Chapter 62

As he sat shackled to the seat of the police van on the way back from Napa, Richard Zaddicos watched the impressive eyes of the patrolman across from him. He plotted, schmed. he wondered how much it would take to buy his freedom. one million? two million? after all what did the fool take him? forty grand a year?

He figured the steely eyed officer was someone above approach, whose commitment to his duty was unquestioned. if he were writing it, that's who he would have put in the car with him.

five million, then. He smirked.

if he were writing it. that notion possessed a cold, punishing irony for him. He had written it.

Zaddicos shifted in his restraints, wrists cufdes, torso strapped to the seat. only minutes earlier, he had shoot in the redbrick courthouse in Santa Rosa while the prosecutor in her little Liz Claiborne suit pointed her finger at him. over and over, she accused him of things only a mind as cultivated as his would think up and do.