alt.sherlock.holmes

by Gini Koch

  “Pleased to meet you?” He half-stood and gave me a limp handshake. My impression was cheap macassar and a cheaper suit, though he had quite the breakfast in front of him: eggs benedict, fresh-squeezed orange juice, and coffee with the sugar jar next to him.

  Sherlock went on. “We appear to have a mutual friend. Ms. Valerie Solanas. You remember her, John?”

  He was up to something, but I had no idea what. I made a show of screwing up my face for a moment. “Short woman, flat cap, sheepskin coat?”

  “That’s her. Mr. Girodias is her publisher. Or will be, when he can find her, of course. He’s got a manuscript, and is hoping to get a second, maybe even a third, isn’t that right, Mr. Girodias?”

  “It is, actually. We call them the Travellers Companion books. Great literature that offers a... a traveller, one on his own, a break from the day-to-day grind. That traveller might need some stimulation. That’s what we provide. Dirty books, sure, but dirty books for the discriminating reader.”

  There was something about this Girodias. His accent was English overlaid with French, but a coarse English and the French sounded more like it was from the movies than from growing up in Paris, but what did I know? Just that I didn’t like him. I spent a lot of time with unsavoury characters, freaks, and cast-outs of prestigious families. I didn’t mind strange, but desperation rolled off of him, despite his rolls of money and the way he encouraged us to order whatever we wanted on his cheque.

  “How did you and Valerie come to meet?”

  He looked at both of us as though we were part of the vice squad. To be fair, Sherlock’s clean-cut face and short hair would make him look like a bad rookie who has put on civvies and been thrown out into the wilds of Southern Manhattan to catch gamblers, pimps, and johns. “Nothing like that, I assure you. No, no, no under the bridge and down the alley liaison for me.” He strained so hard to pronounce “liaison” in a French fashion that I was afraid he was going to pull his larynx.

  “No, we were introduced by the daughter of one of my financiers.” (That strain again.) “Adler. Irene, I think? Lovely family. Lovely woman, actually. Intelligent. Spent quite a lot of time at the Factory. The only one of the Superstars that was a real Superstar, if you know what I mean. Knew of my taste for la controverse. Good for le commerce. You know. She told me of the manifesto of Valérie and I knew I should meet her. With such an endorsement, I knew I should meet her and get her on my author list. So I did.”

  Sherlock looked at me, his expression unreadable, a look I would come to puzzle over many times in our life together. “Valerie has asked me to look over this contract you’ve sent her—it’s so vague as to be legally questionable, you see. She’d like to, hm, clarify her position.”

  “Ah. Well. Tell her... tell her to talk to me, not to send some agent out. I’m a reasonable man, but I am a man of business. She needn’t be concerned. We can... we can discuss the terms. Of course. She is an artist, and I want to make her some money, and myself some. She doesn’t need to send someone to speak for her.”

  “Oh, no. She didn’t send me, she only mentioned it, and since I ran into you, I thought I would ask.”

  “Fine. Well. I must be going. I have a printer to meet. You’ll get that? Very kind, thanks.”

  Girodias left the impression he was running, leaving us with the bill for his breakfast.

  “John, John! What have you found?” Sherlock was looking at me with a sparkle in his eyes.

  “You didn’t think I’d want to share with you?”

  “What? What are you saying, John?”

  “You’ve found some pills, someone’s shared something with you. We’re barely down from the blues and now you’re up again. I thought... Nevermind.”

  “John. John. Look at me.” We were sitting on the same side of the table, across from where Girodias had been. He put his hand under my chin and turned it to face him and his eyes softened. “I haven’t had any pills. I just get excited when I’m stimulated. I just take pills to keep myself going in times when I can’t find something to keep my interest. Please. What did you find out at the Factory about Valerie?”

  I could have kissed him, deep, his stubble raking against mine, there in the coffee shop. I wanted to, but I held myself back. I waded through the pile of information that the hangers-on and buyers had given me. “Not much more than we knew. You have to filter it out of the language they speak over there. They mostly made fun of her, like she was part of the scene but not any longer. Irene Adler did bring her in, and used to be friendly towards her, but no one seems to have seen them together for months.”

  “Hmmm. Interesting. There’s something there. This Adler. What do we know about her?”

  “If we weren’t in America, she’d be royalty. Rich. Very rich. Glamourous. Gorgeous, too, even if she’s not your sort of thing. Her family made money in ice in the early 1800s, and then diversified. Lumber. Newspapers. Radio. The Midas touch. Always on to the next big thing.

  “The open secret is that much of Andy’s generosity comes from her. Most of the big expensive dinners out she pays for, but he gets all the credit. She bought a few paintings, has been in a bunch of his films. Lives at the Chelsea. She’s the original Superstar.”

  “Ms. Adler. How did you come to be friends with Ms. Solanas? And why these introductions? What is it you want Valerie to do for you?”

  “Sherlock, really? What could she possibly want? Maybe she was... moved by her writing, or something?”

  “A woman like that? No, John. It can’t be. Come on. Let’s go to the Chelsea Hotel.”

  Just like that we were out of there, five dollars left on the table: more than double the bill, but it was enough for him. Not for the last time would I follow on the heels of Sherlock Holmes with only the tiniest idea of what was going on.

  The Chelsea Hotel was buzzing with hushed excitement. Billy, Candy, a couple of other transvestites were lying on the sofas, arms artfully arranged in a pose of fainting, affecting stricken. One of the writers—Paul, I think—was standing in the corner, smoking cigarettes; a line of butts on the ground showed where he had been pacing.

  “He’s been walking there for at least an hour and a half. Twelve butts on the ground, seven minutes a cigarette, one in his hand. Something’s happened. I don’t like this, John.”

  I went over to Candy. She was normally a rock. As dramatic as she could be, she was someone to trust in a crisis. “What’s going on? What’s happened?”

  She looked up at me.

  “Oh, god, It’s Andy. He... Andy’s been shot. Valerie shot him. She slept in my room last night, went out for coffee, and came back crazy. She was running around, looking for Maurice, angry. Pacing back and forth. Got all dressed up. Make-up, can you believe? Said she was going to go talk to Andy. I thought maybe... but I don’t know. I helped her with her makeup. She looked nice.”

  Sherlock had his concentrating face on. “This can’t be right. This can’t be it.” He looked at me. “Do you know Irene Adler? What she looks like? Her room number?”

  I didn’t know what to say. I could hardly believe the strange, gregarious woman we’d met, so canny in teasing money out of us, had just shot Andy Warhol. “I know her from sight. We’ve met a time or two, when I was accidentally invited along to dinners, but I don’t really know her. She wouldn’t know me. I assume she’d be in the front on the second or third floor, where the nice rooms are.”

  He turned on his heel and strode to the counter. “Excuse me. I need to speak to Ms. Irene Adler. It’s a matter of some urgency. Could you ring her room, please, or let me up?”

  The desk clerk looked up, his ever-present cigarette dangling and burning. He muttered “Adler. Adler. Hm. What was your name, sir?” as he pulled out a slip of paper.

  “Holmes. Sherlock Holmes. She may be in danger.”

  The clerk turned and looked at the keys on the wall behind him “Red tag. She’s gone away for a while.

  Sherlock stared at him. “Danger. She may be in se
rious danger. Can you tell me where she is, or anything useful?”

  The clerk sighed and lit another cigarette, taking in Sherlock’s lean frame and rumpled, but well-cut clothes. “Let me just have a look...” He thumbed through the guest ledger. “Says here she booked a taxi to LaGuardia. Gone at least a week, maybe longer. There’s the forwarding address... now why would you go to Los Angeles in June? Surely you’d go in the winter?”

  He closed the book with a thump and looked up at us, but Sherlock was already pulling at my arm.

  “John. She’s off to Los Angeles. What’s happening there? We need newspapers, and time, and perhaps a little something to focus the mind...”

  He led me away towards Union Square, muttering to himself. I listened, but could not make out very much. “Los Angeles... Irene Alder... Andy Warhol... The Factory... John!”

  I was startled out of my reverie, walking along past Sherlock. “What is it?”

  “You’re around the Factory a lot. Has anything happened in the last few months? Anything peculiar?”

  “Not that I can think of. People are always coming and going, at least a little. They fall in and out of favour according to Andy’s whims.”

  “Would you know who was in and out?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t particularly pay attention. I notice when people are gone for a while.”

  “What about Adler? She’s the common thread.”

  “She was definitely in. Belle of the ball. She was in quite a few of Andy’s films, Billy’s films, too, two or three years back. Paul just loved her. She was starring in them. Andy even conceived of a series of films just about her. A series of series. She was the centre of the Factory’s fleeting attention. She would take them all out; fifteen, twenty people. More, sometimes. They’d have champagne and oysters. Steak. And pills, Plenty of pills. She left, though, a while back. Peak of her stardom. People started talking about her afterwards. She’d been involved with a musician. She’d gotten pregnant. Couldn’t handle the drugs. Bored. Lots of things.”

  “She’s the key, John. She knows something. She was there. Somewhere. Important.”

  “I think she may be as crazy as Valerie.”

  “Right, John. The thing for this is to sharpen the senses. I want to know what’s going on. Anything in those pockets to aid in focus? An upper?”

  “I have some of the black beauties—cut with methaqulaone, though—Quaaludes, so maybe not so good for concentration, and some Obetrol—Andy Candy.”

  Sherlock took one of each and upped his pace, to get the blood flowing. I wasn’t sure about the combination. Doubling up on the amphetamines, but, then, I was still a bit edgy from the blues, so I figured it couldn’t hurt.

  We headed to Midtown, East 47th Street, to the site of the original Factory, walking fast to get the pills into our bodies.

  He stood in front of the scaffolding surrounding the pile of bricks, facing away, looking up and down the street.

  “Sunlight. Grand Central. There’s a YMCA nearby. Hmmm...”

  He turned left and stalked away towards 3rd Avenue. I had trouble keeping up with his long, muscular legs, despite my own enhancement.

  I was getting jittery, and the methaqualone was sending shivers down my spine as we strode down past Grand Central and towards the Chelsea.

  Sherlock stopped in front of a newspaper stand and looked at the papers.

  “Gum, please. Spearmint.” He handed over his fifteen cents, scanning the headlines. “California Democratic primary. California. Los Angeles.” He picked up a copy of the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times for good measure. He handed me the New York Times. “Here, John. Back to Avenue B. We’ve got to get through these newspapers.”

  I was worried about him, but I thought that, back at Avenue B, we would have water and blankets and the comforts of home. I wasn’t sure that we hadn’t overdone it for a Monday evening, and I didn’t expect we’d get any sleep tonight.

  It was good that it was evening, because we were a giggling mess when we got back. We have had—still do, I suppose—our share of late-night or very early morning entries through the bakery, Mrs. Hendrix constantly reminding us that what we do is not her business, as long as the rent comes in on time.

  “I’ll take L.A., John, and you take New York. Systematic. Let’s first spread the paper out in even numbers across the floor. We’re looking for patterns. Something to do with the Presidential primary. Set aside advertising circulars and sports sections for now. Keep Arts and Culture.”

  I looked at him, peeling apart the newspaper, page by page, setting it down. “Sherlock, surely we’d be better off leafing through normally?”

  “Nonsense, John. Trust me. Unless we can see the whole of it together, we can’t see the patterns. Lay them out. Even pages up. Facing inwards so we can scan across the whole paper. Don’t overlap the pages at all.”

  I laid them out, end to end, looking back at Sherlock crouched there, muttering at the pages as he read them. “We should have bought two copies of the papers, John. We could have them spread to see the entire pattern.”

  At last it was set out, and he walked back and forth in the centre of the room, looking at the newspapers spread there on the ground.

  “Turn them, John. We need the odds, quickly.”

  We went through the laborious process of turning the papers over, one by one. Sherlock’s fingers were crumpling the edges, twitching with overstimulation and speed. “Fuck it, John. I’m in a hurry. Just national and local news.” He was stalking back and forth, wild-eyed, his own movements stirring the air to make the papers move around underneath his feet.

  “Stop, Sherlock. Slow down. Listen to the sounds outside. New York at night, even on a Monday.” Sirens whirred in the distance. Shouts came up, from the street and from the light-wells out back, one more scream. Laughter, and the tinkle of broken glass. “Take a breath. Let’s have a glass of water. Maybe some wine.”

  He looked at me. “You’re right, John, thanks. Get that.”

  I went upstairs to the third floor and our kitchenette. There was a jug of dry red wine that I poured into a couple of jelly jars and filled a coffee can with water from the tap, recoiling at the chlorine smell. I ran a handful of it over my hair, feeling the tingle of the water drops roll down my scalp and neck.

  Another breath.

  “I’ve got it, John!” Sherlock was shouting from downstairs. “We need the telephone. Long distance, direct to California.”

  I staggered down the staircase in a succession of freeze frames, like Duchamp’s nude, glasses clattering in my hands, feet skittering over the steps one by one in a controlled fall, my heart bursting with fear and pride at the bottom. I hadn’t fallen.

  Sherlock was there, holding a piece of the L.A. Times in his hand, his pupils the size of quarters. “This is it, John. She’s after Bobby Kennedy. We’ve got to tell someone.”

  “Sherlock, what the hell are you talking about? Valerie Solanas is after Bobby Kennedy? She’s the subject of a citywide manhunt. She can’t fly. That doesn’t make sense. Here, let’s sit down and have some wine. Settle, remember?”

  “No, John. Don’t mistake the pawn for the queen. Irene Adler, if that’s even her name. She’s played everyone. Had her revenge on Warhol for spurning her. Solanas is just an unpredictable bomb, tossed into the Factory. She’d hurt Andy somehow, but it’s only chance that she’s actually shot him.”

  He stops and thinks, looking at the ceiling.

  “I can’t figure it out. It would make sense, though, that she would focus her rage on Warhol himself, not just the hangers-on. That’s who I’d go after. The leeches. The grovelling assholes who build egos out of propaganda and then think they’re important. I understand Warhol and what he’s built, but there are all these people around him, inserting themselves into his orbit. They don’t have an original thought of their own, but they take delight in playing political games, talking down to people. Making fragile people like Valerie Solanas feel more iso
lated and alone.”

  He was spitting with anger, staring out the window, the sheets of newspaper crumpled in his hand, his forearms rippling with muscle. I stood behind him and put my arms around him, kissing him lightly behind the ear, rubbing his stomach through his shirt.

  “It’s okay, Sherlock. Really okay. They are shitheads. Everything they hate. I know. Andy, I think, knows.”

  He turned in my arms. “Maybe some of that wine?”

  I handed him the wine. “I don’t know if it’s any good. It’s just what was upstairs.”

  “I imagine our taste buds aren’t working anyway. Just so long as it’s not sweet. I can’t stand sweet wine. Hippies and grassheads and those with no imagination. They should just drink Coke.”

  He put the papers down and took up the wine and toasted me, slipping his arm through mine for the sip. “You’re good to me, John. Good for me.”

  I blushed and picked up the papers he’d put down.

  “There’s something there. I can see the whole thing, but I can’t explain it all. My head is buzzing too much.

  “Listen: Adler was been pushed out of the Factory six months or a year ago. Must have met Valerie at the same time. It doesn’t make sense that she’s a real socialite. She might have taken Warhol out in that case, but not all those people. The rich hang on to their money exactly by not giving it away. No. She wanted them to believe that she was wealthy. Buying her way into stardom? She had money, clearly, but the class? Breeding? I find it hard to believe.

  “She met Solanas, and Solanas would have been the perfect bomb. Chaos incarnate. Delicate. Wounded. Fractured in places. If she could get Valerie angry enough, and directed, she’d go off in some unpredictable way. Hurt Warhol? Damage his reputation? Scare him? Could be anything.

  “Why would she run, though? She didn’t do anything. Introduced Valerie to Girodias and Warhol. Possibly stoked the coals of resentment, a bit, but nothing that would be out of the ordinary in the circles she ran in.

  “But here’s the thing: Valerie suddenly got set off. She turned from building up a head of steam to murderous in a few days. She was fine when we met her, just a couple of days ago. Solanas was a practice run, I’m sure of it. I don’t have enough data, but she must have been grooming someone else, someone fragile and vulnerable. Someone poor. Getting her ready. Why would she go off now? Solanas has claimed friendship with Warhol on the most tenuous of links. There’s no way the pigs would go after a rich socialite. Warhol is a distraction. Important, but something to get people to look at New York.