Britt Warden’s death had cost the firm every single one of his clients, not a one of whom was willing to trust his business to Rigby. After six months, he’d been obliged to move the office to smaller and less distinguished quarters and reduce the firm’s staff from five to one. The new space was downtown in what he’d been assured was once the tallest building in Ventura County. It had undeniable mid-century charm, with built-in walnut bookcases and a view of the Pacific across the 101. Damned few lawyers practiced downtown anymore, though, and every time he came into the office to be greeted without enthusiasm by his sole employee he was reminded of his diminished station, which called to mind in turn the other recent troubles occasioned by the decline in revenues. He wasn’t terribly bothered today, though; everything was in line, and he’d have Glenn’s money back in his account before the body was cold, or at least before the accountants got their hands on the books.
Four days had passed since he’d shot Billy Knox and his girlfriend. He stopped in at five o’clock to check on his mail, and he took immediate note of the pinched expression on Lena’s face as he entered the tiny reception area. Neither of them said hello. “You look like you haven’t taken a shit in a week,” he said in passing.
She took a deep breath and pulled her chair back and drummed a staccato, four-knuckled tattoo on the desktop. “Okay, first off, we’ve been over this before, about your language. I’m your employee, and I object to being spoken to in that manner. You’re an attorney, you should know better.”
Oh, right—humorless bitch—he’d forgotten that about her since the day before yesterday. Jesus. “I’m very sorry, Lena.” Between Lena and the priest and God, he was doing a lot more apologizing lately than was his custom or preference. “What else is the matter?”
“You haven’t answered your cell all day.” The way her mouth was set, it really did look as though she’d just guzzled a jar of vinegar. “It’s one thing, you not being in here during business hours, but you have to be reachable. Mr. Haskill’s nephew called four times from St. Louis. This is the fifth day he’s called and I’m getting tired of it.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, quietly enough that Lena didn’t feel obliged to object. “All right, get him for me, would you?”
He stepped back into the office and leaned back in his twelve-hundred-dollar chair, purchased shortly after he and Britt left the old firm and opened their own. Nervous Britt was against such cosmetic extravagances, but Rigby overruled him, saying they didn’t want to look like a couple of kids right out of law school. That was the thing about that partnership, they’d really balanced out one another’s weaknesses. He had no doubt whatsoever that if Britt hadn’t gotten himself killed, he wouldn’t be in anywhere near this kind of trouble. Fucking dumb shit. Ice climbing, he might as well have jumped out of a goddamned airplane without a chute.
“Mr. Rigby, I have Mr. Haskill on one.”
He picked up the receiver with a sense of nonspecific dread. “Jerry, Rigby here. How the hell are you?”
“Oh, just fine. Just have a few questions about my uncle.”
About your uncle’s money, you mean, you bloodsucking prick. The nephew stood to inherit in the low eight figures’ worth of cash and securities, plus the house, plus what remained of the old man’s television revenues, which thanks to the insatiable programming demands of cable were still worth some money. “Sure, go ahead.”
“I ran into some people from my old high school. Uncle Glenn’s alma mater, too.”
“Right.”
“Anyway this guy, he’s the director of development, he says Uncle Glenn’s going to make some sort of bequest to the school. In his will.”
“That’s where a bequest normally goes, Jerry.”
“Hah. I was just wondering what kind of bequest. What size, actually.”
In fact the amount in the will was $35,000, but Rigby liked making the nephew squirm. “I’m not really free to discuss such things, but your uncle can tell you if you’re concerned.”
“Oh.”
Jerry wasn’t ever going to bring this up with old Glenn. He was so terrified of being disinherited he never brought money up in the old man’s presence, even though it came up every single time he spoke to Rigby.
“This guy was also telling me something about a painting. You know the one I’m talking about?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Have you seen it?”
“I sure have.” Now it struck him that if Jerry had ever seen the picture they were screwed, because he would certainly be present for its installation at the school.
“Is it really that special? I know he has a lot of pictures, but as I remember they’re all shit.”
“Oh, I don’t know that much about art, but the girl who works for him now, she’s got a master’s degree in art history and she says it’s crap.”
“The development guy says there was some article on this guy in a magazine. Sounds to me like it might be worth a lot of money. Maybe more than we want to give the school.”
“Jerry, that’s just your uncle fucking with them. You know how he feels about that place.” Don’t say anything right now that’s going to fuck up my beautiful scheme. Do not. Because I will reach in through the telephone wire and rip out your fucking trachea from two thousand fucking miles away.
“So how concrete is the plan to give it to the school?”
“Nothing’s official yet.”
“Maybe we could keep it unofficial, and then when he’s, you know, when he’s gone we could figure it out then? We could sell it or maybe even give it to the school anyway if the spirit moves us.”
Thank God. The dumb bastard was willing to let Rigby handle the talking himself. This wasn’t a roadblock or even a major detour, then, just a slow-moving garbage truck that had to be passed on the wrong side. “I’ll plant the idea in his head and see what comes up, all right? You take care of yourself now, Jerry.”
He hung up and kept talking. “Yeah, take care of your pig-faced, sexless, ball-sucking bag of greedy shit self. You pale, stuttering, hairless pile of worthless human garbage. You worthless goat-fucking taste-like-assburger.”
“I can hear you all the way out here, Mr. Rigby,” Lena called from out in reception.
Three hours later, Lena was long gone. Rigby sat alone in his darkened office, looking out at the cars passing on the freeway, dipping an occasional wet fingertip into a small baggie of coke that he kept in the locked top-right drawer of the desk. The predominant sensation in his brain was optimism; the worry clinging to him for the past few weeks had begun to wither and fall away.
He was well aware that the cocaine was contributing mightily to this feeling, but it hadn’t had the same effect on him recently, had, in fact, been exacerbating his general antsiness. He’d been listening to KFI to see if there was anything about a grisly discovery in a Ventura County summer home, and surfing the local TV stations’ websites looking for any sign someone had found the bodies. Nobody was looking, it seemed, for Knox or his girlfriend, and by the time they were found no one would be able to establish that Rigby had ever had anything to do with the runty little fuck. He was sure now that they weren’t in that house for any legitimate reason—tweakers weren’t renowned for their reliability as house sitters—at some point someone would stumble upon what was left of them, and the cops would tally up the contents of the house, including what Rigby assumed would be a small meth stash, and come to the entirely reasonable conclusion that someone in the drug trade had had it in for little Billy Knox.
Which of course was true, but Rigby knew that they wouldn’t be looking for a more or less respectable attorney as the killer. Nor would they spend the effort necessary to come to such an unlikely conclusion regarding the deaths of the likes of those two.
And then his office line rang. He never picked up himself in the office, but he looked to see who it was. The caller ID was blocked, and the cocaine was telling him to pick up or he’d worry about it later.
“Mr. Rigby? This is Ernie Norwin.”
Jesus, what now? “Sure. How you doing, Ernie?”
“Hope you don’t mind me calling.”
Fuck fuck fuck fuck. “That’s fine, what’s on your mind?”
“Just wondering if you’d seen Billy. His girlfriend Magda’s mom keeps calling me, like she thinks I’m up to something because Magda was supposed to meet her in Chatsworth and she didn’t show.”
“Well, I’ll be honest with you, Ern, Knox sure did fuck up that job I had him do, big time. And despite having fucked up said job beyond all recognition, he felt entitled to his payment.”
“That’s what he told me last time I saw him down at the Shanty. Said he was going to get that money out of you one way or the other.”
“He got some of it. Beat me up pretty good.”
Norwin was quiet for a moment. “Billy Knox did?”
“Snuck up on me with a tire iron. Took everything I had on me, and I was carrying over three thousand in cash for a client, supposed to make a bank deposit the next morning. Had to make it up out of my own pocket.”
“Huh. I didn’t think he had the balls.”
“I imagine he bought some dope and they hightailed it off somewhere to sell it, or else just snort it up. You talk to anyone else about this?”
“No,” Norwin said, slowly, and Rigby could almost hear the gears turning just as painfully inside the man’s head on the other end. “Why’s that?”
“See, I could get into trouble if it got out that I’d lost a client’s money.”
“You said you paid it back yourself.”
“Yeah, but there are rules about how to do these things, and I didn’t follow them. Also it’s not good press that I got beaten up by a guy over a debt. A crooked one at that.”
By the time the call ended Norwin sounded as though he believed that Knox and Magda just ran off somewhere on a tear, and the electrical feeling in Rigby’s belly had subsided to a tolerable degree, but the fact remained that Norwin knew there was a serious conflict between him and the dead man. That would have to be dealt with before any discoveries were made.
From the locked drawer he retrieved the phone he took off Knox. He checked the call log on the office phone and punched Norwin’s number into the burner.
ITS ME BILLY
He hesitated before pressing send, since there was now a telephone record somewhere of Norwin having called him that very evening, a record of their existences having intersected, but the moment seemed to call for bold action.
Dude where you been mags moms going nuts she didn’t show up chatswrth
WERE HOLED UP WANT A TASTE?
sure where you at
Rigby grinned, feeling lucky, and calculated how long it was going to take him to get out to the Ojai house, then started typing directions.