Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (14 page)

“That’s kind of cold, Dix.” Doroz thumbed through the case file. “Any recent significant losses in court for Mr. Regan?”

“Just the usual bottom-feeders,” Carter said. “I got his calendar for the past few months from his secretary. The guy didn’t take on many power players. Hookers, shoplifters, low-level pushers. Mostly in superior court.”

“He didn’t do much federal court work,” Doroz agreed. “I wonder how he ended up with one of our MS-13 guys.”

“He was still on the federal appointment list,” Trask said. “I saw him in district court from time to time, usually when the bigger defense attorneys had a conflict and the court needed somebody to represent an indigent. He actually wasn’t a bad guy, knew how to get the best deals for his clients.”

“Meaning he would have suggested to his new client that he cooperate with us?” Doroz asked.

“Yes. Especially when it looked like a certain conviction,” Trask said.

“So maybe one of the
Mara
bosses didn’t like that suggestion. They didn’t want any extra heat, so they changed their murder method,” Carter offered.

Trask leaned back in his chair and looked at Carter for long seconds before he spoke again. “Dix, from the get-go on this thing you’ve been saying that you didn’t think it was the
Maras
who were pulling all this off. Wrong guns, wrong ammo, no tattoos on the visitors to my house. Why do you think that they’re good for
this
hit?”

“I don’t know that they are,” Carter said. “Just a theory. The murder seems connected to the arrests of that shooting team we interrupted.”

“Then why this one defense counsel? Any of the rest of them threatened or attacked? Has anybody asked them?”

“I’ll get on that now.” Carter stood up and left the room.

Trask looked at Doroz, who shrugged.

“Bear, did Murphy ever get us that personnel roster we asked for? The one for the embassy?” Trask asked.

“Not yet. Want me to call him?”

“Yeah. But tell him—ask him nicely—to bring it over
here
. I’d like him to think we’ve just been checking our notes and it’s a simple loose end.

“It’s not?”

“No,” Trask said. “It’s not.”

August 23, 2:49 p.m.

The man with the eye patch climbed the stairs to a second-floor apartment in the aging apartment building. He wrinkled his nose in disgust at the odor. The place reeked of refuse and neglect. He found the number and knocked on the door.

“One hundred thousand, as agreed,” he said when the door opened. He handed the briefcase to a shorter, thicker, and younger man with the number “18” tattooed into the left side of his neck. “Also as agreed, your brother has been released from
La Esperanza
, and will join you and your wife in Ecuador. Your plane ticket is inside the case. If I ever see you in this country or in El Salvador again, I will kill you. I will also hunt your family down and exterminate them.
Comprende?
”

The younger man nodded, and then closed the door.

The man with the eye patch returned to his car and motioned his driver out of the vehicle. “Hugo, see that he does not make his flight and that the case is returned to me. I’ll circle the block and return for you. Make it quick. We’ve been busy today, and I’m hungry.”

He watched as Hugo entered the building, then he spat on the sidewalk.
Fucking Mara scum.
He opened the driver’s door to the limo and slid behind the wheel. The light at the first corner was turning red as he reached the intersection. Seeing no other vehicles approaching, he ignored the signal and turned left. Three more left turns later, he pulled to the curb in front of the building. Hugo was there, carrying the briefcase. He got into the passenger’s seat, and the car pulled away from the curb.

4:10 p.m.

Frank Wilkes waited for the officers to stand aside and give him room to work. The apartment, a small one-bedroom in the Northeast project facing Rhode Island Avenue, was in order except for the corpse lying on the floor in the center of the room, just inside the doorway. There was a small-caliber bullet wound in the center of the dead man’s forehead. Wilkes took dozens of digital photographs of the scene, and then returned the camera to his bag.

Cause of death is not a mystery in this case,
he thought.

He nevertheless dutifully took a swab and ran it through the pool of blood beside the dead man’s head, placed the swab in an evidence bag, and repeated the procedure with a swab he scraped along the inside of the corpse’s mouth.

“Jeez, Frank, any doubt that’s his blood?” asked one of the patrolmen standing in the doorway.

“Probably not. No doubt at all that we won’t know unless I check it.” Wilkes glanced at the cop with a look that ensured he would not be interrupted again. “Turn that light off, will you?”

The room darkened, Wilkes took a can of luminol spray from his bag and stepped around the corpse. He sprayed the floor, a small table, and a wooden armless chair that were several feet away from the corpse. He looked back at the cop in the doorway. More questions were written on the man’s face, but he was not asking them.

Wilkes waited a few seconds, and then noticed a faint blue glow on the chair at the joints where the vertical bars forming the rear legs and sides of the back passed through the seat. He took more swabs, wiped them along the blue lines, and placed the swabs in evidence bags. He walked past the cop in the doorway.

“It may mean nothing, may mean everything,” he said as he left.

4:45 p.m.

Murphy was smiling as he knocked on Doroz’ office door. He had a manila folder in his left hand while he extended his right to Trask.

Another song flashed through Trask’s memory. “The Backstabbers” by the O’Jays.

“How’s my new favorite prosecutor?” Murphy sank into one of the chairs facing Doroz’ desk.

“I’ll let you know in a minute, Agent Murphy, as soon as I see what is, or isn’t, in that folder,” Trask said. He was standing, and not smiling.

“The personnel roster for the embassy of El Salvador, just as you asked.”

“Just a lot later than I expected it,” Trask said, thumbing through the papers. “And regarding one official, pure bullshit.” He handed three pages back to Murphy. The first page bore the photograph of the man with the eye patch. “I do not believe for a microsecond that this apparently non-English-speaking deputy chief of mission is a career diplomat, or for that matter, that his name is José Rios-García. I would like to know, Agent Murphy, who the hell he really is, why he lied to us about not recognizing one of the photographs we showed him, and what his purpose is in this country.”

Murphy stopped smiling and leaned backward in his chair. “Hypothetically speaking,” he said, “what do you think would happen to a junior Assistant United States Attorney if he attempted to press an investigation, unsupported by anything other than speculation, into a high-ranking official of a foreign government who enjoys full diplomatic immunity? I’m trying to help you out as best I can, Jeff, and I’d hate to see you put yourself in a no-win situation.”

Trask nodded, pacing about the room before turning back toward Murphy. He felt his blood start to boil, and he waited until he could speak with some control.

“I appreciate your concern, Murph. I really do, and I assure you that I have no intention of starting some international incident
without
just cause. But
hypothetically
speaking
, let’s say that a junior Assistant United States Attorney—
and his
wife
—had to fight off a couple of hired goons with machetes who attempted to decapitate this attorney and his wife with the said machetes. Do you wonder just how pissed off that guy might be? Do you wonder if that guy would hesitate at all to charge anyone on this planet,
anyone
, with obstruction of justice if he could show that this
anyone
—being an American citizen and maybe even another government employee and therefore
not
enjoying diplomatic immunity—was concealing evidence in a related homicide investigation?”

“I gave you what we have on file.”

“And I’m telling you that it’s bullshit. And I’m also telling you that if the time comes when I can prove it’s bullshit, and that you knew it was bullshit when you gave it to me, you can expect to spend about half a year’s salary paying some defense mouthpiece to wait outside a grand jury room while you’re inside explaining yourself. Or do you think that your friends at State are actually going to stand behind you and provide counsel for you in that situation?”

Trask saw Murphy’s eyes look away for a split second.

“That’s what I thought. You know as well as I do they’ll promise you full support and then cut you free like a kite caught on a power line. Come back when you can tell me who this pirate really is.”

Murphy stormed out the door.

“Wheeew,” Doroz whistled. “Thanks for inviting me to that little party. Here I was thinking I had a shot at retirement in a year or two.”

“It’s all on me, Bear,” Trask said. “I just needed a witness. Let’s see if Murphy still knows which country he works for.”

Doroz was suddenly looking past him. Trask turned and saw Dixon Carter and Tim Wisniewski standing in the doorway.

“We have another dead defense counsel,” Carter said.

6:20 p.m.

Sivella’s homicide team and the crime scene crew were still at it when they arrived. The law office of William T. Boydston looked undisturbed, a sharp contrast to the body seated in the chair behind the desk. The office had the usual impress-the-clients collection of treatises and published law reporters perfectly arranged in a rosewood shelf directly behind the matching desk. The file cabinets to the side of the bookcase remained closed.

Trask’s eyes scanned the titles for a moment:
Black’s Law Dictionary, Corbin on
Contracts, Prosser on Torts.

The usual collection of law school texts. Books he hasn’t opened since law school. The same
for the Atlantic and Federal Reporters. All for show, for the clients. We all use the web now. The
computer search engines are ten times faster than thumbing through the books.