I heard Cisco whistle as I started the car.
“So let’s talk this out,” he said. “We have Lankford following Gloria Dayton on the night she was murdered. He presumably follows her home and about an hour later she is murdered in her apartment.”
“And then a couple days later at first appearance, he’s there,” I said. “He’s assigned to the Dayton murder case.”
“That’s not a coincidence, Mick. There are no coincidences like that.”
I nodded, even though I was alone in the car.
“It’s a setup,” I said. “Andre’s been telling the truth.”
I needed to get to my Gloria Dayton files but Jennifer Aronson still had them. It would have to wait until the morning staff meeting. In the meantime, I was trying to remember those days eight years ago when I first met Detective Lankford and became his prime suspect in the murder of my own investigator.
I suddenly remembered what Cisco had said at the top of the conversation.
“You’re tailing Trina Trixxx right now?”
“Yeah, she wasn’t hard to find. I drove by her place to get a feel for it and out she came. I followed her here. Same setup that Gloria had. The driver, the whole bit. She’s been inside the hotel for about forty minutes now.”
“Okay, I’m heading your way. I want to talk to her. Tonight.”
“I’ll make that happen. You okay to drive? You sound like you had a few.”
“I’m fine. I’ll grab coffee on the way. You just hold her until I get there.”
17
Before I got to the Standard downtown I got a text from Cisco redirecting me to an address and apartment number on Spring Street. Then I got another text, this one advising me to hit an ATM on the way — Trina wanted to be paid to talk. When I finally got to the address, it turned out it was one of the rehabbed lofts right behind the Police Administration Building. The lobby door was locked, and when I buzzed apartment 12C, it was my own investigator who answered and buzzed me up.
On the twelfth floor I stepped out of the elevator to find Cisco waiting in the open doorway of 12C.
“I followed her home from the Standard and waited until she was dropped off,” he explained. “Figured it’d be easier if we took her driver out of the equation.”
I nodded and looked through the open door but didn’t enter.
“Is she going to talk to us?”
“Depends on how much cash you brought. She’s a businesswoman through and through.”
“I got enough.”
I walked past him and into a loft with views over the PAB and the civic center, the city hall tower lit up and on center display. The apartment was a nice place, though sparely furnished. Trina Rafferty had either recently moved in or was in the process of moving out. She was sitting on a white leather couch with chrome feet. She wore a short black cocktail dress, had her legs crossed in a stab at modesty, and was smoking a cigarette.
“Are you going to pay me?” she asked.
I walked fully into the room and looked down at her. She was pushing forty and she looked tired. Her hair was slightly disheveled, her lipstick was smeared, and her eyeliner was caking at the corners. One more long night in another year of long nights. She had just come from having sex with someone she didn’t know before and would probably never see again.
“It depends on what you tell me.”
“Well, I’m not telling you anything unless you pay up front.”
I had hit an ATM in the Bonaventure Hotel lobby and made two maximum withdrawals of four hundred dollars each. The money had come in hundreds, fifties, and twenties and I split it between two pockets. I took out the first four hundred and dropped it on her coffee table next to the crowded ashtray.
“There’s four hundred. Is that good enough to start?”
She picked up the money, folded it twice, and worked it into one of her high-heeled shoes. I remembered in that moment that Gloria had once told me that she always put her cash payments into her shoes because the shoes were usually the last thing to come off — if at all. Many clients liked her to keep her heels on while they had sex.
“We’ll see,” Trina said. “Ask away.”
The whole drive downtown I had considered what I should ask and how I should ask it. I had a feeling this might be my only shot with Trina Trixxx. Once team Fulgoni found out I had gotten to her, they would attempt to shut down my access.
“Tell me about James Marco and Hector Moya.”
Her body rocked backward with surprise and then straightened up. She stuck out her lower lip for a few seconds before responding.
“I didn’t realize that this is about them. You need to pay me more if you want me to talk about them.”
Without hesitation I took the other fold of money out of my pocket and dropped it on the table. It disappeared into her other shoe. I sat down on an ottoman directly across the table from her.
“Let’s hear it,” I said.
“Marco’s a DEA agent and he had a hard-on for Hector,” she said. “He really wanted to get him and he did.”
“How did you know Marco?”
“He busted me.”
“When?”
“It was a sting. He posed as a john and he wanted sex and coke and I brought both. Then I got busted.”
“When was this?”
“About ten years ago. I don’t remember the dates.”
“You made a deal with him?”
“Yeah, he let me go, but I had to tell him stuff. He’d call me.”
“What stuff?”
“Just stuff I would hear or know about — you know, from clients. He agreed to let me go if I fed him. And he was always hungry.”
“Hungry for Hector.”
“Well, no. He didn’t know about Hector, at least not from me. I wasn’t that stupid or that desperate. I’d take the bust before I’d give up Hector. The guy was cartel, you know what I mean? So I gave Marco the little stuff. The kind of stuff guys would brag about while fucking. All their big scores and plans and whatever. Guys try to compensate with talk all the time, you know?”
I nodded, though I didn’t know if I was revealing something about myself by agreeing. I tried to stay on track with what she was saying and how it fit with the latest permutation of Gloria’s case.
“Okay,” I said. “So you didn’t give Hector up to Marco. Who did?”
I knew that indirectly, at least, Gloria Dayton had given Moya up, but I didn’t know what Trina knew.
“All I can tell you is that it wasn’t me,” Trina said.
I shook my head.
“That’s not good enough, Trina. Not for eight hundred bucks.”
“What, you want me to throw in a blow job, too? That’s not a problem.”
“No, I want you to tell me everything. I want you to tell me what you told Sly Fulgoni.”
She went through the same body shiver as when I had first mentioned Hector Moya. As though for a second she had been shocked by the name and then was able to reconstitute herself.
“How do you know about Sly?”
“Because I do. And if you want to keep the money, I need to know what you told him.”
“But isn’t that like attorney-client stuff? Like it’s privileged or whatever they call it?”
I shook my head.
“You’ve got it wrong, Trina. You’re a witness, not a client. Fulgoni’s client is Hector Moya. What did you tell him?”
I leaned forward on the ottoman as I said it and then I waited.
“Well, I told him about another girl who Marco busted and was putting to work. Like me, only he really had her under his thumb. I don’t know why. I think when he caught her she had a lot more on her than I had.”
“You mean a lot more cocaine?”
“Right. And her record wasn’t as clean as mine. She was going to go down hard if she didn’t come up with something bigger than herself, you know what I mean?”