The Gods of Guilt(76)

I nodded as though I was sympathetic to his situation.

“Well, I’m glad that didn’t happen. Because I’m still here and I may be able to help you.”

He shook his head.

“The reason I tell you this is because only a fool would think I had no motive to have you and Gloria Dayton eliminated. But I did not do this. If I had, you and she would have simply disappeared. This is the way it is done. There would be no case and no trial of an innocent man.”

I nodded.

“I understand. And I know it means little to you, but I also have to tell you that eight years ago I was doing my job, which was to do my best in the defense of a client.”

“It does not matter. Your laws. Your code. A snitch is a snitch, and in my business they disappear. Sometimes with their lawyers.”

He stared coldly at me through the darkest eyes I think I had ever seen besides my own half brother’s. Then he broke away and his voice changed as he engaged in the business of the day, the tone moving from dead-on threat to collegial cooperation.

“So, Mr. Haller, what must we discuss here today?”

“I want to talk about the gun that was found in your hotel room when you were arrested.”

“It was not my gun. I have said this from the very beginning. No one has believed me.”

“I wasn’t there at the beginning—at least on your side. But I’m pretty sure I believe you now.”

“And you’ll do something about it?”

“I’m going to try.”

“Do you understand the stakes that are involved?”

“I understand that the people who did this to you will stop at nothing to keep their crimes secret—because I’m pretty sure you’re not the only one they did it to. They already killed Gloria Dayton. So we will have to be very cautious until we can get this into open court. Once we are there, it will be harder for them to hide behind their badges and the cover of night. They’ll have to come out and answer to us.”

Moya nodded.

“Gloria—she was important to you?”

“For a time. But what is important to me now is that I have a client in the county jail accused of killing her and he didn’t do it. I have to get him out and I need you to help me. If you help me, I will certainly help you. That all right with you?”

“It is all right. I have people who can protect you.”

I nodded. I expected that he might make such an offer. But it wasn’t the kind of protection I was interested in.

“I think I’m all right,” I said. “I’ve got my own people. But I’ll tell you what. I’ve got a client in the pink module at Men’s Central down in L.A. You think you can get somebody in there to sort of watch over him? He’s in there alone, and I’m worried they’re going to see this thing moving toward a trial in which a lot of these secrets are going to come out. They’ll know that the best way to avoid that is to avoid having a trial.”

Moya nodded.

“If there is no client, there is no trial,” he said.

“You got that right,” I said.

“Then I will see to it that he is protected.”

“Thank you. And while you’re at it, I’d double up on whatever protective measures you have for yourself in here.”

“That will be done as well.”

“Good. Now let’s talk about the gun.”

I flipped a few pages back on my legal pad to get to the notes I had written off the trial transcript. I refreshed myself on the facts and then looked at Moya.

“Okay, at your trial the arresting officer from the LAPD described coming into the room and arresting you, and then finding the gun. Were you still in the room when they found it or had you already been pulled out of there?”

He nodded as if to say he could answer this one.

“It was a two-room suite. They handcuff me and make me sit on the couch in the living room. A man with a gun stood over me while the others began to search through the room. They found the cocaine in a drawer in the bedroom. Then they said they find the gun. He come out of the bedroom and show me the gun in a plastic bag and I said it was not my gun. He said, ‘It is now.’”

I wrote a few notes down and spoke without looking up from the pad.

“And he was the LAPD officer who testified at the trial? An officer named Robert Ramos?”

“That was him.”

“You’re sure he said, ‘It is now,’ when you said it wasn’t your gun?”

“This is what he said.”

It was a good note to have. It was hearsay and therefore might not even be allowed as testimony in a trial, but if Moya was telling the truth—and I believed he was—then it meant Ramos might have had some knowledge of the gun having been planted in the room. Maybe he had been coached to look under the mattress.