Fatal Decree

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “Deanna, you’re asking a lot. If Perez is responsible for killing those two women here and trying to take me out, I’d rather see the bastard get shanked in jail than walk.”

  “J.D., I’ll swear on our friendship that Perez knows he’s going to spend the rest of his life in jail. All he wants in return for his testimony against some real bad people is a new identity and a prison where nobody will ever know who he is.”

  “Deanna, Matt Royal is in the car with me. I’d like to hear what he has to say about this. He was almost killed as well.”

  “Hey, Matt,” Deanna said. “I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to meet under better circumstances. What do you think?”

  “I think everybody would lose if Perez is killed. I’d be for isolating him, but if I were J.D., I’d want an ironclad promise from you that you won’t be part of any deal that J.D. doesn’t agree to.”

  Deanna was quiet for a moment. “Okay. I can agree to that with one caveat.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I have an ethical duty to Perez. I’ll make him the best deal I can, and if the U.S. Attorney agrees to it, but J.D. doesn’t, I’ll withdraw. My guess is that in that event Perez’s new lawyer would get the same deal, with or without J.D.’s approval.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  J.D. spoke up. “Look, I also have a duty, if it’s in my power, to make sure that Perez gets a fair trial. I’m part of the system. I can’t let the guy get killed if I can stop it. I’ll make some calls and get back to you.”

  “Thanks, J.D., but time is running out. Perez is in an interview room now, waiting for me. I won’t be able to keep him there long, and once we’re finished, he’s going to lockup. He’s sure there’s already a price on his head.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” J.D. said, and pressed the “off” button on the Bluetooth.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” I said.

  “I know. It’s not always easy, is it?”

  “No,” I said, “but it’s always right.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The puppeteer walked the floor, pacing back and forth, rigid with anger. That fool Perez had gotten himself arrested. Had he figured out that his life was about over? He’d thought himself so clever, stashing a getaway pickup truck in North Miami. A truck. What the hell was he thinking? Did Perez know that the family was on to him? Knew about his plans for a new life? If he was planning to run, he would have to take the family’s money with him. That couldn’t happen. He was a dead man as soon as the family figured out where all the money was hidden. There were no second chances in this business. Even a hint of disloyalty was rewarded with a death sentence, carried out without trial, without mercy.

  Had Perez arranged his arrest so that he would be safe from the family? He should have known better. He’d be dead before the night was over.

  The first break came when the idiot hired a Mexican to keep the truck in running condition. He didn’t know that the man he’d hired was one of theirs. The puppeteer had known about the truck within a day of the time Perez hired the driver.

  The family hadn’t yet figured out all the ways Perez could flee, or where all his secret bank accounts were, but they did know his escape route, or at least the first leg of it. They knew about the pickup and they’d know when Perez decided to use it. The bomb had been rigged months before. If he started it without activating the switch that disarmed the bomb, he’d be blown to hell. Only the Mexican driver knew where the switch was located. When he needed to drive the truck, he simply flipped the switch to the off position and the bomb was rendered inert.

  If Perez had arranged his own arrest, it’d been done without much preparation. The family had a mole in the U.S. Attorney’s office, and if any deals had been struck, or even if Perez had contacted the U.S. Attorney, the family would have been told. They had the same coverage at the state prosecutor’s office, even though the state wouldn’t be involved in the Perez case. Their cartel, small as it was, was of interest only to the feds.

  Fuentes, the crazy don, had reacted to the news of Perez’s arrest with a lot more heat than the puppeteer had expected. The don had exploded in anger. He’d trusted Perez with the family’s money, with his own money, with secrets that no one else knew. Perez had been his childhood friend and now he’d turned on him. Word had already come back to them that some lawyer was trying to reach the U.S. Attorney in Miami to make a deal, to put Perez in isolation until they could work out an agreement for Perez to testify against the don. Perez had to be killed.

  The don, against the advice of the puppeteer, had ordered the murder of the U.S. Attorney and sent word to the Miami-Dade jail, to inmates on their payroll, that whoever killed Perez that night would receive one million dollars upon his release from prison. The puppeteer was afraid that the murder of the U.S. Attorney would bring down the family. You didn’t just go around killing government officials. The system reacted violently. If one of their own was vulnerable, all of them were. It was therefore in their interest to find and kill those who would kill them. Because of this, there had long been a truce of sorts, a tacit agreement never spoken of, between the cartels and law enforcement. Don’t kill us and we won’t kill you. It had worked for years, but the crazy don was now about to breach the agreement. It could bring ruin to the family.

  Fuentes had decided it was necessary to kill the U.S. Attorney because he knew that none of the other people in that office would take a hot potato like Perez and give him any kind of deal. If it backfired, it was their careers. Not so for the U.S. Attorney. He was a political appointee and if he were fired, he’d go back to a very lucrative private practice. If the headman was dead, there would be weeks before any deal could be put together for Perez to testify. Cut off the snake’s head and the body would be ineffective. If the don’s men missed Perez in jail on the night he was arrested, it wouldn’t be too big of a deal. There’d be weeks to get him before another prosecutor could be brought in to make decisions. Or so he thought.

  The puppeteer hadn’t agreed with the don, argued against the murder as a violation of the rules of the war against drugs. It didn’t matter. The don had crossed a line that moved him from just plain crazy to absolutely insane. The puppeteer had always known it, lived with the threat inherent in the don’s insanity. There had been a lot of killings that did nothing for the family’s organization except instill fear in the subordinates. But the don’s bloodlust had never before so threatened the cartel and the family.

  By now the top federal prosecutor in South Florida was floating face down in the Miami River with a gunshot wound in the back of his head. The die was cast, the puppeteer thought, and Katie bar the door. The shit storm was about to hit them full force.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  It was a little after eight o’clock when we pulled into the Mar Vista’s parking lot. J.D. was on the phone with the Miami-Dade chief of detectives, so we sat for a few minutes as she made arrangements to have Perez put in isolation. She then called Deanna Bichler to tell her that her client would be safe for the evening, that he was going to isolation.

  We walked around the back of the restaurant and joined Jock at a table under the trees facing the bay. The air was cool, pleasant, infused with the smell of the sea. Electric lights that looked like tiki torches were placed among the tables. The crowd was mostly older couples, snowbirds probably.

  We sat and J.D. told Jock about her conversations with Bichler and the chief of detectives. “I hope I’ve done the right thing,” she said.

  “If Perez sings,” said Jock, “we might just figure out why you’re a target and whether all this is connected in any way to Gene Alexander’s death. But we’ve got a new problem, a big one.”

  “What?” she asked, alarmed.

  “The U.S. Attorney in Miami was murdered about an hour ago.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “Gunshot to the back of the head. An off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard at a warehouse on the M
iami River saw two men pulling a body out of the trunk of a car. He went after them and they dropped the body and took off in the car. The cop recognized the dead man as the U.S. Attorney. The place is swarming with FBI and Miami-Dade cops right now.”

  “This changes things,” said J.D.

  “Yeah,” said Jock, “but I’m not sure how much. My deputy director has already called the president and he’ll appoint David Parrish as the acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District within the next hour.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because of the tie-in to Gene Alexander’s death. If any of this is connected to our agency, we want to know. Perez can help us figure that out, but only if he gets the deal he wants. If Parrish is the acting U.S. Attorney, he can make the deal happen. The president has confidence in him.”

  “And,” said J.D., “so do you. Did that have anything to do with this?”

  Jock smiled. “I might have mentioned to my boss that I knew Parrish and trusted him.”

  “When does David take over?” I asked.

  “I talked to him fifteen minutes ago. He was at Orlando Executive Airport about to board an FBI plane to take him to Miami. A federal judge is on standby to swear him in as the temporary U.S. Attorney.”

  “What about his job in the Middle District?” I asked.

  “He’ll do both, for now. As soon as the president can get a nominee for the permanent position and get it through the Senate, David will go back to Orlando.”

  “How long will that take?” asked J.D.

  “Months,” I said. “That’s the reason they’re sending David in. They don’t want any screwups.”

  “Right,” said Jock. “We probably won’t hear anything until morning. Let’s eat.”

  “I need to call Deanna,” said J.D. “Let her know what’s going on.”

  “I would think the DEA will be briefing her,” Jock said.

  “That may take a while. I’ll call her.” She walked down toward the bay, dialing her phone.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  W. Warren Plowden had seen a lot in his seventy years, but this evening’s activities were unique. First, there was the call from the president, a totally unexpected event. He didn’t like the president and hadn’t voted for him. They were of different political parties, different generations, different views on how to conduct the nation’s business. But when the president calls and asks a favor, it would be unconscionable to deny him if it was at all legally possible.

  The favor was a fairly simple one. The president had asked that Judge Plowden go downtown to the federal courthouse and swear in David Parrish as the interim U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. It wasn’t such a big deal in and of itself, but Plowden knew that David Parrish was already the sitting U.S. Attorney in the adjoining district.

  Plowden had sat as a judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida for more than twenty years, and in the past year had become Chief Judge of the district. Before that, he had practiced law in Miami for twenty-five years and had the reputation as brilliant, both as a lawyer and a jurist. He was also a man who believed in the law as an instrument of good. The great body of jurisprudence built over centuries to govern the affairs of humanity was for the most part a work of brilliance. There were always little slivers of law that had not been well thought out, not tested in the crucible that was the human experience. But those occasional transgressions foisted upon the legal system were ultimately ironed out, overruled, rescinded by the lawmakers, or declared unconstitutional by the courts.

  Judge Plowden had discovered this great intellectual minefield almost by accident. He’d graduated from Davidson College in North Carolina and decided to go to law school because he didn’t have any plans for the next few years. He discovered his passion during those first few days of studying Real Property and Constitutional Law and other courses that would define his life. He was hooked and took to the study of law with a joy that bordered on obsession. The law was said to be a jealous mistress and Plowden had found that indeed it was. It demanded absolute fealty and devotion from those who practiced its tenets. And he had practiced law with a single-minded pursuit of justice that awed all who came into contact with him, both as a lawyer and as a judge.

  Judge Plowden was saddened by the sudden death of the U.S. Attorney, a man he’d known for many years, who he’d tried cases against, and later who’d appeared before him on numerous occasions. They had been friends, at least to the extent that a judge can be friends with lawyers who appear before him. The man’s death would be a great loss to South Florida.

  The question that Judge Plowden was wrestling with was not whether the president had the authority to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney, he did, but whether he could appoint a man already holding the same office in another district. A quick Westlaw search gave him no answers. He could not find another instance where it had been done. The constitution was silent on the issue and the section of the U.S. code dealing with such appointments did not specifically prohibit one person being appointed in two districts at the same time. It didn’t seem right to the judge, but he could find no legal prohibitions against it.

  Plowden had called the president back and told him he was on his way to the courthouse. Now, as he sat on the bench, having done his duty and sworn Parrish in as the interim U.S. Attorney, Plowden peered out over the courtroom, wondering what came next. Parrish had asked him to hear a motion, a joint motion brought by the government and the defense attorney for a man the judge had never heard of, George Perez. It was a new case, one that arose from an arrest earlier in the day.

  The judge fiddled with his computer keyboard, shook his head, and said, “I find no such case in the dockets, and even if there were such a case, it hasn’t been assigned to me.”

  “Your Honor,” said Parrish, “the defendant was arrested just a few hours ago, and we haven’t had time to file the necessary pleadings to get the case docketed. However, this is an unusual situation, and time is of the essence.”

  “I’m listening, Counselor.”

  “As chief judge you can appoint any of the judges of this court to handle any particular case.”

  “I understand that,” said the judge, a bit of impatience creeping into his voice.

  “I’d like to move that you appoint yourself to hear this case, Your Honor. My opponent, Ms. Bichler, representing the defendant Perez, is here in the courtroom to join me in that motion. The pleadings have already been typed up, and I can sign them now that I’m sworn in. I’ll file them with the court immediately. Again, with Ms. Bichler’s concurrence.”

  “What’s the rush on all this, Mr. Parrish?” asked the judge.

  “Your Honor, Mr. Perez is a money launderer for a small but important drug ring operating out of Puerto Rico. He’s been involved in several recent murders in the Sarasota area and has extensive knowledge of other murders and activities of the drug ring. He can give evidence against a number of people whom the government believes to be guilty of multiple crimes.”

  “Why can’t this wait until the case runs its normal course?” asked the judge.

  “Mr. Perez’s life is in danger, Your Honor,” said Parrish. “We’re afraid that even one night in general lockup could lead to his death. We already know through an informant, that there is a one-million-dollar price on Mr. Perez’s head. We also think there are other murders planned by Mr. Perez’s associates. We may be able to stop them from happening if we get the information we need from Mr. Perez.”

  “What’s your proposal?” asked the judge.

  “Our joint proposal is that we reach a plea bargain that would require Mr. Perez to testify in any trial or grand jury investigation on matters of which he has knowledge. In return, you would sentence him tonight to life imprisonment under a new name. All paperwork would be under the new name and the charges would be completely different than those that bring us here today, but they would carry an equal sentence. Mr. Perez would serve his impriso
nment in an institution far removed from Florida. In other words, Perez would disappear and he would serve his sentence under an alias. Nobody would know who he really is, except a few people in the Department of Justice.”

  The judge looked at Deanna. “Do you agree to these terms, Ms. Bichler?”

  Deanna rose from her seat at counsel table. “Yes, Your Honor. My client has instructed me to accept the deal if the court authorizes it.”

  “This is highly unusual, but I don’t think there is anything illegal about it. I do have a question, Mr. Parrish.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you guarantee that Mr. Perez will cooperate in the coming months and years?”

  “He has agreed to take lie detector tests whenever the government wants. If he is caught lying, or if he refuses to testify, then the life sentence will stand, but he will be reassigned his real name and be sent to a prison in Florida.”

  “In other words, you’ll hold a death sentence over his head. One outside the legal system, an execution by some inmate thug with a homemade knife.”

  “That’s about the size of it, Your Honor,” said Parrish.

  “I won’t be a part of that,” said the judge. “Besides, how do you know some prisoner wherever Mr. Perez is sent won’t recognize him?”

  “Mr. Perez has only dealt with about three people in the organization,” said Parrish. “Nobody else knows him by sight. The odds are infinitesimal that he’ll be recognized.”

  The judge sat silently for a minute, then stood and said, “We’ll be in recess for ten minutes. I have to think about this one.”

  The judge was back. “Mr. Parrish,” he said, “does the government think Mr. Perez is a big enough fish for us to go to all this trouble?”