by Paul Coggins
Dare accepted. “Stop bullshitting.”
“But I’m not—”
Cash cut him off before he could air another whopper. “You’re not very good at lying. Don’t feel too bad about that. Most people aren’t, which is why even half-assed prosecutors rack up a ninety-five percent conviction rate. It’s not like they’re going up against a de Niro or a Streep on the stand.”
“You don’t sound sold on my innocence,” Fine said, “much less committed to defending me.”
“Like it or not, I’m all in, which is why I have to assess what kind of witness you’d make. The jurors will damn sure want to hear from you. If you don’t testify, the judge will tell them not to hold it against you, but no juror in the history of jurisprudence has ever followed that instruction.”
“I want to testify,” Fine said.
“No, you don’t. If I were fool enough to put you on the stand, Delgado would destroy you.”
The client opened his mouth, but no words spilled out.
“Even if you were better at the fine art of lying,” Cash said, “today’s not the time or place for it. This office is your safe space to come clean. Lie to everyone else on the planet. Your parents, spouse, kids, a girlfriend or boyfriend. Just not to your lawyer. Deal?”
Fine nodded.
Not that Cash expected to hear the truth any time soon. That wasn’t how most clients rolled. The skinny rarely surfaced on the first round. Nor the second. Some defendants never shot straight, but the vast majority suffered through several brass-knuckle sessions before Cash hammered out a semblance of reality.
“So can we drop the B.S. that you didn’t know there were underage kids on the site?” Cash said.
Fine’s temples pulsed. “It’s not like I had a choice in the matter. Once the cartel sunk its hooks into me, I couldn’t say no. You of all people should get that.”
Cash did. Fine had inched a little closer to the truth, but not all the way there. With the time of reckoning at hand, Cash hit on a shortcut to the endgame. He buzzed Tina to join them in the office and made the introductions short.
“Tina, meet Fine. My client on this month’s trial docket and the owner of the Backdoor. Fine, meet Tina, my new girl Friday by day and an escort by night. Twenty-five now, she’s been on your website for half her life.”
Cash let the intros sink in. “She’d be a great leadoff witness at your trial.” He paused before delivering the punch line. “For the government.”
Fine and Tina jumped to their feet. He spoke first. “If she’s on their side, I want her out of here.”
Tina matched his decibel level and outrage. “Hey, I’m not cool with helping the law.”
Cash motioned for them to settle down. “I’m talking hypothetically here. It’s not this Tina I’m worried about. It’s all the other Tinas on your website who are ready, willing, and able to assist the feds in putting you away.”
Fine sat. “Why would they do that?”
“A couple of reasons come to mind,” Cash said. “For starters, people in Tina’s line of work get their asses in a crack all the time. The surest way to slip out of a legal jam is to offer the man a bigger fish.”
Tina turned to Fine and said, “Don’t look at me. I’m clean.”
“More or less,” Cash said under his breath but loud enough for both to hear.
She shot him a cross look.
“If someone testifies against me to save her ass,” Fine said, “your job is to rip her a new one.”
“Then there’s always revenge as a motive to join team fed,” Cash said. “Fine, you’re a perv who preys on kids and profits from their pain and suffering, sometimes even their deaths. Why wouldn’t your victims or their friends and families want to draw blood?”
Fine shook his head. “I run a legitimate business.”
“You’re a cog in a sex trafficking ring,” Cash said.
Tina cleared her throat, loud enough to take the floor. “You’re both right and both wrong.”
“Meaning?” Cash said.
“It’s more complicated than that.” Her brow furrowed. “The Backdoor is called a site for a reason. It’s a place, like a bar or a street corner or the backseat of a car, with a good side and a bad side.”
“Let’s hear the bad first,” Cash said.
“My pimp put me on the site when I was thirteen, and I’ve been on it since.”
“And the good?” Fine said.
“When I aged out of my teens, Rocky dropped me. He likes his stable young and fresh.”
“After your pimp split, why on earth would you remain on the website?” It came off harsher than Cash intended.
“That’s the good part,” she said. “Once I was on my own, I could’ve met potential clients in a bar, on a street corner, or in the backseat of a car. Instead, we hook up online, and I vet them before agreeing to a face-to-face. That’s how I stay alive. Same goes for most of the girls.”
The germ of an idea sprouted in Cash’s imagination. From that seed, a full-blown defense could blossom.
Not how he’d expected the encounter between Tina and Fine to go, but he’d take it. A 9-1-1 text from a familiar number buzzed his cell phone.
Cash rose from behind the desk. “Sorry, but I’ve got an emergency.” He rushed from the office and onto the elevator. Pressed the button for the ground floor.
As the elevator door was closing, a thin arm shot through the gap and tripped the sensors. The door reopened. A Latino in a leather jacket with “13” tattooed on his neck stepped into the compartment. The kid had a bad case of acne and couldn’t have been older than fifteen.
Cash flashed back to the meeting at EPIC and the video of the beheading of the police chief’s daughter. Not that the image of the young victim and her even younger executioner ever left his scarred psyche.
The teen reached into his jacket. Cash cocked his arm, gambling that an elbow to the face followed by a knee to the groin would give him a shot at surviving the ride down.
The kid pulled a cell phone from his pocket. Cash lowered his arms and started breathing again. Took a little longer for his heart rate to steady.
At the ground floor, the teen went one way. Cash, the other.
Outside the building, he heard a humming and looked up. A small drone hovered overhead. He recalled the old line that just because a person is paranoid doesn’t mean the world’s not out to get him.
He took off at a brisk pace, making right turns at four street corners, thereby circling the block. The round trip confirmed his suspicion about the drone.
It was tailing him.
What he didn’t know was whether he was being tracked by the government or a cartel.
And if by a government, which one?
If by a cartel, the same question.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The messages arrived a minute apart. Tanaka’s first, then Maggie’s. Both texts screamed 9-1-1, demanded an ASAP meeting, and rocked Cash’s world.
He hadn’t heard from Tanaka since the showing of the snuff scene at EPIC. Nor from Maggie, since her banishment to Bismarck.
Putting business before pleasure, he replied to Tanaka first. A bidding war between agencies offered the only shot at landing a deal La Tigra would take.
Tanaka and Cash agreed to meet at La Calle Doce at 3:00 p.m., nonpeak time for the popular East Dallas restaurant. She brought along DEA dinosaur Duane Leroy Lee, making it a threesome, but not the fun kind.
Leroy reported for duty wobbly and worthy of the unofficial title of World’s Worst Chaperone. The burnout must’ve started his happy hour around 10:00 a.m.
Jesse, the owner, greeted Leroy with an abrazo and offered a round of margaritas on the house. Tanaka vetoed the drinks. “Three iced teas,” she said, “and make sure I get the bill.” Her tone brooked no debate.
Jesse didn’t try to hide his surprise at a fed turning down a free drink. Nor his greater surprise that Leroy settled for tea. Cash silently awarded another title, this one to
Tanaka: World’s Tightest Ass.
Though they had the restaurant to themselves, Tanaka made a beeline to the most secluded table and got down to business. “The Mexican government gave Los Lobos the green light to make a move on La Tigra. Your client has forty-eight hours, seventy-two max, before she’s a former client.”
Cash took stock of his strengths and weaknesses. His strong suit: reading juries. His Achilles’ heel: cutting deals. While plea bargains might be the best course for 90 percent of defendants, they sucked for a stand-up lawyer who came alive in the courtroom.
It wasn’t so much that Cash was bad at bargaining. More that he hated the game. In his book, drawing down on an opponent beat dealing, no matter how badly he was outnumbered and outgunned.
Eva had always handled the back and forth of negotiations. As a seasoned paralegal, she could do damn near everything a lawyer could. Everything, that is, except speak in court.
On his own now, Cash stuck to a few simple rules from Plea Bargaining 101. The first and most important being, maneuver the other side into putting the opening offer on the table.
“I get that the clock’s ticking,” he said, “but what does the DEA propose to do about it?”
“Stop a bloodbath for starters. If the only way to do that is to save La Tigra from Los Lobos,” she said, “we can do that. We can also save her from the FBI. Los Lobos will bury her alive in the desert. The Bureau plans to stick her in Supermax. Either way she’ll never see the sun again.”
“You still haven’t told me what your agency has in store for her.”
“We’ll send her to a prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, where she’ll have her own wing. If some sweet, young inmate happens to catch her eye, she can keep a pet.”
“You know what they say about putting lipstick on a pig,” he said. “Well, the same goes for prison. You can slap a fresh coat of paint on the walls, but it’s still a prison.”
Tanaka fished from her purse two packets of sweetener for her iced tea. It surprised Cash that the control freak hadn’t brought her own tea bags.
“Don’t sell Alderson short,” she said. “It got the Good Housekeeping seal of approval from no less of an authority than Martha Stewart, who did her time there.”
As prisons went, Cash probably couldn’t do better than Alderson, but his client wouldn’t do backflips over life at club fed. “What happened to your master plan to keep La Tigra in the game, as a check on Los Lobos?”
Tanaka’s eyes narrowed. Her lips pursed. He’d hit a nerve.
“That was Plan A,” she said. “Now we’re onto Plan B.”
Plan A must’ve been Tanaka’s brainchild, but she couldn’t sell it to the brass. No wonder. Too much could go wrong and wind up on the front page of the New York Times. If the DEA got caught propping up a cartel leader with buckets of blood on her hands, that’d make the “Fast and Furious” gunwalking scandal look like a botched buy-bust of a dime bag.
“Let’s revisit A,” he said. “La Tigra may not be a Girl Scout, but Los Lobos are animals.”
“We hit too much headwind trying to keep your client afloat. The powers that be turned thumbs down.” Tanaka’s eyes signaled she had more to say.
Cash gave her the chance. “On which side of the border?”
“Both.”
Leroy shook off his stupor. “Which is why it’s always better to ask for forgiveness after the fact than seek permission in advance.”
Which explains, my friend, why Tanaka’s on the fast track, while you’re spinning your wheels on the streets.
Cash raised another hurdle. “And the daughter, what happens to her when La Tigra’s locked away for life?”
Tanaka was slow to answer. When she did, it landed with the thud of a deal-breaker.
***
Cash left La Calle Doce with the Alderson card in his pocket. Not what he’d been fishing for but not bad as DEA’s opening bid, at least the La Tigra part.
However, Tanaka’s proposal to dump Marisol, the daughter, into the purgatory called witness protection was DOA. WITSEC meant no future contact of any kind between parent and child. No one had bounced the deal off Marisol, and the mother would never go for it.
Nor would Cash try to sell it. He couldn’t, not with his backstory.
Business before pleasure turned into business before more business. Not that meeting number two started that way.
At Klyde Warren Park on the cusp of downtown Dallas, Maggie rushed to Cash and locked lips. The kiss caught him off guard, less for its ferocity than for its public nature. PDA was new to her playbook.
Ribbons of intersecting highways not only embraced but also cradled the oasis of green, which rested on an overpass. Scores of kids, parents, and nannies packed the playground on sunny days like today, and a United Nations of food trucks ringed the block.
Maggie wore shorts, sandals, and a sleeveless shirt that bared her waist. J. Edgar was spinning in his grave.
They sat on a bench near the ping pong tables. She took his hand and squeezed.
“Tell me you’re back for good,” he said.
“Working on it.”
“Work faster.” He tried to make it sound less desperate than it came off. “How long can you stay?”
She was slow to answer. “That’s up in the air. I came back to tie up loose ends.”
“Like a proper goodbye to your man.”
She squeezed harder. “I hope it’s not goodbye.”
An errant shot sailed toward them. He pulled his hand free, caught the ping pong ball in midair, and tossed it back. The break loosened his tongue. “The ball’s in your court. I can tell that you want to say something. Now is not the time to hold back.”
She looked away. “How’s the Fine case coming?”
Her attempt to pass off the question as idle chatter backfired. Cash’s senses sharpened, as did his tone. “Who wants to know?”
“Who doesn’t?” She was a good actor, but not that good. Not when reciting lines fed to her.
“Were you brought back to pump me about Fine?”
The question hung in the air for an eternity. She shook her head. “I’m here to find out what La Tigra will do. Specifically, if she’ll take the deal we offered. It’s her only chance to stay alive.”
Cash sighed. Another scripted line that needed work.
“And if you can sell me on selling her?” he said.
“I return to Dallas.”
And to me.
“And to you.” As if she had read his mind.
“If you can’t close the deal….”
“It’s back to Bismarck,” she said.
While he wondered how far she would go to end her exile, a small drone darted among the kites and Frisbees in the crowded sky. It swooped down and hovered over them.
In the struggle for Maggie’s soul, the score now stood: Bureau two, Cash zero.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Uh-oh. This can’t be good.
Federal Judge Anna Tapia had summoned Cash. His last trip to her chambers had ended with a night in lockup for contempt of court. Not that he looked forward to another visit to the Graybar Hotel, but after two years in a federal prison, he could do twenty-four hours in jail standing on his head.
“Thank you for coming, Cash.” She sounded semi-sincere and looked almost happy to see him. Up close and without the black robe, she seemed smaller, more fragile. The lines flaring from the corners of her eyes ran longer and deeper.
His threat alarm spiked. Not only had she called him by his first name, but she had also thanked him. Could the apocalypse be far behind?
The western motif of her chambers reinforced her well-earned nickname: The Hanging Judge. A stuffed palomino stood guard by the door. A framed display of cattle brands staked claim to the northern wall. Her black Stetson hung on the top rung of a wooden hat rack, with a coiled rope a peg below.
“Do you know why I asked you to come?” she said.
Funny, it hadn’t felt like a request.
Never did when coming from a judge with lifetime tenure and the U.S. Marshal under her thumb.
“Let me guess,” he said. “To express how much you’ve missed having me in your courtroom, while I was away in Seagoville.”
Laughter shook her to the brink of tears. “Never lose that sense of humor.” She paused to catch her breath. “I sent for you because….” Another pause, longer than the first. “Well, it’s about Mister Goldberg.”
When she fell silent again, Cash filled the void. “He and I are no longer partners.”
“That’s the problem,” she said.
“For whom?”
“Most immediately, Fred Foster.”
“Who’s he?” Took Cash a few seconds to place the name. He would’ve snapped immediately if she’d spotted him the alias Freddy the Forger.
“He’s a defendant going to trial in my court next month,” she said, “with Mister Goldberg as his counsel.”
“Is Goldy flying solo?”
The judge nodded.
“I see how that could be a problem,” Cash said, “but fortunately, not mine.”
Tapia fiddled with the pen on her desk. Never before had Cash seen her struggle for words. Forced him to consider the possibility she might be human after all.
“It’s definitely an issue for me,” she said, “because I have to assure that Foster receives effective representation at trial. Over the past several weeks, Mister Goldberg has been in my court for various hearings, and it hasn’t gone well. While I should take him off the case, I fear that would kill him.”
Cash couldn’t contest that.
She went on. “Did you know that I lost my husband to Parkinson’s three years ago?”
Cash’s spine stiffened. Tapia was sharing something personal and painful, with him of all people. He nodded. Her husband’s descent into dementia had spurred the creation of a charitable foundation that bore his name.
“I watched him slip away, and it broke my heart.” She paused until Cash looked at her eyes, welling with tears.
“I see the same symptoms in Mister Goldberg,” she said.
Damn. Cash had spent years trying to deny those symptoms. She had shaken his belief that Goldy would live forever, or at least outlive him.
