Free Spider Season by John Morgan Wilson Page A

dangerous, puts me in greater jeopardy. Have you considered that, Detective?”
    Haukness set his jaw firmly. Color seeped into his neck, where a vein had begun to bulge. So the man wasn’t unflappable after all.
    “Before playing the victim with such sanctimony,” he said, his tone finally taking on some feeling, “you might want to consider the possible consequences.”
    “Meaning I’ve got charges hanging over my head and if I ruffle the wrong feathers my ass could land in jail.”
    “I’ll let you interpret it any way you see fit.”
    “Anything else, Detective?”
    “I guess that does it.”
    I started to go, but a hunch stopped me. I turned to face him again.
    “One more question.”
    He glanced at his watch. “What is it?”
    “You wouldn’t happen to be a former jarhead yourself, would you, Detective?”
    “As a matter of fact, I am.”
    I gave him a small salute. “Semper Fi.”
    He didn’t smile as he turned on his heel to disappear back into the station’s inner sanctum. I wasn’t smiling, either, and left feeling less at ease about things than when I’d arrived.

NINE
    That evening, I was scheduled to meet Cathryn Conroy at a Beverly Hills restaurant for the second of our three interviews.
    My plan was to make our meeting a long one, being as congenial and forthcoming as I could, and then try to wiggle out of my promise to meet her a third time. I’d grown weary of serving as a punching bag for writers with axes to grind and egos to feed. Anyone who seeks publicity as I had deserves what they get. You put yourself out there, seeking attention, you’d better be able to handle the flak. But given all the critical problems in the world, she seemed to be wasting an awful lot of time on a washed-up reporter with a name most people outside L.A. wouldn’t recognize and whose transgressions were old news.
    The restaurant she’d picked out was roughly a mile west of my apartment. To make my small contribution toward ending U.S. dependency on fossil fuels, I set out on foot. The enervating humidity we’d been experiencing had largely subsided, and the early evening was pleasant for a stroll, with a fitful breeze taking the edge off the heat. I followed the trail through Beverly Gardens Park, the narrow, green strip that runs along Santa Monica Boulevard through the flats of Beverly Hills and past the opulent architecture of City Hall, with its vintage mix of Spanish magnificence and fanciful Art Deco. Fitness-minded joggers and power walkers were coming and going beneath a canopy of eucalyptus, along with brown-skinned nannies walking pedigreed dogs or pushing strollers carrying well-fed Caucasian babies.
    The steak house was a few blocks south on Beverly Boulevard. Like the downtown site of our previous meeting, it was not an accidental choice on Conroy’s part. It had been a favorite weekend haunt of my late editor, Harry Brofsky, in the old days when we’d both worked at the Los Angeles Times before my sins had ended my career and seriously damaged his. For Conroy, I surmised, the location would serve as a nifty device to turn our conversation toward a past that she wanted to probe and I would rather forget, as well as a useful reference point in the article she’d eventually file. As I stepped inside to the cooled air and long, polished bar, I was reminded, once again, that she was an old pro, calculating and clever.
    “Right on time,” she said, peering at me over a tumbler of Johnnie Walker straight up.
    She’d reserved a booth close to the bar, where her drinks could conveniently keep coming. As we settled in, I put her on my right, since my blind side was on the left and I wanted to look her in the eye without getting a stiff neck. As I glanced around the restaurant, I couldn’t help but remember the good times I’d shared here with Harry, drinking hard, digging into a juicy cut of prime beef, and celebrating some big story I’d just broken under his guidance. I’d been young, full