Illegal (2 page)

"She flipped on you, pal," Rigney said.

"Molly Kraft's gonna testify to the Grand Jury right after lunch. Once she does, I can't stop the indictment."

"And now you can?"

Rigney didn't answer, letting Payne sweat. Smart.

Payne liked people who were good at their jobs. Perjurers. Pickpockets. Pain-in-the-ass cops.

Several seconds passed. There was only one other bowler in the place, way down at lane thirty-two, the falling pins echoing like distant thunder.

"Do you know Judge Walter Rollins?" Rigney said at last.

"Van Nuys Division. Didn't make partner at one of the downtown firms, so they bought him a seat on the bench."

"That's it?"

"Rollins is condescending to lawyers, bullies his staff, and sucks up to the appellate court. He also doesn't like anyone smarter than him. Which means he has very few friends."

Then there was the business with the car. Payne remembered a day when he was stopped at a traffic light on Lankershim near the In-N-Out Burger. He'd looked over—looked down, actually—from his perch in his Lexus SUV, and there was Judge Rollins, glaring up at him from his Mini Cooper. As if thinking:

Truth was, Payne leased the Lexus to impress his clients, especially car thieves.

"Rollins is dirty," Rigney said, then told Payne about Operation Court Sweep. A sting operation. Joint task force of L.A.P.D. and the feds, which Payne figured would have cops shooting one another's dicks off.

"I don't have a case in front of Rollins," Payne said, "so if you're looking for someone to set him up—"

"
We've
got the case."

"Forget it. I'm not a snitch."

"Your choice, Payne. But know this: By tonight, either you or Walter Rollins will be behind bars."

Jimmy drove west on Ventura Boulevard, speaking to his ex-wife on the cell. "Sharon, do you know a dickwad named Eugene Rigney?"

"Public Integrity," she answered. "Corruption cases."

"That's him. Can I trust him?"

"Rigney's a hard-ass who lies under oath to get convictions. What are you up to?"

"A little this, a little that. Mostly bribery."

"I'm serious, Atticus."

"Me, too. How's Adam doing with his math?"

"Jimmy, don't do that! I asked you a question. How are you mixed up with Rigney?"

"Late for a hearing. Gotta go. I'll pick up Adam early for baseball Saturday."

"Jimmy, dammit!"

He clicked off and slowed at the intersection of Beverly Glen. On the seat next to him was a cheap briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in cash.

At the traffic light at Coldwater Canyon, he'd grabbed one of the stacks of bills and slid it under the floor mat in the backseat. If Judge Rollins would roll over for fifty thousand, why not forty-five?

The sting was a mousetrap intended to snap the necks of corrupt judges. Offer cash to reduce bail or dismiss the indictment or, slimiest of all, give up the name of an informant so the defendant can have him killed. So any guilt Payne felt at being a snitch was lessened by the knowledge that Judge Walter Rollins, if he fell for it, was willing to be an accessory to murder.

Our legal system is incompetent and corrupt,
Payne thought. A time-wasting, money-sucking three-ring circus of lazy judges, brain-dead juries, and officious clerks in courthouses where there's not enough parking or decent places to eat lunch.

"Why'd you have to make it a human trafficking case?" Payne had asked Rigney.

"What difference does it make?"

"I repped those Mexicans in the tractor-trailer case."

"I know all about it. You got held in contempt. Ethics charges. Anger management. The whole nine yards."

"So would it make sense that I'd represent a guy who doesn't give a shit if the migrants live or die?"

Rigney shrugged. "What do you care? Another case, another peso."

If the legal system were a frozen pond, Payne walked too far on ice too thin. Wearing combat boots and stomping his feet. In the tractor-trailer case, the ice broke. Traffickers brought three dozen Mexicans through a tunnel from Tijuana to Otay Mesa in San Diego County. As soon as the migrants popped out of the ground like bleary-eyed gophers, armed
vaquetóns—
street thugs working for the coyotes—jammed the new arrivals into a trailer truck. The Mexicans were headed for a slaughterhouse in Arizona, where they had been promised jobs pulling intestines out of dead cows and ripping their hides off with pliers. Where the migrants came from, this was considered cushy work.

The driver, an American who would be paid $6,000 for the run, stopped in El Centro in the California desert to visit his girlfriend in her air-conditioned trailer, conveniently stocked with ice-cold beer and a queen-size bed. Afraid that the migrants would scatter if he let them out, he kept them locked in the back. The sun, perched high in the August sky, blazed orange as a branding iron. The metal truck became a convection oven. No one heard the migrants' screams or their prayers to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Tongues swelled. Arms flailed. Limbs locked in spasms. The stricken watched long-departed relatives float by in the darkness. As the hours passed, bowels exploded like mortar shells. Mouths frothed, eyes bulged, brains melted. Eleven people died.

The government promised permanent residency to the survivors if they would testify against the coyotes and the driver. Trial was had, convictions obtained, miscreants jailed. By then, pale new faces manned the desks of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office. Tough regulations were enacted, lest any
campesinos
from Chihuahua were working for Osama bin Laden on the sly. Even though the survivors had kept their end of the bargain, a tailored suit from Washington yanked their papers and scheduled them for deportation.

"Government fraud, deception, and outright lies!" Payne told the press. "Mafia hit men get better treatment."

Payne subpoenaed a dozen skinny-tied government types. Not just I.C.E. officials. Mayors. State senators. Governors' aides. Demanded to know who cut their grass, washed their cars, changed their kids' diapers. Proved the hypocrisy of the entire system, or so he thought.

But it wasn't. Payne turned to the table of government lawyers, cleared his throat, and belted out a passable rendition of Tom Russell's
"Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?"

Who's gonna cook your Mexican food,

When your Mexican maid is gone?

Forty-eight hours in a holding cell. And a $5,000 fine.

On the brighter side, Payne won the case. Unwilling to risk any more toxic publicity, I.C.E. reversed its decision. Payne's clients got permanent residency.

Now, driving along Ventura Boulevard to the courthouse, Payne planned the rest of his day. Hit the gym, grab some lunch, pick up Adam for a game of pitch-andcatch. But first, there was a judge to bribe.

The day was already steaming. The sidewalk cafés, with their forlorn potted palms, were deserted, except for the Coffee Beans, Starbucks, and Peet's, where wannabe screenwriters pounded at their laptops, dreams of Oscar statuettes, A-list parties, and Malibu mansions warping their brains.

It was a short drive to Van Nuys, Payne's favorite venue for justice to be miscarried. The Lexus spoke then, the pleasant but distant female voice instructing him to
"Turn right in two hundred yards. Van Nuys Boulevard."
She didn't bother to thank him for the five grand under her floor mat.

Payne followed instructions and headed for the courthouse, thinking this wasn't so bad. He was a decent enough liar. He'd get out of the heat, do his civic duty, and pocket five grand. What could go wrong?

"You think I'm stupid?" Judge Rollins aimed the gun a few inches north of Payne's shrinking testicles. "Your wife's a cop."

"Ex-wife."

"I remember. She shot you."

"An accident," Payne said. "She was aiming at my client."

"That how you got the scar on your leg?" Gesturing toward a ridge of purple tissue on Payne 's bare thigh.

"No." Payne reflexively touched the spot. Beneath his fingertips, fastened to his femur, was a metal plate and five locking screws. "Got the scars in a crash on the P.C.H."

"Jesus, Payne. Bad luck sticks to you like flies on shit." A fuzzy thought came to the judge, and he squinted like a sailor peering through the fog. "What I don't get, is why you think I'd tank a case."

"Not tank it, Your Honor. Just give me the identity of the C.I."

"That's even worse!" The judge was reddening, his tone growing angry. "I give up a confidential informant, your client will have him killed."

I messed it all up, Payne thought. Career. Marriage. Life.

Payne's hands trembled, his fingers jerking like piano keys. He made a vow.

"Your Honor. I gotta tell you the truth about what I'm doing here."

Judge Rollins waved the gun toward the stacks of hundred-dollar bills. "The money speaks for itself."

"That's the thing, Judge. Ramon Carollo—"

"Is scum. And so's Pedro Martinez. Fuck 'em both."

"Who?"

"Pedro Martinez, for Christ's sake. The C.I. I signed the warrants. I oughta know."

Payne wasn't sure he heard correctly. "You just gave me the informant's name."

"You paid for it, didn't you?" The judge lifted his robes and slipped the .38 back into its shoulder holster. He swept the stacks of currency into a desk drawer like a croupier cleaning up chips. "Sorry I scared you. But with the Grand Jury running wild, I take precautions."

Payne moved robotically. One leg, and then the other, into his boxers. He had trouble believing what had just happened. He was going home, and the judge was going to jail.

"Martinez has a house on the beach in Rosarito, just south of the border," the judge said. "Plus a condo in La Jolla. He shouldn't be hard for your people to find."

My people, Payne thought, will be busting down your door and putting you in handcuffs. He finished dressing in silence and made for the door.

"Take care of yourself, Payne," the judge called after him. "And next time, make it the full fifty thousand."

An hour after fleeing the courthouse, Payne's hands were still shaking. Either that, or a 5.0 trembler had rocked the Chimney Sweep, a windowless tavern squeezed between a Lebanese restaurant and a discount dentist in a Sherman Oaks strip mall. Payne wrapped a hand around the leaded base of his glass, trying to steady it, but the Jack Daniel's swirled between the ice cubes like molten lava through porous rocks.

"Good work, Payne," Rigney had told him on the phone, minutes earlier.

A pimp high-fiving a hooker, Payne thought, cheerlessly.

"I knew you'd make a great bag man." Rigney's laugh jangled like steel handcuffs.

In Payne's mind, other names floated to the surface, like corpses afer a shipwreck.

If word got out, no client would ever trust him. And word
always
got out. Gossip was the coin of the realm in the kingdom of justice.

He drained the sour-mash whiskey, slipped a small vinyl folder from inside his coat pocket, and removed a business card,

J. ATTICUS PAYNE, ESQUIRE

Rigney had nailed it. Not even the name was real.

Payne bummed a pack of matches from the bartender, set the card on fire, watched it disintegrate, ashes drifting into a bowl of peanuts. No ashtrays. You had to cross into Mexico to smoke legally these days. He lit a second card, stared into the orange flames. Why not burn them all?

The only other patron at the bar was a TV writer who had been unemployed since they canceled
Gilligan's Island.
Camped on his stool as if he had a long-term lease, the guy's faded T-shirt read:
"Say It Loud. Say It Plowed."

Payne hoisted his glass, saluted the fellow, and took a long pull. The liquid gold delivered warmth without solace. He struck another match. Immolated another card, inhaled the acrid smoke, let the flame burn until it singed his fingertips.

Two hundred miles southeast of the tavern where Payne planned to drink the day far into the night, just outside a cantina in Mexicali, Mexico, a wiry twelve-year-old boy named Agustino Perez stood with his mother as city traffic clattered past. The boy had caramel skin and hair so black and thick that women on the street grabbed it by the handful and cooed like quail. Tino's eyes, though, were a startling green. A teacher once said he reminded her of
verde y negro,
a local dessert of mint ice cream topped with chocolate sauce. Boys at school started calling him
"verde y negro"
with a lip-smacking nastiness. It took a flurry of fists and a couple bloody noses to convince the boys that he was not a sweet confection.