by H Hiller
“Yes, sir.” She began nervously rocking back and forth as she began to cry.
I stood up and joined Amanda and Tulip, who were still on the deck with Parker. I said nothing of what Georgia and I had discussed, but my face must have betrayed the unpleasant nature of our conversation. My concern now, more than ever, was what to do to distance Amanda not just from the press she feared but from the cousin she trusted.
“What did you two come up with?” I asked my sister. I did not think they would have any better ideas than I did, but I underestimated my sister.
“I had Amanda call Bumper and arrange a meeting at my office tomorrow morning,” Tulip informed me. “I am going to draw up a contract between them which guarantees Bumper a job at the studio, with the payoffs supposedly now paid as monthly bonuses.”
“And how is that going to help anything?” I wondered.
“Because the contract will have a million dollar golden parachute clause, immediately followed by the bonus clause. The bonus clause will contain the words that are actually a confession to his having taken payoffs prior to the agreement,” Tulip explained and flashed the grin I always associated with her smelling blood in the water. “I am sure Bumper is only going to focus on that million dollar payday and ignore the clause, or the fact that signing it with anything but his real name makes it worthless as a contract but still valid as a confession.”
“I like your sister,” Amanda was finally smiling. “I wish I could have hired her sooner and watched her cut John’s balls off.”
“I’ll keep this in mind about both of you.” I tried to laugh.
Tulip explained that the rest of her plan involved two things that might be a problem. The first was that I needed to give her ten thousand dollars in cash to pay a signing bonus tied to the clause that implicated Bumper in the previous payoffs. This was no problem since Tony had more than that in the bistro safe at any given moment. I would now be up the rest of the night scanning the money to be able to trace the serial numbers of the money. We could not trace the previous payments, but we could tag this one and work from there.
The second issue involved her finding a place to hide Amanda, Georgia, and Parker until I had made my arrests. I was on thin ice ethically just knowing that this was her intention, so I excused myself while Tulip stayed behind to arrange for their disappearance. I didn’t need to stick around to know that Tulip was almost certain to call our mother and ask if she could play hostess to a famous Hollywood actress for a few days. It would kill two birds with one big rock. The first was to hide Amanda and Georgia in case Agent Gabb figured out what she was up to and seek to pre-emptively arrest either of her new clients. The second, and very Tulip-like, reason was that doing so would distract our mother and spare Tulip the monthly dinner she would otherwise have faced on Friday.
THIRTY THREE
Tulip’s meeting with Bumper the next morning went more as she expected it to than Bumper could have ever anticipated. The meeting took place in Tulip’s office on Magazine Street. She had the second floor of a two-storey brick building near Jackson Avenue. There were two other young attorneys with offices on the lower floors and the three shared a pair of paralegals and a legal secretary, but were not partners. Tulip’s office had a large balcony and that’s where she stood while she watched Bumper park his Lincoln. She noted how he scanned the block before crossing the street and entering her building. He need not have bothered as I was sitting in Tulip’s Porsche and parked two blocks away, ready to pick him up if he headed downtown. Tony was parked on Jackson Avenue in a position to follow Bumper back to the studio, or anywhere he might go if he headed towards the river or the lakefront.
I had delivered a manila envelope with ten thousand dollars in fifty and one hundred dollar bills, which I had scanned onto a thumb drive and placed into an evidence bag, to her at eight o’clock and Bumper arrived promptly at ten o’clock as he had been instructed to do. Amanda had explained to him the night before that she wanted to make their “arrangement” both more formal and secure for both parties. Her intimation was that she was prepared to keep giving him ten thousand dollars on the first of each month, which was actually less than ten thousand dollars a week, and he was only too happy to agree that she should do so.
Tulip waited until Bumper was behind her desk to call me on her cellphone so I could listen to their conversation before she turned on the digital voice recorder taped under her desk. I would have had to tell Avery too many things I was trying to hide to have gotten a legal wiretap, but my sister was willing to present her tape recording in court if necessary.
Tulip spent the last moment calming Amanda before Bumper stepped into the office. Amanda was just playing another role as she explained to Bumper that she had asked Tulip to create a long term contract for Bumper to be sure their “special arrangement” was secure once Logan filed Biggie’s will and she was in a position to take control of the studio. Tulip confided that another part of Amanda’s motivation was her concern that she would have to continue leading me on so I would be her protector, and that doing so made it hard to earn a living. Amanda expressed the fear that Bumper might expose the adoption if she left town and he thought she might stop paying him. The blackmailer agreed that he might well have done so. I lost track of what Tulip was saying for a moment while I pondered whether my sister was lying about Amanda’s comments on our relationship. I knew Amanda was aware that I was listening to every word.
Tulip set the eight page contract in front of Bumper and pointed out the clause that guaranteed him a one million dollar golden parachute if he were to leave the studio for any reason before Parker’s eighteenth birthday and agreed to keep the adoption confidential. This was the bright shiny thing she and Amanda were hoping he would focus on.
Tulip had relaxed Bumper enough that his defenses did not alert him to the trap when she asked how long Amanda’s assistant had been delivering the payments to him. He told her about John’s death and his conversation with Biggie which had led to the payments in the first place. I finally knew that Biggie had only threatened to blackmail John, but had settled for a legal financial arrangement instead. Biggie had played no role whatsoever in any blackmail scheme, and Bumper just confirmed he was the only one shaking down Amanda.
Tulip was being very careful not to indicate that whatever had been going on was in any way actually a crime and risk making Bumper think twice about talking to them. Tulip was equally careful not to imply there was any assurance of confidentiality for what he said. She very slowly led him into the clause which assured him a large monthly salary, to be determined later, plus the ten thousand dollar monthly bonus. The bonus clause was phrased to make it clear he had been receiving money before this contract was signed. He perked up at this for an instant, but Tulip waved off the concern and said it was just in case anyone wondered why it was ever paid. She convinced Bumper that it was easier to justify continuing a payment than explaining why to initiate a new one when it came to contracts.
Tulip eased a pen towards Bumper and asked him to sign it if he had no other questions, and then she set the bank envelope on her desktop. Bumper glanced at the thick envelope and then at the contract. Amanda said she had instructed Tulip to make the first monthly bonus payment once the contract was signed. Bumper immediately signed on the dotted line, which was nothing less than a signed confession I would present to SAC Conroy later in the day. Amanda signed the contract and Tulip passed the money to Bumper before he left the office with his own copy of the signed contract. I could almost hear Tulip’s mental laughter at what she imagined Gabb’s reaction to be when he read the payoff clause.
Bumper came out of the building, got into his car, and immediately dialed a number before he pulled away from the curb. Bumper turned onto Jackson Avenue and then towards downtown under the live oak canopy on Prytania Street. Tony fell in behind him and called me to say Bumper was in motion. I intercepted the pair under the overpass on Camp Street, and fell in line behind Tony. We left a
block between us while Tony kept an eye on the big man’s rear view mirrors, but Bumper seemed unconcerned with being followed. I was hopeful that he was headed to meet Agent Gabb, but worried that he may have done so before the meeting with Tulip. I was fairly certain that had not happened because Gabb undoubtedly would have sensed the trap being laid by another lawyer, especially one with Tulip’s family relationship to me and reputation in civil litigation.
I had to close the distance on our quarry as we entered dense traffic in the Central Business District. Bumper turned left on Poydras, with its two lanes running each way from the river to the Superdome. Tony and I each took position in one of the lanes behind Bumper to be able to follow him if he turned abruptly. When he did turn, it was a gentle right onto Baronne headed towards Canal Street. He pulled into a parking garage, which Tony followed him into, while I drove past and parked on the street. Tony lost his phone signal in the garage but called back me as he exited the garage on foot and said Bumper was walking towards Carondolet. He and I both suspected we knew his next stop, and were not only correct but also were able to use my camera to video tape Bumper and Agent Gabb walking into The Security Center together.
I was impressed that one of them had thought to stash their ill-gotten gains here, probably in a numbered safety deposit box that would require knowing the box number to get a search warrant to find. Tony and I had opened our own account with nothing more than a year’s rent and our signatures.
We positioned ourselves as unobtrusively as possible outside the building and waited for the pair to emerge so I could take their picture together. It was going to make my day, and Avery’s year, if I could prove that somewhere inside the building was at least one lock box containing unexplainable amounts of cash with the full knowledge of an FBI agent.
THIRTY FOUR
Chief Avery had arranged a meeting with Katie Reilly and the head of the local FBI office, SAC Conroy at the bistro later that afternoon to present the case I had built against Agent Gabb and Eric Jackson. I did not intend to share anything about Amanda’s being blackmailed or Georgia’s involvement in gun running or the murder of two men.
I did tell Avery and Katie that my sister had moved the women and young boy to a safe location and listened contritely to Avery’s dissertation about the legal problems with my having placed the pair in the care of my sister. Katie was upset that Tulip’s having done so potentially made her an accessory to whatever it was either woman may have actually done and could prove to be obstruction of justice. Avery was also upset that I had used my own money to trick Bumper into leading me to his cash stash, but admitted he would never have authorized police funds for the purpose.
Avery then opened his file on Eric Jackson, which indicated he had been fired in Oklahoma for use of excessive force and had resigned from the New Orleans police department rather than face charges for felony theft. Eric was caught with a bag full of Rolex watches he had taken from a Canal Street jewelry store while on patrol following Katrina.
SAC Michael Conroy arrived and we adjourned to a table on the unoccupied patio. Hannah brought us a pitcher of iced tea and closed the door behind herself as she left. Avery made the first presentation, showing Conroy the materials on Eric Jackson that he had already shown me. Katie’s opinion was that all any of the file showed was that Eric was a bad apple anywhere he went.
Conroy shared the evidence his forensic auditors had found in an audit of the personal accounts of Bumper and Gabb, as well as both Amanda and Georgia, and he seemed rather smug that there was no indication either man was receiving any of the cash Amanda was withdrawing from her account each week. There was, luckily, also no evidence that Georgia had been stashing cash, either. Conroy claimed that there was no mention of any blackmail plot on Biggie’s part in any of the reports Gabb filed, or of his informant handling payments of any sort for Biggie. He declared that he was convinced the blackmail story was a lie, and that he was satisfied his Agent was not involved in any illegal activity nor had knowledge of anything illegal Bumper may have been up to on his own.
Conroy’s grin collapsed when I showed him the contract, and its careful wording which had led Bumper to confess to this very blackmail. I followed this first with the audio tape I had made of my conversation with Agent Gabb on Friday evening and then showed them video tape and photographs of Bumper and Agent Gabb I had taken outside of The Security Center that very morning. My male companions believed that I had made a good case. Katie insisted on playing a devil’s advocate role and argued that while the contract certainly indicated bad deeds in the past, and a willingness to be bought in the future, she did not feel confident that a grand jury would see what our trained eyes perceived. The audio tape was inadmissible and the video tape too inconclusive as to what had transpired. Georgia’s testimony about the blackmail and Amanda’s about making the payments might not be enough to get even an indictment.
The last piece of evidence I shared with the group was a time frame video of the surveillance video from the parking lot at the Hard Rock Café I had on my computer. I had prepared a version of the footage to be able to be viewed as a PowerPoint presentation, because what I needed to show them had eluded me in dozens of viewings of the video.
Bumper’s statement was that he had returned to the Land Rover and spoken only briefly with Biggie Charles before his boss dismissed him and sent him back inside with Tyshika. That is exactly what the video showed, if that is what you believed you saw. The camera angle was such that the view into the back seat was partially blocked by the open door. There was a narrow gap between the vehicle and the door that gave a sliver of a view which included both men. Bumper could be seen speaking with Biggie, unmistakably huge in the confines of the passenger compartment. Biggie appeared to be more surprised by the door opening than angry about Bumper having been the one to open it. Bumper’s statement made it sound as though Biggie had reacted angrily and waved him away. Bumper leaned into the vehicle, and his body blocked the already limited view. I began going frame by frame as Bumper moved his body away from the interior. Biggie was now sitting bolt upright, with a look of intense pain on his face. It was the sort of expression of someone in physical distress, not someone making an emotional outburst. He definitely wasn’t looking at Bumper as the bodyguard waved his hand and slammed the door, hurried away from the vehicle, and adjusted something he had slipped into his pants pocket while walking back to the restaurant.
The first spray of arterial blood crossed the vehicle windshield before Bumper was a half dozen steps from the vehicle. The footage was digital but not of a great quality and taken from a distance of nearly thirty yards away, but Biggie’s shock and blood were clear.
“What are we supposed to see?” Katie was the first to admit she had missed what I had not seen the first time either. I handed each of them a set of photographs taken of video frames and led them through again.
“Bumper used something to stun or injure Biggie just moments before the dog took him apart. A dog whistle was used to make the dog attack. That may be what Bumper put in his pocket,” I said this but knew it was a lie. It was more likely a knife he used to make his boss bleed and excite the pit bull. Georgia had used the dog whistle on her balcony. “Bumper was the trigger man and he just used the dog instead of a gun.”
“Both of your people are dirty.” Avery now weighed in and I was not all that surprised that Conroy and even Katie agreed almost immediately. The new evidence was fairly damning, and nicely contained to two bad apples and not Conroy’s entire office. He could clean this up without losing his job. Katie felt she would have little trouble getting indictments in a city that was already reeling from fresh accusations of police abuses in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Somebody needed to be offered up to quiet the angry mob.
“But they’re also innocent until proven guilty,” Katie pointedly reminded us.
Avery threw his copies of the photos on the table and turned to me. “I guess that’s where you come in. Neither of us ar
e prepared to open a very messy criminal investigation based on what you have, but just let us know what you need to make a case Katie won’t lose in court.”
“I can do that,” I assured the skeptical trio.
THIRTY FIVE
I made a phone call to Ned Davis, the ATF Agent that Avery had brought by the bistro, to find out how genuinely interested he was in what became of Biggie’s locker full of guns before I met Chief Avery and SAC Conroy for breakfast the following Saturday morning. He agreed to extend an offer I suggested, less out of any goodwill than because it might advance his career. Avery arrived ahead of the others we had invited to our pow-wow and made a list of subjects I needed to address with Bumper, and the answers it would be best if I could lead Bumper to give to make the case he wanted to have for Katie to present to the grand jury. Conroy arrived and drank coffee while Avery ate breakfast. Conroy’s wish list was shorter, and could be summarized by describing it as damage control. He just wanted me to be sure to get Bumper’s statement that anything that had been done illegally in Gabb’s operation was not authorized by Conroy.
It was nine o’clock before I arrived at BC Studios. There were a surprising number of cars in the parking lot and I had to take a space well away from the door. I asked the receptionists where I could find Bumper and was pointed towards the sound stage and VIP area of the studio. Georgia’s telling me that Bumper had recorded conversations she had with Cisco while in the nightclub confirmed Tony’s suspicion about the VIP lounge being a place where Bumper could control any surveillance. It turned out, though, that this also happened to be where the big guy was sprawled on a sofa with a leggy blonde that morning. He certainly didn’t seem to be expecting to see me.