by Lia Matera
He straightened, waving an arm. “Jesus! Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It happened just this morning. I left you a message to call. I half-expected you to say you’d eavesdropped via the office bug.”
“I haven’t been to my office today. I’ve been playing catch-up. Stopped by to see Sayres this afternoon about something else and was still there when he got the calls.” He tilted his head, considering me as he might a strange insect on his screen door. “If More did this for you, found this way to shut Sayres up and solve your problem, she did it to keep you in business, to keep your office afloat. So why offer you a partnership?”
“After making sure I’d turn it down?”
“Just to seem friendly? Get you in her corner? Keep you from getting all antagonistic and bothering her clients?” He shook his head.” Either way, why ask you? She’s too deep for me. I can’t get a fix on her.”
“At the time, I worried she was trying to neutralize me in some way,” I confessed. I skipped the reasons the offer appealed to me. “If she knew I wasn’t going to accept, if she knew this was coming around the pike for Sayres—” I had to laugh again. “My god. Perry Verhoeven. I wonder if he’ll come back to me. How soon can I call him without seeming like a vulture?”
“You are a vulture.” Sandy’s tone was not unkind. “Jesus, what a profession.”
My hand had unconsciously strayed to the telephone. I pulled it back to my lap. For a few minutes this morning, I’d considered doing a different kind of work, being a different kind of lawyer.
“I don’t like this, Laura. Every alarm in my head is ringing. I’d bet a year’s salary this has to do with you getting shot at, that it’s part of the same thing. I think this is the worst news you’ve had in a long while, no matter if it’s gift-wrapped and sweet-smelling.”
“Maybe Sayres did it.” The thought chilled my flesh. “Maybe he saw this coming, knew the feds were investigating. Maybe he blamed me. Maybe he …” It was hard to say the words. I hated Sayres’s guts, but he was someone I’d spent years with. It was painful to believe. “Maybe he hired someone to kill me.”
Sandy looked grim. “If so, he did a hell of a job looking surprised about the RICO shit today.”
“Coincidence you were there to see him look surprised.”
He nodded. “The thought crossed my mind.”
“But you’d know on some level if it was Steve, wouldn’t you?”
He came around to my side of the desk, dropping to a crouch. “I don’t always trust my instincts.” He was eye level now. “Because it’s damn hard to tell how deep a person’s feelings run.”
I was startled. Did he mean Steve’s feelings? Or mine? I was off balance, therefore off key. “Is there a punch line?”
His face changed. “Why did you leave me, Laura? We really had something. More than what you gave it away for.”
I’d wondered when or if this would come out into the open. I’d certainly tried on a few explanations for size, painful though the fit had been. But now none seemed worth defending.
I watched Sandy’s face flicker with angry memories and wounded pride.
“I’d hate to be without you again, Sandy.” I was afraid to say more. “I was with someone else, but I didn’t have anyone.”
He stood. “Then why’d you stick with Hal?” He turned away. “Those were four very long years for me. With a hell of a half-life.”
“I guess I wanted …” To reinvent a past blighted by Hal’s mother, my Aunt Diana? To rescue myself through him? I should have guessed his problems would overwhelm us both. But I hated to admit defeat. I’d ended up lotus-eating his denial. “I guess I stuck with it because it was my mistake.”
“Which mistakes are you sticking to now, Laura?” His posture was stiff. I’d seen this anger in him plenty of times in the last four years.
I wanted to say something to allay it. But I knew it would have to wear off. It was too deep to simply turn off.
He shook his head as if coming out of a trance. “Unfortunately, I’ve got another meeting with Steve.” He turned toward me. “I’m already late.”
“Come back when you’re done? Come to my place?”
“If it’s not too late, sure.” His glance was sheepish. “Didn’t mean to go and get heavy on you. You know you can count on me?”
I nodded.
He stood in the doorway a few seconds before walking out.
22
When the phone rang, I practically jumped on it. I’d set the cordless next to my pillow, hoping Sandy would call. I knew reporters wouldn’t phone so late. Anyone who did was likely to have something important to tell me.
I’d been dreaming about home, the house I’d lived in as a child. I’d been dreaming about my father. The pain of his death hit me in first consciousness, exploding as if to crack my ribs. But my first real thought was for Uncle Henry: What if he didn’t forgive me for representing Brad Rommel?
The phone call put a quick stop to family worries.
“Laura, I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Brad!” His voice was a shot of adrenaline. I sat upright in my bed, skin suddenly hot. “We’ve got serious trouble. Where are you? Where have you been?”
“The minute I saw the plane in my driveway, saw it on fire there, I knew I was being set up. I knew I better make tracks.”
“Wait a minute, back up. Where were you when the mall was bombed?” If he had an alibi, nothing else mattered.
“I got a call to go to there.” His voice was gruff, suddenly ironic. “The call was such that I couldn’t refuse.”
“What does that mean?” I didn’t do well with cryptic pronouncements at—what?—four in the morning.
“The person who called was, or said she was, Cathy Piatti.”
He had my full attention, every cell straining to hear.
“Was it really her?”
“Sure sounded like her. At the time, I was pretty positive.”
“Tell me exactly what she said.”
Maddeningly, Brad paused.
“What did Piatti say?” I could have shaken the phone, I was so impatient.
“What was that?” His tone bordered on hostile. “Are you taping this?”
I was about to snap out, No, of course not. But after my recent experiences with Sandy and Osmil, I couldn’t guarantee no one was.
“It’s a cordless phone,” I waffled. “There are ways to eavesdrop. But I’m not—”
“I’m close to your house. Meet me.”
“We need to get you surrendered to the police as soon as possible. You’re wanted for questioning. They’ve already searched your house. They revoked your bail this morning. Yesterday morning, I should say.”
“For what? I’m trying to save my goddam life!” He sounded incensed. “Considering they arrested me for murdering a woman that certainly didn’t sound dead when she called me—when she tried to get me inside the mall before it blew up. Then somebody lands a damn plane in my driveway and sets it on fire. I might be a plain humble fisherman, but I’m not stupid. I’m not going to stay put and wait for the next thing.”
“You need to tell your story. You can’t hide. That’s not doing you a bit of good. They’ll end up arresting you for arson, too.” I was amped nearly to the point of palpitations. “We need to do some quick damage control.”
“Damage control? Grow up!” His anger was a slap in the face. “Someone’s trying to kill me and frame me both. I’ve got bigger problems than damage control!”
“Talk to me, Brad. The odds of someone listening in to this call …” But if the eavesdropper were private, not a cop, his tape or testimony would be admissible in court. It would be a disaster if Brad lied to me, contradicted himself, incriminated himself. The stakes were too high to justify even a small risk. “No, you’re right. Why don’t you come over.”
“Reporters. I was going to come earlier, but you had a couple parked across the street.”
“Are you sure?”
“They were typing on laptops.”
“There’s nobody at this hour.” But it might be morning before we finished our discussion. “Hold on. Let me think.”
I hopped out of bed. One thing for sure: I wasn’t going out alone at night to meet anyone, for any reason. That was B-movie bullshit. I’d gotten burned that way myself.
“My friend and detective, Sandy Arkelett, has an office down near Pier Seven, do you know where that is?”
“I have a map. But I don’t want to talk to a detective.”
“You won’t.” No way I’d break the lawyer-client privilege by having a third party present. “He’ll be in the next room because I’ll need him right after we get through. Don’t worry, he won’t call the cops.” Because I’m going to take you to the Hall of Justice to surrender after we talk.
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve got to trust me, Brad. And I’ve got to hear this. Find Pier Seven on the map.” I gave him a street name and address. “I’ll get hold of Sandy and meet you there as soon as possible.”
I gripped the handset so tightly it hurt. This was a call I didn’t want to let go of. I wanted to know right now what Cathy Piatti had said, what Rommel had done.
But I hung up to remove my temptation and help ensure Brad’s compliance.
23
The streets around Sandy’s office were always gloomy. In the morning, light hit the stark flat-front buildings and was absorbed by dull stone and concrete. By afternoon, the sun stopped reaching over the highrises of the financial district, and a thin wind whipped litter down the shadowed street. But at night, with restless Bay mist stirring the unornamented stillness, the neighborhood could be a movie set, fog-machined and ready for Jack the Ripper.
I parked, checked my locks, and settled into the worn leather of my aged sports car. I hoped Sandy would hurry. He lived a little farther from downtown than I did, and in the opposite direction. He’d wanted to pick me up, but that would have doubled our ETA, and I didn’t want Brad getting nervous and leaving.
I was beginning to regret my decision. I hoped Sandy arrived before Brad. I believed what Brad had told me, but I’d been wrong before. And middle-of-the-night rendezvous had gone wrong for me before.
There was no one on the street. Homeless men and women had melted into the miniscule parks behind tiny townhouses nearer the piers. Beside the bay, a few bars might still be cleaning floors and rattling garbage, a few restaurants might be readying breakfast. But this was a district of California cuisine lunches, its infrequent eateries closed by evening.
I heard the car before I saw its lights. It rounded the corner slowly, heading toward me. I sank low in the bucket seat, waiting for it to pass under a streetlamp, waiting to see if was it Sandy or Brad.
A knock on the passenger window startled a cry from me. As the car passed, flooding the interior of mine with light, I saw Brad Rommel crouched beside my passenger door. Its headlights made a frightening mask of his scowl. He tapped at the window again, his hair glinting red from the passing car’s brake lights.
I clicked the door lock, watching Brad climb into the two-seater with large-man awkwardness. Then I realized the other car had turned the corner, hadn’t parked, must not have been Sandy. Distracted by Brad’s knock, I hadn’t even noticed its make. For reasons I didn’t have time to analyze, this upset me.
But right now, Brad took priority.
“Brad! I didn’t see your car. How did you get here?”
He pressed back into the seat as if soothing aches. “It’s a couple of blocks away. Was that your friend who just drove by?”
“I don’t think so. He’d have parked.” Instantly when he saw Brad.
“Jesus. Then move, would you?”
“Move?”
“The car. Take off with your lights out and go around some corners or something. Let’s make sure that car’s not here looking for me.” He tapped the keys dangling from my ignition. “Come on. Hurry.”
I hurried. He was right. If a reporter had followed me (after eavesdropping on my cordless call?) he could be dialing the police now. I didn’t want Brad to get arrested before I could persuade him to surrender.
I pulled out of the parking space, lights still off.
“Hit it!” Brad insisted. “I hear a car.”
Most likely Sandy. But I could smell Brad’s fear, acrid and animal, and I knew it was justified. I kept the lights off and took my first right. I drove just slowly enough to see by the street lamps. I pulled beside the curb a block and a half behind Sandy’s office, a space from which I should be able to see his office light through breaks in intervening buildings. Sandy had shown me this spot recently, happy as a boy detective to have discovered the oddity, even halfway hoping he’d need to use it at some point. There was no sparkle of light in his window now.
We were closer to the bay, close enough to hear wharf boards groan and chains clank, close enough to smell ship oil and unflushed salt water. Moisture beaded the windshields, cocooning us in a car made tiny by Brad’s bulk.
“What happened, Brad?” My tone was sharper than I intended; I might have been blown up by the plane in his driveway. “What do you know about all this?”
“Somebody’s trying to fuck my whole life up.” His voice was an explosion of anger. But a distant street lamp caught tears brimming his eyes, deep lines in his face, the slump of fatigue in his posture. “I ask myself over and over why. Why me? I don’t get it. I’m scared shitless.”
“You say you got a call to go to the Southshore Mall?”
“Cathy. I know her voice.” His head lolled against the seat back. He seemed too tired to support it. “It was Cathy. She said she’d been up in the Yukon, hadn’t told anyone, but I don’t remember why, I don’t remember if she explained that. I was so emotional, you know?”
“Did you try calling the police? Or me?”
“I tried calling you, but your machine picked up. I was kind of overwhelmed. It just seemed like I didn’t know where to begin on an answering machine. And I didn’t want to call the cops until I knew it was for real.”
“Did you tell her to call the cops?” I tried to imagine what I’d do, hearing the voice of someone I was charged with murdering.
“I don’t even remember. Only that she insisted I meet her at the mall—not at my house, not anyplace that made any sense to me. But she was set on it, and I was afraid she’d up and disappear again. So I popped into my car and went.”
I watched him, willing the rest of the story out of him.
“But my goddam bad luck. At least, I thought so then.” He closed his eyes, then covered them with a rough hand. “I get to the bottoms”—the flat dairyland before the woody rises leading to his cabin—“and here’s this lady waving me down, crying. I actually tried to drive around her. I didn’t give a shit what kind of trouble she was in. I mean, compared to a call from Cathy. But she was like right in front of me. I had to stop. She was all freaked out because her car had broken down, and she wasn’t from around here and was scared to death out in the middle of nowhere at night and et cetera.”
“What did she look like?”
“Big lady, tall, almost looked like a guy.” He uncovered his eyes, watching me with intense focus.
“Sound like anybody you know? Because I’ve wondered. It was a hell of a coincidence getting stopped right then. I mean, it saved my life. If I’d gotten there on time, I’d have been a body they found with Cathy’s.”
“Do you remember her well enough to describe her to a police artist?”
“Yeah. No. I don’t know. I think so. I’m so wiped, I hardly know my own name anymore.”
I reached out, squeezed his arm. “We’ll try to get this straightened
out.” I wasn’t ready yet to tell him that meant a trip to the police station. “Where did you take this woman?”
“Back to her car. Where we wasted a shitload of time with her looking for her keys, which she never found. And trying to get in with a coat hanger and looking under her hood. All of this with me basically saying, Hell with it, I’ll drop you off in town so you can do this tomorrow, and her saying, Please please please, just give it another minute because otherwise her husband’s going to be so pissed he’ll go berserk.” He shifted in the seat to face me. “Have you ever felt like you’d go nuts, just completely lose your mind right there on the spot? Because it just all got too damn weird for me. I got so crazy listening to her whining and her trying to keep me there a little longer when I couldn’t see fuck-all wrong with her engine. I just flipped out, screamed at her. Finally took off in my car and left her standing there.”
He grew quiet. I waited. Power lines above my convertible dripped water, tattooing on the vinyl top.
“I was about a block from the mall when the sucker went up in this ball of fire, just bammo, big fireball in the middle and then a bunch of little explosions and fire and smoke all over the place.”
“Did you see the plane overhead?”
“No. I wasn’t looking up. I was close to the mall, way close, no perspective. My truck got this layer of black over the front. That close.”
“What did you do?”
“Freaked the hell out.” He leaned nearer, his face wiped of fatigue, a mask of recalled shock. “I thought about driving around to see if Cathy was there someplace, and then I thought man, I need to get out of here. I need to think.”
“Did you go straight home?”
“I got home maybe an hour and a half later, or close to home. I got close enough to see a plane burning up in my driveway, and I thought, Screw this, I’m gone till someone figures out what the hell’s happening.”
“What did you do for an hour and a half? Or was it longer?”
“I sat up on top of the hill and watched the fire, the firemen, the cops. Waited to see if they were bringing out any bodies.”
