Notorious (10 page)

M
elanie was in the
middle of a heart-to-heart with Agent Papo West when she looked up to see Evan Diamond lurking in the doorway of her office.

“Are you lost, Evan?” she joked, but this was no laughing matter. They'd been talking about the importance of locating Vegas Bo and convincing him to testify for the prosecution. If Diamond got hold of that information, he'd surely do his best to subvert her plan. She wondered how long he'd been standing there and how much he'd overheard.

“I was on my way out with the discovery binders, and I heard your voice,” Diamond said. He glanced at Papo as if unsure whether to continue. “You're on my list of people to talk to, Melanie, about that thing you brought up in my office this morning.”

“You can speak in front of Agent West. So, what's Atari's answer?”

“Just what I predicted. He has zero interest in cooperating with the government. I believe his exact words were, ‘I ain't no rat.'”

“You told him we're negotiable on the plea terms?”

“I told him everything. This is how he feels. There isn't any point in speaking with him further.”

“What brought about his change of heart?”

“It's no change of heart. Atari claims he never told Lester he wanted to cooperate. He says if Lester told you that, he was lying.”

“Why would Lester lie about such a thing? I don't believe that.”

Diamond shrugged. “Beats me. But that's what my client says.”

Yeah, because he's afraid of you,
Melanie thought.

“Too bad,” she said.

“It is what it is.”

“Why don't you let me speak to him? Maybe I could—”

“My client doesn't want to talk. What don't you understand about that? The discussion's over.”

“I guess we're going to trial, then.”

“That we are. See you at jury selection.”

He turned to go.

“Wait a minute,” Melanie said. “You need an escort. I'm surprised at our paralegal, giving you the run of the place.”

“You worried I'll start boosting documents from your file cabinets?” he asked, smiling.

“It's policy. Nothing personal. Agent West will see you out.”

While Papo was gone, Melanie left an annoyed message for Shekeya Jenkins reminding her of the office policy on defense lawyer visits. Then she called Mark Sonschein and delivered the bad news.

“What the hell is Atari thinking?” Mark said. “He's dead in the water with that wiretap tape. He should be falling all over himself to cooperate.”

“Oh, please. Have you seen the papers? ‘Attack on a Legend'? I want to barf. The press is totally on his side. The jury will be, too.”

“That's always been true, but yesterday Atari was eager to cooperate. Why the sudden turnaround?”

“Why do you think? They murdered his lawyer. Atari's no fool. He got the message.”

“You really think that's the reason?”

“Of course it is. That was their plan, and it worked. We need to find out who told Gamal Abdullah that Atari was about to snitch. Was there a leak somewhere? Is the Bureau investigating that? The answer to that question could turn this whole case upside down.”

“Don't worry, the Bureau is exploring every angle. Leave it to them. You keep your nose clean.”

“Are they looking at Diamond, or are they giving him wide berth because he's the defense lawyer?” Melanie pressed. “Diamond shared office space with Lester Poe. Who knows, maybe he overheard something about the cooperation. He's got a reputation for being untrustworthy.”

“It's a big leap from untrustworthy to getting your partner killed.”

“They weren't exactly partners, and besides, I'm not suggesting that Diamond had Lester killed, just that he might have leaked information. He's quite capable of that.”

“As far as you're concerned, Diamond is opposing counsel, nothing more, Melanie. And you know I can't get specific with you about the bombing investigation.”

“That is so stupid.”

“Sticks and stones, kiddo.”

“What's that supposed to mean? I should come over there and break your leg if I want information?”

“Very funny. Now get back to work. Convict Atari at trial, and maybe he'll come around.”

Melanie hung up, frustrated, as Papo walked back into the room. She was glad to have him to vent to.

When Melanie first met Papo West, his scruffy redneck appearance made her think that he was some kind of slacker thug. At six
four and two hundred and fifty pounds, with the long ponytail of a guy who spent his free time on a Harley, he was both intimidating and out of place in the buttoned-down atmosphere of a prosecutor's office. Melanie was accustomed to working with clean-cut agents who looked like feds, her former boyfriend Dan O'Reilly being a prime example of that animal. But Dan was FBI; DEA, the agency Papo worked for, had a higher tolerance for cowboys, especially when the look suited the job. Papo, it turned out, was a great undercover, a distinction few white men could claim. He played any role from pothead hydroponic farmer to proprietor of a meth lab to leader of a biker gang with utmost credibility. What surprised Melanie was that he was also a decent case agent, that he maintained the concentration necessary to run a big investigation or a complex trial. He was a solid guy and pleasant to work with in the bargain—father of two, married to an ER nurse. Of course, none of that made her want to run into him in a dark alley late at night. Melanie had few illusions about the guys she knew in law enforcement. Most of them lived on the knife's edge of violence, and you'd be wise not to cross them. Papo certainly fit that bill.

“What's the word?” Papo asked as he settled his bulk into her guest chair.

“Mark says we should keep our heads down and prepare for trial.”

“And let that scumbag Diamond get away with his dirty tricks? How much you want to bet he never even mentioned cooperation to Briggs?”

“Mark thinks that if we convict Atari, we'll get a second bite at the apple.”

“Screw Mark. I thought the bosses at DEA were idiots, but this guy takes the cake.”

“I hear you.”

“How long should we wait? Weeks? Months? Meanwhile a hun
dred million bucks a week in Afghan heroin is running free. Terrorism might not be my responsibility, but heroin is. I don't like sitting on my hands not acting on a tip like that.”

“I know. For me, this is mainly about getting Lester Poe's killer, but you're right, the drugs need to be stopped. Could you get your boss to call Mark? Maybe pressure from him would help.”

“No. The chain of command at DEA was told by the Justice Department to back off and let the FBI handle everything. My boss won't do anything.”

“Maybe we should look for a way to reach out to Rick Lynch behind the scenes. He could probably use our help.”

“You mean, go around the Chinese wall? That guy's got a stick up his ass the size of Montana. What are the chances he'd agree to something like that?”

“Let me work on it. I might be able to figure out an alternate route,” she said, thinking of Dan O'Reilly. Dan had told her in so many words that he was overseas working for Rick Lynch. Of course she'd said he shouldn't call, but she had a hunch he wasn't going to listen anyway. Maybe she'd reconsider her moratorium on speaking to him—for business purposes only, of course.

“In the meantime,” Melanie said, “we have to track down Vegas Bo. Think about it, Papo. Atari's former lieutenant, set up out west with a great new source of heroin. And Atari tight with a guy who just brokered the biggest heroin supply agreement in history. What does that tell you about who Bo's source is?”

“Gamal Abdullah is supplying heroin to Vegas Bo?” Papo asked.

“It makes sense, doesn't it?”

“You might be onto something. I'm with you. Let's find this guy Bo right away.”

M
elanie opened her eyes
and stared at the ceiling, the darkened bedroom vibrating with bluish light. Since turning two, little Maya had been sleeping soundly, but that hadn't translated into better sleep for Melanie. First it was work keeping her awake. The previous fall, when Bernadette DeFelice got elevated to the bench and Susan Charlton became chief of Major Crimes, Melanie had been promoted to deputy chief. Her name and cell number went out to every supervisor in FBI, DEA, ATF, ICE, and all the other alphabet-soup agencies as somebody to call for authorization if they wanted to make an arrest. It was like having an infant again: she hadn't gotten a solid night's sleep for months. Then, in December, right before Christmas, Dan O'Reilly confessed that he'd come close to having sex with his ex-wife and that he needed time to sort out his feelings. The crushing insomnia that descended felt like, if not an old friend, at least a familiar foe.

Enough time had passed since Dan dropped that bombshell and ran away to his foreign assignment that Melanie had made some progress. She was over the worst of the heartbreak. On top of that,
March had been a slow month for arrests, and in the past couple of weeks, she'd finally started sleeping again. Then Lester Poe had gone and gotten blown up, and here she was looking at the ceiling just like before. No point in lying here. She knew she wouldn't get back to sleep, not for a while anyway.

In the kitchen, Melanie jiggled the mouse, and her computer sprang to life. The light it cast in the dark room soothed her. She'd been reading every obituary of Lester that she could get her hands on. Now that he was dead, she'd developed an insatiable curiosity about his life. She couldn't believe all the interesting things she'd never known about him, things she hadn't bothered to ask him and that he hadn't thought to tell her. There hadn't been time in their brief acquaintance. She'd learned that he'd clerked for Chief Justice Warren. That he'd lived in Alabama for nearly a decade and still owned a big farm there, in a town where the municipal courthouse was named after a man he'd defended who'd later been lynched. That he'd been married once before Brenda, to a beautiful French socialite named Gabrielle Bertin, and had a son with her who was not much older than Melanie. In a different frame of mind, Melanie might have taken these new facts as evidence of how little she'd known Lester, and been reminded to treat this like any other case. Instead, the more she learned, the more she wanted to know, the more emotionally invested she got, and the more determined to solve his murder she became, no matter what the consequences to herself or her career.

At least it was better than obsessing about Dan O'Reilly.

Melanie Googled Lester for the fifth time that day. All the results that popped up she'd already read. She clicked on one of them, a news story about his civil rights days that she remembered had a picture of him she really liked. It showed the Lester of thirty years before standing at a bank of microphones. He would have been about the age Melanie was now, and he'd been shockingly handsome—jet-black hair, powerful features, every inch the dashing crusader after justice.
As she gazed at Lester's picture, she reached into the pocket of her bathrobe and pulled out the Saint Jude's necklace that had belonged to him, letting it run through her fingers.

“Jesus, snap out of it, the guy is dead,” she said aloud, dumping the necklace on the counter beside her computer.

The phone rang. She grabbed it.

“Hello?”

“Don't hang up, okay?” Dan said.

“Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really.” She'd decided to talk to him—for her own purposes. This was her shot at an end run around the Chinese wall.

“Good, I'm glad. I'm at the Legat in the embassy in Madrid. I managed to find a phone in a private spot, and I thought maybe we could finally talk.”

“Is the line secure?”

“As secure as anything gets.”

“Meaning—”

“Whosever listening is one of ours.”

“That's no good.”

“What difference does it make? They don't care about you and me.”

“We're not talking about you and me.”

“No?”

“No. I told you, we're done. But I still need your help with something.”

Dan went silent for a moment.

“You know I'll always help you,” he said finally, “and maybe eventually I'll manage to change your mind. In the meantime, what do you need?”

Melanie hesitated, worrying that maybe somebody really did
monitor calls from the FBI's Legal Attaché Office, but what could she do? Her options were either talk to Dan or nothing.

“I'm concerned that certain details might not be reaching your colleagues,” she said. “You know I'm working on the Briggs trial, and that I was an eyewitness to the car bombing. Because of all that, they've got me walled off from the investigation. Anything I want to say to Rick Lynch has to go through layers of bureaucracy.”

“I talk to Rick five times a day.”

“I figured you might.”

“Whatever you want him to know, I can get it to him.”

Melanie had missed that rough-and-ready quality about Dan. No preliminaries, no long-winded explanations, no bullshit. He did what needed to be done.

“Right before the bomb went off, I had a long talk with Lester about the cooperation,” she began.

“Lester's the attorney? The one who died?”

“Yes. He told me something important, something that isn't getting enough attention.”

“Tell me. I'll make sure it does.”

“Lester was worried that his office phones had been compromised. Normally when somebody tells me their phones are bugged, I think paranoia. But Gamal Abdullah obviously found out that Atari was about to talk. It's possible he found out some other way, but maybe—”

“Maybe the lawyer's phones really were tapped.”

“Right. And even if they weren't, maybe the leak still came from inside Lester's office. His partner, Evan Diamond, took over the case—”

“Diamond? Evan Diamond, you said?”

“Yes. Do you know him?”

“Yeah, I had him on a trial a few years back. Total dirtbag. We
turn over our witness list, and bang, the next afternoon in Bogotá our star witness's mother gets whacked in a drive-by shooting on her way to mass. We could never prove anything, but the witness refused to testify and Diamond's client walked.”

“That's exactly what I'm afraid of, Dan. Just that type of problem on the Briggs case. My office is treating Diamond with kid gloves because he's opposing counsel. Meanwhile we just turned over witness statements, and our trial is only a week away.”

“I get the picture. This does sound important. Anything else you want Rick to know?”

“That's it. Look at Diamond.”

“Look at Diamond. You got it. And you, watch your back. Watch your witnesses, too.”

“Thanks. I appreciate it, Dan. Good night.”

“Hey—”

She hung up before he could get another word out. Melanie's heart was well hardened against Dan O'Reilly, yet she knew that talking to him was still a dangerous enterprise. Even talking to him about work was dangerous. They were on different planets in so many ways, but on the job they'd always been in sync. On the job was where they'd fallen in love.

Melanie sighed and let her gaze wander back to the image of Lester on the computer screen. What would life be like now if he hadn't been murdered? She'd be proffering Atari Briggs, sitting across the negotiating table from Lester, anticipating their dinner date. She'd be moving forward instead of letting the past nip at her heels.

She clicked refresh, hoping maybe something new had been uploaded during the minutes she'd spent talking to Dan.

Success! A story she hadn't read yet.

Melanie scanned the headline. B
OMBING
V
ICTIM'S
W
IFE
F
OUND
D
EAD
, it read, followed by the subhead,
Seventies Icon Brenda Gould ODs in Apparent Suicide
.