Illegal Read online

  Illegal

  Paul Levine

  Paul Levine

  Illegal

  ONE

  Judge Rollins drew a handgun from beneath his black robes, pointed the snub-nosed barrel at Jimmy Payne's chest, and said, "Who you pimping for, you low-life shyster?"

  Payne gaped at the revolver.

  This cannot be happening.

  The judge gestured toward the stacks of hundred-dollar bills on his desk. "C'mon, Payne. You're not smart enough to dream this up on your own."

  They faced each other in the judge's chambers, a tranquil refuge of leatherbound books and walnut wainscoting. Payne felt his knees wobble. "I swear, Judge. I just represent the defendant. Ramon Carollo."

  "Not like you to defend human traffickers. I remember the hell you raised when those wetbacks got barbecued in a trailer truck."

  "I like to call them 'undocumented aliens.' "

  "Why? They from Mars?"

  The judge vaulted out of his high-backed chair. Quick for a big man. Silver hair swept straight back, like feathers on a snow goose. Shoulders as wide as a bookcase.

  "Take off your clothes, Payne."

  "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "I swear I'm not wearing a wire. You can pat me down."

  "Strip!"

  Payne wasn't sure he could. His joints seemed rusted shut.

  "Now!"

  With jerky motions, Payne kicked off his shoes, unhooked his belt, and dropped his trousers.

  "You bring me nine stacks of hundred-dollar bills, fifty to a stack." Judge Rollins motioned toward the open briefcase on his desk and did the math in his head. "Forty-five thousand dollars."

  "That's the offer," Payne agreed.

  "Odd amount. Like it was supposed to be fifty thousand, but some half-assed bag man skimmed five off the top."

  "No, sir." Payne lowered his tie and slipped out of his shirt. "Forty-five is all I've got to spend."

  "No sale, shitbird."

  "I thought it was worth a shot, Your Honor. But let's just forget the whole thing. I'll put my pants on and-"

  "Drop those undershorts, too." The judge waved the gun like a king with a scepter.

  Payne pulled down his red-and-white boxers with the Los Angeles Clippers logo. He preferred them to the Lakers purple-and-gold shorts, not for the colors, but because he favored underdogs.

  "Now turn around and spread your cheeks."

  "No way, Judge."

  "Do it!"

  At thirty-seven, Payne was in good shape. Flat stomach, decent chest, a sinewy runner's body. He spun around and bent over. "Like I said, Your Honor, no wire."

  Judge Rollins gazed off. "I don't know whether to shoot you or arrest you."

  Jimmy straightened and turned around. "Just let me go, Judge. There's a lot of good I can do out there."

  "Out where? You're Jimmy Payne. Royal Payne. You cut corners. You represent undesirables. You piss people off."

  "Honestly, Judge. I'm gonna change my life."

  "People don't change, Payne. They just get old and die. Sometimes, they don't even get old."

  Payne stepped sideways toward a set of shelves decorated with framed vanity photos. Judge Rollins with Mayor Villaraigosa, Senator Boxer, some local bigwigs, and a pretty young woman in a pink sash, the Rose Bowl queen, maybe. Alongside the photos, the scales of justice. Bronze. Heavy. Tilted heavily to one side. One more step and Payne could grab the scales by the blindfolded lady and take a swing at the judge.

  "Freeze, sleazebag." Rollins pulled back the hammer of the. 38. As the click echoed in his brain, Payne thought of his son, Adam. Ten years old. Loved baseball. Cheeseburgers. Surfing. A boy needs his father.

  Just how the hell did I get into this?

  TWO

  One hour before he stood, naked and terrified, in the chambers of the Honorable Walter Rollins, Jimmy Payne stood, clothed and angry, glaring at a wooden pin some sixty feet away.

  The five-pin.

  Payne hated the five-pin nearly as much as he hated Cullen Quinn, his ex-wife's fiance. And there the damn thing stood-the pin, not Quinn-smack in the middle of the lane, taunting him. For most bowlers, the five was the easiest spare, but for Payne, the ten-pin-that loner at the right edge of the lane-was the gimmee. The trick, he knew, was not being afraid of dropping into the gutter.

  Payne's second ball whooshed past the five and thwomp ed harmlessly into the pit, leaving the pin standing.

  Damn. Even Barack Obama could have made that spare.

  So could Payne's son. He thought about taking Adam bowling this weekend. His eleventh birthday was coming up, and the boy already threw a decent little hook.

  Payne checked the counter behind the ball rack. The stranger still stood there, watching him. He had shown up around the third frame, sipping coffee from a Styrofoam cup. Blue shirt, striped tie thickly knotted, cheap tan suit that needed pressing. Hair that might have been blond once, now turned the yellowish brown of a nicotine stain. A gum chewer, with jaw muscles dancing; a face of angles and planes; a cold stare. A cop? Homicide, maybe.

  Not a problem. Payne hadn't killed anyone. He hadn't even represented a murderer in a couple years. Bar brawlers, check bouncers, hookers from the Sepulveda Corridor. He could really use a good murder trial right now. Or a personal injury case with fractures to weight-bearing bones. Even a nasty divorce would do. Lacking any decent cases, bowling alone on a weekday morning provided a break from bill collectors and anger management classes.

  Payne hoisted his Hammer Road Hawg from the ball return and settled into his stance. Sensing movement, he glanced over his shoulder. Wrinkled Suit was headed his way. Payne considered challenging the guy to three games at ten bucks a pin.

  "Morning, J. Atticus Payne."

  Keeping the ball at hip level, Payne turned to face the man. "Jimmy. Jimmy Payne."

  "Your Bar card says 'J. Atticus.' "

  "My parents were hoping I'd grow up to be Gregory Peck."

  "Nah. They named you 'James Andrew.' You changed it. Not legally, of course. Just made it up and put it on your driver's license, which also says you're six feet tall, when you're really five-eleven. You make up a lot of shit."

  Grinning now, Gotcha. Like he was Sherlock Fucking Holmes.

  "Some people think Atticus fits," Payne said, thinking of his ex-wife, Sharon.

  "What slimeball you gonna walk today, Atticus?"

  That was before she started calling him "the respondent." When Sharon divorced him, her bill of particulars included his reputation for sleazy behavior.

  "Respondent has engaged in a pattern of professional activity that is a source of embarrassment to Petitioner, a police officer."

  If he'd been different, Payne wondered, if he'd made more money and been more respectable, if he'd lunched at the California Club instead of Hooters, would Sharon still be his wife?

  Nah, that wasn't the issue.

  "You weren't here for me when I needed you, Jimmy."

  "Why do you lie so much?" Wrinkled Suit asked.

  Payne shrugged. "I'm a lawyer."

  "You rolled a baby split in the third frame. The three-ten. Very makeable. But you hit the 'Reset,' erased the score, and bowled again."

  "That a crime?"

  "What kind of guy cheats when he's bowling alone?"

  "Maybe a guy who wants a second chance."

  "To do what? Tell a client to flee the jurisdiction?"

  "Who the hell are you?" The man reached into his jacket pocket and flipped open a vinyl wallet with an L.A.P.D. badge and photo I.D.

  Payne read aloud. " 'Detective Eugene Rigney. Public Integrity Unit.' Kinda wussy, isn't it? I mean, compared to Robbery Homi cide. Or SWAT."

  He turned toward the pins and took his four-step approach. A high back
swing, a wrist-snapping release, a fluid follow-through. The ball skidded on the oil, dug in, and hooked hard left into the pocket. A big mix, the clatter of rolling logs. The skinny neck of the six-pin kissed the ten, pushing it over like a wobbly drunk.

  Strike! Take that, Mr. Public Integrity.

  Rigney didn't look impressed. "You gotta do something for me, Payne."

  "What?"

  "Bribe a judge." The cop looked at his watch. "And you've got one hour to do it."

  THREE

  Payne plopped his Road Hawg into its zippered bag. "I'm out of here, Rigney. Go bribe the judge yourself."

  "Do you have a client named Molly Kraft?" the cop asked.

  Payne stopped in mid-zip.

  Molly Kraft. Oh, shit.

  "Child custody," Payne said. "Her husband molested their daughter."

  "You never proved it."

  "The husband's lawyer had a better shrink."

  "So you told Molly Kraft to take off with her daughter in violation of a court order."

  Rigney pulled a little cop notebook from his suit pocket. He read aloud in a monotone that could put a jury to sleep. It was all true. Payne had bought airline tickets for Molly Kraft and her daughter and sent them off to Puerto Vallarta to keep the girl away from her abusive father. Bored by endless sunshine and numbed by rivers of sangria, Molly sneaked back across the border four days ago, and got arrested in San Ysidro.

  "She flipped on you, pal," Rigney said.

  Shit. Is it any wonder I hate my clients?

  "Molly Kraft's gonna testify to the Grand Jury right after lunch. Once she does, I can't stop the indictment."

  "And now you can?"

  Rigney didn't answer, letting Payne sweat. Smart.

  Payne liked people who were good at their jobs. Perjurers. Pickpockets. Pain-in-the-ass cops.

  Several seconds passed. There was only one other bowler in the place, way down at lane thirty-two, the falling pins echoing like distant thunder.

  "Do you know Judge Walter Rollins?" Rigney said at last.

  "Van Nuys Division. Didn't make partner at one of the downtown firms, so they bought him a seat on the bench."

  "That's it?"

  "Rollins is condescending to lawyers, bullies his staff, and sucks up to the appellate court. He also doesn't like anyone smarter than him. Which means he has very few friends."

  Then there was the business with the car. Payne remembered a day when he was stopped at a traffic light on Lankershim near the In-N-Out Burger. He'd looked over-looked down, actually-from his perch in his Lexus SUV, and there was Judge Rollins, glaring up at him from his Mini Cooper. As if thinking:

  "Payne, you asswipe. You don't deserve that fine machine with its G.P.S. whispering directions in your ear like a thousand-dollar hooker."

  Truth was, Payne leased the Lexus to impress his clients, especially car thieves.

  "Rollins is dirty," Rigney said, then told Payne about Operation Court Sweep. A sting operation. Joint task force of L.A.P.D. and the feds, which Payne figured would have cops shooting one another's dicks off.

  "I don't have a case in front of Rollins," Payne said, "so if you're looking for someone to set him up-"

  " We've got the case."

  "Forget it. I'm not a snitch."

  "Your choice, Payne. But know this: By tonight, either you or Walter Rollins will be behind bars."

  FOUR

  Jimmy drove west on Ventura Boulevard, speaking to his ex-wife on the cell. "Sharon, do you know a dickwad named Eugene Rigney?"

  "Public Integrity," she answered. "Corruption cases."

  "That's him. Can I trust him?"

  "Rigney's a hard-ass who lies under oath to get convictions. What are you up to?"

  "A little this, a little that. Mostly bribery."

  "I'm serious, Atticus."

  "Me, too. How's Adam doing with his math?"

  "Jimmy, don't do that! I asked you a question. How are you mixed up with Rigney?"

  "Late for a hearing. Gotta go. I'll pick up Adam early for baseball Saturday."

  "Jimmy, dammit!"

  He clicked off and slowed at the intersection of Beverly Glen. On the seat next to him was a cheap briefcase containing fifty thousand dollars in cash.

  "Strike that, Madame Court Reporter. Forty-five thousand."

  At the traffic light at Coldwater Canyon, he'd grabbed one of the stacks of bills and slid it under the floor mat in the backseat. If Judge Rollins would roll over for fifty thousand, why not forty-five?

  And don't I deserve something for bringing down a dirty judge?

  The sting was a mousetrap intended to snap the necks of corrupt judges. Offer cash to reduce bail or dismiss the indictment or, slimiest of all, give up the name of an informant so the defendant can have him killed. So any guilt Payne felt at being a snitch was lessened by the knowledge that Judge Walter Rollins, if he fell for it, was willing to be an accessory to murder.

  Our legal system is incompetent and corrupt, Payne thought. A time-wasting, money-sucking three-ring circus of lazy judges, brain-dead juries, and officious clerks in courthouses where there's not enough parking or decent places to eat lunch.

  "Why'd you have to make it a human trafficking case?" Payne had asked Rigney.

  "What difference does it make?"

  "I repped those Mexicans in the tractor-trailer case."

  "I know all about it. You got held in contempt. Ethics charges. Anger management. The whole nine yards."

  "So would it make sense that I'd represent a guy who doesn't give a shit if the migrants live or die?"

  Rigney shrugged. "What do you care? Another case, another peso."

  Jeez, how depressing.

  If the legal system were a frozen pond, Payne walked too far on ice too thin. Wearing combat boots and stomping his feet. In the tractor-trailer case, the ice broke. Traffickers brought three dozen Mexicans through a tunnel from Tijuana to Otay Mesa in San Diego County. As soon as the migrants popped out of the ground like bleary-eyed gophers, armed vaquetons- street thugs working for the coyotes-jammed the new arrivals into a trailer truck. The Mexicans were headed for a slaughterhouse in Arizona, where they had been promised jobs pulling intestines out of dead cows and ripping their hides off with pliers. Where the migrants came from, this was considered cushy work.

  The driver, an American who would be paid $6,000 for the run, stopped in El Centro in the California desert to visit his girlfriend in her air-conditioned trailer, conveniently stocked with ice-cold beer and a queen-size bed. Afraid that the migrants would scatter if he let them out, he kept them locked in the back. The sun, perched high in the August sky, blazed orange as a branding iron. The metal truck became a convection oven. No one heard the migrants' screams or their prayers to the Virgin of Guadalupe.

  Tongues swelled. Arms flailed. Limbs locked in spasms. The stricken watched long-departed relatives float by in the darkness. As the hours passed, bowels exploded like mortar shells. Mouths frothed, eyes bulged, brains melted. Eleven people died.

  The government promised permanent residency to the survivors if they would testify against the coyotes and the driver. Trial was had, convictions obtained, miscreants jailed. By then, pale new faces manned the desks of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office. Tough regulations were enacted, lest any campesinos from Chihuahua were working for Osama bin Laden on the sly. Even though the survivors had kept their end of the bargain, a tailored suit from Washington yanked their papers and scheduled them for deportation.

  "Government fraud, deception, and outright lies!" Payne told the press. "Mafia hit men get better treatment."

  Payne subpoenaed a dozen skinny-tied government types. Not just I.C.E. officials. Mayors. State senators. Governors' aides. Demanded to know who cut their grass, washed their cars, changed their kids' diapers. Proved the hypocrisy of the entire system, or so he thought.

  "Mr. Payne, you will refrain from this line of questioning."

  "Why, Judge? Because a Hondu
ran woman cleans your toilets?"

  "That's enough, Mr. Payne!"

  But it wasn't. Payne turned to the table of government lawyers, cleared his throat, and belted out a passable rendition of Tom Russell's "Who's Gonna Build Your Wall?"

  Who's gonna cook your Mexican food,

  When your Mexican maid is gone?

  The judge banged his gavel and shouted,"You're in contempt, buster!"

  Forty-eight hours in a holding cell. And a $5,000 fine.

  On the brighter side, Payne won the case. Unwilling to risk any more toxic publicity, I.C.E. reversed its decision. Payne's clients got permanent residency.

  Now, driving along Ventura Boulevard to the courthouse, Payne planned the rest of his day. Hit the gym, grab some lunch, pick up Adam for a game of pitch-andcatch. But first, there was a judge to bribe.

  The day was already steaming. The sidewalk cafes, with their forlorn potted palms, were deserted, except for the Coffee Beans, Starbucks, and Peet's, where wannabe screenwriters pounded at their laptops, dreams of Oscar statuettes, A-list parties, and Malibu mansions warping their brains.

  It was a short drive to Van Nuys, Payne's favorite venue for justice to be miscarried. The Lexus spoke then, the pleasant but distant female voice instructing him to "Turn right in two hundred yards. Van Nuys Boulevard." She didn't bother to thank him for the five grand under her floor mat.

  Payne followed instructions and headed for the courthouse, thinking this wasn't so bad. He was a decent enough liar. He'd get out of the heat, do his civic duty, and pocket five grand. What could go wrong?

  FIVE

  "You think I'm stupid?" Judge Rollins aimed the gun a few inches north of Payne's shrinking testicles. "Your wife's a cop."

  "Ex-wife."

  "I remember. She shot you."

  "An accident," Payne said. "She was aiming at my client."

  "That how you got the scar on your leg?" Gesturing toward a ridge of purple tissue on Payne 's bare thigh.

  "No." Payne reflexively touched the spot. Beneath his fingertips, fastened to his femur, was a metal plate and five locking screws. "Got the scars in a crash on the P.C.H."