Death, Taxes, and a Skinny No-Whip Latte

by Diane Kelly

  “It wasn’t until after Andrew disappeared that I learned that a former employee of AmeriMex had been found dead after a carjacking that was never solved. Another died in a suspicious fire. The FBI agent who interviewed me told me about those deaths.”

  And with Andrew Sheffield’s death, the trail of bodies grew even longer.

  After Andrew’s murder, the FBI had interviewed Mendoza but he’d offered only vague, carefully crafted answers to a small number of introductory questions, politely declining to answer the more meaty inquiries on the advice of his attorney. He’d even apologized that his counsel “would not allow him to respond.” I’d read the transcript of the interview. It made me want to puke.

  Eddie and I were the only hope for justice now, for putting Mendoza behind bars, for saving the lives of others who might be lured in by the promise of prestige and financial security. Chances were some other naïve soul was unknowingly being groomed to take Andrew’s place. We had to solve this case before that person suffered the same fate as Andrew. But how could we find out who that person was?

  Lauren stared at me now and, for the first time, her eyes showed signs of life. They narrowed now and sparked with vengeance. “Promise me you’ll get Mendoza. Promise me you’ll make sure that bastard gets what he deserves.”

  Eddie and I exchanged glances again. Hell, I didn’t know if we could get this guy. Lauren had given us nothing new to pursue. But I had to give this woman some hope that justice would prevail. Hell, I had to give myself some hope. I’d never been the type to go down easily. And I wasn’t about to start now.

  “I promise.”

  Eddie promptly gave me another sideways kick under the table, a kick that said You’ve done it again, stupid. Made another promise you may not be able to deliver on.

  I responded by putting the toe of my shoe on top of his and pressing down. My gesture said Shut your piehole. I’ll bust this bastard if it’s the last thing I do.

  Andrew Sheffield had been wrong to involve himself with Mendoza. But he’d been right about one thing. The linguine formaggio was indeed delicious.

  Absolutely to die for.

  Too bad I could only choke down a few bites.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Denied

  We’d followed every rabbit trail and found no rabbit. Eddie and I were like the Knights of the Round Table in the Monty Python version of The Holy Grail. They’d pursued the grail with never-foundering focus only to encounter obstacle after obstacle, ranging from the Black Knight to livestock launched at them from a castle. When the movie ended, they still hadn’t located the Holy Grail, their goal having eluded them. At this point, it seemed that we, likewise, would never succeed in our quest to nail Mendoza.

  There was only one option left at this point and it was a long shot.

  The morning after we met with Lauren Sheffield, Eddie and I rounded up Ross O’Donnell and headed to the federal courthouse to seek an order from Magistrate Judge Alice Trumbull to allow a wiretap on Mendoza’s personal phone lines and those at AmeriMex. To be honest, we weren’t sure a wiretap would do any good. From the information Lauren Sheffield had provided us, it appeared Mendoza used untraceable cell phones to do his dirty business. We’d have no way of discovering what those phone numbers might be. And with all the free e-mail services on the Web, pinning down Mendoza’s secret e-mail address would be like finding a needle in a worldwide haystack. Still, a wiretap seemed to be our only option.

  I handed Ross the affidavits and evidence we’d collected, including the family photo of the Sheffields. The stack looked paltry. “Think it’ll be enough?”

  He glanced down at the papers, his face skeptical. “Hard to say with Judge Trumbull. But I’ll do my best.”

  Judge Trumbull was one of the few liberal judges in Texas. She’d been a flower child back in the sixties and once had the crap beaten out of her by police during a peaceful sit-in at a congressman’s office to protest the Vietnam War. She’d applied to law school shortly afterward and made it her life’s mission to prevent further abuses of authority. Unfortunately, what she mostly accomplished was preventing us government employees from effectively doing our jobs.

  Despite all of that, I had an odd sort of respect for the Bulldog, as she was known in local legal circles. She had her principles and she stuck to them. Kinda like the hot sun was making my jacket stick to my sweaty back as we walked from our office to the federal courthouse in the late May heat.

  We waited in a short line at security, most of those ahead of us attorneys in business suits. When it was our turn, we placed our briefcases on the conveyer belt to be X-rayed and walked through the metal detectors. After showing our credentials to the deputies manning the security checkpoint, we were allowed to retain our weapons.

  We rode the elevator up to Judge Trumbull’s courtroom in silence. A lot rested on the decision Judge Trumbull would make today. Maybe the whole investigation.

  When the bailiff called our case, identifying it only as “Commissioner versus John Doe,” Ross approached the bench. “We have a highly sensitive matter, Your Honor. May we discuss this in your chambers, off the record?”

  “What the hell.” Judge Trumbull’s jowls jiggled as she spoke. “Time for a potty break anyway.” She banged her gavel, announced a short recess, and stepped down from the bench.

  We followed her through a door and into a small hallway that led to her private office and bathroom. She waved for us to go into her chambers to the left, while she ducked into the restroom to the right.

  Judge Trumbull’s office was surprisingly feminine. Her desk chair and the set of wing chairs were a soft mauve. Her cherrywood antique desk sported a white marble top shot through with streaks of amber. A pink-and-white orchid sat on one corner of her desk, a small brass lamp with a Tiffany-style shade on the other corner. Her oversized floor-to-ceiling bookshelves supported an assortment of legal texts, knickknacks, and photos of the judge with various bigwigs, including one of her in much younger days with then-President Jimmy Carter. Billowy curtains graced the plate-glass windows behind her desk, framing the view of the old-fashioned Dallas County courthouse and clock tower sitting catty-corner across the street from the relatively modern federal courthouse.

  Ross gestured for Eddie and me to take the wing chairs, while he opted to stand near the bookshelves and peruse the judge’s collection of law primers.

  A few minutes later, Judge Trumbull sailed into the room, her unzipped robe flowing behind her like a superhero’s cape. Underneath her robe, she wore Birkenstocks, faded blue jeans, and a T-shirt commemorating a chili cook-off held in 1997. “Have to practically get undressed to pee,” she said, removing her robe and hanging it on a brass coat tree just inside the door to her office.

  She flopped into her desk chair and folded her hands across her ample belly. “So? What do y’all have that’s so gosh-darn secret?”

  Ross deferred to Eddie, and my partner explained who we were after and why. He explained about Nick Pratt and how Mendoza had bought off Pratt in the previous investigation. He explained that Carson McNabb was approached by Double Down after betting on the horses at a track owned by AmeriMex and that the Pokornys were approached by the loan shark after applying for a loan at North Dallas Credit Union which, again, was owned by AmeriMex. He noted that all three of the credit card fraud victims held accounts at NDCU. He informed her about the robbery and beatings at the Pokornys’ bakery, about the earlier suspicious home fire and the deadly, unsolved carjacking that claimed two of Mendoza’s former employees. He wrapped things up by telling her about our interview with Andrew Sheffield’s wife, the information Andrew had shared before he was murdered, the questionable cash transactions run through the ARS Financial account.

  Her expression was less than impressed. “All you’ve got is a bunch of people flapping their gums about this Mendoza character? No hard evidence? Nothing to tie all of this together?”

  Ross opened his briefcase and handed her copies of the a
ffidavits and other documentation we’d collected from McNabb and the identify theft victims.

  Trumbull thumbed through the documents, reading over the parts I’d highlighted, ending with the pharmacy receipt. “What’s LovLub?”

  I felt a warm blush rush to my face, but my cheeks burning was far preferable to the burning LovLub had caused in my nether regions. “It’s … um … a sexual enhancement product.”

  She harrumphed. “For $27.99 it better produce some pretty fantastic results.”

  I had some personal knowledge in that regard but wasn’t particularly inclined to share, on or off the record.

  The judge looked at me and Eddie, stuck out her hand, and waggled her fingers. “Show me what else you got.”

  Eddie and I looked at each other. We’d given her all we had.

  Eddie cleared his throat. “Mendoza’s left a trail of at least three bodies,” Eddie said, merely putting a new spin on the information he’d already provided. “Maybe more.”

  “You mean you suspect he’s left the bodies,” Judge Trumbull corrected him. “He’s never been convicted of any of these crimes, right?”

  Not only had he not been convicted, Mendoza had never even been arrested.

  This wasn’t going well.

  Ross interjected now, stepping closer to her desk. “Marcos Mendoza hasn’t been convicted, Your Honor, but as we all know the lack of a criminal record doesn’t mean someone is innocent.”

  “That may be true,” Judge Trumbull said, looking up at him. “But the lack of a record means I don’t have hard facts to back up my decision. A wiretap is a major invasion of someone’s privacy. If I start granting wiretaps willy-nilly the ACLU will be crawling up my butt.”

  Now there’s a visual.

  “If I’m going to allow a wiretap,” she continued. “It’s gotta be clear it’s the right thing to do. All you’ve got is secondhand, hearsay testimony from the widow, which has already been investigated by a number of law enforcement agencies who couldn’t put a case together. You haven’t been able to prove any direct link between this Mendoza and the murders or show me any hard proof that Mendoza is involved in any illegal activity. Everything you’ve shown me is circumstantial at best.”

  “That’s exactly the problem, Your Honor.” Eddie leaned forward in his chair, his jaw flexing with barely contained frustration, his speech slow and controlled. “Without a wiretap, we may never be able to get anything but circumstantial evidence and Mendoza will go on to kill someone else. If we’re going to nab this guy, we need a wiretap to do it.”

  Judge Trumbull spun her chair around to look out the window behind her. After a moment, she stood and waved us over. Once we were standing next to her, she pointed down to a small area of grass outside the Dallas County courthouse.

  “See that spot down there?” she said. “That’s the very place where, back in 1972, me and three dozen other women burned our bras as an act of support for the Equal Rights Amendment.” She looked down at her sizable bustline, which had now all but merged with her waistline. “In retrospect, burning my bra might not have been the smartest decision.” She turned to face us now. “Civil rights is what this country is all about. It’s why the pilgrims came over on the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria.”

  Actually, the pilgrims came over on the Mayflower. Christopher Columbus was the one with the three ships. But none of us was stupid enough to correct her on that. No matter how erroneous the reference, she’d made her point.

  “You don’t have probable cause,” she said. “Fact is, from a legal standpoint, you don’t have diddly squat. Sorry, gang. Can’t do it.”

  Before I could stop myself, the words flew out of my mouth. “But I promised my boss and Lauren Sheffield we’d get Mendoza.”

  Judge Trumbull gave me the evil eye. “You should know better than to make those kinds of promises, young lady.”

  “Told you,” Eddie said.

  I turned my evil eye on him then.

  Ross forced out a thank-you, and Eddie and I insincerely agreed.

  “You get something new,” Judge Trumbull called after us as we walked out of her chambers. “You’re welcome to come back and try again.”

  * * *

  We parted ways with Ross on the courthouse steps.

  “Sorry, you two,” he said.

  “You did your best,” I replied.

  “Yeah,” Eddie spat. “It’s not your fault Trumbull’s a bra-burning, bleeding-heart liberal—”

  “I need a drink,” I said, interrupting Eddie’s rant.

  “Not a bad idea. You want to join us, Ross?”

  Ross begged off. “Got a brief to prepare. Maybe next time.”

  Eddie and I headed into one of the downtown bars. He ordered a Heineken and I ordered a frozen margarita plus a platter of nachos to share.

  When the waiter brought our order, I took a deep drag on my margarita, steeling myself against the inevitable brain freeze. I powered through it and licked my finger, running it around the rim of the frosted mug to collect some of the large-grained salt.

  “What the fuck do we do now?” Eddie said. “Short of catching Mendoza in the act, we’ll never nail him.”

  “And we’ll never catch him in the act,” I said, licking the salt from my finger, “because he never does his own dirty work.”

  Eddie swallowed a large swig of beer. “He’s got to slip up sometime, doesn’t he?”

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. Well, relative silence. There’s no quiet way to eat a platter of crispy nachos.

  Alcohol supposedly kills brain cells, but the tequila in my margarita seemed to open my mind instead. “I’ve got an idea.”

  “It better be a good one,” Eddie said.

  “The problem so far has been that we can’t get close to Mendoza, right?”

  “Right. And?”

  “Suppose we get close to him.”

  “You mean infiltrate his operations? Like Nick Pratt did?”

  I shook my head. “Not that close. Too risky. But maybe we’d learn something if we played spy on our own. Kept an eye on him ourselves. Monitored his comings and goings.”

  Eddie tossed back the remains of his beer. “What the hell. I’m in.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Security and Insecurity

  Judge Trumbull had told us to come back if we obtained more evidence against Mendoza and that’s exactly what Eddie and I hoped to do. Of course the only chance we had for collecting hard evidence against Mendoza at this point was to spy on the guy, hope he’d lead us to something incriminating. Not that we really expected to learn anything from watching Mendoza. He was far too smart to make any stupid moves. But it was the only thing left to try before throwing in the towel.

  Eddie and I scarfed down the rest of our nachos, paid our bill, and hopped into his minivan. Given that it was after five, it was too late to snag a car from the Treasury’s fleet or impound lot. We could’ve picked up a rental, but the extra time and expense involved didn’t seem necessary given that we’d only be taking a preliminary look-see at potential stakeout spots.

  “Let’s hit Crescent Tower first,” I said, noting the first of our two destinations.

  Eddie turned out of downtown and in just minutes we arrived at the Crescent Tower complex. The property was a nineteen-story European-style mixed-use property situated just north of the downtown financial district and on the southern edge of the Turtle Creek neighborhood, adjacent to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. Since the fiasco of Nick Pratt’s earlier investigation, Marcos Mendoza had relocated both his residence and the headquarters of AmeriMex to the prestigious Crescent Tower. Mendoza now lived in one of the building’s exclusive penthouses. AmeriMex maintained a small office on the building’s ninth floor. Must be nice to have only a twenty-second vertical commute each morning. No worries about traffic or gridlock. The worst thing he might experience is a stubbed toe.

  The enormous structure boasted the largest order of limestone since the constructi
on of the Empire State Building. The light-gray stone exterior featured filigree trim and a dark slate roof. Intricate painted grillwork graced the balconies. The place was beautiful, one of Dallas’s signature buildings.

  A gorgeous façade hiding a cold, murderous criminal.

  I’d been to Crescent Tower once before, enjoying a fancy dinner at the private Crescent Club dining room on one of the higher floors of the office building. A client of Martin and McGee had invited me and the firm’s managing partner to the club. We had provided the financial analysis to defend his company against an antitrust lawsuit and the meal was his way of saying thanks. He’d treated us to appetizers, dinner, wine, and dessert. The feast must have cost a fortune. But I’d worked overtime three months straight for the client. I’d earned it. Besides, the guy would get a tax deduction for the meal.

  Eddie pulled into the underground parking garage. We circled past an assortment of late-model Mercedeses, Lexuses, and Infinitis, all in silver, white, or black, until finding an empty spot three levels down. Eddie’s maroon minivan with the Mickey Mouse antenna ball stuck out like a sore thumb among the tastefully drab luxury automobiles.

  We rode the elevator up to the lobby. Due to the late hour, the lights in the open foyer had been dimmed. Eddie and I stepped out onto the pink-and-black granite floor, glancing around the space to familiarize ourselves with the layout. The building’s lower floors housed a variety of upscale restaurants and high-end retail shops, all of which were closed and locked up now, though they were sure to be bustling during business hours tomorrow.

  Eddie jerked his head toward the elevators. “Check out the team of rent-a-cops.”

  To the right of the elevator bank sat a wide console housing state-of-the-art security equipment monitored by no less than five security guards. The tenants and residents of the building would expect no less. A quick glance around the lobby confirmed eight visible security cameras, with probably more hidden in less obvious locations. The tight security likely explained Mendoza’s decision to relocate here.