She nods. “We’re off.”
“You can say you got this from sources close to the defense,” I allow, “but my name doesn’t get mentioned.”
“Agreed.”
I proceed to tell her what I know about the drug connection Troy Preston had with Cesar Quintana. I don’t mention Paul Moreno, and I don’t mention the rivalry with Dominic Petrone, preferring to hold all of that until a later date. There is always the possibility that Karen, being a good reporter, will uncover it on her own, and that would be fine with me.
“Was Preston involved in their drug business?” she asks.
I nod. “That is our information, though we’re not ready to prove it. He certainly had drugs in his system.”
“As did your client.”
“Preston took them voluntarily,” I say.
She seems surprised. “And Schilling didn’t?”
“Schilling didn’t.”
“So how did the body get in Schilling’s house and the blood in his car?” she asks.
“We’ll take that up next semester.”
Karen looks skeptical, as she should be. “You think Quintana framed him? Why would they do that?”
I smile knowingly, even though I don’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about. “Come on,” I say, “I’ll show you how cute Tara is with the ducks.”
Much to my amazement, Karen has no desire to see how cute Tara is with the ducks. She declines, then rushes off across the green stuff to her car so she can prepare her story.
* * * * *
THE PHONE WAKES me at six A.M., and Laurie answers it.
“Hello,” she says, then listens for a moment and hands the phone to me. “It’s Vince. He wants to talk to the ‘shithead source close to the defense.’”
I take the phone. I’ve dreaded this conversation and was hoping to put it off until later than six in the morning. “Hello, Vince, old buddy,” I say. “How are you?”
“You son of a bitch.”
Vince has obviously read Karen Spivey’s story already. “I’m sorry, Vince. If I gave the story to you, everyone would have known I planted it.”
“Who do you think they suspect now? The queen of fucking England?”
I actually feel bad about this, but I’ll get over it. “You’ll get the next one. I promise.”
“I’d better. And just to show there are no hard feelings, you can have my next one. It’s about your client, and you’re not going to like it.”
“What is it?”
Click.
Vince hanging up on me is not a news event, but what he said leaves me a little unsettled. He’s a terrific newsman with a first-rate staff of reporters and very capable of having come up with something on Kenny. If he said I’m not going to like it, it’s safe to assume that I won’t.
It’s also safe to assume that calling him back won’t help me drag the secret out of him, so I roll over and go back to sleep for another hour. When I wake up, I go out to the front yard and get the paper, an act that Tara has never accepted as dignified for golden retrievers to perform.
Karen has nailed the story well; it will certainly have the desired effect of shaking up the public perception of the case. Quintana is not likely to be thrilled with it; Karen has done some additional reporting that makes his connection to Preston seem even tighter.
I sit for a while and ponder what my next steps should be when Laurie comes in and reminds me that I have a breakfast with Sam Willis at eight.
Sam is my accountant, a position that increased significantly in importance when I came into my fortune. He is also my friend and my competitor in something we call song-talking. The goal is to work song lyrics smoothly into our conversation, and I am probably giving myself too much credit by referring to Sam as my competitor. He is a master at it and has long since outdistanced me.
I let Sam choose the restaurant for breakfast, and he picked a place called Cynthia’s Home Cookin’, which the signs say is noted for “Cynthia’s World Famous Pancakes.” I’ve only been to Europe twice, but no one has come up to me and said “Ah, an American. That’s where Cynthia makes her famous pancakes.” But Sam is a regular here and always chooses the place, and they do have great pancakes.
Since it’s not fair to leave Adam in the office listening to Edna all the time, and since he’s supposed to be observing me, I invited him to the breakfast with Sam. He’s waiting for me in the parking lot when I arrive, as always writing something in his notepad.
“Good morning,” I say. “No trouble finding the place?”
He smiles. “Are you kidding? It’s world-famous.”
I point to the notepad. “You’re taking notes about it?”
He nods. “It’s a great setting for a scene.”
We go inside the restaurant, which is basically a dump, albeit a crowded dump. There is not an empty table in the place. Sam sits in a booth near the window waiting for us. He waves, then calls out to the waitress. “They’re here, Lucy.”
“Coffee comin’ up, Sam” is her response, then she comes over to the table and pours coffee for all of us even before we arrive. Decaf is not an option at Cynthia’s.
I introduce Adam to Sam as we sit down. I notice my chair is covered with crumbs and sweep them off before sitting. “Nice clean place you brought us to.”
Sam shrugs and fires his opening salvo. “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
Adam brightens up. “Hey, that’s a song. Cheers, right?” I had forgotten to warn Adam about the song-talking.
Sam says to me, “This guy’s sharp as a tack.”
“He’s a big-time screenwriter,” I say. “So be careful, or he’ll have Peewee Herman play you in the movie.”
I start to tell Sam what I want, which is to have him use his incredible computer expertise to hack into the life of the deceased Troy Preston. Put Sam in front of a computer and he can find out anything about anybody, and right now I’m interested in financial dealings that can connect Preston to drug money. I provide Sam with the personal information about Preston that was in the police reports, as well as the information the Giants were able to provide.
Sam gives the material a quick look, then casts a wary glance at Adam, who is still taking notes. The kind of research Sam does is not always strictly legal, and his unspoken question to me asks if Adam can be trusted. I nod that it’s okay, so Sam promises to get right on it.
The waitress, Lucy, comes over and spends a few minutes joking with Sam, who tells Adam that Lucy can “light the world up with her smile. She can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.” Adam recognizes it as being from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which surprises me, since he’s not old enough to have seen it, other than in reruns.
Sam asks Adam a bunch of questions about the movie business, including one about how Adam got into it in the first place. He grew up in a poor rural area in Kansas, and his first and fondest memories are rooted in his love for movies. Five years ago he was living in St. Louis working at an ad agency and spending his free hours writing something called a spec script. That’s a script that no one commissions in advance and therefore can be sold as a finished product to the highest bidder. His sold for “mid-five figures,” as Adam puts it, and though it never came close to making it out of the sewer pipe, it resulted in his getting more work.
“But I had to move to LA so I could sit in meetings, look creative, and pretend to know what I’m talking about.”
I see an opportunity, so I say to Sam, “They said that Californee is the place he oughta be, so he loaded up the truck and he moved to Beverlee-Hills, that is.”
Sam nods in grudging respect to my Hillbillies reference. “Makes sense… swimming pool… movie stars.”