Rosarito Beach

by M. A. Lawson

  “That reminds me,” Kay said. “I’m giving Jackson a two-day suspension.”

  “Jackson?”

  “The geek. The one who was supposed to hook up the video cameras in the bar. He didn’t check his equipment before he went in, and one of the cameras didn’t work.”

  Davis shook his head again. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Jackson’s young. What you should do is take him out for a beer. Tell him you understand he was nervous and under a lot of pressure, but that what he did put people’s lives in danger and how next time he needs to do better. You give him a suspension, he’s going to find all kinds of reasons why you didn’t give him enough time to do his job right and he’s going to hate you for the rest of his career. And when you need geek help in the future, he’s not going to give it to you.”

  The hell he wouldn’t. She’d fire Jackson if he didn’t do his job.

  But she didn’t say that. Instead she said, “So what are we going to do about Tito? You know we can’t leave him in MCC, and we have to do something before they arraign him.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Davis said, but she could tell he was irritated over the way she’d changed the subject from her management style to Tito. “I’ve got a meeting set up with the judge, SDPD, the warden at MCC, and the senior U.S. marshal in San Diego. It’s scheduled for one p.m., so you have time to go home, get a couple hours’ sleep, and take a shower and change.”

  “What time is the press conference?” Kay asked.

  “Three.”

  “I want to be there.”

  “Yeah, I know you want to be there.”

  “Well, can I come?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Not exactly I’d love to have you standing by my side, but good enough.

  Kay rose to leave.

  “But, Hamilton—”

  “Yes, boss?”

  “I’ll do all the talking at the meeting with the judge and at the press conference. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Just as long as I get credit for the bust.

  —

  As Kay was leaving to go home, she swung by Wilson’s desk. He should have been on his way home, too, after having been up all night, but instead he was using two stubby fingers to type up a report—a report that would put Kay’s actions in the worst possible light while still being accurate.

  “Wilson, do you know who Colleen Brandon is?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s just been put in charge of the Far East Division and we’re pals. You know how us girls stick together.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Wilson said.

  “Because Colleen needs a guy for Mongolia, and I told her you were the perfect man for the job. Colleen owes me.”

  Kay walked away, leaving Wilson sitting there with his mouth open.

  Kay actually did know Colleen Brandon. The DEA has eighty-five regional offices in sixty-five foreign countries, and Brandon was the newly appointed head of the Far East Division. Kay hated to admit it, but Brandon had risen through the ranks faster than her because she had the political skills to impress people in Washington. She was good at sucking up. What Wilson didn’t know was that Colleen Brandon hated her and wouldn’t piss on her if her head was on fire.

  She figured Wilson would be in Jim Davis’s office, wailing like a baby, before she left the building.

  7

  As Kay was driving to her house in Point Loma, she was thinking she should do what Jim Davis had said: take a shower and sleep for a couple of hours before their meeting with the judge. But she didn’t feel like sleeping. She was still too energized from busting Tito. No, she didn’t want sleep. She wanted sex.

  She took out her cell phone and punched in a number.

  “What are you doing this morning?”

  “I have a meeting with Julian Montgomery’s lawyer in an hour.”

  Kay knew who Julian Montgomery was: a guy worth a couple hundred million bucks who’d never worked a day in his life. He’d made his money the old-fashioned way: He inherited it. He was on San Diego’s A-list, gave generously to the arts, was on the boards of several charities, and attended every exclusive social gala in the city. He was also a degenerate pervert, and he had just been arrested for having a computer full of child pornography.

  Julian’s gardener, who lived on Julian’s estate, had caught Julian taking nude photographs of his nine-year-old son. The gardener—a normally gentle man from Honduras who barely spoke English—tried to split Julian’s head open with a machete. He missed Julian’s head, but did manage to slice off part of one of his ears. When the police arrested the gardener for attempted murder, they didn’t believe him at first, but eventually they obtained a warrant to look into Julian’s computer and his camera’s memory chip, where they found hundreds of pictures of children.

  “Do you think Julian’s lawyer would mind if you kept him waiting a bit?” Kay asked. “I need someone to wash my back.”

  “I’m sure he would mind. Your place?”

  “Yes.”

  —

  Kay lay there with her eyes closed, waiting for her heartbeat to slow down to something approaching normal. She finally opened her eyes and looked over at Robert Meyer. He smiled at her and said what he always said after they finished having sex: “Wow.”

  For a man who depended on his communication skills to make a living, Robert tended to be less than original when it came to postcoital pillow talk. He was, however, a beautiful human specimen. He was a muscular six foot two, had rugged features and a perfect profile—the kind you might see on old Grecian coins. He also had the same waist size he had in college, because he worked out four days a week to stay in shape. He was marvelous in bed; he wasn’t the best lover Kay had ever had, but he was currently number three on her list.

  Robert Meyer was an Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of California. One day, and probably not that far in the future, he would be the U.S. Attorney for the district, and Kay wouldn’t be surprised if he ended up being the Attorney General of the United States. He had money, looks, political connections, and brains.

  He also had a beautiful wife and two beautiful daughters. A Meyer family portrait was the perfect campaign poster.

  “I gotta get going,” Kay said, and rose from the bed. She didn’t bother to put on a robe; Robert Meyer had seen her naked often enough.

  “Me, too,” Robert said. He didn’t move, however. He continued to lie there, his head propped against a pillow, a small content smile on his face. If people still smoked, he would have been having an after-sex cigarette.

  Kay started to walk toward her bathroom, but Robert said, “Hold it a minute.”

  “What?” Kay said.

  “Just stand there. I want to look at you.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Kay muttered.

  “You are definitely the best-looking woman I’ve ever slept with.”

  What a bullshitter. Kay knew his wife was actually better-looking than she was. Well, she wasn’t as stacked as Kay, but she was definitely a stunner.

  When Kay came out of the shower—this one she took by herself—Robert was still in bed.

  “I thought you had a meeting with Julian Montgomery’s lawyer,” Kay said.

  “I do. But he’ll wait until I get there, and he’ll charge Julian about seven hundred bucks for every hour he waits. What are you going to do about Tito Olivera?”

  “We’re meeting with Judge Foreman and a bunch of other bureaucrats to talk about that at one. We’re going to try to impress upon the judge that Tito needs to be held someplace where his big brother can’t get to him. I just hope he’ll listen. If he doesn’t, we’re going to have blood running in the streets of San Diego.”

  She didn’t need to explain why this was so to Robert Meyer. He knew abou
t her yearlong investigation leading to Tito’s arrest, and he knew the capabilities of the Olivera cartel. That was another thing she liked about Robert: They could talk shop when they weren’t screwing, and he was the type of man who could keep what she told him to himself. Being a prosecutor, he was usually on her side of the game, although he tended to be a little persnickety about following the rules.

  Kay met Robert when she first came to San Diego two years before. At the time he’d been working in the Narcotics Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and they met on one of Kay’s first cases in the region. It didn’t take long before he asked her out for a drink—she was hardly the first extramarital affair he’d had. He now ran the General Crimes Section of the Criminal Division. General Crimes was a catchall section dealing with bank fraud, organized crime, counterfeiting, weapons offenses, identity theft, computer crimes, and public corruption. And child pornography. Robert had asked for the job in General Crimes to round out his résumé—particularly as it related to computer crimes—and he was going to personally prosecute Julian Montgomery because it would be a high-profile case. Robert Meyer always prosecuted the high-profile cases.

  In addition to being able to talk shop with Robert and his skills in bed, the other thing Kay liked about him was that she would never have to face the day when he came to her, a mopey expression on his face, and said he loved her so much that he was going to leave his wife and marry her. He would never do that. He was married to his career, and he knew divorcing his wife would be political suicide. He also knew that Kay Hamilton would never be the ideal mate for a politician.

  And all of this was fine with Kay. She had no desire to get married again, or at least not anytime soon; she’d been married once, for almost a year, and didn’t wish to repeat that experience in the near future. For that matter, she had no desire to have a live-in boyfriend right now. She liked her life the way it was. She liked living alone—at least most of the time—and she liked the fact that she wasn’t tied to any person or place. If the DEA decided to reassign her, she had no emotional attachments to keep her from moving and advancing. Robert Meyer was the perfect lover, as far as she was concerned.

  Kay normally dressed in pantsuits for meetings with other agencies or when she had to go to court, and she usually wore her hair in a practical ponytail. Today, however, she knew she was going to be on camera at the press conference—and she wanted the cameras on her. She let her long, sun-streaked blond hair fall to her shoulders and wore a dark blue suit with a white blouse and a skirt that clung to her ass and stopped just above her knees. She had good legs and she knew it. The cameras would be on her.

  8

  Sitting in the judge’s conference room were Kay Hamilton and her boss, Jim Davis; Clyde Taylor, director/warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center; John Hernández, chief of the San Diego Police Department; and U.S. Marshal Kevin Walker, head of the marshals’ Southern District Office. The marshals were, among other things, responsible for security for the federal courts in San Diego. Also present was Carol Maddox, the Assistant U.S. Attorney who had obtained the warrant for Kay to put video cameras in Cadillac Washington’s bar. Maddox would be prosecuting Tito Olivera for Cadillac’s murder.

  While they were waiting for the judge to arrive, Carol Maddox leaned over and whispered to Kay, “Did you know Tito was going to kill him?”

  “How could I possibly know that?” Kay said. “We just got lucky.”

  “Hmm,” Maddox said, giving her a look she probably used on her kids when she suspected one of them was lying. Which reminded Kay . . .

  “Are you going to have time to handle Tito’s trial? I mean, with your kids and all?”

  “Don’t worry about me doing my job, Hamilton.”

  Judge Benton Foreman of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California entered the conference room. He was dressed in a dark gray suit and maroon tie, and not the black robe he wore in court. Foreman would be the man presiding over Tito Olivera’s arraignment and possibly his trial. He was sixty-three years old, six foot six, and weighed two hundred and seventy pounds. His black head was shaved, and gleamed as if he polished it with furniture wax, and Kay thought he looked like a retired NFL lineman. The judge hadn’t played in the pros, but he had been a defensive tackle at Stanford. He’d also been number four in his class at Stanford Law and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. He was a very bright man.

  As he was taking his seat, he said, “I don’t feel comfortable holding this meeting without Mr. Olivera’s lawyer in attendance.”

  “Your Honor,” Jim Davis said, “this meeting is only to discuss security for the court and actions necessary to ensure Tito Olivera remains in jail until his trial.”

  “You’re assuming Mr. Olivera isn’t going to be granted bail,” the judge said.

  “Your Honor, Tito was videotaped shooting a man in the head and he’s the brother of Caesar Olivera, head of the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico. I can’t imagine that he’s going to be—”

  “Stop!” Judge Foreman said. He turned and picked up the phone on the credenza behind his chair. “Martha, call Tito Olivera’s attorney and tell him I want him in my conference room in half an hour.” He hung up and said to the people in the room, “We’ll resume this meeting when Mr. Olivera’s lawyer is present.”

  Judge Foreman left the room, leaving the other attendees staring at each other. Or, to be accurate, glaring at Jim Davis.

  “Shit,” Davis said. “Prescott is going to turn this into a circus.”

  “Well, I think this entire meeting is bullshit,” Clyde Taylor, the MCC warden, said.

  Kay had only spoken to Taylor on the phone and never met the man in person. He turned out to be a short, round man with a double chin—and both his chins were quivering with outrage.

  “It’s not bullshit,” Kay Hamilton said. “Your goddamn guards—”

  “Shut up, Hamilton,” Davis said. “Warden Taylor, we’ll have this discussion when the judge returns, and you’ll have a chance to present your case. I apologize for the delay.”

  Marshal Kevin Walker rose from his chair and said, “I’m gonna go get a cookie or something.” Walker was in his early forties, and Kay thought he looked a bit like her boss, Jim Davis, although he wasn’t as tall as Davis and his hair was dark instead of white. But like Davis he had a mustache, and Kay thought if he wore a cowboy hat, he’d look like the Marlboro Man. He was a hunk.

  “Why don’t you come with me, John,” Walker said to Chief Hernández. “I’ll buy you a donut. I know cops like donuts.”

  John Hernández, like Tito Olivera, didn’t look Hispanic. Nor did he have a Spanish accent; he sounded like the Harvard Law School graduate that he was. Like Kay’s lover, Robert Meyer, Hernández had political ambitions that went far beyond being the top cop in San Diego. Kay could hardly wait to tell him that three of his narcotics detectives were on the take.

  “I don’t eat donuts,” the chief said, sounding both righteous and serious, the way some people sound when they say: I don’t smoke. “But I’ll come with you.”

  Kay figured the marshal and the chief were going off to see if they could agree on a position they could both support. They were probably going to gang up on her boss.

  —

  The meeting resumed with Lincoln Prescott in attendance. Lincoln Prescott may not have been the best criminal defense lawyer in San Diego, but he was definitely one of the richest. His full-time job was defending members of the Olivera cartel, and Caesar and Tito Olivera sent a lot of work his way and paid him well.

  Prescott was dressed, as always, in a white three-piece suit. He wore the suits regardless of the time of year or the weather, to make sure no one would confuse him with any other lawyer. His hair was gray and long enough to touch his collar in the back and had wings sweeping out over his ears. He always looked like he needed a haircut—and he ha
d his hair trimmed once a week to make it look that way. He was a devious, grandstanding, media-hogging asshole and was hated by every prosecutor who ever had the misfortune to go up against him.

  “Okay,” Judge Foreman said. “Mr. Davis, you can begin.”

  “Your Honor, as I stated earlier, the purpose of this meeting is to discuss security for you and your court and to make sure that Tito Olivera doesn’t escape before his trial. I think it’s a mistake having Mr. Prescott here, as he’ll pass on everything he hears to Mr. Olivera’s brother.”

  “I object, Your Honor,” Prescott said. “In fact, I object on several grounds. I strongly resent Mr. Davis implying that I’d be a party to an escape attempt. I object to my client being treated differently than any other citizen who has been accused of a crime in this district. I also intend to show that the warrant obtained by the DEA to monitor a private meeting between my client and Mr. Washington was improper and unconstitutional and—”

  “Mr. Prescott, you can save the warrant speech for later,” the judge said. “Right now I want to hear why the DEA thinks extraordinary security precautions are necessary.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor,” Davis said. “As I stated earlier, Tito Olivera is the brother of Caesar Olivera, head of the most powerful drug cartel in Mexico.”

  “I object again,” Prescott said. “I also represent some of Mr. Caesar Olivera’s interests in the United States and I know he’s never been arrested here or in Mexico, that there’s absolutely no proof that he’s involved with narcotics, and—”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up,” Kay muttered.

  She didn’t think she’d spoken loud enough for the judge to hear, but she was wrong. “What did you say, young lady?” the judge said.

  “I apologize, Your Honor,” Kay said, “but this isn’t a courtroom and there’s no jury here. If Olivera’s mouthpiece keeps interrupting every time we say something, we’ll never get through this meeting.”