Follow the Money

9


I didn’t have to look too hard. Matt found me instead. I was sitting in my office the next morning when the phone rang. When I answered it, the voice on the other end said, “Hey a*shole.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is the a*shole, isn’t it? The a*shole that came around bothering my mother yesterday? My sister too? That’s you, right?”

I sat up with a start. “Matt? Is this Matt Bishop?”

“Well, look at the big brain on the a*shole. You’re a real bright guy there, Olson, you figured that out without any help. Seems a smart guy like you would know better than to run around town asking all kinds of bullshit questions.”

“I thought you were in prison.” It was a dumb thing to say, but it was the only thing I could think of.

“You don’t think they got phones in here? You didn’t think my mom was going to call me to tell me you were harassing her? Man, maybe you are stupid.”

I was racing for questions to ask. Unsure how long I could keep him on the line, I went straight to the only question I really cared about. “Where were you the night Sharon Steele was killed?”

There was laughter on the other end of the phone. Then, Matt said, “I guess you really must have your head up your ass. All that shit’s blocking your ears. Haven’t you heard? I was home all night. Watching TV with my lovely family. Where do you think I was?”

I decided to challenge him. What did I have to lose? I said, “That’s bullshit. I know you weren’t home.”

“Listen up, a*shole. You can know it, but you’ll never show it. I didn’t kill that bitch, no matter what you think. Don’t get me wrong, I sure would have liked to, but her old man beat me to it.” He laughed again, seemingly delighted by the idea.

“Listen Matt—”

“No, you listen. You get yourself a pen and some paper, and you write this shit down so your dumb ass won’t forget it. I got friends, motherf*cker. And I can call them same as I called you. You stay away from my f*cking family. You hear me?”

I heard him alright. The blood was pounding in my ears, but I heard him.

“What’s the matter, a*shole? You run out of things to say? You ain’t so full of questions now, are you? Take some advice from me and keep it that way. Don’t be running around town asking all kinds of ignorant questions, and stay the f*ck away from my family. You don’t, and some friends of mine will have to pay you a little visit. And trust me, a stupid f*cker like you won’t be hard to find.”

The line went dead and I went numb.

An hour later, I was having lunch with Reilly and I told him about everything so far, with an emphasis on Matt’s threats. We sat outside by the fountain at California Plaza, eating deli sandwiches and shielding our eyes from the sun.

“Don’t worry about it.” Reilly waved my concern off with the palm of his hand. “Guys in prison got nothing better to do than make threatening phone calls. He’s in prison. He can’t do anything.”

“What about his friends?”

“What friends? Christ, Ollie, you’re being irrational. Look, even if he has friends — and I wouldn’t be too quick to assume he does — people don’t run around breaking kneecaps without getting paid for it. You think this guy’s got money for something like that?” Reilly shook his head and chewed a bite of his Reuben.

It sounded reasonable. But what did Reilly know? Breaking kneecaps? Who talks like that? “Okay,” I said, “but what about this Ray Gee guy?”

“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 f*ck around, motherf*cker. 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 a*shole, 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.