The Eye of the Tigress

by Paul Coggins

  Two ways to interpret her allusion to offshore accounts in tax havens, given the likely presence of a bug in the room. Either a slip of the tongue by her, or a warning shot at him.

  Much as Cash hoped for the former, he steeled himself for the latter. “Remember what I said. Our conversation isn’t privileged, and this room could be wired.”

  Her tone turned hard. “If I go down, it won’t be alone.”

  Nope, not a slip. Of the legal fees paid by the Benantis over the past decade, Cash wondered how much had been dirty money, laundered to look and smell clean. He came up with a rough calculation: all of it.

  “As I was saying before being interrupted, even if I could represent you and you could afford me, there’d still be one tiny technicality that would prevent me from taking your case. You tried to have me killed.”

  “Well, if you’re going to hold that against me.” She laughed.

  He didn’t.

  “For what it’s worth,” she said, “I had no choice. It was either you or me.”

  “So you did have a choice.”

  “Yes, and I made the same call you would’ve in the circumstances.”

  “Then I’ll make the same decision now that you would if our roles were reversed.” He rubbed his chin. “Come to think of it, our roles have been reversed. When I was doing time and you were on the outside, I don’t recall a single visit from you.” He stood. “That’s my cue to exit.”

  “You won’t walk away from me.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because you are who you are. You may not be my lawyer, but you’re still a lawyer. Even worse, the kind who got in the racket for all the wrong reasons.”

  “As if you’d know the right ones.”

  Her stab at a smile fell short. “Money, prestige, power. But mostly money.”

  He didn’t ask about her list of the wrong reasons for doing what he did. “Stop dancing around and get down to business. What am I doing here?”

  “You have to convince La Tigra to spare my life.”

  It was Cash’s turn to laugh. “And while I’m at it, why don’t I get the feds to issue you a formal apology?”

  “I’m dead serious,” she said.

  You’re half-right anyway.

  “I’m in no position to ask our mutual friend to the south for a favor. Other way around, I owe her a big one,” he said.

  A roach the size of a rat skittered across the floor. Good timing. Reminded Cash of a lawyer he and Mariposa knew all too well. “Besides, this sounds like a job for your trial counsel, Rhoden.”

  She stiffened in her seat. “We both know who hired Rocket and what he was hired to do.”

  “Puh-leeze,” Cash said, “that publicity whore calls himself Rocket, but no one else does.” He didn’t dispute her read of the fix she was in. Higher-ups had hired Rhoden to make sure Mariposa didn’t flip.

  “I don’t give a shit what anyone calls him,” she said, “but we both know what he is.”

  “Then I’ll give you the same advice I’d give my best friend if she were in trouble, free of charge.” Cash almost choked on the last three words. He hated to fall into the habit of handing out freebies. Downright unprofessional of him. “If you don’t trust your lawyer, get a new one.”

  “Not an option,” Mariposa said.

  Cash shook his head slowly. “You can’t go to trial with a lawyer you—”

  She cut him off again. “We both know that I won’t make it to trial, not unless you help me.”

  He didn’t challenge that either. “Don’t get your hopes up, but I’ll make a call.”

  “You have to ask her face-to-face, and by ask, I mean beg.” Her eyes misted. Not the first time she had used that weapon on him.

  It worked every time. He pushed away from the table but couldn’t escape the look in her eyes. “If you think I’d voluntarily return to Mexico, you’re delusional. The last time I went down there, I almost ended up as tiger food.”

  “The point being,” she said, “that you talked your way out of a jam back then. You can do the same for me now.”

  “If the goal of this conversation is to tee up your insanity defense, put me on your witness list. I’ll testify you’re certifiable.”

  “We meant something to each other once,” she said.

  “I hate to keep harping on this, but that was before you gave the green light to kill me.”

  “Can we get past that?” Her voice broke. “You’re my only hope.”

  “There is another way.” Bug or no bug, he owed her his best advice. “Witness protection.”

  She shook her head. “Your FBI squeeze has already dangled that poison apple. Problem is, the feds have a lousy track record of keeping their witnesses alive.”

  He rummaged for a Plan C but came up empty. “Exactly what am I supposed to tell La Tigra?”

  “If she lets me be, I’ll cop to all counts of the indictment. No deal. No cooperation. Spend the rest of my days inside, doing whatever the fuck this place does to turn a profit.”

  “Would you buy that if you were in her shoes?”

  “Only if you sold it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, “but I start a short trial tomorrow. Have to wrap that up before I could go anywhere.”

  She reached across the table, grabbed his hands, and squeezed. “I’m hanging on day to day here.” Her voice swelled. “So are you.”

  No need for the second warning that she had the goods on him. The first shot had done the trick. He broke the grip and stood.

  A crunch underfoot meant one roach down. One to go.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Cash couldn’t leave the women’s unit at Big Spring without checking on a client. He had Wanda Walters—a.k.a. “Wacky Wanda”—pulled from the prison gym and brought to the visiting room.

  Good thing she came alone, because he couldn’t have picked her from a lineup. That’s how much she had changed.

  She had gone from being a punching bag to actually punching a bag, transforming her body from whippet thin to wiry taut. Four hours a day in the weight room will do that, boosted by a regular ’roid supply.

  Three years ago, Wanda—a mousy bank teller—had fallen under the spell of a con artist and dipped into the till to buy the expensive toys that kept him around and aroused.

  He testified against the lovestruck teller and got a walk. She took the fall.

  Today, her ego had ballooned, along with her pecs, biceps, and triceps. She could pump more iron than men half her age and twice her size and outwrestle all comers, Cash included.

  Determined to prove her dominance, she rolled up the sleeve of her orange jumpsuit, past the elbow and the fresh dragon tattoo encircling her bicep. By prison standards, her tatt rocked. Low bar.

  “Let’s arm wrestle.” She assumed the position. Right elbow anchored on the metal table. Hand in the air. Eyes daring Cash to accept the challenge.

  He leaned back in the chair. “Let’s not and just say we did.”

  “Chicken?” Wanda’s voice registered lower and more masculine with each visit.

  “Guilty as charged,” he said. “In the interest of self-preservation, I subscribe to my own personal philosophy. I call it the four Cs: Cash’s Code of Constructive Cowardice. Saves my fragile ego and my more fragile body from many a bruise.”

  Her twitching fingers taunted him. “Man up and grow a pair. We can make this contest interesting. I win, and you represent me gratis. If you pull off the upset, I double your fee.”

  Cash started to point out that she hadn’t paid him a penny since he’d pried her file from the grubby fingers of Tony Dial—a.k.a. “Terrible Negotiator Tony.” T.N.T for short. That waddling case of malpractice had bamboozled her into copping to five counts of embezzlement, with no cap on the sentence and no credit for restitution.

  Cash shelved the nonpayment issue, allowing Wanda to save face. “Don’t make me regret asking to see you while I was in the neighborhood,” he said.

 
; “Yeah, I hear you’re representing the new bitch on the block, the stuck-up hottie hiding out in stir.”

  “You heard wrong on two counts. I’m not representing her, and she’s not stuck-up. Just suffers from a strong interest in staying alive.”

  “If that dumb bitch thinks she’s safer in stir than gen pop, she’s nuts. In stir, no one can hear you scream.”

  Cash rubbed his chin. Maybe an insanity defense had legs for Mariposa. For Wacky Wanda too.

  With the test of strength taken off the table, Wanda lowered her forearm. “How’s my appeal coming?”

  “Technically, you don’t have a right to appeal.” Not the first time he’d told her that. “You bargained that away when—”

  She cut him off. “That fool Tony did that.”

  “Okay, he cut the deal, but you signed off on it. So now you’re limited to a habeas petition, with ineffective assistance of counsel being the sole ground left open to us.”

  “Tony was as fucking useless as tits on a bull dyke.”

  Cash couldn’t argue with that. “I plan to file your petition next week, and we’ll see how it goes. In the meantime, do me a solid and keep an eye on your new BFF in solitary.”

  “Are you trying to protect her from us,” she said, “or us from her?”

  Cash smiled. “We’ll see how it goes.”

  ***

  The back-to-back meetings with Mariposa and Wanda behind him, Cash pushed the intercom button. With a trial starting tomorrow at nine, he needed to return to the office. That meant having a guard escort him from the visiting room to the front gate. From there to the parking lot, he’d be on his own.

  No guard showed. He pressed the button again. And again.

  The lights in the windowless room dimmed and then died. Stewing alone in the dark transported Cash to another pitch-black room thirty-five years ago and to the nightmare of his mother’s disappearance.

  The walls crept closer. The temperature spiked, along with Cash’s heart rate.

  He smelled an ambush. Wouldn’t be his first prison beating. Might be his last.

  The door banged open. Light flooded the room, temporarily blinding him. His heart skipped several beats before racing like mad.

  Two angels emerged from the light and invited themselves in. On closer look, not angels but agents. FBI Special Agent Maggie Burns—a.k.a. “MagDoll”—followed by Marty Shafer of the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division. CID for short.

  Make that, one angel. The jury was still out on Shafer’s final destination.

  “Well, if it isn’t Beauty and the Beast,” Cash said.

  “Fuck you too,” Shafer said.

  “Settle down, Marty.” Leave it to Maggie to defuse the situation. “McCahill might’ve been referring to you as the beauty.”

  Riiiiight.

  From the age of six through her days at Ole Miss, Maggie had racked up enough beauty titles to own the crown. Auburn hair. Hazel eyes. A willowy frame only half-hidden by the G-woman getup. Blue Blazer, stiff white shirt, skirt to the knees, black pumps.

  Calling Shafer a beast rang less true. Not that anyone would mistake him for Ryan Gosling, but he wasn’t exactly Quasimodo either. More like an unremarkable mosaic of forgettable features, divided by deep wrinkles into jigsaw pieces. The whole somehow less than the sum of the parts.

  Maggie and Cash took the only seats in the visiting room separated by a metal table, forcing Shafer to stand.

  “What are you doing here?” she said.

  “Funny,” Cash said, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”

  Shafer slapped both palms on the table. “I know why the prick’s here.” He leaned over, invading Cash’s space. “He came to warn Benanti to clam up…not to play ball with us. That counts as obstruction in my book.”

  Cash rocketed to his feet, going nose-to-nose with Shafer. “Don’t flatter yourself. You don’t own a book and wouldn’t know what to do with one if you did.”

  Maggie pounded the table. “Sit down, McCahill. Whether or not Marty could make an obstruction charge stick, if he can provoke you into slugging him, you’ll do the full nickel.”

  Cash sat. “You here to offer Mariposa a deal?”

  Maggie shot Shafer a keep-your-trap-shut look and turned back to Cash. “If you weren’t hired to sit on Benanti, why are you here?”

  “Last time I checked, there’s no law against visiting an old friend who’s fallen on hard times.”

  Shafer leaned over the table. A deeper invasion of Cash’s space. “Dollars to donuts, this slimeball’s trying to poach the case from Rhoden.”

  Maggie put her hand on Shafer’s forearm. It was enough to reel him away from Cash.

  “You feds took that play off the table when you put me on your witness list,” Cash said. “I can’t testify for the government and also cross-examine myself. The law’s funny that way.”

  “If you were truly her friend,” Maggie said, “you’d convince her there’s only one way to avoid the needle.”

  “Isn’t that a conversation you should have with Mariposa’s lawyer?” Cash said.

  Shafer snorted. “That dirtbag’s slimier than you, hard as that is to believe.”

  A knock on the door interrupted Cash’s comeback. The door opened, and the devil appeared in the flesh.

  “Speak of the devil.” Leave it to Shafer to resort to the obvious line, as Rob “Rocket” Rhoden swaggered into the visiting room, sporting a shit-eating grin and aviator sunglasses.

  The shark wore sunglasses everywhere, except court. Claimed to have super-sensitive eyes. If true, that’d be the only thing sensitive about him. Also the only true tale he’d ever told.

  Rocket pretended to count heads. “Quarters are a bit cramped.” The accent betrayed his Boston roots. That, along with the red hair and ruddy complexion.

  He hadn’t hailed from a Brahmin upbringing in a Beacon Hill brownstone, with stops at Choate and Harvard to meet and mingle with the right people. Instead, his background had been a hardscrabble slog through the mean streets of Southie, capped by long nights at Suffolk Law School.

  “I see the problem,” Rhoden said. “We have one lawyer too many.”

  Cash made a show of looking around the room. “The way I see it, there’s only one real lawyer here.”

  “Bail now,” Rhoden said to Cash, “and I won’t report you to the bar for talking to my client behind my back.”

  Cash laughed. “You! Snitching to the state bar. That’d be a switch.”

  “We’ll see how the bar feels about your attempt to poach my client.”

  “Again, that’s rich coming from a bottom feeder like you. The way I remember it, you couldn’t wait to tell Goldberg’s clients that he was knocking on death’s door.”

  “That was true then,” Rhoden said, “and truer now.”

  “You followed up that lie with the bigger whopper that I was headed back to prison.”

  “Only a matter of time.” Rhoden pointed to the agents. “You’d be back behind bars already, if these two so-called special agents would get off their asses and do their jobs.”

  Maggie stepped between the attorneys. “Much as the world would be a better place if the bar flushed both of you, I don’t have time to measure your micropenises today. Marty and I need to talk to Benanti, and unfortunately, we can’t do that without her lawyer being present.”

  She turned to Cash. “McCahill, that’s your cue to leave.”

  Cash stood and turned to Maggie. “Here’s a simple tip on how to tell when Rhoden’s lying. His lips will be moving.” He slapped a business card onto the table. “Remember, Rhoden, every lie to a fed is a five-year felony. Keep my card handy. You’re going to need a good lawyer.”

  Rocket swept the card off the table and onto the floor. “Are you going to refer me to one?”

  “You wouldn’t recognize a real lawyer if he hit you upside your head,” Cash said.

  “Don’t do it, Cash,” Maggie said.

  Shafer groaned.
“Oh, Maggie, you’re spoiling my fun. I would like nothing better than watching a dustup between these two dirtbags.”

  Cash withdrew from the field of battle but consoled himself with one thought. He had denied Shafer his ultimate pleasure.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The watering hole at the Westin Galleria in North Dallas had the typical hotel bar setup. Tables out in the open for those with nothing to hide. Booths for the cheaters.

  The motif of the month was tropical escape, which translated into plastic tiki torches, Gauguin prints, waitresses in tight Tommy Bahama blouses and short khaki skirts, and rainbow-colored drinks with tiny umbrella stir sticks.

  Cash sat at the bar, where he downed two mai tais, deleted four frantic messages from his assistant Eva, and turned down a two-for-the-price-of-one happy hour special from a pair of working girls.

  Or wannabes anyway.

  Cash let the rookies down easy. Amber and Zooey—surely stage names—bookended him at the bar. Amber—the taller and more talkative—kicked off the pitch by claiming to be an SMU senior and introducing Zooey as her sorority sister.

  Long ago Cash had lost count of the hookers who formed the backbone of his client base, the vast majority touting college degrees and sorority affiliations. Sweethearts of Ramma Jamma Slamma.

  While Amber rambled on nervously, Zooey kept her mouth shut and her dark eyes fixed on her drink. With an olive complexion and an exotic air, Zooey could pass as a precious import from a host of hot climate countries.

  “You girls are a long way from campus,” Cash said. “What are you studying?”

  “Economics.” Amber struggled to make her alleged major sound sexy.

  Cash turned to Zooey. “And you?”

  “Same.” A south-of-the-border inflection spiced up her accent.

  “Then I assume you’re looking for a capital investment from me.” Cash patted the wallet in his breast pocket. “How much are we talking about?”

  Negotiations ground to a halt as the girls looked at each other. An awkward silence underscored their confusion.

  Amber recovered first. “Two thousand for the best night of your life.” Came off closer to a question than a proposition.