“Drive to Chicago, it’s big enough to get lost in. Find a bar, get a job for cash and tips, you know the drill. Call my office, collect, every Monday morning at eight o’clock sharp. I’ll be waiting.”
“Yes sir.”
Chapter 32
The grand plan to stick together and present a unified defense began to unravel a few weeks after the arrests. Joshua Burch soon learned the lunacy of trying to control the competing interests of Malco, his three managers, and thirteen ladies of the evening.
The first to flip was a stripper with the stage name of Blaze. Wary of Lance and anyone connected to him, she hired Duff McIntosh, a tough criminal lawyer and a friend of Jesse’s. Over beers late one afternoon, Jesse made his first offer. If Blaze would plead guilty to one count of prostitution, he would reduce it to a misdemeanor, dismiss the other charges, and let her go with a $100 fine and thirty days in jail, suspended. She would have to agree to testify at trial against Lance Malco and his managers and describe in detail the sex trade at Foxy’s. In addition, she would promise to leave the Coast, sort of a “go and sin no more” farewell. Getting out of town would not be a bad idea after her testimony. Since she was out of work and blackballed along the Strip, she was leaving anyway. After a month of negotiation, Blaze took the deal and disappeared.
Word spread quickly and Duff became the go-to lawyer for the girls. When they realized they could walk away with no jail time and no felony conviction, they lined up at Duff’s office. Through the fall of 1974, he and Jesse met often for beers and conducted business. Jesse offered the same deal. Eight of the thirteen said yes. Two said no, out of fear of Malco. Two others had different lawyers and were still negotiating. One had not been seen since posting bail.
* * *
Three months after their meeting in Mobile, Jesse had not heard from Haley Stofer. He had no idea where he was hiding and had no time to search for him. His only hope was for the knucklehead to screw up, get himself arrested, then extradited back to Harrison County where Jesse would beat him over the head with the indictment, promise him forty years in prison, and strong-arm him into testifying against Lance Malco.
It was a long shot.
The other possibility was that Malco found him first. In that case, it was unlikely he would be found again.
* * *
In mid-November, Judge Oliphant scheduled another motion hearing to deal with the avalanche of paperwork spewing forth from the typewriters inside the law offices of Joshua Burch. At issue on that day was an aggressive and well-reasoned motion to try Lance Malco separately from his three managers. Burch wanted his star client to go last so he could learn the prosecution’s strategies, strengths, and weaknesses. Jesse opposed the idea and argued that having four trials based on the same set of facts was a waste of judicial resources. More than three months had already passed since the indictments, and it would take another year to try all of them piecemeal. What Burch wasn’t saying was that he believed the prosecution would have a difficult time finding forty-eight jurors who could not be influenced by the outlaws he represented. One hung jury, one mistrial, and the prosecution’s momentum would suffer greatly.
Only a few spectators watched as the lawyers haggled. One of the defendants, Fritz Haberstroh, sat in the back row, no doubt sent by Malco to observe and report. Haberstroh was a floor manager at Foxy’s and a longtime employee of the Malco enterprises. He had two felony convictions for fencing stolen appliances, and had served time in Missouri before heading south to find work where no one cared about his past. Jesse was itching to get him in front of a jury.
After two hours of often tense argument, Jesse suddenly changed his strategy and announced, “Your Honor, I see that one of the defendants, Mr. Haberstroh, is with us today.”
“He’s my client,” Burch interrupted.
“I know that,” Jesse shot back. “I’ll agree to try Mr. Haberstroh first. Let’s put him on trial a month from now. The State is ready.”