I sit for a while and ponder what my next steps should be when Laurie comes in and reminds me that I have a breakfast with Sam Willis at eight.
Sam is my accountant, a position that increased significantly in importance when I came into my fortune. He is also my friend and my competitor in something we call song-talking. The goal is to work song lyrics smoothly into our conversation, and I am probably giving myself too much credit by referring to Sam as my competitor. He is a master at it and has long since outdistanced me.
I let Sam choose the restaurant for breakfast, and he picked a place called Cynthia’s Home Cookin’, which the signs say is noted for “Cynthia’s World Famous Pancakes.” I’ve only been to Europe twice, but no one has come up to me and said “Ah, an American. That’s where Cynthia makes her famous pancakes.” But Sam is a regular here and always chooses the place, and they do have great pancakes.
Since it’s not fair to leave Adam in the office listening to Edna all the time, and since he’s supposed to be observing me, I invited him to the breakfast with Sam. He’s waiting for me in the parking lot when I arrive, as always writing something in his notepad.
“Good morning,” I say. “No trouble finding the place?”
He smiles. “Are you kidding? It’s world-famous.”
I point to the notepad. “You’re taking notes about it?”
He nods. “It’s a great setting for a scene.”
We go inside the restaurant, which is basically a dump, albeit a crowded dump. There is not an empty table in the place. Sam sits in a booth near the window waiting for us. He waves, then calls out to the waitress. “They’re here, Lucy.”
“Coffee comin’ up, Sam” is her response, then she comes over to the table and pours coffee for all of us even before we arrive. Decaf is not an option at Cynthia’s.
I introduce Adam to Sam as we sit down. I notice my chair is covered with crumbs and sweep them off before sitting. “Nice clean place you brought us to.”
Sam shrugs and fires his opening salvo. “Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.”
Adam brightens up. “Hey, that’s a song. Cheers, right?” I had forgotten to warn Adam about the song-talking.
Sam says to me, “This guy’s sharp as a tack.”
“He’s a big-time screenwriter,” I say. “So be careful, or he’ll have Peewee Herman play you in the movie.”
I start to tell Sam what I want, which is to have him use his incredible computer expertise to hack into the life of the deceased Troy Preston. Put Sam in front of a computer and he can find out anything about anybody, and right now I’m interested in financial dealings that can connect Preston to drug money. I provide Sam with the personal information about Preston that was in the police reports, as well as the information the Giants were able to provide.
Sam gives the material a quick look, then casts a wary glance at Adam, who is still taking notes. The kind of research Sam does is not always strictly legal, and his unspoken question to me asks if Adam can be trusted. I nod that it’s okay, so Sam promises to get right on it.
The waitress, Lucy, comes over and spends a few minutes joking with Sam, who tells Adam that Lucy can “light the world up with her smile. She can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile.” Adam recognizes it as being from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which surprises me, since he’s not old enough to have seen it, other than in reruns.
Sam asks Adam a bunch of questions about the movie business, including one about how Adam got into it in the first place. He grew up in a poor rural area in Kansas, and his first and fondest memories are rooted in his love for movies. Five years ago he was living in St. Louis working at an ad agency and spending his free hours writing something called a spec script. That’s a script that no one commissions in advance and therefore can be sold as a finished product to the highest bidder. His sold for “mid-five figures,” as Adam puts it, and though it never came close to making it out of the sewer pipe, it resulted in his getting more work.
“But I had to move to LA so I could sit in meetings, look creative, and pretend to know what I’m talking about.”
I see an opportunity, so I say to Sam, “They said that Californee is the place he oughta be, so he loaded up the truck and he moved to Beverlee-Hills, that is.”
Sam nods in grudging respect to my Hillbillies reference. “Makes sense… swimming pool… movie stars.”
I tell Adam that I will meet him back at the office, that there is something I need to talk to Sam about privately. Adam leaves, and Sam makes the logical assumption that I want to discuss my personal finances, which is not at all what I want to discuss.
“There’s somebody else I want you to check out.” I say it hesitantly because I’m more than a little ashamed of what I’m doing. “His name is Sandy Walsh. He lives in Findlay, Wisconsin.”
Sam writes down the name. “You want to tell me why?”
As long as I’m doing something this slimy, I might as well at least come clean as to why. “He’s Laurie’s old boyfriend… he’s offered her a job back in Findlay. She’s thinking of moving there.”
He shakes his head in sympathy; he likes Laurie and knows how devastated I would be if she left. “You think she will?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
He shakes his head again. “Just walking out on you and going back to her hometown… damn, there must be fifty ways to leave your lover.”
I’m going through this torture, and he’s actually song-talking Simon and Garfunkel. The mind boggles. “This might not be the best time for song-talking,” I say.
“Sorry, sometimes I can’t help it. What do you want me to find out about this guy?”
“That he’s a slimeball. Maybe a crook, a terrorist… whatever you can come up with. Something that will make Laurie decide to stay here.”
“I assume you don’t want her to know about this?”
I nod. “That’s a safe assumption. It’s not my proudest moment.”
“Jeez, Andy… I thought you guys were gonna get married.”
“We talked about it. Maybe we should have; things were going well enough. I certainly didn’t expect anything like this.”
“Ain’t it always like that?” he asks.
“What?”
“I mean, the relationship goes on, you think you’re making progress… I don’t know… sometimes it just seems the nearer your destination, the more you’re slip-sliding away.” He smiles slightly, hoping I won’t take offense at his inability to stop song-talking.
I don’t. “Just for that you can pay the check,” I say.
He nods. “Who do you want me to look into first, Preston or this Walsh guy?”
“Preston,” I say with some reluctance.
“I’ll get on them both right away,” he says, understanding. “You can count on it.”
I stand up to leave. “You’re like a bridge over troubled water,” I say.
He smiles. “I will ease your mind.”
* * * * *
I MAKE IT A POINT to meet frequently with my clients during the pretrial period. It’s not vital to their defense; the truth is that as time goes on, they have less and less to contribute. This is usually because they’ve already told me everything they know, though I’m not sure that’s the case with Kenny Schilling. But with Kenny, as with all my clients, my visiting is vital to their sanity, and they are generally desperate to see me and learn whatever is going on in their case.
My visit to the jail this morning finds Kenny in surprisingly good spirits. A guard has slipped him the morning newspaper, and he’s read Karen’s story raising the possibility that Preston was the victim of a drug killing. It’s the first positive news Kenny’s heard in a very long time, and though it’s totally speculative and publicly denied by Dylan, he chooses to be euphoric over it.
“So you think this Quintana guy could have done it?” he asks.