“Just tell her if she wants to know about me, she can come right to me. Anytime. No need to sneak around the courthouse, pulling files, whispering questions. I’m right here. All the time.”
He closed the door and walked off. I watched him as he went down the sidewalk and turned the corner. He didn’t go into Fulgoni’s office, even though he had claimed that was the reason he was in the vicinity and had spotted me.
Soon Earl got back in behind the wheel.
“You okay, boss?”
“I’m fine. Let’s go.”
He started the car. My frustrations and feelings of vulnerability got the best of me and I snapped at Earl.
“How the hell did that guy get in the car?”
“He came up and knocked on the window. He showed me the badge and told me to unlock the back. I thought he was gonna put a slug in the back a my head.”
“Great, and you just let me jump in the back with him.”
“There was nothin’ I could do, boss. He told me not to move. What did he say?”
“A bunch of self-deluding bullshit. Let’s go.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know. Head toward the loft. For now.”
I immediately got on the phone and called Jennifer. I didn’t want to scare her but it was clear that Marco knew of her efforts to background him and check other cases he had been involved in.
The call went straight to message. As I listened to her recorded voice, I debated whether to leave a full message or just tell her to call me. I decided it would be best and perhaps safest to leave her the message so she got the information as soon as she turned on her phone.
“Jennifer, it’s me. I just had a little visit from Agent Marco, and he is aware of your efforts to document his history. He must have friends in the clerk’s office or wherever you’re pulling records. So I’m thinking you might want to keep what you got on that but switch back to Moya. I’m going up to see him tomorrow in Victorville and I’d like to know all there is to know by then anyway. Let me know that you got this. Bye.”
Cisco was next and this time my call went through. I told him of my encounter with Marco and asked why there had been no heads-up from the Indians who were supposedly watching me for a tail. I wasn’t too pleasant about it.
“No warning, Cisco. The guy was waiting for me in my fucking car.”
“I don’t know what happened but I’ll find out.”
He sounded as annoyed as I was.
“Yeah, do that and call me back.”
I disconnected the call. Earl and I rode in silence for a few minutes after that, with me replaying the Marco conversation in my head. I was trying to figure out the motives for the visit from the DEA agent. First and foremost, I decided, was the threat. He wanted to put a chill on my team’s efforts to research his activities. He also, it would seem, wanted to steer me away from the Moya case. He probably felt that Moya’s conviction and life sentence were relatively safe with the inexperienced Sly Fulgoni Jr. at the helm of the habeas petition. And he was probably right. But hitting me with the description of Moya as the worst thing this side of the devil was just a front. Marco’s motives weren’t altruistic. I didn’t buy that for a moment. All in all, I concluded that Marco was trying to spook me because I had spooked him. And that meant we were pointed in the right direction.
“Hey, boss?”
I looked at Earl in the rearview.
“I heard you telling Jennifer in that message that you’re goin’ up to Victorville tomorrow. That true? We’re goin’ up?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, we’re going. First thing in the morning.”
And in saying so out loud I also sent a silent fuck-you to Marco.
My phone buzzed and it was Cisco, already back with an explanation.
“Sorry, Mick, they fucked up. They saw the guy arrive and get in the car with Earl. They said he showed a badge but they didn’t know who he was. They thought it was a friendly.”
“A friendly? The guy has to badge Earl to get in the car and they think he’s a fucking friendly? They should’ve called you on the spot so you could call me and stop me from coming out with my goddamn zipper down.”
“Already told them all of that. You want me to pull them off now?”
“What? Why?”
“Well, it seems pretty clear we know who jacked your car, right?”
I thought about Marco’s claim that he had just happened to see me while he was checking out Fulgoni because of the subpoena. I didn’t buy that for a moment. I agreed with Cisco; Marco had jacked my car.
“Might as well save the dough,” I told Cisco. “Pull ’em off. They weren’t much in the early-warning department anyway.”