by Avery Duff
Bradley Holtzmann, he remembered. Senior partner at the mid-Wilshire firm where Evelyn used to work.
He made the call; a man answered. “I’m a friend of Dorothy’s,” Robert said, following her cloak-and-dagger instructions.
Like Dorothy, Bradley Holtzmann got right down to business, too.
“I knew the woman in question,” he said, meaning Evelyn. “She left my firm’s employ under a cloud. An allegation that she stole a client’s personal property. That client was Chet Jordan. You might recall his films from years gone by.”
Robert started to answer, but Bradley pressed on.
“The item in question, Mr. Jordan’s Rolex. She denied taking it and rightly pointed out Mr. Jordan was often intoxicated and that he was in error. However—”
Bradley drew a deep breath. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have a pressing matter to take care of.”
“I’ll be here,” Robert said. Taking his arthritis meds, Robert guessed.
Evelyn’s account of why she’d left the firm—tired of grinding it out—didn’t jibe with Bradley’s. Her story didn’t much surprise him. Sounded like her departure might’ve been part of a lover’s dispute.
Waiting for Bradley, he pulled up Reyes’ texts. The attached photos: Reyes and his girlfriend, Felicia; Reyes with Peter Paul Dickerson on Santa Monica Pier’s Ferris wheel; and Reyes’ text: Me and PPD. Two ballers!
Several more photos: Felicia with a Slurpee, sticking out her dark-blue tongue. Reyes’ text: Brain Freeze!!! Was frozen waaaay b4 the Slurpee!!!
Robert hoped Felicia didn’t see that one. He opened the last of Reyes’ attachments as Bradley came back on the line, seeming more relaxed.
“The woman in question, her work was excellent, even with her active social life. Usually, we stood behind our junior partners, even if it meant losing a client like Mr. Jordan. However, a prior incident tipped the scales against her.”
A sense of dread began pulsing, back of Robert’s mind.
“The prior incident involved another client, one of her own. A single-task assignment. The client paid half, fifteen hundred dollars, up front, but something happened. After she did the work, he refused to pay the balance. She had twenty hours on her time sheets, time she had to write off. Because it was her client, not the firm’s, she was also told she must eat the unpaid fifteen hundred.”
Made sense. Bradley’s firm had plenty of its own work to occupy themselves. If a junior partner wrote off work for a firm client, no problem; but for her own client, the loss fell her way.
“Eventually,” Bradley said, “she took her medicine, but not before causing a big row. Wasn’t a big deal to the senior partners, but to her? She did not like being challenged. It was a side of her. . . let’s just say her reaction was over the top.
“No matter,” he continued. “After the Jordan incident, the firm let her go, paid her off, and signed the very nondisclose I’m violating. She took several clients with her, yet every client came back because she charged too much. Valued herself too highly—that’s how I’d put it.”
Holtzmann’s account didn’t seem to square with the woman Robert had spent time with. She’d stood up to Judge Blackwell when he’d started running down Carlos, stepped in and reminded him a child was present in his courtroom, and that Carlos had been her friend. Taking the high ground, it seemed. Had there been more to it? Had her reaction stemmed from Judge Blackwell not valuing her highly enough?
Bradley kept talking. “And when Chet Jordan died in his drunken accident . . . Dorothy said you’d worked at Fanelli’s outfit, so you know how gallows the humor can get.”
“Definitely,” Robert said, his mouth going dry.
“We used to joke around at the firm that somehow this woman had killed Chet or had him killed. Not normative behavior,” he said. “Not that she actually killed him, you understand.”
Not normative. Or rational.
“I do understand,” Robert said.
“Then there was the cancer,” Bradley said.
“What cancer?”
Outside Erik’s SUV now, Robert paced the driveway.
“During severance negotiations, the woman let us know she was undergoing cancer treatments.” He laughed. “We hired a private detective, and sure enough, she went into a treatment facility. We backed off, paid up, and never regretted being shed of her.”
The intimacies Evelyn had shared with Gia and him: her cancer, Delfina’s trust, her regrets about not having children, her friendship with Carlos. Robert had assumed the truth of it all.
At this point, Bradley started rambling, the drugs having a private party. Apparently, he’d loved Dorothy and considered losing her a big mistake.
Bradley sighed, then laughed. “Before Evelyn left, we called her one-off client the little trust with the big name.”
Saying Evelyn, Bradley had forgotten his own rules.
In the driveway, Robert stopped moving and breathing.
Evelyn’s client dispute in ’95 had been over a trust?
“Famosa,” Robert said. “The Vincent Famosa Family Trust.”
“You know about it?” Bradley asked.
“About it, yes.”
All about it? Definitely not. Evelyn Levine had drafted Vincent’s trust. Meaning she’d known Vincent since at least 1995; she’d known all about Vincent’s family situation years before she’d met Carlos and had repeatedly lied to Robert about it.
“I have to go,” Robert said, then realized Bradley had already signed off. Robert jumped behind the Yukon’s wheel and squealed out of Erik’s driveway.
He texted Gia: Call me ASAP.
Vincent was murdered in 2005. Evelyn had known him for years. Something had blown up between Evelyn and Vincent over legal work done ten years before Vincent died. Meaning that in 2005, Evelyn didn’t happen to meet Carlos at a seminar—she found him there. Carlos didn’t happen to move three blocks from her. His bet: she’d followed Carlos, not the other way around.
Had Evelyn ever been Carlos’ friend? The trust’s faithful adviser? Robert didn’t buy a word of it anymore.
He stopped at a red light on Pico. Glancing down, his eye caught his iPhone screen just before it went dark. A jarring image appeared there, meshing with what he’d seen a few hours ago in San Bernardino. He picked up the phone, hit the “Home” button. His screen shone bright with Reyes’ last photo attached to his last text.
Staring at the photo, he’d swear Raymundo Reyes had just sent him a shot of Evelyn Levine from the late ’90s: an elegant, slender brunette, that crisp bone structure.
Already dialing Gia’s number, he mashed the pedal to the floor.
It wasn’t Evelyn in Reyes’ photo—it was Sharon Sloan. Her image was up close now, not distant like Sharon had been at the Draganov gathering. She looked nothing like her online photo, or the loving wife and mother serving barbecue to her family in her office-door photo.
A fox, Reyes said, and he’d nailed it. Sharon Sloan and Evelyn Levine looked disturbingly alike. Was it possible Sharon was Evelyn’s daughter by Syd Levine?
Doesn’t matter if she is or not. Evelyn Levine is a Draganov, too. All these years, she’s been the one working against the trust, not Sharon Sloan.
Gia picked up on the other end.
“¿A dónde, Roberto?”
“Is Evelyn there?” he asked.
“Do you need to speak to her?”
“You and Delfina—stay away from her. Don’t let her in the house.”
“Hold on . . . Delfina went down to her car to help her up the front walk. What is it?”
“She’s dangerous!” he shouted. “Stay away from her!”
Silence for a moment, then the sound of Gia’s footsteps, the front door opening.
Gia screamed. “She’s gone!”
She? Robert wondered, hoping. Meaning . . . ?
Gia’s front door slammed, her breath harsh into her phone.
“Delfina’s gone. Evelyn’s car’s gone. They�
��re both . . . What’s going on!”
He heard Gia crying.
“Call 911,” he said. “Tell ’em Evelyn Levine kidnapped Delfina, and tell ’em it’s not a custodial dispute.”
“What?”
“Tell them that.”
“Sure, but, Robert, how do you know?”
It was impossible to take her from zero to ninety in any logical sequence.
“Because I love you, Gia. Because I know.”
“I love you, too,” she said, her voice breaking.
Next, he considered a lie he wanted Gia to tell about the abduction. If he was wrong, Gia would be filing a false police report, could possibly face prosecution. But if she told the truth, the police would burn time asking legitimate questions: How well do you know Ms. Levine? Was she expected at your home? Did the girl know Ms. Levine? Is it possible they drove off and forgot to tell you?
“Gia, tell the police—”
Her crying stopped, the anger in her voice growing. “I’m telling them I saw Evelyn do it. That Delfina was struggling, scared, going with Evelyn against her will, and I’m a hundred percent sure of what I saw.”
“I’ll find her, Gia.”
Gia screamed, “Find her! And if she hurts that little girl—kill that cunt!”
CHAPTER 45
At the stoplight, Evelyn glanced at the unconscious girl in her passenger’s seat. Tonight, Delfina had been watching out Gia’s front window. Little girl lost, waiting for Robert, and yes—waiting for her. Doing what Delfina always did whenever she expected a loved one’s arrival at Gia’s.
Delfina embodied all the traits that Evelyn knew she herself lacked. Early in life, Evelyn, and all those like her, knew they were totally alone. Knew they lacked any need to connect with other people—a need both Delfina and her daughter, Sharon, craved.
The little girl had run down Gia’s walkway to meet her—making things so much simpler than finishing inside the house, contending with Gia Marquez. What Evelyn had in mind now was so much more pure, an end to her distant beginning with Vincent Famosa.
Vincent had been similar to her father. Not a drunk like Emil, but easy prey. A monstrous ego with nothing to back it up. She’d waited years to punish Vincent after drafting his trust. Looked him up, finally, and told him she’d behaved badly, overreacted.
“All is forgiven,” she’d told him.
What Vincent could never understand was how much she had enjoyed deceiving him after that. Letting him manage the properties he’d bought with proceeds from the house he’d sold out from under her. Even letting him take out whatever cash he needed. This was never about cash to her. She had been in no hurry at all. Had even looked forward to their get-togethers, listening to him brag about the trust and about his success.
“You’ll outlive us all, Vincent.”
She had been in no hurry in that motel room, either, after she paid one of the Draganov girls to lure Vincent there. When he came to from the drugs, Evelyn spent the next few hours toying with him while he was hog-tied, helpless on that cheap bedspread, begging for answers—he was hard to understand, ball-gagged like that. Finally, as she’d taken her time with that dildo, she’d answered him in her own way.
As if you didn’t already know, Vincent. We had a deal. You stole from me, then dared me to do something about it—at my own law firm. So really, you left me no choice.
Afterward, she’d beaten him to death with a metal meat mallet and left his broken body for the Draganov men.
“West Hollywood,” she’d told them. “Dump the big man’s body there.”
Carlos was next. Evelyn had arranged to bump into him at an estate-planning seminar and befriended him. In his own way, Carlos’ downfall had been more gratifying than Victor’s. She’d moved into a house near him on Harvard, knowing that all her money—everything in the trust—was now in Carlos’ capable hands. Whenever she wanted trust money, she’d dummied up maintenance problems, roof leaks, infestation reports from exterminators, all caused and repaired by her people. Most of the repair money wound up in her pocket.
For big-money drawdowns, she’d staged lawsuits against Teo. Dosing him with Rohypnol that blanked his memory afterward, she’d settled those cases with handpicked lawyers. All the while, her own lawyering and legal maneuvering drew praise from Carlos, and again, just last week, from Robert Worth.
After she’d convinced Gospodar to use the Famosa trust as a money-laundering vehicle, she had another challenge: turning Carlos much more vehemently against Teo. That task, she’d relished.
“You’re doing all the work, Carlos, and splitting the money with Teo? That setup’s so unfair.” Often reminding Carlos: “Teo and his wife used trust money to get high while you took care of all the busted plumbing. Addicts never change—don’t you know that?”
That left her with introducing Ilina into the mix. Carlos had latched on to her at one of the Draganov mixers. After that meeting, shearing Carlos from his brother had been so simple that Evelyn was almost disappointed.
Post Ilina, Carlos was all in on scamming the trust. To cover her own tracks, Evelyn resigned as trust counsel early on, protesting the investments in writing. In those early e-mails between Carlos and her—she and Carlos had crafted those over glasses of wine—Evelyn voiced her grave concerns about his two risky investments. Protecting herself if Carlos’ investments were ever somehow scrutinized by probate court—or by an outsider like Robert Worth.
All along, Carlos had believed he was in on everything with her. Up to a point, that had been true: making the investments, taking dirty money under the table, receiving her formal e-mail resigning as counsel and wishing him the best, sending her copies of e-mails about SoccMom’s first interest payment and telling her, You worry too much!
She and Carlos had even crafted e-mails to SoccMom’s fictional Jake Saxon, who blew off meetings and a showdown lunch. The same went for Carlos’ e-mails threatening lawsuits. Those were drafted for Carlos’ own camouflage, to show that, if nothing else: Hey, at least I tried to get the money back. They tricked me!
But over time, the true Carlos began emerging in his own e-mails, the ones he’d written to Evelyn, unbidden. The ones talking about sunrise for lovers in spiritual Sonora, shopping for his lady at Bulgari up in San Francisco, and moving with her to Santa Barbara in a heartbeat.
None of Carlos’ e-mails surprised Evelyn. A wallflower with millions in cash on hand, in love with the perfect woman, who loved him back. Evelyn had relished watching his sick ego bloom like a long-dormant virus. And she had relished him talking down to her—You should travel more, I insist!—elevating his own glamorous life over her drab existence. That, she knew, had been the real Carlos. A son channeling his father, mainlining ego behind stacks of cash.
Or so she’d let Carlos believe for a delicious month or two. It made his downfall even more satisfying when she’d jerked the little man’s chain—Ilina has disappeared!—and brought him to heel. Poor Carlos. A weak little man, after all. Just like Vincent. And just like her father, Emil.
Carlos had crawled to her then, trying to get back in her good graces. What was it he’d said? Beginning to think I offended you somehow, and showing up at her house distraught, high, at all hours.
Broken.
To his credit, Carlos eventually discovered her connection with Ilina. Near the very end, he’d even called her from a phone booth to tell her he knew about Ilina. About everything.
Too late, Carlos. Too late finding out about Ilina, weren’t you?
Her only true disappointment: Carlos’ heart attack while Kiril and Penko held him for her. She’d been delayed by her doctors that day, learning about her own very real, untreatable, pancreatic cancer. Carlos had died before she could tell him how long she’d made him dance for her, about the phony lawsuits, how she’d gone about killing his father and exactly why.
The one compensation for missing Carlos’ death was how Carlos had—cleverly, she conceded—lured his derelict brother off the street
s and into court. Otherwise, Teo would’ve been lost to her forever. That meant she could now see to it that Vincent’s entire line was rooted up, extirpated. Dead.
As it worked out, having Teo in the hospital, rather than in the ground, turned into a happy accident. Comatose, his daughter distraught, and Evelyn put herself in the middle of it. An angel of mercy, the voice of reason, she’d watched Teo’s daughter suffer up close—played the aging, cancer-victim lawyer, now torn with regret over how she’d treated dear friend Carlos—and nobly took credit for a new trust that Delfina would never see.
At the next stoplight, Evelyn recalled waiting outside the hospital till Robert and Gia came out with Delfina, playing a repentant, guilt-ridden lawyer and friend before visiting Teo’s hospital room.
She’d recalled, too—savoring the memory—her one-way conversation in Teo’s room: “That car running you down tonight was a gift from your own father. I killed him. Stuffed a dildo inside him and dumped his body. Then I ruined your weak-willed brother and killed him as well. And your blessed daughter is now in my very capable hands.”
Doctors, she’d learned, believed the subconscious picked up penumbral data beyond consciousness. Now, she hoped so again, as the traffic light changed, and she turned onto her street.
She punched her clicker and eased her car into the garage, the door slowly closing behind her. She and the chloroformed girl beside her were thrown into darkness. In many ways, she hoped Robert Worth would put in an appearance. Such a promising young man. Yet having him bear witness to what he’d done to Delfina? At this point, that would be asking life for a bit too much.
Ah, well. All my pain will soon end. Others can feast on my share of it.
Delfina, she was thinking as she opened her car door. The last Famosa . . . my true prize.
CHAPTER 46
Robert wheeled the Yukon onto Wilshire, headed east; he’d already tried calling Erik. No answer on the other end, but better that he not drag Erik into whatever was coming. One thing Robert could do that cops normally didn’t: break the law. Turning onto Harvard, he parked a hundred yards down the street from Evelyn’s house and hit the ground running. Once he made it across her front yard, he slipped onto her porch. Her front door, locked. Her plateglass front window, blocked by thick, drawn curtains.
