The Sepia Siren Killer. Richard A. Lupoff
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1989 his story “12:01 PM,” that was written in 1973 for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, was produced by writer-director Jonathan Heap, starring Kurtwood Smith. The thirty-minute drama can still be caught on Showtime-TV and has experienced limited theatrical release, and garnered an Oscar nomination in 1990. New Line Cinema backed a feature-length version opening as 12:01. Directed by Jack Sholder and produced by Chanticleer, the cast included Martin Landau, Helen Slater and Jonathan Silverman.
If the intricate plots of his Killer mysteries expose the intertwining of doppelganger identities and copycat modi operandi, one reason may be because of Lupoff’s own experience in the “real” life of Tinsel Town, where illusion is a commodity. In the last decade, there has probably been a greater quantity of screenplays written and submitted by more people—even besides waiters and cab drivers—than than ever before. Despite the richness of all of that bounty to choose from, some Hollywood “creative” types continue to rely upon remakes, sequels, adaptations and the infinite Roman numeralizations of other properties in order to grasp at the grail of “bankability.” This persistence of revision has even been known to extend to the “unconscious and coincidental” mimesis of another film—without the inconvenience of attribution.
To his amazement and dismay, Lupoff confronted that very same creationist phenomenon when he saw Groundhog Day unreel on the big screen, well turned out by Bill Murray’s performance. It was certainly flattering to see so much of his “12:01” remain intact, from the Jorge Luis Borges-worldview of time itself repetitively looping, day by day, trapping the protagonist in a xeroxism of immortality, and to many of the framing details of the story. But, studio politics being what they are in the Greater Los Angeles Basin, Goliath here shall always remain unDavided.
The alternate realities that seize, shanghai and betray the characters in his Killer novels are no less abrupt and conceptually unsettling. Events, roles and identities are often only as far apart as the thickness of a mask. It is an unquiet past that, like a riptide under the ripples, catches at insurance agent Hobart Lindsey to drag him into the deeper waters of criminal investigation. The pasts—and there are often more than one—can come alive and walk again to speak, to reveal, and to kill.
Bart’s home life is dominated by an anxious mother who is helplessly adrift in her own multiplex theater of the mind, where she is able to keep her dial frozen at circa 1953 in a cocoon of old movies, vintage magazines, and the perfect denial of her projectionist fantasies. His own sense of the present is continually blurred and eroded by his devoted support of her. But, in the course of the four novels, she slowly but surely finds her own way from a bright and misty then to an in-your-face now, just as Bart discovers his own independence, professionalism and sexuality.
The evolution of Lupoff’s Hobart Lindsey/Marvia Plum mysteries is also a richly rendered guided tour through American popular culture. Each novel focuses on the shibboleths and ceremonies of a different tribe of collectors. The Comic Book Killer (1988) brings us in between the span of sensibilities of the juvenile-fueled underground and the investment-driven elite who fight over paper heroes. The Classic Car Killer (1992) revolves around not only the romance of the classic auto, but of the cultivation and preservation of an Art Deco decade whose style and panache can help its devotees to keep the awful nineties at bay. The Bessie Blue Killer (1994) takes us to a revisitation of vintage World War II warplanes and the Tuskegee Airmen, the African American fighter pilots who flew them. The Sepia Siren Killer (1994) cuts through the surface of the classic silver screen to reveal illusions that are not what they may seem, and that some of them may be black.
Each community of collectors is a microcosm of society. In their cabalistic zeal and devotion to their collectibles, they describe a minority vertical interest with all of the hermeticism, unique jargon and value set that puts them often at odds with a society that is systematically destroying or scattering the old comic books, used cars, sheet music, motel ashtrays and silent films that they revere. But at the same time, these groups’ operational survival is dependent upon the industrial-retail infrastructure that manufactured the artifacts, and all the resources and tools of publishing, communication, education, regulation, documentation, preservation and exhibition to support and further their hobbies.
Another, deeper meridian of understand is drawn and developed through this series. American Popular Culture is as much a quotient of black life as it is of the white majority. They contradict and complement each other even as they mimic and deny. The developing relationship between Bart and Marvia that moves from professional rivalry to life partnership is driven along the jagged border between their two lifestyles that, even in ultra-liberal Berkeley, are worlds apart.
In this, Lupoff’s fourth Killer novel, we are introduced to the parallel universe of an era of motion pictures—from the twenties to the forties—produced by blacks that were destined for black audiences. Like “race” records and the Negro baseball leagues, they were carbon copies of the white institutions and production and distribution structures, with the emphasis on the “carbon.” Black stars were described and understood in terms of their black/white analogs: “A Chocolate Cowboy;” “The Bronze Buckaroo;” “The Bronze Venus;” and some featuring “high-yallers and sugar-cured browns!” But the jive went both ways. Oscar Micheaux’s Ten Minutes to Live (1932) featured nightclub acts including black comedians—in blackface.
In Jean Cocteau’s surrealist film Sang d’un Poet (Blood of a Poet) (1930) the truth-seeking artist dives through a mirror (a camera and set both tilted and the mirror frame filled with water) to emerge in another parallel dimension of both mystery and understanding. Bart Lindsey’s “whitebread” persona, safely wrapped within his white collar job and suburban shell, is hurtled into a realm just as alien to him as Cocteau’s poet in his Zone, as he finds himself on the quicksilver side of the cultural mirror of biracial America. In the cultural and sexual frisson he encounters with Marvia, Bart’s whitebread is toast, and he achieves a greater humanity in meeting the challenge.
CHAPTER ONE
The corpse was still warm when Hobart Lindsey arrived. The fire engines were gone, the familiar yellow tapes were up, and someone had produced a couple of giant fans to blow the toxic fumes away. That way, everybody in town could get a little bit sick, instead of a few people getting very sick.
The Pacific Film Archive was in turmoil. Fire had broken out in a combination office/screening room where a graduate student was screening ancient footage on a similarly ancient Movieola. Now the student was dead and the room was scorched. Blobs of fire-retardant foam hung like tan soap suds from furniture and fixtures.
A Berkeley police officer stopped Lindsey before he could get past the yellow tapes. He showed his International Surety credentials. The officer remained adamant. Then a uniformed sergeant laid her hand on the officer’s shoulder and said, “It’s okay, let him in.”
A fat man in a white shirt, the buttons straining at his girth and a striped tie flying over his shoulder, seemed everywhere at once. He wrung his hands, ran his fingers through his hair, tried to talk to everyone in sight.
The police officer shrugged and motioned Lindsey into the chaotic scene. Lindsey said, “Marvia. I was scanning KlameNet at the office and this thing came over. Talk about prompt!”
Sergeant Marvia Plum indicated the fat man. “That’s Tony Roland. He’s in charge here. Soon as he found this out he summoned the firefighters, soon as they found the body they summoned us. He must have an emergency procedure that included calling the insurance people.”
The staff had cleared the Film Archive and its host institution, the University Art Museum. Students and workers and street people milled around outside the yellow tapes. One wild-eyed, bearded individual was waving his arms, making an impassioned speech.
Lindsey said, “What happened? The computer flash didn’t really tell me anything.” Before Marvia Plum could answer, Lindsey peered around. “I’m surprised Elmer Mueller isn’t here. He’s supposed to take the claim.”
A team of uniformed men, one in police blues, the other in firefighter’s togs, brushed past. The policeman exchanged a few words with Marvia Plum.
To Lindsey, she said, “Young