Michael Connelly - The Gods of Guilt

“Okay, Mick, so no hard feelings?”

I looked over the paper at Valenzuela. He had his phone out again and took my photo. I had forgotten he was even there. I could’ve gotten mad but I was too intrigued now.

“No, no hard feelings, Val. If I knew you were a process server, I would have been using you myself.”

Now Valenzuela was intrigued.

“Anytime, man. You’ve got my number. Money’s tight in the bond market right now, so I’m just picking up the slack. Know what I mean?”

“Yeah, but you tell your employer on this that lawyer to lawyer, a subpoena is not the way to…”

I paused when I read the name of the lawyer issuing the subpoena.

“Sylvester Fulgoni?”

“That’s right, the firm that puts the F-U in litigation.”

Valenzuela laughed, proud of his clever response. But I was thinking of something else. Sylvester Fulgoni was indeed a onetime ball buster when it came to practicing law. But what was unusual about being subpoenaed by him to give a deposition was that I knew he had been disbarred and was serving time in federal prison for tax evasion. Fulgoni had built a successful practice primarily suing law enforcement agencies over color-of-law cases—cops using the protection of the badge to get away with assault, extortion, and other abuses, sometimes even murder. He had won millions in settlements and jury verdicts and taken his fair share in fees. Only he hadn’t bothered to pay taxes on most of it and eventually the governments he so often sued took notice.

Fulgoni claimed he was the target of a vindictive prosecution designed to stop his championing of victims of law enforcement and government abuse, but the fact was he hadn’t paid or even filed his taxes for four successive years. You get twelve taxpayers in the box and the verdict always comes out against you. Fulgoni appealed the guilty verdict for nearly six years but eventually time ran out and he went to prison. That was only a year ago and I now had a sneaking suspicion that the prison he’d ended up in was the Federal Correctional Institution at Victorville, which also happened to be home to Hector Arrande Moya.

“Is Sly already out?” I asked. “He couldn’t have gotten his bar ticket back already.”

“No, it’s his son, Sly Jr. He’s on the case.”

I had never heard of a Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. and I didn’t recall Sylvester Sr. being much older than me.

“He must be a baby lawyer, then.”

“I wouldn’t know. I never met the man. I deal with the office manager there and I gotta go, Mick. I’ve got more goodies to deliver.”

Valenzuela patted the satchel he had slung over his shoulder and turned to head down the courthouse hallway.

“Any more on this case?” I asked, holding up the subpoena.

Valenzuela frowned.

“Come on, Mick, you know I can’t be—”

“I send out a lot of subpoenas, you know, Val. I mean, whoever gets my business stands to make some pretty good coin month to month. But it’s gotta be somebody I trust, you know what I mean? Somebody who’s with me and not against me.”

Valenzuela knew exactly what I meant. He shook his head and then his eyes lit when he came up with a way out of the corner I had put him in. He signaled me over with his finger.

“Say, Mick, maybe you can help me out,” he said.

I stepped over to him.

“Sure,” I said. “What do you need?”

He opened his satchel and started looking through the papers in it.

“I gotta go over to the DEA to see this agent over there named James Marco. You have any idea where the DEA is in the Roybal Building?”

“The DEA? Well, it depends if he’s on one of the task forces or not. They have them spread around that building and other places in town.”

Valenzuela nodded.

“Yeah, he’s part of something called Interagency Cartel Enforcement Team. I think they call it ICE-T or something like that.”

I thought about that, the intrigue of the subpoena and everything else building inside of me.

“Sorry, I don’t know where they’re at in there. Anything else I can help you with?”

Valenzuela went back to looking through his bag.

“Yeah, one other. After the DEA, I gotta go see a lady named Kendall Roberts—that’s with a K and two l ’s—and she lives on Vista Del Monte in Sherman Oaks. You know where that is by any chance?”

“Not offhand, no.”

“Well, I guess I’ll have to fire up the old GPS then. I’ll see you, Mick.”

“Yeah, Val. I’ll call you with my next batch of paper.”

I watched him go off down the hall and then walked over to one of the benches that lined the hallway. Finding a small open space to sit down, I opened my bag so I could write down the names Valenzuela had just given me. I then pulled my cell and called Cisco. I gave him the names James Marco and Kendall Roberts and told him to find out whatever he could on them. I mentioned that Marco was supposedly law enforcement and possibly with the Drug Enforcement Agency. Cisco groaned. All people in law enforcement take measures to protect themselves by eliminating as many digital trails and as much public information as possible. But DEA agents take it to a whole new level.

“I might as well be running down a CIA agent,” Cisco complained.

“Just see what you come up with,” I said. “Start with the Interagency Cartel Enforcement Team—ICE-T. You never know, we might get lucky.”

I left the courthouse after that and spotted the Lincoln parked on Spring. I jumped in the back and was about to tell Earl to head to Starbucks when I realized it wasn’t Earl behind the wheel, because I was in the wrong Lincoln.

“Oh, sorry, wrong car,” I said.

I jumped out and called Earl on the cell. He said he was parked on Broadway because a parking cop had chased him off the curb on Spring. I waited five minutes for his arrival and used the time to call Lorna to check on things. She told me nothing worth mentioning was happening and I told her about the subpoena from Fulgoni and that it was scheduled for the following Tuesday morning at his office in Century City. She said she’d put it on the calendar and seemed to share my annoyance with Fulgoni’s using Val to drop paper on me. Traditionally, it is not necessary for one lawyer to subpoena another. Usually a phone call and professional courtesy accomplishes the same thing.

“What a jerk!” Lorna said. “But how is Val doing?”

“I guess all right. I told him I’d throw him some of our paper.”

“And did you mean it? You have Cisco.”

“Maybe. We’ll see. Cisco hates process serving, thinks it’s beneath him.”

“But he does it and it doesn’t cost you anything extra.”

“That’s true.”

I ended the call as Earl pulled up in the right Lincoln. We drove over to the Starbucks on Central so I could use the Wi-Fi.

Once I was set up online, I went to the PACER site and plugged in the case number I took off the subpoena. The filing by Sylvester Fulgoni Jr. was indeed a true habeas motion seeking to vacate the conviction of Hector Arrande Moya. It cited gross government misconduct in the actions of DEA Agent James Marco. The filing alleged that prior to Moya’s arrest by the LAPD, Marco used a confidential informant to enter the premises of Moya’s hotel room and plant a firearm under the mattress. Marco then used the informant to orchestrate the arrest of Moya by the LAPD and the finding of the weapon by the arresting officers. The firearm allowed prosecutors to add an enhancement charge against Moya, making him eligible upon conviction for a life sentence in federal prison. He was indeed sentenced to life following his conviction.

The government had not yet responded, at least as far as I could determine online. But it was early. The filing by Fulgoni was dated April 1.