fries in a basket. She’s on the phone to Frankie. The Mercedes is headed south on Highway 19 and our tail has eased in behind it. Our man calls back with the tag number, and Vicki goes to work. We order iced tea and salads. Frankie arrives a few minutes later.
We have seen the enemy.
The Mercedes is registered to a Mr. Nash Cooley, of Miami. Vicki e-mails this info to Mazy at home and both women are burning up their keyboards. Within minutes we know that Cooley is a partner in a firm that specializes in criminal defense. I call two lawyers I know in Miami. Susan Ashley Gross, who’s eating a sandwich in the courtroom, calls her contacts. Mazy calls a lawyer she knows in Miami. Vicki pecks away. Frankie enjoys his tuna melt and fries.
Cooley and Black Denim park at a fast-food place in the town of Eustis, population 18,000 and twenty minutes away. What is obvious becomes even more so. The two men eased into town to watch the hearing, did not want to be seen together or recognized in any way, and sneaked off for a bite. As they dine, our tail exchanges cars with his colleague. When Cooley leaves Eustis and heads our way, he is being followed at a distance by another car.
Cooley is a partner in a twelve-member firm with a long history of representing drug dealers. Not surprisingly, it is a low-profile firm with a sparse website. They don’t advertise because they don’t need to. Cooley is fifty-two, law school at Miami, a clean record with no bar complaints. His photo online needs to be updated because he appears at least ten years younger, but this is not unusual. After our first cursory round of research, we find only one interesting story about the firm. In 1991, the guy who founded the firm was found dead in his pool with his throat slashed. The murder remains unsolved. Probably just another disgruntled client.
* * *
—
TWO P.M. COMES and goes with no sign of Judge Plank. Perhaps we should ask one of the clerks to check and see if he is (1) alive, or (2) just napping again. Nash Cooley enters and sits near the back, oblivious to the fact that we know the names of his children and where they go to college. Black Denim enters a moment later and sits far away from Cooley. So amateurish.
Using the services of a high-tech security firm in Fort Lauderdale, we sent a video frame of Black Denim and paid for turnaround service. The firm’s facial recognition technology was primed to run the frame through the firm’s many data banks, but that was unnecessary. The first data bank was the Florida Department of Corrections, and the search lasted for all of eleven minutes. Black Denim is Mickey Mercado, age 43, address in Coral Gables, a convicted felon with dual citizenship—Mexican and American. When Mercado was nineteen he got shipped away for six years for, of course, trafficking. In 1994, he was arrested and tried for murder. The jury hung and he walked.
As we wait for Judge Plank, Vicki is still in the diner, ordering coffee and raging through the Internet. She will tell us later that Mercado is a self-employed private security consultant. Whatever that means.
Their identifications are stunning, and as we sit peacefully in the courtroom it’s hard not to turn around, call them by name, and say something like “What the hell are you doing here?” But we are much too seasoned for anything like that. When possible, never let the enemy know what you know. Right now, Cooley and Mickey have no idea that we have their names, home addresses, license plate and Social Security numbers, and places of employment, and we are still digging. Of course, we assume that they have a file on me and Guardian and its meager staff. Frankie is nothing but a shadow and will never be caught. He’s in the hallway outside the courtroom, watching and moving. There are few blacks in this town and he is always conscious of getting looks.
When Judge Plank appears at 2:17, he instructs Susan Ashley to call our next witness. There are no surprises in these hearings so everyone knows Zeke Huffey is back in Florida. The surprise was that he agreed to testify live if we would pay his airfare. That, and I had to swear in writing that the statute of limitations has run on perjury