Full Release (14 page)

“I didn’t ask him to lie.” Though in a way, I guess, I bribed him.

“Did you record the conversations?”

“No.”

“Then no one knows what you did.”

“The woman in the car was either Eddie’s mother or his fiancée. Are you going to look into that?” I asked.

“Goodbye, Mr. Latowski.” He hung up on me.

I was pretty sure Detective Hanson was the one who wanted to railroad me, but now I began to wonder. Maybe it was both of them. I’d let my attraction to Tripp cloud my judgment. Had I told Tripp too much? Would he go back to Mrs. Enders and Simon Willow and encourage them to say I’d tried to influence their stories? Was there anything I’d said that could be viewed that way? Oh shit, I thought. If Simon Willow mentioned that we had sex, that could be construed as my trying to influence him. He’s certainly not going to tell a policeman that he blackmailed me into it. Shit.

I had the rest of Sunday and no idea what to do next. It was nearly lunchtime and I was pretty hungry. Mentally, I calculated which of my credit cards might have enough available credit for a decent lunch.

Beyond being hungry, I could really use a nap. I tried to add up the amount of sleep I’d had since I found Eddie in the garage and I figured all told I’d gotten one decent night’s sleep in three nights. Maybe after lunch I could lie down for a little while. No, I thought, I didn’t want to nap myself all the way into a maximum-security penitentiary.

I was in my bedroom, pulling on a pair of boxers when my phone rang. “Have you been arrested yet?” Peter asked when I picked up.

“Sorry to disappoint, but no.”

“The minute I get back, I’m going to throw a fundraiser for your legal defense fund.”

“I don’t have a legal defense fund.”

“We’ll establish one. Where do think it should be?”

“In a bank?”

“The fundraiser. Should it be at Crush or Wrath?”

“Um… I don’t really care right now. Peter, when are you coming home?”

“Oh God, I don’t know. This whole thing is going so well it’s scaring me. Benjamin is just, well, he’s perfect.”

“Benjamin? I thought you said his name was Alfonso?”

“Did I? Hmmm, imagine that.”

“Peter? Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s wonderful. But I can’t explain it all. We’re about to go to the restaurant at the Eiffel Tower.”

“You’re in Vegas? I thought you were in New York?”

“No, darling, we’re in Paris. We’re eating at the real Eiffel Tower. Gotta run. Whatever you do, do
not
get arrested!” And with that, he hung up.

It annoyed me a little that Peter had to choose this particular moment in time to have a whirlwind romance with Alfonso and/or Benjamin. It would have been nice to have him around, although I had no idea what I expected him to do. I mean, if he was in Los Angeles the most he’d be able to do would be bitching out Tripp and Hanson. Which, while fun to think about, would likely only make things worse.

I finished getting dressed. Eddie’s keys were still in the pockets of my jeans. They were bulky and uncomfortable. I had no reason to take them to lunch with me, so I pulled them out and was about to put them back in the bowl by the front door, when I noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

The Pez dispenser had a seam across the tube that held the candy. I tugged on the rubber duck, and the dispenser came apart in two pieces. Candy did not fall all over my floor. In fact, there was no candy inside the dispenser at all. What
was
inside changed everything -- a USB flash drive.

Chapter Fourteen

Surprised, I held the flash drive in my hand for a few minutes after I found it. Clearly, something important was on it. It wasn’t hard to figure out this is what the killer was looking for when he got into my house; when he broke into Eddie’s car. The killer’s identity had to be on it. The most logical thing to find on the drive would be a client list. Whenever madams got busted, their little black books became very important. Eddie must have kept something like that. So, maybe it was a client; a client afraid of exposure.

All I had to do was open the flash drive and the document would be there. I just had to print it out, get it to the police and insist that they talk to everyone on the list. They’d find the killer. Suddenly, everything seemed simple. Of course, with my computer gone, I couldn’t just plug in the flash drive and read what was on it. I thought about going to a copy store and using a computer to open the drive. It would only cost a few bucks. But why waste money? I could drive to the studio and open the drive on my computer there. That made more sense. I could do it that evening. Or I could do it first thing in the morning. I really did need to get some sleep. I’d forgotten about lunch and was suddenly exhausted. More than exhausted, unable to move one step farther. I lay on the couch and closed my eyes for just a few minutes. Sixteen hours later, I woke up.

I lay there thinking about the night of Eddie’s death. Detective Tripp theorized that someone (in his mind, me) was having sex with Eddie, strangling him to orgasm, and made a fatal error. He pressed too hard, and Eddie passed out, assumed Eddie was dead, dragged him to the garage and staged a suicide.

Was that how it happened? It seemed possible, even likely. But what happened before that? Before Eddie passed out? There were no signs of forced entry or a struggle; Eddie had let the killer in willingly. They might have talked in the living room briefly. Briefly because there were no glasses or other signs of socialization. Eddie hadn’t offered his killer even a glass of water.

Then they’d gone into my bedroom, presumably to have sex. Had they gotten their clothes off? Probably not. Why did I think that? Because it would have been difficult to dress Eddie after he’d passed out. Difficult, but not impossible. I thought they’d remained dressed because of the keys. Eddie’s keys ended up under the bed. Given where I’d found them, it was unlikely they fell out of his pocket and ended up there. At some point, he’d taken his keys out of his pocket and slipped them between the mattress and the wall. If they’d just gone in the bedroom and stripped, Eddie would have left his keys in his shorts.

He’d dropped his keys behind the bed to keep the killer from getting them. Which meant the killer wanted whatever was on the USB drive. Was the killer a client? Yes. When we’d had our appointment, Eddie had asked me to take my clothes off right away. Assuming the killer was a client, why hadn’t Eddie seen him in Jeremy’s old office like he had me? Why hadn’t he set up his table? It was there. In fact, it was still in the spare room. The police hadn’t taken it. He would have used the table if the killer was a client.

Of course, the killer might have paid Eddie to skip the massage and go right to having sex. A lot of masseurs were available to escort. I hadn’t asked Eddie about that, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing. For the right price.

Feeling wooden, I went through my normal morning routine. Shave. Shower. Microwave oatmeal. Watch morning show while choking it down. Floss. Brush. Dab on cologne. Dress. Slacks, a light blue shirt, pick out a tie. Struggle to tie tie. Aside from the occasionally theorizing about Eddie’s murder, it was a pleasure to have a normal morning. The last few days had been so topsy-turvy. It was a relief to know that things would be over soon. Very soon.

Grabbing my phone, I ran out of the house and got into the car. As I did, I noticed a black and white parked down the street. Two uniformed officers stood on Simon Willow’s doorstep. Through his screen door, I could see him talking to the officers. Briefly, I wondered if he’d try getting on his knees with them in an exchange for information. He was probably too smart to try it, but I’d bet he’d spend the rest of the morning jacking off over the idea.

Between the conversation I’d had with Tripp and the officers at Simon Willow’s door, I guessed he’d been unaware that one of my neighbors had gotten skipped. I assumed the officers would be canvassing the neighborhood a second time to make sure only one got skipped. That idea made me feel even better about my situation.

On the way to the studio, I tried to decide exactly what to do with Eddie’s list of clients when I got it off the thumb drive. My first idea had been to just hand it over to the police, but was that wise? Is that what I should do? I could make a copy of the list and then hand the drive over to the police. That at least gave me a back-up plan.

How long should I wait for the police to go through the list? A week? Two? They might just look at it, see that I was on it, and add it to the pile of incriminating evidence they’d collected against me. No, I decided. I should contact everyone on the list myself, and I should start right away.

I assumed there’d be phone numbers, maybe even email addresses. But what was I going to do? Contact each client and ask if he was into erotic asphyxiation? That might be a good opening line in some situations, but not this one. I’d have to be subtler than that. If there were email addresses, maybe I could send them all some kind of email. Maybe telling them I know what happened to Eddie, that I know what they’re into. Then I could sit back and see who answered. What if they all answered, though? What if none of them answered?

I pulled into my parking space at the studio. It was a little after nine. I hurried through the garage and into the elevator that took me up to the lobby. As I crossed the enormous lobby with its eight-story atrium, my phone rang. Pulling it out of my pocket, I glanced at the phone and I saw that the caller was an old 213 number. One I didn’t recognize. I could answer or ignore. I answered.

“This is Alan Moskowitz with the
Los Angeles Herald
.” At first, I thought he wanted to sell me a new subscription, but then he asked, “Would you like to make a comment about Carlos Maldonado’s comments?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. “You must have the wrong number.”

“This is Matt Latowski right?”

“Yes. What is it you’re calling about?”

“A young man named Javier Hernandez was found dead at your house?”

I stopped in front of the elevators that would take me up to my floor. Other late employees rushed by me to get to their desks before anyone noticed their tardiness. I lowered my voice, even though no one was listening. “I don’t think I can talk about that.”

“Do you know you’ve been identified as a person of interest in his murder? Carlos Maldonado is criticizing the LAPD for not arresting you,” Moskowitz said. He was professional and confident. He made me very uncomfortable.

“Who is Carlos Maldonado?” I asked.

“Do you want to comment?”

I realized what a bad idea it was to talk to a reporter and hung up the phone without answering his question. I was shaking as I got into the elevator. Trying to calm myself, I took a few deep, yoga-style breaths. Focus, I told myself. Yes, it was a disaster that people knew the police were centering their investigation on me, but it would be an even bigger disaster if I didn’t find a way to prove my innocence.

I got off the elevator at the seventh floor, wound my way around the floor until I got to our office suite, then slipped into my office. Immediately, I powered up my computer. While I waited, I nervously sifted through some pending work on my desk and tossed it all in my to-do box. There was nothing that couldn’t wait. My voicemail light on my desk phone was flashing. I checked my voicemail. Bobby Sharpe had left a message asking if we could meet on Wednesday. I quickly called him back and set up the appointment.

By that time, the PC was up and running. I took Eddie’s keys out of my pocket and was slipping the Pez dispenser/flash drive into the USB port when Sonja stuck her head in my office. “Matt, come into my office.”

With a sinking feeling, I followed her. When we got to her office, she shut the door behind me. Her entertainment center was open, and the TV was on. It was tuned to the independent channel that ran local news for most of the morning. “My husband called me. They ran the story in the last hour cycle. They’ve been promo-ing it, so they’re going to run it again.”

“Oh,” I said, not sure what else to say.

“You’re not surprised?”

“A reporter called me a few minutes ago. I haven’t had time to deal with it.” Or even mentally process it.

She raised an eyebrow, gave me a disapproving look, as if this was all something I’d done just to annoy her. “You’ve been identified as a suspect in a murder. You’d better find time to deal with it.”

“I mean I
am
dealing with it. I’m trying to figure out how to prove I didn’t do anything.”

“Have you hired a lawyer?”

I shook my head. “Cash flow problems.”

“Hire a lawyer,” she instructed me, but failed to offer any help with the retainer. “Here it is.” She turned the sound up on the television.

On the screen, the camera focused on a stocky, Hispanic-looking man with his arm around a young, dark-haired woman in her twenties. In his early forties, the man was muscular, his hair black and close cropped. Behind them stood a red-haired priest. In front of them stood half a dozen reporters with microphones and cameras.

The Hispanic-looking man was speaking. A crawl beneath identified him as Carlos Maldonado, Latino Community Action Committee, “As a former Los Angeles police officer, I can assure you I’m empathic with the difficulties of police work. However, it has been nearly a week since the murder of Javier Hernandez, a suspect has been identified, and it is important to the Latino community that justice be served in this terrible crime. We urge anyone with information that might be helpful to the police to step forward and aid in this investigation.”

The report cut away from them, and suddenly I filled the screen. It was a terrible picture of me; I was red-faced and disheveled. It was the mug shot taken the night Jeremy and I had our fistfight. It made me look like a criminal, a rather stupid criminal.

“Police have identified Matthew Latowski as a person of interest in this case. His home has been searched and police are awaiting...”

The reporter droned on, but I tuned out. I’d just been publicly identified as a suspect in a murder case. Why did they do that? Did they hope I’d crack under pressure? And why was this Carlos guy deliberately attacking me? The report cut back to him. I studied his square, solid body, which gave the impression he was ex-military as did his close-cropped, black hair turning gray at the temples. His eyes were dark and intense.