Notorious (14 page)

F
ollowing the money was
never easy, especially when the parties to a transaction took pains to keep it secret. Melanie and Papo spent the next several hours chasing down records of the commissary deposit and learning what they could about Eight Ball's mother's finances, but ended up nowhere. They even brought in an assets expert from DEA's forfeiture unit to consult. By late afternoon they were back in Melanie's office, having succeeded in nothing beyond learning that the commissary deposit was made with an untraceable money order, and that there were no bank accounts in New York City held in the name of Eight Ball's mother.

“That doesn't mean she has no bank account,” Papo said, leaning back with one boot braced against Melanie's desk. “It just means she has no account in her own name.”

“Even if we could find her account,” Melanie said, “we'd never see a nice, clean check coming in from Atari Briggs or Evan Diamond. Contract hits are a cash-only business. The best we'd do is a lot of cash, maybe a money-laundering charge.”

“You're probably right about that.”

“What if we were to look at the other end of this contract? Not the payment, but the offer. How did Eight Ball find out that Atari and his people would pay the twenty grand? A phone call? A visit? They must have conveyed it to him somehow.”

“Not by telephone. Every inmate knows his calls are being recorded.”

“Yes, but you'd be amazed what people still say,” Melanie insisted. “I've had cases where inmates actually
did
discuss murders over prison phones. Seriously.”

“If you want, I can send over a subpoena and get Eight Ball's recorded phone calls, as well as his visitor's log. But I'm warning you, it won't be done in time for trial. That kind of information takes weeks to get. Months, sometimes.”

Melanie sighed. “We don't have that kind of time. I'd like to be able to go to Judge DeFelice now with evidence that the defense was behind the attack on our witness. Then she might at least grant us a postponement.”

“To get the kind of proof you're talking about, if it even exists, won't happen until the trial's over.”

“Then we'd better hope Vashon recovers quickly, and that he's still willing to testify.”

“There is one other thing we can do,” Papo said. “What you've been saying all along. Find another witness. Where the hell is Vegas Bo?”

 

B
ut when they finally succeeded in getting Glen Begley on the phone, the news on Vegas Bo was as bad as it could be.

“Your boy Kevin Bonner is in the wind,” he announced over the speakerphone with barely concealed glee.

“He's
gone
?” Melanie cried. “When were you planning on telling me this?”

“I'm telling you right now.”

“But you knew exactly where he was. How did he get by you?”

“He knew where we were, too. He made the surveillance. DEA went to execute the warrant this morning, and the whole place'd been stripped and abandoned. Nothing left but a few empty glassines and a whole lot of garbage. We lifted some prints and got some heroin residue out of the sink, though.”

“A lot of good that'll do me. I need him in the flesh!”

“What can I say? Shit happens.”

“You screwed this up, and that's your response?”

“I was hoping this wouldn't degenerate into finger-pointing. I told you before, the location is difficult to surveil.”

“Then you should've been sitting on it around the clock so he couldn't get away.”

“This wasn't even our case. We were doing you a favor.”

“That's funny, because just the other day you were saying it was your case, and that Bo was your target. And now he vanishes into thin air, presumably to resurface later under your indictment. Convenient, isn't it?”

“I don't like your implication.”

“I'm not implying a thing. I'm saying it straight out. You blew the warrant on purpose to buy time to poach my target. Main Justice is going to hear about this.”

Melanie slammed the phone down. “Can you believe that?”

“Let me call my people in Vegas and see what went wrong,” Papo said, leaning across her desk and picking up the receiver.

“I'd better go tell Susan. Between Vashon and this, our case just fell apart.”

Melanie ran down the hall to Susan's office. Susan, Jennifer, and a young DEA colleague of Papo's were in the middle of a prep session with a cooperator named Michael Watkins, who'd been a night-shift
manager at one of Atari Briggs's heroin spots. All four of them looked up as Melanie burst into the room.

“What's wrong?” Susan asked.

Melanie glanced at Watkins. It wasn't smart strategy to blurt out in front of one cooperator that another had just been nearly beaten to death.

“I need to talk to you outside. Now.”

Susan's face suddenly looked as upset as Melanie felt. They hurried to the anteroom, pulling the door shut behind them.

“What? Tell me,” Susan said.

“Vashon was badly beaten last night by some other inmates in the MCC cafeteria. He's in Bellevue in serious condition with multiple fractures. He'll recover, but he won't be available to testify by the trial date. It looks like Briggs was behind the attack. We have anecdotal evidence that the lead attacker was offered twenty thousand, but nothing we can prove.”

“Shit. He's our main witness.”

“That's not all, Susan. Our potential backup witness, Kevin Bonner, is gone, gone, gone. DEA in Nevada lost him. He packed up and shipped out. Nothing left at the location but some garbage and a few glassines. They have no clue where he is.”

“All right. I need a minute to think.”

“There's nothing to think about. Our case just fell apart. We need to call the judge and ask her to postpone the trial.”

“After the stink Evan made about speedy trial, she'll never agree to that,” Susan said.

“We beg if we have to. We have nothing left. If we can't get extra time, we might as well dismiss the charges right now and let Atari Briggs walk.”

M
elanie arrived early for
the status conference, before the marshals had even set up a security checkpoint. Much to her surprise, the heavy wooden double doors to Judge DeFelice's courtroom were unlocked, which was normal around the courthouse, but not what she would've expected in a high-security case. Melanie poked her head in cautiously and saw that the cavernous space appeared deserted. She found herself tiptoeing down the center aisle, mesmerized by the silence. Some might find the institutional hush oppressive or even creepy—the buzzing of fluorescent lights bouncing off the dead gray-white marble of the walls under ceilings tall enough to dwarf the tallest human being. But to Melanie, who loved courtrooms, it was as peaceful as a church in here, and she was grateful for the chance to still her tumultuous thoughts.

At the opposite end of the courtroom, the door behind the judge's bench banged open and Tracey Montefiore stomped in, shattering the tranquil moment.

“Here you are,” the blowsy courtroom deputy exclaimed. “I've been trying to get you on the phone forever. The judge wants to see you ASAP.”

“Me? Now?”

“What did I just say?”

“Shouldn't I wait for Susan and Mr. Diamond?”

“Nope. She said just you, and make it snappy. Come through the back. Nobody's here to see.”

Tracey unlocked the door she herself had just passed through. Melanie hustled to obey, but she wasn't happy. Whatever reason Bernadette had for wanting to see her alone, it couldn't be good.

The door led to a back hallway that Melanie had been admitted to once or twice before to drop off court papers after hours. Somehow she hadn't realized that the blank, unmarked doors across from each judge's chambers were the back entrances to their courtrooms. With one step across the narrow hallway, she stood at the door to Judge DeFelice's chambers and buzzed, turning her face up to the security camera as if to the sun.

Bernadette's secretary was on the phone but waved Melanie vigorously toward the inner sanctum. Melanie marched right in, surprising a federal judge in the process of fixing her makeup. Bernadette wore a red suit that Melanie recognized from days gone by, and seeing her in that familiar outfit felt like old times. So did the lump of fear in Melanie's throat. A similar lump had been her perpetual companion during her many visits to the chief's suite, back in the days when Bernadette had run Major Crimes.

Her former boss snapped her compact shut and nodded curtly at one of the chairs in front of her desk. Bernadette had a mobile and expressive face. On the rare occasion when she was happy, she was attractive, even beautiful. But when, as now, she wore an expression of anger, she looked plain, bitter, and old.

Bernadette skipped the preliminaries and went straight for the jugular.

“The last time you sat in that chair, I let you stonewall me, and a witness landed in the hospital. I'm done with the games, Melanie. I
refuse to play the fool anymore. You tell me right now what's causing all the violence on this case, or I'll make big trouble for you. I can't say it any plainer than that.”

“Your Honor, perhaps when Ms. Charlton—”

“Susan's not here, and I don't give a damn what she thinks anyway. I trained you. I trust you. You owe me. So spill it.”

“I'd love to tell you what I really think, Your Honor. But I shouldn't be meeting with you alone, without the defense lawyer present.”

“You want me to invite Evan Diamond? Isn't he the pond scum who had your witness attacked?”

Melanie didn't respond. She sat there and let her old boss, who knew her so well, read the answer in her eyes.

“Can you prove it?” Bernadette asked after a pause.

“No. We know who they gave the contract to. We can prove some money changed hands. It was done carefully. There's no obvious signature on it, and finding one could take a very long time. More time than we have.”

“Unfortunately, with no evidence, there's not much I can do to help you.”

“I understand.”

“What about Poe's murder? What have you got on that so far?”

“Judge, other people are in charge of the investigation. They've got me focused on the trial—”

“You're walled off?” Bernadette demanded.

“Yes.”

“That's idiotic. The threat is obviously coming from the trial. Who's in a better position than you to investigate?”

Melanie threw up her hands. “I know!”

“Tell me everything you've got and let's see if we can't make some progress here.
Idiots
running the office since I left.”

“All right. On the day he died, Lester Poe approached me and
told me that Atari Briggs wanted to cooperate against a target named Gamal Abdullah. You know who he is?”

“The terrorist.”

“Yes, but the information Atari had was about narcotics activity. Abdullah supposedly brokered a high-level supply agreement. Afghan heroin delivered weekly to some of the biggest players in domestic narcotics, all over the U.S., to the tune of a hundred million bucks a month, with the proceeds going back to the warlords in Afghanistan.”

Bernadette whistled. “Impressive. But why would Atari give you that? He'd be putting himself in danger, and for what benefit?”

“To get out from under the jail time, I guess.”

“What jail time? Atari's in the catbird's seat and always has been. The press loves him. Jurors love him. All he ever needed to do was get rid of one witness, which he just did without breaking a sweat.”

“Maybe Atari was in danger. Maybe he wanted to throw in his lot with the government so he could get Witness Protection.”

“Why? Briggs can afford all the protection he needs.”

“What can I say, Judge? I don't know why he came forward. Lester never told me, and now he's dead.”

“And I assume you can't ask Briggs himself, because he's changed his mind about cooperating and refuses to talk to you.”

“Yes. How'd you know that?”

“God, how do you manage without me? In twenty years of practice, Evan Diamond has never once cooperated a client. So it stands to reason that he wouldn't cooperate Atari Briggs now. Duh.”

Bernadette sighed with irritation and leaned back in her chair. Melanie noticed her wedding photo in a silver frame on the credenza, just beyond Bernadette's right shoulder. She'd hoped, as many in the U.S. Attorney's Office had, that Bernadette's marriage the previous summer would make her easier to deal with. Her new husband,
Lieutenant Vito Albano of the NYPD, was a much-loved figure in the law enforcement community and roundly hailed as a good guy. Despite his balding pate and sloping shoulders, Bernadette twittered like a schoolgirl whenever his name was mentioned. But her happiness with Vito had failed to spill over into Bernadette's work life.

“Sorry, Judge,” Melanie said.

“I don't want apologies. I want ideas. I want solutions!”

“I keep thinking this could all be worked out if only I could speak to Briggs without having Diamond involved. What about appointing shadow counsel?” Melanie asked.

“Hmm, I suppose that's a possibility.”

“I've never actually done that in any of my cases. How does it work?”

“We need some real basis for believing that Diamond is standing in the way of Atari's cooperating.”

“What I have is Lester Poe proffering the cooperation, then immediately getting blown up, and Diamond subsequently insisting that Atari had never said he'd cooperate.”

“These are unusual and very difficult circumstances. I'd be willing to proceed if you made a record about that.”

“Okay. So what do we do?”

“Atari appears before me, but without Diamond present. We can do it right here in chambers so the proceeding is kept secret. I get a court reporter in here and ask Briggs on the record whether he wants to cooperate but is being prevented from doing so, whether by threats or intimidation or whatever. If he says yes, I appoint a different lawyer and kick Evan off the case.”

“How do we get Briggs to come here without Diamond?”

“We tell him to.” She smiled. “I'm the judge, girlfriend. He has to listen. Why do you think I like this job?”

“Can I come to this proceeding?”

“Oh, yes. The government is present, along with a lawyer from
Legal Aid who'll act as Briggs's shadow counsel and give him neutral advice. Plus me and the court reporter. And Tracey, my courtroom deputy, because I like to have her at everything. She's a smart girl, Tracey. Don't underestimate her.”

“What if Briggs says no? That he wasn't pressured and doesn't want to cooperate?”

“Then you lose big-time. We go to trial. I give you an extra week or two because your witness is in the hospital, but unless you can
prove
Briggs ordered your witness attacked—?” Bernadette raised her eyebrows.

“I can't. Not yet. We're investigating, but so far it looks like guys on his cell block pulling a vigilante stunt.”

“Then a week is the best I can do give the speedy-trial issue. Diamond stays on the case. He screams dirty tricks because you tried to interfere with his relationship with his client, then beats the pants off you in court. The press hangs on his every word and reviles you by name. Not pretty. Don't you love this job?”