times. “Hell no it doesn’t. I made that payoff and Steele got arrested three days later. I knew that money was still laying around somewhere. After I couldn’t find it in the house, I was sure some dirty cop walked off with it. But most cops ain’t smart enough to hide that kind of money very well. They do stupid shit like buy speedboats and stuff, you can spot a cop who skims a mile away. I looked at every damned cop who investigated and none of them took it. So I knew it was still around. So I waited, biding my time. And then you showed up.”
The car was approaching the 405 freeway. The sun would be setting soon and we drove westward toward a sky painted in vast swaths of pale pink. Gary motioned for me to keep going, all the way to the end, to the ocean, and up PCH.
“So Steele didn’t kill her for the money?” I asked, a hot delirium of worry beginning to engulf me. My hands were shaking on the wheel, my stomach quivered. I wanted the conversation to continue forever, onward and endless, so that it might stave off whatever was coming next.
“Not as far as I know. Like I said, she didn’t even know about the money. No, they got in some kind of fight over her threatening to tell everyone what kind of real cocksucker he was. Hell, the only thing that saved him was the fact that his little ass buddy Andersen happened to be a shit-hot lawyer.”
I uttered a lugubrious laugh and slowed as the freeway ended and then merged onto PCH.
“What’s so funny?” Gary asked.
“Well, I was just thinking that Steele really got screwed, since Andersen didn’t do anything to get him off. Andersen must have wanted to get the money too.”
“What?” Gary responded incredulously. “Look man, Steele is guilty as hell, and, as of a few days ago, he was out. I don’t know about you, but twelve years seems like a light sentence for a guy who stabbed his old lady a hundred times. What, you think you got Steele out? Kid, any moron would have found the evidence you found. Especially since we made sure you had something to find. That was the whole goddamned point.
“Andersen told Steele how to fuck up the crime scene on the phone before the cops got there. He told him what to do with the 911 call, told him to blame the boyfriend, everything. Shit, he knew Steele was guilty, all he could do was create enough problems so some little fuckwad like you could come along years later and get him out. It still took some help from me though. Dan Kelly was expensive.”
Gary laughed again, delighted. “Shit, you ain’t nothing but a pawn, kid. Turn at the light.”
I took a right off PCH and went up Sunset. “So did Matt know you guys were framing him? I found a note under my door, and two guys roughed me up in the parking lot.”
Gary laughed again. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’ve been played. We had to get you motivated somehow, and a little reverse psychology was just the ticket. Actually, I can’t take credit for that. That part was Andersen’s idea.”
I thought about the way the bearded guy’s words had seemed too polished, and it all seemed to make sense. It had all been theater, and I had been an unwitting participant. I was hoping this drive was all part of the act and we would all go to an after party when the show was over. But the way Gary was holding the gun on me, I figured the party was already over. Now he was cleaning up the mess.
We wound around up through the same tight curves Liz and I had driven down the day before. Then we turned up the hill and drove deep into the Palisades. The road went along the cliff, back toward the ocean with Sunset Boulevard winding down the canyon below us. The houses facing outward were massive Spanish style homes with views of the ocean stretching outward to the light blue rim of the earth.
“Slow down,” Gary finally said. “Here.” He motioned with the gun. I pulled into a wide driveway and around the high shrubs and brick wall that shielded the house from the street. I recognized the cross beams on the windows from the pictures I’d seen of Andersen and Steele together. There was