Attorney at Large (Thaddeus Murfee Legal Thriller Series Book 3)

by John Ellsworth

  Immediately a dozen or so inmates formed a queue of prospective clients jostling to visit with the lawyer.

  Why not, he thought, might as well make the best use of my time while I’m here. And who knows, I just might help one or two.

  “So you sold a zip to the undercover officer. Did he entice you into making the sale?”

  “He offered me fifteen hundred for the bag of weed. That enticed me.”

  Thaddeus shook his head. “What I’m trying to find out, is whether there was a predisposition toward committing the crime, or whether the police put the idea in your head.”

  “Oh, it was my idea, all right. I was hongry as hell.”

  Thaddeus sighed. “All right, let’s back up. Where did the weed come from?”

  “Stole it out of a BMW where these honkies went inside the Pink Palomino. I knew they was holding in the glove box. Rich honky twenty-somethings on the prowl is always holding. So I smashed the window and made off with their stash.”

  “How much was there? That makes a difference in Nevada.”

  “Hell, Thaddeus, I didn’t exactly weigh it.”

  “But if you had to guess. How much did you steal?”

  “Probly a half pound.”

  “Shit! Really?”

  “Maybe more. Plus there was an ounce of blow. But I sold that to a brother on the corner so’s I could get a steak. Hadn’t eaten in seventy-two hours. And they say there’s money in Vegas. Not if you’re black, busted, and got no gig they ain’t.”

  “I’m sure. So here’s the deal. Do you want to work?”

  “Fuckin’ A.”

  “How about you come see me once you get out. I’m sure we’ve got something for you.”

  “Naw, I got a felony already. No one will hire me.”

  “We’ll give it a whirl. If you don’t steal, and show up sober, and put in a solid eight, we’ll get along fine.”

  “What would I do?”

  “Got a driver’s license?”

  “You kidding?”

  “How about this. You start out busing tables. We’ll make a room available to get you off the street. But no visitors, no girls, no booze, no drugs, no guns. You read me?”

  “Hella.”

  “All right then. How much is your bail?”

  “Thirty thousand.”

  “Then you need forty-five hundred to bail out. You willing to sign a note for that?”

  “Say what?”

  “If I loan you the money, will you pay me back?”

  “Hella.”

  “Good. Then let’s shake on it. You’ll get out when I get out.”

  “You shittin me?”

  “Not at all. We need good workers at the Desert Riviera.”

  “You the manager?”

  Thaddeus nodded. “Something like that. You come there and ask for Thaddeus. Tell them I’m expecting you. Because I will be.”

  Bat jumped to his feet. Exuberance brought him fully upright, the first time in years. “Hot shit, y’all. We gots a lawyer here!”

  Next in line was a man charged with theft of Social Security checks from mailboxes in a senior citizen assisted living venue.

  Then came a motorcycle gangbanger whose alleged crime was issuing bad checks to Harley shops for repairs to his “scooter,” as he called it.

  Another man was facing three years for food stamp fraud. He had learned how to forge the stamps and sell them. “Since they made the hundred-dollar bill impossible to forge, everyone was jumping over to food stamps.” Evidently they could be sold for fifty cents on the dollar and they were selling out every time they printed a run.

  The line was still five deep when the Tonight Show music fired up on the TV.

  Thaddeus was exhausted but still listening.

  He’d had no idea he would one day open a legal clinic in Las Vegas.

  He realized that he was living in a dream world of a money flood and that he was out of touch with real people.

  The stories he was hearing in the jail were moving him.

  Sure, there were cons, slicks, and thugs, but there was also a huge population whose only crime was being poor and trying to snatch a meal, or a dry bed.

  Of those folks, probably nine out of ten of were alcohol or drug related, that much was clear. Addiction, that’s what brought the majority of his fellow travelers to this place. He already had one idea in mind about that; maybe this was another.

  At midnight, Tubby and Lang Moretti came for him.

  The proprietor of Blackjack Bail Bonds was in tow. He had just earned a quick $150,000 on the bail he was about to post and he was happy to be staying late at work.

  Thaddeus had also told him to bring a second set of bail paperwork. They would be bailing out one inmate who went by Bat.

  The bail order was presented to the front desk, the bail bond was slid under the glass partition, supervisors were consulted, and phone calls placed.

  Finally it was determined that the bail was legitimate, the passport was surrendered as well, and the prisoner who went by Thaddeus Murfee could be released.

  Inmate Billy A. Tattinger—Bat—was part of the deal.

  They paid his $4,500 bail in cash, and he exultantly followed the three white guys into the cool 1 a.m. air of the Las Vegas morning. Outside on the sidewalk he did a Bojangles click of the heels and started to walk off.

  “Bat, where you off to?” Thaddeus called after him.

  “Nowhere and everywhere. I got no place.”

  “You’re coming with me. I’ve got a room for you and you start work first thing in the morning. You ready?”

  “Yes sir!” cried Bat, and he slid into the Mercedes seat beside Thaddeus. “Let me shake your hand,” he said.

  “Not necessary. We’ll shake after your first thirty days without drugs and alcohol. Did I also mention that AA meetings are part of the deal?”

  “Spare me that God shit and shinola,” Bat spat at him.

  “Just keep coming back, that’s what they tell you,” said Tubby from the front seat. “Half my tax clients wind up there. I know all about it.”

  “You’re a lawyer too?” Bat asked, his eyes growing wider.

  “I am.”

  “Shit,” said Bat. “Shit.”

  “Pull over next corner,” Thaddeus told the driver. The car edged to the curb and Thaddeus turned to Bat.

  “You want to get straight?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll go to the meetings? Yes or no, because I’ll dump your ass right here if I don’t like how you answer.”

  “Mister, I loves me some AA.”

  “All right,” Thaddeus said to the driver. “Let’s go home.”

  20

  It was into the Desert Riviera environment that Kiki Murphy walked two days later, to talk to Thaddeus about becoming a spotter.

  Thaddeus was meeting with Tubby Watsonn when Kiki arrived.

  The two lawyers were poring over a bathtub-size stack of papers spread across the Vermont coffee table in Thaddeus’ office. So far, everything had been arranged by year. Now it was time to start categorizing.

  Teller tapes, count room records—all paper trails of cash transactions were the first target and it was a moving one. As cash moved from the tellers’ cages, the numbers looked fine at first; but then, after processing in the count room, numbers were changing.

  Totals weren’t adding up.

  What was $250,000 in teller tapes at the far end of the graveyard shift turned into $235,000 in count cards in the count room.

  Again and again they compared tapes to cards and always it was the same result—short. The count numbers were always less than the teller tapes. Like Svengali’s rabbit in the hat, money was disappearing and it was happening somewhere between the teller cage and the count room. Theft on a large scale was ongoing. Now all they had to do was figure out who and how and they would have the “why” of Thaddeus’ arrest and indictment.

  Thaddeus left Tubby and his associate alone with the records and t
ook Kiki into his private living quarters just off the office.

  The penthouse was gangster glamorous and she took it all in as a smile played across her face.

  They talked briefly and got the preliminaries out of the way.

  She was elated over finding her brother, she blurted, and she was feeling much better since her last visit to the casino.

  Thaddeus wouldn’t discuss the criminal charges with her—that was PX’s job and it was dangerous for Thaddeus to cross over that line.

  So they discussed her role.

  She—along with seven other floor walkers on each shift—would be responsible for spotting casino cheats. Her area of expertise would be card counting at blackjack, which was the highest-grossing table game and the reason why the casino dedicated 45 percent of its total floor space to the game.

  Kiki was ready to get down to business.

  She had selected a nice two-piece gray suit, white button-down shirt, and foulard tie. Italian loafers completed the business look.

  Her short hair was still worn in the wedge and Thaddeus noticed an engagement ring on her finger, but he didn’t say anything. That could only mean stability—he thought.

  “So you met with PX and you’re feeling good about that. That’s excellent. And now you’re ready to earn some money.”

  She smiled. “Well, my card-counting career is officially over, thanks to your sharp eyes. So I guess I am. In fact, I’m excited about working for you. When would I start?”

  “Tomorrow too soon?”

  “I’ll be here. What shift?”

  “Let’s start you off evening shift, six to two a.m. Sound okay?”

  “That’s terrific. It fits right into my schedule. I’m enrolling in school.”

  “Really, what are you studying?”

  “Hotel and resort management. It’s a master’s program at UNLV. The classes are mostly late morning, so the work hours will be perfect.”

  “I told you sixty thousand to start.”

  “That’s incredibly generous.”

  He returned her smile. “Hey, I just want you to be happy. You’re going to be a great addition to our team.”

  “Can you tell me a little about the company?”

  “Sure. We feature thirty-five hundred slot machines.”

  “How much do they hold? I’ve always wondered.”

  “Well, it took thirty-five armored cars two days to bring in the $4.5 million in coins needed to fill the slots when I took over and the new bank got installed.”

  “Holy cow!”

  “Each visitor spends about four hours a day gambling in our casino. We have to give them other things to do, too, so we’ve got an IMAX screen that shows movies twenty-four/seven. Admission is ten dollars regardless of age, popcorn is four dollars for a box, and drinks are three dollars. We also have a ride around the river downstairs. That costs five bucks a head. Together, the IMAX and the ride bring in about five million dollars a year. Not too shabby. But the important thing is, they really help keep our guests on our premises. Plus we’ve got seventeen shops, four spas, three eighteen-hole golf courses, four Olympic pools, and WaterWorld for the kids. WaterWorld is free to everyone under twelve and offers CPR-trained lifeguards and stewards, who will keep an eye on the older kids while mom and pop blow their college savings. At least that’s the whole idea.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “About families losing their savings? Not good. But I didn’t design human nature. I just cater to it.”

  “You sound jaded, Thad.”

  “Maybe I’m getting that way.”

  “How many guest rooms?”

  “They just finished an expansion when I took over. Today there are three thousand eight hundred nine guest rooms.”

  “What kind of gambling.”

  “We emphasize blackjack on the table games. But I’ve also added a baccarat high-rollers area that’s now roped off from the rest of the casino. We get a lot of Europeans and baccarat is their game of choice.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  She brushed a wisp of hair from her face and the engagement ring sparkled. Maybe she meant for him to ask about it, but he refrained. He would let her tell him when she was ready, if ever.

  While they were talking, security manager Gordon Denton had just finished roll call with his people when the switchboard got its first call for that shift. The claim from the guests was that someone had broken into their room to take a dump in the toilet, as they so descriptively put it.

  Gordon Denton interrupted Thaddeus with Kiki, as that scenario was definitely not in the security manual.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked Thaddeus.

  Gordon was a tall man in a Brooks Brothers suit who had his master’s in business administration from USC and who ran the security service at the Desert Riviera like a small business. He had slick gray hair, yellowish tints in his eyeglasses, and perfectly manicured and polished nails. At first appearance, he was a dandy, but he was anything but. He had won Orange County Golden Gloves in the middle-weight class in his teens, and would have gone on with a career in championship boxing if he hadn’t suffered a slight neuro-deficit from his first professional fight. The damage jerked his head to the right over and over, maybe every thirty seconds. Which wasn’t even noticed in Las Vegas. He waited for the owner’s answer.

  “Seriously?” Thaddeus said, halfway astonished. “Someone took a dump in their toilet by breaking in? Anything reported missing?”

  Gordon smiled. “That’s the damned thing. Nothing seems to be missing. They looked.”

  “So the perp left something instead of taking something?”

  “Left a dump.”

  “We send someone?”

  “I sent a security officer up to take their complaint.”

  “Don’t take pictures.”

  “Agree. Who needs pictures of shit? Excuse me, miss. My language—”

  “That’s okay,” Kiki grinned. “I’m a big girl. I know shit when I see it.”

  Gordon laughed. “Maybe I shoulda sent you.”

  They both laughed.

  Thaddeus could see that Kiki was going to fit right in with that rough-and-tumble world. Which was probably the understatement of the day, considering she had already shot and killed an attacker and she wasn’t even twenty-five years old.

  Just then Gordon got a call from the security officer sent to investigate. It seemed the guests had flushed the evidence. Gordon rolled his eyes and told the employee to take their statement nonetheless.

  “Did he do a lock interrogation?” Thaddeus asked Gordon.

  Every time someone inserted one of the plastic guest room keys the use was recorded in the security system. Each lock recorded the last 500 times keys had been used to open the door. He felt they just couldn’t be too careful with thousands of guests and the tens of thousands of problems that were possible in a single night.

  “Okay, Gordon,” Thaddeus said at last. “Comp them for two nights’ stay and deduct room charges. That should put to rest the unknown feces ordeal they’ve suffered through.”

  “Got it, Boss.”

  Gordon hurried out, apologizing for the interruption.

  Kiki simply shook her head. “Amazing.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m gonna like it here.”

  “Yes, you are. You’ll fit right in to this carnival.”

  “See you at six in the evening,” she said, and offered her hand.

  “Welcome aboard, Kiki. I won’t be up until about two o’clock, but we’ll probably run into each other off and on. Just call me if you need help with anything. You’ll report to Joel Hagen, Director of Gaming. He’s on two.”

  “Thanks again, Thad. Thanks so much.”

  “De nada.”

  21

  “I want this guy!” grunted H. Mouton Carraway, United States Attorney for Nevada. “He lies, he cheats, he steals, and—”

  “And he’s great press,” said Mitch Dubro
ff, his public relations head.

  “—and he’s great press, indeed.”

  They were in the U.S. Attorney’s walnut-paneled office, studying the two-column newspaper spread broadcasting the arrest of local casino owner Thaddeus J. Murfee.

  Assistant U.S. Attorney David Fisher, who had obtained the indictment, was waiting for the fireworks, knew they were coming, knew how badly Carraway had wanted to nail a casino bigwig and prove to his constituents that he was doing a bang-up job of protecting them.

  Fisher’s left leg was crossed over his right at the ankle, and his foot was nonstop movement, jittering. Inside he was irate and put off by the chief. Only late on Friday nights, when he’d had too much to drink and Michelle had put the kids to bed, did his truth come out. He hated the U.S. Attorney and couldn’t wait for the Democrats to leave office so there would be a change. Such change never bothered David. He was a career prosecutor.

  H. Mouton Carraway slapped the newspaper article with the back of his hand, and scowled, “There you go, son, a bitch slap. This says he’s only twenty-nine years old. How the hell does a punk lawyer all of twenty-nine get off owning one of the city’s swankiest casinos?”

  “Unknown, Mouton,” said Mitch Dubroff, whose job it would be to put the desired spin on today’s meeting.

  “I’ll tell you how,” said Fisher. “He sued the mob and won. Something this office has never been able to do. No offense, Mouton. No U.S. Attorney in the history of federal asset seizures has ever been able to co-opt anything as spectacular as an entire casino. The kid must have something on the ball.”

  The U.S. Attorney’s eyes narrowed, full of malevolence.

  “But I don’t suppose you mentioned his legal talent to the grand jury you persuaded to indict him? Am I right? Hell no you didn’t. All right, Fish. You contact the IRS idiot, this Aldous Kroc. Tell him I’m ordering surveillance on this tax cheat twenty-four/seven. That’s just for openers. Are you hearing me?”

  “Will do.”

  “And I mean surveillance. Dig through his garbage. Get taps on his phones, in his walls, records from his cell provider, downloads and uploads from his office and personal computer. If he ‘likes’ something on Facebook that better damn well show up in some surveillance log somewhere. We are going to bury this guy or my uncle’s name ain’t Sam. And you”—pointing at Fisher—“you are going to seize his casino when it’s all said and done. The biggest RICO seizure in the history of racketeering seizures. This guy’s skimming money out of this casino, we know that. But what else is he into? Drugs? Money laundering for the cartels? You find out and you bring it back here to papa and lay it on my desk, bleeding with its throat slashed open. Am I making myself clear here?”