hazy. Her anger showed in the way she held her head. 'The judge in New Orleans, who was he?' 'Rulon Lester. Do you know him?'
She thought about it, trying to place the name, then shook her head.
'No, I don't think so.'
'I spoke with his assistant. He sent my file to Myers, so Myers had one of only two copies that the Army released. Joe and I found this copy in an apartment in San Gabriel that belongs to Eric Schilling. He made at least six phone calls to a number in San Miguel, E1 Salvador, that belongs to Michael Fallon. It's Fallon on your tape, Lucy. I called the number. I recognized his voice.'
I opened Schilling's phone bills and pointed out the
calls to E1 Salvador. She stared at the number, then dialed it into her phone. I watched her as it rang. I watched as she listened. Her face darkened as she listened to his voice, and then she jabbed hard at the phone to end the call. She smashed the phone down onto the arm of the couch. I didn't stop her. I waited.
'The only way they could have gotten my zoi file is through Myers. Myers probably set up the entire thing and brought them in on it. They nabbed Ben with me as the smoke screen because Richard would buy into that. Myers probably even talked him into coming out here with people of his own to find Ben. That way, Myers could ride it from the inside and control how Richard reacted. He was Richard's point man in the investigation.
287
He could feed Richard the ransom demand and encourage him to go along.'
Lucy stood hard.
'Richard's at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Let's go see him.'
I didn't move.
'And tell him what? We have the file, but we can't prove Myers knows them. If we don't have something definite, he'll deny everything and then we're stuck. He'll know that we know, and then the only thing left for
him is to get rid of the evidence.'
Get rid of Ben.
Lucy lowered herself onto the couch and stared at me. 'You said you need my help. You already know how you want me to help, and it's something you can't do or you would be doing it.'
'If Myers hired these people before he started thinking about this, then he probably hired them straight up. Richard's company would have a record of it. We have Fallon's phone number in E1 Salvador and Schilling's number in San Gabriel. If Myers called either of them at any time and for any reason from a company phone, those records will exist.'
'But we don't want to ask Richard because Richard
might lose it with Myers.'
'Myers can't know.'
Lucy slumped back, thinking. She glanced at her watch.
'It's almost ten in Louisiana. Everyone from the office should be home.'
She went into her bedroom, then returned with a battered leather address book, and flipped through the pages.
'I had friends at Richard's company before we were divorced. I was close to some of these people. Everyone
288
knew he was an asshole, especially the people who knew him the best.'
She settled back with her phone and pulled her legs up so that she was sitting cross-legged and dialed a number.
'Hello, Sondra? It's Lucy. Yeah, here in L.A. How are you ?'
Sondra Burkhardt had been Richard's comptroller for sixteen years. She oversaw an accounting department which was responsible for paying the company's bills, collecting monies, and tracking cash flow. Most of her job was done by computer, but she told the computer what to do. Sondra had played tennis with Lucy at LSU, and Lucy had gotten her the job. Sondra also had three children, the youngest of whom was six, and Lucy was her godmother.
'Sondra, I need a favor that's going to sound strange and I don't have time to--'
Lucy paused, listening, then nodded.
'Thanks, babe. Okay, I'm going to give you three names, and I need to know whether or not they were ever
on the payroll. Can you do that from home?'
I interrupted.
'Central America. Any time in the past year.'
Lucy nodded.
'They would have been foreign hires, probably in Central America sometime in the past year. Myers would have been the one to hire them. No, I don't have Social Security numbers, just the names. I understand, that makes it harder. I know.'
Lucy gave her the names, then asked if we could get a list of all the calls that Myers had made to Los Angeles
