Rage

“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.

CHAPTER 25

The 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.”