Self-Defense by Jonathan Kellerman Read Free Book Online Page B

manslaughter charge was quoted, too: “This guy is
serious bad news. They might as well light a stick of dynamite and wait for it
to blow.”
    The next few citations on Lowell turned
out to be cross-referenced interviews with Trafficant. Describing himself as
“Scum made good, an urban aborigine exploring a new world,” the ex-con quoted
from the classics, Marxist theory, and postwar avant-garde literature. When
asked about his crimes, he said, “That’s all dead and I’m not an undertaker.”
Crediting Buck Lowell for his freedom, he called his mentor “one of the four
greatest men who ever lived, the other three being Jesus Christ, Krishnamurti,
and Peter Kurten.” When asked who Peter Kurten was, he said, “Look it up,
Jack,” and ended the interview.
    The article went on to identify Kurten as
a German mass murderer, nicknamed the Däusseldorf Monster, who’d sadistically
raped and butchered dozens of men, women, and children between 1915 and 1930.
Kurten had other quirks, too, enjoying coitus with a variety of farm animals
and going to his execution hoping he could hear his own blood bubble at the
precise moment of death.
    When recontacted and asked how he could
term that kind of thing “greatness,” Trafficant replied, “It’s all a matter of
context, friend,” and hung up.
    A storm of outraged letters ensued.
Several religious leaders condemned Lowell in their Sunday sermons. Lowell and
Trafficant refused further interviews, and after a week or so the fuss died
down. In May, From Hunger to Rage was published to uniformly strong
reviews, went into a second printing, and made it to Number 10 on The New
York Times best-seller list. A scheduled book tour for Trafficant was
canceled, however, when the author didn’t show up for an interview on a
national morning talk show.
    When questioned about Trafficant’s
whereabouts, Buck Lowell said, “Terry walked out on us a couple of weeks ago.
Right after all the sturmdrang idiocy about Kurten. Words mean different things to a
man like that. He was wounded deeply.”
    A sensitive soul? asked the reporter.
    “It’s all a matter of context,” said
Lowell.
    Over the next two decades, coverage of
Lowell diminished steadily, and by the end of the period nothing was left but a
few doctoral theses, inflicting upon him that peculiar gleeful viciousness that
passes for wit in the academic world. Command: Shed the Light went out
of print, and no further books or paintings materialized. No mention at all of
Terry Trafficant, though his book did go into paperback.
    Checking out the gray volume, I drove
home. When I passed Topanga Canyon, I wondered if the great man was still
living there.

CHAPTER 6
    At Las Flores Canyon, static wiped out the
music on my radio. I fooled with the tuner and caught the word Shwandt at the tail end of a news broadcast. Then the disk jockey said, “And
now back to more music.”
    I couldn’t find a newscast and switched to
AM. Both all-news stations were doing the sports scores, and everything else
was chatter and music and people trying to sell things.
    I gave up and concentrated on the beauty
of the highway, open and clean as it ribboned past true-blue water. Even the
commercial strip near the Malibu pier didn’t look half bad in the afternoon
sun. Bikini shops, diving schools, clam stands, real estate companies
pretending they still had something to do during the slump.
    Once home, I took a beer and Lowell’s
poetry onto the deck. It soon became clear this wouldn’t be reading for fun.
    Nasty stuff. Nothing like the luxuriant
verse and lust-for-life stories Lowell had put out during the forties and
fifties. Nearly all the poems dealt explicitly with violence, and many seemed
to glorify it.
    The first, entitled “Home-icide,” was
almost a haiku:
    He walks in the door
    briefcase-appendaged. And
    Finds
    She’s shot the kids.
    But the dog’s still alive.
    Time to feed it.
    Another proclaimed:
    Over the meadows and through the woods