Fulgoni nodded.
“Exactly. So I went to Hector and said, what if the gun wasn’t planted by the locals? What if it was already there under the mattress and planted earlier by somebody else? Who was in that room between the time you checked into that hotel and the bust went down? That was four days and I asked him for a list with the names of everybody who’d visited that room in that time frame.”
“Gloria Dayton.”
“Yes, we zeroed in on her. But she wasn’t the only one who had been in that room. There had been at least one other hooker, Hector’s brother, and a couple other associates, too. Luckily, we didn’t have to vet the housekeepers because Hector kept the do not disturb on his door the whole time. But we zeroed in on Gloria because I had a friend run all the names through the police computer and—bingo!—she happened to get popped one fricking day before they took Hector down.”
I nodded. The logic made sense. I would have zeroed in on Gloria as well. I also knew what I would have done next.
“How’d you track down Gloria? She’d changed her name. She moved away and then moved back.”
“The Internet. These girls can change names, locations, doesn’t matter. The business is based on the visual. Young Sly got her booking photo from eight years ago, when she got arrested on a possession and prostitution beef, and then he went online, checking photos on escort sites. Eventually he found her. She’d changed her hair but that was about it. He printed out photos and brought them up here. Hector confirmed.”
I was surprised. Sly Jr. had actually done something that created a significant break in the case.
“And you then, of course, had Junior paper her.”
I said it like the next move had been a matter of routine.
“Yeah, we hit her with a subpoena. We wanted to bring her in to put her on the record.”
“Who was the process server, Valenzuela?”
“I don’t know. Somebody Sly Jr. hired.”
I leaned across the table and started increasing the urgency and momentum, hitting him with the questions without pause.
“Was she photographed to prove receipt?”
Fulgoni shrugged like he didn’t know and didn’t care.
“Was she?”
“Look, I don’t know. I was up here, Haller. What’s so—”
“If there’s a photo, I want it. Tell your son.”
“Fine. Okay.”
“When did you paper her?”
“I don’t know the date. Last year sometime. Obviously before she got killed by her pimp.”
I leaned further across the table.
“How long before she got killed?”
“About a week, I think.”
I hammered my fist down on the table.
“She wasn’t killed by her pimp.”
I pointed across the table at him.
“You got her killed. You and your son. They found out about the subpoena. They couldn’t trust that she wouldn’t talk.”
Fulgoni was shaking his head before I was finished.
“First of all, who is ‘they’?”
“Marco, the ICE team. Do you think they would risk this coming out? Especially if planting firearms was common practice with that team. Think of all the reputations, careers, and cases that would be jeopardized. You don’t think that’s motive for murder? You don’t think they’d risk taking out a hooker if it meant securing their operation?”
Fulgoni held up a hand to stop me.
“Look, I’m not stupid, Haller. I knew the risks. The subpoena was filed under seal. Marco couldn’t have known about it.”
“So she ended up dead a week later and you thought, what, that the pimp did it and it was all just coincidence?”
“I thought what the police thought and what my son read to me out of the newspaper. That her pimp killed her and we missed our chance to have her help Moya.”
I shook my head.
“Bullshit. You knew. You must have known you set things in motion. How many days before the deposition was she killed?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t sched—”
“That’s bullshit! You knew. How many days?”
“Four, but it doesn’t matter. It was under seal. No one knew but her and us.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, only you and she knew, and what did you expect—that she wouldn’t tell someone who might tell somebody else? Or that she might not call up Jimmy Marco, who she used to snitch for, and say, what should I do about this?”
Suddenly I realized something that gave an answer to one of the questions I had been carrying since handling the phony subpoena served on Kendall Roberts. I pointed at Fulgoni’s chest.
“I know what it was. You thought Marco had somebody inside the clerk’s office. Somebody who told him about the sealed subpoena. That’s why your son dummied up the subpoena he had Valenzuela serve on Kendall Roberts. You two didn’t want to do it again—get somebody killed. You wanted her to come in so Junior could find out what she knew about Gloria and Marco, but you were afraid a real subpoena would get back to Marco, even if it was under seal.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Haller.”
“No, I know exactly what I’m talking about. One way or another, your subpoena got Gloria killed. You both knew it and you decided to keep quiet about it and lie low while some poor schmuck went down for it.”
“You’re way off base on this.”
“Really? I don’t think so. Why the subpoenas this week? To me and Marco and the phony one to Kendall Roberts. Why now?”
“Because the petition was filed almost six months ago. We had to move on it or it would be dismissed. It had nothing to do with Gloria Dayton or—”
“That’s such bullshit. And you know something, Sly? You and your son are no better than Marco and Lankford in all of this.”
Fulgoni stood up.
“First of all, I don’t know who Lankford is. And second, we’re done here. And you can forget about Moya. He’s ours, not yours. You’re not seeing him.”
He turned and started shuffling toward the door.
“Sit down, Sly, we’re not finished,” I said to his back. “You walk out of here and the state bar is going to come down all over you and Junior. You’re not an attorney anymore, Sly. You are operating a writ mill in here and feeding cases to a kid who sits in an office in a Dodgers jersey and doesn’t know the first thing about being a lawyer. The bar will tear him up and throw him away. You want that for him? For you? Who will you feed cases to when Junior’s out of business?”
Fulgoni turned around and kicked at the door with his heel to alert the guard.
“What’s it going to be, Sly?” I asked.
The guard opened the door. Fulgoni glanced back at him, hesitated, and then said he needed five more minutes. The door was closed and Fulgoni looked at me.
“You threatened my son yesterday but I didn’t think you’d have the balls to threaten me.”
“It’s not a threat, Sly. I’ll shut you both down.”
“You’re an asshole, Haller.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I’m an asshole. When I’ve got an innocent man facing a murder count.”
He had nothing to say to that.
“Sit back down,” I instructed. “You’re going to tell me how to handle Hector Moya.”