“Maggie, thank you,” I said. “No matter what happens, you were here for me and it has meant more than you’ll ever know.”
“Well,” she said. “Let’s get the NG — as you like to call it — and everything will be all right.”
I withdrew my hand but it was too late. A voice came from the speaker box next to the camera and told me not to touch her again. I acted like I didn’t even hear it.
“Still thinking about going back to the D.A.’s Office after this?” I asked. “Now that you’ve seen behind the curtain of high-stakes defense work?”
I was smiling good-naturedly, wanting to take a small break.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sure the bosses are getting a steady diet of complaints about me from Dana. The well may be poisoned — especially when we win. Maybe I could get used to sticking it to the man.”
She said it with full sarcasm. But she smiled and I smiled back.
At 4 p.m. I got a fifteen-minute heads-up from Deputy Chan that I was being moved to the shuttle and I had to lose the suit. Maggie said she was going to go.
“When you get out of here, call Cisco,” I told her. “Get a copy of the video with the room-service guy in Arizona and bring it to court tomorrow. We might need it.”
“Good idea,” she said.
Twenty minutes later I was in the back of a cruiser being driven to Twin Towers by Deputy Pressley. He took the normal route from the courthouse, crossing the 101 freeway on Main Street and dropping down Cesar Chavez Avenue to Vignes Street.
But at Vignes, instead of turning left toward Bauchet Street and the jail, he turned right.
“Pressley, what’s up?” I said. “Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer.
“Pressley,” I repeated. “What’s going on?”
“Just calm down,” Pressley said. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
But his answer didn’t calm me. Instead, high concern gripped me. The stories about sheriff’s deputies committing or orchestrating atrocities in the jails had permeated the local justice system. Nothing was unimaginable. But fact or fiction, the stories all took place inside the jail, where the situations were controlled and unseen by outside witnesses. Pressley was taking me away from the jail and we were driving behind the Union Station railway complex, bouncing over tracks and entering a maintenance yard where the workers had punched out at five sharp.
“Pressley, come on, man,” I said. “You don’t have to do this. I thought we had an understanding. You told me to watch my back. Why are you doing this?”
I was leaning forward as far as the seat belt and the cuff lock between my legs would allow me. I saw a slight smile crack across his face and I realized he had played me. He wasn’t a sympathizer. He was one of them.
“Who put you up to this, Pressley?” I demanded. “Was it Berg? Who?”
Again, only silence from my abductor. Pressley pulled the car into an open work bay covered with a corrugated and rusted metal roof. He then hit the release on the rear door locks and got out of the car.
I tracked him as he walked around the front of the car. But he stopped there and looked back at me through the windshield. I was puzzled. Was he going to pull me out, or what?
The rear door across from me opened and I turned to see Special Agent Dawn Ruth slide onto the plastic seat next to me.
“Agent Ruth,” I blurted out. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Calm down, Haller,” she said. “I’m here to talk.”
I turned and looked through the windshield again at Pressley. I realized I had read him completely wrong just now.
“And I should ask you the same question,” Ruth said. “What the fuck is going on?”
I looked back at her, regaining some of my composure and cool.
“You know what’s going on,” I said. “What do you want?”
“First of all, this conversation didn’t happen,” she said. “If at any time you try to say it did, I will have four agents ready to alibi me and you will look like a liar.”
“Fine. What exactly is the conversation?”
“Your judge is out of control. Ordering me to appear to testify? That’s not going to happen.”
“Fine, don’t show up. Then you can read about it in the Times. But if you ask me, that’s no way to keep an investigation under wraps.”
“And you think testifying in open court is?”
“Look, if you cooperate, we can choreograph your testimony. We can protect what you need to protect. But I need to get on the record that Sam Scales was an informant and Louis Opparizio found out and had him whacked.”
“Even if that’s not what happened?”
I looked at her for a long moment before responding.
“If that’s not what happened, then what did?” I finally asked.
“Think about it,” she said. “If Opparizio thought Sam was an informant, would he still go on running the scam at BioGreen? Or would he have killed Sam and closed up shop?”
“Okay, so you’re saying the scam’s been ongoing — even after Sam got killed. So the bureau’s operation is also ongoing.”
I tried to put it together but couldn’t.
“Why was Sam killed?” I asked.
“You probably knew him better than anybody,” Ruth said. “Why do you think?”
It clicked.
“He was running his own scam,” I said. “On the bureau and Opparizio. What was it?”
Ruth hesitated. She was steeped in a culture that never gave away secrets. But now was the time — in a conversation that would and could be denied.
“He was running a skim,” Ruth said. “We found out after he was dead. He secretly started his own oil distro company. Incorporated, registered with the government. He was running tankers back and forth to the port, but half the subsidies were going to him.”
I nodded. The story was easy to pick up from there.
“Opparizio found out and had to whack him,” I said. “He didn’t want an investigation to come to BioGreen and he saw an opportunity to settle a score with me.”
“And I’m not going to testify to any of this,” she said.
“There’s no reason not to. Opparizio is dead, in case you didn’t hear.”
“You think Opparizio was in charge of this? You think he was the target? He was running one operation. We’re watching six refineries in four states. Ongoing operations. Opparizio wasn’t giving the orders, he was following them. And that’s why it was easy for them to decide he had to go. His freelancing vendetta with you showed poor business judgment and that’s not tolerated by these people. At all. You think he snuck off to Arizona to avoid a subpoena? Don’t be silly. He was hiding from them, not you.”
“You were watching him too?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Through the windshield I could see Pressley pacing in front of the car. I had a feeling that we were on a clock. This was an unsanctioned stop.
“Does he work for you, too?” I asked. “Pressley? Or do you have something on him?”
“Don’t worry about him,” Ruth said.
My thoughts returned to my own situation.
“So, what am I supposed to do?” I said. “Sacrifice myself? Take a conviction so your case goes on? That’s crazy. You’re crazy if you think I’ll do that.”
“We had hoped that our investigation would be at the arrest phase before your case even made it to court,” she said. “We would then square it. But that didn’t happen — you refused to delay the case. A lot of things that were supposed to happen didn’t.”
“No fucking kidding. Let me ask you one thing. Were you watching when they killed Sam? Did you guys just let it happen — to protect your case?”
“We would never let something like that happen. Especially just to protect a case. They grabbed him inside the refinery. We had nobody else inside. We didn’t know he was dead until the LAPD ran his prints after finding his body in your trunk.”