Maybe Crowe and Hennessy jump bail, maybe they roll the dice with a trial on the drug charges, maybe they take a chance on each other’s holding firm, but the point is They have problems of their own now.
And so do the higher-ups.
Someone paid a lot of money to spring Crowe and Hennessy for fear they might flip in the interview room. But Duane and Brian still have good reason-double-digit prison sentences-to trade up, so the question is “Did they get them out to get them out,” Chon asks Ben, “or to get them out of the way?”
The latter of which leaves two options Crowe and Hennessy jump bail and disappear, or Someone disappears them.
In either case, the plan worked-drop Crowe into the shit and see who throws a line.
But how do we track the line back?
One of Ben and Chon’s favorite movies is All the President’s Men. They can practically quote it. Well, not “practically.” Actually. Driving back from Ben’s meet with Dennis, they go into the routine:
Hunt’s come in from the cold. Supposedly he’s got a lawyer with $25,000 in a brown paper bag.
The prices have gone up, Bob.
Follow the money.
“Follow the lawyer who brought the money,” Ben says. “Somebody sent Chad to bail Crowe out. He’s going to report back to that somebody. And he isn’t going to do it over the phone.”
“Can you do it, bro?” Chon asks. “Follow him without getting seen?”
Without getting killed?
“I think so,” Ben says.
“I’ll take the other line.”
Crowe and Hennessy have to be freaking. They know they’re on thin ice. They’re going to reach out.
And up.
It’s a good situation, Chon thinks. If Crowe and Hennessy had flipped on each other, Ben would have gotten his “justice,” but it would still have left the higher-ups out there, and they would have him killed.
Better this way.
“Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your head down.”
“You, too.”
“Always.”
Recent evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
224
Duane Crowe goes home long enough to pack a few things.
Because this could go either way.
He folds his Old Guys Rule shirt into the duffel bag and thinks about the phone conversation that was less than reassuring.
Yeah, we have judges, but this is federal, Duane. That makes it tough. Say you get twelve-you serve twelve. You can do twelve. I’ve done it. You’re still a young man when you get out.
I’m not a young man now, Duane thinks. He grabs a couple of pairs of jeans out of a dresser drawer and throws them in the bag. I have a daughter going to college. I have tuition to pay. I can’t do one year, never mind the cost of the trial, the defense.
And that’s just the drug charge.
The other thing…
… is a problem. If the other guy gets weak in the knees… You fucked up. You know, with the girl. It’s a problem.
Yeah, thanks a fucking heap. Tell me something I don’t know. Just like the Powers That Be, you work your ass off for them, make them money, and then when there’s a “problem” they leave you on an island.
But Duane gets the message.
The Powers That Be will take a chance on the drug charge, but the homicides?
If I don’t do something about Brian, they’re going to do something about me. They’re going to clean house-Brian, Leonard, me.
If they’re not on their way already.
He puts the revolver in his pocket and heads out.
225
Ben sits in his car and calls Chad Meldrun.
The bored, too-cool-for-school receptionist puts him on hold. Comes back on a few seconds later and says, “Chad said to say he can’t represent you anymore.”
“Did he say why not?”
“Conflicted.”
“You or him?”
She hangs up.
But Ben knows what he wanted to know-Chad is in the office.
Which works out, because Ben is in the parking structure.
All the President’s Men.
226
O is conflicted as to what to wear.
She walks into her closet, surveys the hangers full of clothes, and tries to decide how to go, sartorially speaking.
I mean, what does the style-conscious South Orange County Princess wear to meet her father for the first time?
Dress it up, or caj it down?
Go older, or younger?
She thinks about a polka-dot dress and pigtails, but decides it’s waaaay too creepy because maybe Paul Patterson doesn’t have a sense of satire or irony.
She looks at your basic “little black dress”-like, look at what a lovely lady the daughter you threw away turned out to be-but worries about crossing the paper-thin line between sophisticated and sexy.
She thinks about not going at all.
This is a girl who has stood in front of a vending machine-torn between F-3 (Peanut M amp;Ms) and D-7 (Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies)-for fifteen minutes and then walked away with nothing rather than make a choice.
O knows she doesn’t have that luxury here. She has to wear something, she can’t just go naked as the day she was born, as symbolically appropriate as that might be.
You might be able to walk naked in Laguna without raising alarm-or an eyebrow-but Newport Beach? They don’t get undressed to have sex. You could get arrested in Newport for wearing white after Labor Day.
Okay, this is getting you nowhere, O thinks.
But maybe that’s just where you should go.
Maybe you should lie down, fire up a blunt, and forget it.
227
Chon pulls over near Crowe’s place up Laguna Canyon and looks at the driveway.
Crowe’s car isn’t there.
Chon gets out, slips his pistol into his waistband, and goes to the front door. It’s locked.
The man has taken off.
Chon doesn’t blame him, but it’s a problem.
Not a big problem, but a problem.
228
Chad “No Worries” Meldrun comes into the parking structure like he has a problem.
Worries.
Has that “places to go, people to see” look on his face as he strides to his Benz, gets in, and peels out.
Ben follows him.
West on Jamboree.
North on the PCH.
All the way to the Newport Beach Yacht Club.
Which figures, Ben thinks.
Money is a pigeon.
It always finds its way home.
229
This is, like, Republican Central. The party could hold its California convention right here, and Ben feels like he should have a visa to even get in.
A twenty slipped into the doorman’s palm
(“Are you a member, sir?”
“No, but he is.”) is sufficient documentation, but Ben feels Out of Place and a little hostile as he makes his way through the lobby and watches Meldrun go out onto the patio, overlooking the harbor, overlooking the yachts, where on this late Friday afternoon the elite are there to have a drink and to see and be seen.
Ben’s working hard at being Joe Detective, trying to blend into the crowd and still keep an eye on Meldrun without being seen when he hears “Ben?”
230
It’s a woman’s voice.
“Ben? Ophelia’s friend? Is that you?”
Ben panics momentarily because
(a) he doesn’t want to lose sight of Chad, and
(b) he can’t think of her actual name, only “Paqu.”
“Oh, hi. Mrs…”
He damn near says “Four.”
“It’s Bennett, now,” she says in a tone that manages to combine self-deprecating charm with a warning not to push the subject. (Indeed, she’s here cruising for his replacement. Four is about to become Four mer.)
“Mrs. Bennett.”