“Come on. First, the detective told you the guy was some kind of reporter. Isn’t that enough for you? I mean, every time Steele appeals newspaper stories get written. It only makes sense that some guy — maybe a freelancer hoping to have a story ready by the time of the hearing — is out walking the beat, knocking on doors.” Reilly laughed and sucked down some Coke. “Look, Carver wants to meet with us tomorrow morning at ten. We can talk it through then. But Jesus, Ollie, you need to relax. Get out of the office more and have a little fun.”
When I got back from lunch there was a thick file from the library sitting on my chair. I took a seat and flipped through it. There was a bio about Garrett Andersen from a legal directory, an old United States Senate bio on Steele, background checks purchased through a service the firm subscribed to, and address listings for the names I’d given.
At the back of the pile was Matt Bishop’s criminal record. The initial entries were juvenile crimes — shoplifting, vandalism, public drunkenness — all amounting to short stints in juvenile halls around LA County. Then, at nineteen, he was arrested for assault with a deadly weapon for mugging a woman at knifepoint. He served six months of a thirteen-month sentence. Then, three years ago, he was arrested for another burglary as well as an attempted rape. The rape would have been successful if a neighbor hadn’t rushed in after hearing the woman’s screams. Matt Bishop was currently three years into a six-year sentence. That must have been the robbery his mother and sister were blaming on Danny Kelly.
I read it again. There was a crime against a woman and a crime with a knife. Although they happened long after Sharon Steele was killed, they didn’t do anything to make Matt Bishop look innocent.
I turned to the Steele biography. It was photocopied from an old bound volume — two pages crammed on a sheet of paper with the text curving up and inward at the center of the page:
“Senator Steele is a native Californian with a long history of public service. Born in Los Angeles on April 4, 1951, Senator Steele attended Stanford University where he graduated summa cum laude in 1973 with a bachelor’s degree in geology. While at Stanford, Senator Steele volunteered for various coastal environmental protection groups and helped draft Proposition 22 which failed to pass during the 1972 general election. Though unsuccessful, the Proposition 22 campaign solidified Senator Steele’s commitment to preserving California’s coastal beauty for future generations.
“After working in the oil industry for two years, Senator Steele returned to Stanford in 1975 to pursue a graduate degree in business. Senator Steele was convinced that the oil industry could be both profitable and environmentally conscious and was determined to improve the industry’s environmental record. Upon taking his M.B.A. in 1977, Senator Steele began a six year career in the oil industry where he was responsible for dozens of improvements in both the extraction and shipping of oil.
“Never far from politics due to his constant contact with environmental regulators, Senator Steele was appointed to the California Water Resources Board in 1983 at the age of 32. He was the youngest ever appointee to that Board. Three years later, Senator Steele made an unsuccessful bid for the United States House of Representatives. Returning to the private sector in 1985, Senator Steele worked tirelessly, laying the groundwork for his successful 1988 campaign. After two terms in the House, where he became known for his environmental expertise, Senator Steele was elected to the United States Senate in 1992.”
I thought about the Steele I’d met at the prison. I never would have guessed he was a geologist, or an environmentalist.
I had barely finished reading when I felt someone walking up to my office door. I raised my head in time to see Morgan Stapleton smiling, as though we were old friends.
“Heeeeey, we missed you at Marmont.”
I felt my face flush. “Oh, I was having drinks with one of my professors. An adjunct guy I’m a TA for. Sorry I missed it.”
“Oh, it was no big thing. Just another night on the town, you know.” I did not know, but I nodded as if I did. Her eyes were bright and large and clear, her hair bounced. She wore a tight black dress, as though the office was just another cocktail party where people laughed and flirted and flashed each other knowing looks between sips of cosmopolitans.
“So what are you doing a little later?” She asked. “Some of us are going out for drinks. Interested?”
“Sure, where and when?” I said it like I went out drinking every night after work.
“We thought we’d start up the street at Ben & Bev’s and then get out of there as soon as we recognized any lawyers.”
“Sounds good.”
“About six?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Cool.” She tilted her head, smiled, and was gone.
I couldn’t believe it. I’d been hoping to bump into her, rounding a corner in the stacks and seeing her leaning back against a wall of books concentrating on an obscure treatise, her calves flexing as she rocked gently against the stacks. I had thought I might smell her perfume drifting over my shoulder and turn to see her there. I imagined us talking casually, exchanging smiles. It never happened. And then she just appeared in my office to invite me out.
I spent the next two hours trying to focus on the background reports from the library, but I couldn’t. Most of it was useless anyway. There were pages of telephone and address listings for Dan, Daniel, and Danny Kelly or Kelley, scattered all over southern California. The same for various spellings of Raymond Gee. It would take days just to contact them all to see if they were the right person. I thought about Reilly’s comments. If Ray Gee was a reporter, I didn’t need to waste my time. I decided to set him aside. At least that would cut my workload in half.
I pushed my chair back and put my feet up on the desk just in time for the phone to ring. It was Liz.
“Hey there worker bee. You want to come over for dinner?”
A mild panic ran through me. I thought of Morgan. Liz and I could have dinner anytime. “I’d like to, but I’ve got to get this research done. I’ve got a meeting with the partner tomorrow morning. My head feels like someone put it in a vise.”
“That’s why they call that place the death star.”
“Cute. So what are you doing?”
I was trying to play it cool, but I was starting to sweat. I was convinced she was going to figure out that I wasn’t really busy, that I was just preferring the company of my co-workers over her. But Liz began describing her day, as if nothing was wrong. I asked myself what I was doing over and over. Then I realized the line was silent, that it was my turn to talk. I muttered a feeble, “Sure.” But it was not the right response.
There was silence again. Then Liz spoke, cold and flat. “Okay, someone’s not listening to anything I’m saying.” She was pissed.
“No. Sorry. I was just thinking. I think this case has melted my brain.”
“Sounds like it.”
I was back in the clear. Always blame work; you’ll always be believed. So I poured it on a little more. “Shit, I’m sorry, I was just looking at my notes here and I got side tracked. Like I said, I’m kind of stressed, I gotta get ready for this meeting tomorrow morning.”
“Well, I won’t keep you from your first all-nighter. Enjoy that.” Still mad, but what could she really say? “You’re getting sucked in already. Pretty soon you’ll be billing 3,000 hours a year and talking about how you love your clients and your practice.” She was getting a kick out of harassing me.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Spare me.” I was trying to transform her anger into teasing. “The day I start talking like that is the day you can have me euthanized. Deal?”
“Deal.”
I was relieved to get off the phone. Why did I feel so bad? Why not go out with a group of people from work and have a couple of drinks? There was Liz, sure. But we’d only been dating for a year. We weren’t that serious, were we? We weren’t talking about marriage, or futures, or any of the other topics that seemed to escalate a relationship into
serious territory. And besides, it was only drinks with co-workers. I sat there, listening to the hum from the computer and feeling guilty. I hadn’t lied to Liz. I really did need to work. But the truth was, I didn’t want to.
An hour later, the phone rang again. I knew it was going to be Liz and I didn’t want to answer it. But after my lie about being chained to my desk, I figured I had to talk to her. I couldn’t not be in my office, so I picked it up on the third ring and said hello.
A voice like broken glass said, “Don’t fuck around, motherfucker. We’re watching you.”
“What?” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“This is a friend of Matt’s. Step out of line asshole, and see what happens.”
The line went dead. I sat with the receiver in my hand and stared at it like I didn’t know what it was. My mind immediately raced to images of burly bikers with tattoos and scars waiting to beat me with chains in a dark parking lot somewhere. And then I started to think rationally. It was probably just some guy in prison with Matt, making a phone call for him, trying to scare me, and doing a good job. And then I thought of Reilly’s assurance that Matt Bishop was harmless. I wanted to believe it, but now I wasn’t so sure.
But what I was sure of was that I wanted that drink with Morgan and her friends more than anything now. I checked my watch and sighed. It was still too early to leave. I sat at my computer and surfed the web and tried not to think about Matt Bishop or his friends or Steele or the note I found under my door. I tried not to ask myself who the hell Ray Gee was. And most of all, I tried not to think about Liz or ask myself any hard questions about what I was doing tonight or with my life in general.
It was all I could do to kill time. I couldn’t focus. I paced around my office. I did anything I could to distract myself from thinking that I was doing something I shouldn’t. But eventually, I put on my thin suede coat, turned off the light, and headed for the elevator.
10
Although Ben & Bev’s is a restaurant, it has the kind of little bar you expect to find in the financial districts of big cities, but that doesn’t generally exist in LA. It has dark wood. It has brass. It has raw oysters, good scotch, and a bartender who will light a woman’s cigarette. It is the place where young lawyers, stockbrokers, and accountants go after work to drink hard liquor and lie about how successful they are. I had never been there before.
It was crowded, but not too crowded. You could get space at the bar, you could move easily from place to place, but the noise and the clusters of bodies clad in business attire and illuminated by subdued, colored lights, told the casual observer that this place was happening. I looked for familiar faces — one in particular — among the otherwise homogenous professionals. My eyes moved from blonde head to blonde head, from black dress to black dress, and, not seeing her, I wondered instantly if it had all been a joke and made my way to the bar to wait and avoid looking like the insecure young man I was.
My thoughts had started to drift back to the threat from Matt’s crony. The voice had a quality to it that I didn’t recognize directly, but still felt communicated a familiarity with cruelty, with pointless violence and pain for the sake of pain and nothing more. But I barely had time to dwell on it. Before the waiter had even returned with my gin and tonic, I felt a tap on the shoulder, turned, and saw her standing there wearing a wide smile, a light jacket draped over her arm.
“Been here long?”
The bartender set a fizzing Collins glass on the bar, asked me for twelve dollars, and I nodded my head at the drink. “Just got here.”
It was the closest I’d been to her — almost face to face in the crowded bar — and I could see small clusters of very light freckles on each of her otherwise smooth and unblemished cheeks. Her teeth were perfectly straight, her eyebrows perfectly trimmed, her hair perfectly cut and curled.
She ordered a cosmopolitan and squeezed in beside me at the bar. I looked down at her as she struggled to place her purse and jacket at her feet. Bending down, the hair fell away from the back of her neck as she turned her face, glancing up at me from below. The curve of flesh running from the base of her ear, down between her shoulders, possessed a mystical geometry that stunned me.
She laughed and smiled, uttering, “Whaaaaat?” like the purr of a kitten.
“Nothing.” I caught myself, and shook my head as though I’d been deep in thought. “I was just thinking about that damned research. It’s a nightmare.” The work. Always blame the work.
“Ugh, I know.” She responded. The bartender brought the cosmo. I threw a twenty on the bar. The bartender took it and never even thought about returning with change. Morgan picked up the drink. “Cheers.” We touched glasses. “Let’s forget about all that for awhile.” She said as she sipped, peering up at me over the rim of the glass.
“Forget about what?” I smiled and sucked down half the gin and tonic. Morgan smiled too and looked around the bar.
“Have you seen anyone else?”
“Who else was supposed to come?”
“Oh, Jenna and I think Britney and Ed. Have you met them?” I told her I hadn’t. “Oh, they’re great. I go to law school with Ed and I know Jenna from college. Britney is a friend of Jenna’s from Columbia. They’re all really fun.”
I watched her drain half the cosmopolitan in one gulp. “Whoo! That’s good.” She licked her lips and smiled. “So you’re from LA?”
“Well, Riverside, actually. It’s east of here about sixty miles.”
“Your family still there?”
“Yeah.”
“What do they do?”
“My dad owns a tile business, you know tile work in houses and stuff.” I lied. My father only worked for a tile contractor. Somehow I thought it would impress her if she thought my dad was a business owner. But she didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
“Your mom?”
“She stays at home and chases my little brothers and sister around the house. I’m pretty sure she’s got the tougher job.” I hoped my acknowledgment that raising children was hard work would also impress her. Again, she nodded blankly, finished her drink and leaned into the bar sideways, kicking her hip out and resting her hand on it.
“What about you?” I finally asked.
“Chicago. My dad’s a heart surgeon. My mom spends his money. My two older brothers and I have all moved away and none of us plan to go back. I’ve been living in New Haven for six years, making trips to New York for fun and decided to spend the summer out here. Between Chicago and New England, I think I may have had enough snow to last a lifetime.”
“I hear you.” I had never lived anywhere where it snowed.
“Although, sometimes it’s nice to bundle up in the cold.” She smiled again — that wide mouth, full lips, and faint freckles — and squinted, almost winking. She faced the bar and brushed against me as she turned. “Crowded in here.” She said, and tried to signal the bartender. I finished my drink, set the glass down and shifted my position slightly away from her to avoid her accidentally rubbing up against my erection. “Two more!” She called to the bartender.
I wondered what her comment meant. Was she thinking of a permanent move to Los Angeles? For an instant, I wondered if a woman like her would be interested in a kid from Riverside. Don’t be silly, I told myself, as she turned to hand me another gin and tonic.
“Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
“So I’m hoping to see as much of the city as I can before the end of the summer.”
“There’s a lot here.” I said, stating the obvious and suddenly wondering where the other people who were supposed to be coming were.
After two more rounds and forty minutes of continuous gossip about the firm and which partners were rumored to sleep with the associates, the secretaries, the clients, and anyone else they could, it was clear that no one else was going to show.
Morgan huffed slightly, looked around the bar, and then poked my chest with her index finger. “Guess what?”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t think any of these people are showing. Why don’t we get the hell out of here?”
I thought briefly about work, I thought of checking my watch to see what time it was, I even thought of Liz for half a second. But I was four drinks into the evening and she was mesmerizing and I figured, why not? When was this going to happen again?
“Sure.” I replied. “Where to?”
“I’ve been wanting to go to this place I heard about over at Hollywood and Vine. I’m guessing it won’t be packed tonight.”
***
We took a cab; at three grand a week, we could afford it. Morgan sat in the middle of the back seat. Her leg pressed tight against mine. The bottom of her black dress was halfway up her thigh and I resisted the urge to touch it, somehow, to shift or move or drop something or to otherwise devise an artifice that would result in my hand caressing the smooth, firm flesh of her thigh.
“So why doesn’t a good looking guy like you have a girlfriend?” She asked, her head back on the seat and tilted sideways, toward me. “Or do you,” she continued, “and you’re just not mentioning her?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.” I replied, dreaming up questions to ask the cabbie that would require me to lean forward and accidentally grab her knee.
“Touché.” She winked and dropped the subject, having apparently resolved any moral conflict she might have had. I, however, still had a few waning thoughts of Liz and feelings of concomitant guilt. But they vanished as the car turned north off of Sunset up Vine and stopped just south of Hollywood Boulevard in front of a dimly lit doorway below a tiny neon sign that read simply “Mack’s.”
The lights of the Pantages Theatre gleamed up on Hollywood where the tourists snapped pictures of the stars on the sidewalk, but this stretch of Vine was only partially lit. There was a small crowd standing around the doorway smoking and wearing leather coats that served no purpose in the late June evening other than to look good.
Follow the Money Page 8
