Death Rattle

by Alex Gilly

  Joaquin shook his head again.

  “Two dollars and fifty cents.”

  Now Joaquin adopted a shocked look.

  “For three meals? Jesus. What do they eat for two bucks fifty?”

  Mona remembered the drums of cooking oil and trolleys of blast-frozen food she’d seen going into the center during a visit to Carmen.

  “I did some calculations,” she said. “Two-fifty per prisoner, per day, equates to $912.50 per prisoner, per year. The occupancy of PDC last year, averaged over twelve months, was 450 migrants. That means that the actual cost, at a rate comparable to other prisons, to feed 450 inmates three meals a day for a year is a little over $410,000.”

  Joaquin raised an eyebrow.

  “Which means this Anaheim outfit earned itself an almost five-and a-half-million-dollar margin,” he said.

  Mona nodded. Her heart was thumping, the way a fisherman’s heart thumps when something big takes the hook and the line starts racing off the reel.

  “Seems excessive, even by government procurement standards,” said Joaquin dryly. “What do you know about AmeriCo?”

  “Almost nothing. It’s a private company. It doesn’t even have a website. All I have is their address, the name of their agent, and the date they incorporated.”

  “When did they incorporate?”

  “In 2016—the same year that PDC opened.”

  “What’s the name of the agent?”

  “Edward Maws. He’s listed as the CEO and founder.”

  “Five million dollars. I wonder what that buys you in the migrant-detention business.”

  “I don’t know. But I bet Edward Maws does.”

  Mona checked her watch; it was six o’clock—too late to get to Anaheim and visit AmeriCo Food Services. It would have to wait until tomorrow.

  She had completely forgotten about the third item on her to-do list.

  * * *

  AmeriCo Food Services was located in a business park wedged between the interstate and the Santa Ana River, in a putty-colored building with smoked-glass windows. There was no sign out front, and Mona could only be sure she was in the right place because she could see guys loading pallets of food products and drums of cooking oil into two trucks backed into the loading dock.

  She sat in her car a moment and watched them. It was almost 9:00 A.M. She couldn’t see anything that seemed out of the ordinary. Just the daily grind in a business park, one of hundreds sprawled through Orange County. And yet she felt nervous, like an archeologist about to open a tomb.

  Mona got out of her car, climbed the steps to the side of the loading dock, and passed through the sliding glass doors leading into the reception area.

  “Can I help you?” said the young woman behind the counter.

  “This is AmeriCo Food Services, right? There’s no sign anywhere,” said Mona.

  The receptionist, with a forced smile, said it was.

  “Is Edward Maws available?” said Mona.

  “I’ll check,” said the receptionist in a tone that suggested she wouldn’t. “Who are you?”

  “My name is Mona Jimenez,” said Mona. “I’m a lawyer with Juntos Para una Frontera Mas Segura.” She handed the receptionist her card. The receptionist invited her to take a seat on a nearby bench.

  A minute later, a man emerged from a door behind the reception counter. He was of medium height. His suit and tie looked expensive. So did the blow-dried whoosh of his hair. He looked fit the way rich people look fit—like he played squash at a fitness club that had a sauna and a wood-paneled dining room. Mona straightaway pegged him as a guy born to wealth.

  He greeted her and held out his hand. It had an oily feel, like he’d just moisturized. Then he invited her to follow him into his office. There was something oily about the invitation, too.

  In his office, Maws sat first without waiting for Mona. She sat down, crossed her legs, and tugged down her skirt.

  “How may I be of service to you?” he said with a flourish of his hands. Mona groaned inwardly. Maybe he thought he was being cute. But he sounded like a waiter.

  “I mentioned to your receptionist, I’m a lawyer with Juntos.”

  “Yeah, she said. I had to Google it. Tell me what it is you guys do, exactly?”

  “Essentially, what we do is help migrants stuck in the immigration system.”

  “I see. And you want my help with that?”

  “Not exactly. I understand that AmeriCo Food Services has the catering contract for Paradise Detention Center?”

  She phrased it as a question, inviting Maws to start talking.

  He took the bait.

  “Yes. You see, we already have something in common: you represent illegals, I feed them,” said Ed Maws, sounding like a guy who liked the sound of his own voice. “We both help them in our own way.”

  He smiled an unctuous smile, then went on.

  “It’s a huge contract. Paradise is the biggest migrant detention center in the state. Did you know that? They started out with five hundred beds; now they’re up to seven hundred. We feed them two hot and one cold meal a day. It’s a big logistical operation. We send out two trucks a day, seven days a week, stocking their canteen. You probably passed a couple of them on your way in.”

  “How long have you been in the catering business?”

  “I used to be a restaurateur. I had a restaurant in Santa Monica, called the Dining Room on Wilshire, down near the beach. Did you ever go there?”

  Mona said she hadn’t.

  “Too bad. People raved about it. LA Weekly loved it. You like salmon? We had a salmon dish, if you died and went to heaven, it would be the one thing you’d miss about Earth. Amazing dish. Anyway. I had to give it up when I won the contract for the detention center. No one thought I would win it, but I did. A quality restaurant like the Dining Room, probably the best restaurant in Santa Monica at the time, maybe ever, you needed to be there. You had to stay on top of things, or else the standard dropped. So I had to give it up. It was too much even for me, you know? And I’m a workaholic. But I wish you could’ve tried it. I bet you would’ve loved it.”

  “How did you get from running a fine restaurant to catering to a detention facility?”

  Maws assumed a serious look.

  “Oh, it wasn’t easy, believe me,” he said. “I had to beat the biggest names in the business to win it. The big multinationals. Huge corporations. It just goes to show, size doesn’t always matter”—that oily smile again—“sometimes, it pays to be agile. Or dexterous. It means the same thing. That’s what I am. Dexterous.”

  “Was there a tender process?”

  “Yes. And no one gave us a chance. Everyone said we would never win it, the other guys were too big. Even my wife said it. My ex-wife, now. She said don’t do it. I did it anyway. I said, what’ve we got to lose? And guess what? We won it. I won it. She didn’t believe I would, but I did. She was sure glad I’d won it when we got divorced, believe me. Her and her lawyer. Both very glad.”

  He fell silent and lost his smile.

  Mona coaxed him along. “I’m impressed, Mr. Maws. What do you think the clincher was? That won you the contract?”

  His smile returned.

  “You know, people ask me that and I always say the same thing. It’s not complicated. What it is, is price. Price and quality. Nobody could beat us on price and quality, and that’s why we won the contract.”

  Mona tried to keep the skepticism from her face.

  “I see. Price and quality,” she said. “Mr. Maws, there’s something I’m struggling to understand, and I was hoping you could help me.”

  He smiled like he could think of nothing he’d like more than to help an attractive young woman like her understand something. Mona dead-eyed him and said, “The BSCA paid you almost $6 million last year to fulfill the catering contract for their Paradise operation. I just can’t figure out how you reached that number, especially since you say you won the contract on price.”

  She left a sp
ace for him to say something incriminating. For once, he was at a loss for words. Mona kept digging.

  “Every other prison subcontractor in the country charges the government between two to three dollars per detainee. You say that there are seven hundred migrants in Paradise. That means you’re charging the taxpayer more than thirty-three dollars per migrant. What does the extra thirty dollars buy you?”

  The smile had slid from his face. Mona was glad about that.

  “First of all, we’re not charging the taxpayer anything. We charge the BSCA.”

  “They pass on the cost to the taxpayer.”

  “Second of all, that’s proprietary information.”

  “The BSCA is a public company. It’s in their annual report.”

  “Third, your numbers are wrong.”

  “Well, you see, Mr. Maws, that’s what I was hoping you could help me with. Which numbers? The $5.8 million I got from the BSCA’s annual report, or the two-to-three-dollars-per-person figure I got from the ACLU?”

  “They must’ve made a mistake.”

  “Who? The BSCA or the ACLU?”

  Maws looked like his tan was about to melt off.

  “It’s not just the food,” he said. “It’s the distance. Trucking costs. Paradise is way out in the desert…”

  “I know where it is, Mr. Maws. I’ve been there many times. But many prisons are in out-of-the-way places. Calipatria, Corcoran, Ironwood—all those institutions feed their inmates three meals a day for two to three dollars a person. But you’re charging thirty-three dollars per person. What do you give them in return?”

  Maws sniffed. He was trying to look stern, but his face was flushed. He forced a smile and said, “Let’s change the topic, Miss Jimenez. I can think of many other things I’d rather discuss with you.”

  At this point, she knew that any serious negotiator would’ve seen that there was no upside for them in continuing the conversation and would’ve put an end to it. But there was something off about Maws. She sensed he was unwilling to leave it there. Like she’d pricked his pride, and now he had to reinflate himself.

  “It’s Ms. Jimenez. Are you avoiding the question, Mr. Maws?”

  “I like you too much to avoid your questions, Ms. Jimenez. What I’m saying is, my business is my business. I’m damned good at what I do, but I can’t just give away my secrets. You look confused.”

  “I’m not confused.”

  “Fine. You want to know why I got such a great deal with the BSCA? I’ll tell you in a nutshell: I’m a tremendous negotiator. You’re sitting across from the greatest negotiator in California, maybe the greatest negotiator in the whole country. You should be impressed. Paradise is just one of my customers. We cater to institutions all over the state. Frankly, I can’t give you the details you’re looking for. It’s proprietary, and anyway, I’m the big-picture guy. I’ll get my finance department to see if there’s any non-commercially sensitive information they can share with you. In the meantime, here’s my card. And please”—his chair squeaked as he leaned forward—“that’s my personal cell on there. Call me anytime.”

  Mona walked out of her meeting with Ed Maws certain of three things: one, that Edward Maws was a slime bag; two, that Edward Maws was hiding something about the inflated payment; and three, that Edward Maws felt protected enough to both lie to her and to hit on her while doing it. After the initial shock of discovering that she knew about the inflated payment, Maws had recovered. Clearly, Maws had decided she couldn’t hurt him.

  But she could hurt him. The numbers were damning. She could go to the attorney general. She could tell her friends at the ACLU. She could go to the press. That Maws was so unfazed by her probing only raised new questions in her mind.

  Mona walked out of the AmeriCo lobby. Instead of going down the steps back to her car, she went over to the workers loading the trucks at the dock. She walked past drums of cooking oil, sacks filled with rice, beans, flour, sugar, giant cans of fruit in syrup, cardboard boxes packed with processed products like breakfast cereal, and a Mexican brand of lime-and chili-flavored chips she liked called Papas Santas. She didn’t see anything that warranted the thirty-dollar markup. They weren’t eating marbled rib eye out at Paradise Detention Center.

  The workers looked tired. They didn’t have whooshy hair. Their smiles weren’t oily.

  “I guess you cover a lot of ground, huh,” she said to one of them in Spanish. “Delivering to customers all over the state?”

  “Customers? Señora, we have only one customer: the prison out in the desert. We don’t go anywhere else. Just the desert.”

  * * *

  Because Mona and Finn had both grown up near the beach, they tended to take it for granted. The sunset that night, however, was too spectacular not to appreciate. They were walking along the water’s edge on Redondo Beach, Mona’s Roman sandals dangling from her right hand. The horizon was red and yellow, and the water separating them from it was gleaming. The evening colors, the give of the wet sand beneath her bare feet, the sound of the water lapping at the beach restored Mona’s equanimity. She felt like she was finally emerging from the whirlwind that had followed Carmen’s death; finally getting some perspective on things. She was telling Finn about how she had challenged Maws about the vastly inflated cost his company was charging the BSCA for the catering contract to Paradise Detention Center.

  “What did he say?” said Finn.

  “He said he couldn’t remember the exact details. He made it sound as if he had more clients than he could keep track of. But on the way out, I spoke to one of the workers loading the trucks. He told me they only go to one place. Paradise.”

  “They have no other customers?”

  “Nope.”

  Finn gave her a quizzical glance.

  Mona continued, “None of it makes sense. A company like the BSCA, the first thing it does once it locks in a government contract is cut costs, not inflate them.”

  “Right,” said Finn.

  “That’s what I went looking for in the financial statements. Evidence I can use to demonstrate that Carmen died because she did not receive the care due to her. And sure enough, I found all the usual stuff about cost-cutting initiatives, rationalizations, good management. In fact, the BSCA has been ruthlessly cutting costs in every area except one: its catering contract with AmeriCo. Why?”

  “Some kind of kickback,” said Finn.

  “Exactly. And now I’m digging, asking questions. And now Maws knows I know. So why isn’t he worried?”

  “Maybe he is; he’s just good at hiding it.”

  Mona shook her head. “No. I got a good read on him. He’s a real slime bag, but he wasn’t scared. The opposite, in fact. He wanted me to be impressed. He told me he was brilliant at making deals.”

  “Maybe he feels confident you won’t find anything.”

  “Maybe.”

  “And maybe it’s a job for the DA,” added Finn.

  Mona gave him a peevish look.

  “Look, all I’m wondering is what any of this has to do with Carmen’s death,” said Finn.

  Mona shrugged. “There’s no direct link. But still … I can’t shake this feeling that there’s something there, something bigger, you know?”

  She was about 80 percent sure her gut feeling was right, but the 20 percent was niggling away at her.

  Finn nodded. “But if it is something big, Mona, if it’s kickbacks, corruption, anything like that, you should tell the attorney general. Let them investigate it. Whatever it turns out to be, you stumbled on it by accident. It’s separate from what happened to Carmen.”

  They stepped over a large jellyfish abandoned by the tide.

  “I left Maws feeling like I’d stepped on one of those,” said Mona.

  “Will you tell the attorney general?” said Finn.

  “If I do, it’s not my case anymore, is it? The attorney general takes over.”

  “You’ll still have your lawsuit. You’ll still be fighting for Carmen.”


  Mona looked out to sea. “If this kickback thing turns out to be as big as my gut’s telling me, I could force the BSCA to shut down Paradise Detention Center. Can you imagine, Nick? What greater justice could there be for Carmen than shutting down the prison where she died?”

  They walked in silence for a while. Mona kept glancing at Finn. She could tell from the set expression on his face that he was worried.

  “I know I’m sticking my neck out, Nick. But if I can shut down PDC, the world will be a better place. But to do it, I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  Finally, Nick said, “All right. Message received. How can I help?”

  “Can you run Maws’s name through the databases at work?”

  As a marine interdiction agent with Customs and Border Protection, Finn was authorized to run names through the databases of various law-enforcement agencies, to check for outstanding warrants against people the agency processed at border checkpoints. But Maws was not trying to enter the country, nor was there any question about his citizenship or immigration status, which meant that what Mona was asking Finn to do was legally problematic. She knew Finn could get into trouble if he got caught.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Mona smiled. “Thank you, Nick. Meanwhile, I’ll try to find his ex-wife. He said he was divorced. Divorces tend to turn up a lot of dirt.”

  Finn returned Mona’s squeeze when she took his hand.

  But his eyes still carried a worried look.

  FOURTEEN

  CALIFORNIA law mandates that almost all court records, including divorce cases in the family courts, are put on the public record. All Mona had to do the following morning was type Maws’s name into the search box on the superior court’s website to discover that he and his wife were divorced in Orange County.

  Mona was in the Orange County courthouse by lunchtime. She found a seat at a wooden desk beneath a high window in the archives room. A clerk delivered a document box, and she began sifting. She learned that the marriage of Edward Maws to Katrina Wakefield had been consecrated at the Yorba Linda Golf Club on the September 3, 2011, and dissolved in Orange County superior court on November 15, 2018. He and Katrina Wakefield had two children. The divorce, Mona was not surprised to learn, had been far from amicable. It had taken almost a year of court action and had resulted in Maws forfeiting to his wife a house in Yorba Linda and committing to pay the mortgage on it. The house was valued at $4 million. On top of that, the court had ordered Maws to pay about $250,000 in alimony and child support a year. Katrina had custody. Maws had visitation rights. None of this surprised Mona. What did surprise her was that the court had forced Maws to surrender his 49 percent share of AmeriCo to Katrina. She must’ve had a terrific divorce lawyer. Maws was CEO but had no interest in the company he founded.