Before I could say a word in my defense, there was a booming impact that shook the room and, I assumed, the entire prison. My hand went to my belt and the alarm as my first thought was that there was some kind of explosion and prison break occurring.
Then I noticed that Fulgoni hadn’t even flinched and had a glib smile on his face.
“That was a big one,” he said calmly. “They probably have the B-Two up today. The stealth.”
Of course. I now remembered the nearby airbase. I tried to shake it off and get back to business. My legal pad was on the table in front of me. I had jotted down a few questions and reminders while I waited for Fulgoni. I wanted to start with the basics and lead up to the important questions once I had Fulgoni vested in the conversation.
“Tell me about Moya. I want to know how and when this whole thing started.”
“Well, as far as I know, I’m one of two defrocked lawyers in here. The other guy was part of a bank fraud in San Diego. Anyway, it kind of gets known what you did in the world and people come to you. First it’s general advice and recommendations. Then some come because they want help with a writ. I’m talking about guys in here long enough to be abandoned by their lawyers because they’ve exhausted their appeals. Guys who don’t want to give up.”
“Okay.”
“Well, Hector was one of those guys. He came to me, said the government hadn’t played fair, and wanted to know what he could still do about it. The thing is, nobody had ever believed him. His own attorneys didn’t believe his story and didn’t even put an investigator on it, as far as I could tell.”
“You’re talking about the DEA planting the gun in his room to get the enhancement?”
“Yeah, the enhancement that puts him in here for life. I’m not talking about the powder in the room. He totally cops to that. But he said the gun wasn’t his, and it turns out he’s been saying that since day one but nobody would listen. Well, I listened. I mean, what else am I going to do in here but listen to people?”
“Okay.”
“So that’s your start. My son filed the paper and here we are.”
“But let’s go back to before young Sly filed the habeas petition. Let’s go back to last year. See, I’m trying to put all of this together. Moya tells you the gun was planted. Did he tell you Gloria Dayton planted it?”
“No, he said the cops did it. He was arrested by the LAPD after you made the deal with the DA’s Office. Remember that? Only he didn’t know about any deal until years later—until I told him. All he knew at the time was that the LAPD came through his door with a felony fugitive warrant. They found the coke in the bureau and the firearm under the mattress and that was it. The fugitive beef was for a grand jury no-show. That was nothing compared to the case they had now. He had two ounces of blow in the room and the gun. And then the feds swooped in and scooped the whole thing up and he goes to trial in federal court, where they have the lifetime achievement award. Convenient, huh?”
“Yeah, and I know all of that. I’m talking about the gun. I am trying to track how you went from his story to Gloria Dayton. Your habeas petition says Gloria planted the gun.”
“It was simple. I asked the right questions, and then I took two steps back and looked at the big picture. I came at it from the angle of believing Hector Moya. Like I said, nobody had before. But he came to me and said, ‘Yes, the powder in that room was mine and I’ll do the time for it. But not the gun.’ I figured, why deny one and not the other unless you’re telling the truth?”
I could think of reasons to do exactly that—lie about one thing and not the other—but I kept them to myself for now.
“So . . . Gloria?”
“Right, Gloria. Hector said the gun was a plant. Well, I had a case once with a firearm enhancement attached. Same thing, but this was a DEA case from the start. No locals. A straight DEA buy bust and the client swore to me he had no gun on him when the deal went down. I didn’t believe him at first—I mean, who goes to buy a kilo with twenty-five K in a briefcase and no gun for backup? But then I started looking into it.”
“You proved the gun was planted to get the enhancement?”
Fulgoni frowned and shook his head.
“Actually, I was never able to prove it. And my guy went down for it. But the unit that made the bust was something called the Interagency Cartel Enforcement Team, which was run by the DEA and headed up by an agent named Jimmy Marco. He’s the same guy who did the swoop and scoop on Moya. So when that name came up in the file I thought there was something to it. You know, that was twice I’d seen this on a case with his name on it. I figured, where there’s smoke there might be fire.”