Who had been the target?
Him?
Or the informant waiting in the booth inside?
The only thing the detectives in the gang task force would say was that dead men tell no tales. And by the time Donnally had gotten through rehabbing his hip, whatever trail there might have been had been overgrown by a jungle of other crimes.
Little girls in Catholic school plaid skirts stepped out of a pandaria, giggling and biting into sugar-covered empanaditas. Donnally felt his legs tense and his knee bend for a run toward them, his mind racing ahead to thoughts of a crossfire. He forced himself to stop and turned toward a clothing store window and took a breath, listening to the girls’ laughter as they walked behind him.
When his eyes refocused, he realized he was staring at rows of women’s spike-heeled pumps like he was a fetishist from South of Market. He imagined the lookout watching him, laughing to himself, dismissing him as a threat. The crook coming to the right conclusion for the wrong reason.
Hector Camacho was sitting in a rear booth, his fingers working an electric adding machine, the gears grinding out the paper against the background of banda music drifting down from dusty loudspeakers wedged into the upper corners of the dining room.
Donnally wondered whether he was counting up the money he’d have left after the government was done seizing his house and cars.
As Donnally zigzagged through the three rows of empty Formica tables, through the smells of roasted chilies and grilled meats and fresh tortillas, he heard a whistle from behind the counter and saw Camacho’s right hand slide from the table down to his lap.
Donnally raised his hands, slowed, but kept walking. Only now did he wish it was still the old days when he had his we’re-the-good-guys detective’s shield clipped two inches to the right of his belt buckle.
Ten feet away, Donnally said, “Quedate tranquilo.” Stay cool. “Yo tengo identificacion.” I have ID.
Camacho raised his left palm.
“Muestrame de donde es usted.” Show me from where you are.
Donnally stopped, reached into his back pocket and pulled out his retirement badge, and turned it toward Camacho.
“My name is Harlan Donnally.”
Camacho pointed at Donnally’s left side, then slid his finger over until it pointed at his right.
Donnally pulled back his jacket and showed the gun on his hip.
Camacho nodded and covered his paperwork. He signaled Donnally to come forward and said in English, “Sit down and keep your hands on the table.”
Donnally slid in across from Camacho and laid his palms flat in front of him. Close up, the man looked weary, wearing a face like those of the World War II and Korean War vets his father employed as extras in his first combat movies. The sort who lived in the ghosts of dead comrades and revisited the battlefield each night in their dreams. Donnally had the feeling that while Camacho had the will to fight, he preferred to be done with fighting.
“I want to talk to you about Mark Hamlin,” Donnally said. “I was appointed by the court to look into his death.”
“I saw something about that on the news.” Camacho smiled. “Special master made it sound like you’d be some old white-haired guy.” His smile left his face. “You talking to all his clients, or just me?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“And you’re darkening my door because. .”
Donnally caught motion of a cook walking from the kitchen toward the counter with a takeout order.
“Is it safe to talk in here?”
Camacho waited until the cook finished his return trip and disappeared from view, then said, “Good as anywhere.”
Donnally leaned forward and lowered his voice. “My understanding is that you cut a deal.”
Camacho didn’t respond.
“Somebody rolled on you and you rolled on someone else, and Frank Lange was with you during the debriefing.”
Camacho’s face hardened. His hand came up from under the table. Donnally tensed, ready to dive and roll and come up shooting. Camacho’s hand was empty.
“You been talking to that flaky throwback hippie chick?”
“Which?”
“Moon River or River Moon or some bullshit name like that. A couple of months ago she was poking around about who snitched on who. A hundred pounds of crazy, and pathetic as hell.”
“I can’t tell you whether I talked to her or not, but I can tell you I saw some paperwork in Hamlin’s files. All of his records are still privileged, but the judge is letting me look at anything I need to.”
Camacho spread his hands in a kind of defeat. “What happened, happened. Somebody was gonna snitch me off someday. I shouldn’t have gone back into the trade. Sure I was pissed it was one of Hamlin’s other clients, but-”
“What?”
“Just what I said. One of his other clients rolled on me. Since Hamlin could see it coming, he was able to work something out for me before they kicked in my door.” Camacho flashed a grin. “Gave me time to clean things up a little.”
Donnally thought of the line in Hamlin’s notes.
Split 40/60 from Guillermo, 60/40 from Nacho, and 40/60 from Rafa.
“Who rolled on you?”
“Didn’t she tell you that already?”
“Was it Guillermo?”
Camacho nodded. “Guillermo Gutierrez.” His lips pressed together as though he was a disappointed parent thinking about an ungrateful child. “And I gave the motherfucker his start, gave him my connection when I went to the federal pen.”
“And you gave up Rafa.”
“Is that a question?”
“No. I saw his name in Hamlin’s file. Was he one of Hamlin’s clients?”
“No. Reggie Hancock’s. In LA. Rafa was big down there”-Camacho grinned again-“until last month.”
Donnally now understood the splits. Hamlin and Hancock split sixty-forty or forty-sixty depending on whose client was rolling. And he wondered how far back the scheme went, since, according to Navarro, Hancock had been Camacho’s attorney in the case he was convicted on decades earlier.
“And how would you know the details of his operation, or at least enough to roll on him?”
Camacho smiled. “The flake didn’t go running to you, did she?”
And Donnally had the answer. It was Lange. Lange fed Camacho the information he needed to set up Hancock’s client, which meant that Hancock fed the information to Lange first. And Ryvver must have figured it all out and was looking for a way to use it to help Little Bud.
“I told you,” Donnally said. “I can’t say who I’ve talked to.”
“Have it your way.”
“What about the money?”
“You mean Hamlin’s fee?”
Donnally nodded.
“He was gonna take it out of the reward, from my cut of whatever the government forfeited from Rafa. They found almost half a million in his house. I got fifty thousand out of that. The DEA said I could get up to two hundred and fifty altogether, depending on how much they find.”
Donnally thought of the Vietnamese gunman who kidnapped him off the street and took him into the garage. He wondered whether the quarter-million-dollar figure was a coincidence.
“I take it the DEA would send a check to Hamlin,” Donnally said, “and he’d deduct his cut and forward you the rest.”
Camacho nodded. “In cash. I didn’t want no kind of trail between the government and me.”
Listening to Camacho, it was clear to Donnally he was no genius. But he didn’t have to be to succeed in the drug trade. He just needed to be able to count the money and protect his link in the distribution chain.
Was it possible Camacho hadn’t yet figured out that if Guillermo got a cut of his property, and he got a cut of Rafa’s, and Hancock and Hamlin got a cut of everybody’s, the whole thing must have been a setup from the start?
Chapter 48
I’m in pretty deep in the attorney-client end of the pool and can’t feel the bottom,” Donnally said to Judge McMullin in his oak-paneled study a couple of hours later.