Follow the Money

Epilogue


Reilly lingered in the doorway. Our conversation was over but he couldn’t seem to leave. He just kept bringing it up. “Man, that must have been something! All that money just blowing away like that.”

“Yeah,” I responded, uninterested. Examining the office one final time, ensuring that I had everything. The man from the mailroom was loading my boxes onto a handcart, ready to take them down to my car.

“So you’re really leaving?” The prospect seemed foreign to Reilly, incomprehensible. He even seemed to have trouble asking the question.

I stared at Reilly as if into a mirror, or a perspicuous pool reflecting images of a future not yet written. I realized then and there that, despite all that had happened to me, I was essentially a weak man, a child thrown to the world. I had not escaped with my life because of my smarts or skills, but luck and luck alone. At each step I was confronted by my own hesitating self, afraid to do necessary things and opting instead to play it safe. The decision to go to law school, the decision to go to K&C, my reliance on Ed Snyder to formulate a plan and to make the world safe for me, all of these and more resulting from my inability to stick with my own convictions, or to have convictions at all. My eyes fell over the empty office one more time. I looked at Reilly and saw myself in a few lonely, frightened years.

“Yeah. All this happening, it just put some things in perspective. You know?” I stood with my hands in my pockets, nodding as I spoke.

“Oh, yeah,” Reilly nodded back, but could only guess at my meaning. Hovering at the door, silence fell between us and I thought about simply walking out and leaving him there.

And then, glancing down at the handcart, I reached out and took the top box from the pile, the one I’d taped up myself, and tucked it under my arm. “I’ll carry this one,” I said to the mail guy, who could have cared less. Then I smiled at Reilly and winked, “You know, never keep your eggs in one basket, eh?”

“Wow!” Reilly went on again, no longer paying attention to me. “That must have been something. I mean, five million dollars.”

“Yeah, well,” I hesitated at the door, aching to leave. “That’s what they said anyway. But who really knows. I mean, with it all blowing around like that, who’s to say if it was five million or three million?” I tapped the box under my arm again and smiled. I turned away from Reilly, leaving him to his thoughts and the safety of his imagination. The man with the handcart followed.

In my car at Fifth and Fig, I waited for the light to change. I glanced at the box on the seat beside me, but could not muster a smile. Despite its contents, I was alone and escaping once again. But to where? As I drove south toward the ten freeway, I contemplated Riverside, the drive east, and what it might mean to lose myself once again in safety, in choices born of risk aversion. But most of all, I thought of my luck and of the things I wanted most in the world.

As the sweeping concrete curves of the onramps stretched out in front of me, peeling off in opposite directions, I wavered in the center lane, careening forward at full speed, thinking of Liz and what I had done and what I had failed to do. I turned the wheel and headed west, toward Liz and the ocean.

I sat in the parking lot outside the Legal Aid office, staring the rest of my life in the face. It was my turn to act instead of react. I took a few deep breaths and opened the door. Then I picked up the box from the seat beside me and carried it under my arm. I paused at the blue donation bin beside the entrance, lifted the lid, and dropped the box inside.

It was my first good deed in a long time. Then I went through the door, ready for another, preparing to take a chance and maybe save myself, for once.





Now, turn the page for a taste of the second Oliver Olson novel:

THE FLAMING MOTEL





Friday

November 1





I


It was a banner headline, front page, above the fold: Pornography Mogul Shot by Police at Costume Party. Apparently a toy gun had been mistaken for the real thing. A hell of an error to make on Halloween. I was reading the story, both amused and appalled, when the call came in.

I glanced up. Through my office doorway I saw Jendrek answer the phone on Ellen’s desk. He made a few grunts into the receiver, nodded, looking over at me. Our eyes met and he grinned. I heard him mention Professor Stanton. I heard him say we’d handled these kinds of cases before and that we appreciated Mr. Stanton thinking of us. I heard him say we’d be happy to meet whoever it was wherever would be most convenient. He bent over the desk, scrambled for a pen and paper, and scribbled something down.

I was sitting with my feet up on the desk, still holding the paper, when I heard him hang up and say, “Grab your coat, Ollie, we’ve got a meeting to get to.”

Jendrek was halfway out the door when he stopped, leaned back inside and said, “And bring the newspaper, we can learn something about this thing on the way up there.”

I threw on a sport coat and locked the office door behind me, fumbling with the key. Ellen wouldn’t even be in for another hour. We usually sat around drinking coffee at this time of morning. Not much to do. Our law practice wasn’t exactly on fire.

Jendrek was holding the elevator at the end of the hallway, grinning out at me. He was twice my age, but his cherubic round face would have made him look a lot younger, were it not for his shoulder-length gray hair. “Come on, man,” he hollered.

“What is it?” I asked as the elevator closed.

He flicked the paper I was holding with his finger and said, “The lead story. Don Vargas, the porn king. That was his son on the phone. We’re going to meet him, and Vargas’s wife too, I imagine.”

I unfolded the paper and stared at the headline again, having already forgotten the name of the dead man. Jendrek pointed at the paper again as the elevator opened onto the parking structure two levels below ground. He spoke as he walked to his car, rushing. Always rushing. “Apparently Max Stanton represents Vargas’s companies. The family called him in the middle of the night when it happened, and he recommended me if they were interested in suing the police department.”

He unlocked his 1974 Jaguar and hit the automatic locks to let me in. I slid into the passenger seat, still processing what he said. Jendrek laughed as he pulled out of the garage and headed east down Santa Monica Boulevard. “Hell, I knew all that adjunct teaching at the law school would have to pay off someday. If that story in the paper is even half right, we might actually have a good case.”

He was positively giddy, which wasn’t like Jendrek at all. He was usually a stone-cold cynic. I found it amusing and called him on it. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself? You know journalists never get legal stuff right.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “You’re one to talk about that.”

He had me there, and his statement cut to the bone. A journalist had gotten murdered in connection with the very first case I ever worked on. It was the case that both made me and broke me, and I still felt bad about getting the journalist involved at all, even though I had nothing to do with his getting killed. It was just one of those terrible things that happen in the world, one of those terrible things I was getting more and more used to in the four years I’d been out of law school and practicing with Jendrek.

He could sense my rumination and said, “Hey, I didn’t mean to bring you down. I was just joking.”

“I know.” And I did. But there wasn’t much else to say. I returned to reading the paper as Jendrek took a left on Doheny and headed up into the Hollywood Hills. We crossed Sunset Boulevard and kept climbing. The houses grew larger and larger, shrouded by canopies of palm fronds and surrounded by high hedges, ivy-covered walls, and security gates. After a few minutes, I forgot about the past enough to get curious again.

I said, “Jesus, how far up does this guy live?”

Jendrek smiled. “All the way, baby. Up on Mulholland.”

We wove through block after block of gated estates, trying to avoid the morning rush that clogged the main streets. Eventually, Jendrek made it up to the famous road that ran along the top of the Hollywood Hills like a highway in the sky. We turned west and I caught glimpses of the smog-covered San Fernando Valley between the houses.

Jendrek slowed the old Jag, annoying the cars behind us, as he tried to find the address. With only two lanes, Mulholland could back up bad, and quick.

“I think you’re irritating the rich folk.” I glanced in the side mirror to see a bright yellow Humvee riding our ass, the driver shrugging at us and yelling something we couldn’t hear.

Jendrek checked his mirror as well and smiled. “It’s good for him. That’s what he gets for driving such an obnoxious car.”

Two houses later we turned into a sandstone driveway that opened on to a large courtyard and a massive Spanish style stucco mansion. There were clusters of people standing around and yellow police tape was strewn across a walkway leading down the left side of the house. A single police car sat at the far side of the driveway. Two guys in dark suits stood next to it having a heated discussion.

There were people coming and going from the side of the house where the police tape was, and the whole place had the look of an aftermath. There had been a lot going on here only a few hours before, and these were just the tired stragglers left behind to clean up.

“That must be the wife.” Jendrek motioned with his chin as he parked the car. I looked up at the top of the wide stairs leading into the house and saw a nearly perfect blonde woman wrapping herself in a long, terry cloth robe. She hugged herself against the November morning chill, which only emphasized the curves beneath the robe.

I scanned the paper again. “Says here Vargas was sixty. She doesn’t look half that.”

Jendrek smiled as he opened the door. “Like I said, I think that’s his wife.”

We must have looked liked lawyers because a guy came from the inside of the house, somewhere behind the woman in the robe, and descended the stairs with his hand out. “Mr. Jendrek?”

“Mr. Vargas?” They shook hands. Then Jendrek motioned my way and said, “This is my partner, Oliver Olson.”

I smiled and shook the man’s hand. It amused me when Jendrek referred to me as his partner, because he meant it only in the most general sense. We worked together. I got paid. But we weren’t partners in the way law firms usually used the word. There was never any question that Jendrek ran the show.

The young Vargas couldn’t have been much more than thirty, barely older than me. He had that thin but muscular Hollywood look, like he spent all of his time in a gym. A cardio and low-carbs kind of guy. A diet rich in protein and cocaine. He was still wearing the remnants of last night’s costume: a bellhop uniform, the jacket now unbuttoned and the bowtie hanging loose. I wondered whose bags he carried in real life.

“Eddie Vargas,” he said, and nodded at me. As I let go of his hand I noticed the thick Rolex on his wrist. Expensive and flashy, it didn’t go with the costume. It told me that this was a guy who liked to impress people.

He moved in and stood close to us, speaking in a quiet voice. “I really appreciate you guys coming so quickly. I figured it was important to get someone on this as soon as possible.”

He scratched the back of his head and glanced back over his shoulder. The woman at the top of the stairs had not moved. She looked far too young to be a widow, and her expression only confirmed that fact. She had a face too young to know the expression for grief. After a few seconds of gawking, Ed Vargas said, “The goddamned cops have been here all night, poking around, asking questions like we were the f*cking criminals. A couple of them are still over there.”

He motioned with his head toward the two guys at the far end of the driveway by the car. One of them stopped talking when he noticed us staring at them. Then the other one stopped and both of them stood quietly, staring back at us.

Ed Vargas turned and headed up the steps and said, “Come on inside where we can talk privately.”

We followed him to the top of the stairs where he paused. “Gentlemen, this is Tiffany Vargas.” He leaned into her like he was sharing a secret, and said, “These are the lawyers Stanton recommended.”

She broke out of her trance and smiled at us. There was a glow to her smile, both innocent and mischievous. It was a face that took you in and held you hostage. I could see why a sixty-year-old man—or any man, for that matter—would want her. But why she would want him was an open question. I took her small, soft hand and she nodded at me as she shook. She looked like every stunning blonde model I’d ever seen in a magazine, and yet, she looked even better in real life. You could convince yourself that women like that didn’t really exist in the world, until you saw one, and then you were ruined forever.

She said, “I’m sorry. I’m still in shock. My husband wasn’t perfect, but he didn’t deserve this.”

I didn’t know what to say. Neither did Jendrek, but I caught him smiling at me. He was reminding me that he’d been right, that she was the wife, and he was awfully damned proud of himself. It was a good guess. Tiffany Vargas could have been in her early thirties, but she’d pass for a buxom twenty-two-year-old in anyone’s book. That she had been married to an old guy like Vargas seemed a shame. But she was still young.

She sank back into her trance, looking out over the driveway and the hedges, but seeing none of it. We left her at the top of the stairs and followed Ed Vargas into the house. We stepped into a massive great room with twenty-foot ceilings and a Mexican tile floor. The far end of the room was all windows that looked out over the city. It was a clear day, and you could see all the way to Orange County, if you were interested in looking at it.

The house, still littered with the remains of a large party, had the aura of a hurricane about it. There were cups and ashtrays and bowls of food on the coffee table in the center of the room and along the bar that stood to one side. The obviously expensive rugs were littered with stains and paper. Near my feet was a devil mask with a footprint on it. A loft space overlooked the main room, but the air was heavy despite the open layout.

Ed Vargas stood with his hands on his hips and surveyed the area. “It happened about 11:00. This place was packed. The party was really going.” He shook his head. Anger flushed his face. “There were cars everywhere outside. It was obvious there was a party going on. We’re gonna sue the shit out of these people. I want to bankrupt the city. What the f*ck were these guys thinking? Getting called on a noise disturbance? Going around the side of the house instead of just coming to the door? What kind of bullshit is that?”

Jendrek and I stood and listened. Neither of us tried to answer the question. Ed’s words echoed in the large room, bouncing off the tile floor and lingering in the air. It was the first hint of emotion I’d gotten from him. He caught himself and stifled it, trying to keep himself under control.

Then he turned and went through an entryway that led into a wide corridor. “You might as well see where it happened,” he said. We followed.

As I left the great room, I noticed for the first time that a young woman had appeared at the rail of the loft and was staring down at me. She wore black gym shorts and a T-shirt that hung over her large breasts like a sheet draped over furniture. She smiled down at me with a glow much like the young widow’s. It was as if beautiful women were being cloned somewhere in the house. But her expression was strained, the smile forced, like she didn’t know how else to look, even with the tragedy still fresh in the room. Her eyes followed me. I felt something tug inside me as I followed Jendrek down the hall.

Ed stepped into a room on his left and said, “This is where they were.”

“Who’s they?” Jendrek asked.

“My dad and Pete Stick, a costume guy we work with. Pete’s an old friend of my dad’s.”

I looked down and took a quick step back. My right foot had been on the chalk outline on the floor. It seemed like a desecration of some kind and a wave of panic and disgust went through me. Ed hadn’t seemed to notice. He was standing with his back to us, staring out the wide bay window. He pointed to a hole in the glass ringed by a spider web of cracks. It was low to the floor.

“You can see they were standing right outside. The shot came through here and, well, you can see where the body was. Pete said he collapsed right where he was standing.”

I surveyed the rest of the room. It was nearly empty. There was a desk on one side of the room and a bookshelf and leather chair on the other side. Other than that, the room was bare. It would have been a clear shot, and the shooter would have had a clear view of what was going on inside the room.

I asked, “So the cops were just standing outside the window and shot into the house?” I could hear a tone of incredulity in my voice. Ed heard it too and smiled.

“Yeah. Pretty f*cking amazing, huh?” He turned back toward the window with the outrage starting to spill from him again. “I mean, what the f*ck? They get called to investigate a noise disturbance. They show up at a house where there’s obviously a Halloween party going on. They go around the side of the house, look in through a window, and see two guys talking, one of them has a gun in his hand, so they just shoot him through the window? No warning? Nothing?”

Ed turned back and stared at the chalk outline on the floor. “It’s crazy.”

I walked over to the window. There was a walkway on the ground outside and a strip of grass between the walkway and the jasmine covered wall that marked the edge of the property. I asked, “Were there any people outside who might have seen something?”

“Not that I know of,” Ed said. “The only guy who saw anything was Pete.” He thought about that for a second, and then added, “And the cops. But I don’t expect them to be too helpful.”

Ed walked out into the hallway and turned toward the back of the house. We followed him through a back room with leather walls and a large pool table with bright pink felt. We went through a set of French doors out onto a wide deck overlooking the city. The hill dropped away below us and there was very little in the way of a yard behind the house. There were some steps that led down to a pool area where the walkway from the side of the house ended. We stood at the rail looking down at Los Angeles.

Finally, Ed Vargas asked, more to himself than to us, “So now what?”

Jendrek leaned sideways against the railing and spoke. “Well, I’d expect the police department will complete its internal investigation of the shooting very quickly. And, not to be too cynical, I’ll bet they conclude that the shooting was justified because they’ll be expecting us to file a lawsuit.”

Ed’s eyes swelled with rage. “Well they damned sure better expect a lawsuit. We’re going to sue the hell out of them. How could they even think something like this was justified?”

Jendrek held his hands out in front of him. “I’m not defending the police here. I agree with you. This is outrageous. Shooting a man at a costume party because he has a gun in his hand? I mean, you’ve got to be kidding. It never occurs to them that it could be a fake gun? I hear you. I understand where you’re coming from. But you’ve got to understand that suing a police department is not an easy thing to do.”

Ed leaned his back against the railing and stared at the house. He was grappling with a whole range of emotions that I could only guess at. The incongruity of his haggard, sleep deprived face and the cheerful luster of his bellhop uniform was almost comical. But he didn’t look like he was finding much humor in anything. Finally, he said, “I want you to do whatever it takes to make them pay for what they’ve done to me.”

Jendrek glanced at me and raised his eyebrows. The young man’s reference to himself instead of his father struck us both like a slap in the face. But Ed Vargas didn’t catch his slip and simply folded his arms across his chest, brooding and looking more exhausted with each second. Then, with a quick burst of energy, he took a few steps forward and turned back toward us.

“Please, have a look around. Although I don’t think there’s much left to see. The cops took everything with them when they left. I’ll be back in a few minutes with a retainer.” Then he turned and walked back through the French doors we’d come through.

Jendrek and I stood quietly for a moment, making sure he was gone. Then Jendrek raised his eyebrows and whispered, “What do you think?”

I smiled back and said, “Why are you whispering?”

Jendrek chuckled, and spoke in a normal voice. “I guess it seemed like the right thing to do. There’s obviously a lot of tension in the air.”

“You can say that again. There’s something odd between the son and the wife.”

Jendrek had a glimmer in his eye. “You think it could be because they’re the same age?”

I smiled back and strolled over to the edge of the deck, peering around the side of the house. There was a narrow set of stairs leading down to the walkway and I started down them before looking back at Jendrek. “You want to check out the side of the house?”

We ducked under a line of yellow police tape as we neared the window. There was a small circle of chalk on the sidewalk that Jendrek pointed to with his toe.

“This must be where they found the empty shell from the shot.”

I grunted at the spot and turned my attention toward the window. Although the glass was nearly floor to ceiling on the inside of the room, from the outside it started at about chin height on me. Looking upward into the room, someone standing outside the window would have to be reasonably tall and very close to the glass before they could see where the floor met the opposite wall of the room.

“Pretty low angle,” Jendrek said from behind me. I turned to see him standing back about four feet from the side of the house, right in the center of the walkway. He couched and held his arms up like he was pointing a gun. It was an unnatural pose for his squat body.

“You figure they had to be coming down the path when they looked in and saw whatever they thought they saw. Given where the bullet hole in the glass is and where the chalk outline is on the floor in there, the cop must have been shooting at a backward angle. Like they’d damned near walked past the window before they saw what was inside.”

I went and stood next to Jendrek to see what he was looking at. I was imagining the position of the chalk outline when I realized, “The shooter would have had a clear view of Vargas from at least the knees up. He would have been looking straight at him.”

Jendrek went up to the glass and peered in at the outline. “I think you’re right, judging by that outline. It looks like he fell backward from a position facing where you’re standing right now.”

I’d assumed the position of the shooter. I studied the surroundings, trying to imagine how it had been at eleven the previous evening. There were no lights along the walkway, so it would have been dark along the path. There would have been music or noise coming from inside; it had been a noise disturbance call, after all.

“It was dark out here, but the light would have been on inside,” I said, thinking out loud. “They would have had a perfect view from out here. A clear line of sight view, right at Vargas.”

“And,” Jendrek interrupted, excitement building in his voice, “because the light was on inside, Vargas wouldn’t have been able to see the cops out here. It would have been too dark. Even if they’d tried to signal him to put the gun down, there’s no way he could have seen them.”

I stood there, mulling it over.

I pictured the events again. Two cops arrived at the house, responding to a noise call on Halloween. They found a house where a party appeared to be going on. They decided to go around the side of the house for some reason. As they came along the dark path, they passed a window of a lit up room. Just before they pass it, they look inside and see a man facing toward them with a gun in his hand. There was another man in the room too. Something about what they saw caused them to react. A gun was drawn, a shot fired, and within seconds, Don Vargas was dead from a clean shot through the chest.

Jendrek and I had always agreed between ourselves that nothing was ever too stupid to say, as long as it was just us. It was a rule he laid down when I started working for him. As I ran through it, I said, “I wonder what order they were walking in.”

Jendrek gave me a curious look.

“The cops, I mean. I wonder if the shooter was in the front or the back.” Jendrek still looked confused. I went on, “Because if the shooter was in the front, then it just doesn’t make any sense at all. But if the shooter was the one in back, then it’s almost like he was waiting for the perfect spot. You know, stopping where he had perfect aim, waiting for his partner to get out of the way. Almost like he meant to kill him.”

A cold expression came over Jendrek. Like the possibility wasn’t something he even wanted to think about. I walked back down toward the front of the house, then turned and started walking back.

“Look,” I said. “They’re coming along here. It’s dark. There’s a bright light spilling out of the window. You don’t think they look inside the second they come to it? Of course they do, it’s the only thing there is to look at, it’s nighttime, it’s pitch black out here. They look inside. They see Vargas and this Pete guy. But they get all the way to here,” I took five long steps and stopped where we figured the shooter had been, “before they shoot? Why? What happens in the two seconds it takes to cover this space that causes the cop to shoot? What happens inside the room to go from a situation that doesn’t require shooting to one that does?”

I could see Jendrek running it through in his head, tracing my story along the path with his eyes.

“At least one explanation,” I went on, “is that nothing changed at all. Vargas and Pete were standing there when the cops first saw them and they were still standing there a couple seconds later. Same positions, Vargas holding the gun the whole time, nothing’s changed except the angle from which to shoot. One explanation is that the cop took his time, lining up his shot, like he knew he was going to shoot the whole time.”

Jendrek cracked a wide smile and said, “I think you’ve snapped, Ollie. Unless you can prove Vargas welched on a huge debt to this cop, I don’t think that theory is going to fly. Isn’t it much more likely that the cop’s just an idiot?”

I said, “Probably.”

Ed Vargas appeared on the path at the foot of the stairs leading down from the deck. “Mr. Jendrek,” he called out, waving something in his hand.

Jendrek turned and walked back toward him. “Please, call me Mark,” he said as he reached Vargas. I followed behind. We went back up the stairs and I noticed the girl in the T-shirt sitting in a lounge chair on the far end of the deck. She turned to watch us as we walked into the house through the French doors.

Vargas handed Jendrek an envelope and collapsed into a chair near a bar at the back of the room, away from the windows and the pool table. It was the second bar I’d seen on the main floor. It was as though the house was used for parties and little else.

Vargas rubbed his temples and leaned back in his chair, almost crowding himself into the furthest corner of the house. He looked tormented, like a man who wasn’t sure about anything anymore and was just looking to sit still in a quiet, dim place until the world returned to normal.

“That’s a retainer,” he said, pointing to the envelope. “Should be enough to get things started.”

Jendrek didn’t look inside, he merely tucked it in the pocket of his tweed sport coat. Given the size and location of the house, I doubted money was anything we’d have to worry about. Putting together a winnable case, well, that was something different.

Jendrek cleared his throat. “I know this is a stressful time,” he began. “But we’re going to need to talk to people at the party, anyone who might have seen or overheard anything.”

Vargas waved his hand like he was batting a fly from the side of his face. He was irritated by something that didn’t seem connected with his father’s death. I studied the stubble on his chin. It appeared to spring from his flesh like worms escaping from something horrible inside him. He was suffocating on his own anger and exhaustion. Revenge and spite percolated through him.

He said, “Brianna’s outside on the deck. She was here. She lives here. She helped organize the party, she can give you a good list of who was here. I’m not sure what good I’m going to be. I need to get some sleep.”

Jendrek motioned for me to go talk to the girl on the deck. I crossed the room, running my fingers along the pink felt of the pool table as I passed it. “Now, I need you to understand a few things about the difficulty of a lawsuit against the police … ,” I could hear Jendrek say as I stepped back out into the bright, crisp daylight.

I stood by the French doors for a moment, watching her. She sat facing out at the city. It was one of those spectacular autumn days in Los Angeles where the air is completely clear and the temperature mild. It was the kind of day that made Angelinos remember why they lived there, and why so many others had lived there before them.

Women like Brianna were another reason people loved LA. She was aesthetically perfect, mesmerizing to look at. The kind of woman a man found difficult to take seriously as anything but an object. I traced the curves of her firm, tan body with my eyes, not wanting to disturb her, feeling intimidated and overwhelmingly attracted at the same time. Finally, she must have felt my stare because she turned to see me lingering near the doors.

“Hi.” She smiled. “Something I can help you with?”

I cleared my throat and walk toward her, trying to make it look like I hadn’t been standing there watching her. “Yes. I’m Oliver Olson,” I said, crossing toward her with my hand outstretched. She’d taken off the T-shirt and wore a black bikini top barely big enough to cover her nipples.

She shook my hand and smiled up at me from the deck chair. “Nice to meet you.” Her blue eyes glowed in the daylight. She smelled of tanning oil. I tried to keep my tone serious, which only made me feel ridiculous.

I tried not to stare at her tight stomach muscles as they rippled with her movements. “I’m an attorney. We’ve been called to look into the possibility of a lawsuit against the police department stemming from last night’s events.” I realized I didn’t have a note pad or anything to write with and I felt a sudden urge to do something with my hands to keep them from fidgeting like a schoolboy. “I understand from Mr. Vargas that you live here and that you helped arrange last night’s party. I would like to get a list of who was here and how I can get in touch with them, to the extent you know.”

She was quiet for a minute. She sat with her hands in her lap and her shoulders slumped, staring out into the light blue sky. Even somber, she exuded a pure, objectified sexuality. Just the sight of her made me want to climb on top of her right then.

Finally, she shook her head and said, “I’ve tried not to think about it all morning. You know, just get up and go about my business like nothing happened.” She looked up at me with sad, crystalline eyes. “But it’s stupid, y’know. I mean, Don was everywhere. Everything reminds me of him. I can’t stop wondering what the hell’s going to happen now.”

“Are you a relative? Miss … ?” I realized I didn’t know her last name.

She looked up at me with a quick, genuine grin. She almost looked amused. “Jones.” She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand to get a better look at me. “I’m Brianna Jones.”

She spoke in a way that said she was used to people knowing who she was. I didn’t. So I just nodded and said, “It’s nice to meet you, Ms. Jones.”

She giggled at being addressed formally. “No. I’m not family. Well, you know, Don was the kind of guy who had a loose definition of ‘family’—a lot of people were either in or out of it over the years, from what I understand. Tiffany was his wife. Ed’s his son. I heard he was married once before. But beyond that, Don didn’t have much real family. But he was Uncle Don to a lot of people. Like me, I guess. People he took under his wing. He really wasn’t a bad guy, despite what some people said about him. He was like a father to me.”

There was a strange mixture of innocence and weariness in her voice, and it made me wonder how old she was. She could have been seventeen, but her body said twenty-five. I asked the only thing I could think of. “So how long have you lived here?”

She thought about it for a second. “About three and a half years. I moved in on my eighteenth birthday. Don said I couldn’t move in until I was eighteen.”

I did the math quickly and tried to process her comments. The whole thing made me want to ask a million questions that had nothing to do with why I was there. I took my hands out of my pockets and really wished I had something to write with. A list of names wouldn’t do me a damned bit of good if I couldn’t write it down. Rather than stand there like an idiot, I asked, “What about your family?”

She smirked and rolled her eyes. “If you saw the shithole I grew up in out in Northridge, you’d move into a place like this the first chance you got. Believe me.”

I had to stop myself with that. I ran my eyes over the smooth curves of her calves as she crossed her legs and turned toward me. “So, back to the party,” I said. “Who was here. We’d like to chat with as many people as possible who might have seen the cops arrive. Who might have seen anything at all?”

She took a deep breath and started rattling off names. “Well, Pete was in the room when Don got shot. I was just outside the room. I’d been talking to Pete right before it happened. Then there was Duffy, and Rick and Tony. Most of the girls were here.” She proceeded to rattle off a dozen more names that I knew I would never remember. I’d obviously have to go over the list with her again sometime. It was a thought I enjoyed more than I knew I should.

When she was done, I asked, “What were you and Pete talking about right before it happened?”

“Nothing, really. I was pretty drunk. I think I was just pestering him. He got kind of annoyed and said he needed to talk to Don alone and they went into the office.”

“Do you know what they were talking about?”

She shook her head and shrugged. “You’ll have to ask Pete. Pete and Don were always having private conversations, ever since Pete started coming around a few years ago. They were weird together. Don always gave Pete a lot of attention. So, anyway, they went into the office to talk and a minute later Don got shot.”

“Where were you when it happened?”

“I was back in the living room. No one even noticed the gunshot. Just all the sudden Pete came running into the room with blood all over his hands. He was hysterical. Then the two cops came running in from the deck. Then all hell broke loose. When people saw the cops they thought it was a bust.”

Brianna’s eyes shifted to look at something behind me and I turned to see Jendrek lumbering across the deck. He was wearing a cynic’s grin, and he ran his fingers through his gray hair, swooping it back over his head. I could see his eyes darting back and forth between Brianna and me. He was obviously more interested in her.

I made the introductions. “Mark, this is Brianna Jones. Ms. Jones, this is Mark Jendrek.”

She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Mark.”

Jendrek grinned down at her and then gave me a sideways glance, beaming and bright-eyed. “The pleasure is ours,” he said. He gave me a look that said we had to go, so I took out a business card and handed it to Brianna.

“I’m sure I’ll be back in touch to ask you some more questions about the party. But in the meantime, if you remember anything at all that you think we should know, call anytime. My cell number is on here as well.”

She took the card, smiled at me, and brushed a lock of glowing blonde hair from her forehead. Her arm brushed the side of her chest as she moved and she watched my eyes focus on her jostling flesh. She smiled and said, “I’ll be sure to call.”

We went back out front without saying a word to each other. At the car, I studied the front of the house again, wondering what it was worth. I noticed the wife was gone and realized we hadn’t talked to her. “What about the wife?” I asked.

Jendrek leaned on the Jag and spoke over the roof of the car. “We’ll get to her. First, we need to figure some things out about who we’re working for.” He took the envelope out of his inside pocket and slid it to me. “Take a peek in there.”

I opened the envelope and took out a check. It was made out to the law firm of Jendrek & Olson. It was for $50,000. I raised my eyebrows. “It’s a nice check.” I smiled.

“Yeah, but look at the account it’s drawn on.”

It was made out from an entity called Good Times, Limited. I shrugged and smiled.

Jendrek said, “We need to make sure we know who our client is. I called Max Stanton from the house. He’s waiting for us in his office.” Jendrek checked his watch and chuckled. “Maybe if we have time, you can give me a tour of your old stomping grounds, Hoss.”

“F*ck you.” I laughed, and got in the car. Visiting Stanton would be my first trip back to Kohlberg & Crowley since I’d almost gotten killed and quit the place.