“And he paid you?”
“Yep, the next day, he gave me the money and told me to keep my mouth shut. Said that if anyone ever found out, then I would be charged with leaving the scene of an accident and probably something worse. Gotta tell you, I was scared shitless, so I kept my mouth shut. Scared of the cops, but also scared of Westbay. A few weeks went by and I figured I was in the clear. Then Westbay grabbed me one day at the hotel and he told me to get in my car and leave Florida immediately. He gave me a thousand bucks and said stay away until he called.”
“Has he called?”
“Once, but I didn’t answer. I thought about never coming back, but I was worried about my mother and I didn’t want to miss a meeting with my parole officer. I sort of snuck back into town today and I was planning to see my mother tonight.”
With the general narrative in place, Pacheco returned to the beginning of the story and hammered out more details. He dissected every movement and pushed the witness to remember every name. After four hours, Foreman was exhausted and eager to leave town again. When Pacheco finally relented, two U.S. marshals entered the room and left with Zeke Foreman. They drove him to a hotel in Gulfport, Mississippi, where he spent the first night of his new life.
—
Clyde Westbay lived with his second wife in a nice home behind gates not far from the beach in Brunswick County. He was forty-seven years old and had no criminal record. He held a Florida driver’s license and a current U.S. passport and had never registered to vote, at least not in Florida. According to state employment records, he was the manager of the Surfbreaker Hotel in Fort Walton Beach. He carried two cell phones and used two landlines, one at his office and one at home. Three hours after Zeke left Florida, FBI agents were listening to all four phones.
32
The morning mail included three thick packages from the law offices of Edgar Killebrew. Lacy reluctantly opened them and found his cover letter. He explained, in typical terse and arrogant language, that the “enclosed” was Judge McDover’s response to Lacy’s “frivolous” subpoenas. Attached to the letter was his formal demand that all allegations against his client be dropped and the investigation terminated. In the alternative, he demanded “an immediate and confidential hearing before the full Board on Judicial Conduct.”
Lacy had requested all of his client’s records, both official and personal, for ten specific lawsuits. As she began plowing through the stack, it became apparent nothing new was being offered. Killebrew and his associates had simply copied the court filings and lumped them together in a haphazard manner. There was an occasional memo dictated by the judge and not filed, and even a few handwritten notes, but nothing that revealed her thoughts, intentions, or observations; nothing that would implicate her in favoring one side or the other. But in all ten cases she had ruled for the faceless offshore entities and against the local property owners and litigants.
Not surprisingly, the paperwork was far less organized than the material Sadelle had indexed long ago. Nonetheless, Lacy had no choice but to review every document and record. When she finished, she reported to Geismar.
—
On October 5, the first Wednesday of the month, Judge McDover left her office an hour earlier than usual and drove to the same condo at Rabbit Run, her second visit there since the filing of the complaint that accused her of receiving the unit in a bribery scheme. She parked her Lexus in the same spot, leaving room for another vehicle, and entered the condo. She gave no indication of being the least bit jumpy or nervous, never once looked over her shoulder or up and down the street.