Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

“How about Toast?”

It was ten past noon, but I understood that a woman of her occupation might have just gotten up for the day.

“Uh, yeah, that’s fine, I guess. I’m trying to think of a place where we could get breakfast.”

“What? No, I mean Toast, the place. It’s a café on Third near Crescent Heights.”

“Oh, okay. I’ll meet you there. So about one, then?”

“I’ll be there.”

“I’ll get a table and be waiting.”

I ended the call, told Earl where we were going, and then called Lorna to see if she got my two o’clock status conference postponed.

“No soap,” she said. “Patricia said the judge wants this thing off his calendar. No more delays, Mickey. He wants you in chambers at two.”

Patricia was Judge Companioni’s clerk. She actually ran the courtroom and the calendar, and when she said the judge wanted to move the case on, it really meant Patricia wanted to move it on. She was tired of the constant delays I had asked for while I tried to convince my client to take the deal the DA had put on the table.

I thought for a moment. Even if Stacey Campbell showed up on time—which I knew I couldn’t count on—there was probably no way I could get what I needed from her and get back to the courthouse in downtown by two. I could cancel the meeting at Toast but I didn’t want to. The mysteries and motives surrounding Gloria Dayton had my full attention at the moment. I wanted to know the secrets behind her subterfuge, and diverting to handle another case was not going to happen.

“Okay, I’ll call Bullocks and see if she’s still up for covering for me on it.”

“Why, are you still in first-appearance court?”

“No, heading to West Hollywood on the Dayton case.”

“You mean the La Cosse case, don’t you?”

“Right.”

“And West Hollywood can’t wait?”

“No, it can’t, Lorna.”

“She still has a hold on you, doesn’t she? Even in death.”

“I just want to know what happened. So right now I need to call Bullocks. I’ll talk to you later.”

I clicked off before I got a sermon about getting emotionally involved with the work. Lorna had always had issues with my relationship with Gloria and could not understand that it had nothing to do with sex. That it wasn’t some kind of whore fixation. That it was about finding someone you somehow shared the same view of the world with. Or at least thought you did.

When I called Jennifer Aronson she told me she was working in the law library at Southwestern and going through the Gloria Dayton files I had given her that morning.

“I’m going case to case and just trying to familiarize myself with everything,” she said. “Unless there is something I should be specifically looking for.”

“Not really,” I said. “Did you find any notes on Hector Arrande Moya?”

“No notes. It’s amazing you remembered his name after seven years.”

“I remember names, some cases, but not birthdays or anniversaries. Always gets me in trouble. You need to check on Moya’s status and—”

“I did that first thing. I started with the L.A. Times online archives and found a couple stories about his case. It went federal. You said you made your deal with the DA’s Office, but the feds obviously took over the case.”

I nodded. The more I talked about a case, the more I remembered it.

“Right, there was a federal warrant existing. The DA must’ve gotten big-footed because Moya was papered and that gave the feds first dibs.”

“It also gave them a bigger hammer. There is a gun enhancement with federal drug-trafficking statutes that made Moya eligible for a life sentence, and that’s what he got.”

I remembered that part, too. That this guy was put away for life for having a couple ounces of coke in his hotel room.

“I’m assuming there was an appeal. Did you check PACER?”

PACER was the federal government’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records database. It provided quick access to all documents filed in regard to a case. It would be the starting point.

“Yes, I went on PACER and pulled up the docket. He was convicted in ’06. Then there was the plenary appeal—the usual global attack citing insufficient evidence, court error on motions, and unreasonable sentencing. None made it past Pasadena. PCA right down the line.”

She was referring to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It had a Southern California location on South Grand Avenue in Pasadena. Appeals from Los Angeles–based cases would be filed through the Pasadena courthouse and initially reviewed by a three-member local screening panel of the appellate court. The local panel weeded out appeals it deemed unworthy and kicked the others for full consideration to a merits panel composed of three judges drawn from the circuit that held jurisdiction over the western region of the country. Aronson’s saying that Moya never made it past Pasadena meant that his conviction was “per curiam affirmed” by the screening panel of judges. Moya had struck out swinging.

His next move was to file a habeas corpus petition in U.S. District Court seeking postconviction relief, a long-shot move to vacate his sentence. This was like shooting a three at the buzzer. The motion would be his last shot at a new trial unless startling new evidence was brought forward.

“What about a twenty-two fifty-five?” I asked, using the U.S. Code designation for a habeas petition.

“Yep,” Aronson said. “He went with ineffective assistance of counsel—claiming his guy never negotiated a plea agreement—and got blown out on that as well.”

“Who was the trial attorney?”

“Somebody named Daniel Daly. You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him, but he’s a federal court guy and I try to stay clear of the fed. I haven’t seen him work but from what I’ve heard, he’s one of the go-to guys over there.”

I actually knew Daly from Four Green Fields, where we both stopped in on Fridays for end-of-the-week martinis.

“Well, there wasn’t much he or anybody could do with Moya,” Jennifer said. “He went down hard and stayed down. And now he’s seven years into a life sentence and not going anywhere.”

“Where is he?”

“Victorville.”

The Federal Correctional Institution at Victorville was eighty miles north and located at the edge of an air force base in the desert. It was not a good place to spend the rest of your life. It was said up there that if the desert winds didn’t dry you up and blow you away, then the constant earthshaking sonic booms of the air force jets overhead would drive you crazy. I was contemplating this when Aronson spoke again.

“I guess the feds really don’t fool around,” she said.

“How do you mean?”

“You know, a life sentence for two ounces of blow. Pretty harsh.”

“Yeah, they’re harsh all the way around on sentencing. Which is why I don’t do federal defense. Don’t like telling clients to abandon all hope. Don’t like working out a deal with the prosecution only to have the judge ignore it and drop the hammer on my guy.”

“That happens?”

“Too often. I had a guy once…uh, forget it, never mind. It’s history and I don’t want to dwell on it.”

What I did dwell on was Hector Arrande Moya and how a slick deal I made for a client ultimately landed him in Victorville with a life sentence. I hadn’t even really bothered to track the case after making the deal with a deputy DA named Leslie Faire. To me it was just another day in the salt mine. A quick courthouse deal; a hotel name and room number in exchange for a deferral of charges against my client. Gloria Dayton went into a drug rehab program instead of jail and Hector Arrande Moya went off to federal prison forever—and without knowing who or where the tip to the authorities had come from.