He went to the lectern. He hadn’t brought any papers with him.
“Good afternoon, sir.”
Jim Gardner had come to San Francisco after law school. Before that, he’d been somewhere deep in the backwoods of Mississippi. When he was sixteen, his baritone drawl had landed him a job recording radio spots for businesses across the region. Car dealerships and bowling alleys in Tupelo. A strip joint all the way down in Slidell. It was his voice that had gotten him out of Mississippi. Three words into his cross, and he had the jurors leaning closer for more.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Lorca’s attorney.”
“I represent Mr. Alba,” Jim said, indicating his client. “But he doesn’t know anyone named Lorca.”
“Objection,” Nammar said. “If he wants to testify to that, let him put Lorca on the stand.”
“Mr. Gardner,” Judge Kim said. “Ask your first question and let’s move on.”
“Thank you, Your Honor. And if I may respond to Mr. Nammar—I have Lorca on the stand. Right now.”
“Objection!”
Nammar had jumped to his feet.
“You opened the door and walked into that one,” Judge Kim said. Then she turned to Jim. “Ask your first question.”
Jim nodded. He turned to the jury.
“Your name is Albert DeCanza. Yes or no.”
“Yes.”
“Have you ever had an alias?”
“My friends call me Al.”
Jim laughed along with the jury. Then he came around and stood in front of the lectern. That wasn’t the norm in federal court, but the judge didn’t stop him, and Nammar didn’t object.
“Isn’t it correct that you’re the beneficial owner of all of the stock in the Aguila Holding Corporation?”
The levity on DeCanza’s face lasted another second. Maybe two. He’d heard the question, but it was taking him a moment to process it. When he did, his face went flat. Ten seconds passed. An eternity in a trial court. Still he didn’t answer.
“Should I repeat the question?” Jim asked.
“I’ve never heard of that company.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jim said. “You’ve never heard of the Aguila Holding Corporation? I’m talking about a Bahamas company, which registered as a foreign entity in Texas five years, three months, and two days ago. You’ve never heard of it?”
DeCanza could only shake his head.
“You have to answer out loud,” Jim said. “Our court reporter, this lovely lady down in front of you, she gets heartburn if she can’t hear you.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” DeCanza said. He was looking at the glass of water in front of him. He took his hands off the witness desk and folded them out of sight.
“Where were you on March twenty-third, 2014?”
“I don’t know.”
“Strange. You’ve had an excellent memory for the last five hours,” Jim said. “Let me ask you this—what’s the nearest airport to Eagle Pass, Texas?”
“I don’t know,” DeCanza said. He glanced at Nammar, but Nammar was swiveled around, whispering over the rail with two of the FBI agents in the front row.
“You don’t know,” Jim said. “Okay, let’s try this: Who are the directors of the Ranch Four Corporation? If it refreshes your recollection, it was established in the Cayman Islands. Registered as a foreign entity in Texas. On March twenty-third, 2014.”
Now Nammar stood up.
“Your Honor,” he said. “May we approach?”
“I have a question pending,” Jim said. “And I’d like it answered.”
The judge looked from Jim to Nammar. Then at DeCanza, whose forehead was now glazed with a thin film of sweat.
“Answer the question.”
DeCanza looked up at her. He shook his head, his eyes glassy and wide.
“What was—I mean—” He pointed down at the court reporter. “Can she read it back?”
Without waiting for the judge to respond, the reporter read Jim’s last question. Jim was leaning against the front of the lectern. Nammar was back in his chair, in a whispered conversation with the FBI agents.
DeCanza was still shaking his head.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never heard of that company. So I don’t know the directors.”
“Then let me ask you—”
Nammar stood, and cut Jim off.
“Your Honor—may we approach now?”
“Fine.”
The judge reached past her gavel and hit a switch. White noise came out of speakers in the ceiling above the jury box and the public gallery. When Jim and Nammar approached for their bench conference, it was impossible to hear what they were saying. But it was easy to imagine. Nammar wanted to know: Where the hell is he going with this? And Jim was saying: I don’t have to give him a map. It’s his damn witness. If he doesn’t know where I’m going, that’s his fault. The exchange went back and forth for a minute. DeCanza, alone and forgotten on the witness stand, looked like he wanted to run for the nearest window and dive through it. Never mind that we were on the seventeenth floor.
When the judge killed the white noise and the attorneys walked back, I couldn’t tell how she’d ruled. Both attorneys wore blank faces. Jim took his spot in front of the lectern. Nammar sat down and turned to the more junior AUSA on his left.
“Mr. DeCanza,” Jim said. “Does your ranch outside of Eagle Pass have an airstrip?”
Nammar was on his feet immediately.
“Objection!” And then, in a quieter voice, he added, “Lacks foundation. And counsel said he was going to be asking about foreign corporations.”
“And their holdings,” Jim said. “I definitely said holdings.”
“The witness will answer the question.”
“An airstrip? I don’t even know about the ranch.”
“No ranch in Eagle Pass?”
“No.”
Jim walked back to his table and picked up a thin folder. He carried it back to the lectern and opened it. He took his time. The point was to let the jury wonder what damning documents he was about to unleash. And, maybe more important, to let DeCanza twist on the blade.
“You’re telling me you don’t know a thing about a ranch—a five-thousand-two-hundred-and-forty-six-acre ranch—outside of Eagle Pass, Texas?”
Here, Jim turned to his folder and scanned the first page with his fingertip.
“Three habitable structures, an airstrip, and a hangar, all of which last changed hands on March twenty-third, 2014?”
DeCanza had been looking at Nammar. But Nammar was either talking to his co-counsel or whispering with the FBI agents behind him. He wasn’t watching his witness flounder. So DeCanza turned to his only other possible lifeline. Jim’s client. From behind, I couldn’t tell if I saw a reaction from the man. Maybe there was a nod. Maybe it was just my imagination.
“I—just don’t—I mean—”
Jim took three steps forward.
“Let’s circle back,” he said. “When we got started a couple of minutes ago, I asked you about aliases. Have you ever gone by an alias, sir?”
DeCanza looked at his wrists. They were pale; he’d spent a lot of time indoors just recently. He was going to be spending a lot more.
“Yes.”
“You’ve had an alias?”
“Yes.”
Jim took another step forward.
“What alias, sir?”
DeCanza glanced at the defense table again, and then focused on his water glass. If his testimony on direct examination had gone anything like the statements he’d given at the Westchester Hotel, then he would have spent a considerable portion of the morning telling the jury how Lorca dealt with his enemies. Lorca’s methods of communication were baroque. He started with power tools and duct tape and graduated to bags of scorpions and a good-sized footlocker. But all his messages ended the same way: with a dismembered corpse burning in an oil drum, some low-level guy stirring the flames and adding fuel unt
il there was nothing left. DeCanza knew, because he’d been involved at every level of the process.
Now, in real time, I could see DeCanza thinking. Nammar didn’t know his wife and son were alive. No one was protecting them. He could stick to his story, and then it would be a race to Eagle Pass. Lorca’s men against the feds. Jim, with his genial southern manner, was offering DeCanza a simple choice. DeCanza could kneel down and put his head on the block, right now, and spare his wife and child. Or he could hold to the truth and take his chances.
His life for theirs.
“What alias did you use, sir?” Jim repeated.
“Lorca.”
“Can you say that again?” Jim said. “You were so quiet, I’m not sure our lovely court reporter could hear you.”
DeCanza wouldn’t look up. He didn’t want to see Nammar, and he didn’t want anyone to see him looking at the defense table.
“Lorca,” he said, a little bit louder this time.
I heard DeCanza’s last answer as I was walking out. From behind me, Jim was talking again. I pulled the courtroom door open. Cold air flooded in from the hallway.
“Why don’t we hit rewind?” Jim was saying. “Let’s go back to a few minutes ago, when you pointed to my client—”
As I was stepping out, I looked back. Agent White had turned around again. White buzz cut, whiskey-punched nose. Sharp, black eyes. He watched me until the door closed.
5
On the ground floor, at the security stand, I handed the guard my claim ticket and waited for him to return my phone. I was expecting White to come out of the elevators at any moment, calling after me; I didn’t feel safe until I’d gotten out of the federal building.
The government had spent two years and millions of dollars preparing its case. Jim Gardner had eviscerated it in less than ten minutes. It wasn’t even a quarter past three. I hurried away from the front entrance. There were SUVs from Homeland Security parked to the left, so I went to the right. Someone was going to pay for what had just happened. They were going to dump everything they could on DeCanza, but there’d be plenty left over for someone else. Someone like me, for example.
I crossed Larkin and stepped into Harry Harrington’s Pub. I paused just inside and scanned the place. Twenty people, including the two bartenders. The customers were an evenly split mix of dedicated boozehounds who might as well have had reserved stools, and government workers who’d left work a couple hours early on a Friday. The seven television screens were showing baseball and cricket. I took a seat at the end of the bar, farthest from the door. As soon as I got the chance, I ordered a Wild Turkey, neat.
I didn’t think about anything until I ordered the second glass. For my stay in the Westchester, I’d looked the part. I stopped shaving, and rarely showered. I never did laundry. In thirty-five days, I wore two sweatshirts, and always the same pair of jeans. By the time I was done with it, my thrift store coat might have come from a grave robbing.
I took a drink of my bourbon. Glass in hand, I brushed my knuckles along my cheek. It was still smooth from shaving this morning. I could see myself in the mirror behind the liquor bottles. In my ironed shirt and dry-cleaned suit, I looked like a lawyer. The real kind, who could show up in court and represent a client without getting arrested. Jim should never have invited me to his cross-examination.
Maybe I was just being paranoid. I’d been careful in the Westchester, had taken precautions beyond my appearance. Agent White had turned around and stared at me, but that could mean anything. It didn’t mean he’d connected me to DeCanza’s implosion.
When the bartender came past, I ordered another Wild Turkey. He poured it for me, but first he gave me a glass of ice water. Meaning it was time to slow down or move on. I finished them both and walked out.
I crossed Van Ness, went into the bookstore there, and found a copy of the Chronicle abandoned on a table in the coffee shop. It didn’t have anything about the blonde I’d photographed, which wasn’t surprising. She’d probably hit the Wraith about the same time the paper was coming off the press. There was a snippet on the Lorca trial, but I didn’t read it. No journalist could have foreseen the turn the trial had just taken.
I left the bookstore and kept walking west. I hadn’t gotten any real exercise since mid-May. I didn’t mind that it was raining. When Jim paid his last invoice, I could have my suit dry-cleaned again. I could throw it away and buy all the new suits I wanted. It didn’t matter. I kept walking, looking for green spaces. I went through Alamo Square, and then followed the footpaths along the Panhandle and into Golden Gate Park. It was June, so it would stay light past eight thirty. But it was gray light. Fog light.
DeCanza probably wasn’t going to spend the night in the Westchester. If Nammar and White cared about this case or their careers they’d tie him to a chair in a concrete room and take turns on him with a baseball bat. What the fuck just happened, Al? What’s Gardner got on you? But that wasn’t how Nammar operated. I only knew one person who did things like that, and he was the man who ultimately paid my bills.
The rain falling into the eucalyptus trees made a hushing sound. I decided to walk all the way to Ocean Beach, and then take a cab home. After that, I wasn’t sure. Maybe La Paz again, or somewhere even farther. Thailand or Vietnam. But when I got to the beach and sat down, my phone vibrated. I pulled it out and looked at the incoming text, from Jim Gardner.
Meet me at your office. Now.
“Lee,” he said. “That took forever.”
He’d climbed the steps from the street to my locked door, and he was waiting there in the shadows.
When he’d been my boss, I’d called him Mr. Garland, and I was Mr. Crowe. I wasn’t used to hearing him say my first name, even though my short term of employment with him had ended six years ago. When I’d returned from La Paz, I’d sat in my new apartment for two months. Finally, I decided I needed something to do. Between my old job and my summers working for a defense lawyer, I could cobble together enough investigative hours to meet the requirements for a PI license. So I took the test, and passed. I had a card printed, and then I went and found Jim. He’d been my main source of work for the first couple of years, but as time went on, I’d found other avenues. Now things were going well enough that I needed an office of my own.
“This is how you show up at the office?” he asked, looking at my soaked suit.
“Only when there’s a client waiting.”
I took off my jacket and twisted it to wring water onto the floor. We shook hands, and then he took a step back.
“You smell like bourbon, Lee.”
“It’s my office,” I said. “My time.”
I took the key ring from my pocket and opened the door. Jim went in and I followed him. He sat in one of the two chairs across from my desk, and took a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his wool suit to dab the rain from his face.
“Nice place,” he said.
I doubted he thought so. He had a corner office on a high floor at One Market Street, overlooking the Ferry Building and the bay. He got to his desk while it was still dark and watched the sun come up over the Oakland hills. He had two hundred attorneys working on three all-marble floors. Twenty-four hours a day, money poured into the till. I’d never had any doubts about how I’d gotten my foot through the door. He’d done his research, and let me know it. I was a certified nobody, from a long line of them. So it wasn’t my name or my draw that he wanted. He’d wanted Juliette’s father as a client. It had been a great strategy until my divorce and disbarment made me useless. To save face, he very publicly cast me out. I’d expected that much. But our relationship continued, and evolved, and I never would have predicted that.
“I should’ve come by when you signed the lease,” he said. “What was that, last month?”
“I didn’t throw an office-warming party. How’d you wrap up with DeCanza? I left early.”
I didn’t want to tell him about Agent White unless I knew for sure there was a problem.
“You were there to see him flip?” Jim asked. I nodded, and he went on. “After that, he followed me wherever I led him. Everything he said in Nammar’s direct was a lie. He’s Lorca. He ran the whole thing, from the top down.”
“Did you finish with him?”
“Yeah, but Nammar doesn’t know it. He’s my witness tomorrow morning. I’ll ask enough to make sure he didn’t change his mind overnight, and then I’m going to hand him back to Nammar.”
“Will they change his mind?”
Jim looked around the office. He must have been weighing the possibility that it was bugged. And he must have decided it probably wasn’t.
“Would they change your mind, if it was your wife who’d go in the barrel?”
I shook my head. However Jim meant the question, the answer was no. They wouldn’t change my mind for a hypothetical future wife, and they wouldn’t change my mind for Juliette. I had no fond feelings for her, but no one deserved to go into one of Lorca’s barrels.
“Will they let it go to a verdict?” I asked.
“This is Lorca. The man at the top. They’re not going to risk an acquittal. Someone higher than Nammar will make a call tonight. They’ll angle for a mistrial. If that doesn’t work, they’ll start offering pleas—and why not? They’ve already got him cold on tax evasion, so he’s doing time either way.”
“But you win,” I said.
“I win.”
I opened my desk drawer and got out a bottle.
“I was saving this.”
“Keep saving it, Lee.”
I was about to pull the cork, but his tone stopped me. I leaned the bottle on my knee and looked at him.
“I didn’t come here to talk about the trial,” Jim said. “I have another job for you—a client who needs a detective. She’s a good client, and has been for a long time. So I think I’d rather bring her a sober man. And a dry one, if you’ve got another set of clothes around here.”
“What’s this about?”
“Claire Gravesend.”
Blood Relations Page 3