The Big Exit (31 page)

When he was through checking and rechecking everything, he took off his shoes and stepped into a pair of nearby sandals, careful
never to touch the ground with his feet. He then took the briefcase out of the trunk and walked over to his pool house, stripped
down to nothing but a T-shirt and jeans and stuffed everything else—shoes, weapon, long-sleeve shirt, and the briefcase—into
a duffel bag that could be worn as a backpack. The final touch was a modest disguise:
a blond wig with a ponytail that he covered with a John Deere hat and a cheap Weed Wacker that he slung over his shoulder.
He then walked out the back of his property, slipped through his neighbor’s yard and emerged on the adjacent street, Corinne
Lane, and headed up to Valparaiso and back to the El Camino and Anderson’s car.

Everything had gone off without a hitch. “A thing of beauty,” McGregor says, pausing reflectively. Then he says, “You wanna
hear something fucked up?”

Richie shrugs. Like he has a choice. Like what he’d just told him already wasn’t fucked up enough.

“That program I wrote for the shell company, the code Anderson sold back to us, was the best work I’d done in a long time.
It was pretty spectacular. Ended up with a patent for one piece of it. It kicked the shit out of what our engineers came up
with, which wasn’t bad, mind you.”

“If it was so good why didn’t you just keep everything legit?”

“People are constantly doing beautiful work and no one gives a shit. Everything’s fucking ‘freemium’ these days. You gotta
ramp pretty fast and you’re dealing with a lot of different variables. You either can’t get to critical mass or you get to
critical mass but you don’t get the return on investment you said you would and all of sudden your optics are all off. Next
thing you know you’re looking through the bottom of a Coke bottle and drinking Jack, fending off the hounds. Why deal with
all that stress? It’s a hell of lot easier to raise the money than to actually make it. And shit, this way I didn’t have to
give away any of it to my vampire wife.”

He had a point, Richie admits. But there’s still some stuff that doesn’t make sense.

“Like what?” McGregor asks.

“Like how could you count on Beth to make an ID? I mean, she had to, you know … she had to know your body,” he says, struggling
to get the remark out.

“Dude, we hadn’t had sex in a year. And I put on some weight over the last few months. And shit, how long would you want to
look at a body that had been hacked up like mine was? It was pretty gruesome, man. But here’s the kicker. Here’s the fucking
brilliant part.”

Using his left hand, he yanks up his shirt, then wedges his thumb
in his waistband and pulls it down, exposing a patch of skin on his waist, just below the belt line. Richie glances over and
sees that it’s a small tattoo that looks like a snake. There are some letters underneath it that spell something he can’t
make out.

“I got this tattoo. Exact same one Anderson had. I made sure she noticed it. Cops ask for identifying characteristics: here
it is.”

Wow
, Richie thinks. “What are the words? What’s it say underneath?”

“Sedition 1918.”

“What’s that?”

“Some fucking gay rights group he was a part of in his twenties. Gay marriage and shit. I’m all for it, by the way. They thought
the name was clever. He and a few of the other boys went out one night and got themselves tatted up. You know, solidarity
for the movement, which must not have been much of a movement because I did a search on Google and didn’t find anything. Lots
on the Sedition Act of 1918, though.”

Sedition Act?
It rings a bell from a history class but he doesn’t know exactly what it refers to.

“Hey, slow down,” McGregor says. “There’s highway patrol all along here. I don’t want you to get a ticket.”

That’s exactly what Richie wants. He accelerates more, pushing the speedometer to eight-five.

“I said slow down.”

“What are you going to do? Shoot me going ninety? We’ll both be killed.”

“Good,” McGregor says, raising the gun a little. “I’ve got no problem with that. We can do it that way.”

Richie looks at him, decides he’s serious, and eases off the gas.

“Where are we going, Mark?”

“You know where we’re going, Richie.”

He does. He’s known ever since McGregor said to get on 280 and go south. This is the route they took the night of the accident.

“You don’t remember this part because you were asleep,” McGregor goes on. “But you’re going to remember it this time.”

They drive in silence for a little bit, then McGregor says:

“I’ll tell you, man, it’s something to be able to see what happens
after you die. All the flowers in front of the house like that, a lot of them from strangers. And all the nice things people
had to say. It was really quite moving.”

“You’re an arrogant asshole. You always were.”

“Yeah, I know. But when we were friends, you used to like that. I made you laugh.”

That was true. He did make him laugh. Just then the first sign for the Sand Hill exit appears and McGregor says:

“Hey, get ready. Turnoff’s coming up.”

“What are we doing here, Mark?”

“I thought we’d pay our respects. What do you say?”

“And then what?”

“Then I’ll let you in on another little secret.”

“What kind of little secret?”

“You’ll see.”

They drive in silence, the question and answer session seemingly over—or entering a new phase. He glances over at McGregor,
who’s wearing a small, self-satisfied smile. It’s all a game to him. The same psychological bullshit. With McGregor, it had
always been about gaining the upper hand. He had to have it. And now he was doing it again.

What’s the endgame?
Richie thinks, looking ahead to what the best time to jump him will be. He’s just going to have to go for it.
I’m gonna live till I die
, he says to himself, remembering one of Sinatra’s famous quotes, which always struck him as something Yogi Berra would say.
I’m gonna live till I fucking die
.

He pulls off at the Sand Hill exit and then struggles a bit with the steering wheel as they go around a tight loop that leads
them back over the highway.

“I was having a little trouble keeping my eyes open on the freeway,” McGregor says. “But I was fine here. I remember being
glad to get off.”

They head down Sand Hill and Richie looks at the speedometer. They’re going forty-five. He goes through the first light and
passes the Rosewood Hotel on his right. Buildings with the names of venture-capital firms litter either side of the road.

“Slow down,” McGregor says, staring straight ahead.

He should have done it then, should have put his hands together and taken a swing at him, but he was looking, too, mesmerized
by the road ahead.

“I must have fallen asleep right here,” McGregor goes on. “I never saw the red light until the last second. I was probably
only out for three or four seconds. Max. Okay, pull over. By the cross.”

Richie turns the wheel a little to the right, then a little left and straightens out, guiding the car into the wide bike lane,
positioning the left wheels of the car just inside the line. It’s not a good place to stop. A car whizzes past. Then another.
They’re going really fast. Like torpedoes.

“Turn off the engine,” McGregor orders. “Just put it in park and hit the button.”

The gear shift is between them, with Ashley’s purse practically lying on top of it just in front of the radio and GPS screen.
Reaching over with both hands, Richie takes the lever and gets set to put the car in park when something stops him.
Don’t
, he thinks. He pushes the lever up, and he says, “Fuck, I didn’t know that cross was still here,” causing Mark to glance
over at it. In that moment he lets the stick come back down to D. He then reaches over to the ignition button and pretends
to tap it, saying, “The family maintain it?”

“I don’t know,” McGregor says. “But I’ve gotta see it every time I take fucking 280.”

Richie leans back in his seat, leaving his hands in his lap front of him

“Bummer.”

McGregor turns his head left, his eyes looking out the windshield toward the intersection. He stares straight at the spot
where the woman died.

“Their car came out of nowhere,” he says. “I opened my eyes and there it was in front of me. It just fucking appeared. There
was nothing I could do. I could see it was bad right away. We’d gone right into them. That Cadillac was a tank. And then I
looked over and saw you lying there. And I said, ‘Richie. Richie.’ And you didn’t answer. And then I shook you. And nothing.
You were fucking limp. And I went to feel for a pulse and I didn’t get one. I didn’t think you were breathing; I thought you
were dead. And that’s when I panicked. I thought, ‘Shit, I killed this guy right before he’s going to get married. I’m never
going to live this down.’ And that’s when I decided to switch seats. I climbed over you and unhitched your belt and slid you
over into the driver’s seat. I had time to wipe down the steering wheel with my jacket and then I took you by the back of
the shirt and slammed you up against the wheel as hard as I could to make it look like you hit the thing on impact. And I
remember you slumped over to the left and all of sudden you coughed and woke up. I saw you take a breath and make a sound,
and I was like, What the fuck? But by then it was too late. I heard the sirens and I just focused on making sure it looked
like I was in the passenger seat. I put your hands on the wheel and you actually took it. You held on to it.”

“That’s your little secret,” Richie says when he’s through. “That’s what you brought me here to tell me? That you thought
you’d killed me but you then accidentally saved my life?”

“That’s it,” McGregor says.

“And I’m supposed to believe that?”

“You can believe what you want. That’s what I’m telling you happened. That’s the fucking truth.”

And then they hear the sirens. At first they seem to be coming up Sand Hill in front of them. Then it sounds like they’re
coming from behind. And then Richie realizes they’re coming from both directions at once.

“Why didn’t you tell the cops that? Why didn’t you just fucking tell the truth back then?”

“I always told you, man, when you do something you’ve gotta be committed. Totally committed. I made a choice. And you know,
it was more important for me to go on. It was more important for the shareholders. I had a lot of people depending on me.
I couldn’t go to prison. No, strike that. I
wasn’t
going to prison. It just wasn’t happening. And it isn’t happening now either.”

“But it was okay if I did? And it was okay for you to take Beth.”

“I didn’t take her. She took me. Make no mistake about that.”

“But you thought it was okay nevertheless.”

“You never had enough spine, Forman. You were never cutthroat enough. But you sure as shit could sing. I’ll give you that.
You did a mean Sinatra, even back then.”

The cops are upon them now. The first vehicle to reach them is an
SUV that looks familiar. It makes a left in front of them, its tires squealing, and screeches to a halt in the intersection
right in front of them. A second vehicle, this one a sedan, follows in its wake and pulls in behind the SUV, forming a roadblock.

Richie looks in the rearview mirror and sees another squad car coming in behind them—it’s probably highway patrol—and a car,
a regular passenger vehicle, a Mercedes, coming to a stop next to them, not able to pass through the intersection. One of
the cops—he thinks it’s Carlyle—has his gun out and is shouting for them to get out of the car.

“What now, Mark?” he asks. “What’s your exit plan?”

He’s ready for McGregor to shoot him but instead he lowers the gun and sets it in his lap and smiles.

“What now?” he says. “Now you get to be in the driver’s seat forever. Sorry, kid. Gotta go. It’s wheels up for me.”

And then McGregor lifts the gun, bringing it up to his chin as Richie slams the accelerator all the way down to the footboard,
sending the car lurching forward. Richie hears the gun discharge but he can’t see anything. He’s slid down in his seat, his
hands in front of his face. He braces for impact and wham, the car crashes into Carlyle’s SUV.

When Richie opens his eyes, Carlyle has his gun pointed at him through the windshield and there’s all kinds of shouting. Richie
looks over and sees Carlyle yanking McGregor out of the car and dragging him to the ground. Another cop pulls Richie out and
slams him up against the back of car, pushing his face down to the trunk. The cop pulls out a set of wrist ties, somehow missing
the fact that Richie’s already handcuffed.

“Easy, easy,” Carlyle shouts. “He’s okay. This is the guy. I got him.” Then, turning his head toward the microphone on his
shoulder. “We got him, Hank,” he says. “We fucking got him. And you’re not going to believe where.”

Richie comes to the front of the car and sees Carlyle standing there with his boot on top of McGregor’s head, pointing his
gun down at him. McGregor’s groaning. He’s still alive. The bullet missed.

Richie takes a step forward, leans down, and kneels. He then moves close to McGregor’s face and says in a quiet voice that
only McGregor can hear:

“We’re not even close to even, asshole. Not even fucking close.”

C
OGAN’S THE ONE WHO ENDS UP TALKING TO
B
ETH FIRST
. S
HE’S
called Carolyn’s cell phone, and Cogan, who’s holding onto it for her, picks up when he sees her caller ID info pop up on
the screen.

Richie listens as Cogan tells her that Carolyn’s at Stanford Hospital in very serious condition. She’s been stabilized but
she has the worst kind of open fracture. She’s gone into surgery, it’s being performed by a friend of his, the chief of orthopedic
surgery, and several other surgeons are attending. So she’s in good hands, but the surgery is going to take awhile.

“I’ve got someone who wants to talk to you,” he says, and hands the phone to Richie.

“Hey, Beth.”

“Richie?”

“Where are you?” he asks.

She says she was in a class at the gym. She came out and looked up at one of the screens by the treadmills and saw a picture
of Carolyn being carried out of a house by a firefighter and Madden by their side. She couldn’t believe it. Then she saw his
and Mark’s picture up on the screen. She didn’t have any headphones on and couldn’t hear anything. She called Carolyn immediately.

“What the hell’s going on, Richie?”

“You better get down here. We’re at the hospital. I’ve got some things to tell you.”

Fifteen minutes later she shows up, still in her gym outfit.

“I’m sorry for my appearance,” she says to the group in the surgical waiting room, a little surprised by how many they are.
“I didn’t shower. I came right over.”

Lowenstein’s there, sitting next to Ashley, who’s been playing it
tough, insisting she’s okay. Physically she is, but every so often Richie sees one of her legs start shaking and she puts
her hands under her armpits and hugs herself. Richie himself has come over from the emergency room, where he received ten
stitches and now has a small bandage on the right side of his head. He’s been diagnosed with a Grade I concussion that has
Grade II aspirations. When the doctor told him he should take it easy for the next couple of days and not drive, he agreed.

Between the two of them and Cogan, who uncharacteristically tears up at one point, it’s a motley-looking bunch, so when Beth,
typically stunning, apologizes for her appearance, no one’s quite sure what she’s talking about. Richie gets up and takes
her aside, leading her out of the waiting room. They go down the hall a bit, near the elevators.

“There isn’t going to be a funeral, Beth.”

“There isn’t?”

“You’re going to need a divorce after all.”

She looks at him, confused.

“Mark’s alive,” he says. “He’s always been alive.”

“What?”

She just stares at him a moment, then her knees start to buckle, and he reaches out and grabs her before she hits the floor.
After the initial shock wears off, he props her up against the wall and she stands there for a few seconds, leaning against
it, her hand on her forehead, partially covering her eyes.

“Where is he?” she says.

“In custody.”

He then recounts the day’s events, getting interrupted a few times whenever a nurse or doctor or visitor arrives in the elevator.
He tells Beth how Ashley went to investigate a tip she had on Anderson’s whereabouts and how he and Carolyn had gone to look
for her and ended up stumbling into a much more hazardous situation than they’d anticipated. After killing Anderson, Mark
took Anderson’s identity, living in his house. He tells her about getting bonked on the head, then being trapped in a laundry
room upstairs while Ashley and Carolyn were locked up in the basement, Carolyn with a broken leg, which he’d only heard about
well after the fact. Mark had then
set the house on fire with the two women in it and taken him hostage in the car.

“He had a gun,” he says. “He had me drive him back to the scene of the accident. He was going to kill himself.”

With each new detail, Beth seems more astonished. She feels terribly for Carolyn. Is she going to be all right? He tells her
the surgeons are concerned about her developing a fat embolism, which is a frequent occurrence with such injuries. And a little
of the bone had poked out through the skin, which meant they had to watch out for infection; they were pumping her full of
antibiotics.

“She’s looking at a very long rehabilitation, but it could have been worse,” he says. “She could be charcoal. And who knows,
maybe her ex-boyfriend in there will marry her. He seems pretty broken up.”

Beth doesn’t respond. Her eyes drift away, her thoughts elsewhere.

“Why’d he do it, Richie? It’s just insane. It doesn’t make sense.”

He tells her Mark had bank accounts with over thirteen million dollars in them that he had access to. He was all set to leave
the country but ran into a small problem: Anderson had lied to him and told him his passport was current when it wasn’t. He
still could have gotten out of town and figured out a way to get a new passport quickly, but he just decided he’d lay low
for a few days. He seemed to take some perverse pleasure in hiding in plain sight. It was a bit of hubris, Mark told him.
Things were looking pretty good from where he was sitting and he figured he’d sit back and have a cocktail or two and enjoy
the show. Shit, once they cremated his body, as he’d requested in his will, he’d be home free. He joked that he might even
catch some of the funeral on Saturday. It had always been a fantasy of his, since he was a kid, to watch his own funeral.

“He didn’t seem to have a concrete plan for what he was going to do afterwards,” he says. “He said Central and South America
were the next big frontiers for the Internet. He was looking at Nicaragua. But it just didn’t seem like he’d put that much
thought into it. He just figured he’d somehow reinvent himself.”

“So he did it for the money? I don’t understand. He had the company. They were just about to launch. The product was good.
I saw it.”

Yeah, but he didn’t think he’d ever have a shot at the big exit. Just
wasn’t in the cards, he told Richie. So this was it. This was his big exit. This would show everybody.

However, it wasn’t just about the money, Richie says, mentioning Mark’s comment about a “confluence of factors.” He wanted
to set her up, implicate her in the murder. While he was trying to goad her into reaching out to Richie to create some innuendo,
things changed when she decided to meet with him down here in Menlo Park. He decided to modify his plan. It was too good an
opportunity to pass up. And it turned out better than he thought it would.

“My arrest was a bonus,” Richie says. “You were the real target.”

It ended up being a mistake, though. Mark told him he regretted involving him to the degree he did. He said he was sitting
there watching the news and Marty Lowenstein suddenly appeared out of the blue. He said to himself,
Shit, Marty Lowenstein, how the fuck did that happen? Where did he come from?

“That’s just crazy,” she says for what seems like the tenth time. “But I don’t understand, who was trying to blackmail him?”

“He was blackmailing himself.”

Her jaw drops again. “You’re kidding me?”

“Just a diversion,” Richie says. “One of many. I’ve gotta ask you something, Beth. One thing’s been bothering me.”

“Just one?”

“Well, a lot of things. But there’s one thing I’ve been thinking about a lot. Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“It wasn’t him. I mean, how could you …”

As his voice trails off, she looks at him and lets out a long sigh, then looks away, down at the floor. It’s unclear whether
she’s trying to recollect something or is carefully considering her answer.

Finally, she says, “The truth is that when I first saw him there in the garage, my initial thought was that it wasn’t him.
I didn’t know whether it was just the shock of seeing him lying there or whether it was something in my subconscious. It wasn’t
anything in particular. It looked like Mark. He was dressed how he dressed. He was the same size. Same hair. And I saw his
watch. But this little thing in the back of my mind said it wasn’t him. But I let it go. If I had any doubt about it, it went
away after they said his thumbprint matched and they
found the tattoo I told them about. And I think they even had his dental records, didn’t they?”

Richie nods. He tells her how Mark switched them. And then he told her about the tattoo.

“My God,” she says.

“I know. But you didn’t say anything? You didn’t express any doubt? When you ID’d the body, why didn’t you say anything?”

She shakes her head.

“They asked me whether it was him. And I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ I mean, it was horrible. You can’t imagine. What Mark did
to that poor person was horrible. I thought you really had to hate someone to do what he did. I thought—”

And then he knows. “You thought it was me, didn’t you? You thought I killed him?”

She lowers her eyes, not able to look at him.

“I did,” she says after a moment, lifting her eyes. “I thought you’d done it. This time I thought you’d done it.”

“Why?”

“Because I still loved you. And I thought you still loved me.” A brief pause, then, her eyes looking at him beseechingly:
“You do, don’t you?”

He stares back at her, not answering. Then he reaches up with his hand and takes her chin gently between his fingers.

“Love is love,” he says, and just then the elevator dings, the doors open, and Bender and Madden step out.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” Bender says. “Did you see the post? I made this fucking guy into a hero,” he says, pointing
to Madden, who’s carrying a small Big 5 Sporting Goods bag in his hand. “Did you read it?”

“You didn’t make me into a hero,” Madden says. “You made yourself into a hero.”

Richie had seen the article. Lowenstein had showed it to him. The title was, “How I Solved the McGregor Murder: The Inside
Story.”

“Well, that too,” Bender says. “But that’s true. That’s a fact. We did it, huh, buddy?” he says to Richie. “We got him! I
can’t fucking believe it. I’ll give you a little time. I’m sorry, did I walk in on something? Oh, hello, Ms. Hill. I’ll give
you two a little time and then you
and me will sit down and I want the whole story. I want all the details. I get the first interview, understand? You’re still
mine for another twenty-four hours.”

“No, he isn’t,” Lowenstein says, coming out from the waiting room with Ashley in tow. “Didn’t you read the little line in
the contract about what happens in the event that the charges against my client are dropped?”

Bender doesn’t miss little details like that. He takes pride in not missing those kinds of things. And from the look on his
face it’s clear that he hasn’t missed it this time either. Rather, he’s dismissed it.

“Are you going to tell everyone the good news, Detective?” Lowenstein says.

“The DA’s scheduled a press conference forty-five minutes from now. He’s going to announce the charges against McGregor and
drop the charges against Richie.”

“Shit,” Bender says. “What were the fucking odds of that happening?”

“Come on,” Madden says to Bender. “I’m going to say hello to my old friend Cogan in there, see how he’s doing. But afterwards,
I’ll give you a ride over to the press conference and give you an exclusive. I’m retiring.”

Bender thinks about it a moment, then nods, mainly to himself. “All right. That’s not bad. I can work with that. Let’s do
it.”

Madden then hands Lowenstein the Big 5 bag.

“Thanks,” Lowenstein asks.

“My pleasure.”

Then he walks off into the waiting room, leaving the four of them standing there.

“This is for you, Richie—as promised,” Lowenstein says, passing along the bag, which Richie can see has a mitt inside. “What
do you say we go outside and play a little catch? I’ve got my mitt in the car. We’ll come back later and see how she’s doing.”

“I like that idea,” Richie says, pressing the button for the elevator. When it arrives, he lets Ashley in first, then Lowenstein.
Then he gets in. Beth hangs back outside the elevator, looking at them.

“You coming, Beth?” Lowenstein asks.

Beth looks at Richie, not knowing what do.

“Sure she is,” Richie says, taking her by the arm and pulling her in.

Once the door closes, Lowenstein says, “I know you’re a Wilson man, but I think it’s time you gave it up.”

Richie opens the bag and looks inside. It’s a tan-colored mitt and it has a ball inside the web. He thinks it’s going to be
a Rawlings, but it isn’t.

It’s a MacGregor.