Paul Levine: Illegal

Strike! Take that, Mr. Public Integrity.

Rigney didn't look impressed. "You gotta do something for me, Payne."

"What?"

"Bribe a judge." The cop looked at his watch. "And you've got one hour to do it."

Payne plopped his Road Hawg into its zippered bag. "I'm out of here, Rigney. Go bribe the judge yourself."

"Do you have a client named Molly Kraft?" the cop asked.

Payne stopped in mid-zip.

Molly Kraft. Oh, shit.

"Child custody," Payne said. "Her husband molested their daughter."

"You never proved it."

"The husband's lawyer had a better shrink."

"So you told Molly Kraft to take off with her daughter in violation of a court order."

Rigney pulled a little cop notebook from his suit pocket. He read aloud in a monotone that could put a jury to sleep. It was all true. Payne had bought airline tickets for Molly Kraft and her daughter and sent them off to Puerto Vallarta to keep the girl away from her abusive father. Bored by endless sunshine and numbed by rivers of sangria, Molly sneaked back across the border four days ago, and got arrested in San Ysidro.

"She flipped on you, pal," Rigney said.

Shit. Is it any wonder I hate my clients?

"Molly Kraft's gonna testify to the Grand Jury right after lunch. Once she does, I can't stop the indictment."

"And now you can?"

Rigney didn't answer, letting Payne sweat. Smart.

Payne liked people who were good at their jobs. Perjurers. Pickpockets. Pain-in-the-ass cops.

Several seconds passed. There was only one other bowler in the place, way down at lane thirty-two, the falling pins echoing like distant thunder.

"Do you know Judge Walter Rollins?" Rigney said at last.

"Van Nuys Division. Didn't make partner at one of the downtown firms, so they bought him a seat on the bench."

"That's it?"

"Rollins is condescending to lawyers, bullies his staff, and sucks up to the appellate court. He also doesn't like anyone smarter than him. Which means he has very few friends."

Then there was the business with the car. Payne remembered a day when he was stopped at a traffic light on Lankershim near the In-N-Out Burger. He'd looked over-looked down, actually-from his perch in his Lexus SUV, and there was Judge Rollins, glaring up at him from his Mini Cooper. As if thinking:

"Payne, you asswipe. You don't deserve that fine machine with its G.P.S. whispering directions in your ear like a thousand-dollar hooker."

Truth was, Payne leased the Lexus to impress his clients, especially car thieves.

"Rollins is dirty," Rigney said, then told Payne about Operation Court Sweep. A sting operation. Joint task force of L.A.P.D. and the feds, which Payne figured would have cops shooting one another's dicks off.

"I don't have a case in front of Rollins," Payne said, "so if you're looking for someone to set him up-"

" We've got the case."

"Forget it. I'm not a snitch."

"Your choice, Payne. But know this: By tonight, either you or Walter Rollins will be behind bars."

Jimmy drove west on Ventura Boulevard, speaking to his ex-wife on the cell. "Sharon, do you know a dickwad named Eugene Rigney?"

"Public Integrity," she answered. "Corruption cases."

"That's him. Can I trust him?"

"Rigney's a hard-ass who lies under oath to get convictions. What are you up to?"

"A little this, a little that. Mostly bribery."

"I'm serious, Atticus."

"Me, too. How's Adam doing with his math?"

"Jimmy, don't do that! I asked you a question. How are you mixed up with Rigney?"

"Late for a hearing. Gotta go. I'll pick up Adam early for baseball Saturday."

"Jimmy, dammit!"

He clicked off and slowed at the intersection of Beverly Glen. On the seat next to him was a cheap briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in cash.

"Strike that, Madame Court Reporter. Forty-five thousand."

At the traffic light at Coldwater Canyon, he'd grabbed one of the stacks of bills and slid it under the floor mat in the backseat. If Judge Rollins would roll over for fifty thousand, why not forty-five?

And don't I deserve something for bringing down a dirty judge?

The sting was a mousetrap intended to snap the necks of corrupt judges. Offer cash to reduce bail or dismiss the indictment or, slimiest of all, give up the name of an informant so the defendant can have him killed. So any guilt Payne felt at being a snitch was lessened by the knowledge that Judge Walter Rollins, if he fell for it, was willing to be an accessory to murder.

Our legal system is incompetent and corrupt, Payne thought. A time-wasting, money-sucking three-ring circus of lazy judges, brain-dead juries, and officious clerks in courthouses where there's not enough parking or decent places to eat lunch.

"Why'd you have to make it a human trafficking case?" Payne had asked Rigney.

"What difference does it make?"

"I repped those Mexicans in the tractor-trailer case."

"I know all about it. You got held in contempt. Ethics charges. Anger management. The whole nine yards."

"So would it make sense that I'd represent a guy who doesn't give a shit if the migrants live or die?"

Rigney shrugged. "What do you care? Another case, another peso."

Jeez, how depressing.

If the legal system were a frozen pond, Payne walked too far on ice too thin. Wearing combat boots and stomping his feet. In the tractor-trailer case, the ice broke. Traffickers brought three dozen Mexicans through a tunnel from Tijuana to Otay Mesa in San Diego County. As soon as the migrants popped out of the ground like bleary-eyed gophers, armed vaquetons- street thugs working for the coyotes-jammed the new arrivals into a trailer truck. The Mexicans were headed for a slaughterhouse in Arizona, where they had been promised jobs pulling intestines out of dead cows and ripping their hides off with pliers. Where the migrants came from, this was considered cushy work.

The driver, an American who would be paid $6,000 for the run, stopped in El Centro in the California desert to visit his girlfriend in her air-conditioned trailer, conveniently stocked with ice-cold beer and a queen-size bed. Afraid that the migrants would scatter if he let them out, he kept them locked in the back. The sun, perched high in the August sky, blazed orange as a branding iron. The metal truck became a convection oven. No one heard the migrants' screams or their prayers to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Tongues swelled. Arms flailed. Limbs locked in spasms. The stricken watched long-departed relatives float by in the darkness. As the hours passed, bowels exploded like mortar shells. Mouths frothed, eyes bulged, brains melted. Eleven people died.

The government promised permanent residency to the survivors if they would testify against the coyotes and the driver. Trial was had, convictions obtained, miscreants jailed. By then, pale new faces manned the desks of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office. Tough regulations were enacted, lest any campesinos from Chihuahua were working for Osama bin Laden on the sly. Even though the survivors had kept their end of the bargain, a tailored suit from Washington yanked their papers and scheduled them for deportation.

"Government fraud, deception, and outright lies!" Payne told the press. "Mafia hit men get better treatment."

Payne subpoenaed a dozen skinny-tied government types. Not just I.C.E. officials. Mayors. State senators. Governors' aides. Demanded to know who cut their grass, washed their cars, changed their kids' diapers. Proved the hypocrisy of the entire system, or so he thought.

"Mr. Payne, you will refrain from this line of questioning."

"Why, Judge? Because a Honduran woman cleans your toilets?"

"That's enough, Mr. Payne!"