When I got to the room that Uncle Scotty had texted to me, I slowly opened the heavy wooden door and slipped inside as soundlessly as I could. But even though I was operating in super-stealth mode, most of the people in the room turned to look at me. Including Uncle Scotty, who was perched on the edge of the second-row bench. He made an almost imperceptible motion for me to join him before turning back around to pay attention to the person giving her testimony.

  I quickly and quietly tiptoed to the second row and slid into the open spot next to Uncle Scotty. Then, turning off my phone, I finally pulled the buds out of my ears and was able to hear what was being said on the stand.

  “Mrs. Martinez, please recount the things that needed to be fixed in your apartment to make it habitable,” a woman dressed in a smart blue skirt suit said as she stood a few feet away from what I assumed to be her client.

  “Sí,” the woman on the stand began, then continued in English with a Hispanic accent. “There was wires coming out of the walls, and a ceiling that would spark when you turn on lights. Once my husband got a jolt when the light went on. There were also roedores—rats—all over the house and in the walls. You could hear them scratch, scratch, scratch all night long. And no heat all winter. We had to put blankets over the ventanas to keep from freezing.”

  “And did you ask the property owner, Mr. Miles, to fix this?” the female lawyer asked.

  “Sí,” Mrs. Martinez said.

  “How many times?” the lawyer asked.

  “Quatro or cinco,” she answered.

  “So you asked Mr. Miles four or five times to make your apartment livable,” the lawyer continued.

  “Sí.”

  “And what happened next?” the lawyer asked.

  “Nothing,” Mrs. Martinez said, shrugging helplessly.

  “Nothing?” the lawyer asked, like this was the shock of the century and they weren’t in court for that very reason.

  “No,” Mrs. Martinez said. “Nobody ever called. Nobody came by.”

  “So what did you do next?” the lawyer asked, seeming genuinely interested despite the obvious fact that she already knew what her client had done next.

  “We did not pay,” Mrs. Martinez said.

  “You mean you didn’t pay your rent,” the lawyer corrected.

  “Sí,” Mrs. Martinez said. “The Internet says they do not fix, we do not pay.”

  “Well, that sounds fair to me,” her lawyer said as she walked back to her table and sat down. “Your witness, counsel.”

  Mrs. Martinez’s eyes darted over to the defense table nervously. You could tell she wasn’t one for confrontation, and the fact that there was a whole table of confrontation about to be focused on her had her visibly shaken. One of the men wearing an expensive-looking suit stood up from his table slowly, then placed his hand over his chin and stroked it thoughtfully as he began to creep toward the stand.

  “Good afternoon, Seniora Martinez,” the man said, giving her an exaggerated grin. “Cómo estás?”

  He’d barely even spoken and already I didn’t trust the guy. He was a snake. He looked like a snake. He moved like a snake. His tongue was already wagging like a snake’s. He might be nice now, but I’d seen enough to know he was going to strike soon. And poor Mrs. Martinez wouldn’t even see it coming.

  “Fine,” Mrs. Martinez responded guardedly.

  “Good, good,” the lawyer said, as if to himself, before continuing. “It sounds like there were a lot of things wrong in your apartment, and I’m sorry you had to live like that. But isn’t it true that in your lease agreement, it states that tenants are required to make their own repairs above the first one hundred dollars for basic maintenance paid by the management company?”

  “Sí, but the rats were there when we moved in and we didn’t know the heater was broken until it was winter—”

  “How do you know the rats were there before you moved in?” the lawyer asked.

  “Because we saw the heces—uh, poop,” Mrs. Martinez said.

  “If you’d seen evidence of rodents from day one, why did you move in?” the lawyer asked as if this were an obvious question.

  “We had already signed the papers and if we backed out, we would have lost our deposit,” Mrs. Martinez explained, flustered. “And we had nowhere else to go.”

  “But obviously nothing was so bad that you felt like you couldn’t move in, correct?” The lawyer pushed forward. “I mean, I wouldn’t move into a place after seeing obvious problems like this.”

  “We thought Mr. Miles would fix it,” Mrs. Martinez explained, then looked over at the judge pleadingly. “It was not our fault.”

  “Do you have proof, Mrs. Martinez?” the lawyer asked, ignoring the woman’s distress.

  After a second’s hesitation, she nodded. “Sí,” she answered, gesturing to her lawyer. “We have pictures and video of all the problems we had.”

  “But none of that proves that the so-called problems existed before you moved into the apartment, correct?” the lawyer asked.

  “There are pictures,” Mrs. Martinez said again, as if that were all the proof she needed.

  The lawyer nodded. “I’ve seen them, Mrs. Martinez,” he acknowledged. “And that’s why I know that they are time-stamped from just a few months ago. Not from the time you first moved into the apartment. Is that correct?”

  This time Mrs. Martinez remained silent.

  “So you don’t actually have any proof that the rodents were in your apartment before you moved in. You don’t have proof that any of these problems happened prior to your moving in, in fact,” he said, waving his arms around grandly.

  “I told them about the rats,” Mrs. Martinez said, angry now. “I told them about the wires. I told them right after we moved in.”

  “Again, where’s your proof?” the lawyer asked. He made a show of going over to his table and riffling through the stack of papers, and came back empty-handed. “There’s no proof of these so-called complaints, is there?”

  “We were told to fill out the repair request forms on the website,” Mrs. Martinez said, folding her arms over her chest defensively. “We did. Nothing was fixed.”

  “Maybe you did,” the lawyer said, nodding, though his tone conveyed his disbelief. “But then why didn’t my client receive your request?”

  “He should have,” Mrs. Martinez said.

  “I agree,” the lawyer said quickly. “Because if he had received your alleged four or five complaints, he might have been able to help you. But he didn’t.”

  Mrs. Martinez narrowed her eyes at the lawyer.

  “I don’t believe you,” she said firmly.

  “Well, you don’t have to, Mrs. Martinez,” the lawyer said finally. “Because the truth is, there is no proof that those messages were ever delivered to Mr. Miles. He certainly has no record of them. Why didn’t you try contacting Mr. Miles another way?”

  “We were told the management would only fix repairs if we went through their website,” Mrs. Martinez said.

  “I’m sorry, but I just find that hard to believe,” the lawyer said, suddenly laughing. “If I’d sent a bunch of messages to my landlord and wasn’t hearing anything back, I would most certainly give them a call. Did you call them, Mrs. Martinez?”

  “I tried to, sí,” she answered.

  “You tried?” the lawyer asked. “How many times? Once, twice—”

  “Twice maybe,” Mrs. Martinez said. “Nobody answered and I couldn’t leave a message.”

  “So living conditions in your apartment were so bad that you could barely stand to stay there, yet you only tried calling your landlord twice to have things fixed? It doesn’t sound like it was all that urgent, Mrs. Martinez.”

  “That’s not true!” Mrs. Martinez snapped.

  “And then you just stopped paying your rent.” The lawyer pushed on. “You had a contract to pay Mr. Miles for living in his apartment complex and you went back on your word. Can you blame him for asking you to move out?”

  “He didn’t ask, he kicked us out of our home!” Mrs. Martinez shouted.

  “The home you so badly didn’t want to leave? The same home with rats and dangerous electrical wires and no heat? I’m sorry, Mrs. Martinez, that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”

  “They forced us out when we asked them to fix what was wrong!” Mrs. Martinez said, standing up and banging her tiny fist on the stand in front of her.

  “Please remain calm, Mrs. Martinez,” the judge said quietly before relaxing back into his chair. “Or I’ll have to find you in contempt.”

  Mrs. Martinez’s cheeks turned red as she realized she’d let the lawyer get the best of her. She sat down again and folded her hands in her lap.

  “It’s all right, Your Honor. That’s all I have for this witness,” the lawyer said finally, sauntering back to his chair and sitting down with a confident look on his face.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Martinez, you may sit down now,” the judge said.

  As the older woman rose slowly to her feet, I felt my anger rise. I’ve been all around the world and seen different levels of underprivileged people. Kids who didn’t have access to an education. People who slept on mats on cold floors and considered having a roof over their heads a luxury. Yet here we were, in one of the richest towns in one of the richest countries in the world, and we weren’t just not helping those less fortunate, but some people were actively trying to bring them down.

  It made me wonder why my dad was sitting in prison and this guy was wandering around free to destroy other people’s lives.

  “I would now like to call to the stand Detective Scott Lorde,” Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer said loudly for all to hear.

  Then I watched in awed silence as my uncle got up and headed for the stand.

  Entry Fourteen

  As Uncle Scotty got up and walked to the stand, I studied the judge to see if he’d bought any of the defense’s bull. I certainly hadn’t. But then again, maybe it takes a swindler to recognize one. It seemed so obvious to me that the landlord had made it impossible for these people to get repairs done. And for what? To save a little money? From the sound of it, Mrs. Martinez was living in nastiness begin with. So would a few repairs really break the bank for Mr. Miles?

  “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?” the court officer asked as he swore Uncle Scotty in.

  “I do,” Uncle Scotty answered.

  Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer got up and approached the stand.

  “Detective Lorde,” she began, her voice friendly and approachable. “You’ve been investigating Mr. Miles for some time now, haven’t you?”

  “I have,” Uncle Scotty confirmed, nodding.

  “Can you tell us why?”

  “I began to hear from citizens several years ago that while they were living in a few specific properties in the southwestern corner of town, they were being made to live in horrible conditions,” Uncle Scotty said. “These same residents were then either evicted or threatened when they requested repairs be made.”

  “So you began to investigate?” the lawyer asked.

  “Yes,” Uncle Scotty said. “It’s not right that lower-income housing should come at the cost of a person’s safety and well-being. And there were clearly laws being ignored here.”

  “Objection,” the opposing counsel interjected loudly. “Mr. Miles has not been found guilty of any lawbreaking. Move to strike.”

  “Just because we haven’t charged him doesn’t mean he isn’t breaking the law,” Uncle Scotty argued.

  “Sustained,” the judge said.

  “Detective Lorde,” Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer continued, “what did you find in the course of your investigation?”

  “I found that Mr. Miles was forcing these people to live in deplorable states,” Uncle Scotty replied. “When I went to see what was going on myself, I was appalled.”

  “How so?” the lawyer asked.

  “As Mrs. Martinez mentioned, most of the apartments in this area were severely run-down. There were cockroaches everywhere. Exposed wiring, holes in the drywall, leaks, mold. Most appliances that the buildings did have didn’t work. Heaters, air-conditioning units, refrigerators, stoves, plumbing…it was all broken-down.”

  “I’d like to show some photos that Detective Lorde took on one of his early visits to some of these dwellings,” the lawyer said, and began to press buttons on a remote control she had in her hand.

  A photo popped up on a screen already set up in the corner of the courtroom. It was of a kitchen. A dirty kitchen. It wasn’t dirty because there were dishes piled up or anything. It was just generally gross. The corners of the turned-up linoleum had a brownish-yellowish tint. The oven was so old, I’d guess it hadn’t been in use since before I was born. The wallpaper was peeling in places, completely gone in others. There were large chunks taken out of the wall and you could clearly see through to the wiring inside.

  She flipped to the next photo, showing several large rats huddling in the corner of what I assumed was the living room. Nearby were droppings that the rodents had left behind, creating a nice little pile of crap in the person’s house.

  At least the rats were trying to keep it all in one place.

  The next photo showed a bunch of dead cockroaches hidden behind a toaster that had been pulled away from the wall. The shot was so vivid, I could almost imagine one of them still kicking its tiny bug legs until it finally died.

  All of it was shocking. And disgusting. And I couldn’t believe anyone would live in a place like that.

  Or more pointedly, that they had to live in a place like that.

  Even at our most frugal times, Dad and I had never had to take a room in a roach motel. Obviously, we’d had to build our way up to robbing palaces and estates. In our early years of conning, we primarily lived off one job a year, which might just bring us enough to scrape by on what would be considered a modest living to normal people. And even when money began to dwindle down to nothing, I’d never had to share a space with a rodent or bug.

  Well, except for when we lived in New York briefly, but that was only when we rode the subway. And in that case, it was part of the city’s charm. At least that’s what a true New Yorker would tell you.

  What I was seeing here was like a horror movie. And totally not right. Especially in a town like this.

  I glanced over at the defendant, Mr. Miles, for the first time.

  He was sitting between two suited-up men, wearing a dark blue suit himself, with an even darker blue tie wrapped around his neck like a noose. His face was tan, like he had a season pass to a tanning salon, and his skin looked leathery around the edges.

  His blond hair was thick and swooped up and back toward the crown of his head, revealing eyes that looked a little too tight for his age. I’d heard of women getting plastic surgery but had never seen it on a man before. The effect bordered on creepy. Like when you see a zombie. At first they look normal, humanlike even. But when you look closer, you can tell something’s off.

  That was the vibe I was getting from Mr. Miles.

  Full-on zombie.

  He was leaning as far back in his chair as he could get without fully reclining and had a big fake smile plastered across his face like this was all a joke to him.

  But for Mrs. Martinez, it was her life.

  And for that alone, I couldn’t help but hate the guy.

  “And was this what all the apartments were like when you visited?” the lawyer asked Uncle Scotty.

  “Yes,” he answered, nodding. “Some were worse, but I figured these pictures were proof enough.”

  “And you’re looking into Mr. Miles for other criminal activities, correct, Detective Lorde?” the lawyer asked.

  “Right,” Uncle Scotty said.

  “Objection,” Mr. Miles’s lawyer said. “Relevance?”

  “It goes to show that Mr. Miles has a history of cutting corners and breaking the law. His past misdeeds can be used to establish a pattern of this sort of behavior,” Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer argued.

  “Your Honor, introducing any other ongoing investigations that may or may not be underway would prove unjustly prejudicial to the proceeding at hand,” Mr. Miles’s lawyer said.

  “Sustained,” the judge answered without hesitation.

  I made eye contact with Uncle Scotty then and saw him purse his lips in frustration.

  “In your opinion, Detective Lorde, has Mr. Miles acted negligently and fraudulently when it comes to the tenants living in this part of town?” Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer asked.

  “Objection,” the other lawyer said.

  “Yes,” Uncle Scotty said loudly, ignoring Mr. Miles’s lawyer. “Absolutely.”

  “Objection! Detective Lorde isn’t in the position to give his opinion in this matter, given that his background is not in real estate law,” said Mr. Miles’s lawyer.

  “Sustained,” the judge said again. “Stick to the facts, Mrs. Kinnigan.”

  Looking disappointed, Mrs. Martinez’s lawyer closed her mouth tightly and made her way back to her table.

  “No more questions then, Your Honor,” she said, sitting down in her chair.

  “Your witness, counsel,” the judge said.

  This time, Mr. Miles’s lawyer dispensed with the pleasantries he’d afforded Mrs. Martinez. In fact, he didn’t even smile as he made his way over to Uncle Scotty, stopping only a few feet from him.

  It didn’t matter, though, because Uncle Scotty didn’t look all that pleased to be talking to him, either.

  “Detective Lorde,” the lawyer started, barely containing a sneer. “You alleged before that my client threatened those of his tenants who came forward with complaints. How exactly did he do that?”

  “Some he threatened to evict,” Uncle Scotty said.

  “Which is well within his right as a landlord to do if the tenants don’t live up to their part of the contract, is that correct?”

 

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