indifference that bordered on loathing. “The police are set to hand out your name to the next guy who stumbles along. Trust me. Some low-level corker working cop shop out here in the Delta somewhere. If I don’t identify you, someone else will.”
In a bid for self-control, Abatangelo laughed softly and looked away. The truly galling part, he thought, was that Waxman was right. At first he’d been perfectly willing to have his name made public. Being named had swagger, it’d flush somebody out, they’d come looking for him, asking who the fuck he thought he was. He’d only relented when he realized the benefit to remaining unnamed, given Shel’s likely reaction to his exposing Frank. All that seemed obscenely irrelevant now. Even so, this smacked of betrayal- not so much what Waxman had done as the way he’d confessed to it. The squirming, the bluster, the milky eyes.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “Enough on that. Now did they respond to the message above the phone?”
“I was getting to that,” Waxman snapped. He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry if I seem back on my heels. It’s just… you’re insinuating that I was there to feed them some cooked-up version of events.”
Cohn, sensing a need for a different tack, stepped in. “Any sense the detectives think this Frank Maas character killed the three people in that house?”
Waxman put his glasses back on. “If they do, they didn’t share that with me.”
Abatangelo said, “It doesn’t make sense, Tony.”
“It doesn’t?” He turned a little, the light catching his eyes briefly, making them glisten within the shadows veiling his face. “This is a guy you yourself described as a sociopath. Your girlfriend, after getting the shit kicked out of her, ran back to him.”
“Not to him,” Abatangelo said.
“Oh, Christ. To what, then?”
“To protect me.”
“From this Frank character.”
“I don’t think so,” Abatangelo said. “Not from the note she left. I think she meant the people Frank was in with. This Felix Randall guy.” It came out rushed, unconvincing. “Look, Tony- ”
“As long as we’re dwelling in the land of I Don’t Think So,” Cohn interrupted, “I’d say my guess is as good as yours, and my guess is she came back, this Frank character was lying in wait, as they say in the penal code, and he went off all over again. He made this thing look like a burn, just like he did with the Briscoe kids. Now he’s on the run. He’s got the woman he loves with him. That woman’s either going to love him back or die. If she isn’t dead already.”
Abatangelo thought it through. It was possible, he supposed. The problem was, it also meant there was no hope.
“I don’t see it that way,” he said quietly. “It doesn’t explain the message above the phone.”
Cohn snorted with disgust and turned to Waxman. “Anything else?”
“They implied,” Waxman said, “that they have information to the effect that Dan and Ms. Beaudry had gotten back together.”
“What information?” Abatangelo asked.
“I don’t know, but whatever it was, it suggested the involvement wasn’t strictly romantic. They think you’re back in the trade.”
“Then their information’s lousy.”
“One of the detectives suspected the murders were meant for the two of you, retaliation for some drug deal gone wrong.”
Cohn closed his eyes and murmured, “Lovely.”
“That’s the way it’s set up to look,” Abatangelo countered. “These cops, they’re not really that stupid. They were playing you, Wax.”
“Yes, well,” Waxman said. “Another detective, the narc I mentioned, came up with a different theory. He suspects you’re the killer.”
Cohn opened his eyes again.
Abatangelo said, “And you laughed, right?”
“He apparently believes that you came out looking for Frank Maas, to get even for what he did to Ms. Beaudry.”
“Which he knew about how?”
“From my article,” Waxman said. “I gave them a draft, remember?”
“Wait. This theory, that I’m the killer, this narc made it up while you were sitting there? What’s that tell you, Wax? It’s horseshit.”
“Be that as it may,” Waxman continued, “the way this narc sees it, when Frank wasn’t there, you killed the people who were, figuring blame would work back to Frank.” Turning to Cohn, he added, “That’s his explanation for why the killings were made to look like a drug burn, like the Briscoe murders.”
“I’m one cold-blooded snake,” Abatangelo said.
“It’s also,” Waxman added, “his explanation for why you were there earlier tonight.”
Both Cohn and Abatangelo snapped to at that one. “How’d they know that?” Abatangelo said.
“I told you, they were very well informed.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Some kind of trace on the phone out here, I imagine,” Waxman said.
“You imagine?”
“He simply said they knew it for a fact.”
“Fucking Christ, Wax. I’m not hearing this. You didn’t confirm it, did you?”
Waxman shrank back a little. “As I said, I gave them a draft of the story- ”
“You haven’t had time to write that part.”
“I’ll be phoning it in,” Waxman said, “as soon as we’re done here.” His eyes hardened. “And if I were you, I might consider taking refuge in the truth for once, instead of this scamming knack for bullshit you seem so fond of.”
“You know what?” Cohn interjected sourly. “I think this is a good time- ”
“You still haven’t told me, Wax, what the cops said about the message above the phone.”
“Nothing,” Waxman said.
Abatangelo flinched. “Come again?”
“They said nothing about it. I brought it up, they acted like I was an idiot.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Tell them, not me. I said the message suggests she was abducted. Some kind of trade is being arranged.”
“Exactly.”
“They laughed.”
“Wax, come on, you sold it- ”
“It’s not my position to sell anything. I pointed it out, I showed them my story. Once there was no longer any point concealing the fact that you were my source, everything else I proposed came off like canned crap, manufactured by you.”
“Wait, wait- ”
“My guess is they think you wrote the message above the phone, intending it as some sort of smoke screen.”
“That’s nuts. One minute I’m making it look like Frank did it, the next I’m trying to pin it on some Mexicans?”
“I’m just telling you what they suggested.”
“And you said?”
“As little as possible,” Waxman responded. “Though I realize you don’t believe that.”
Cohn pinched the bridge of his nose. “As I was trying to say, this might be a good time for me to speak with my client alone. All right?”
Waxman reached for the door handle then stopped, turning back to Abatangelo. “I have to see it from all sides. Nothing I write will seem credible otherwise.”
