Chapter 23
So Jason has his identity and fame back. Mary and Jason arrive at her
apartment, and her living room is arresting in its use of color, and has
several vases on display. Turns out Mary is pretty darn talented. Jason
immediately starts scheming to get Mary on his show, dreaming up
musical-pottery related numbers and whatnot, and drops the vase he is
holding as he's so besotted with his dreams of the future.
To break the tension there Mary launches into a story about her mother,
who was always saying she was at death's door with kidney problems, and
when I die it'll be your fault, etc. Once Mary leaves home she forgets
about this. A few years later her mom comes to visit, and it's the same
complaining sphiel until she says "I have to go grocery shopping". Once
there, her mom confesses her kidnies are done and she's getting an
artifical replacement but she may die. So Mary goes to the deli counter
and asks for a steak and kidney pie.
This doesn't make much impact on Jason, who is first thinking up lies to
promote Mary, and then brushing off her concerns about "truth" because
he is the arbiter of all truth. He pays for the vase, and Mary gives him
another - one of her best pieces. Jason leaves business cards, but Mary
isn't really into the idea of fame.
Chapter 24
We're back at Alys Buckman, dead in a bathroom. The book plays coy, but I
suspect it's a fairly mundane dead body and not a 1000 year old
skeleton. Felix is there, with the coroner, who tells Felix she died of
an overdose.
Felix is obviously grief-stricken, but with a guy who abstracts his
emotions like he does, there's a lot of looking away from that grief.
His underling, Herb Maime, suggests arresting Taverner. Both men know
Taverner had nothing to do with Alys' OD, but it's something. Felix
touches his face and is suprised to discover he is weeping. Felix's
instinct is to punish someone: Taverner, the people who made the drug,
the people currently operating the phone-sex line...
Herb drives Felix back to the police HQ, and then while alone with
Felix, broaches a sensitive subject. The sister fucking is a problem,
now that Alys is dead. Some of the Grand Marshalls above Felix really
hate him, and will leak to the media about the sister fucking, and say
that Alys killed herself to attack General Buckman. A salacious story
like this would be damaging to Felix. So, Herb suggests a counter move:
order the coroner to find Alys' death a murder. Take control of the
narrative by suggesting Alys died to spite Felix's kinder, gentler
police oppression. Some of Buckman's Marshall enemies behind it, of
course. While Felix can see the show trial and execution of some random
patsy, Herb urges an upgrade to the actual murderer: somebody a) famous,
b) involved in degeneracy, like those marshalls, especially drugs and
phone sex, and c) already entwined with the case. So no prizes guessing
who this is.
Felix thinks about it, and realizes Herb is right: the way out of this
is to make up a bigger scandal than his enemies can insinuate, and well,
sister-fucking is some scandal.
Chapter 25
(Coming back to this, one thing I noticed about the previous chapter is
that Jason Taverener has recovered his celebrity status according to the
police. While it is narrated by the grief-stricken and shattered mind
of Police General Felix, who accords Jason the status of a six, that
slips into Taverener being the perfect celebrity to hang the crime of
Alys's "murder" on.)
General Felix and his aide Herb are attending to the dull details of the
conspiracy they hatched to frame Jason for the death of Alys. Then a
secretary brings the General the Jason Taverner file.
Of course the whole reason the police and General Felix were interested is that there was no Jason Taverner file.
It contains not only files, but mentions Taverner's hit TV show on NBC.
Felix and Herb are baffled. Felix puts a call into the local NBC
affiliate and gets a VP to confirm that it is a show, it is three years
old and has every Tuesday thirty million viewers. Felix hangs up.
Herb has never heard of Jason or his TV show. The General hasn't
either, and he apparently watches two hours of TV every night, between 8
and 10, IE when the Jason Taverner show is broadcast. It is just
inconceivably weird that previously Jason Taverner was expunged from all
police records and having to get false papers in Watts, but at the same
time was not only famous, but as famous as celebrities get. Taverner's
back catalog goes back nineteen years, for fuck's sake. His latest .45, Nowhere Nuthin' Fuck-Up, sold over two million copies. And so on.
Herb is trying to rationalize, and gets about as far as "the computer
for reasons unknown was slow in getting back to us." That's logically
possible, but the rest of the story sticks out like somebody trying to
mash a platypus into a undersized Tupperware container. Fleix's mind
does suss a connection - Alys was "fond" of sixes and had an affair with
Heather Hart for about six months. Herb takes this bit of info and adds
it as motive to the collage of lies they've been gluing together, a
motive for the murder. This last detail is not only enough to get Hart
and Taverner brought in, it is enough to get Taverner an APB. Ultimately
Felix answers the question "why Taverner" with "it has to be somebody."
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