Chapter Thirty-Two
Walter Zegda didn’t do jails or prisons.
He assumed anything he said would be recorded and used against him.
So, he had Frank Tyler, a coke-addicted lawyer, on a retainer, which was paid in part in cash and in larger part in white powder.
Anything anyone said to Tyler would be protected by the attorney-client privilege and couldn’t be used to screw Zegda.
Raymond Castor was represented by Tyler, who had no qualms about repeating any of his “confidential” conversations with any of his clients to Zegda that the lawyer thought his master might need to know.
Half an hour after Ray called him, he and Tyler were conferring in a contact visiting room.
The lawyer and his client leaned across the table until their heads were almost touching.
Ray told Tyler what Nikki had told him in a voice barely above a whisper because he was as paranoid as Zegda about the ability of the authorities to record jailhouse conversations.
“What do you want me to do?” Tyler asked.
“You got to tell you-know-who. Wyatt is on the warpath. If she gets to the DA, the Disciples are fucked.”
“You’re right. I have to tell him,” Tyler said, as careful as Ray not to name names.
“But tell him to go easy on Nikki. She doesn’t know anything. I never told her the DA’s name. She’s got the hots for me, and she was just trying to help me.”
Tyler nodded. “I’ll do that. And you’re doing the right thing, Ray.”
Walter Zegda lived in an ultramodern, cantilevered glass-and-steel house that extended out over thick woods on one of the hills on Portland’s west side. Wolf Larson thought his friend sounded nervous when he summoned him to his retreat in the middle of the night.
Zegda had his house swept for bugs every day, but he was still paranoid, so Wolf found him outside his house on a wide deck that gave Zegda a spectacular view of the lights of Portland at night and the snowcapped mountains of the Cascade Range when the sun was up.
“What’s up?” Larson asked.
“I have a decision to make, and I want your input,” Zegda said after he told Larson what Frank Tyler had told him.
“You’re not thinking about taking out Wyatt.”
“It would solve the problem.”
“Hey, man. It’s one thing to take care of a nobody like Kramer, but you’ll bring down too much heat if you go after a prominent attorney. And how did Ray learn what he knows?”
“Yeah, that was my fault. I let it slip one night when Ray-Ray and I were drinking. I was stupid, but what’s done is done. Ray-Ray knows the name, and three million dollars is one big incentive to share it with Wyatt.”
“Wyatt isn’t the problem,” Larson said. “She doesn’t have the name. If Raymond never tells her, she never will.”
“You think I should take out Ray-Ray?”
Larson shrugged. “Once he’s out of the picture, the problem is solved.”