23

LONG AFTER SADLER’S BODY had been taken to the morgue and the lab boys had dusted the room for prints, taken photos of the scene, and picked up hair follicles and blood samples, Jack and Oscar checked Sadler’s computer for evidence which might link him to Steinbach. Also Blakely, Hughes, and Andreen. But nothing came up in any of the dead lawyer’s financial records.

Jack stretched and leaned against the crumbling old wall.

“I know the guy is dirty,” he said. “He’s as much as admitted it to me. The cocksucker. He’s laughing at us right now.”

He looked down at the screen, which glowed off Oscar’s face.

Then Oscar smiled and turned to him.

“Hey,” he said. “Look at this name. Timmy Andreen. That’s the guy who runs a place called the Valentine Room down in the Valley. Timmy-boy is into all kinds of nefarious shit. Fences stolen jewels. Used to be a hit man . . . worked with the late Jules Furth who, if you recall, was in business with Steinbach.”

Jack leaned down behind Oscar and looked at the ledger, which read Payment Owed . . . 200,500 . . . S.

“S for Steinbach?”

“Could be,” Oscar said. “Maybe these are our boys. Maybe they hit Zac and Hughes for Steinbach and received their blood money from Sadler.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Then maybe Sadler needs dough and decides to shake down Steinbach. Which was what the meet at Musso’s was supposed to be about. But instead of collecting the money, he gets an extra mouth in his neck.”

The two men looked at one another.

Jack stood up and began to pace the room, his arms folded across his chest.

“If our tarnished little researcher is right, Blakely and Hughes, and Forrester, might have been branching out from bank robberies to sales. ’Cause Andreen deals in an eclectic catalog: guns, diamonds, whores, anything they can boost, sell, or kill.”

“Yeah, but Blakely and Hughes helped us bring down Stein- bach,” Oscar said. “How do we account for that?”

“Okay,” Jack said. “But what if it went down like this: They want a bigger share of the take, so they don’t tell Steinbach we’re investigating him. They want to make it a little hot for him. He gets in a jackpot, and now he wants to kill them. Now think about what he said: ‘I’m going to get all of you.’ But he hasn’t gotten us, has he? Maybe that’s what it’s all about. They didn’t do their jobs, so he has them hit.”

“Uses Andreen.”

“Yeah, why not?”

“Andreen doesn’t know us. Maybe we ought to go down to Ventura, take a little trip to the Valentine Room.”

“I got a problem with that,” Oscar said. “Timmy knows me. I busted him once a long time ago when I was with the staties. He might remember my face.”

Jack smiled. Shook his head.

“All right. I’m going down there; see if I can get inside.”

“Alone? I don’t like that.”

“I know, but it’s the only way. I’ll be okay.”

“All right,” Oscar said. “Man, this case has more twists than a corkscrew. But you know we’re going to get it solved. They can’t stop the Hardy fucking Boys.”

Jack laughed and punched his partner on the arm. Good old Oscar, the one man he was sure he could trust.