by Mike Lawson
Finally, one night, she said to Bill, “Maybe we’re just going to have to disappear this guy.”
“What do you mean?” Bill said.
“What do you think I mean, Bill?”
“No way. I’m not going to end up doing life in fucking Minnesota if we get caught.”
“Bill,” Ella said, “we’re looking at losing a million bucks if this guy testifies.”
That was the deal they’d made with the defendant’s lawyer: They’d been paid a million up front, but wouldn’t be paid the other million until the evidence disappeared and they could guarantee that the witness wouldn’t testify.
“I don’t care,” Bill said.
Well, Ella sure as hell cared. A million was a million—it wasn’t chicken feed—and the way Bill spent money, they would need it. But she didn’t say anything to him. So while he spent more time trying to find an angle he could use to blackmail the witness, Ella decided to deal with the problem on her own.
The witness was a health nut, and every day at six a.m. he went for a four-mile run. Since Bill and Ella had been watching him for months, Ella knew the exact route he took. The first thing she did was steal a car. A swanky restaurant she and Bill often went to provided valet service for customers’ cars, and the valet put the keys in a little box outside the restaurant. When a car would drive up, the valet would park the car in a garage across the street from the restaurant, but he didn’t lock the box where the keys were stored.
So Ella stood outside the restaurant one cold night wearing a wig and a ski jacket with a hood, and when the valet left to park a car, she took the keys for a car he’d already parked. The next morning, driving her stolen car at sixty miles an hour, she simply ran the witness down; it was still dark outside, and there wasn’t a soul around. She then dumped the car in the parking lot of a large hotel—and that was that.
Bill was furious. He ranted and raved, and after he stopped ranting, he didn’t talk to her for almost two weeks. But eventually he got over it and they made their entire two-million-dollar fee—which Bill invested and lost in the Florida land deal.
There were times when she just felt like strangling Bill.
17
Now all Ella could do was wait and see what happened with Esther; if nothing did after a month or two, she’d have to come up with a Plan B. But since the trial was scheduled to start in a month and a half, she needed more time.
She texted David Slade: Get a 3 month delay.
Slade responded immediately, as if he’d been holding the phone in his hand. We need to meet!! Ella smiled at the double exclamation points. She imagined by now that Slade must be feeling anxious, not knowing what she was doing, and with the trial so close.
She texted: There’s no need to meet. Things are going well. Just get me 3 months. We’ll meet soon.
We need to meet now!
No. Not yet.
She didn’t even like texting Slade, much less meeting with him. She wanted as little contact as possible to minimize the chance that anyone would discover they were working together.
Ella texted: Be patient. And trust me. I know what I’m doing. Then she turned off the phone.
David Slade met with His Honor Albert Martinez and ADA Justine Porter and requested that the trial be moved three months to the right. Justine had been anticipating this and was not the least bit surprised. In fact, she’d been expecting Slade to ask for a much longer delay. She felt compelled, however, to play her part in the drama of the American legal system, and pretended to be outraged that Slade had waited until now to ask the court to change its calendar. “I strenuously object, Your Honor,” she said.
Before Justine had a chance to explain why she objected—strenuously or otherwise—Slade said, “Your Honor, I need this time in order for my client to be able to participate in his own defense, which, as you know, is his constitutional right. You see, Your Honor—and I certainly hope that this information doesn’t leave this room—Toby Rosenthal has been drinking quite heavily, which is somewhat understandable considering the stress he’s under. He hasn’t been coping well at all, Judge, and his father and I have convinced him he needs to admit himself to Glendon Hills for treatment. In the condition he’s in right now, Your Honor, there’s simply no way he’ll be able to participate at trial, and I certainly can’t ask him to testify, which I was planning to do.”
Glendon Hills was a rehab facility that catered to upper-crust drunks and dopers. And what Slade had told the judge was mostly true. He had no intention of allowing Toby to testify at his trial—that was just something he’d tossed out to confuse Justine Porter—but Toby really had been drinking like a fish. He’d stopped going to work—which was fine with Henry Rosenthal, as he didn’t want his son hanging around his law office while wearing a GPS anklet. All Toby did all day was drink and mope. He was supposed to be preparing for his second try at the bar exam, but all he could think about was what was going to happen to him in prison. The kid was a wreck. So Slade convinced Henry to force Toby to go into rehab. He did this primarily so he could delay the trial, but he also did it so there would be less chance of Toby doing something stupid before the trial.
Slade didn’t expect Martinez to have any objection to his request, and a three-month delay was hardly excessive. What Slade didn’t realize was that Martinez—like a number of his black-robed brethren—was tired of defense attorneys delaying trials. Sometimes trials were delayed for years, not months, and delaying a murder trial two or three years was not at all uncommon. In fact, it had become the norm. But Martinez had had enough. When you delay a trial for months or years, all sorts of things can happen, and most of them aren’t good: Witnesses die or get ill or they move and can’t be located. Cops, prosecutors, and public defenders retire or resign. Evidence gets lost or destroyed. And two or three years after an event occurs, how well can anyone really remember what happened?
“How long will Mr. Rosenthal be in the clinic for treatment?” Martinez asked.
“What?” Slade said. He knew the answer; he just hadn’t been expecting the question.
“I asked, how long will Mr. Rosenthal be required to remain at Glendon Hills? And before you answer, Mr. Slade, I want you to know that a niece of mine was admitted there when she became addicted to painkillers a few years ago.”
“The normal inpatient stay at the clinic is twenty-five days, Your Honor,” Slade said. “But it could take longer in Toby’s case. Each patient is different, and you never can tell. And then there are follow-up sessions, meetings with counselors, those sorts of thing. So I believe that a three-month delay—”
“I’ll give you two months,” Martinez said, “which means the trial starts three and a half months from today. If your client isn’t sober by then, he probably never will be.”
Slade couldn’t believe it. This was terrible. He could have used a dozen other reasons for delaying the trial, and if he had known that Martinez was going to pull this bullshit, he would have used one of them.
Ella saw that she had a text message from Slade. More exclamation points.
The judge wouldn’t grant a 3 month delay! He only granted 60 days! The trial is set for September 17th.
Ella texted back: This is unacceptable. Do your damn job!
She’d never expected this. From everything she’d read about him, she’d thought that Slade was a better-than-average lawyer. But there was no point in stewing over his incompetence. She needed to keep moving forward.
While waiting for Esther’s new medications to do their job, Ella began working on the next witness: the busboy, Edmundo Ortiz. Ella had been hoping to learn that Edmundo was an illegal immigrant, which would have made things simple: She would have threatened to call ICE if he didn’t decide to take a long vacation, one that would last until after Toby Rosenthal’s trial. She was unhappy to learn from the Dallas data miners that Edmundo, after spending eleven years in the United States, was a newly minted U.S. citizen.
The data miners told her one oth
er thing that was important. Edmundo’s wife was dead—she’d died five years ago; some lymph cancer thing—and based on the records they’d obtained, Edmundo now lived alone. But his credit card statements showed that Edmundo purchased Pampers and baby formula and shopped at places that sold clothes for toddlers. Ella needed to take a closer look at Edmundo’s living situation.
Since Edmundo lived in a public housing project—one in which white, blond Ella would tend to stand out if she started asking questions—and because she didn’t speak Spanish, as many of the tenants in the project did, Ella hired a Spanish-speaking private detective. Two days later, the detective informed her that Edmundo lived with his daughter and her two kids, who’d somehow made it from Honduras to New York. The daughter’s husband—Edmundo’s son-in-law—had come to the United States with his wife and kids, but one day he was grabbed in an immigration roundup and shipped back to Honduras. Ella imagined that Edmundo was now doing whatever he could to reunite his son-in-law with his family—not that she really cared. What she cared about was that Edmundo was most likely fearful that his daughter and grandkids could be deported just like his son-in-law.
Ella thought about using this information to force Edmundo to leave—telling him that if he didn’t catch the next Greyhound out of town, she was going to make sure that his wetback daughter and her babies were deported. But she decided that this tactic could backfire on her if Edmundo got an immigration lawyer involved—which was why she decided to call an old friend in Seattle.
When she and Bill had lived in Seattle after they first got married—because of the case involving the Microsoft rapist—they’d rented a penthouse apartment with a view of the Olympic Mountains and Elliott Bay, and became good friends with the couple who owned the only other penthouse apartment in their building. Anyway, the man—his name was Shearson—was involved in the maritime business in a major way. He had a fleet of tugboats that pushed cargo ships around Puget Sound and a dozen oceangoing boats that fished for crab in the Bering Sea. He’d also just acquired a couple of drilling platforms that sucked oil from the ocean floor when they weren’t being harassed by environmentalist nuts. After they left Seattle, Bill and Ella had kept in touch with the Shearsons—Christmas cards, a phone call now and then—and once when they took an Alaska cruise that departed from Seattle, they spent a few days with the couple, rekindling their friendship.
So Ella called Shearson. She didn’t tell him she was no longer with Bill; she said that Bill was working out in New York and doing fine and that if he hadn’t been so busy he would have called himself. Shearson knew that Bill was some kind of legal consultant, but that’s about all he knew because Bill was such a master at talking a lot while never really saying much about what he did. After Ella chatted with Shearson for a while, asking him how the wife and kids were doing, she told him that she and Bill had met this absolutely marvelous man in New York named Edmundo Ortiz.
She told Shearson that Edmundo was a busboy at a restaurant they frequented, and that she and Bill came to know him because one time Ella lost a diamond earring at the restaurant and Edmundo found it. He could have pawned the earring—Lord knows he could have used the money—but being as honest as the day is long, he returned it to Ella. After that, she and Bill talked to Edmundo every time they went to the restaurant, learned about his family, his background, that sort of thing. Well, a couple of days ago, Ella noticed that Edmundo looked depressed, not at all his normal, cheerful self. When she asked him if something was wrong, he said that he’d witnessed a drug dealer who lived in his housing project kill a man. Edmundo, being a good citizen, told the cops and the drug dealer was arrested, but now Edmundo had a serious problem: The drug dealer’s pals were going to kill him before the trial.
“Geez, that’s awful,” Shearson said.
“Yes, it really is,” Ella said. “He’s such a lovely man, and he’s the sole source of support for his widowed daughter and her two little kids.”
Ella had decided that making the daughter a widow might provide an extra tug on Shearson’s heartstrings.
“Bill did a little research on the drug dealer, and he’s convinced that Edmundo’s right, that the guy will have him killed before he’s able to testify.”
“Geez,” Shearson said again.
“What Bill and I were wondering was if you could give Edmundo a job on one of your ships. He’s a hell of a cook—he was trained as a chef.”
This was actually true. The Dallas data miners had learned about Edmundo’s culinary education because Edmundo had filled out dozens of online applications trying to find work as a cook before he’d settled for busing tables.
Ella said, “We were wondering if you could give him a job on one of your fishing boats where he’d be gone for six months or so. In other words, Edmundo would disappear before the trial started, and these drug dealers would never find him if he was at sea. Then, after the trial’s over, you could either keep him on or let him go, though I think you’ll want to keep him because he’s such a hard worker. But the thing is, if you hire him, you have to pay him in cash and make sure there aren’t any records the drug dealers can trace. Bill said these people are connected to a big Mexican cartel and they’re really sophisticated.”
Shearson, with hardly any hesitation, agreed to help poor Edmundo. He liked being part of a drama, hiding a witness from an evil drug cartel. And he liked Ella. Now Ella just had to tell Edmundo that he was about to become a seafaring man.
Ella waited until Edmundo left McGill’s one night; the poor guy worked until two in the morning. As he was dragging his weary brown ass toward the subway station, she walked up beside him. She wore a trench coat with the collar turned up, an auburn wig, and dark-framed glasses—although she wasn’t particularly worried about him identifying her.
“Edmundo, we’re going over to that coffee shop and have a chat,” she said.
“What?” he said. “Who are you?”
“I’m your fairy godmother. Or the wicked witch. It all depends on you.”
“What?” he said again.
The guy could barely speak English; she needed to stop trying to be cute. “Edmundo, if you don’t do what I want, your daughter and your grandkids are going to be sent back to Honduras.”
“I’m an American citizen,” he said.
“So what? All that means is that you can be sent to jail for harboring illegal aliens. Let’s go have a cup of coffee. I’m buying.”
He followed Ella to an open-all-night restaurant, head down, looking like a sheep being led to an abattoir.
“Ed,” Ella said, “in two days—two days should be plenty of time for you to pack—you, your daughter, and your grandkids are going to get on a bus for Seattle, Washington. You’re not going to tell anyone you’re leaving. You are not going to fly or take a train.”
“What are you talking about?” Edmundo said.
Ella ignored his confusion and from her trench coat pulled out an envelope bulging with cash. The bills stuffed in the envelope were plainly visible, and she doubted the busboy had ever seen that much money all in one place before. “In that envelope are two things, Ed. First, there’s ten thousand dollars in cash. Relocation expenses.” Ella figured that Henry Rosenthal could afford to be generous. “The other thing is the name of a man and a phone number. You’ll call that man when you arrive in Seattle—he’s expecting your call—and he’ll help you find a place for your daughter and your grandkids to live. Then you’re going to get on a ship and disappear until after the Rosenthal trial.
“You see, we’ve gotten you a great job, Ed. You’re going to be a cook on a fishing boat, which pays a hell of a lot better than being a busboy, and as I understand it, you get a bonus depending on how much fish they catch.
“So if you do what we want, you get a great job, you can provide better for your family, and you can stop doing shitty work like busing tables. But if you don’t get on a bus to Seattle, your daughter and her babies are going to be tossed into a detention cente
r and shipped back to that hellhole called Honduras.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” Edmundo asked.
“Because we don’t want you to testify at the Rosenthal trial. And listen carefully, Ed: We’ll know if you talk to anybody about the conversation we’ve had tonight. We’ll know if you don’t arrive in Seattle. We’ll know if you try to hide your daughter and your grandkids.”
She kept saying “we” because she wanted Edmundo to imagine an army of people in trench coats, watching and eavesdropping.
“And think about this, Ed: You’re only one of five witnesses, and all you saw was a guy run past you. There are four other people who can testify who saw much more than you did, so your testimony isn’t really needed anyway.”
This was something she’d learned from Bill: Give a witness a chance to rationalize that his testimony isn’t important.
“So if you do what we want, you get ten grand and a great job. But I’m telling you—I’m not bullshitting you, Ed—that if you don’t disappear from New York in two days and if you show up for the Rosenthal trial, we’re going to destroy your fucking family.”
Ella laid a small white hand on one of Edmundo’s hard brown ones. “This is a good thing, Ed. Don’t look so glum.”
After Ella was sure Edmundo knew everything he needed to know and what to do—like ditching his cell phone and not using his credit cards—she rose to leave, then stopped, pulled a twenty out of a pocket, and handed it to him.
