Compromised

by James R. Scarantino

  Benny Silva picked up the phone and dialed the other number that was on the slip of paper with the information for the guy who had ordered the dumpster for his mobile home park. He had not given that number to Detective Aragon.

  He was seeing Detective Aragon as the girl who came into his grocery store with her father. Before the muscles. Beautiful, long black hair back then. It shined in the light. He knew some of the hard-working people she’d put away since she’d turned cop. They were only doing what they’d always done, making a living, providing, in the world they’d been handed, and taking it from there. She was the one seeing a problem with the way things were.

  He called that other number, the deadbeat’s lawyer, and left the second message with her receptionist, a polite girl, called him sir. First time he’d called, they’d talked about more than the money he was owed. He knew her grandmother, a Gabaldon from the Pueblo Alegre neighborhood, not too far from La Tiendita. The receptionist sympathized with him. He took a person’s word, provided a service, held up his end of the deal, and now he’s not getting paid.

  She had asked, what’s wrong with people?

  That’s what he wanted to know.

  After that call he took a prepaid cell phone from his desk and called another number he kept to himself. It rang eight times before he got an answer.

  “This is Judge Diaz.”

  He knew the girl in the picture Detective Aragon had showed him. Judge Diaz did, too.

  “Time you did the rest of what we agreed,” he said. “Your little friend, she’s dead. This can get worse fast unless you make it better quick.”

  Six

  Marcy Thornton read the note from her receptionist. Mr. Benny Silva had again called, wanting payment for the dumpster delivered to Narciso Morales’s Plaza Contenta mobile home park. Thornton and Associates had been representing Morales since he got popped using empty mobile homes as addresses for social security checks for dead people. Then Santa Fe code inspectors found living tenants, senior citizens, giving Narciso their checks to cash, pay rent and utilities, buy groceries, their medicine and stool softener, sharing their rooms with rats.

  Morales had told Silva his lawyer would take care of things while he was in jail. But he’d left no funds to cover bills. He hadn’t even paid his own legal expenses—postage, the copying charges for briefs she’d filed trying to keep him at liberty while she appealed his case. Thornton had stopped giving him copies. If he wanted reading material to fill his quiet hours in jail, he could get her paid up. Certainly no way she was covering his dumpster service out of her retainer.

  She’d win his case in the Court of Appeals, where classmates from the University of New Mexico Law School sat on the bench. Then he’d tell her she’d had an easy job because he’d been innocent all along and he’d want a refund. He was that kind of client.

  She kicked off her heels and leaned back in the big chair, her feet on her mahogany desk. Across the room the sofa was empty, a bottle of Montclaire’s nail polish still there on the coffee table. The cops had her somewhere, prying information to bring down Judy Diaz. She should be filled with fury, her mind busy working on ways to destroy Lily so she’d be laughed off the stand when it came to that. Instead, she wished Lily was filling that sofa, her skirt pulled up her long legs, long arms reaching for her feet. What would be today’s color? Lily changed toenail shades constantly. They’d chat about last night. Maybe it would have been a celebration here in the office, getting drunk over kicking the DA’s butt again. Lily finding someone to include in the fun. At the front end of middle age, Lily still scored some beautiful young men. One or two maybe you could call boys, no facial hair yet roughing their cheeks. And the girls. Lily always found them, even on short notice.

  Like Andrea.

  There had been lots of parties. The practice had taken off after the Geronimo case. Sure, he got killed. But since he didn’t live to be tried she could still brag she’d never lost a case. Bad-ass Marcy Thornton: the worse the crime, the more she shined. Clients had poured in. She’d robbed two lawyers from the Public Defender to help with the caseload.

  It wouldn’t last beyond this week. When word got out her investigator was talking to police, business would dry up. How could you trust a lawyer when her staff, people listening when you told it all, were spending their days in interrogation rooms?

  Her secretary, a bright young thing out of Northern New Mexico Community College, brought in a message that Judge Diaz was holding. Maybe it was time to test the Bright Young Thing’s views on office parties while there might be something left to celebrate. Thornton tried to see her on the sofa in Lily’s place but it didn’t work. Too much sunshine and innocence. She said close the door behind you, and picked up the phone.

  “I need to see you,” Diaz said.

  “I was just there. What’s up?”

  “Not chambers. Our park. Now.”

  Thornton had seen the judge’s docket. She had motion hearings until five. She should be on the bench right now.

  On the way out, she instructed her secretary to cancel the day’s appointments. This might take a while.

  Her Aston was parked in the lot she’d once shared with Fager. Since he’d been disbarred he hadn’t needed the parking. He kept one space for his black Mercedes and leased the rest of his share to the Tamarind Wellness Center of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine with its back doors the other side of the alley.

  Thornton pulled onto Paseo de Peralta, her driveway directly across from the Roundhouse, the Capitol building, and swung east. She detoured to drive past Montclaire’s home on one of the smaller hills overlooking downtown. Lily’s BMW was in the drive in the spot where it had been yesterday. A newspaper lay on the door step. The landscaping, sparse by design, was dying, turning the same brown as the cracked adobe townhome.

  She drove on past, wondering where the police were keeping Lily.

  She took residential streets to the ball field, empty except for kids tossing Frisbees. When Judy had said “our park,” Thornton knew she meant this place, Old Fort Marcy Park, the site of a US Army outpost during the war with Mexico, now acres of grass ringed by trees.

  Choosing this place meant something.

  They had come here their first year in a law school, three carloads up from Albuquerque for the burning of Zozobra, Old Man Gloom, the opening of the Fiesta since the 1920s now morphed into a mad, drunken blowout. Thornton had never seen anything like it. Nighttime, the mountains a black silhouette against the stars, a figure of wood and paper and cloth three stories high swaying and groaning, a tape recorder pushing a deep male voice through hidden speakers. A couple thousand drunks spread on the lawn. Dope hung in the air. A flare sparked, flames climbed the figure’s robe, the groaning grew louder, someone somewhere amping the sound. The crowd was crazy before. Now they went insane, leaping to their feet, punching the air, screaming “Burn him! Burn him!”

  Flames licked the monster’s head, its eyes ignited, the skull exploded in a fireball.

  Judy Diaz was all over her, pulling her down to the blanket in the grass, legs and feet all around them, an empty bottle digging into her kidney, Judy’s hands moving under her shirt, lips smashing hers.

  They discovered they liked getting drunk and screwing. They still did. It was just more complicated now.

  Diaz rolled up. Thornton knew she would find her. The Aston was hard to miss.

  “Let’s walk,” the judge said when she opened the door to her car. She popped an Altoid in her mouth.

  They moved toward the ball field. Diaz caught her foot on something. Thornton steadied her. They stopped under cottonwoods ready to dump their fluff.

  “I’m being blackmailed,” Diaz said. “I thought I could handle it. I was wrong.”

  “Say again. You’re being blackmailed?” Out of Diaz’s mouth it had been “backmailed.” The “let’s walk” had been “lezz walk.”


  “I got Andrea killed, thinking I could handle it. Now they’re tightening the screws. I got a call. On this cell phone they told me to carry. I don’t know who they are.” Diaz looked around the park.

  Thornton followed her gaze. “You think you’re being watched?”

  “I think so. I don’t know.”

  “Judy, you’ve been drinking. Middle of the day.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “We need to sit down.”

  They found a bench under a tree, no one nearby. Diaz ate another Altoid. Her hand trembled as it opened the tin.

  She said, “There was a photograph of Andrea inside my car, on the seat. And a cheap cell phone.”

  “Today?”

  “Months ago. A phone number on the back, a note saying I’d better call or this girl would be on television talking about me. I called. All they wanted was my personal e-mail. I started getting pictures of Andrea and me. Video clips. I got another note on my car seat to call on the cell phone. I didn’t. Then the pictures and videos started showing up in my office e-mail. Right there between e-mails from judges wanting another clerk, to switch from civil to the criminal docket—an attachment with Andrea in handcuffs.”

  She’d been doing well until she said, “civil.” It came out “shivil.” “Attachment” was “attashmun.”

  “These pictures, is anybody else in them?”

  Diaz shifted on the bench to face Thornton. “You, Lily. The three of us in my home with Andrea.”

  “Judy, you weren’t going to tell me?”

  “I thought I could handle it.”

  “You said that.”

  “I gave them a little. It stopped. Then they killed Andrea because I was dragging my feet.”

  Thornton was up, pacing, ignoring her heels sinking in the gravel path. She came back and sat next to Judge Diaz, now meeting her eyes, lost, helpless. Bloodshot. She took Diaz’s hands in hers. “Tell me what they want.”

  “I didn’t want to involve you.”

  “I’m in these home movies. They’ll be coming at me next.”

  “Maybe they don’t know … who you are.”

  “Maybe this is Lily working around the police,” Thornton said. “Playing them while she’s running her own thing. She met my clients. Car thieves who could get into a Lexus with no problem. A guy fighting with another guy over a porno website. This woman who ran an escort service who hired me on a consult. Shit, maybe that’s who set Lily up with Andrea. I want to see these videos. I want to see Andrea’s eyes—was she looking directly into the camera, like ‘are you getting this?’”

  Now it was Thornton scanning the park.

  “If they got into your car,” she said, “maybe they got into your house, planted cameras. Was there sound on these videos?”

  “I deleted them.”

  “What?” Thornton up again, her heels flipping under her, cursing, ripping them off, standing in nylons on the gravel.

  “I didn’t want them on my computer.”

  “You dumb bitch. Oh, jeez. I’m sorry.” She touched Diaz’s cheek. “Judy, the delete button doesn’t wipe them permanently. They’re in your computer, but not where we can learn anything from them.”

  “I don’t want to look at them again.”

  “You know what’s coming next? They sent it to your e-mail for a reason. You’ve got kiddie porn in your computers, especially your State of New Mexico computer in your office. They could have left photos, a zip drive, a CD, in your car. They wanted it on your computers.”

  Thornton pulled Diaz to her feet and caught the cinnamon heavy on her breath. “We’ve got a lot to go over,” she said. “Let’s go to my house, not my office. You don’t want to be seen going in there right now.”

  “You got anything to drink, or should we shtop shumwhere?”

  “We’ll stop at Starbucks.”

  “I throw them one case,” Judy Diaz said, on the sofa in Thornton’s living room, nursing a twenty-ounce cup of black coffee. “They’ll be back for more. They’ll own me.”

  Thornton put more cold cuts and cheese on the plate at Diaz’s elbow. She’d started feeding her as soon as they got in the house. It had helped sober her up.

  “Tell me about the case.”

  “It was civil. E. Benny Silva Enterprises against Jeremiah Kohn Productions.”

  “Shit, I know the plaintiff. He’s been calling me about a dumpster one of my clients rented.”

  “Has he said anything about, you know?”

  “No. What’s he suing Kohn for? He picked a fat target.”

  “He’s done suing. He got a nine million dollar jury verdict. A fire started in Kohn’s construction site and spread to a building next door that Silva owned. Inside was his daughter, sleeping. She was killed. The building destroyed. The claim was Kohn’s company hadn’t secured welding equipment. Some kids broke in and started the fire. The cause was undisputed, but the kids were never caught. Kohn didn’t put up much of a defense. Hardly any witnesses, and his case collapsed. The jury didn’t have a difficult job with the evidence.”

  “What’s this have to do with the blackmailers?”

  “I’m getting to that. Kohn filed a motion for a new trial, based on why his case collapsed. Witness intimidation, allegations a key eyewitness, a security guard, was murdered to keep him from testifying, destruction of evidence, jury tampering, etcetera.”

  “Pat Caudill presided. I remember it now.”

  “They wanted me to get Caudill off the case. He was troubled by what went on. He said a lot from the bench that showed he’d lost any impartiality. I was to persuade him to recuse himself. Mostly they wanted me to prevent him from entering findings of fact that couldn’t be overturned on appeal.”

  “They used those words, ‘findings of fact that couldn’t be overturned on appeal’?”

  “They did.”

  “Go on.”

  “I got Pat to step off the case. He stands a good chance being appointed to Court of Appeals and doesn’t need the fireworks. If the evidence of tampering is as strong as he believed, another judge will reach the same conclusion. I assured him that’s how I would rule.”

  “Would you?”

  “Pat needed to hear that.”

  “What happened to the motion?”

  “I haven’t reassigned the case yet. They want me to take it and find it baseless.”

  “You’re on the criminal docket.”

  “When we’re short judges, I can fill the gap. And we’re short judges. That’s how I got your case against Fager.”

  “You heard from them today?”

  “I’m sure they killed Andrea to force my hand. The video makes me a prime suspect. It comes out, I’ll be at the top of the list, a prominent public official with a motive to eliminate the witness who could bring her down.”

  Thornton had been writing questions while Diaz talked. She had one circled near the top of the page of her legal pad.

  “Was it Benny Silva who called you?”

  “I heard three voices. All men, different ages, if I had to guess. They disguised their voices, talking low and high, something over the phone, maybe a sock. The last call, telling me ‘your little friend is dead,’ that was an older man. Definitely Hispanic. Northern New Mexico. Not Mexican. He didn’t say lee-tool.”

  “Listen,” Thornton said, “you have to get rid of your computers. Office and home. Smash them, bury them in the desert. You don’t want what’s on there discovered by anybody.”

  “Court administration loses things all the time. But how do I explain losing a desktop? Something else just occurred to me. What if Fager’s behind this? Say he put one of his clients up to it. What he said in court today, he knows about Andrea.”

  “If Walt was blackmailing you he wouldn’t give out that information for free. He was just t
hrowing mud. He got it from Lily, I bet.”

  Thornton dug a note from her purse, picked up her phone, and dialed.

  “Who are you calling?” Diaz asked.

  “Time I returned Mr. Silva’s calls. Maybe pay my client’s bill in person to see who we’re dealing with. Judy, you’re worth it.”

  Diaz got to her feet and brushed crumbs off her clothes. “What makes you think you can handle this any better than me?”

  Seven

  Ruger mud flaps, gun rack in the back, country music blasting on Javier’s system. Aragon enjoyed the look as she drove her brother’s F-250 SuperCab 4x4 onto St. Francis from I-25. Sitting high above other cars, looking down into windows, she saw a beer can squeezed between a driver’s thighs. She dropped back, read the plate, and called it in to the Drunk Busters hotline.

  Her phone buzzing told she had voicemail. She played a message from Sergeant Noah Jennings, who ran SFPD’s Crimes Against Children Unit, notifying her that Andrea’s photo had been sent to school security officers and juvenile probation workers. They should have her full name soon, unless she was a runaway from out of town.

  A Blake’s, there by the light. Not exactly fast food. They cooked every burger from scratch, then loaded them with green chile, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and pickle. She never minded the wait. It was part of the ritual.

  Usually she’d pull in, but not today. People were waiting for her. She found a strip of beef jerky in the bottom of a cup holder. She brushed off grit and tried to tear off a piece. Her teeth would come out of her gums before she had anything to chew. The jerky went out the window as she parked outside the FBI’s territorial-style office building.

  Somebody had been thinking of her. Red, white, and blue Blake’s bags clustered on the table in the conference room. Lewis was there, talking with Evan Tucker. Tomas Rivera entered behind her, his hand brushing hers as he walked to the head of the table.

  “Lotaburgers,” Rivera said. “It’s what’s for dinner.”