“And you told Daney’s seminary about him.”

“I figured I was doing the Lord’s work. Thanks for the memories, Doc. Time to get back to real life.”

“You said Daney should have thanked you.”

“Damn straight he should’ve. I got Sydney and him meetings with some serious people.”

“To make a film?”

“No, to make Polish sausage, yeah a film. A feature, not TV. Sydney made a big point of that, her attitude was always I was TV so I was low on the food chain. Her project was going to be stars and a substantial shooting budget. The two of them thought they had the greatest story ever told. But who did they come to when they wanted references?”

“Was the story the Kristal Malley murder?” I said.

“Yup,” said Boestling. “Two kids kill another kid and go to jail. Not exactly Titanic.”

“Whose idea was it?”

“Can’t say for sure, but my bet is Daney was your typical delusional jerk and he infected Sydney.” He snickered. “Along with other things.”

“You know for a fact that he gave her the clap?”

“Or it was one of the other five thousand dicks she rode. He’s the one I saw, so I’m putting a face on it— so to speak.” He shrugged. “For all I know it was the other kid’s lawyer, some Latino guy.”

“Lauritz Montez,” I said. “She slept with him, too?”

“For sure.”

“How do you— ”

“When Sydney first started on the case, she did nothing but bad-mouth Montez. Stupid, no experience, an albatross who was going to drag her down. Then, a couple weeks in, she started taking late meetings with him. Lots of late meetings. Working on a joint defense. I bought it until I caught her with that scumbag Daney and finally stopped being the densest moron in the galaxy. The only joint defense going on was when Montez tucked his dick back in his pants.”

I said nothing.

Boestling said, “Just another waltz down memory lane. Now if you— ”

“Did Sydney say anything about the Malley case that you thought was unusual?”

“This is about that? After all these years?” he said. “What’s Daney suspected of?”

“Can’t get into details. Sorry.”

“One-way conversation.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Well, unfortunately for you, all Sydney told me was that her client was a murderous little monster and there was no way she was going to get him off. Seen her recently?”

“I tried to talk to her a few days ago. She got very upset— ”

“And went nuts on you and started screaming, right?”

“Right.”