But the air inside the carnicera belied the blight outside with its smells of peppers, molé sauces, slow cooked pork and refried beans. Despite the desperate starvation on the surrounding streets, the food in this tiny lunch spot was good and plentiful.
A skinny white guy in his late twenties approached me the instant I arrived. “Mr. Olson?”
“Yeah.”
“Ed Snyder,” the man said, offering his hand and a glowing smile. “Man, it’s good to meet you.” He went on, shaking his hand and nodding his head, sending his overgrown curly hair into a bobbing wave. He wore vintage clothes and stood with a relaxed posture, suggesting he was never concerned about much. A hipster journalist with a cultivated go-with-the-flow air, but always on the lookout for his big break.
“Good to meet you,” I replied, glancing at the long counter where they took the orders.
“You ever eat here before?” Ed asked.
“No.”
“Oh man, this place is the best. I mean it’s great.” Ed immediately began rattling off his order in Spanish and joking with the cooks. Ed was a regular. When it was my turn, I ordered with as few words as possible to hide the fact that I knew no Spanish whatsoever. The food was served on plastic plates on orange plastic trays, cafeteria style. Ed chose a table in the back where no one would hear us.
“So,” Ed began, “I was wondering if I was ever going to hear from you.”
“Yeah, well, the only reason I’m even talking to you instead of going straight to the police is because I’m not sure I’m safe. I need to make sure someone else knows what’s happened.” I handed Ed the copies I’d made of the documents and photographs. “I’m giving you this because I’m worried about my safety. I’m being followed and someone’s already been through my apartment looking for this information.”
Ed took the file and slid it under his tray. He never took his eyes off of me. He wore no expression. He had the air of a man who’d had many of these kinds of conversations and knew exactly how to behave. He took a bite of his enchilada and waited for me to continue.
I told him the story, from the beginning up through my trashed apartment and the file full of pictures, deeds, and notes. Ed never so much as flinched. He smiled a few times, but otherwise showed no reaction one way or the other. By the time I finished my story, Ed was done eating. He pushed himself back from the table and leaned his chair against the wall.
“So it sounds to me like Steele did it.”
“Well, yeah, it’s definitely a possibility.”
“So what’s the problem? Not that I’m complaining, I’d love to scoop this story, but why not just go to the police?”
“Because even if they do arrest Steele, Andersen’s still out there. The guy who’s been following me is still out there. I’m still in danger as far as I can tell.”
“Hmmmm.” Ed leaned his head back and thought for a second. “You’ve got a point, but it only seems to make sense if there’s something more to it. I mean, yeah, Steele wants to protect his career, but Andersen doesn’t seem to have much to lose and has probably kept his fingers clean enough to stay out of trouble. So what, he was sleeping with Steele, it’s not his fault Steele killed his wife.”
“Yeah, but you should have heard him on the phone. He sounded like—” I struggled for words. “Like a guy who had something to lose. I don’t know.” I wolfed down half a taco and waited for Ed to speak.
“Well, what if it’s not about Steele?” Ed sat forward and leaned in, talking low. “I mean, what if there’s something more to it? Okay, if we get rid of the whole Bishop story, right? Forget about Bishop, let’s assume that whole thing is just coincidence, just people confused about timing, right?”
I nodded and finished the taco.
“Alright. Well, that doesn’t change the rest of the facts. For example, we know that grandpa found the door open when he came out a couple days later. Assuming that’s true and grandpa’s not just senile, then someone went into that house. Maybe they were trying to fuck up the crime scene, but maybe they were looking for something.” Ed raised his eyebrows and leaned back again, obviously impressed with his own suggestion.
“But what?” I stirred the refried beans on my plate with a plastic fork.
“Shit, I dunno, maybe they had a Van Gogh hanging on the wall. All I’m saying is that the police seemed to have completed most of their investigation on the night of the murder. To me that means that anyone going back in the house wasn’t interested in the crime scene. I mean, if you really thought there was still an investigation going on, you’d be fucking crazy to go in there. You’d only go in there if you knew the investigation was over and you were there for something else. Who knows what the history between Andersen and Steele is? Maybe they had some kind of shady shit going on that Andersen was going back in to cover up? Maybe he’s afraid of that shady shit coming back to haunt him.”
I was trying to process everything Ed was saying, but he was on a roll and speaking fast.
“Look, I’ve been doing a lot of research, asking a lot of questions. It seems to me that Steele was mixing with some pretty sketchy business people. I mean, he was getting ready to propose legislation to open up the Alaskan Wilderness Preserve for drilling. That was a position he never would have taken even six month earlier. It was a complete turn-around. So who knows what he was into? Hell, maybe the wife found something else entirely and that’s why he killed her.”
I watched Ed’s excitement build and suddenly got the feeling that Ed was about to launch into a massive conspiracy theory. I’ve gotten involved with a nutcase, I told myself, and resolved to get the hell out of there if Ed so much as whispered the word “Kennedy.”
“Maybe.” Ed paused and pointed as he spoke. “Maybe.” I could see that Ed’s mind was getting ahead of him. “Just, maybe, there’s something else out there, some other information. This is really a big story. I mean, this is huge.”
Ed was rambling now and I could see I needed to control the conversation. “Look,” I interjected. “I don’t know if there was something more going on here. Frankly, I don’t really want to know. I just want out of this thing. I need to get a handle on Andersen, I need to know that I can go to the police with what I’ve got and come away from this thing clean. You know? I’m not trying to be a hero here. I’ve got a life I’m trying to get back.”
Ed listened with an expression of disappointment. “Wait a minute, man. You’ve gotta check under every rock before you go public. You can’t just know half the story when you go to the cops because they’re certainly not going to do the legwork. I mean, they already convicted Steele once, if you’ve got half the evidence you say you’ve got it’ll be a slam dunk to convict him again, regardless of whether he’s really guilty. Shit. Did it ever occur to you that you’re not really in any danger? I mean, they don’t know what you know. They went through your place to see if they could find anything. They’re watching you to see if you do anything crazy or if you turn up any real evidence.”
“I hope that’s all it is. I mean, Andersen’s a rich lawyer, why would he get mixed up in something like this?”
“Exactly.” Ed was back to pointing again when he spoke.
“Well, shit, so what’d’ya think? What now?”
“Okay, look, what’s going to protect you is publicity. If everyone is paying attention to you, then these guys won’t risk anything, they’ll have to leave you alone. What we’ll do is double team them. I’ll write the story. I’ll take what you’ve got here and I’ll write it. I may not be able to make tomorrow’s paper, so you might have to hide out for a couple of days, just lay really low. But the morning the story comes out, you go straight to the police and hand them all the evidence. They’ll arrest Steele and the media frenzy will focus on you long enough to keep you safe while the cops haul Andersen and anyone else they can think of in for questioning. Trust me, whoever the goon is they’ve hired to follow you ain’t going to do a damned thing with that much attention on you — and
especially not without orders from whoever the boss is.”
It sounded good to me.
“So look. To make that happen we’re both going to have to move quick. I have to take what you’ve got here,” he patted the file, “and go through it, check facts, put something together, and talk with the editor. You need to go out to that place in Topanga and see what’s there.”
“Whoa! Whoa! I’m not about to—”
“Don’t worry, man. No one’s following you right now. No one knows you’re here. I’ll drop you off at a rental car place, you rent some four door Chevy or something and cruise on up and check it out. No one knows she bought this place. It’s cool. Look, it’s the only thing we don’t know a damned thing about. Shit, the place probably isn’t even there. But we need to know. It’s gotta be checked before we go to the press. I’m not gonna have time to go out there.”
Ed was the first one who’d made any sense in quite awhile. I took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and shook my head. “Alright, if we gotta do it, we gotta do it. You’re right, no one knows I’m here. I’ll just run up there and then lay low.”
Ed smiled. His eyes were wide and bright. His curly hair stuck out like a fluffy halo around his head. I could see his excitement, it radiated from him. It was at that moment that I realized I’d just handed a hard-working young reporter his first huge story.
Ten minutes later, Ed dropped me off at Hertz so I could rent an appropriate car. I lingered by the open door as I got out of his car.
“Okay, man. Sneak on up to that place in Topanga and let me know if you find anything. I’ll be shocked if there’s anything there at all. Call me as soon as you get back, leave me a detailed message if I’m not there. We gotta move quickly if we’re gonna get this story out in the next day or two.”
“Will do. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
“Alright. I’ll be in touch later today. Thanks a lot, man.” Ed patted the file on the seat. “Good thing you got this to me. It’s always best to spread information around. And besides, it’s never safe to keep all your eggs in one basket. Know what I mean?” I nodded, unsure but playing along.
“We’re gonna blow this thing wide open.” Ed laughed as I closed the door and stared at a long row of identical four-door sedans.
26
I didn’t want to go alone. Fortunately, I caught Liz on her cell and convinced her to go with me. I picked her up in front of a coffee shop in Westwood. She was still lugging her backpack, in addition to a large iced latte.
“Nice ride.” She smiled, as she threw the backpack in the back seat and climbed in the front. “Did you get rid of the Beemer? Did you finally come to your senses and reclaim your soul?”
“Don’t start.” I smiled. “It’s been a rough day. I can’t believe we’re even doing this.”
I told her all the details of my meeting with Ed. We drove out on Sunset, through the Pacific Palisades and continued past Temescal Canyon and on toward the ocean. The road descended away from the shops and restaurants in the village, down the final tight curves to where Sunset suddenly burst around a corner to reveal the wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Sunset Boulevard finally butted up against the Pacific Coast Highway at an intersection perpetually clogged with traffic. On the ocean side of PCH sat a parking lot for a seaside restaurant and little else but sand, surf, and the jagged rocks of the breakwater. We turned right and headed up PCH toward Malibu.
The Topanga Canyon road winds its way through the part of the Santa Monica mountains that sit between the Palisades and Malibu. Though only twenty minutes from the city, it is one of the final vestiges of rustic country living to be found in the area around Los Angeles. Countless smaller roads barely wider than a single lane angle off the main road and up the steep mountainside, ultimately disappearing into the wilderness of low trees, sage brush, and rocks that line the canyon walls.
We went through the small collection of buildings that functions as the town of Topanga, with its odd shops and quaint restaurants, and then turned left up a small drive with a cluster of rusty mailboxes gathered along the main road.
What had for many years been a hideout for artists and other rustics who fancied a rugged, pastoral life, was rapidly gentrifying into a neighborhood of wealthy businessmen, lawyers, surgeons, and the ubiquitous movie people who seemed to run like lemmings into every place considered hip or cool. This left the canyon with a strange mix of lone holdouts, still living the country life but finding it more and more difficult to pay their property taxes, and the wealthy interlopers only interested in the appearance of country living without the attendant hassles.
“Do you really think it will be there?” Liz asked, more to herself than to me.
“Who knows. It looks like a real deed, doesn’t it? Murdock said she’d bought a place.” I studied signs at the ends of the driveways as I drove. They were difficult to read. “I just hope the place is still empty.” I added.
The road was steep and only a single lane. We passed old homes with old cars in the driveways that were decorated in the bohemian style one expected in Topanga Canyon — hand painted murals, yards colored brightly with shimmering glass and metal sculptures, dogs everywhere. But interspersed with these were the new homes, built with new money by people who did not care to blend into their surroundings. They were monstrosities piled high and to the edge of their lots with manicured lawns and Mercedes SUVs in the driveways. Homes built by and for obnoxious people who had even less sense than they had taste.
The numbers on the houses climbed as we ascended the hill. I slowed the car as the addresses got close and stopped completely when we reached a number that was too high. For a minute I felt slightly deflated, disappointed at the prospect that the deed was inaccurate, or that the house was no longer there.
“Maybe we missed it,” Liz said, leaning out the window and looking back down the road behind us.
I backed up slowly and we examined the driveways one by one. We came to one that appeared to branch off and split into a high and low road. The driveway leading up disappeared behind its crest.
“Could be up there,” I guessed.
Liz said, “It doesn’t look like the upper road is used at all.” Then she turned to me and grinned. “Maybe it’s tucked back in there and no one knows about it.” She was excited. I liked her that way. Her energy was infectious.
I turned in and drove up the gravel driveway. It looked like the lower portion was occasionally used for parking by the neighbors. But as we went up, the weeds began to grow high in the center of the wheel ruts and the ruts themselves faded to grass covered parallel indentations until, perhaps a half mile onward, we came to a low slung post and beam house protruding out over a small terrace. I shut the car off and we got out, looking around at the trees and grass and listening to the overwhelming silence. There were numbers beside the door and they matched the address on the deed.
“Looks like this is it,” Liz said. The sound of her voice was utterly foreign in the stillness.
The house was a single story and looked like a log cabin Frank Lloyd Wright might have built. It was small and blended into the hillside, the wide decks surrounding it mixing indoor and outdoor space perfectly. I could see east out across the Santa Monica Mountains, with their jagged peaks and soft, mossy green hue, off toward the city and then south down the canyon. The smog hovered at the base of the canyon, blotting out the furthest edge of the view, but I imagined that on a clear day the nebulous gray air would dissipate and the blue of the Pacific would twinkle like a gemstone in the distance.
I stepped up onto the porch and found the front door locked. Liz came up beside me and peered through the window. I did the same. We could see the dusty wood floors of a long empty living room disappear around a wall. The house was empty.
We walked down the side of the house and onto the wide deck that sat out over the hillside, supported by stilts. The view was panoramic, unobstructed, and endless. I imagined Sharon Steele standing in the same s
pot more than a decade before feeling the warm Santa Ana breeze blowing eucalyptus and jasmine on her face and contemplating the same view and the serene contrast it would offer to her then current life.
I turned to face the wide bay windows, shielded my eyes, and stuck my nose to the glass. I could see a front room with a pile of boxes and other things in the center. There were a few loose articles scattered about the room, but it was otherwise empty.
“There’s her stuff,” I mumbled. Seeing the pile through the window gave me shivers.
“It’s kind of eerie,” Liz said, reading my mind.
We went around to the rear of the house, trying all the doors and windows along the way. Everything was locked. We stood by the back door, staring at each other.
“We’ll have to break in,” Liz suggested.
I knew she was right. I picked up a rock and held it, assessing its weight. Despite the situation, I hesitated, briefly debating the moral consequences of burglary.
Liz rolled her eyes and let out a huff. “You sell yourself to corporate America and now you’ve got a conscience. Gimme that.” Liz snatched the rock from my hand and tossed it through the glass in the back door. She’d thrown it harder than necessary. We could hear the rock rolling across the floor inside.
“Way to finesse it.”
“Fuck you.” She grinned as she reached in through the broken window and tried to turn the knob. I watched her struggle a few times.
“Here, shorty. Let me do it.” She stepped aside and I reached in and unlocked the door.
Once inside, we came into a kitchen that opened into the living room we’d seen from the deck. I tried the faucets. No water. I flipped the light switches. Dead. The air was suffocating, dank, and smelled of mice. I could see their telltale turds, scattered along the counters and floors like handfuls of black rice tossed and left to land like confetti. Liz didn’t know what they were and she grimaced when I told her.
We went into the living room. Several of the cardboard boxes had split at their sides, eaten away by rodents, their contents — mostly clothes — spilling out onto the floor and eaten at as well.
Follow the Money Page 19