I heard “the pitch” several times a day, day in and day out. I also attended the Sunday salons where Myron and board members spoke to potential white-hat donors, and I mingled with them afterward, mentioning the stories I was working on. I had some extra cachet at these gatherings as the author of two bestselling books, though it was never mentioned that it had been more than ten years since I had published anything. I knew the pitch was important and vital to my own paycheck—not that I was getting anywhere close to a living wage for Los Angeles—but I had heard it so many times in my four years at FairWarning that I could recite it in my sleep. Backward.
Myron stopped to listen to his potential investor and muted the phone before looking up at me.
“You in?” he asked.
“Just sent it,” I said. “Also to Bill.”
“Okay, I’ll read it tonight and we can talk tomorrow if I have anything.”
“It’s good to go. Even has a great headline on it. You just need to write the deck.”
“You better be—”
He took his phone off mute so he could respond to a question. I gave him a salute and headed toward the door, stopping by Emily Atwater’s cubicle on my way out to say goodbye. She was the only other staffer in the office at the moment.
“Cheers,” she said in her crisp British accent.
We worked out of an office in a typical two-story plaza in Studio City. The first level was all retail and food, while the second floor was walk-in businesses like car insurance, manicure/pedicure, yoga, and acupuncture. Except us. FairWarning wasn’t a walk-in business, but the office came cheap because it was located above a marijuana dispensary and the venting in the building was such that it brought the aroma of fresh product inside our office 24/7. Myron took the place at a heavy discount.
The plaza was L-shaped and had an underground parking garage with five assigned spaces for FairWarning employees and visitors. That was a major perk. Parking in the city was always an issue. And sheltered parking was an even bigger perk for me because this was sunny California and I rarely put the top up on my Jeep.
I had bought the Wrangler new with the advance on my last book, and the odometer served as a reminder of how long it had been since I was buying new cars and riding bestseller lists. I checked it as I fired up the engine. I had strayed 162,172 miles from the path I had once been on.
2
I lived in Sherman Oaks on Woodman Avenue by the 101 freeway. It was a 1980s Cape Cod–style apartment building of twenty-four townhomes that formed a rectangle enclosing a courtyard with a community pool and barbecue area. It, too, had parking underneath.
Most of the apartment buildings on Woodman had names such as the Capri and Oak Crest and the like. My building stood nameless. I had moved in only a year and a half before, after selling the condo I had bought with that same book advance. The royalty checks had been getting smaller and smaller each year and I was in the midst of reordering my life to live within the paychecks from FairWarning. It was a difficult transition.
As I waited on the sloping driveway for the garage gate to lift, I noticed two men in suits standing at the call box at the pedestrian gate to the complex. One was white and middle fifties, the other a couple of decades younger and Asian. A little kick of wind opened the Asian man’s jacket and I got a glimpse of the badge on his belt.
I drove down into the garage and kept my eyes on the rearview. They followed me down the slope and in. I pulled into my assigned space and killed the engine. By the time I grabbed my backpack and got out, they were behind the Jeep and waiting.
“Jack McEvoy?”
He had gotten the name right but had pronounced it wrong. Mick-a-voy.
“Yes, McEvoy,” I said, correcting him. Mack-a-voy. “What’s going on?”
“I’m Detective Mattson, LAPD,” the older of the two said. “This is my partner, Detective Sakai. We need to ask you a few questions.”
Mattson opened his jacket to show that he, too, had a badge, and the gun to go with it.
“Okay,” I said. “About what?”
“Can we go up to your place?” Mattson asked. “Something more private than a garage?”
He gestured to the space around them as if there were people listening from all quarters, but the garage was empty.
“I guess so,” I said. “Follow me. I usually take the stairs up but if you guys want the elevator, it’s down at that end.”
I pointed to the end of the garage. My Jeep was parked in the middle and right across from the stairs leading up to the center courtyard.
“Stairs are good,” Mattson said.
I headed that way and the detectives followed. The whole way to my apartment door I was trying to think in terms of my work. What had I done that would draw the attention of the LAPD? While the reporters at FairWarning had a lot of freedom to pursue stories, there was a general division of labor, and criminal scams and schemes were part of my turf along with Internet-related reporting.
I began to wonder if my Arthur Hathaway story had run across a criminal investigation of the swindler and whether Mattson and Sakai were about to ask me to hold the story back. But as soon as I thought of that possibility, I dismissed it. If that were the case, they would have come to my office, not my home. And it probably would have started with a phone call, not an in-person show-up.
“What unit are you from?” I asked as we crossed the courtyard toward apartment 7 on the other side of the pool.
“We work downtown,” Mattson said, being coy, while his partner stayed silent.
“What crime unit, I mean,” I said.
“Robbery-Homicide Division,” Mattson said.
I didn’t write about the LAPD per se, but in the past I had. I knew that the elite squads worked out of the downtown headquarters, and RHD, as it was called, was the elite of the elite.
“So then what are we talking about here?” I said. “Robbery or homicide?”
“Let’s go inside before we start talking,” Mattson said.
I got to my front door. His nonanswer seemed to push the answer toward homicide. My keys were in my hand. Before unlocking the door, I turned and looked at the two men standing behind me.
“My brother was a homicide detective,” I said.
“Really?” Mattson said.
“LAPD?” Sakai asked, his first words.
“No,” I said. “Out in Denver.”
“Good on him,” Mattson said. “He’s retired?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “He was killed in the line of duty.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mattson said.
I nodded and turned back to the door to unlock it. I wasn’t sure why I had blurted that out about my brother. It was not something I usually shared. People who knew my books knew it, but I didn’t mention it in day-to-day conversation. It had happened a long time ago in what seemed like another life.
I got the door open and we entered. I flicked on the light. I had one of the smallest units in the complex. The bottom floor was open-plan, with a living room flowing into a small dining area and then the kitchen beyond it, separated only by a counter with a sink. Along the right wall was a set of stairs leading up to a loft, which was my bedroom. There was a full bath up there and a half bath on the bottom floor beneath the stairs. Less than a thousand square feet in total. The place was neat and orderly but that was only because it was starkly furnished and featured little in the way of personal touches. I had turned the dining-room table into a work area. A printer sat at the head of the table. Everything was set for me to go to work on my next book—and it had been that way since I moved in.