Jonathan Kellerman - Rage

“Did you hear any specific rumors about a movie deal?” I said.

“I do know that she wrangled to get the case.”

“How?”

“By kissing up to the boss. The way it works at the P.D. is whoever’s top of the list gets the next client. Unless the boss handpicks someone for a specific case. I know for a fact that Sydney wasn’t next up on Troy Turner because the guy who was told me he’d been bumped. He wasn’t bitching, he had no stomach for high-profile bullshit. The way he phrased it was ‘The bitch did me a favor.’ ”

“Was she qualified?”

Montez clicked his teeth together. “I’d like to say no, but yeah, she was smart enough. By that time she had three, four years under her belt and her win-loss record was as good as anyone’s.”

“Three or four years out of school?” I said. “I remember her as older.”

“She was older. After she passed the bar she got married, did the mommy bit, waited until the kids were older.” He wiped his mouth and folded his napkin. “When you see her, give my regards.”

“I will.”

“I was kidding.”

I phoned Milo’s desk from the car. He was out and I asked for Detective Binchy.

Sean said, “Hey, Dr. Delaware.”

“Could you get me an unlisted address?”

“I don’t know, Doc, it’s kind of against regulations.”

“Milo asked me to talk to this person, so in a sense I’m a police surrogate.”

“A surrogate… okay. I guess. You’re not going to shoot anyone, are you?”

“Not unless they piss me off.”

Silence.

He said, “Ha. Okay, hold on.”

Lauritz Montez’s rant about Sydney Weider’s lifestyle had cited houses in Brentwood and Malibu but maybe that had been metaphorical, too. Or, she’d defied his rich-get-richer expectations and downsized.

Her listed residence was a smallish, single-story ranch house on La Cumbre Del Mar, on the western edge of Pacific Palisades. Sunny street cooled by Pacific currents, seven-figure ocean view, but by no means palatial. Splintering redwood siding striped the white stucco front. Half-dead sago palms and droopy ferns backed a flat lawn spiked with crabgrass. A shaggy old blue-leafed eucalyptus created gray litter on the grass. The driveway was occupied by a dented, gray Nissan Pathfinder filthy with gull shit.

As I walked to the door, I could smell the Pacific, hear the slow breathing of rustling tide. No one answered my knock or two bell pushes. A young woman across the street opened her door and observed me. When I faced her, she went back inside.

I waited awhile longer, took out a business card, wrote a note on the back asking Sydney Weider to call me, and dropped it in the mail slot. As I returned to my car, she came walking up the block.

She had on green sweats and white sneakers and dark glasses, walked with a stiff gait that threw her hip out at an odd angle. Her hair was chopped short and she’d let it go white. She was still thin but her body looked soft and loose-jointed and ungainly.

I stepped out to the breezeway in front of her house. She saw me and stopped short.

I waved.

She didn’t react.

I stepped toward her and smiled. She thrust her arms in front of her torso in a sad, useless defensive move. Like someone who’d seen too many martial arts movies.

“Ms. Weider- ”

“What do you want?” Her lawyer’s voice was gone, tightened by fear-laden shrillness.

“Alex Delaware. I worked on the Malley- ”

“Who are you?”

I repeated my name.

She stepped closer. Her lips fluttered and her chin quaked. “Go away!”

“Could we just talk for a minute? Rand Duchay’s been murdered. I’m working with the police on the case and if you could spare- ”

“A minute about what?” Ratatat.

“Who might’ve killed Rand. He was shot last- ”

“How would I know?” she yelled.

“Ms. Weider,” I said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but it might involve your personal safety.”

She clawed the air with one hand. The other was balled tight, flat against her flank. “What are you talking about? What the hell are you talking about?”

“It’s possible- ”

“Go away go the fuck away!” Shaking her head frantically, as if ridding it of noise.

“Ms. Weider- ”

Her mouth gaped. No sound for a second, then she was screaming.

A gull harmonized. The same neighbor from across the street stepped out.

Sydney Weider screamed louder.

I left.

The haunted look in Sydney Weider’s eyes stayed with me during the drive back home.

I went to my office and played Search Engine Poker. Thirty hits came up for “Sydney Weider” but only one was related to her work on People v. Turner and Duchay. A paragraph in the Western Legal Journal, dated a month prior to the final hearing, speculating about the ramifications for juvenile justice.

Weider had been quoted predicting there’d be plenty of “ground-breaking consequences.” No words of wisdom from Lauritz Montez. Either he’d declined to comment or no one had asked his opinion.

The remaining citations preceded Weider’s assignment to the P.D. by years. An obituary for Weider’s father listed him as Gunnar Weider, a producer of low-budget horror flicks and, later, episodic TV. Sydney was listed as his only survivor and as the wife of Martin Boestling, a CAA film agent.

The Times used to run a social page before political correctness took over. I logged onto the archives and found notice, twenty-eight years ago, of the Weider-Boestling nuptials. The Beverly Hills Hotel, Sydney had been twenty-three, her groom, two years older. Big wedding, lots of Faces in attendance.

I plugged in Boestling’s name. A few years after marrying Sydney he had left CAA for ICM, then William Morris. After that, he took a business affairs post at Miramax, where he’d stayed until a year before the Malley murder, when he resigned to start MBP Ltd., his own production company.

According to the press release in Variety, the new firm’s emphasis would be on “quality, moderately budgeted feature films.” The only MBP credits I could find were three made-for-TV cheapies, including a remake of a sitcom that had been stale in its first incarnation.

Lauritz Montez had talked about a script. Had there been a real one and had Boestling gone out on his own to peddle it?

To my mind, the Malley case had nothing to offer cinematically- no happy ending, no redemption, no character development- but what did I know?

Maybe it would’ve worked as a quickie cable stinker. I searched some more. As far as I could tell, no one, Martin Boestling included, had done the project.

The other hits were mentions of Sydney and Martin at fund-raisers for the predictable causes: Santa Monica Mountains Conservation League, Save the Bay, The Women’s Wellness Place, Citizen’s Initiative for Gun Control, The Greater L.A. Zoo Association.

The single photo I found showed the couple at a Women’s Wellness benefit. Weider looked the way I remembered her from eight years ago: sleek, blond, haute coutured. Martin Boestling was dark, stocky, pitched forward like an attack dog.

She’d always been a fast talker but now her cool, deliberative demeanor had given way to manic speech patterns and ragged fear. From private jets and a Porsche/Beemer combo to a bird-splotched Nissan.

Did only one car in the driveway mean Boestling was away at work? Or was Weider living alone?

I phoned Binchy. Now he was out, but Milo was in.

I recounted the talk with Montez, the welcome I’d received from Weider, her house, her car.

“Sounds like an unhappy woman,” he said.