Rage

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “Sydney had trouble coping,” I said.

  “Sydney was a spoiled bitch who became a lawyer for status and fulfillment. After we split, she tried to get herself a private practice job but it didn’t work out. Meanwhile, the divorce lawyers are looting whatever’s left. Her mother finally died and left her enough to get herself a place in the Palisades along with a small monthly allowance. The zip code’s right but it’s a dump and she doesn’t maintain it. She was always hyper, now I hear she’s downright manic.”

  He looked to me for confirmation. I said, “What happened to her private practice job?”

  “Ah, that,” said Boestling, smiling. “Unfortunately, her boss received a copy of that pesky lab report. So did every other serious criminal defense firm in town. Now, who’d do something so vengeful?” He yawned.

  “And you told Daney’s seminary about him.”

  “I figured I was doing the Lord’s work. Thanks for the memories, Doc. Time to get back to real life.”

  “You said Daney should have thanked you.”

  “Damn straight he should’ve. I got Sydney and him meetings with some serious people.”

  “To make a film?”

  “No, to make Polish sausage, yeah a film. A feature, not TV. Sydney made a big point of that, her attitude was always I was TV so I was low on the food chain. Her project was going to be stars and a substantial shooting budget. The two of them thought they had the greatest story ever told. But who did they come to when they wanted references?”

  “Was the story the Kristal Malley murder?” I said.

  “Yup,” said Boestling. “Two kids kill another kid and go to jail. Not exactly Titanic.”

  “Whose idea was it?”

  “Can’t say for sure, but my bet is Daney was your typical delusional jerk and he infected Sydney.” He snickered. “Along with other things.”

  “You know for a fact that he gave her the clap?”

  “Or it was one of the other five thousand dicks she rode. He’s the one I saw, so I’m putting a face on it— so to speak.” He shrugged. “For all I know it was the other kid’s lawyer, some Latino guy.”

  “Lauritz Montez,” I said. “She slept with him, too?”

  “For sure.”

  “How do you— ”

  “When Sydney first started on the case, she did nothing but bad-mouth Montez. Stupid, no experience, an albatross who was going to drag her down. Then, a couple weeks in, she started taking late meetings with him. Lots of late meetings. Working on a joint defense. I bought it until I caught her with that scumbag Daney and finally stopped being the densest moron in the galaxy. The only joint defense going on was when Montez tucked his dick back in his pants.”

  I said nothing.

  Boestling said, “Just another waltz down memory lane. Now if you— ”

  “Did Sydney say anything about the Malley case that you thought was unusual?”

  “This is about that? After all these years?” he said. “What’s Daney suspected of?”

  “Can’t get into details. Sorry.”

  “One-way conversation.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “Well, unfortunately for you, all Sydney told me was that her client was a murderous little monster and there was no way she was going to get him off. Seen her recently?”

  “I tried to talk to her a few days ago. She got very upset— ”

  “And went nuts on you and started screaming, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Good old Sydney,” he said. “Freaking out was always her technique. In court she was real controlled, but outside, anyone tried to disagree with her she’d just blast out with this wall of Indy 500 noise. At me, the boys, her parents.” He shook his head. “Amazing what I put up with. My second wife was a different story. Mellow, couldn’t be sweeter. Dead in the sack, though. Eventually, I’ll find the right combination.”

  He got up and headed back toward his store. I walked with him, pressed for more details about the movie.

  “Never saw a script. Never got involved directly. Don’t forget, I was just a TV guy.”

  “You were good enough to set up meetings,” I said.

  “Exactly.” He scratched his chin. “I did all kinds of stupid things back then. Had a little substance-abuse problem that clouded my judgment. I’m talking to you in the first place because my sponsor says I need to be honest with the world.”

  Same thing Nina Balquist had said. How much of what passed for honesty nowadays was atonement?

  I said, “I appreciate that.”

  “I’m doing it for myself,” said Boestling. “Should’ve been a lot more selfish when it counted.”

  * * *

  I drove to Beverly Hills and caught Lauritz Montez exiting the court building on Burton and Civic Center. The double-wide briefcase he toted dragged at his right shoulder as he headed for the rear parking lot.

  “Mr. Montez.”

  An eyebrow lifted but he never broke step. I caught up.

  “What now?”

  “A reliable source tells me you and Sydney had more than a business relationship.”

  “And who might that be?”

  “Can’t say.”

  No answer.

  I said, “Tell me about Sydney’s movie ambitions.”

  “Why would I know anything about that?”

  “Funny,” I said. “You didn’t say ‘what movie?’ ”

  We entered the lot and he walked to a ten-year-old gray Corvette, put his case on the ground. “You’re getting annoying.”

  “Judge Laskin’s retired but he’s got friends. I’m sure the judiciary and the bar association would be thrilled to know how you comported yourself during a major case.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Heaven forbid,” I said. “Then again, maybe you’d rather file indictment forms in Compton for the next twenty years.”

  “You’re a real piece of work,” he said, keeping his voice low. “My money says LAPD has no idea what you’re doing.”

  I held out my cell phone. “Speed-dial five.” Which would’ve connected him to my dentist.

  He didn’t take it. A Beverly Hills cop drove past us in a brand-new Suburban. One officer, all that curb weight. Gas economy doesn’t mean much in 90210.

  I pocketed the phone.

  Montez said, “What do you really want?” His voice wavered on the last two words.

  “What you know about the movie and anything else you can tell me about Sydney and the Daneys.”

  He backed away, positioned himself between the Corvette’s scoop-nose and the parking lot wall.

  “The Daneys,” he said, smiling coldly. “Always figured them for your typical Jesus freak hypocrites, and I was right.”

  “Right, how?”

  “Daney was doing Sydney any way he wanted.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Saw her going down on him in her car. In the parking lot, after dark. Asked her about it the next day and she screamed at me to fuck off and get out of her life.”

  “Which parking lot?”

  “County jail.”

  Same place she’d offered her baby blue BMW for the interview with Jane Hannabee. “High-risk behavior,” I said.

  “That was the thrill for Sydney.”

  “So Daney broke the eighth commandment,” I said. “What made his wife a hypocrite?”

  “C’mon,” said Montez. “She had to know. Sydney and Daney were hooking up all the time, how couldn’t she know?” He worked his lips as if to spit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “She rubbed me the wrong way. Psychobabble-spouting airhead. The only one she cared about was Troy, I couldn’t get her to even talk to Rand. You really care, you reach out to everyone.”

  “Why’d you want her involved?”

  “Character reference.”

  “Why’d she favor Troy?”

  “They both did. Because they knew Troy from before,” he said. “He was one of their do-gooder projects
at 415 City. Which shows you how effective they were.”

  “Rand wasn’t a project.”

  “Rand never got into big-time trouble until he met up with Troy, so he never had the benefit of their wise counsel. Not that it would’ve made a difference, like I told you.”

  “The script.”

  “If you don’t believe there’s a script for everything, you don’t deserve that Ph.D.”

  “What happened with the real script?”

  “Sydney’s movie? What do you think? Nothing happened. This is L.A.”

  “What was the story line?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Never read it?”

  “No way, this was top secret. Don’t even know if there was a script.” He pulled out a remote and disarmed the Corvette’s alarm. Moving around me, he opened the door.

  “What was there?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Suit yourself,” I said and clicked open my phone.

  He said, “All I saw was a summary, okay? A treatment Sydney called it. Only reason I knew about it was I found it in her desk when I was looking for matches.” Tiny smile. “I like to smoke afterward.”

  “You and she got it on at the office?”

  “Those cheap government desks are good for something.”

  “What did the treatment say?”

  “The names were changed but it was basically Kristal Malley. Except in her story, the boys had been manipulated by the kid’s father into killing her.”

  “What was his motive?”

  “It didn’t say, we’re talking two paragraphs. Sydney came back from the john, saw me reading, tore it out of my hand, and did the old scream bit. I said, ‘Interesting theory, maybe we can use it for real.’ She freaked out and kicked my ass. Literally, she kicked me.” He rubbed his rump. “She had on these pointy pumps, it hurt like hell.”

  “So the treatment was written before the case closed.”

  “Before the formal sentencing, but everyone knew how it was going to go down.”

  I said, “Whose idea was the deal?”

  “Sydney proposed it, Laskin accepted. She lied and told him I’d agreed. I ended up agreeing anyway, because I thought it was the best I could do for Rand.”

  “Get the boys started on their sentence and party with co-counsel,” I said.

  “It wasn’t like that,” he said. “That night— her desk— was after we’d done the bulk of our work. That’s when Sydney and I really started getting it on. Before that, it was only minor stuff. We kept it outside the office.”

  “Motels?”

  “None of your business.”

  “In her car?”

  “You want to be a judgmental prick, go ahead. It’s no crime to have fun.”

  “Fun till she started kicking you.”

  “She was insane,” he said, “but let me tell you. She had her talents.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Nymphomaniac,” said Milo. “To use a quaint old term.”

  He blew cigar smoke into the air. The way the air felt today, he was cleansing it. “Not that I’m nostalgic for quaint old terms. Having borne the brunt of such.”

  “ ‘Queer’ is common parlance now,” I said.

  “So’s ‘niggah’ if you’re Snoop Dogg. Try it on some dude at Main and Sixty-ninth and see how many giggles you get.”

  Smoke rings floated upward, wiggled and dissipated. We were two blocks from the station, walking slowly, thinking in silence, talking in bursts.

  “So everyone’s screwing everyone,” he said. “Literally and otherwise. You think Weider’s story line pinning it on Malley was fiction? Or did she and Daney latch onto something eight years ago? Like Malley not being Kristal’s father. Like Troy telling Weider that Malley had put him up to it.”

  “Montez jokingly suggested to Weider that they use it as a red herring and she freaked out. Maybe that was more than keeping her hot idea under wraps.”

  “She’s got exculpatory evidence but conceals it. Because her main goal isn’t defending Troy, it’s cutting a film deal. Cold. As in what passes for morality in Hollywood.”

  I said, “If Weider needed to rationalize, she could’ve. Malley pulled the strings but the boys did the actual murder and were going down for a long time, no matter what. She said as much to Marty Boestling. Her advice to Troy would’ve been keep quiet, I’ll get you out of jail quickly and you’ll be rich. That would explain his fantasy of wealth.”

  “Troy was a streetwise little thug, Alex. Think he’d buy it?”

  “He was also a thirteen-year-old with no future,” I said. “Kids flock to Hollywood every day believing in Rich and Famous. Still, because he was a kid, his patience couldn’t be relied on indefinitely. Maybe Troy’s death wasn’t Malley’s doing, after all.”

  He bit down on the cigar. Choppy smoke created a jagged halo. Picking a scrap of tobacco from his tongue, he spat and frowned. “Weider was a P.D.; she’d have known how to connect to a guy like Nestor Almedeira.”

  “Maybe so would Daney,” I said. “Working with disadvantaged youth. He and Cherish both visited Troy.”

  “Daney was the white guy Nestor talked about, not Malley? Jesus.” Puff puff. “Yeah, it could go that way as easily as Cherish being Jacqueline the Ripper. Especially ’cause I’ve got no real evidence for either scenario.”

  He dropped the cigar, ground it out on the sidewalk, waited until the butt cooled, and pocketed it.

  “What a good citizen,” I said.

  “Enough dirt in this city. So how would Rand’s murder fit with a Weider-Drew thing?”

  “Same as with a Cherish-Barnett thing. Rand was never in the loop so he was allowed to live. Somehow, he figured out the truth behind Kristal’s death and made himself a target.”

  “The truth being Malley’s revenge, because he wasn’t Kristal’s daddy.”

  “That seems to be the constant,” I said. “Any progress on the DNA?”

  “Filled out a requisition, waiting to hear from the muck-a-mucks. I’d still like to know how and when Cherish started sleeping with Barnett. But now maybe we know the why: payback for Drew screwing around.”

  “Makes sense. The waitress at Patty’s said Cherish and Barnett had only been there once before and she’s been working there for years. Cherish chose Patty’s because she knew it from her seminary days— Wascomb used to meet there with students. But the two of them could have other spots.”

  “Their main spot was the motel. I’ll go by there and see what the clerks have to say.”

  “Another possibility,” I said, “is Cherish snitched Rand out to Drew, not Barnett.”

  “She’s cheating on Drew. Why would she confide in him?”

  “She didn’t have to confide, just mention that Rand seemed really nervous, was dropping hints about Troy. Because she suspected that Drew played a role in Troy’s murder and if she could get him to eliminate Rand, it would save Barnett the trouble.”

  “Dutiful girlfriend posing as a dutiful wife,” he said. “That’s manipulation elevated to an art form. Wascomb said she was a spiritual girl.”

  “Wascomb hasn’t learned the fine points of cynicism.”

  He took out another cigar, left it in its plastic wrapper, and rolled it nimbly from finger to finger. Nifty little trick; I’d never seen it before.

  “There’s another manipulation to think about,” I said. “Drew’s story about the black truck was the reason we started looking seriously at Barnett Malley. But given what we’ve learned about him, we need to consider that he was playing us.”

  “Not afraid of Malley, just wanting to point us in Malley’s direction.”

  “Unfortunately for Drew, it got us looking closely at him.”

  “Three dead kids,” he said. “Maybe two teams of murderers.”

  We turned a corner. “Alex, now I’m thinking I need to take Jane Hannabee more seriously as a related crime. If Troy told his mommy about the movie and she wanted in, that would’ve made her a pr
oblem for Sydney and Drew.”

  “An addict down on her luck,” I said, “she’d definitely want in.”

  “We were saying Cherish coulda known where Jane slept, being Jane’s spiritual adviser, but the same applies to Drew.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “This is growing like cancer. You ever find out how much the Daneys are sucking from the county tit?”