Tonight, I wrote about the wonderful book I’d read that summer on James Compton, a lost figure in the 1990s British art scene. Brilliant, blond, brash, upper crust, and frequently spotted in an immaculate white suit, Compton had been the brief Warhol of his tribe. He was the first to open a gallery in Shoreditch, one of London’s derelict warehouse districts, and it soon became a hub for a loose confederation of young artists. He organized a street fair with kissing booths, clowns, and drawings for sale, all staffed by young names who became art-world legends within five years. He also smoked crack, held a cake knife to his throat at his birthday party, and was rumored to have connections with a Turkish crime family. Within five years, he’d died, the victim of an ether overdose. The funeral for Compton was huge, but since then—without his powerful personality and showmanship—his name had ebbed.

I told my mother that reading about Compton had made me sad for him, but that the writer’s eloquent praise of his achievements took that sadness and added something, the way the second note of a chord takes a lonely, simple sound and makes it lovely and full. When I finished the book, I felt bereft, partly because Compton had died at twenty-eight and there was so much he could have done, and partly because the text’s warm, edifying voice had finished talking to me.

I didn’t say that the book was not a book, but a thesis. I didn’t say that the author was Calvin Teicher, Ray’s half brother, or that he was also dead, found in a Boyle Heights hotel about a year ago, beaten and floating facedown in a bathtub, the shower running, the drain closed. His death not from blows, but from water in his lungs. The investigation inconclusive. Calvin’s murderer still free. I didn’t believe Ray was back in L.A. only for Janis Rocque, or that, deep down, he really cared what had happened to Brenae Brasil. He must have some new insight into his brother’s case, and he would be chewing on it the whole time we worked together. You don’t want to act like you’re playing a part. People can always tell.

Interview with Hal Giroux

March 16, 2003

LAAC

Detective Strick

Tell me how long and in what context you knew Brenae Brasil.

She was one of my star students in the fall. She came in blazing, straight from undergraduate. I hired her to work on my crew, and she assisted in building my London show. I was also the chair of her review committee.

So exactly how many months did you know her?

August to March. Seven or eight months.

You’d never met her before she was a student at LAAC?

No.

Did your relationship to Brenae change over the course of those months?