Cal drew a long breath. The topic still sizzled with raw emotion, a live wire never buried.
“Philippe was just another client. At least, that’s how Rich explained it. Eventually, routine business turned into gifts, dinners, vacations. Attorney-client privilege protected that friendship. I never got far when I asked about it.”
“And Rich’s relationship with the Moriartys?”
Cal blinked at Kingsley. “I wasn’t aware there was one.”
“A witness identified Moriarty members at Rich’s party. The papers are painting what happened as collateral in the Moriarty-Velasco feud, but someone is doing their damnedest to keep Rich’s possible involvement out of the press.”
Cal huffed a bitter laugh. There was no better evidence that Rich was alive. Only he would care enough to keep his reputation intact at a time like that.
“As I understand it,” Kingsley continued, “Burt was concerned about Rich’s dealings with these organizations.”
“That tracks. A week before he died, Burt reached out to me wanting to meet. He said it was about Rich but didn’t elaborate.”
“Burt was ready to call foul on Rich’s friendship with Philippe,” Kingsley told him. “He thought it created an ethical dilemma for the firm, so he dug into it.”
“Dug in how?”
Kingsley surveyed the bar and lowered his voice.
“There was more to Philippe’s story than what he offered in his plea deal. He confided to Rich that someone was quietly influencing his most trusted captains. Those captains had plans for a coup then war with the Moriartys. Philippe gathered all the information he could about the coup, the war plans, everything. He compiled it into a folder, handed it off to Rich for safe keeping, then went into hiding. The Velascos must have dirt on Rich because he coughed up Philippe’s whereabouts without much cajoling.”
“And the folder? I assume the Velascos wanted that too.”
“Yes, but by then, Burt had the folder. He found it snooping around Rich’s office and confronted Rich about it. Bad timing. Rich had just sold out Philippe to save his hide and had no qualms about throwing Burt under the bus too. When Burt realized this, he reached out to Agent Kranski for help, told him Amelia had seen the folder and was in danger too.”
Cal’s stomach knotted, sick enough that he eyed the bathroom door to measure the distance.
“Wait. Why would Amelia have seen it?”
“From what Burt told Kranski, she grabbed it on accident. No one knows how much she might’ve seen, though.”
Cal slumped in his seat. “Why wouldn’t she tell me? I could’ve helped her. And why the hell wouldn’t Rich warn me about this?”
The questions came louder than Cal intended as the bar went quiet.
“I don’t know about Amelia,” Kingsley said, “but I do know that Rich’s priority was saving face with civilized society.”
Kingsley layered sarcasm on the last bit. Above the table, civilized society was a mask of faux outrage. Beneath it, they had their fingerprints all over these organizations. Suggest too much chumminess between the Richard Dauers and Philippe Velascos of the world, and things got ugly.
“Watch who gets a burr up their ass. They’re always the most corrupt,” Cal said. “My brother, Mitch, used to say that about civilized society. He knew better than most, spent his career in Vegas PD trying to nail Liam Moriarty to the wall.”
“So I’ve heard,” Kingsley replied but was polite enough not to repeat the rumor: the Moriartys murdered Mitch Havick.
Cal had heard that same rumor as he put his brother in an early grave. Mitch had tried to fracture the Moriartys at their fault lines and watch them crumble. In the end, it was Cal’s family left fractured and crumbling.
On the other side of the room, a stranger ambled to the jukebox. With his back to them, he stared inside the machine and drummed his fingers against the frame. Kingsley turned to Cal but seemed to keep the stranger in his periphery.
“I don’t imagine the name Ivan Holt is foreign to you.”
Cal shook his head. He hadn’t heard that name in over a year. Every so often, someone said it with faltering trepidation, and Cal was never quite prepared for the dread it deposited in him. He took another swig of beer, but his mouth went dry as he spoke.
“When I worked for the district attorney’s office, Ivan was under investigation for a series of murders in California, Nevada, and Oregon. Same MO. All college-aged women away from home. Sexually assaulted, tortured, murdered.”
“Melancholy Man” crooned from the speakers and sliced through the bar’s unnerving quiet. The haunting tune sickened against the backdrop of the conversation.
“I heard the tape,” Kingsley confessed with evident shame.
