The Gods of Guilt(36)

“I’ll try but I don’t know.”

“Okay, you try. I have to go now. I’ll be seeing you before the trial. There’s still a lot of prep work to be done.”

“Okay. And I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For getting you upset about Giselle. I can tell you are.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just make sure you eat the food they give you tonight. I want you to look strong for the trial. You promise me?”

La Cosse reluctantly nodded.

“I promise.”

I headed back to the steel door.





12





I walked back through the courtroom with my head down, oblivious of the hearing that Judge Leggoe had started following ours. I moved toward the rear exit, pondering the story La Cosse had just told me, that he had reached out to me following his arrest because Gloria Dayton had wanted me to know if something happened to her, not necessarily because she thought I should be his attorney. There was a significant difference in the stories and it helped ease the burden I’d carried for months in regard to Gloria. But did she want me to get this message so I would avenge her, or was it to warn me about some unseen danger? The questions put a new complexion on how I viewed things about Gloria and even myself. I now realized that Gloria might have known or at least feared that she was in danger.

The moment I stepped out of the courtroom and into the crowded hallway I was confronted by Fernando Valenzuela—the bondsman, not the former baseball pitcher. Val and I went way back and once shared a working relationship that was financially beneficial to both parties. But things turned sour years ago and we drifted apart. When I needed a bondsman these days, I usually went to Bill Deen or Bob Edmundson. Val was a distant third on that list.

Valenzuela handed me a folded document.

“Mick, this is for you.”

“What is it?”

I took the document and started to unfold it one handed, waving it to get it open.

“It’s a subpoena. You’ve been served.”

“What are you talking about? You’re running process now?”

“One of my many skills, Mick. Guy’s gotta make a living. Hold it up for me.”

“Fuck that.”

I knew the routine. He wanted to take a photo of me with the document to prove service. Service had been made but I wasn’t going to pose for pictures. I held the paper behind my back. Valenzuela took a photo with his phone anyway.

“Doesn’t matter,” he said.

“This is totally unnecessary, Val,” I said.

He put his phone away and I looked at the paper. I immediately saw the styling of the case; Hector Arrande Moya vs Arthur Rollins, warden, FCI Victorville. It was a 2241 filing. This was a permutation of a habeas petition that was known by lawyers as a “true habeas,” because rather than being a last-ditch effort grasping at legal straws like ineffective counsel, it was a declaration that startlingly new evidence was now available that proved innocence. Moya had something new up his sleeve and somehow it involved me, meaning it must involve my late client Gloria Dayton. She was the only link between Moya and me. The basic cause of action in a 2241 filing was the claim that the petitioner—in this case, Moya—was being unlawfully detained in prison, and thus the civil action directed against the warden. There would be something more in the full filing, the claim of new evidence designed to get a federal judge’s attention.

“Okay, Mick, so no hard feelings?”

I looked over the paper at Valenzuela. He had his phone out again and took my photo. I had forgotten he was even there. I could’ve gotten mad but I was too intrigued now.

“No, no hard feelings, Val. If I knew you were a process server, I would have been using you myself.”

Now Valenzuela was intrigued.

“Anytime, man. You’ve got my number. Money’s tight in the bond market right now, so I’m just picking up the slack. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, but you tell your employer on this that lawyer to lawyer, a subpoena is not the way to . . .”

I paused when I read the name of the lawyer issuing the subpoena.

“Sylvester Fulgoni?”

“That’s right, the firm that puts the F-U in litigation.”

Valenzuela laughed, proud of his clever response. But I was thinking of something else. Sylvester Fulgoni was indeed a onetime ball buster when it came to practicing law. But what was unusual about being subpoenaed by him to give a deposition was that I knew he had been disbarred and was serving time in federal prison for tax evasion. Fulgoni had built a successful practice primarily suing law enforcement agencies over color-of-law cases—cops using the protection of the badge to get away with assault, extortion, and other abuses, sometimes even murder. He had won millions in settlements and jury verdicts and taken his fair share in fees. Only he hadn’t bothered to pay taxes on most of it and eventually the governments he so often sued took notice.