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PROLOGUE
April 1976
Larry Wilkes always hung at the back of the pack. There were twenty-one boys in his gym class, not enough for any of them to escape notice but enough to break into distinct groups as they ran around the track. The jocks in front, the nerds in the middle and the stoners at the rear. Larry couldn’t ever figure out where he belonged. Sometimes he was a nerd, and sometimes he was a stoner. He could even run fast if he wanted, but he was never a jock. Figuring that out was easy.
It was a bright, comfortable morning. The sky clear and the pollution low, blown away by the last of that year’s Santa Anas. The white-capped San Gabriel Mountains were postcard clear, but the boys paid no attention as they ran the track. Even from the back, Larry managed to keep his eyes on Pete Michaels. Blond and freckled, with a smile that melted the hearts of teachers and cheerleaders alike, he ran up at the front with his brother Paul. Pete had been kept back a year because he’d had some horrible illness in grade school. Larry could never remember which illness, though.
The school sold gym uniforms, but no one bought them. Larry ran in a pair of cut-offs and an old tie-dyed T-shirt. The other boys were just as ragtag. Pete wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a cut-off football jersey with the number 69 on it.
As he ran, Pete giggled like a possessed child. Larry couldn’t see the reason until he noticed that the back of Pete’s sweatpants would flop down and show his ass and the thick waistband of his jockstrap, then flop up, then flop back down. Pete had loosened the string that held the pants up and was holding them up from the front.
Every few seconds his smooth, pink ass cheeks would be exposed, mooning the boys behind him. Then they disappeared behind the grass-stained gray cloth. Pete kept giggling while his brother rolled his eyes in exasperation. They were, after all, running extra miles because Pete had made the gym class crack-up one too many times. Larry could barely breathe. And not because he’d run for too long, though they had been running far too long.
Looking back over his shoulder, Pete saw Larry watching the sweatpants flop up and down. Then he grinned and, with a glint in his eye, winked.
1
April 1, 1996
Monday
“Do we have a problem?” Lydia asked. In the time I’d known her, which was only a few months, I’d noticed she had a very casual way of asking important questions.
We were sitting in a teal-colored vinyl booth at the Park Pantry, my favorite breakfast place. She munched on a veggie skillet, while I worked my way through a San Francisco Joe. When she asked her question, I stopped eating and looked out at the traffic rolling along on Broadway.
Did we have a problem? She knew who I really was. Something I’d been trying to keep secret for a long time. So, yeah, we had a problem. I just wasn’t sure how big a problem it was.
“Is that the setup for an April Fools’ joke?” I asked.
“It’s a serious question.”
About a month before, we’d gotten a kid named Danny Osborne out of prison for a murder he didn’t commit. I say we, but it was mostly Lydia and her not-for-profit, The Freedom Agenda. All I did was some basic investigation. She’d hired me despite my lack of visible experience, which at the time hadn’t made much sense. But then, eventually, she admitted knowing a journalist named Richland Keswick. He’d written a book calledOperation Tea & Crumpetsabout the Chicago Outfit in which I had a supporting role. Lydia had known who I was all along and had hired me for the experience I’d attempted to hide.
“Are you good at keeping secrets?” I asked.
“Really?” She scowled, and said, “Fine. Pay me.”
“What?”
“Give me a couple of bucks.”
I knew what she was doing. I didn’t mind the formality of it. I pulled a five out of my wallet and gave it to her.
“Great. Now we have attorney-client privilege. I can’t tell anyone anything you don’t want them to know. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. I knew I could trust her. I just didn’t want to.
“Fabulous. Now that we have that out of the way, you know I’m dying to ask you questions,” she said, with a spec of spinach floating on her front tooth. I decided not to mention that.
For the last few weeks, Lydia had been focused on pulling together Danny Osbourne’s file for his civil attorneys. There was likely to be a large settlement, a small portion of which would come back to The Freedom Agenda as a donation. From Danny, of course. My understanding was that it could have come as a referral fee, but most civil attorneys were loath to reduce their take.
I’d spent March with my nose buried in a stack of files, reading letters from prisoners claiming their innocence and hoping we’d get them out. I had to decide which ones might have merit. It was a gruesome job. Dull and dispiriting. Most of the letters were from desperate men who were guilty as sin but had nothing to lose by writing a letter. The thing was, no matter how hard they tried, they never managed to hide their guilt.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll answer your questions on one condition.”
“Which is?”
“I want you to give me Richland Keswick’s address and phone number.”
