The Gods of Guilt

by Michael Connelly

  On the twelfth floor I stepped out of the elevator to find Cisco waiting in the open doorway of 12C.

  “I followed her home from the Standard and waited until she was dropped off,” he explained. “Figured it’d be easier if we took her driver out of the equation.”

  I nodded and looked through the open door but didn’t enter.

  “Is she going to talk to us?”

  “Depends on how much cash you brought. She’s a businesswoman through and through.”

  “I got enough.”

  I walked past him and into a loft with views over the PAB and the civic center, the city hall tower lit up and on center display. The apartment was a nice place, though sparely furnished. Trina Rafferty had either recently moved in or was in the process of moving out. She was sitting on a white leather couch with chrome feet. She wore a short black cocktail dress, had her legs crossed in a stab at modesty, and was smoking a cigarette.

  “Are you going to pay me?” she asked.

  I walked fully into the room and looked down at her. She was pushing forty and she looked tired. Her hair was slightly disheveled, her lipstick was smeared, and her eyeliner was caking at the corners. One more long night in another year of long nights. She had just come from having sex with someone she didn’t know before and would probably never see again.

  “It depends on what you tell me.”

  “Well, I’m not telling you anything unless you pay up front.”

  I had hit an ATM in the Bonaventure Hotel lobby and made two maximum withdrawals of four hundred dollars each. The money had come in hundreds, fifties, and twenties and I split it between two pockets. I took out the first four hundred and dropped it on her coffee table next to the crowded ashtray.

  “There’s four hundred. Is that good enough to start?”

  She picked up the money, folded it twice, and worked it into one of her high-heeled shoes. I remembered in that moment that Gloria had once told me that she always put her cash payments into her shoes because the shoes were usually the last thing to come off—if at all. Many clients liked her to keep her heels on while they had sex.

  “We’ll see,” Trina said. “Ask away.”

  The whole drive downtown I had considered what I should ask and how I should ask it. I had a feeling this might be my only shot with Trina Trixxx. Once team Fulgoni found out I had gotten to her, they would attempt to shut down my access.

  “Tell me about James Marco and Hector Moya.”

  Her body rocked backward with surprise and then straightened up. She stuck out her lower lip for a few seconds before responding.

  “I didn’t realize that this is about them. You need to pay me more if you want me to talk about them.”

  Without hesitation I took the other fold of money out of my pocket and dropped it on the table. It disappeared into her other shoe. I sat down on an ottoman directly across the table from her.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said.

  “Marco’s a DEA agent and he had a hard-on for Hector,” she said. “He really wanted to get him and he did.”

  “How did you know Marco?”

  “He busted me.”

  “When?”

  “It was a sting. He posed as a john and he wanted sex and coke and I brought both. Then I got busted.”

  “When was this?”

  “About ten years ago. I don’t remember the dates.”

  “You made a deal with him?”

  “Yeah, he let me go, but I had to tell him stuff. He’d call me.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Just stuff I would hear or know about—you know, from clients. He agreed to let me go if I fed him. And he was always hungry.”

  “Hungry for Hector.”

  “Well, no. He didn’t know about Hector, at least not from me. I wasn’t that stupid or that desperate. I’d take the bust before I’d give up Hector. The guy was cartel, you know what I mean? So I gave Marco the little stuff. The kind of stuff guys would brag about while fucking. All their big scores and plans and whatever. Guys try to compensate with talk all the time, you know?”

  I nodded, though I didn’t know if I was revealing something about myself by agreeing. I tried to stay on track with what she was saying and how it fit with the latest permutation of Gloria’s case.

  “Okay,” I said. “So you didn’t give Hector up to Marco. Who did?”

  I knew that indirectly, at least, Gloria Dayton had given Moya up, but I didn’t know what Trina knew.

  “All I can tell you is that it wasn’t me,” Trina said.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s not good enough, Trina. Not for eight hundred bucks.”

  “What, you want me to throw in a blow job, too? That’s not a problem.”

  “No, I want you to tell me everything. I want you to tell me what you told Sly Fulgoni.”

  She went through the same body shiver as when I had first mentioned Hector Moya. As though for a second she had been shocked by the name and then was able to reconstitute herself.

  “How do you know about Sly?”

  “Because I do. And if you want to keep the money, I need to know what you told him.”

  “But isn’t that like attorney-client stuff? Like it’s privileged or whatever they call it?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’ve got it wrong, Trina. You’re a witness, not a client. Fulgoni’s client is Hector Moya. What did you tell him?”

  I leaned forward on the ottoman as I said it and then I waited.

  “Well, I told him about another girl who Marco busted and was putting to work. Like me, only he really had her under his thumb. I don’t know why. I think when he caught her she had a lot more on her than I had.”

  “You mean a lot more cocaine?”

  “Right. And her record wasn’t as clean as mine. She was going to go down hard if she didn’t come up with something bigger than herself, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  It was how most drug cases were built. Small fish giving up bigger fish. I nodded as though I had full knowledge about how things worked, but once again I was privately humiliated because I had not even known the details of my own client’s dealings with the DEA. Trina was obviously talking about Gloria Dayton, and she was telling a story I didn’t know.

  “So your friend gave up Hector,” I said, hoping to keep the story moving so I didn’t have to dwell on my own failings in the case.

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean ‘sort of’? She did or she didn’t.”

  “She sort of did. She told me that Marco made her hide a gun in Moya’s hotel room so that when they busted him, they could add charges and send him away for life. See, Hector was smart. He never kept enough in his room for them to make a big case on. Just a few ounces. Sometimes less. But the gun would change everything, and Glory was the one who brought it in. She said when Hector fell asleep after she did him, she took it out of her purse and hid it under the mattress.”

  To say I was stunned was an understatement. In the course of the past several months I had already accepted the fact that I’d been used by Gloria in some way. But if Trina Rafferty’s story was true, the level of deception and manipulation was as masterful as it was perfect, and I had played my part to a T, thinking I was carrying out good lawyering by pulling all the right strings for my client, when all along it was my client and her DEA handler who held the strings—my strings.

  I still had many questions about the scenario Trina was outlining—mainly the question of why I was even needed in the scheme. But for the moment I was thinking of other things. The only way this knowledge could be more humiliating would be for it to become public, and everything the prostitute sitting in front of me was saying indicated that this was exactly the direction it was going.

  I tried not to show any of the internal meltdown I was feeling. I kept my voice steady and asked the next question.

  “When you say Glory, I take it you mean Gloria Dayton, also known at that
time as Glory Days?”

  Before she could answer, the iPhone on the coffee table started vibrating. Trina eagerly snatched it up, probably hoping she could get in one last booking before crashing for the night. She checked the ID but it was blocked. She answered anyway.

  “Hello, this is Trina Trixxx . . .”

  While she listened to the caller I glanced at Cisco to see what I could read in his face. I wondered if he understood from what had been said that I had been an unwitting participant in a rogue DEA agent’s scheme.

  “And another man,” Trina told her caller. “He said you’re not my lawyer.”

  I looked at Trina. She wasn’t talking to a potential customer.

  “Is that Fulgoni?” I said. “Let me talk to him.”

  She hesitated but then told the caller to hold on and handed me the phone.

  “Fulgoni,” I said. “I thought you were going to call me back.”

  There was a pause and then a voice I didn’t recognize as Sly Fulgoni Jr. spoke.

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to.”

  And then I realized I was talking to Sly Sr., person to person from FCI Victorville. He was probably on a cell phone smuggled into the lockup by a visitor or a guard. Many of my incarcerated clients were able to communicate with me on burners—throwaway phones with limited minutes and life spans.

  “Your son was supposed to get back to me. How are things up there, Sly?”

  “Not too bad. I’m out of here in another eleven months.”

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I didn’t. I was checking on Trina.”

  I didn’t believe that for a moment. It sounded like he had specifically asked Trina about me before she passed the phone over. I decided not to push it—yet.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Haller?”

  “Well . . . I’m sitting here talking to Trina and I’m wondering what I’m going to be doing for you. I got the subpoena and I’m just beginning to put together the angle you’re playing for Moya. And I gotta tell you, I have a problem being made to look like a fool—especially in open court.”

  “That is understandable. But sometimes when one has indeed played the fool, it is difficult to skirt the issue. You have to be prepared for the truth to come out. A man’s freedom is at stake.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  I disconnected and handed the phone back across the table to Trina.

  “What did he say?” she asked.

  “Nothing much at all. How much have they promised you?”

  “What?”

  “Come on, Trina. You’re a businesswoman. You charged me just to answer a few questions here. You must be charging something to tell that story in a depo for a judge. How much? Did they already take your statement?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t been paid anything.”

  “What about this place? They get you this to keep you close?”

  “No! This is my place and I want you to leave. Both of you, get out. Now!”

  I glanced at Cisco. I could push it, but it was pretty clear that my eight hundred bucks were spent and she was finished talking. Whatever Fulgoni had said before the phone was handed to me had frozen her. It was time to go.

  I stood up and nodded Cisco toward the door.

  “Thanks for your time,” I said to Trina. “I’m sure we’ll be talking again.”

  “Don’t count on it.”

  We left the apartment and had to wait for the elevator. I stepped back to Trina’s door and bent forward to listen. I thought she’d make a call to someone, maybe Sly Jr. But I heard nothing.

  The elevator came and we rode down. Cisco was quiet.

  “What’s up, Big Man?” I asked.

  “Nothing, just thinking. How did he know to call her then?”

  I nodded. It was a good question. I hadn’t thought it through yet.

  We left the building and walked out onto Spring Street, which was deserted except for a couple of empty patrol cars parked along the side of the PAB. It was after two a.m. and there was no sign of another human being anywhere.

  “You think I was followed?” I asked.

  Cisco thought about it for a moment before nodding.

  “Somehow he knew we’d found her. That we were with her.”

  “That’s not good.”

  “I’ll get your car checked tomorrow and then put a couple Indians on you. If you have a physical tail we’ll know it soon enough.”

  The associates Cisco used in countersurveillance were so adept at disappearing into the crevices that he called them Indians after the old westerns in which the Indians used to trail the wagon trains without the white settlers even knowing they were there.

  “That will be good,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Where’d you park?” Cisco asked.

  “Up in front of the PAB. Figured it was safe. You?”

  “I’m around back here. You okay or you want an escort?”

  “I’m good. See you at the staff meeting.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  We headed off in different directions. I looked over my shoulder three times before I made it to my car, parked in the safest spot in downtown. From there I kept an eye on the rearview mirror all the way home.

  18

  I was the last to arrive at the loft for the staff meeting. And I was dragging. I’d hit the private stash of Patrón Silver when I’d finally gotten home just a few hours before. Between the alcohol consumption, the trip downtown to interview Trina Rafferty, and the disquiet that comes with the knowledge that you are probably being watched, I’d gotten only a couple hours of restless sleep before the alarm sounded.

  I grunted a hello to the assemblage in the boardroom and went immediately to the coffee set up on the side counter. I poured half a cup, shot two Advils into my mouth, and took the scalding hot liquid down in one gulp. I then refilled and this time added milk and sugar to make it a little more palatable. That first blast had burned my throat but it helped me find my voice.

  “How’s everybody today? Better than me, I hope.”

  Everyone chimed in positively. I turned to find a seat and immediately noticed that Earl was at the table. For a moment I forgot why and then remembered that I had indeed invited him to join the inner circle the day before.

  “Oh, everybody, I invited Earl to join us. He’s going to take a more active role in some of the work, from the standpoint of investigations and interviews. He’ll still be driving the Lincoln, but he’s got other skills and I intend to exploit them to the benefit of our clients.”

  I nodded to Earl and as I did so realized I had not mentioned his elevation to Cisco. Still, Cisco showed no surprise, and I realized I had obviously been helped out there by Lorna, who had kept her husband informed, where I had failed.

  I pulled out a chair at the end of the table and sat down, noticing the small black electronic device with three green blinking lights at the center of the table.

  “Mickey, you don’t want a doughnut?” Lorna asked. “It looks like you should put something in your stomach.”

  “No, not right now,” I said. “What is that?”

  I pointed at the device. It was a rectangular black box about the size of an iPhone, only an inch thick. And it had three separate stub antennas sticking out of one end.

  Cisco answered.

  “I was just telling everyone, that’s a Paquin seven thousand blocker. Stops all transmissions by Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and radio wave. No one will hear what we say in this room outside of these walls.”

  “Did you find a bug?”

  “With one of these things you don’t even have to look. That’s the beauty of it.”

  “What about the Lincoln?”

  “I have some guys looking at it out back right now. They were waiting for you to arrive. I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

  I reached into my pocket for the keys.

  “They don’t need your keys,” Cisco said.
<
br />   Of course not, I realized. They’re pros. I took the keys out anyway, put them on the table and slid them down to Earl. He’d be driving the rest of the day.

  “Okay, well, let’s get started. I’m sorry I’m late. Long night. I know that’s not an excuse but . . .”

  I braced myself with another slug of coffee and this time it went down easier and I began to feel it take hold of my bloodstream. I looked at the faces around the table and got down to it.

  Pointing to the Paquin 7000, I said, “Sorry for all the secret-agent stuff but I think precautions are necessary. We had some significant developments yesterday and last night and I wanted everybody to be here and to be made aware of what’s happening.”

  As if to underline the seriousness of my opening statement, a power chord from an electric guitar echoed through the ceiling and stopped me cold. All of us looked up at the ceiling. It had sounded like the opening chord tab of A Hard Day’s Night—the coincidence was not lost on me.

  “I thought the Beatles were broken up,” I said.

  “They are,” Lorna said. “And we were promised no band practice in the mornings.”

  Another chord was strummed and then followed by some improvisational noodling. Somebody pumped a hi-hat on a drum kit and the clash of cymbals almost loosened my fillings.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “Shouldn’t those guys be hungover or asleep? I know I wish I was still in bed.”

  “I’ll go up,” Lorna said. “This makes me really angry.”

  “No. Cisco, you go up. You already know the update. I want Lorna to hear it and you might get better results up there.”

  “On it.”

  Cisco left the room and headed upstairs. It was one of the few times I was pleased that he had worn a T-shirt to work, exposing his impressive biceps and intimidating tattoos. The T-shirt celebrated the one hundred tenth anniversary of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. I thought that might help get the message across as well.

  To the rhythm of a bass drum from above, I began updating the others, starting with the subpoena Valenzuela laid on me the morning before and then moving through the happenings of the rest of the day. About halfway through, a terrific crash was heard from above as Cisco put an end to band practice. I finished my story by recounting the late-night meeting with Trina Trixxx and the conclusion prompted by Fulgoni’s call from prison that I was under surveillance.