Deception

Hustler tented over his face. Breathing slowly, evenly. One manicured hand brushed the carpet. Near his fingers sat a chrome-plated iPod.

Quinn Glover, larger and heavier in real life, with the bland good looks of a budding politico, sat with his feet up, wearing eyeshades, sucking from a bottle of Silver Patron and bopping in time to whatever tune-buzz his gold- plated iPod was offering.

Both boys wore camouflage cargo pants and tight black T-shirts that showcased muscular builds. Combat boots and dirty white socks littered the aisle.

Uniformed for a mission.

Milo yanked Quinn up first, had him cuffed, belted into his chair, eyes and ears exposed, before his mouth could close.

Tristram remained asleep. Milo flipped him like a pancake, yanked out his earbuds.

Both boys gaped.

Milo said, “You guys watch a lot of TV?”

Blank stares.

“I’m sure you know the drill, but here goes: Tristram Wydette, you are under arrest for murder. You have the right to keep your stupid mouth shut, whether or not you talk really doesn’t matter squat to me…”

The evolution of each boy’s facial expression was as uniform as their getup: drowsy surprise morphing to cornered-animal shock, upgrading to terror, then tears.

Milo called for backup and we watched them sob.

Worth the price of admission.

CHAPTER

39

 Battalion One: high-priced lawyers.

Battalion Two: high-priced publicists.

An attempt to curry favor at the Times because Myron Wydette played golf with the publisher backfired and the resulting self-righteous indignation was borderline slapstick. Wags insisted the real problem was Wydette cheated at the game and his greens buddy finally had enough.

The palm print found on Sal Fidella’s garage matched Quinn Glover’s hand. Faced with that addition to the mountain of eyewitness and forensic evidence, Quinn’s legal commandos tried selling out Tristram Wydette in return for a lighter sentence, pushing the notion that Quinn was a weak-willed follower caught in the spell of Tristram Wydette’s evil charisma.

Tristram, his former best friend claimed, had masterminded the whole thing because getting into Stanford was the most important thing in the world to him, he felt like the stupid kid in the family, Aidan was the brainiac.

When told that Aidan had also used Trey Franck as an SAT surrogate, the boy was genuinely surprised. “No shit. What was his problem?”

“You tell me, Quinn,” said Milo.

“He always seemed smart to me.”

“Maybe he just wasn’t smart enough.”

“Yeah. Sir. You’re right.” Laughter.

“Something funny, Quinn?”

“I guess he just fucked up. Sir. I guess we all did.”

“That’s a fair assessment.”

“Assessment,” said Quinn. “That’s an SAT vocab word. ‘The act or instance of evaluating.’”

“How do you assess your situation, Quinn?”

“It was T’s idea, sir. I didn’t like it, what could I do?”

“No choice at all.”

“Exactly, sir. T thought of the dee-ice, T put her—Ms. Freeman—in it. He also bashed in that loser’s head— we were gonna shoot him—T was gonna shoot him but we forgot the gun at T’s house and we already drove all the way there so T said let’s just do it.”

“How’d it go down?”

“Loser came to the door, we—T pushed him in, saw the pool cue and bashed him.”

Milo said, “There was no sign of a serious struggle, Quinn. That means Mr. Fidella was restrained.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“Be a lot easier for two big guys to restrain one middle-aged loser.”

The boy’s lawyer, silent and working his iPhone till now, said, “I’d prefer he doesn’t answer that.”

Milo didn’t protest. “So T bashed in the loser’s head. Then what?”

“Then T got into the Jag.”

“And you drove away in the loser’s Corvette.”

The lawyer said, “I’d prefer if—”

“And I’d prefer not to waste my time, Mr. Neal. Grand Theft Auto is not your client’s problem.”

“It’s not a matter of that, it’s a matter of—”

Milo stood. Motioned to me to do the same.

“That’s it?” said Quinn.

“According to Mr. Neal it is, son.” To the attorney: “So far, I haven’t heard anything of a ‘forthcoming nature’ and John Nguyen won’t take kindly to that. Particularly in light of multiple victims, murder for gain, extreme depravity, lying in wait—”

“Fine,” said Neal. “He drove the car.”

We sat back down.

Milo said, “You drove off in Mr. Fidella’s Corvette.”

“Piece-of-shit wheels,” said Quinn. “Made all sorts of noises.” Smiling and hoping it caught on.

“Then what happened?”

Client glanced at counsel. Counsel nodded.

“We went to Tristram’s house and stored it in the garage. His dad’s got a huge garage, twenty cars in there.”

“Then what?”

“Nothing until the next day, then Tristram took the Jag and I took the piece of shit, I almost thought it wouldn’t make it.”

“Make it where?”

“Pasadena.”

“What’s in Pasadena?”

“His place.”

“Whose place?”

“Him. The nerd who took the test.”

“Trey Franck.”

“Yeah—yes, sir.”

“Why’d you go there?”

“T said it was like his mom, she’s crazy about being neat, doesn’t matter if you leave a speck of cookie on the couch or you take a dump on it, she’s going to freak out. So we had to go all the way.”

“No sense leaving a speck of mess,” said Milo.

“Exactly, sir. We had to be thorough.”

“How’d it go down with Trey Franck?”

“The plan was we were going to knock on the door, say it was a friend or something, but right after we got there, he came out of the building and started walking. We drove up to him, it was dark, no one was around, so we jumped out and held him and cold-cocked him. He wimped out totally, like out.”