Resurrection Walk

“I can’t get into it,” he said. “The threat is still out there and it’s real. You need to be careful or it will be your ass in a sling next.”

“Wrong answer. You need to get into it right now or I’ll file that in the morning and put a press release out to every newsroom in the city.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

I pointed to the document on the desk in front of him.

“It’s already done. You want to stop it, tell me what went down with Sanz. Who threatened you and why?”

“Jesus Christ.”

Silver shook his head like a man who sees no way out of a trap.

“There’s only one choice here, Frank,” I said. “You’re working with me or you’re working against me. And I will burn the ground you walk on to get my client out of that prison.”

“All right, all right,” Silver said. “I’ll tell you what happened, okay? But you need to treat it as intel. You can’t reveal who you got it from.”

“I can’t make that promise. Not until I know what you know.”

“Fuck...”

He was stalling. I pushed my chair back.

“Okay, I’m out of here. Good luck tomorrow.”

“No, no, no, wait. Okay, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you. You were right, Angel told me everything. Sanz was a collector for this sheriff’s gang who call themselves the Cucos. Acosta and his gang were paying for protection, and Sanz was the bagman. That day was supposed to be a regular cash pickup but then Sanz upped the ante. The Cucos wanted more. There was an argument and it turned into a shoot-out. After Angel told me that, a friend of Sanz’s called me and said that if I went into court with what I knew, it would be the last case I ever tried.”

“A friend? Who are we talking about?”

“I don’t know. One of the Cucos.”

“That doesn’t help me. I need a name.”

“I don’t have a name. I didn’t want a name.”

“I’ll protect you.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You can’t protect me from them. They’re cops!”

“How did you know they were cops?”

“I just did. It was obvious, wasn’t it? With what Acosta had told me.”

“I still need a name, Frank, or we’re done here. Who called you?”

“He didn’t say his name and I didn’t ask for it.”

“What exactly did he say?”

“He told me to tell Acosta that if he kept his mouth shut, he’d get a deal from the DA. I said fine. I knew getting him a deal would be a big victory. And so did Acosta. I didn’t have to sell it. He was happy to take it.”

“Who was the prosecutor who offered the deal?”

“Same one who handled all the heavy cases out there. Andrea Fontaine. But she’s downtown now.”

I considered everything just said and then moved on.

“Okay,” I said. “Lucinda Sanz. You went to the PD and took the case.”

“Because I was told to,” Silver said.

“By who? The same one who called you on Acosta?”

“No, this time it was a woman. She knew about the whole Acosta deal and she said there would be an offer from Fontaine. She told me to make Lucinda take the deal and plead her out. And that if I used what I knew about Roberto Sanz and the shoot-out from before, I was a dead man, plain and simple.”

I thought about this. Lucinda had said a woman had conducted the GSR test on her, a woman who said she worked with Roberto Sanz.

“The second caller, do you know who it was?” I asked.

“No, man, I told you,” Silver said. “No names were mentioned. They weren’t that stupid.”

“Did Lucinda know about any of this?”

Silver lowered his eyes.

“I never told her,” he said. “I just told her to take the deal. That it was the only way.”

I thought I could see shame and regret in Silver’s eyes. Maybe he had believed at the time that Lucinda was guilty as charged and that the callers were putting a cap on what could blow up into another scandal for the sheriff’s department. But either way, Silver knew deep inside that he’d never be more than a hack lawyer from the Ord Street commune.

“You did all this based on phone calls from nameless people who claimed they were cops,” I said. “But how did you know the threats were legit?”

“Because they knew things,” Silver said. “Things that had never gotten out, that had to have come from the inside.”

“Like what?”

“Like they knew what Acosta could spill if I put him on the stand. That Roberto Sanz was no fucking hero that day at the shoot-out.”

I changed direction with Silver, using Bosch’s tactic of keeping a witness off balance with unexpected questions.

“Tell me about Agent MacIsaac,” I said.

“Who?” Silver asked.

Through a few phone calls Bosch had been able to learn MacIsaac’s full name and posting in the Bureau’s L.A. field office. That part of the document was fact and I was hopeful it would draw a response from Silver.

“FBI Special Agent Tom MacIsaac,” I said. “He’s the guy the U.S. attorney won’t allow me to talk to or subpoena. Did he ever show up around here to talk to you?”

“No, I never heard of him till now. What’s his—”

“He had a lengthy meeting with Roberto Sanz on the day he was killed. If you were any kind of an attorney, you would have found that out and not talked your client into a plea deal.”

Silver shook his head.

“Look, man, I keep telling you, I was threatened,” he said. “I had no choice.”