Breach of Trust (29 page)

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Authors: David Ellis

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Breach of Trust
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“I’m serious about that job offer,” she said to me as I left. Say this much for her: I was out of there in sixty minutes as promised.
 
FEDERICO “KIKO” HURTADO
had been a member of the Latin Lords street gang, by our accounts, since the age of twelve. No known father. Mother deceased. One brother, whereabouts unknown to me at the moment, at least. No wife and no children that we knew of.
Kiko committed his first murder at the age of thirteen. He committed his second, we believe, at the age of sixteen. We liked him for about twenty kills, all told, over the years. He’d maimed and raped a lot of others along the way. He’d largely remained free during this time. Witnesses tended to have serious memory losses when Kiko was a suspect. Some of them had unfortunate accidents.
Kiko was productive. He was ruthless. And he was savvy. He’d made his way up the ladder by being all three of those things. It was believed, in fact, that he assumed the role he currently held, at the right hand of the leader, by murdering the guy who previously held the position. The lore was he decapitated his predecessor with an ordinary kitchen knife.
At the ripe age of twenty-seven, by my estimation—it had been a few years since my stint on the gang crimes task force as a prosecutor—Kiko was now firmly entrenched in the upper echelon of the Latin Lords. He was the muscle, the enforcer, whatever word necessary to convey that when someone got out of line, Kiko got them back in line, or he put them out of commission.
No wonder, if Kiko was involved, that the guy in the alley, Scarface, was reticent about having his name associated with the matter. And no wonder he didn’t come forward after Ernesto’s death. It would be the same thing as putting a gun to his head.
But these days, if things held to form, it would be unusual for Kiko to do the wet work personally. It was routine for the gangs to use juveniles for the heavy crimes because they were harder to imprison. The state kept lowering the age for an automatic transfer from juvenile to criminal—trying minors as adults—and the gangs kept lowering the age of their assassins accordingly. If Kiko was ordered to kill someone, he’d more likely dispatch someone else to do it than do it himself.
So this had been exceptional. I suppose Joey Espinoza would merit such an honor. I didn’t know that Espinoza knew Kiko, but it didn’t surprise me. He was a lot closer to the ground than his boss, Hector. He knew the streets. He admitted knowing members of the Cannibals, including the supreme leader, Yo-Yo. Not a stretch at all that he’d also know a guy like Kiko.
“Lightner,” I said into my office phone. It was bright and early the following morning. My lower back was tight and my calf muscles were sore as hell. But somehow I didn’t mind.
“Kolarich.” Joel Lightner was in his typically effusive mood.
“Favor.”
“Shoot.”
“Address.”
“Who?”
“Federico Hurtado,” I said. I spelled it for him. It had been a long time since Lightner had been a cop. He wasn’t a stranger to gangs, but he wouldn’t be as familiar as I with the current rosters. He wouldn’t recognize the name “Kiko.”
Technically, I was violating my own promise not to involve Lightner. But this was a discrete assignment, far removed from anything associated with the feds and their sting operation. At least I thought it was far removed. I wasn’t sure of a whole lot right now.
“What do you know about him?”
“Latin Lord,” I said. “Age twenty-seven.”
“Oh, nobility. A higher-up. And why do you want to find this guy?” he asked.
“I want to invite him to a baby shower I’m hosting.”
He paused to show his displeasure.
“C’mon, Joel, say yes. I’ll buy you some breath mints.”
It took him a while to come around. He was worried about me, which I found aggravating. Maybe it was the breath mints that put him over the edge. Or maybe he decided I was a big boy and I could take care of myself, thank you very little.
“So you want to know where Mr. Hurtado lives,” he said, relenting. I figured Kiko had a lot of money, being at the top of the organizational chart. And he wouldn’t want wads of cash lying around. My bet was he owned more than one house.
“I want to know where he sleeps,” I said.
 
“HEY.” SHAUNA POPPED HER HEAD
into my office, having been in court all morning. She was dressed accordingly, a snappy sand-colored suit and cream blouse. “Aren’t you the busy beaver.”
We hadn’t seen much of each other lately. With my legal plate swelling over the last few months and time spent with Charlie Cimino, I was stretched pretty thin. But it was more than that. I found myself putting distance between us. I felt radioactive these days, and I didn’t want any residue rubbing off on her. She couldn’t know what I was doing, and if we spent too much time together, she would. She’d sense it. She’d ask. I’d lie. She’d know. I’d used up a pretty good chit with the U.S. attorney’s office to free her from their clutches, and I didn’t have any more.
“Turns out, this practicing law thing ain’t so bad,” I said. “Depositions. Interrogatories. Motions to compel discovery. I can’t get enough of it.”
“Mmm-hmmm.” She peered at me through squinted eyes. “You’re a chipper one today.”
That wasn’t quite right. I wasn’t in good cheer so much as I was hyped up. I’d had a few volts of electricity injected into my veins over the last week. Mind-altering sex and a gun pointed at your head tend to clear your sinuses.
“So, what do you say, sport—dinner tonight?” I asked.
She made a face, like she had an answer but didn’t want to give it. “I’m seeing Roger tonight,” she finally admitted.
Ah, yes. Roger.
Roger.
I remembered the initial date and my reaction to it. But Shauna and I had lost touch. Apparently this
Roger
was a keeper?
“You should meet him some time,” she suggested.
“I’ll count the hours.” My intercom buzzed. Marie, at the reception desk.
“Hang on,” I said. “This might be Uma Thurman. I stood her up last night.”
“You got laid,” Shauna guessed.
I punched the button. “Marie, my love. Who’s calling? If it’s Halle Berry, tell her I’m not ready for a commitment.”
“Close,
” she said.
“It’s Hector Almundo. And he’s here to see you
.”
52
 
HECTOR LOOKED LIKE HE ALWAYS LOOKED, WHETHER
he was on trial for his life or out on the town, always the colorful shirts and loud ties, the collar pin. He wasn’t skimping on wardrobe, but then again, he didn’t have a wife or kids to spend money on. He was divorced and his wife had remarried, taking him off the hook for alimony. It reminded me of Joel Lightner’s speculation, back during Hector’s trial, that our client was gay.
Hector made an attempt at complimenting my office, but it was painful and awkward for both of us. This place didn’t exactly compare to Shaker, Riley’s space. But I didn’t mind it. It was starting to grow on me. It would be nice, in theory at least, to measure my progress in the legal profession by such things as the size and quality of my office space over time.
I say “in theory” because I knew a certain federal prosecutor who had other plans for my future, including a criminal indictment. But I was working on that.
“I only have a couple of minutes,” I apologized to Hector. Charlie and I were meeting with a state contractor today. But I didn’t tell Hector that, because he might want to walk me to Charlie’s waiting car, and it would be slightly awkward when we had to take a detour to Suite 410 so that Special Agent Lee Tucker could hand me the F-Bird before I met Charlie.
“Things are working out with Charlie,” he said, taking a seat. It was a statement, I thought, not a question. More than anything, it was Hector reminding me, in case I had forgotten, that he was the one who got me the gig. “Are you enjoying yourself?”
“It has its moments.”
“You know I’ve recommended you for other things, as well. Maddie discussed it with you.”
So Hector was following up on the offer that Madison Koehler pitched me in the hotel room. He was recruiting me. I’d deferred the idea for a while and wasn’t seriously considering it. I wasn’t interested in helping the government ensnare anyone else. It wasn’t my style. Charlie was different, because he and his buddies were the reason I got caught up with the FBI in the first place, the memos they doctored, but I wasn’t interested in going beyond him. Not to get Madison.
And certainly not to get Hector. I wasn’t the president of his fan club, but he’d been my client. That bond was inviolable. Technically, we were no longer attorney and client, but it still felt wrong to me. You don’t defend a guy in federal court one day and turn state’s evidence on him the next. I could, as a purely formalistic matter, but I wouldn’t.
“You should do it,” he said. “We need you.”
“ ‘We’?”
“Yes, ‘we.’ ”
Madison had mentioned that Hector had the governor’s ear. I’d heard the same from some stray comments Charlie had made. I didn’t completely understand it. Hector wasn’t the worst of the worst, but he sure wasn’t the best of the best, either. The way I described him to Talia, in a moment of private candor, was that Hector Almundo was a political thug. He led with his chin and he didn’t take prisoners.
My take was that, as is often the case in politics, it was a pure case of need. The governor needed the Latino vote, and Hector had been something of a cause célèbre in that community, the poster child for persecution at the hands of white federal prosecutors. And better still, Hector stood up to the G and beat them. To many, he was a hero.
“I like where I am now,” I said.
“Jason, you’re not seeing the big picture.”
No, my friend,
I was tempted to say.
I see the big picture a hell of a lot better than you.
“You know how Charlie is, right?” he said. “All about loyalty? Well, the governor’s cut from the same cloth. I mean, look at Greg Connolly. That guy can hardly spell his name, but he and Carl grew up together. So Carl gives him a nice title. A job that, as you know,” he added, with a knowing nod, “can be advantageous in other ways as well.”
I think Hector liked the fact that I had gotten down in the mud with him. However devoted we were to defending him, regardless of what the evidence showed, it had to be embarrassing to Hector on a personal level to have to explain himself to Paul and me. It was probably psychologically comforting for him to see me joining him in the cesspool now.
“The point being?” I asked.
“Well, you know the point. You can be right there with us. You’ll be right there when he gets elected. You can get a lot out of that, Jason. A lot. The sky’s the limit.”
I nodded warmly enough, shrugged a shoulder.
“Oh, you’re crazy.” Hector fell back in his chair. “You’re going to turn this down?”
“I am.”
“Listen, you don’t have to give up”—he gestured around my office, then remembered how unimpressive it was—“you can still be in private practice. You can do whatever you want.”
“Including turning down your offer?”

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