26
I came down the front stairs at exactly eight and found Earl Briggs waiting, leaning against his car parked out front and taking in the view of West Hollywood past the shoulders of Laurel Canyon.
“Morning, Earl,” I said.
He took the two Starbucks cups off the hood of his car and crossed the street to the Lincoln. I exchanged the keys for one of the cups and thanked him for thinking of stopping for coffee before we headed off.
The Lincoln had gotten a clean sweep by Cisco the afternoon before. The GPS tracker was still in place but he and his men had found no bugs or cameras on the vehicle.
We headed south to pick up the 10 Freeway east, stopping only to top off the Lincoln’s big gas tank. Traffic was grim but I knew it would thin out once we got past downtown and turned north on the 15. From there it was a straight shot north through the Mojave.
Overnight Jennifer had sent me several e-mails with documents from her research attached. I passed the time by reading through these. The first thing to catch my eye was her analysis of Hector Moya’s habeas petition and what was riding on it. Moya had already been incarcerated for eight years since his arrest. The life term he received because of the gun enhancement under the federal career criminal statute was the only thing currently keeping him behind bars. He was sentenced to six years for the cocaine found in his possession. The life term was added on top of that.
This meant that Moya’s immediate freedom was riding on the outcome of his habeas petition. To me it was an added reason for him to cooperate with me on the La Cosse case and to put his future in more experienced hands than those of Sylvester Fulgoni Jr.
This knowledge also put Marco’s visit with me the day before in better perspective. The DEA agent had to have known as he sat across from me in the Lincoln that a violent man he had put away presumably for life could see freedom soon, depending upon the outcome of a couple of court cases he could not control.
I next reviewed the transcript from Hector Moya’s trial seven years before. I read two sections, one containing the testimony of an officer with the LAPD warrant enforcement team, and the other containing part of the testimony of DEA agent James Marco. The LAPD cop testified about Moya’s arrest and his finding the gun hidden under the mattress in the hotel room. The testimony from Marco contained replies to questioning about the analysis and trace work that was done on the recovered firearm. It was key testimony because it tied the gun to Moya through a purchase in Nogales, Arizona.
About the time we came through the mountains into the Mojave, I grew tired of the reading work and told Earl to wake me when we got there. I then racked out across the backseat and closed my eyes. I’d had a restless sleep after my middle-of-the-night conversation with Sly Fulgoni Sr. and needed to catch up. I knew from prior experience that going into a prison would be exhausting. It was an ordeal that fully taxed the senses. Prison sounds and smells, the drab gray steel set off by the garish orange uniforms of the incarcerated, the mixture of desperation and threat in the faces of the men I’d come to visit—it was not a place I ever wanted to spend an extra minute in. It always felt as if I were holding my breath the whole time I was inside.
Despite the cramped configuration of the backseat, I managed to doze off for almost a half hour. Earl woke me on our approach to the prison. I checked my phone and saw that we had made good time despite the early traffic. It was only ten o’clock and that was when attorney visiting hours began.
“You don’t mind, boss, I’m gonna wait outside on this one,” Earl said.
I smiled at him in the mirror.
“I don’t mind, Earl. I wish I could, too.”
I handed him my phone over the seat. There was no way I would be allowed to take it inside, which was ironic, since most prisoners had access to cell phones.
“If Cisco, Lorna, or Bullocks calls, answer it and tell them I’m inside. Everything else let go to message.”
“You got it.”
He dropped me at the main visitors’ entrance.
The process of getting in to see Fulgoni and Moya went smoothly. I had to show a driver’s license and my California bar card, then sign one document certifying that I was an attorney, and a second certifying that I was not smuggling drugs or other illegal contraband into the facility. After that I was walked through a magnetometer after removing my belt and shoes. I was placed in an attorney-client room and given an electronic alert to clip to my belt. If I was physically threatened by my client, I was instructed to yank the pager-size device off my belt, and an alarm would sound, drawing guards to the room. Of course, I would still need to be alive to pull it but that detail wasn’t mentioned. This had all come about because of one court ruling or another that had prohibited guards from watching over attorney-client meetings in the prison.
I was left alone in the ten-by-ten room to wait. There were a table and two chairs and an electronic call box on the wall next to the door. The waiting was a given. I don’t think I had ever made a prison visit where I walked into the interview room and my client was there waiting for me.
It was routine for attorneys to stack interviews with multiple clients at a prison—even when the cases were unrelated. It saved travel and clearance time to get it all done in one visit. But usually the prisoners were brought in on a timetable that suited the prison staff and was based on the schedules and availability of the prisoners. I had asked the visitor center captain to allow me to visit with Fulgoni first and then Moya. He frowned at the request but said he would see what he could do.
Maybe that was why the wait seemed extraordinarily long. Thirty minutes went by before Fulgoni was finally brought into the interview room. At first I almost told the guards escorting him that he had the wrong guy, but then I realized it was indeed Sylvester Fulgoni Sr. Though I’d finally recognized him, he still wasn’t the man I recalled from the courthouses and courtrooms we both worked at one time. The man shuffling into the room in leg chains was pale and haggard, hunched over, and for the first time, I realized he must have worn a toupee all those years I knew of him in L.A. No such vanity was allowed in prison. The crown of his head was bald and sharply reflected the overhead fluorescent lights.
He took a seat across the table from me. His wrists were cuffed to a waist chain. We didn’t shake hands.
“Hello, Sly,” I said. “How was lunch?”
“Lunch was the same as it is everyday here. Bologna on white bread, unfit for human consumption.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’m not. I figure when I start liking it, then I’ve got a problem.”
I nodded.
“I get that.”
“I don’t know about you, but back in the day I had clients who liked to hide out in prison. Places like this. It was easier than the streets because you got your three squares, a bed, clean laundry. Sex and drugs readily available if you want ’em. It was dangerous, but the streets were plenty dangerous, too.”
“Yeah, I’ve had a few like that.”
“Well, that’s not me. I consider this place to be a living hell on earth.”
“But less than a year to go, right?”
“Three-hundred and forty-one days. I used to be able to tell it down to the hour and minute but I’m a little more relaxed about that now.”
I nodded again and decided that was enough as far as the pleasantries went. It was time to get down to business. I hadn’t driven all the way up to discuss the pros and cons of prison life or to figuratively pat Sylvester Fulgoni on the back.
“Did you talk to Hector Moya about me this morning?”
Fulgoni nodded.
“That I did. And you’re all set. He’ll take the meeting and he’ll take you as co-counsel with young Sly.”
“Good.”
“I can’t say he’s too happy about it. He’s pretty convinced that you’re in part responsible for him being here.”
Before I could say a word in my defense, there was a booming impact that shook the room and, I assumed, the entire prison. My hand went to my belt and the alarm as my first thought was that there was some kind of explosion and prison break occurring.
Then I noticed that Fulgoni hadn’t even flinched and had a glib smile on his face.
“That was a big one,” he said calmly. “They probably have the B-Two up today. The stealth.”
Of course. I now remembered the nearby airbase. I tried to shake it off and get back to business. My legal pad was on the table in front of me. I had jotted down a few questions and reminders while I waited for Fulgoni. I wanted to start with the basics and lead up to the important questions once I had Fulgoni vested in the conversation.
“Tell me about Moya. I want to know how and when this whole thing started.”
“Well, as far as I know, I’m one of two defrocked lawyers in here. The other guy was part of a bank fraud in San Diego. Anyway, it kind of gets known what you did in the world and people come to you. First it’s general advice and recommendations. Then some come because they want help with a writ. I’m talking about guys in here long enough to be abandoned by their lawyers because they’ve exhausted their appeals. Guys who don’t want to give up.”
“Okay.”
“Well, Hector was one of those guys. He came to me, said the government hadn’t played fair, and wanted to know what he could still do about it. The thing is, nobody had ever believed him. His own attorneys didn’t believe his story and didn’t even put an investigator on it, as far as I could tell.”
“You’re talking about the DEA planting the gun in his room to get the enhancement?”
“Yeah, the enhancement that puts him in here for life. I’m not talking about the powder in the room. He totally cops to that. But he said the gun wasn’t his, and it turns out he’s been saying that since day one but nobody would listen. Well, I listened. I mean, what else am I going to do in here but listen to people?”
“Okay.”
“So that’s your start. My son filed the paper and here we are.”
“But let’s go back to before young Sly filed the habeas petition. Let’s go back to last year. See, I’m trying to put all of this together. Moya tells you the gun was planted. Did he tell you Gloria Dayton planted it?”
“No, he said the cops did it. He was arrested by the LAPD after you made the deal with the DA’s Office. Remember that? Only he didn’t know about any deal until years later—until I told him. All he knew at the time was that the LAPD came through his door with a felony fugitive warrant. They found the coke in the bureau and the firearm under the mattress and that was it. The fugitive beef was for a grand jury no-show. That was nothing compared to the case they had now. He had two ounces of blow in the room and the gun. And then the feds swooped in and scooped the whole thing up and he goes to trial in federal court, where they have the lifetime achievement award. Convenient, huh?”
“Yeah, and I know all of that. I’m talking about the gun. I am trying to track how you went from his story to Gloria Dayton. Your habeas petition says Gloria planted the gun.”
“It was simple. I asked the right questions, and then I took two steps back and looked at the big picture. I came at it from the angle of believing Hector Moya. Like I said, nobody had before. But he came to me and said, ‘Yes, the powder in that room was mine and I’ll do the time for it. But not the gun.’ I figured, why deny one and not the other unless you’re telling the truth?”
I could think of reasons to do exactly that—lie about one thing and not the other—but I kept them to myself for now.
“So . . . Gloria?”
“Right, Gloria. Hector said the gun was a plant. Well, I had a case once with a firearm enhancement attached. Same thing, but this was a DEA case from the start. No locals. A straight DEA buy bust and the client swore to me he had no gun on him when the deal went down. I didn’t believe him at first—I mean, who goes to buy a kilo with twenty-five K in a briefcase and no gun for backup? But then I started looking into it.”
“You proved the gun was planted to get the enhancement?”
Fulgoni frowned and shook his head.
“Actually, I was never able to prove it. And my guy went down for it. But the unit that made the bust was something called the Interagency Cartel Enforcement Team, which was run by the DEA and headed up by an agent named Jimmy Marco. He’s the same guy who did the swoop and scoop on Moya. So when that name came up in the file I thought there was something to it. You know, that was twice I’d seen this on a case with his name on it. I figured, where there’s smoke there might be fire.”
I thought for a long moment, trying to put the pieces together and understand the moves Fulgoni had made.
“You had the name Marco but he didn’t come into it until after the arrest went down and the locals had found the coke and the gun,” I said in summary. “So if Marco was behind this, then you had to figure out how he got the gun in there for the locals to find.”