“Your kid has some mouth on him, Burton,” Lytell said to my father.
“He’s right, Mike,” the Sheriff said. “Hold him. Judge Azenberg will issue the order.”
“Barry Kornbluth will have a conniption.”
“Barry Kornbluth should be worried about disbarment,” I said. “He’s played real loose with the facts of this case.”
“He’s not going to be disbarred,” Lytell insisted.
“Ah,” I said, “of course he’s not. How stupid of me. For a moment there, I almost forgot about the San Remo old boys’ network.”
“There is no San Remo old boys’ network,” Lytell stated defensively.
“Yeah, and someday chickens will grow teeth.”
Lytell looked at my father. “What did I tell you?”
“I think we should get on with this,” ADA Skip Wilder said. “What do you want to do about arresting Senior?”
Lytell sighed. “What do you think, Burt?” he asked my father.
“I say we arrest.”
“Skip?”
“I agree with Burton.”
After a while, Lytell sank back into his chair. “Okay. My office will prepare the paperwork.”
We all stood.
“This poor son of a bitch has lost everything,” Lytell muttered. “First his money. Now his freedom. I feel sorry for him. It’s a very sad story.”
“Feeding addictive narcotics to children is a sad story,” I said. “Holding a lowlife dip shit accountable for his despicable behavior is called justice.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
I had been parked in front of the house on Loretto Drive for over an hour. It was a refurbished Colonial, the columned front of which put me in mind of Leslie Howard’s manse in Gone With the Wind.
It stood on nearly two acres of mountainous terrain, its foundation carved into a stretch of leveled expanse midway up the hillside. It was a massive structure, looming tall above the homes in the valley below. There was parking for what must have been twenty cars. The mansion’s second-floor picture windows, with their white, slatted shutters, overlooked the Pacific. Further up the mountainside, a tiered area had been bulldozed to accommodate a swimming pool, and higher still, on yet another leveled tier, a tennis court.
I watched as the Prius hybrid made its way up Loretto, past where I was parked. It turned right at the front gate of the Colonial and began to climb the hill toward the big house. Suddenly it stopped and lingered on the driveway for several moments. Then it carefully executed a U-turn and came back down to Loretto. It turned left and pulled up behind my cruiser.
Margaret de Winter stepped out of the Prius. After a moment’s hesitation, she headed in my direction. I was already out of the car when she reached me.
She was wearing snug-fitting jeans and a slate gray hoodie. Her auburn hair was tied in a ponytail, which emphasized her beautifully sculpted face. She wore no makeup.
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.”
“And you thought the most efficient way of doing that was to surveil my father’s house?”
“Something like that.”
“What is it, Buddy?”
I couldn’t quite find the words I was seeking.
“Quit phumphering,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Me, too,” I said.
“You, too, what?”
“I think I love you.”
A glut of emotional responses flashed rapidly across her face, then just as quickly vanished. “You think?”
“Okay. I know. I love you.”
“There’s another shoe that hasn’t dropped yet, isn’t there?”
“Can we at least take a moment to appreciate what I told you?”
“Sure.” She stood quietly for a moment.
“Now, what didn’t you tell me?”
I had difficulty finding the right words so I remained silent.
“This is turning bleaker by the moment,” she said. “Tell me everything you came here to say or I’m getting back in my car.”
Finally I spoke. “When I first met you, I was collecting information regarding your family.”
“I remember.”
“It wasn’t my intention to fall in love with you.”
“Ditto.”
“I never meant to hurt you.”
“Come on, Buddy, out with it.”
“I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“You’re referring to your ethics?”
“Yes.”
“This has something to do with my family?”
“It does.”
“With my father?”
“And your brothers.”
“Do you want to be more specific?”
“There’s enough evidence to bring criminal charges against them.”
“All of them?”
“I’m not certain about Barry, Junior.”
“What will happen to them?”
“That will be up to the courts to decide. But the odds favor jail time. Likely for your father, and surely for Hickey, if he ever turns up.”
She started to say something but thought better of it. She turned as if to walk away but thought better of that, too. She glared at me.
I lowered my eyes. “I’m sorry, Maggie. This isn’t how I wanted things to be.”
“What about Barry?”
“The Reverend?”
“Yes.”
“Uncertain. My guess would be no jail time. Probation, maybe. Public service. Again, it’s not really my table.”
“So it’s your plan to bring down my entire family.”
“It isn’t a plan.”
“But when we met, you were veering in that direction.”
“They’re not innocents, Maggie. They did manage to break several laws which, by the way, I took an oath to uphold. Narcotics trafficking. Tax evasion. Murder. Take your pick. I’m here because I didn’t want you to be blindsided.”
She reached down and scooped up a handful of pebbles that she proceeded to toss one at a time into the weeds by the side of the road. “You have to do what you have to do, Buddy.”
When she finished tossing the stones, she looked at me for several moments. “I realize these bozos are out of control. They were sleazeballs to begin with and then they got taken to the cleaners.”
She struggled to find the right words. “I lived with my head in the sand, Buddy. I took their money and looked the other way. For what it’s worth, I’m hunting for a different direction.”
She looked down and kicked at a few random stones in the road. “It’s so ironic when you think about it. You wander around, always expecting that one day you’ll meet someone who counts. You look high and low. You try not to lose hope. Then one day, there he is. You know it in an instant. You lose whatever control you may have thought you had over your emotions. You blindly jump with both feet and pray you land safely. Then life rises up and bites you in the ass.”
She walked to her car, and once there, looked back at me. “It could never have worked between us.”
She shook her head once, climbed into the Prius and drove away.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Barry Long, Senior, looked up when Johnny Kennerly and I entered his office. A frown creased his forehead. “What do you two bozos want?”
“I have to ask you to come with us,” I said.
“Why?”
“I have a warrant for your arrest.” Johnny stepped over to him and cuffed him.
“Now wait just a minute,” Long said. “I want to exercise my right to phone my lawyer.”
“That’ll have to wait until you get to the station,” Kennerly said.
“Like hell, it’ll have to wait.” He tried to kick Johnny in
the leg but he evaded it. “Do you know who I am?” Senior Long huffed.
“I know who you were,” I said. “Who you are now has yet to be determined.”
***
The bank had provided enough signed checks to confirm Barry Long, Senior’s involvement in the illicit drug operation. I was amazed at how cavalier he had been. He assumed that by destroying his files, he would walk free.
He never surmised he would be sabotaged from within. It was his trusted CPA who toppled his house of cards. It was his friend, Oliver Darien, who decimated it.
“Birds of a feather,” I mused.
I drove up the winding driveway and was greeted in the motor court by Barry Long, Junior. Instead of being surrounded by a cadre of thugs, he was accompanied only by his wife, Catharine, and his son, Barry Three.
When I got out of the cruiser, the Reverend approached and extended his hand. “Welcome.”
I didn’t accept his handshake. “Thank you for seeing me.”
I nodded to Catharine, who held my gaze.
“Come in,” Barry said.
He, Catharine, and I trailed after Three, who had raced ahead of us, bounding onto the porch and into the house, allowing the big screen door to slam shut behind him.
“Five-year-old energy,” the Reverend said. “Totally exhausting.”
Catharine called out to someone named Esperanza, who then appeared with Barry Three in tow.
“Esta bien,” Esperanza said.
Catharine nodded.
The front hallway and the living room beyond were filled with cardboard boxes, all of them labeled, all bulging at the seams. Everything else had been removed. The walls were bare. Tables stood absent the lamps or tchotchkes that had adorned them.
As the Reverend led us to his study, he commented, “We’re moving out this weekend.”
The study had likewise been rendered bare. A few chairs remained, but most everything else had been packed up and loaded out.
The three of us sat.
“I’d offer you something,” Catharine said. “But I have nothing left to offer.”
I nodded.
“We realized we’d have to turn the house over to whomever the court-appointed conservator might be. So we figured, why wait?”
“For the District Attorney’s directive, for one thing,” I said.
“We’ve spoken with Mr. Lytell and have assured him that, although we intend to leave Freedom, we will keep him apprised as to our whereabouts.”
“Hopefully, you’ll do a better job of it than you did earlier regarding Catharine’s whereabouts.”
The Reverend moved quickly away from having to deal with that statement. “Mr. Lytell confided that he has no immediate plans to indict us.”
Then, with a quick glance at Catharine, he said, “I meant to say he has no plans to indict me.”
Catharine’s attentions were tightly focused on her husband. I stared at her for a few moments, then turned back to the Reverend. “So you have no remorse, is that the case?”
“Regarding?”
“Everything that happened. Keeping your wife imprisoned, for openers.”
“It was a mistake,” he said.
“A mistake?”
“I made any number of errors in judgment, Sheriff Steel. The first was ceding so much authority over my affairs to my father and brother. I had no idea they were engaged in any criminal activities.”
“Which still doesn’t excuse your complicity with regard to Catharine’s imprisonment.”
“I came to realize that, but too late.”
Once again he shot a glance at his wife. “Catharine learned before I did about the dire state of our finances. She confronted Hickey. They argued. She threatened to contact the authorities. Hickey had already placed her in the cell by the time I found out.”
“And you did nothing about it.”
“I told you I made judgment errors. That was one of them.”
“But none of that makes you any less accountable for your actions.”
“I see that now.”
We sat quietly for a while.
Emboldened by the silence, the Reverend spoke out with a great deal of self-assurance. “I’ve emerged from this a better man. Catharine stands beside me. My son is with me. It’s true I lost my fortune, but I regained my faith. I still have the ear of God, who has forgiven me. And my dedication to helping the poor and unfortunate has been renewed and strengthened.”
Catherine flashed Barry a look of abject disgust. She got up from her chair and stood over him. “You know something, Barry,” she snarled, “you are totally full of shit.”
Jolted, the Reverend faced her, concern spreading over his upturned face.
“You and your self-righteous father and your deplorable brother. You’re all full of shit. You’re nothing but a trio of inept con men. And for your information, I don’t stand beside you. I’m not like your sister. The truth is, you sicken me.”
She looked toward the door. Jeffrey Bruce, the former intern, had wandered in and was leaning against it. She turned back to the Reverend. “It’s over, Barry,” she said.
A thin sheen of perspiration had appeared on his forehead. “What are you talking about? Why is he here?”
“The Barry Long, Junior, show has closed,” Catharine said. “I’m running it now. Tomorrow’s Los Angeles Times will exclusively headline the story of how you and your family kidnapped me and held me captive. And on Friday, I’ll be Katie Couric’s only guest.”
Jeffrey meandered over to Catharine and rested his hand on her shoulder. She smiled at him and turned back to the Reverend.
“Did you know that Jeffrey here has a new calling?”
Barry stared at her blank-eyed. She went on. “He’s joined the Noble Agency, and will be representing me and packaging my TV show, which, by the way, will be syndicated both domestically and abroad.
“Three and I will be appearing together and we plan to deliver a powerful message of hope and redemption to those who once had faith in you. Just like I did. But it’s my show now, Barry, and it’s sure to be a huge success. Thanks to my agent here, I’ll be extremely well compensated for it.”
Jeffrey grinned then flashed the Reverend a disparaging glance.
Catharine railed on. “While you and your family are defending yourselves against the criminal lawsuit I’ll be slapping you with, my son and I will be raising our voices in praise of a God who saw fit to release us from your oppression. Who gave me the courage to stand up for my own rights and to also act as a spokesperson for the rights of women everywhere.”
“Worldwide,” Jeffrey added.
“Oh, and Barry,” Catharine said, “just FYI, I filed for divorce this morning. No more community property, in case you thought you’d be sharing in the proceeds.”
The full weight of all this had begun to register with Reverend Barry. “Catharine, Catharine,” he pleaded. “Can’t we at least talk this over?”
Catharine reached back and delivered a roundhouse blow to the Reverend’s face. He recoiled and grabbed his cheek.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to be held captive, Barry? Against your will? Scared out of your wits?”
All sad-eyed and contrite, Barry whined, “I told you how much I regretted that, Catharine. I thought you had forgiven me. That we were still a family.”
“You’re toast, Barry. And just when things were going so well for you.”
She picked up her bag and gave me one last glance. She and Jeffrey headed for the door.
Then she stopped to glare at Reverend Barry once again. “In case you’re interested, the show is titled, Rise Up.”
Chapter Fifty-nine
The first few drops of a misting rain began to fall as I exited the Ralphs and headed for my cruiser.
Ralphs was t
he largest supermarket in Freedom, yet on this particular Sunday morning, the parking lot was mostly empty. I had stocked up for the week and as I loaded my two shopping bags into the backseat, I noticed that the egg carton, which had been carefully placed at the top of one of the bags, was dripping. When I opened it, I spotted two cracked eggs.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I picked up the dripping carton, and had begun berating myself for not having checked it before leaving the market, when I became aware of Hickham Long, standing beside the car parked adjacent to mine, pointing a Glock .22 semi-automatic pistol at me. He had a look of self-satisfaction on his lopsided face.
“Well, well, well,” he said. “Would you looky here. Is this an incredible coincidence or what?”
“Are you done?”
“Done? I haven’t even started.”
“Do me a favor, Hickey. If you’re planning to shoot me, just do it and spare me the sound of your voice.”
“A smart ass to the end. It’s amazing how difficult you made things for us.”
“What’s amazing is how difficult you made things for yourself.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“It’s the only way of looking at it. Put the gun down, Hickey. Turn yourself in.”
“Not likely.”
“What did you do with the money?”
“What money?”
“Surely you can lie better than that. Where is it?”
Hickey glared at me but didn’t speak.
“I’m guessing you settled up with the Blackbirds,” I said. “Took the heat off of your old man. Anything to win his approval. Isn’t that right, Hickey? Daddy’s devoted son.”
“Shut up, asshole.”
“Actually it’s Sheriff Asshole. You’re done, Hickey. Time to cash out.”
The rain began to fall in earnest, soaking us both.
“And if I did?”
“You’d probably pull a lifer.”
“I’d probably pull a lethal.”
“Not likely. Not in California. The bleeding heart liberals out here hate lethals. You’re more likely to live to a ripe old age in a snazzy San Quentin guest dwelling. Big screen TV. En suite bath and shower. Room service. Hell, you might even make someone a lovely wife. Livin’ it up at the Hotel California.”
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