I told Jennifer I wanted the request filed as soon as court opened in the morning and then I disconnected and let her go to work. I had not asked if the assignment intruded on her plans for the evening. I was only interested in protecting my own. Kendall had not gotten to the Musso & Frank Grill since her return from Hawaii. It had been her favorite restaurant and a place where we had shared many a martini and dinner in our first go-round. I was off martinis and all other alcohol now, but I had made a deal with her. Musso & Frank’s on Sunday night in exchange for allowing me to hole up in my home office and work through the weekend. That work had paid off big-time and now I was looking forward to the night out as much as Kendall was. I passed the case baton to Jennifer and told her I would meet her at the Nickel Diner in the morning after she filed. I asked her to tell the whole defense team to come for breakfast so we could update one another on the prior seventy-two hours.
Despite having to witness many martinis being prepared, served, and consumed, I found dinner at Musso’s a welcome distraction from thoughts on the case, if only for a few hours, and it pulled Kendall and me back toward the relationship we had shared for seven years before her departure for Hawaii. What drew me closest to her was her assumption that there would be no interruption in our relationship going forward. The idea that I could be found guilty of murder a month from now and be locked away in prison for the rest of my life had never entered her thinking or her discussion of our renewed life together. It was naive, yes, but also endearing. It made me not want to disappoint her, even as I understood that disappointing her would be the least of my problems if I didn’t win the case.
“You know,” I said, “being innocent is no guarantee of a not-guilty verdict. Anything can happen in trial.”
“You always say that,” she said. “But I know you’re going to win.”
“But before we make any great plans, let’s get the verdict, okay?”
“It doesn’t hurt to plan. As soon as this is over, I want to go somewhere and lie on a beach and forget all about this.”
“That will be nice.”
And I left it at that.
17
Monday, January 13
At breakfast the next morning Jennifer was the last to arrive. By then we had been around the table with team members reporting on their efforts since the last meeting. There had been little advancement, largely because of the weekend. Cisco said that he had had a surveillance team on Jeannie Ferrigno since Friday evening but there had been no sign of Louis Opparizio having contact with her. Meanwhile, Bosch told us that he was working his law enforcement contacts to try to determine why BioGreen was on the FBI’s radar.
Jennifer had not heard the updates and asked a few questions to catch up.
“Is there any confirmation beyond his dirty fingernails that Sam Scales was somehow involved with BioGreen?” she asked.
“Well, not under that name,” Bosch said. “I dummied in a call to check on employment for a car loan and they said they had no record of a Sam Scales working there now or ever.”
“What about the FBI?” Jennifer asked. “Do we know what they’re up to?”
“Not yet,” Bosch said. “I didn’t think we wanted to take a head-on approach to that question, so I’m sort of sniffing around the edges while trying to get a line on Scales.”
“I followed a tanker truck out of there Friday afternoon,” Cisco added. “For the hell of it. Just wanted to see where it went. But he went through a security gate at the port and I had to hold back. About a half hour later, he comes driving out and goes back to the refinery. I think he either picked up or dropped off a load.”
“Are we thinking Sam Scales was driving a truck?” Jennifer said. “What’s the scam in that?”
“Maybe he went straight,” Cisco said.
“No,” I said. “I knew Sam. He was never going to go straight. He was up to something and we still need to find it.”
There was silence for a few moments while I thought about what Bosch had said. I had spent the entirety of my career laboring in state courts and had few interactions with FBI agents or the federal government. Though Bosch had once been married to an FBI agent, I knew he had a history of antagonism when it came to his federal counterparts. The rest of my team were also outsiders when it came to the feds.
“We’ve got trial in a month,” I said. “What do you think about switching to a head-on approach to the bureau instead of sniffing around the edges?”
“We can do that,” Bosch said. “But you have to remember, the feds only respond to threat. Threat of exposure. Whatever they’ve got going down there, they want to keep it quiet and they’ll only take you seriously if they see you as endangering their secrecy or their investigation. That’s what a head-on approach is. You make yourself a threat. That’s how we always did it at the LAPD.”
I nodded and thought about that. Monica, one of the owners of the Nickel, brought over a variety plate of doughnuts to go with the pancakes and eggs we had already eaten. Jennifer, the only one who hadn’t had breakfast yet, reached for the chocolate-frosted entry.
“Anyone want to share this?” she asked.
There were no takers. Jennifer continued.
“I was going to say we should file a Freedom of Information Act request,” she said. “But those take forever. They probably wouldn’t even acknowledge receipt until after your trial.”
I nodded in agreement and then changed my mind.
“We could do that but then back it up with a subpoena requesting files on Scales,” I said.
“The FBI can ignore a subpoena,” Jennifer countered. “They don’t have to answer questions about federal investigations in state court.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “Just delivering the subpoena would be the threat Harry’s talking about. They would be on notice that this is coming up at my trial. It might bring them out of the shadows. Then we see what we can get.”
I looked at Bosch for confirmation. He nodded.
“It could work,” he said.
“Let’s do it,” Jennifer said.
“Jennifer, I know I’m putting everything on your plate,” I said. “But can you add the subpoena and FOIA request?”
“No problem,” she said. “The FOIA’s probably an online request. It’ll be done by the end of the day. I’ll work on the subpoena first. What are the parameters?”
“Sam Scales and any and all aliases,” I said. “Then include Louis Opparizio and BioGreen Industries. Anything else?”
Jennifer received a call on her cell and got up from the table to take it outside. The rest of us continued to talk through the subpoena idea.
“Even if it does bring them out, I’m not sure what you’ll get,” Bosch said. “You know what they say: the FBI doesn’t share. It eats like an elephant and shits like a mouse.”
Lorna laughed. It made me realize that Cisco had been silent through the whole discussion.
“Cisco, what do you think?” I asked.
“I think another way to get information about that place is for me to go down there and ask if they’re hiring,” Cisco said. “Maybe I get inside there and see what’s going on — even if they don’t hire me.”
“Put a hard hat on, and you look the part,” I said with a smile. “But no. If they’re running a con, they’d do a deep dive checking you out, and your name would connect to mine. I think I’d rather have you working with the Indians on Opparizio.”
Cisco called the men on his surveillance team the Indians. Political correctness aside, he likened them to the Indians in the old westerns who watched the wagon trains from the cliffs without the settlers having any clue.