Follow the Money

27


I hit the west side at rush hour and dropped Liz at her place. Then I braved the jammed freeway all the way downtown. It took forever and it was late when I finally made it back to the firm. I parked the rental car in the basement garage and lugged the hope chest and photo albums up to my office where I placed them in a wide, four-foot long file drawer and locked it.

I was only there a few minutes when the phone rang. It was Ed. He sounded flustered.

“Man, good to talk to you. You make it up to Topanga?”

I told him all about it. I could hear him rummaging through paperwork as I talked. He was only half listening.

He said, “That’s great. I can’t believe that stuff was still there.” I could feel him masking some kind of dark worry. “Hey, listen, I can’t talk long. I don’t think we’re going to make it to the press tomorrow morning. My editor is excited but understandably concerned. He wants to be sure this thing is right before we run it.”

“Of course.” I did not want to wait another day.

“So look, man. I’ve been talking to some people about Steele and Andersen. Most people have said they never knew anything like that, never suspected anything. I even had one guy say he didn’t remember. Can you believe that? Anyway, no one wants to get involved. You know, no comment and all of that. I’ve still got a few more leads and people to get a hold of, but it’s getting late and I doubt I’ll make much more progress tonight.”

“Is anyone talking at all?” I was concerned that I’d hitched myself to someone who couldn’t get the job done. But who was I to complain?

He said, “I started trying to find guys that went to school with either of them. I found a guy who was at law school at Berkeley with Andersen. He said that a bunch of them used to go hang out in the Castro sometimes, you know, go to the clubs, the bars. He said he remembers seeing Steele around sometimes. Andersen and Steele could have met there. Hell, this thing between them could have been going off and on since the mid-70s.”

“Really. That’s interesting. But I can’t believe that Steele was able to keep something like that secret all those years.”

“I can’t either. But it happens. People in the gay community aren’t in the business of outing people, so as long as Steele was discreet, maybe people figured they had a friend in high places. But something like that would also make Steele very vulnerable to blackmail too. So, I don’t know.”

We talked for a few minutes about who might want to blackmail Steele. It didn’t seem likely to me. We knew that Sharon wanted a divorce. That seemed like the most likely reason for the murder.

“True,” Ed went on, “but Andersen represents a lot of big oil companies. I think the reason Andersen seemed so concerned when you called him is because there’s more to this than just an affair. I agree with you, I don’t think Andersen would care too much about that coming out because it’s already out. I think Andersen had something to do with Steele changing his mind on the Alaskan oil issue.”

I grimaced. I couldn’t tell if Ed was a loon or really on to something. He seemed obsessed with the issue. “Well, yeah, maybe. I mean he might have lobbied for his clients or something. I mean, that’s a helluva political contact to have. But even so, how does that have anything to do with Steele killing his wife?”

My dose of reality and logic seemed to calm him. The line was silent for a few seconds. “Hmmm. Well, I don’t know that it does,” He finally admitted.

“Okay, so what now?”

“Look man, you just gotta lay low another day. We’re going to hit the press with this Wednesday morning. Just spend the day tomorrow hanging out in a crowd, doing nothing. I’ll call you when the story’s done and you can come down here and confirm it and then it’s a go.”

“Right on, man.” My effort to speak in Ed’s vernacular came out cold. Then I added, “Have you seen that black car anywhere?”

“Uh,” Ed paused, the worry welling up in him. “Well, I don’t know. There are lots of black sedans out there when you start looking for them. They’re everywhere.” He uttered a forced laugh.

“I never thought of that.” I laughed too and added, “But then, it’s like a professor of mine always says, ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.’”

“Ha, yeah, right.” Ed’s voice trailed off. “That’s a good one.”

When I hung up, I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes. I began to drift off immediately and forced myself back awake. Despite the daylight outside, I was spent. I needed to sleep, but it was only then that I realized I had nowhere to go. Laying low meant staying away from home, and home was trashed anyway, so it wouldn’t have done me much good.

I thought about Ed’s comment about black cars. I wondered if he really was being followed. If he’d been making a lot of phone calls, word had probably gotten back to Andersen. There was something comforting in the thought that I might have at least diverted attention from myself for the time being. I hadn’t intended to use Ed as a decoy. But if that was the effect, I couldn’t complain.

I found myself reclining and relaxing again, with my feet up on the desk. I felt comfortable and safe high above the city streets, out of harm’s way. I could see a long black car moving through the night, cruising through the pools of streetlight like a steel shark, sensitive to any strange movements, any minor vibration or disruption, ready to attack.

The rising, electric bleat of the phone awoke me. I sprang forward as if reacting to an emergency of some kind. I answered it before it had another chance to ring.

It was the firm’s research librarian, telling me he had the report for the license number I’d given them. The guy was getting ready to go home and wanted to know if I needed him to drop it off. I told him I’d come down and pick it up. At the very least it would give me something to do. Something to keep me from falling asleep in my office.

The guy in the library was waiting for me at the door. He handed me a single sheet of paper as I came in. “Hope this helps,” he said, as he tried to catch the elevator. I could barely utter a thank you before he was gone.

I read the paper as I walked, pausing to digest the information. The black Taurus was registered to a Gary Rollins. As soon as I read it I remembered Andersen’s secretary telling him that a “Mr. Rollins” was there to see him. That was definitely the guy who was sitting in the lobby when I walked out. It was the same guy in the car who followed me. So it was Andersen who was having me followed. I’d suspected it so much that the confirmation hardly seemed surprising.

I’d only been gone five minutes, but when I got back to my office, the light was blinking on my phone. It was a message from Ed.

“Hey man, great news. This guy called me and said he’d heard I was looking for info on Steele and Andersen. He said he knew about them and would talk to me, but not on the phone. He seemed really freaked out, paranoid. You should of heard the guy. I’m meeting him in a bar in West Hollywood later. He was funny. He refused to give me his last name. He’d only give me his initial: G. Said his name was Ray G. Funny huh? Totally paranoid. Anyway, I’ll call you in the morning to let you know how it goes.”

The name sent chills up my neck. I wrote it down and almost started laughing. It wasn’t Ray Gee. It only sounded that way when you said it out loud. Leave it to the journalist to ask the follow up question: Is that an initial or a name?

Ray G. I sat there with the printout from the library and stared at the name as I wrote it. Ray G. And then, for no reason at all, I remembered Liz’s work party, the guy that knew Andersen. I felt a sickness in my stomach. He said Andersen was a great lawyer, as well as a guy who loved anagrams.

Ray G, rearranged, was Gary.

Gary Rollins.

Son of a bitch.

Was I crazy? Could it really be the same guy? Why not, I thought. I reached for the phone and tried to get Ed. But he wasn’t at work and his cell phone was off. I left rambling, excited messages that probably made no sense. I begged him to call me back right away. Then I hung up, telling myself I had to be crazy. I was reaching, groping, making connections that didn’t exist. I was the one who was paranoid. Suddenly everything was interrelated. I had to be wrong.

To convince myself it wasn’t a late onset of schizophrenia, I went back through my notes. The conversations with Detective Wilson, Carole Bishop, and Jessica Bishop all referred to Ray Gee. But they’d all just spoken to him. Detective Wilson had written it down as “Ray Gee” and I just assumed that’s what it was.

Ray G. had asked Wilson about the alibi, about Matt Bishop, the details of the 911 calls. He’d asked the Bishops about the night of the murder. Jessica said he tried to bribe her. If Ray G. was Gary Rollins, then Andersen was probably behind these inquiries.

What was Andersen looking for? Was he trying to find a way to get Steele out? They had been lovers. Perhaps they intended to be again. But why wait twelve years? I thought about all the research I’d done. I thought about Carver’s comment that all of the appeals in state court were just a joke, that nothing ever happened until the federal habeas case. If that were true, then Andersen surely knew it. Had he merely been biding his time all these years?

Then I remembered Jessica Bishop’s comment about Dan Kelly driving a new Corvette. Ask him what he did to get that, she’d said. Now I was pretty sure I knew what it was. Dan Kelly had been paid to sharpen his memory, to perhaps remember a little more than he otherwise had a right to remember. Perhaps Carol Bishop had been right after all. Dan Kelly really was always trying to get her boy in trouble.

I tried Ed again. I wanted to talk it through with him. The revelations were coming too fast and I felt like I wasn’t really putting it all together. There was just too much information.

I got up and paced around the room. I had to get out of there, but I couldn’t go home. I could always sleep in the office. I’d damn near fallen asleep only an hour before. But the thought of sleeping there disgusted me.

As I stood at the window, looking down, I was struck by the obvious. I was surrounded by hotels. I checked the file drawer again to ensure it was locked, grabbed my briefcase, shut off the light, and hit the elevator. Three minutes later I was checking into the Bonaventure. Five minutes more and I was riding to the twentieth floor in the glass elevator that ran up and down the side of the building like a pod on a space station. For a minute I enjoyed the view of the city and wondered how long my life could go on like this.