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“What was he doing?”
“He was holding onto the victim, crying.”
“Would you say he was remorseful?”
The defense attorney objected to that, and the judge agreed.
“How would you characterize the defendant’s demeanor?”
“Remorseful—”
“Your honor!” the defense objected.
The prosecution had made the point though. But it didn’t make much sense given the later testimony. Someone who convinced someone else to get them a gun, then went and killed someone in a very premeditated way might feel remorse. Eventually. But immediately? I didn’t think so. However, it was the only logical explanation for Larry’s tears—if you were unwilling to entertain the possibility they were in love.
18
April 14-15, 1996
Sunday evening/Monday morning
By Sunday night, I’d made a couple of decisions. First, I’d try to stick around until I could get Lydia to take Larry’s case. Second, I wanted to help Ronnie get the co-op he wanted.
That afternoon, I snuck down to the basement. It was surprisingly small, about the size of one room. Ronnie and I had many conversations about this. Our working theory was that the house was built with a simple crawl space and the full basement was dug and “poured” later. It was somewhat rough-hewn, which fit with our theory.
We didn’t use it for much, other than some storage, and the washer and dryer. With a loud scrape, I pulled the washer out a little bit away from the wall. The back of it was a thin metal sheet. Right after we moved in, I’d unscrewed the bottom bolt and bent the sheet back. Inside, I kept my getaway bag: a vinyl travel bag that was about four inches by ten inches and another three inches thick. Inside it, I kept the key to a P.O. Box I rented in North Hollywood at a Mailboxes Etc.; Nick Nowak’s birth certificate and social security card (Dom Reilly’s were upstairs with Ronnie’s important papers—if I left I wouldn’t need them); the ten thousand dollars in cash,a Beretta 92S; and Nick Nowak’s Nevada driver’s license, which I got in ‘86 when I spent six weeks shacked up with a lounge singer named Bucky Diamond. The license was valid for eight years and renewable by mail. Even years later Bucky was kind enough to forward it to my Mailboxes Etc. address.
The seventy thousand I had when I left Chicago had been too much to show up at a teller’s window and withdraw, so eventually, in 1988, I contacted Owen Lovejoy, Esquire, and asked him to help me move the money to an account belonging to Dom Reilly—though I never gave the name to Owen. After I signed the necessary paperwork and overnighted it back to him, he moved the money into an escrow account at his law firm. Then, using a company called DigiCash, he anonymously transferred the money to an account in California. I promptly got a cashier’s check in the full amount, then opened a new account at a different bank. Eventually, that was the money I gave to Ronnie as a down payment for our first house.
I suppose I could have siphoned off some of it for a rainy day, but I didn’t need to. I was already bartending at that point, so I began saving cash every week. That’s where the ten grand came from. It was my getaway money. It was easy to grab, and it meant I’d never have to circle back and ask Ronnie for money.
Ten thousand was just a nice, easy number. I didn’t need or not need that much cash. I counted out twenty-five hundred in fifties and hundreds. Maybe I was being stupid, maybe I’d need every penny. I had no way of knowing. What I did know was that I wanted to leave Ronnie with something toward his condo. Leaving and never seeing him again was terrible. Knowing he was one step closer to his dream of being a real estate mogul made it a bit better.
I went back upstairs and put the money under his pillow, planning to talk to him about it later. I hunted through the covers and foundK Is for Killer. I read, for a couple of hours I think, and then fell asleep. I slept fitfully; my head full of weird dreams of dead people. Owen was there, as were Harker and Ross. I kept thinking they were in pain and only I could stop the pain, but I didn’t know how. I had to figure it out. I abruptly woke a little after eight in the morning. Ronnie wasn’t next to me.
When I got downstairs, I found him in the kitchen making breakfast and watching theTodayshow on a small portable TV. Katie Couric was telling us that the one-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing was coming up and that we should tune in for their weeklong special coverage. It sounded depressing. The money I’d left under Ronnie’s pillow sat on the marble countertop.
“Oh, you found the money. Good.”
“It made a big lump in my pillow.”
“I was going to talk to you about it last night, but I fell asleep.”
“Mmmm-hmmm. Dom, where did it come from?”
“I saved it.”
“Twenty-five hundred dollars?”
“Yeah, I work for tips. I put twenty, twenty-five dollars away every week.” Sometimes more.
“You’ve been saving this for two years?”
“I guess. You’re better with numbers than I am.”
He didn’t say anything, just started plating scrambled eggs for both of us. I consoled myself with the idea that he probably wouldn’t be making me breakfast if things were all that bad.
“The money is to help you buy the co-op.”
