Майкл Коннелли - Law of Innocence

“More like hot damn. You got lots of names.”

“Names and connections. I started tracing, looking for stuff out here. Three Opparizio associates are vested owners of BioGreen and make up a majority interest. He controls it through them. One of them is named Jeannie Ferrigno, who in the last seven years has risen from a Vegas stripper with a couple of possession pops on her record to part owner of a variety of businesses from there to here and back again. I think Jeannie is Opparizio’s sidepiece.”

“Follow the honey.”

“Right to BioGreen.”

“This is getting good, Bosch.”

I pointed down the channel to the refinery.

“But if Opparizio has a secret ownership in businesses from here to Vegas, why are we looking at this one?”

“Because this is where the biggest money is. You see that place? It’s not a typical refinery. It’s a biodiesel plant. Basically, it makes fuel from plants and animal fat. It’s recycling waste into an alternate fuel that costs less and burns cleaner. And right now it’s the apple of the government’s eye because it reduces our national dependence on oil. It’s the future, and Louis Opparizio is riding the wave. The government is propping this business up, paying companies like BioGreen a premium on each barrel just to make it. That’s on top of what they get for then going out and selling that barrel.”

“And where there’s government subsidy, there is always corruption.”

“You got that right.”

I started pacing along the worn footpath on top of the berm. I was trying to see the connections and how this could all work.

“So, there’s a guy,” Bosch said. “A lieutenant who runs the bureau at Harbor Division. I trained him twenty-five years ago when he came through Hollywood detectives as a D-one.”

“Can you talk to him?” I asked.

“Already did. He knows I’m retired, so I told him I was fishing around for a friend who is interested in BioGreen as an investment. I wanted to know if there were any red flags and he told me, yeah, there’s a big red flag, an FBI flag on the place.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning he is supposed to take no action on anything that comes across his plate from BioGreen. He’s supposed to alert the bureau and stand down. You understand what that means?”

“That the bureau’s working on something there.”

“Or at least keeping an eye on it.”

I nodded. This was getting better and better in terms of building a smoke screen for trial. But I knew I needed to do more than provide smoke. This wasn’t work for a client. It was for me.

“Okay, so all we need is a connection to Sam Scales, and we have something I can tee up in court,” I said. “I’ll call Cisco and see what he—”

“We already have it,” Bosch said.

“What are you talking about? Where does he connect?”

“The autopsy. Remember the fingernails? The scrapings showed vegetable oil, chicken fat, sugarcane. That’s biofuel, Mick. Sam Scales had biofuel under his fingernails.”

I looked down the channel at the BioGreen refinery. The smoke from the stack billowed ominously upward, helping to feed the dirty cloud that hung over the entire harbor.

I nodded.

“I think you found it, Harry,” I said. “The magic bullet.”

“Just be careful you don’t shoot yourself with it,” he said.

16

Sunday, January 12

Bosch’s discovery of BioGreen and its connection to Louis Opparizio and possibly Sam Scales served to kick-start the defense case by providing a focal point of investigation and strategy. The trip to Terminal Island was followed by an all-hands meeting the following morning at which tasks were delineated and assigned. Establishing a link between Scales and Opparizio was paramount and I wanted that to be the main focus of my investigators.

Locating Opparizio was another. He had insulated himself from direct ownership and control of the refinery operation and we needed to nail that down before trial. With no direct link we worked the secondary link: Jeannie Ferrigno. I told Cisco to put together a surveillance team in hopes that Jeannie would lead us to Opparizio, and then we would jump the surveillance to him. I wanted to be able to document for the jury that this man who held an undeniable grudge against me had an association with the man I was accused of killing. If we could make that connection, then I believed we had our frame.

The meeting ended with a lot of excitement. But for me the adrenaline ebbed quickly. While the investigators got the thrill of working in the field, I focused through the weekend on what many lawyers abhor: reviewing the case files. The paper trail of a case is a living thing that grows and changes. Documents and evidence reviewed at one point could look different or take on new significance when reviewed through the prism of time.

It was important to know the case inside and out, but I could only accomplish that through repeated reviews of the case files. It had now been more than two months since my arrest and the files had thickened by the week with the dissemination of discovery material. I had read and reviewed it all as it came in but it was also important to take it all in as a whole.

By Sunday morning I had filled several pages of a legal pad with notes, lists, and questions. One page was a list of what was missing from the case. At the top was Sam Scales’s wallet. It was not on the property report that described the clothing found on the body and the contents of its pockets.

No wallet. It was assumed that the killer—meaning me—had taken and disposed of it. This missing wallet was important to me because in the variety of scams for which I had defended Sam, he had never used his real name. It was the con man’s way. Each con required a new personality so that he could avoid being traced after the victims woke up to the fact that they had been had. To this end, I knew that Sam was gifted at reinventing himself. I only represented him the times he got caught. It was unknown how many cons he had pulled off without detection.

The missing wallet in this case was important because after a month of diligent work, Cisco Wojciechowski had come up empty in his efforts to background Scales. It was a black hole. We had found no digital record of his whereabouts in the two previous years. The wallet would help if it contained the identification of his current persona. It also would help connect him to BioGreen. If he was working there or involved in some kind of scheme with Opparizio, his current identity would be key to tracing it.

It was only when I reviewed the case file for a third time on Sunday evening that I noticed a discrepancy that appeared to flip the case over and give me one more grievance to take to Judge Warfield.

After strategizing next moves, I called Jennifer Aronson and spoiled her dinner plans. I told her to draw up an emergency motion to compel discovery from the prosecution. I told her that the request should clearly state that the prosecution had been withholding vital evidence from the defense since the start of the case and that the evidence in question was the victim’s wallet and its contents.

It was a provocative move and my guess was that Dana Berg would object to the accusation, and an evidentiary hearing would be quickly scheduled before Warfield. That was exactly what I wanted—a hearing presumed to be about a discovery dispute that would be about something else entirely.

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.