She looked up at me and nodded.
“ Toledo was murdered for that money, Olivia. What were you thinking?”
“There was nothing left to do. I had to try something. I guess I kind of hoped my mother would be the one who came. But even if she sent someone else, I thought all I’d have to do is tell them who I really am. I didn’t believe my mother would let them hurt me.”
I started pacing again. “That night at your apartment, did you tell those men who you really are?”
“Of course. But it didn’t make any difference. That man kept right on beating me and asking where the money is.”
“Next time they might kill you.”
“They might have done that before, but now I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Because now I have a backup plan.”
“Yeah? What is that?”
“Not what, Malcolm. Who. My backup plan is you.”
45
The next day Olivia slept a lot. I cleaned the M11 at the kitchen counter and clipped the weapon to my belt. Then I went outside and washed a couple of the cars. I never let the guesthouse out of my sight, but it was good to have a little distance from Olivia. I needed time to think about her story.
When I was done with the second car, I went and sat on Haley’s favorite bench beneath the bougainvillea. From there I could see both Newport Harbor and the guesthouse. It seemed clear Olivia had told the truth as far as she knew it. Her story didn’t hang together in a couple of places, but that was probably because of the one mistaken assumption I was pretty sure she’d made. And her information did explain some things that had been puzzling me.
It was a perfect day for sailing. The wind was steady out of the northwest, the skies were cloudless, and the chop was under a foot. A good sailing day is a good thinking day. By the time I stood up to return to the guesthouse, I was fairly sure I knew what was really going on.
Olivia and I walked around the grounds for a while before sunset, then we ordered pizza and watched a movie, Wall Street. It was good to sit and relax a little, knowing there were finally no secrets between us. But there was a limit to my relaxation. I kept the M11 on the table at my elbow.
Olivia’s black eye had turned from red and purple to a more uniform dark brown. On most women it would have been an ugly mark, but even with the bruising, she was beautiful. She said she needed fresh clothes for work the following day, so we spent another night in separate bedrooms and then rose before the sun and drove up to her apartment in the Bentley.
When we arrived, I took her keys and asked her to stand in the small courtyard outside her front door. Before I stepped inside the apartment I pulled the M11, put a round in the chamber, and slipped the safety off.
The living-room furniture was still askew, the potshards were still scattered on the floor from my diversion, and the slugs were still in the walls from the shots I had exchanged with Medallion’s partner. Otherwise the place was fine.
I tidied up the living room while Olivia went to her bedroom to pack some things. Twenty minutes later, she came into the room with only a purse over her shoulder. She had done wonders with makeup. It was hard to tell she had been beaten just three days before. But I had expected her to come back with a suitcase full of clothes.
“Where’s your other stuff?” I asked.
“What other stuff?”
“I thought you’d pack for the week.”
“I can’t stay at your place, Malcolm. There’s the walls, and you and Simon and Teru. Those men won’t come for me there.”
“They might, but we’d be ready. And you sure can’t stay here. It’s too exposed.”
“If we make this too hard for them, they can’t take me to my mother.”
“Olivia, be reasonable. You don’t even know for certain that they work for your mother. They kept beating you after you told them who you really are, remember? All we know for sure is that they only care about the money, and there’s nothing they won’t do to you to get it.”
“It’s still the only way to find her, and if I don’t find her, my father’s going to drink himself to death. You saw him. You know it’s true.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone.”
She smiled. “That’s what I’m counting on.”
She took her little Japanese car to the Montes’s place overlooking Beverly Hills. I hung back a couple of blocks, since I knew where she was going. She took Lincoln Avenue to Santa Monica Boulevard, and then turned inland. At Beverly Drive she turned left, and at the little Will Rogers Park where Beverly meets Sunset Boulevard, she bore left again. We passed the Beverly Hills Hotel and crossed Sunset to climb into Benedict Canyon. Up near the top, she turned right on Wallingford and then left into the Montes’s driveway.
The last thing I needed was for Doña Elena or the congressman to see me there and think I was stalking them or casing the place for another home invasion. So while Olivia paused to push the code into the gate keypad, I drove past her, made a U-turn, and parked in the shade of a live oak tree about a hundred yards up the road, out of camera range from the gate.
I killed the engine and settled in to wait. Like so many other roads above West Hollywood and Beverly Hills, if you didn’t know there were mansions all around, you’d never guess. Only one of the Montes’s neighbors had erected a wall along the road. All the others had planted landscaping that looked natural but was artfully positioned to conceal fences and state-of-the-art security systems. So from where I sat, mostly all I saw was vegetation, a couple of gates, and blue sky.
After twenty minutes, a woman drove a white Honda Civic past me. I watched in the rearview mirror as she slowed and turned into a driveway on the other side of the street. She seemed to know the gate code. Somebody’s maid, probably.
After about an hour, I decided to see how many bird species I could spot from where I sat. There were quails and doves and crows and smaller blackbirds. Also hummingbirds and one hawk gliding in a giant circle on the thermals rising from the hills. I saw several little brown birds, which I couldn’t distinguish from each other, so in fairness I could only count them as one species. Also some kind of a finch that looked like a sparrow, except it had a yellow breast.
At eleven-thirty my cell phone rang.
She said, “You still out there?”
“You bet.”
“I just had a thought. You know how Teru thinks the guys who attacked me were the same ones who tried to kill you? Maybe they were also the ones who did the home invasion. Maybe it was me they were after, not the congressman or Doña Elena. You know, I spend the night here sometimes. Maybe there was a mix-up. If you catch them trying to get to me again, you might be able to prove a connection with the home invasion and clear yourself.”
“Maybe so.”
“You already thought of this?”
“Something like it crossed my mind.”
“Well, good. I’m glad you’re getting something out of this too. Why don’t you go for lunch? I’d bring out some food, but Doña Elena might notice, and it’s probably not a good idea for her to know you’re hanging around out there.”
“That’s true.”
“Go ahead. I promise not to leave, and they’ve really beefed up the security in here. I’ll be okay.”
“Lunch is for wimps.”
“Isn’t that from a movie?”
“Gordon Gekko. From last night, remember?”
“I fell asleep, remember?”
“How could I forget the deafening snores?”
“Liar. Go eat something.”
“You’ll stay put?”