Free The Detective & the Chinese High-Fin by Michael Craven Page B

with it. I wanted to talk to her unencumbered by any possible communication barriers that might be created by her husband sitting there.
    After Geoff strolled off, I said to Sydney, “I’ve read the police report. I have the file. As I said, I know you were a long way away at the time of the murder. And also, I’ve read what you told the police. I read your statements. So I thought maybe we could just talk a bit. At this point in my investigation I’m still trying to get a picture of this guy.”
    Sydney seemed comforted by the fact that I understood that she’d been halfway across the country at the time of the killing. She still had some sort of defensive thing happening. But she seemed ready to talk.
    She said, “Well, I knew Keaton really, really well. We dated, off and on, for almost seven years. We met in college. He went to USC. I went to Art Center in Pasadena to study my passion at the time, photography. Well, I went there for a year, anyway. I dropped out. Too regimented for me.”
    She looked right at me, staring almost, with her defensive but still sexy eyes. Eyes that said, Are you judging me for dropping out? Do you think I’m a flake?
    â€œYes” and “yes” would be the answers to those questions. Often when someone says something like “too regimented,” it really just means they didn’t have the discipline or the stamina to stick it out. Not always, but often.
    She continued as she craned her neck and cracked it. “I just think art is more flow-y, more about spontaneity. Not like . . .” Curiously, out of nowhere, really, she started talking like and imitating a robot. “You must take this class. You must learn about this person. Then you must take this class. Then learn about this other person. You must practice every day.”
    Having lived in Los Angeles my whole life, I knew a few artists. Writers, directors, photographers, even some painters. All the successful ones were very disciplined. They studied what came before them, often possessed an encyclopedic amount of information about the particular field they chose to focus on, and worked on a schedule that they stuck to very seriously. I didn’t mention this to Sydney.
    She continued with her robot impression, now putting stiff arms out in front of her and moving them robotically as she robot-talked. “Structure, structure, structure. Learn this before you learn that. Do it like we say. Work every day. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.”
    She dropped the robot impression and got back to the other version of herself that she’d let me see. “I’m sorry, I’m just not going to let someone instruct me on how to domy art. I had the same problem with a few of the people I worked for after leaving school. I had stopped taking pictures. I had realized that that actually wasn’t my passion. I had realized, at that time anyway, that I wanted to get into film. So I worked at a few production companies. And again, it was just all these rules. All these producers wanted me to do it their way. And I would always say, It’s art . I don’t just want to do it my way. I have to. Anyway, I guess it was all for the best, because I realized that film wasn’t my passion either. What I’m doing now is. That’s why I, well, I guess we , invented the workout you saw. I’m going to write a book about it and go on a speaking tour.”
    I thought, It’s amazing what can happen to someone when they don’t have to work, or when they are with someone who enables them to not have to. I surmised that in the past she’d leaned on Keaton, and that now it was Geoff who paid the bills. But, boy, entitlement can rear its ugly head quickly. And you combine that with the reality of hard work, and it can just transform and cripple people to the point where the things they say, the excuses they make, the ideas they have, reach an almost