Fulgoni turned around and kicked at the door with his heel to alert the guard.
“What’s it going to be, Sly?” I asked.
The guard opened the door. Fulgoni glanced back at him, hesitated, and then said he needed five more minutes. The door was closed and Fulgoni looked at me.
“You threatened my son yesterday but I didn’t think you’d have the balls to threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat, Sly. I’ll shut you both down.”
“You’re an asshole, Haller.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I’m an asshole. When I’ve got an innocent man facing a murder count.”
He had nothing to say to that.
“Sit back down,” I instructed. “You’re going to tell me how to handle Hector Moya.”
27
The wait between interviews with Fulgoni and Moya was twenty-five minutes and two more teeth-rattling sonic booms. When the door finally opened, Moya stepped in calmly and slowly, his eyes steady on me. He walked with a grace and ease that belied his situation and even suggested that the two men behind him were personal valets, not prison guards. His orange jumpsuit was vibrant and had crisp creases. Fulgoni’s had been faded from a thousand washes and frayed at the edges of the sleeves.
Moya was taller and more muscled than I had expected. Younger, too. I put him at thirty-five tops. He had wide shoulders at the top of a torso that tapered down like a V. The sleeves of his jumpsuit stretched tightly against his biceps. I realized that despite my interaction with his case eight years before, I had never seen him in person or in a newspaper photograph or television report. I had built a visual image based on fantasy. I had him as a small, round man who was venal and cruel and had gotten what he deserved. I wasn’t expecting the specimen standing before me now. And this was a concern because, unlike Fulgoni, Moya was not chained at the ankles and waist. He was as unencumbered as I was.
He accurately picked up on my concern and addressed it before even sitting down.
“I have been here much longer than Sylvestri,” he said. “I am trusted and not chained like an animal.”
He spoke with a strong accent but was clearly understandable. I nodded cautiously, not knowing whether his explanation contained some sort of threat.
“Why don’t you have a seat,” I said.
Moya pulled back the chair and sat down. He crossed his legs and held his hands together in his lap. He immediately looked relaxed, as if meeting in a lawyer’s office instead of a prison.
“You know,” he said, “six months ago my plan was to have you killed in a very painful manner. When Sylvestri spoke of the part you played in my case, I became very angry. I was upset and I wanted you dead, Mr. Haller. Glory Days, too.”
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.
“There was no video of the search introduced at your trial. Do you recall seeing anybody with a video camera?”
“Yes, they take a video of me. And the whole room. They humiliate me. They make me take off my clothes for the search. And the video man was there.”