Over the Edge (18 page)

I arrived at the jail at eleven and was kept waiting in the entrance lobby for forty-five minutes without explanation. It was a hog, smoggy day, and the pollution had seeped indoors. The chairs in the room were hard and unaccommodating. I grew restless and asked about the delay. The voice from the mirrored booth claimed ignorance. Finally a female deputy arrived to take me to the High Power block. In the elevator she told me that an inmate had been knifed to death the day before.

'We have to double-check procedures, and it slows everything down.'

'Was it gang-related?'

'I'd imagine so, sir.'

A stocky black deputy named Sims took over at the entrance to the High Power block. He ushered me to a small office and searched me with a surprisingly light touch. When I got to the glass room, Jamey was already there, Sims unlocked the door, waited until I was seated before leaving. Once outside, he stayed close to the glass and, just as Sonnenschein had, kept an unobstructive but watchful eye on the proceedings.

Jamey was awake this time, straining and twisting against his shackles. His lips were pursed, the eyes above them careening like pinballs. Someone had shaved him. but it had been a slapdash job, and dark patches of stubble checkered his face. His yellow pyjamas were clean but wrinkled. The pungence of stale body odour quickly filled the room, and I wondered when they'd last bathed him.

'It's me again, Jamey. Dr. Delaware.'

The eyes stopped moving, froze, then sank slowly until they settled on me. A brief flicker of clarity illuminated the irises, as if lightning had flashed within the orbital sockets, but the blue quickly filmed over and remained glassy. Not much of a response, but at least he was showing minimal awareness.

I told him I was glad to see him, and he broke out into a sweat. Beads of moisture moustached his upper lip and glossed his forehead. He closed his eyes again. As the lids fluttered shut, the cords of his neck grew taut.

'Jamey, open your eyes. Listen to what I have to say.'

The lids remained fastened tight. He shuddered, and I waited for other signs of dyskinesia. None came.

'Do you know where you are?'

Nothing.

'What day is it, Jamey?'

Silence.

'Who am I?'

No response.

I kept talking to him. He rocked and fidgeted, but unlike the movements he'd displayed during the first visit, these appeared to be voluntary. Twice he opened his eyes and stared at me cloudily, only to close them again quickly. The second time they remained shut, and he showed no further response to the sound of my voice.

Twenty minutes into the session I was ready to give up when his mouth began to work, churning, the lips stiff and extended, as if he were struggling to talk but unable to do so. The effort made him sit straighter. I leaned close. In the corner of my eye I saw a khaki blur: Sims edging closer to the glass and peering in. I ignored him, kept my attention fixed on the boy.

'What is it, Jamey?'

The skin around his lips puckered and blanched. His mouth became a black ellipse. Out came several shallow exhalations. Then a single word, muttered under his breath:

'Glass.'

'Glass?' I moved within inches of his mouth, felt the heat of his breath. 'What kind of glass?'

A strangled croak.

'Talk to me, Jamey. Come on.'

I heard the door open. Sims's voice said:

'Please move back, sir.'

'Tell me about the glass,' I persisted, trying to build a dialogue out of one whispered word.

'Sir,' said Sims forcefully, 'you're too close to the prisoner. Move back.'

I complied. Simultaneously Jamey retreated, hunching his shoulders and bowing his head; it seemed a primitive defence, as if self-reduction would make him unappealing prey.

Sims stood there, watching.

'It's all right,' I said, glancing over my shoulder. 'I'll keep my distance.'

He stared at me stolidly, waiting several seconds before returning to his post.

I turned back to Jamey.

'What did you mean by glass?'

His head remained lowered. He swung it to one side so that it rested unnaturally on his shoulder, like a bird preparing for sleep by tucking its beak in its breast.

'The night you called me you talked about a glass canyon. I thought that meant the hospital. Was it something else?'

He continued withdrawing physically, managing, despite the restraints, to curl into foetal insignificance. It was as if he were disappearing before my eyes, and I was powerless to stop it.

'Or are you talking about this room - the glass walls?'

I kept trying to reach him, but it was useless. He'd turned himself into a nearly inert bundle - pallid flesh wrapped in sweat-soaked cotton, lifeless but for the faint oscillation of his sunken chest.

He remained that way until Sims entered and announced that my time was up.

The Cadmus Building was on Wilshire between Westwood and Sepulveda, one of those high, mirrored rectangles that seem to be cropping up all over Los Angeles - narcissistic architecture for a city built on appearances. In front was a sculpture made of rusty nails welded together to create a grasping hand three storeys high. The title plate said STRIVING and assigned the blame to an Italian artist.

The lobby was a vault of black granite, air-conditioned to the point of frigidity. In the corners sat oversized dieffen-bachias and ficus trees in brushed steel planters. To the rear was a granite counter shielding a pair of security guards, one heavy-jowled and grey-haired, the other barely out of his teens. They looked me over as I checked the directory. The building was filled with attorneys and accountants. Cadmus Construction occupied the entire penthouse.

'Can I help you, sir?' asked the older one. When I told him my name, he asked for identification. After confirming it with a sotto voce phone call, he nodded, and the young one accompanied me to the elevators.

'Security always this tight?'

He shook his head. 'Just this week. Got to keep out reporters and nuts.'

He pulled a ring of keys from his belt and unlocked an express elevator that whisked me up in a matter of seconds. The door opened, and I was greeted by the corporate logo: a small red C nestled in the belly of a larger blue one. The reception area was decorated with Albers prints in chromium frames and architectural models in Plexiglas cases. A willowy brunette was waiting for me there, and she led me through a foyer that forked. To one side was the secretarial pool - rows of frozen-faced women pounding nonstop on word processors - to the other were metal double doors marked PRIVATE. The brunette opened the doors, and I followed her down a silent corridor carpeted in black. Dwight Cadmus's office was at the end of the hallway. She knocked, opened the door, and let me in.

'Dr. Delaware here to see you, Mr. Cadmus.'

'Thanks, Julie.' She left, closing the door after her.

It was an enormous room, and he was standing in the middle of it, stooped, jacketless, shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows, wiping his eyeglasses with a corner of his tie. The inner walls were brownish grey plaster, and from them hung architectural renderings and a painting of a caravan of Arabs riding camels across a wind-carved dune. The outer walls were floor-to-ceiling smoked glass. I thought of the single word Jamey had whispered, speculated, and put the thoughts aside.

The glass walls were a backdrop for a low, flat desk of lacquered rosewood, its top piled high with blueprints and cardboard tubes. Perpendicular to the desk was a large wet bar; facing it, a pair of armchairs upholstered in textured black cotton. A suit jacket was draped over one of them.

'Make yourself comfortable, Doctor.'

I sat in the empty chair and waited until he finished polishing. Sunlight had turned the darkened glass to amber; the city below seemed brassy and remote.

Placing his spectacles on his nose, he walked behind the desk and sat down in a swivel chair, glancing at the blueprints and avoiding eye contact. His hair was especially thin on top, and he patted it as if seeking reassurance that some remained.

'Can I get you anything?' he asked, looking at the bar.

'No, thanks.'

A cacophony of honking horns rose twenty storeys. He raised his eyebrows, turned, and stared down at the street. When he faced forward again, his expression was blank.

'What is it I'm supposed to do for you exactly?'

'I want you to tell me about Jamey, to trace his development from birth until the present.'

He looked at his watch.

'How long is this supposed to take?'

'We don't have to do it in one sitting. How much time do you have?'

He waved his hand over the blueprints.

'Never enough.'

I looked at him with reflexive disbelief. He met my eyes and tried to remain impassive, but his face sagged.

'That probably didn't come out right. I'm not trying to punt. I'm more than willing to do anything I can to help. Christ knows that's all I've been doing since I found out. Trying to help. This thing's been a nightmare. You do your best to live a certain way, to keep things organised. You think you know where you stand, and boom, everything's blown to hell overnight.'

'I know it's tough on you - '

'It's tougher on my wife. She really cares about him. Both of us do,' he added quickly, 'but she was the one who was home with him all the time. In fact, if you really want details, she could tell you more about him than I could.'

'I plan on talking with her, too.'

He played with the knot of his tie.

'Your name's familiar,' he said, looking down again.

'We spoke on the phone five years ago,' I said.

'Five years ago? What was it about specifically?'

I was certain that he remembered the conversation clearly but recounted it, nonetheless. He interrupted me midway.

'Aha. Yes, it's coming back. You wanted me to make him see a psychiatrist. I did give it a try, talked to him about it; but he fought it tooth and nail, and I didn't want to force him. It's not my nature to force things. I'm a problem solver, not a problem creator. Forcing him to do things had created problems in the past.'

'What kinds of problems?'

'Conflict. Fights. Mouthing off. My wife and I have two little girls, and we don't like them exposed to that kind of thing.'

'It must have been a tough decision to have him involuntarily committed.'

'Tough? No. At that point there was no other way. For his sake.'

He got up, went to the bar, and fixed himself a scotch and soda.

'Sure I can't get you anything?'

'Nothing, thanks.'

He carried the drink back to the desk, sat down, and sipped. The hand that held the glass shook almost imperceptibly. He was nervous and defensive, and I knew he'd try to find another way to divert the interview. Before he could, I started talking.

'You began taking care of Jamey after your brother died. What was he like then?'

The question perplexed him.

'He was a little kid.' He shrugged.

'Some little kids are easy going; others are irritable. What kind of temperament did Jamey have?'

'Cranky sometimes, quiet others. I guess he cried a lot -more than my girls anyway. The main thing you noticed right away was how damned smart he was. Even as a baby."

'Did he talk early?'

'You bet.'

'At what age?'

'Christ, that's a long way back.'

'Try to remember.'

'Let's see - it had to be under a year. Six months maybe. I remember one time I was home on semester break and Father and Peter were trying to change his diaper, and this little thing pipes up and says, "No diaper." And I mean clearly, no baby talk. It was bizarre hearing words come out of something that small. Father made some joke about "give the midget a cigar", but I could tell he was upset by it.'

'What about Peter?'

'It bothered him, too. What does any of this have to do with the situation at hand?'

'I need to know as much about him as possible. In what other ways was he precocious?'

'Everything.'

'Can you give me some examples?'

He frowned impatiently.

'It's like he was moving at seventy-eight rpm when everyone else was going thirty-three and a third. By the time he was a year old he could go into a restaurant and

order a sandwich. We had a maid who spoke Dutch. All of a sudden he was talking Dutch. Fluently, just by listening to her. He taught himself to read when he was about three. This was around the time I took him in. I walked in one evening and saw him with a book, asked him if he wanted me to read it to him. He looked up and said, "No, Uncle Dwight. I can read it myself." I thought he was faking, so I said to him, "Let me hear you." Sure enough, the kid could read. Better than some of my employees. By the age of five he could pick up the daily paper and read it front to back.'

'Tell me about his schooling.'

'I was tied up full-time with the company, so I sent him to nursery school. He drove the teachers crazy. Probably because he was so much smarter than they were. They expected him to do what the other kids were doing and his attitude was basically "You're stupid, screw you." After I got married, my wife worked hard at finding him the right school. She looked around for a long time - visited lots of places, interviewed teachers, the works - until she came up with the right one. It was the best kindergarten in Hancock Park, full of good kids from good solid families. He mouthed off so much they kicked him out after two months.'

'For talking back?'

'For bucking the system. He wanted to read adult books - I don't mean porno. Faulkner, Steinbeck. They thought it would bend the other kids out of shape and you can see their point. A school's a system. Systems are based on structure. But too much slack in a system, and things fall apart. He needed to give in, but he wouldn't.

'When they tried to lay down the law, he gave them lip, pulled tantrums, kicked the teachers in the shins. I think he called one of them a Nazi or something. Anyway, they finally had enough and booted him out. You can imagine how my wife felt, after putting in all that work.'