soliloquy. “I damn well shouldn’t be talking to you,” he says. “I mean, I know everybody’s entitled to a defense, but nobody forced you to represent the son of a bitch. If it was up to me, I wouldn’t talk to you. But you know what a pain in the ass Vince can be.”
“That’s something we can agree on.”
“So what do you want?”
“I want to know about Linda Padilla.”
“You mean, like, what did she eat for breakfast? Or how fast she could run a mile? You think you could be a little more specific? Because I don’t feel like chatting about this forever.”
“Okay,” I say, “here’s how it works. At the end of the day I want to find out who killed Linda Padilla. So I ask questions about her. I can’t only ask what’s important, because I won’t know what’s important until after I’ve asked a hell of a lot more questions. Of course, if you know who killed her, and why, you can blurt it out and save us both a lot of time.”
“The police think your client killed her,” he says.
I nod. “Yes, they do. I’m working on a different theory. My theory is that he’s innocent.”
He sighs and sits at his desk. “So where should I start?”
“With your relationship to her,” I say.
“I’m a political consultant; I find politicians and try to move them up the ladder. I teach them what to say, how to say it, and who to say it to. But they need to have something special going in, something that’s there before I get to them, or they can only go so far. Linda had it, and there was no ceiling for her. None at all.”
“Why did she want to go up that ladder? What was in it for her?” I ask.
“The real reason, or the one she would give if your client hadn’t killed her and you could ask her yourself?”
The question isn’t worthy of a reply, so I don’t give him one.
“She would tell you she wanted to help the people on the bottom,” he continues. “So that everybody could have a shot at the American dream like she did. She would even have believed it while she was saying it.”
“So what was it really? The power? The celebrity?”
“Duhhh . . .” is his mocking reply, letting me know that of course it was the power and celebrity, that it’s always the power and celebrity.
“Was she wealthy?” I ask.
He nods. “Loaded. Linda had the first nickel she ever made, and the last couple of years she was making a shitload of nickels.”
I continue asking questions, but he answers mostly in generalities, not providing much insight into who Linda Padilla was. There’s a good chance he has no idea, that she never let him get close.
I finally ask about the rumored connections to Dominic Petrone and organized crime, and he’s careful and measured in his response. “I never saw them together. Nothing was ever said in front of me.”
“But you have reason to believe she knew him?” I ask.
“I don’t have reason to do anything.”
Finally, probably to get me out of there, he suggests I talk to Padilla’s boyfriend, one Alan Corbin. Corbin is a high-powered businessman and had only recently been seen with Padilla in public. According to Spinelli, they were considerably closer than they let on to the press.
“Just don’t tell him that I sent you to him,” he says.
“Why not?” I ask. The fact is, Corbin was next on my list to talk to anyway, so Spinelli’s naming him is not in any sense a big deal.
“He’s not a guy I want pissed at me.”
My next stop is Sam Willis’s office, to ask him to use his computer expertise to help us on the case. It’s a move I make reluctantly because of the death of his assistant. But we need someone, and Sam has often expressed a desire to contribute, so I convince myself it’s okay.
I spend about ten minutes repeatedly and obnoxiously telling him to be careful, that if he senses anything unusual or dangerous, he is to stop and call me. There’s no reason to think he’s in any danger, but I want to make totally sure he’s safe. He promises he’ll call, more as a way to shut me up than anything else.
“I want you to find out as much information as you can about these people,” I say, referring to the victims. I give him the documentation we’ve accumulated from the police reports