The Eye of the Tigress

by Paul Coggins

  “Any higher-ups with the cojones to green light this disaster in the making,” Gina said, “would have to be in a position to deny any knowledge of it, if things went south. Make that, when things go south.”

  Cash perked up at the first positive sign of the morning. Gina had made the telltale leap from trashing his plan to tweaking it.

  Leroy belched. “Got any more chocolate croissants?”

  Okay, with Leroy, maybe Cash had shot too low.

  ***

  Cash ended the meeting without a clue whether the “Great Cuban Getaway” had legs. He ended the day still up in the air, this time literally. The lone passenger on the FBI’s private jet, bound for Quantico—the bound part, not literal.

  The next morning, he sat across the table from FBI Director Danfield. Scores of photos featuring Danfield with a rogues’ gallery of politicians plastered the office walls, confirming Cash’s worst fears about the director and the pols.

  Danfield’s eyes bounced between Cash and the bank of TVs bracketed to the wall, each muted and tuned to a cable news station. His back to the TVs, Cash caught the reflection of Wolf Blitzer in the director’s reading glasses.

  “Been to Quantico before?” Danfield said.

  “Once. When I was an AUSA, four of us front-line prosecutors were flown here to play the hostages in a rescue scenario.”

  “How did that go?”

  “Not well,” Cash said. “When the HRT commander heard that the hostages were lawyers, he said ‘fuck it’ and left us up shit creek.”

  Bureau humor. Danfield cracked a rare smile.

  “When is the A.G. getting here?” Cash said.

  Danfield stopped smiling. “You deal with me.”

  Cash had a bad feeling about doing business with the director but didn’t have time to hold out for the boss lady. “I take it that you’ve heard my offer.”

  “More of a joke than an offer,” Danfield said. “Why would we reward a mass murderer with a Cuban vacation?”

  “For starters,” Cash said, “the offer on the table involves safe passage and a soft landing for my client and her daughter. And question number one is, can you make it happen?”

  Cash’s gambit banked on Danfield’s god complex. No way would he admit there was anything beyond his powers.

  “I can make it happen,” the director said.

  “Then we have something to talk about.”

  Danfield’s eyes locked on the TVs. The color drained from his face. “If this is your idea of bringing more leverage to the bargaining table, I’ll see to it that you spend the rest of your sorry life in Leavenworth.”

  Cash wheeled around. All four screens carried the “Breaking News” banner, with a crawl below that read: Bombings on the Border.

  Danfield unmuted CNN, catching Blitzer mid-story. “…rocking El Paso and Juárez. There are twenty-nine confirmed deaths so far, with hundreds missing. We will bring you more details as they develop.”

  Cash turned away from the TVs. The bombings couldn’t have come at a worse time.

  Nor a better one.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  The fog of war obscured who had fired the first shot. Or in this case, who had detonated the first bomb.

  According to CNN, neither cartel claimed credit for a cross-border body count that had climbed into triple digits. Both governments vowed a crackdown, as if they meant it.

  Danfield aborted the meeting and booted Cash from Quantico. In a close call, the director decided against holding him for questioning. Bigger fish in the cesspool.

  Danfield commandeered the Bureau jet, forcing Cash to fly home on his own nickel. He returned to Dallas more uncertain than ever, not knowing whether the bombings helped or hurt La Tigra’s chances of relocating to Cuba.

  Time ticking, he was torn over whether to devote his final days to working on the queenpin’s great escape or cracking the mystery of Martin Biddle’s hanging. Odds were stacked against doing either, much less both.

  Before it was too late, he owed it to Bettina Biddle to share his suspicions with her. After he was gone, perhaps she could persuade another knight to take up the quest.

  He tracked down Bettina at the Chuck E. Cheese on Mortfort Drive in North Dallas, where her twins were on a sugar high, celebrating one of the dozen or so birthday parties rocking the place. With kids running wild from table to table and game to game, it was impossible to tell where one party ended and the next began.

  The decibel level in the madhouse induced migraines. It had to be quieter on the border, bombings and all.

  Bettina held court among a cluster of women. She looked relaxed in sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt that read: World’s Okayest Mom. She rushed to Cash and gave him an awkward hug.

  “What are you doing here?” She broke the embrace. “Poor boy, you’re wasting away. How about a slice of pizza?”

  Lip reading allowed him to catch her every other word. He shouted over the tumult. “Let’s go outside.”

  She nodded and handed him a slice of pepperoni pizza on a paper plate. Grease soaked through to his palm. “Can they legally call this pizza?” he said. On the way out, he took a bite and trashed the rest.

  The hum of traffic on Montfort settled his nerves, though his ears still rang and the cardboard taste lingered. “Do you actually like the food here?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Despite coming to countless parties here, I’ve never had the courage to try it. You’re my guinea pig.” She laughed. “But if you weren’t a confirmed bachelor before, I’m sure you are now.”

  He looked her in the eye. “You might be surprised.”

  She blushed. “Why are you here?” Her tone turned serious. “Did you find out something about Marty?”

  He nodded but held off speaking until a gaggle of incoming kids moved out of earshot. “Rhoden sold your husband down the river.”

  “I never trusted him.”

  “For good reason,” Cash said. “But I’m no longer sure that a cartel took Rhoden out.”

  Her brow furrowed. The wheels were turning in her head. “Do you think his murder had some connection to Marty?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, “but one thing is clear. Rhoden’s not the only bent lawyer in the picture.”

  Bettina’s eyes darted back and forth between him and the restaurant entrance. “I want to hear it all, but my girls are bouncing off the walls in there. Do we have to do this now? Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? We can talk after I put the girls to bed.”

  Hard as it was to resist the invitation, he shook his head. Just as he didn’t know when the hit would take place, he didn’t know where. He couldn’t risk putting Bettina and the girls in the crossfire.

  “If it’s more money you need—”

  He cut her off. “It’s not money. It’s time.”

  “I thought that time was money for lawyers.”

  “Funny, but I always feared I’d run out of money before running out of time. Looks like it will be the other way around.”

  “You’re scaring me,” she said.

  “Good. Stay scared.”

  “If you need a place to crash,” she said, “we’ve got a guest bedroom. It’s nothing fancy, but you can stay as long as you like.”

  He shook his head, more forcefully this time. When the end came, her home was the last place on the planet he wanted to be. “I’ll make this quick and give you the condensed version of what I know.”

  She nodded.

  “All roads to and from Marty’s death lead to the law firm of Powell, Ingram & Gardner.” He stopped as more groups flocked to and from the building. “Let’s finish this in my car.”

  They sat in the Porsche, overshadowed by the SUVs parked on three sides. He kept the windows up and his voice down. “The Powell firm has represented Longhorn Investments from the beginning. Over the past two decades, it has billed the hedge fund tens of millions in fees.”

  Her eyes widened. “Mister Powell recommended that we hire Rhoden and sai
d the company would pay our legal fees.”

  Must’ve sounded like a good deal at the time. Now, not so much.

  “A pillar of the bar like Stewart Powell wouldn’t share the same elevator with a bottom feeder like Rhoden. That is, unless Mister High-and-Mighty needed an ethically challenged attorney to sit on your husband and send him to prison as a sacrificial lamb.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. “Are you saying Marty wasn’t guilty?”

  Cash faced a fork in what could be his final conversation with her. The safe path was to continue coddling the widow. The risky road involved taking a first step toward the truth. He took the risk. “Longhorn couldn’t have fudged the books without your husband’s knowledge and involvement. After all, he was the CFO.”

  That brought tears but no protest from her. He plowed on, trusting that she’d prove tougher than her petite frame suggested. “But there’s no way he carried out a fraud of this magnitude by himself, which is how the law firm pitched the criminal case to the feds and how things played out in court.”

  Her mouth dropped open, but no words fell out. He filled the silence. “Federal prosecutors charge conspiracy at the drop of a hat. Why no conspiracy count here? Why didn’t the feds indict others with your husband? Why did he fade the heat alone?”

  She shook her head. Tears flowed freely now.

  “Here’s how I think it went down,” he said. “Powell’s firm handled the internal investigation of Longhorn, which conveniently pointed the finger at Marty but cleared everyone else of wrongdoing. The whitewash worked because Powell’s daughter happens to be the United States Attorney in Dallas, putting her in a perfect position to rubber-stamp the findings of Daddy’s firm.”

  She grabbed his arm. “Can you prove this?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  Maybe not ever.

  He went on. “Step one would be getting our hands on the report Powell’s firm prepared and turned over to the feds. Dollars to donuts, I could blow holes in it. I almost had it, but my mole inside the firm got caught and fired.”

  She squeezed his arm. He couldn’t have broken her grip. Not that he wanted to.

  “You will keep trying?” Her voice cracked. “My girls will grow up knowing their father died in prison. They shouldn’t be tortured by the belief he took his own life.”

  “I’ll see this through to the end.” He didn’t say what end.

  Or whose.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Cash’s farewell tour moved to a private dining room at Ocean Prime in Uptown Dallas, where he gathered the trial team. Goldy, Eva, and Tina arrived in that order and in varying moods, like three of the seven dwarfs: Grumpy, Sleepy, and Happy.

  Not that anyone would confuse Cash with Snow White.

  He lifted his wine glass. “To my mentor and the finest standup lawyer I’ve ever known, Gary Goldberg. A good gunslinger wins a string of shootouts, but when you’re one of the greats, like Goldy, the bad guys don’t dare draw on you.”

  Goldy looked around the room. “What the hell’s going on here? Whenever you say something nice about me….” He paused. “Hey, wait a sec. You’ve never said anything nice about me.”

  “That’s not true.” Cash rummaged through his memory for an example of public praise but found none. “I’ve complimented you countless times. Granted, in the past it’s always been out of your earshot. Tonight I’m saying it to your face.”

  “About time,” Eva said. “And speaking of time, why are we wasting ours here, when we should be at the office prepping for trial?”

  “Glad you brought that up,” Cash said. “It’s one of the things we’re celebrating tonight. While we still have Freddy the Forger on the docket, Fine is on the verge of receiving pretrial diversion.”

  “Is that like probation?” Tina said.

  “Better.” Cash killed a bottle of an excellent Hall Cabernet on three glasses at the table. He bypassed Goldy’s glass, which Eva had filled with Perrier. “Probation means either you pled guilty or were found guilty by a jury. With pretrial diversion, however, if Fine keeps his nose clean a year or so, the feds flush the indictment. No conviction, no prison time, no supervised release. Bottom line, it’s a no brainer.”

  “You’re delusional if you think Fine will get a walk” Goldy said. “Pretrial diversion is reserved for pissants who commit pissant offenses, not co-conspirators to major crimes like sex trafficking and money laundering.”

  “First time for everything.” Cash sipped the cab. No one followed his lead. “And all we have to do to secure a sweetheart deal for Fine is to end a cartel war, by whisking La Tigra to safety in Cuba.”

  That got Goldy drinking. He killed the glass in three gulps. “I’m going to need something stronger.”

  Eva slapped the table with both palms, rattling the dishes. “I’ve been busting my ass to get us ready for back-to-back trials, working twenty-four seven.” The bags under her eyes backed up her claim. “This is information I could’ve used weeks ago.”

  “I didn’t have the offer nailed down then,” Cash said. “Didn’t get the client’s signoff until yesterday.”

  “Is she in Cuba now?” Goldy’s tone suggested he knew the answer.

  Cash shook his head. “Still waiting for the green light from the feds.”

  “Then tonight’s celebration is premature,” Eva said. “How many great deals have we put together for clients, only to see them fall apart at the eleventh hour?”

  Cash couldn’t dispute that. Nor could he level with them on why he had jumped the gun on the closing dinner. The deadline imposed by Los Lobos to turn over La Tigra loomed, now only two days away. There were loose ends to tie up, and he might not be around to finish the job.

  Make that, the jobs.

  Solving the mystery of Biddle’s death topped Cash’s to do list. He couldn’t shake the belief that if only he’d filed Marty’s appeal sooner….

  “I owe it to Biddle’s family to look into how he died,” Cash said, “and why.”

  “I’m in,” Eva said.

  Tina nodded.

  Goldy pushed away from the table. “As the lone adult in the room, allow me to remind everyone that we can’t afford to get sucked into another one of Cash’s charity cases.”

  “What’s the matter, old man?” Cash said. “You afraid to tangle with a highflying hedge fund, the most powerful law firm in Texas, and the United States Attorney in Dallas?”

  “Son, at my age, the only things left to fear are—”

  Cash interrupted him, having heard the line a thousand times. “Are losing your car keys and running into a coven of your exes.”

  Still, it was a good line.

  Cash shared with the team his suspicions about Biddle’s death. He detailed everything. Stewart Powell’s hiring of the sleazebag Rhoden to represent the sacrificial CFO. Jenna Powell’s failure to recuse herself from the case and complicity in the cover-up. The whole father-daughter connection stank to the heavens.

  Goldy’s scowl signaled that he wasn’t sold. “Do you have any proof of this wild-ass theory?”

  Eva beat Cash to the punch. “How about the fact that Powell’s firm fired me for trying to get my hands on the report of its internal investigation of Longhorn Investments?”

  Goldy turned to Eva. “Did you actually see the report?”

  She shook her head.

  “Which means we don’t know what’s in it or even who saw it.” Goldy crossed his arms at his chest. “For all we know, the feds might’ve sent it straight to the shredder, where it probably belonged.”

  Cash waved down the waiter and ordered another bottle of the 2015 Kathryn Hall cab. “The reason I summoned you here….” After a long pause, he resumed in a softer voice. “If something were to happen to me—”

  It was Goldy’s turn to cut him off. “Nothing’s going to happen to you.”

  Good old Goldy. In his world, no one gets to predecease him.

  “But say I were to be hit by a bus or dev
elop an incurable case of amnesia,” Cash said, “I don’t want to take my suspicions to the grave.”

  Eva stood, wine glass raised high. “All in favor of getting to the bottom of Biddle’s death, say aye.”

  On the first ballot, Goldy got outvoted three to one. The old man was on a losing streak.

  ***

  Goldy, Eva, and Tina left the private dining room at Ocean Prime in the same order as their arrival. While Cash nursed an after-dinner drink, Tina circled back and closed the door behind her.

  “Forget something?” he said.

  “No, but you did. The official ruling on Biddle’s death was suicide, right?”

  He nodded.

  “Tonight you laid out the case for murder, but you failed to present the evidence for suicide.”

  The cognac left a bitter aftertaste. “There’s something about Biddle I haven’t told the others. Not even his widow. Especially not her.” He closed his eyes. “My other cellmate at Seagoville, a brute called Big Black, terrorized Marty. When the mood hit, he forced the poor boy to wear a wig, makeup, and lingerie. He made Marty his bitch.”

  “And you’re sharing this with me and not the others because…?”

  Her question caught Cash off guard. He thought the answer obvious. “Well, you being transgender and him being…more or less in the same boat…sort of.”

  She sighed loudly. “What you don’t know about the transgender community could fill the Grand Canyon. For starters, based on what you’ve told me, Biddle wasn’t transgender. I’m a trans woman, which means I identify as a woman. In contrast, a predator forced Biddle to cross-dress. But unless you know something about him that I don’t, he never stopped identifying as a man.”

  “Big Black robbed him of that identity.”

  “So your alternative theory is that Biddle hung himself, because he couldn’t handle the abuse and shame.”

  He nodded.

  She picked up his glass and polished off the cognac. Her hand shook as she put down the glass. “Remember the first time you represented me for soliciting?”