64

Before we left, I assured LD Gaudet of two things. First, that we would keep our meeting and the details she had revealed about her past and everything else strictly confidential. Second, I pledged to pray for her.

After thanking LD for her courage in speaking with us, we left the DOJ building. The note with the protocol code message written on it was securely tucked in my pocket, but I hadn’t the faintest what it meant.

I could think of only one next step. And it involved Gil Spencer, a member of LD’s internal affairs investigative team looking into the Forester and Pullmen deaths. On the other hand, Vance Zaduck had given me a dump truck full of reasons to stay clear of him.

As a preliminary, I called Zaduck at the US attorney’s office. I had something that I needed to ask him before my next move. But I was told he was in meetings and he would have to call me back. I couldn’t afford to wait for his return call before I reached out to Gil Spencer.

Heather stopped me on the sidewalk, right in front of the Nathan Hale statue. She announced, “I’ve got to get over to the Library of Congress. Right now. I’m only ten minutes away from the best information resource center in the world.”

“Fill me in.”

“Matamoros. I’ve got to research that beyond just an Internet search. There may be a deeper meaning behind that word. And I intend to find it.”

I told her that I would be running down Gil Spencer. I had no idea when, or if, I would be hearing back from Vance Zaduck, but our backs were against the wall. I still didn’t have a cell phone replacement, so I told Heather to hang on to mine, and I would pick up a cheap cell phone and try to track down Gil.

I felt uneasy about separating from Heather. On the other hand, I was proud of her initiative. And then there was that comment from LD about our father-daughter team. Amazing how great a simple thing like that can make you feel.

I told Heather, “Let’s plan on getting back together in three hours. I’ll call you.”

While we waited for a cab for Heather, I put in a call to Gil Spencer, and his secretary informed me he was in court. After explaining my past history with him and our being legal colleagues, I was able to ferret out from the secretary that he was arguing to oppose a Freedom of Information Act demand that had been filed against the Department of Justice.

“So,” I asked, “that means he’s over at the US district court?”

“Yes. 333 Constitution Avenue NW.” She gave me the courtroom number. A taxi pulled up and I wished Heather luck, gave her my cell, and shooed her into the backseat. I decided to leave my rental in the parking ramp and catch a cab myself to save time. One showed up a few minutes later.

My destination wasn’t that far away, so I knew the cabbie would be ticked off about a low fare, but I told him I would drop a heavy tip on him if he could thread the needle quickly through traffic.

After eight minutes of a hair-raising ride, he slam-parked the taxi on the other side of Constitution, across from the courthouse. I paid the fare, plus twenty bucks, and danced my way across oncoming traffic, dashing past the statue of Sir William Blackstone and into the federal courthouse building.

On the sixth floor I peeked into the courtroom. The judge was rendering his opinion. I decided to wait outside in the corridor. Ten minutes later, the door swung open. Gil Spencer’s opponents were smiling. A forlorn-looking Gil trudged out with his extra-wide briefcase.

I stopped him in his tracks. “Well, Gil,” I said, “better luck next time.”

He looked surprised to see me. “Yeah, well, you know these FOIA cases. The motion today was just a skirmish. The case itself? More like the Hundred Years’ War.”

“Since when are you doing Freedom of Information litigation?”

He looked down the hallway in both directions and said in a hushed voice, “Keep it down.” Then he added, “I have been temporarily reassigned out of the Criminal Division. Get this: somebody within the federal legal establishment filed an internal ethics complaint against me.”

“Do you know who?”

“Not yet. But I will soon. I’m wondering if it is because of our off-the-record conversation at the cemetery.” Then he asked, “So what are you doing here?”

“Bringing you a question.”

“Make it quick. This doesn’t look good, my talking to you like this.”

“Okay, here it is: when I say the word Matamoros, what does that bring to mind?”

His head jerked back a bit. “You’ve been talking to someone on the internal affairs investigative team, haven’t you.”

“Sorry, I can’t confirm or deny.”

“That’s fine,” he said. “Okay. Matamoros . . .”

“Right. Let your mind wander . . . any recollection at all. Why it might be important. Whether you can see any connection to the case that Jason Forester was investigating and your boss, Mr. Pullmen, was supervising.”

“What are you looking for, exactly?”

“Anything. Everything.”

“You look a bit frantic, Trevor. That’s not like you.”

I managed a tight smile.

Minutes ticked by. Gil kept looking this way and that, like he was under surveillance.

“Look,” he finally said. “Obviously you got that word from somebody in internal affairs. And obviously we all know it’s a city in Mexico.”

“Right. I’m trying to figure out whether any of Paul Pullmen’s cases, for instance, or those of the DOJ, or cases of Jason Forester have anything to do with Matamoros. Or for that matter, any other case you’ve ever heard of in your life.”

Gil bobbed his head.

While he was struggling, I asked him a question out of left field, just to catch his response. “Gil, one more time. I need to know this. I can trust you, right?”

“Yes,” he shot back, looking me in the eye. “And I’m pretty sure I can trust you. Otherwise this conversation wouldn’t be happening.”

I nodded. He kept thinking. Then he jerked his head up like someone just jabbed him. “Wow, that’s odd.”

“What?”

“After all these years, remembering it. The human brain’s a strange thing.”

“Explain.”

“Oh, this goes back. Way back, all the way to the New York City public defender’s office. It was just after you left to join the Tobit law firm. You remember that boxer client you had? Convicted of attempted murder or something close to that? Beat up some guy who was stalking his girlfriend.”

“Carter Collins. How could I forget?”

“After he was convicted and was already serving his prison sentence, we got this letter from him, addressed to the public defender’s office and saying he wanted to talk to you. I arranged a phone call to Collins at the prison and explained you were now working as criminal defense counsel in a high-priced private firm, but that we could forward any message to you. Carter Collins said that of course he couldn’t afford private counsel but needed someone from the public defender’s office to talk to him about something. So I paid him a visit in prison.

“The details are foggy —about our meeting, I mean. I don’t recall exactly what the guy wanted, though whatever it was, it struck me as pretty strange at the time. Typical prison gossip stuff —railing against the system, that sort of thing —but my memory is that he was making some pretty outrageous claims against a government lawyer. But he wouldn’t give me the name of the lawyer unless I promised that he could strike a deal with the prosecutors for a reduction of his sentence, which I was supposed to work out for him and which of course I couldn’t do. The point being, the city of Matamoros came up in our conversation somehow. That much I’m sure. Anyway, your client struck me as just trying to get a free-pass-out-of-jail card, and I wasn’t buying it.”

“You’re positive about all this?”

“That’s the weird thing about it. That part just leaped out of my memory bank. So, anyway, there it is.”

I knew I had to talk to Carter Collins but had no idea where to start after all these years.

When I mentioned that out loud to Gil, he shrugged real nonchalantly and said, “That’s not a problem. He’s been out of prison for quite a while and he’s actually not far from here. I read an article in the local news section of the Post about his heading up a boys’ boxing club for underprivileged kids. You know, some kind of self-help, motivational nonprofit group with a pretty good record. His outfit is being sponsored by two congressmen who serve together on the Judiciary Committee. And they’re actually from opposite sides of the aisle if you can believe that.”