The prices have gone up, Bob.
Follow the money.
“Follow the lawyer who brought the money,” Ben says. “Somebody sent Chad to bail Crowe out. He’s going to report back to that somebody. And he isn’t going to do it over the phone.”
“Can you do it, bro?” Chon asks. “Follow him without getting seen?”
Without getting killed?
“I think so,” Ben says.
“I’ll take the other line.”
Crowe and Hennessy have to be freaking. They know they’re on thin ice. They’re going to reach out.
And up.
It’s a good situation, Chon thinks. If Crowe and Hennessy had flipped on each other, Ben would have gotten his “justice,” but it would still have left the higher-ups out there, and they would have him killed.
Better this way.
“Ben?”
“Yeah?”
“Keep your head down.”
“You, too.”
“Always.”
Recent evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
224
Duane Crowe goes home long enough to pack a few things.
Because this could go either way.
He folds his Old Guys Rule shirt into the duffel bag and thinks about the phone conversation that was less than reassuring.
Yeah, we have judges, but this is federal, Duane. That makes it tough. Say you get twelve-you serve twelve. You can do twelve. I’ve done it. You’re still a young man when you get out.
I’m not a young man now, Duane thinks. He grabs a couple of pairs of jeans out of a dresser drawer and throws them in the bag. I have a daughter going to college. I have tuition to pay. I can’t do one year, never mind the cost of the trial, the defense.
And that’s just the drug charge.
The other thing…
… is a problem. If the other guy gets weak in the knees… You fucked up. You know, with the girl. It’s a problem.
Yeah, thanks a fucking heap. Tell me something I don’t know. Just like the Powers That Be, you work your ass off for them, make them money, and then when there’s a “problem” they leave you on an island.
But Duane gets the message.
The Powers That Be will take a chance on the drug charge, but the homicides?
If I don’t do something about Brian, they’re going to do something about me. They’re going to clean house- Brian, Leonard, me.
If they’re not on their way already.
He puts the revolver in his pocket and heads out.
225
Ben sits in his car and calls Chad Meldrun.
The bored, too-cool-for-school receptionist puts him on hold. Comes back on a few seconds later and says, “Chad said to say he can’t represent you anymore.”
“Did he say why not?”
“Conflicted.”
“You or him?”
She hangs up.
But Ben knows what he wanted to know-Chad is in the office.
Which works out, because Ben is in the parking structure.
All the President’s Men.
226
O is conflicted as to what to wear.
She walks into her closet, surveys the hangers full of clothes, and tries to decide how to go, sartorially speaking.
I mean, what does the style-conscious South Orange County Princess wear to meet her father for the first time?
Dress it up, or caj it down?
Go older, or younger?
She thinks about a polka-dot dress and pigtails, but decides it’s waaaay too creepy because maybe Paul Patterson doesn’t have a sense of satire or irony.
She looks at your basic “little black dress”-like, look at what a lovely lady the daughter you threw away turned out to be-but worries about crossing the paper-thin line between sophisticated and sexy.
She thinks about not going at all.
This is a girl who has stood in front of a vending machine-torn between F-3 (Peanut M amp;Ms) and D-7 (Famous Amos chocolate-chip cookies)-for fifteen minutes and then walked away with nothing rather than make a choice.
O knows she doesn’t have that luxury here. She has to wear something, she can’t just go naked as the day she was born, as symbolically appropriate as that might be.
You might be able to walk naked in Laguna without raising alarm-or an eyebrow-but Newport Beach? They don’t get undressed to have sex. You could get arrested in Newport for wearing white after Labor Day.
Okay, this is getting you nowhere, O thinks.
But maybe that’s just where you should go.
Maybe you should lie down, fire up a blunt, and forget it.
227
Chon pulls over near Crowe’s place up Laguna Canyon and looks at the driveway.
Crowe’s car isn’t there.
Chon gets out, slips his pistol into his waistband, and goes to the front door. It’s locked.
The man has taken off.
Chon doesn’t blame him, but it’s a problem.
Not a big problem, but a problem.
