Rage (26 page)

Her
listed residence was a smallish, single-story ranch house on La Cumbre Del Mar,
on the western edge of Pacific Palisades. Sunny street cooled by Pacific
currents, seven-figure ocean view, but by no means palatial. Splintering
redwood siding striped the white stucco front. Half-dead sago palms and droopy
ferns backed a flat lawn spiked with crabgrass. A shaggy old blue-leafed
eucalyptus created gray litter on the grass. The driveway was occupied by a
dented, gray Nissan Pathfinder filthy with gull shit.

As I
walked to the door, I could smell the Pacific, hear the slow breathing of
rustling tide. No one answered my knock or two bell pushes. A young woman
across the street opened her door and observed me. When I faced her, she went
back inside.

I
waited awhile longer, took out a business card, wrote a note on the back asking
Sydney Weider to call me, and dropped it in the mail slot. As I returned to my
car, she came walking up the block.

She
had on green sweats and white sneakers and dark glasses, walked with a stiff
gait that threw her hip out at an odd angle. Her hair was chopped short and
she’d let it go white. She was still thin but her body looked soft and
loose-jointed and ungainly.

I
stepped out to the breezeway in front of her house. She saw me and stopped
short.

I
waved.

She
didn’t react.

I
stepped toward her and smiled. She thrust her arms in front of her torso in a
sad, useless defensive move. Like someone who’d seen too many martial arts
movies.

“Ms.
Weider— ”

“What
do you want?” Her lawyer’s voice was gone, tightened by fear-laden shrillness.

“Alex
Delaware. I worked on the Malley— ”

“Who
are you?”

I
repeated my name.

She
stepped closer. Her lips fluttered and her chin quaked. “Go away!”

“Could
we just talk for a minute? Rand Duchay’s been murdered. I’m working with the
police on the case and if you could spare— ”

“A
minute about what?” Ratatat.

“Who
might’ve killed Rand. He was shot last— ”

“How
would I know?” she yelled.

“Ms.
Weider,” I said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but it might involve your personal
safety.”

She
clawed the air with one hand. The other was balled tight, flat against her
flank. “What are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s
possible— ”

“Go
away go the fuck away!” Shaking her head frantically, as if ridding it of
noise.

“Ms.
Weider— ”

Her
mouth gaped. No sound for a second, then she was screaming.

A
gull harmonized. The same neighbor from across the street stepped out.

Sydney
Weider screamed louder.

I
left.

T
he haunted look in Sydney Weider’s eyes stayed with me
during the drive back home.

I
went to my office and played Search Engine Poker. Thirty hits came up for
“Sydney Weider” but only one was related to her work on
People v. Turner and
Duchay.
A paragraph in the
Western Legal Journal,
dated a month
prior to the final hearing, speculating about the ramifications for juvenile
justice.

Weider
had been quoted predicting there’d be plenty of “ground-breaking consequences.”
No words of wisdom from Lauritz Montez. Either he’d declined to comment or no
one had asked his opinion.

The
remaining citations preceded Weider’s assignment to the P.D. by years. An
obituary for Weider’s father listed him as Gunnar Weider, a producer of
low-budget horror flicks and, later, episodic TV. Sydney was listed as his only
survivor and as the wife of Martin Boestling, a CAA film agent.

The
Times
used to run a social page before political correctness took over. I logged onto
the archives and found notice, twenty-eight years ago, of the Weider-Boestling
nuptials. The Beverly Hills Hotel, Sydney had been twenty-three, her groom, two
years older. Big wedding, lots of Faces in attendance.

I
plugged in Boestling’s name. A few years after marrying Sydney he had left CAA
for ICM, then William Morris. After that, he took a business affairs post at
Miramax, where he’d stayed until a year before the Malley murder, when he
resigned to start MBP Ltd., his own production company.

According
to the press release in
Variety,
the new firm’s emphasis would be on
“quality, moderately budgeted feature films.” The only MBP credits I could find
were three made-for-TV cheapies, including a remake of a sitcom that had been
stale in its first incarnation.

Lauritz
Montez had talked about a script. Had there been a real one and had Boestling
gone out on his own to peddle it?

To my
mind, the Malley case had nothing to offer cinematically— no happy ending, no
redemption, no character development— but what did I know?

Maybe
it would’ve worked as a quickie cable stinker. I searched some more. As far as
I could tell, no one, Martin Boestling included, had done the project.

The
other hits were mentions of Sydney and Martin at fund-raisers for the
predictable causes: Santa Monica Mountains Conservation League, Save the Bay,
The Women’s Wellness Place, Citizen’s Initiative for Gun Control, The Greater
L.A. Zoo Association.

The
single photo I found showed the couple at a Women’s Wellness benefit. Weider
looked the way I remembered her from eight years ago: sleek, blond, haute
coutured. Martin Boestling was dark, stocky, pitched forward like an attack
dog.

She’d
always been a fast talker but now her cool, deliberative demeanor had given way
to manic speech patterns and ragged fear. From private jets and a
Porsche/Beemer combo to a bird-splotched Nissan.

Did
only one car in the driveway mean Boestling was away at work? Or was Weider
living alone?

I
phoned Binchy. Now he was out, but Milo was in.

I
recounted the talk with Montez, the welcome I’d received from Weider, her
house, her car.

“Sounds
like an unhappy woman,” he said.

“Jumpy
woman and I made her jumpier. Scared the hell out of her.”

“Maybe
she doesn’t want to be reminded of her former life. Getting poorer can do that
to you. Not that I’m weeping, she’s still living in the Palisades.”

I
said, “Can you find out if she and Boestling split up?”

“Why?”

“Her
getting poorer. And I got the feeling she lived alone.”

“So?”

“Her
reaction was bizarre.”

“Hold
on.” He went off the line, came back several minutes later.

“Yeah,
they’re divorced. Filed seven years ago and closed three years after that.
That’s as much as I can get without driving downtown. Three years of drawn-out
legal battle couldn’t be fun and maybe she didn’t get what she wanted. Now
here’s my show-and-tell: Went over to Nestor Almedeira’s dump on Shatto. All
the roaches you can stomp. Like Krug said, no one remembers Nestor ever
existing. After some prodding, the clerk thought
maybe
Nestor
sometimes
hung out with another junkie named Spanky, but he had no idea what Spanky’s
real name was. Male white, twenty-five to forty-five, tall, dark hair and
mustache. Possibly.”

“Possibly?”

“The
hair
coulda
been dark blond or maybe reddish or reddish brown. The
mustache
coulda
been a beard. Clerk’s about five-two, so I’m figuring
anyone would look tall to him. At eight a.m. his breath reeked of booze, so
don’t buy stock on his advice. Nestor’s belongings are nowhere to be found. I
asked around about Krug and he’s got a rep as a lazy guy. I’d bet he never
bothered to go through Nestor’s treasures, gave the other junkies in the place
time to do the vulture bit on Nestor’s dope kit, whatever else they figured
they could use or sell. The rest probably got tossed.”

“Including
Troy Turner’s prison I.D.,” I said. “No street value in that. Or maybe Nestor
carried it on him and the killer took it as a souvenir.”

“If
the motive was hushing Nestor, that’s a real good bet. Wouldn’t it be nice if I
could get a warrant for Cowboy Barnett’s cabin and the damn thing’s sitting in
a drawer? Next item: Jane Hannabee. Central can’t seem to find her murder book,
one of the D’s who worked the case is dead and the other moved to Portland,
Oregon. I’m waiting for his callback. I did manage to locate the coroner’s
report on Hannabee, they’re supposed to be faxing it any minute. Last but not
least, I background-checked the old stunt gal, Bunny MacIntyre. She’s an
upright citizen, has owned the campsite for twenty-four years. Anyway, that’s
my life. Suggestions?”

“With
no dramatic leads, I’d follow up on Sydney Weider.”

“Back
to her? Why such a big deal?”

“You
had to be there,” I said. “The way she went from wary to panicked. Also, she
angled for the case eight years ago and Montez voiced a half-joking suspicion
that she and Boestling wanted to make a movie about it. I know none of that
ties together, but she twanged my antenna.”

“You
wanna talk to the ex, it’s fine with me. What about the Daneys? How’d they
react to being warned?”

“They
weren’t in.”

“Okay,”
he said. “Let’s do this: You give the Daneys another try and— ah, here’s the
coroner’s fax on Hannabee falling through the slot . . . looks
like lots of paper, let me check it out, if anything interesting comes up, I’ll
call you.”

* * *

I
made two more attempts at the Daney residence. The phone kept ringing.

No
machine. Considering all the foster kids they cared for, that seemed odd.

At a
quarter to six, I called Allison at her office.

“One
more patient, then I’m free,” she said. “Want to do something different?”

“Like
what?”

“How
about bowling?”

“Didn’t
know you bowled.”

“I
don’t,” she said. “That’s why it’s different.”

We
drove out to Culver City Champion Lanes. The place was dark and black-lit,
throbbing with dance music, and crowded with skinny, young, hair-gelled types
who looked like reality show rejects. Lots of drinking and laughing and
ass-grabbing, twelve-pound balls guttering, a few clackering hits.

Every
lane taken.

“Studio
night,” said the pouch-eyed, middle-aged attendant. “Metro Pictures has a deal
with us. They toss the slaves a perk once a month. We make out good on booze.”
He eyed the cocktail lounge on the alley’s north end.

“Who
are the slaves?” said Allison.

“Messengers,
gofers, assistant directors, assistants to assistant directors.” He smirked.
“The
industry.
”

“How
long does it last?” I said.

“Another
hour.”

“Want
to wait?” I asked Allison.

“Sure,”
she said. “Let’s play that machine where you try to fish out cool prizes.”

* * *

I
spent five bucks moving a flimsy robotic claw around a pile of twenty-cent
toys, trying in vain to snag a treasure. Finally a tiny pink fleece troll-like
thing with a dyspeptic smile managed to get an arm caught in a pincer.

Allison
said “How cute,” dropped it in her purse, and touched her lips to mine. Then we
entered the lounge and took a booth at the back. Red-felt walls, moldy
carpeting so thin I could feel rough cement underneath. This far from the
lanes, the technopop was reduced to a cardiac throb. Allison ordered a tuna
sandwich and a gin and tonic and I had a beer.

She
said, “What mischief have you been up to?”

I
caught her up.

“The
eight-year lag stayed in my mind,” she said. “How about this: The fact that
Rand was being released set something off in Malley. Does he use amphetamines
or coke?”

“Don’t
know.”

“If
he does, that could prime his rage further. He’d know about Rand’s release,
right?”