The Gods of Guilt mh-5

by Michael Connelly

  The government had not yet responded, at least as far as I could determine online. But it was early. The filing by Fulgoni was dated April 1.

  “April Fool’s,” I said to myself.

  “What’s that, Boss?” Earl asked.

  “Nothing, Earl. Just talking to myself.”

  “You want me to go in and get you somethin’?”

  “No, I’m good. You need a coffee?”

  “No, not me.”

  The Lincoln was set up with a printer on an equipment shelf on the front passenger seat — I bet those guys in the other Lincolns never thought of that. I printed out a copy of the filing and then closed the computer. When Earl handed the printout back over the seat, I read the motion in its entirety one more time. Then I leaned against the door and tried to figure out what the play was and what my part was supposed to be.

  I thought it was pretty obvious that the confidential informant repeatedly mentioned in the document was Gloria Dayton. The inference was clearly that her arrest and my negotiation of a disposition on her behalf were orchestrated by the DEA and Agent Marco. It sure made a good story but I — being one of the players in the story — had a hard time believing it. I tried to recall in as great a detail as possible the case that brought Gloria Dayton and Hector Arrande Moya together. I remembered meeting Gloria at the downtown women’s jail and her telling me the details of her arrest. Without any prompting from her I saw the possibility of trading information from Gloria in exchange for a pretrial diversion. It had been wholly my idea. Gloria was not the kind of client who understood or even knew the law. And as far as Marco went, I had never met or spoken to him in my life.

  I had to consider, however, that Gloria had been coached to say just enough to get the wheels turning inside her attorney’s head. It seemed like a long shot but I had to admit to myself that if the last five months proved anything to me, it was that Gloria had dimensions I didn’t know about. Maybe this was the ultimate revelation about her: that she had used me as a pawn for the DEA.

  Impatiently I called Cisco again and asked what progress he had made running down the names I had given him.

  “You gave me the names less than a half hour ago,” Cisco protested. “I know you want this stuff quick but a half hour?”

  “I need to know what is going on with this. Now.”

  “Well, I’m going as fast as I can. I can tell you about the woman but I got nothing yet on the agent. That’s going to be a tough nut to crack.”

  “Okay, then tell me about the woman.”

  There were a few moments of silence while Cisco apparently collected his notes.

  “Okay, Kendall Roberts,” he began. “She’s thirty-nine and lives on Vista Del Monte in Sherman Oaks. She’s got a record going back to the midnineties. A lot of prostitutions and conspiracy to commits. You know, the usual escort stuff. So she’s a hooker. Or I should say, she was. Her record’s been clean the past six years.”

  That would have made her active when Gloria Dayton was working as an escort under the name Glory Days. I suspected that Roberts and Dayton knew each other back then, or had known of each other, and that was the reason for the subpoena from Fulgoni.

  “Okay,” I said. “What else?”

  “Nothing else,” Cisco said. “What I told you is what I’ve got. Why don’t you call me back in an hour.”

  “No, I’ll just see you tomorrow. I want everybody in the boardroom at nine tomorrow morning. Can you tell the others?”

  “Sure. This is including Bullocks?”

  “Yes, Bullocks, too. I want everybody there and everybody brainstorming on this latest thing. It could be just what we need on La Cosse.”

  “You mean the straw man defense — Moya killed Dayton?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay, well, we’ll all be there in the boardroom at nine.”

  “And in the meantime you gotta find out who this Marco guy is. We really need it.”

  “I’m doing my best already. I’m on it.”

  “Just find this guy.”

  “Easy for you to say. Meantime, what are you going to be doing?”

  It was a good question — good enough to prompt a hesitation on my part before I knew the answer.

  “I’m going up to the Valley to talk to Kendall Roberts.”

  Cisco’s rejection of that plan was swift.

  “Wait, Mickey, I should be there. You don’t know what you’re getting into up there with this woman. You don’t know who she’ll be with. You ask the wrong question and there will be trouble. Let me meet you there.”

  “No, you stay on Marco. I have Earl and I’ll be fine. I won’t ask the wrong question.”

  Cisco knew me well enough to know that one protest was enough, because I wouldn’t be changing my mind about going up to brace Roberts.

  “Well,” he said, “then happy hunting. Call me if you need me.”

  “Will do.”

  I closed the phone.

  “All right, Earl, let’s hit it. Sherman Oaks and step on it.”

  Earl dropped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb.

  I felt my adrenaline surge with the car’s velocity. New things were happening. Things that I didn’t understand yet. But that was okay. I promised myself that I would soon understand everything.

  13

  It seemed likely to me that Fernando Valenzuela would deliver his subpoenas in the order in which he had asked me about the names. The Edward R. Roybal Federal Building was just a few blocks from the Criminal Courts Building. He would probably go there first to try to serve the paperwork on James Marco and then head up to the Valley to serve Kendall Roberts. It would not be an easy thing for Val to get to Marco. Federal agents do their best to avoid accepting subpoenas. I knew this from experience. Usually service ended up having to be arranged through a supervisor who would reluctantly accept a subpoena on behalf of the agent in question. The target agent almost never received the subpoena personally.

  I believed that the timing of all of this gave me an edge on Val. If Roberts happened to be home, I would be able to get to her long before he did. Of course, I had no idea what getting there first would accomplish, but my hope was that I would be able to talk to Roberts in an unguarded moment, before she knew she was being drawn into some sort of federal case involving an imprisoned cartel kingpin.

  I still needed to know more about Roberts than her name. It sounded like Roberts and Gloria Dayton were in similar circles in the 1990s and at least into the beginning of the new century. Cisco’s information was a starting point but it wasn’t enough. The best way to go into a conversation with a player in a case is to go in with more knowledge than the player has.

  I Googled Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. on my cell and then called the number listed. A woman with a deep, smoky voice that seemed more appropriate for taking calls for reservations at Boa than at a law office put me on hold. We were on the 101 Freeway now and in heavy traffic. I figured we were still a half hour from Sherman Oaks, so I wasn’t bothered by the wait or the Mexican cantina music playing in my ear.

  I was leaning against the window and about to shut my eyes when the voice of a young man announced itself in my ear.

  “This is Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. What can I do for you, Mr. Haller?”

  I sat up straight and pulled a legal pad from my briefcase up onto my thigh.

  “Well, I guess you could start by telling me why you hit me with a subpoena today at the courthouse. I’m thinking you must be a young lawyer, Mr. Fulgoni, because that whole thing was unnecessary. All you needed to do was call me. It’s called professional courtesy. Lawyers don’t drop paper on other lawyers — especially not in front of their peers in the courthouse.”

  There was a pause and then an apology.

  “I am truly sorry about that and embarrassed, Mr. Haller. You’re right, I’m a young lawyer just trying to make my way, and if I handled it wrong, then I certainly apologize.”

  “Apology accepted and you can call me M
ichael. Why don’t you tell me what this is about? Hector Arrande Moya? I haven’t heard that name in seven or eight years.”

  “Yes, Mr. Moya has been away a long time and we are trying to improve his situation. Have you had a chance to look at the case the subpoena refers to?”

  “Mr. Fulgoni, I barely have time to look at my own cases. In fact, I need to move some things around in order to clear the time you put on this subpoena. You should’ve left the time of the depo open-ended or at a time convenient to both parties.”

  “I am sure we can accommodate you if Tuesday morning doesn’t work. And please call me Sly.”

  “That’s fine, Sly. I think I can make it. But tell me why I am being deposed for Hector Moya. He was never my client and I had nothing to do with him.”

  “But you did… Michael. In a way you are the one who put him in prison, and therefore you might also have the key to getting him out.”

  This time I paused. The first part of Fulgoni’s statement was debatable, but whether true or not, it wasn’t the kind of thing I wanted a high-ranking cartel man thinking about me, even if he was safely held in a federal prison.

  “I want to stop you right there,” I finally said. “Saying that I was the one who put your client in prison is not going to engender any help or cooperation from me. On what basis are you making such an outrageous and careless statement?”

  “Oh, come on, Michael. It’s been eight years. We know the details. You made a deal that got your client Gloria Dayton into diversion and gave the feds Hector Moya tied up in a nice pink bow. Your client is now dead and that leaves you to tell us what happened.”

  I drummed my fingers on the armrest as I tried to think of the best way to handle this.

  “Tell me,” I finally said, “how do you know the things you think you know about Gloria Dayton and her case?”

  “I’m not going to go there with you, Michael. That is internal and confidential. Privileged, as a matter of fact. But we do need to take your deposition as we prepare our case. I look forward to meeting you Tuesday.”

  “That’s not going to work, Junior.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “No, you’re not excused. And maybe you’ll see me Tuesday and maybe you won’t. I can walk into any court in the CCB and get the judge to quash this in five minutes. You understand? So if you want me there on Tuesday, you’d better start talking. I don’t care if it’s internal, eyes only, confidential, or privileged, I’m not walking into any depo anywhere with just my hat in my hand. If you want me there, then you need to start telling me exactly why you want me there.”

  That got his attention and he stammered in his reply.

  “Uh, uh, I’ll tell you what. Let me get back to you on this, Michael. I promise to call you in a bit.”

  “Yeah, you do that.”

  I disconnected the call. I knew what Sly Jr. was going to do. He was going to get Sly Sr. on the phone up at Victorville and ask him how to handle me. It was pretty clear from the call that Junior was doing Senior’s bidding. This whole thing was probably cooked up in the rec yard up in Victorville: Sly Sr. going to Moya and suggesting he had a shot at a true habeas motion. From there, Sly Sr. probably handwrote the motion or the instructions to his son in the prison law library. The only question I had about it was how did they know Gloria Dayton had been the confidential informant on Moya?

  I looked out the window after the call and saw that we were now making good progress and almost to the Cahuenga Pass. Earl was finding the holes and moving like a scatback through the blockers. That’s what he was good at. We were going to get to Roberts sooner than I had thought.

  Roberts lived a few blocks from Ventura Boulevard. If you were looking for some sort of status attributed to address, then south of the boulevard was what was preferred in the Valley. After my divorce my ex-wife bought a condo one block south of the boulevard on Dickens, and the distinction had been important to her — and pricey. I, of course, was partially paying for the place, since it also housed our daughter.

  Roberts was living a few blocks north of the designation line, in the stretch between Ventura Boulevard and the Ventura Freeway. It was sort of a second-place neighborhood with a mix of apartment buildings and single-family homes.

  When we were a block away I saw that we were on a stretch of Vista Del Monte that was lined with homes instead of apartments. I had Earl stop the car so I could get into the front seat. I first had to unplug the printer and move the platform into the car’s trunk.

  “Just in case she sees us arrive,” I said, once I was in and had closed the door.

  “Okay,” Earl said. “What’s the plan, then?”

  “Hopefully we park in front and look official in this car. You go with me to the door and I do the talking.”

  “Who are we seeing?”

  “A woman. I need her to tell me what she knows.”

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  That was the problem. Kendall Roberts was being subpoenaed in the Moya appeal just as I was. I barely knew what I was bringing to the case, let alone what Roberts had.

  We were in luck. There was a red curb and a fire hydrant directly in front of the 1950s ranch house at the address Cisco had given me.

  “Park here so she sees the car.”

  “We might get popped on the hydrant.”

  I opened the glove box and took out a printed sign that said CLERGY and put it on the dashboard. It worked more often than it didn’t and was always worth a try.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  Before getting out of the car, I pulled my wallet out and took my laminated bar card from one of the back slots and slid it into the plastic display window in front of my driver’s license. I worked out a quick plan of action with Earl and we then got out. Cisco had said Kendall Roberts’s arrest record ended in 2007. My hunch was she was out of the life now and probably clinging to the straight and narrow. I hoped to use that to my advantage — if the woman was even home in the middle of a weekday.

  I put on my sunglasses as we approached. My face had been on TV and billboards scattered around town last year in the lead-up to the election. I didn’t want to be recognized here. I firmly knocked on the door and then stepped back next to Earl. He had on his Ray-Ban Wayfarers and his standard black suit and tie. I was in my charcoal Corneliani with the pinstripes. Still, standing shoulder to shoulder, both of us wearing shades, I was reminded of the black guy/white guy combo in a popular series of movies I had enjoyed with my daughter during better times. I whispered to Earl.

  “What were those movies about the two guys who hunt aliens for a secret govern—”

  The door was pulled open. A woman who looked a bit younger than the thirty-nine Cisco reported for Roberts stood in the doorway. She was tall, lithe, and had reddish-brown hair that fell to her shoulders. As far as I could tell, she wore no makeup and didn’t need to. She was wearing gray sweatpants and a pink T-shirt that said GOT FLEX? on it.

  “Kendall Roberts?”

  “Yes?”

  I started to pull my wallet out of my inside coat pocket.

  “My name is Haller. I’m with the California Bar and this is Earl Briggs. I wonder if we could ask you a few questions about a situation we’re investigating.”

  I flipped my wallet open and briefly held it up so she could see my bar card. It had the Bar’s scales of justice logo on it and looked fairly official. I didn’t allow her too long a look before flipping the wallet closed and returning it to my inside pocket.

  “We won’t take too long.”

  She shook her head.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “I have nothing… legal going on. There must be some mis—”

  “It’s not regarding you, ma’am. It involves others, and you are on the periphery of it. Can we come in, or would you like to accompany us to our office in Van Nuys for the conversation?”

  It was a gamble offering her another location that didn’t actually exist, but I w
as betting she wouldn’t want to leave her home.

  “What others?” she asked.

  I was hoping she wouldn’t ask that until we got inside. But that was the rub. I was bluffing, trying to act like I knew something about something I knew nothing about.

  “Gloria Dayton, for one. You might know of her as Glory Days.”

  “What about her? I have nothing to do with her.”

  “She’s dead.”

  I can’t say she looked surprised by the news. It might not have been that she knew Gloria was dead, but that she had a knowledge that Gloria’s life could lead to a bad end.

  “In November,” I said. “She was murdered and we are taking a look at how her case was handled. There are ethical questions regarding the conduct of her attorney. Could we come in? I promise we won’t take much of your time.”

  She hesitated but then stepped back. We were in. It was probably against her instincts to let two strangers into her home but she also probably didn’t want to keep us — our business — out on the front porch for the neighbors to see and wonder about. I went through the doorway and Earl followed. Kendall directed us to a living-room couch and she took a chair opposite.

  “Look, I am very sorry to hear about Glory. But let me just say that I haven’t had anything to do with that world in a very long time and I don’t want to be dragged back into it. I don’t know anything about what Glory was doing or how her case was handled or what happened to her. I had not talked to her in years.”

  I nodded.

  “We understand that and we’re not here to drag you back into it,” I said. “In fact, we actually want to help you avoid that.”

  “I seriously doubt that. Not if you come to my house like this.”