. In one sustained burst, a bolt of blinding light seems to crack the sky. My skylight goes all white. Then, perhaps a second later, as the light starts to fade and the roar unleashes a torrent of rain, I see a figure in a hood looming up there, lying flat spread-eagled across the skylight, hands grasping its edges, face pushed hard against the glass as if peering down at me lying twelve feet beneath.
My reaction: sheer terror, followed by the thought that no one would go up on a roof in weather like this. So, an apparition, optical illusion, ghost? The image fades as quickly as it came. It can’t have been visible for more than a second, but an after-image burns my eyes: like an etching, a black silhouette in human form set against the roiling bleached-out sky. I didn’t see his face (if it is a ‘he’), just the outline of his splayed form. And then after the wind drives another wave of water across the skylight, the next crack of lightning reveals emptiness. If there was someone up there, he’s gone now or been blown away.
Terrified, I phone Rex. His voice is groggy. I realize I’ve woken him up.
‘It’s Tess. I think I saw someone on the skylight above my bed.’
‘Come on! You’re spooked by the storm. Go back to sleep.’
‘I’m afraid.’
‘Who was it? Did you recognize him?’
‘I think it was a man wearing a dark hooded slicker. He was clinging to the skylight, then he was gone.’
‘Want me to come over? I can be there in half an hour.’
I thank him, tell him that isn’t necessary, that I’ll move my bedding to the living-room couch and call the building manager in the morning.
‘Sorry to bother you, Rex. Don’t know why I called you, really.’
‘I know why – we’re close and you know I’ll always be there for you.’
In the morning I phone Clarence, tell him what I think I saw.
‘No, Tess, that couldn’t be. I keep the staircase door locked and the roof door bolted. But, really, I can’t imagine anyone climbing around on the roof in a lightning storm like that, let alone managing to get up there.’ He pauses. ‘I wish you’d called me last night. I’d have gone up there and checked. Like I keep telling everybody, I’m on call for my tenants day and night. You know that, right?’
‘I do. Thank you, Clarence.’
‘I’ll come up now and we’ll go look together.’
Our expedition to the roof yields one clue: I’m able to open the door to the roof staircase which Clarence assured me he keeps locked. All I have to do is turn the knob. The door that opens to the roof isn’t bolted either.
Clarence admits he’s embarrassed. I think he’s a lot more upset than he lets on. He sputters something about how the last person to whom he gave roof access was a TV dish installer, and that was two weeks before.
‘After workmen leave I usually check to make sure the roof’s locked up. I thought I’d done that, but maybe this last time I forgot. I apologize.’ He peers at me. ‘But that doesn’t explain why anyone would come up here during a storm. I mean, that’s totally crazy. And then to stay up here in the wind and the rain – why would anyone do that?’
The roof, I note, is now barely wet, the May morning sun having already burned off most of the rainwater. Clarence escorts me on a tour. There are layers of dried guano from the night herons that perch in the neighborhood. I’m surprised the rain didn’t rinse the stuff away. We check out both my skylights. No sign of anyone having clung to the one over my bed – if the intruder did leave traces the storm would have washed them off.
‘You keep calling him an intruder,’ Clarence says. ‘But he didn’t really intrude. He stayed outside.’
‘If he came in through the building then he’s an intruder, Clarence. Unless you think he got up here by jumping from another roof.’
We check the edges of the Buckley. The gap between it and the building to the east would be too dangerous for a leap. But the roof of the building to our west, the McCormick, is just a foot lower and separated by less than a yard.
‘Maybe he climbed up from there,’ Clarence says.
‘Pretty dangerous during a storm. He could have slipped.’
‘Yeah …’ Clarence has a far-away look in his eyes. He’s trying to figure the thing out. ‘You’re sure you saw somebody, Tess?’
I tell him I’m pretty sure, but not one hundred percent. The vision was too quick, too shocking, and I was too frightened by it.
‘Might have been something like a newspaper blown onto the glass,’ he suggests. ‘Or a big bird. Maybe somebody’s old coat. Lots of stuff blowing around in a storm. Could have stuck onto the glass, then a second later got blown off.’
‘Yeah, maybe that’s what it was,’ I tell him. But the fact that both doors were unlocked making the roof accessible causes me to wonder if the rather creepy Josh Garske could have been up here last night.
On our way back down the stairs, I ask Clarence if he knows anything about Chantal’s Roman chariot. He says he does, that she abandoned it when she moved out. When I ask him why he didn’t leave it in the loft like the jail cell and the X-frame, he says the chariot had wheels and was mobile while the other two apparatuses were built in.
‘I still have it stored in the basement.’ He giggles. ‘You know, in case I ever want to play Ben-Hur.’
‘Can I buy it from you?’
‘Are you serious?’ And when I nod: ‘Hey, you can have it. I’ll bring it up and leave it by your door.’