The Brass Verdict

Four

It was a little early in the week for Lorna Taylor to be calling and checking on me. Usually she waited until at least Thursday. Never Tuesday. I picked up the phone, thinking it was more than a check-in call.

“Lorna?”

“Mickey, where’ve you been? I’ve been calling all morning.”

“I went for my run. I just got out of the shower. You okay?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“Sure. What is-?”

“You got a forthwith from Judge Holder. She wants to see you – like an hour ago.”

This gave me pause.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. All I know is first Michaela called, then the judge herself called. That usually doesn’t happen. She wanted to know why you weren’t responding.”

I knew that Michaela was Michaela Gill, the judge’s clerk. And Mary Townes Holder was the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The fact that she had called personally didn’t make it sound like they were inviting me to the annual justice ball. Mary Townes Holder didn’t call lawyers without a good reason.

“What did you tell her?”

“I just said you didn’t have court today and you might be out on the golf course.”

“I don’t play golf, Lorna.”

“Look, I couldn’t think of anything.”

“It’s all right, I’ll call the judge. Give me the number.”

“Mickey, don’t call. Just go. The judge wants to see you in chambers. She was very clear about that and she wouldn’t tell me why. So just go.”

“Okay, I’m going. I have to get dressed.”

“Mickey?”

“What?”

“How are you really doing?”

I knew her code. I knew what she was asking. She didn’t want me appearing in front of a judge if I wasn’t ready for it.

“You don’t have to worry, Lorna. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Call me and let me know what is going on as soon as you can.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

I hung up the phone, feeling like I was being bossed around by my wife, not my ex-wife.

Five

As the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge Mary Townes Holder did most of her work behind closed doors. Her courtroom was used on occasion for emergency hearings on motions but rarely used for trials. Her work was done out of the view of the public. In chambers. Her job largely pertained to the administration of the justice system in Los Angeles County. More than two hundred fifty judgeships and forty courthouses fell under her purview. Every jury summons that went into the mail had her name on it, and every assigned parking space in a courthouse garage had her approval. She assigned judges by both geography and designation of law – criminal, civil, juvenile and family. When judges were newly elected to the bench, it was Judge Holder who decided whether they sat in Beverly Hills or Compton, and whether they heard high-stakes financial cases in civil court or soul-draining divorce cases in family court.

I had dressed quickly in what I considered my lucky suit. It was an Italian import from Corneliani that I used to wear on verdict days. Since I hadn’t been in court for a year, or heard a verdict for even longer, I had to take it out of a plastic bag hanging in the back of the closet. After that I sped downtown without delay, thinking that I might be headed toward some sort of verdict on myself. As I drove, my mind raced over the cases and clients I had left behind a year earlier. As far as I knew, nothing had been left open or on the table. But maybe there had been a complaint or the judge had picked up on some courthouse gossip and was running her own inquiry. Regardless, I entered Holder’s courtroom with a lot of trepidation. A summons from any judge was usually not good news; a summons from the chief judge was even worse.

The courtroom was dark and the clerk’s pod next to the bench was empty. I walked through the gate and was heading toward the door to the back hallway, when it opened and the clerk stepped through it. Michaela Gill was a pleasant-looking woman who reminded me of my third-grade teacher. But she wasn’t expecting to find a man approaching the other side of the door when she opened it. She startled and nearly let out a shriek. I quickly identified myself before she could make a run for the panic button on the judge’s bench. She caught her breath and then ushered me back without delay.

I walked down the hallway and found the judge alone in her chambers, working at a massive desk made of dark wood. Her black robe was hanging on a hat rack in the corner. She was dressed in a maroon suit with a conservative cut. She was attractive and neat, midfifties with a slim build and brown hair kept in a short, no-nonsense style.

I had never met Judge Holder before but I knew about her. She had put twenty years in as a prosecutor before being appointed to the bench by a conservative governor. She presided over criminal cases, had a few of the big ones, and was known for handing out maximum sentences. Consequently, she had been easily retained by the electorate after her first term. She had been elected chief judge four years later and had held the position ever since.

“Mr. Haller, thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m glad your secretary finally found you.”

There was an impatient if not imperious tone to her voice.

“She’s not actually my secretary, Judge. But she found me. Sorry it took so long.”

“Well, you’re here. I don’t believe we have met before, have we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, this will betray my age but I actually opposed your father in a trial once. One of his last cases, I believe.”

I had to readjust my estimate of her age. She would have to be at least sixty if she had ever been in a courtroom with my father.

“I was actually third chair on a case, just out of USC Law and green as can be. They were trying to give me some trial exposure. It was a murder case and they let me handle one witness. I prepared a week for my examination and your father destroyed the man on cross in ten minutes. We won the case but I never forgot the lesson. Be prepared for anything.”

I nodded. Over the years I had met several older lawyers who had Mickey Haller Sr. stories to share. I had very few of my own. Before I could ask the judge about the case on which she’d met him, she pressed on.

“But that’s not why I called you here,” she said.

“I didn’t think so, Judge. It sounded like you have something… kind of urgent?”

“I do. Did you know Jerry Vincent?”

I was immediately thrown by her use of the past tense.

“Jerry? Yes, I know Jerry. What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Murdered, actually.”

“When?”

“Last night. I’m sorry.”

My eyes dropped and I looked at the nameplate on her desk. Honorable M. T. Holder was carved in script into a two-dimensional wooden display that held a ceremonial gavel and a fountain pen and inkwell.

“How close were you?” she asked.

It was a good question and I didn’t really know the answer. I kept my eyes down as I spoke.

“We had cases against each other when he was with the DA and I was at the PD. We both left for private practice around the same time and both of us had one-man shops. Over the years we worked some cases together, a couple of drug trials, and we sort of covered for each other when it was needed. He threw me a case occasionally when it was something he didn’t want to handle.”

I had had a professional relationship with Jerry Vincent. Every now and then we clicked glasses at Four Green Fields or saw each other at a ball game at Dodger Stadium. But for me to say we were close would have been an exaggeration. I knew little about him outside of the world of law. I had heard about a divorce a while back on the courthouse gossip line but had never even asked him about it. That was personal information and I didn’t need to know it.

“You seem to forget, Mr. Haller, but I was with the DA back when Mr. Vincent was a young up-and-comer. But then he lost a big case and his star faded. That was when he left for private practice.”

I looked at the judge but said nothing.

“And I seem to recall that you were the defense attorney on that case,” she added.

I nodded.

“Barnett Woodson. I got an acquittal on a double murder. He walked out of the courtroom and sarcastically apologized to the media for getting away with murder. He had to rub the DA’s face in it and that pretty much ended Jerry’s career as a prosecutor.”

“Then, why would he ever work with you or throw you cases?”

“Because, Judge, by ending his career as a prosecutor, I started his career as a defense attorney.”

I left it at that but it wasn’t enough for her.

“And?”

“And a couple of years later he was making about five times what he had made with the DA. He called me up one day and thanked me for showing him the light.”

The judge nodded knowingly.

“It came down to money. He wanted the money.”

I shrugged like I was uncomfortable answering for a dead man and didn’t respond.

“What happened to your client?” the judge asked. “What became of the man who got away with murder?”

“He would’ve been better off taking a conviction. Woodson got killed in a drive-by about two months after the acquittal.”

The judge nodded again, this time as if to say end of story, justice served. I tried to put the focus back on Jerry Vincent.

“I can’t believe this about Jerry. Do you know what happened?”

“That’s not clear. He was apparently found late last night in his car in the garage at his office. He had been shot to death. I am told that the police are still there at the crime scene and there have been no arrests. All of this comes from a Times reporter who called my chambers to make an inquiry about what will happen now with Mr. Vincent’s clients – especially Walter Elliot.”

I nodded. For the last twelve months I had been in a vacuum but it wasn’t so airtight that I hadn’t heard about the movie mogul murder case. It was just one in a string of big-time cases Vincent had scored over the years. Despite the Woodson fiasco, his pedigree as a high profile prosecutor had set him up from the start as an upper-echelon criminal defense attorney. He didn’t have to go looking for clients; they came looking for him. And usually they were clients who could pay or had something to say, meaning they had at least one of three attributes: They could pay top dollar for legal representation, they were demonstrably innocent of the charges lodged against them, or they were clearly guilty but had public opinion and sentiment on their side. These were clients he could get behind and forthrightly defend no matter what they were accused of. Clients who didn’t make him feel greasy at the end of the day.

And Walter Elliot qualified for at least one of those attributes. He was the chairman/owner of Archway Pictures and a very powerful man in Hollywood. He had been charged with murdering his wife and her lover in a fit of rage after discovering them together in a Malibu beach house. The case had all sorts of connections to sex and celebrity and was drawing wide media attention. It had been a publicity machine for Vincent and now it would go up for grabs.

The judge broke through my reverie.

“Are you familiar with RPC two-three-hundred?” she asked.

I involuntarily gave myself away by squinting my eyes at the question.

“Uh… not exactly.”

“Let me refresh your memory. It is the section of the California bar’s rules of professional conduct referring to the transfer or sale of a law practice. We, of course, are talking about a transfer in this case. Mr. Vincent apparently named you as his second in his standard contract of representation. This allowed you to cover for him when he needed it and included you, if necessary, in the attorney-client relationship. Additionally, I have found that he filed a motion with the court ten years ago that allowed for the transfer of his practice to you should he become incapacitated or deceased. The motion has never been altered or updated, but it’s clear what his intentions were.”

I just stared at her. I knew about the clause in Vincent’s standard contract. I had the same in mine, naming him. But what I realized was that the judge was telling me that I now had Jerry’s cases. All of them, Walter Elliot included.

This, of course, did not mean I would keep all of the cases. Each client would be free to move on to another attorney of their choosing once apprised of Vincent’s demise. But it meant that I would have the first shot at them.

I started thinking about things. I hadn’t had a client in a year and the plan was to start back slow, not with a full caseload like the one I had apparently just inherited.

“However,” the judge said, “before you get too excited about this proposition, I must tell you that I would be remiss in my role as chief judge if I did not make every effort to ensure that Mr. Vincent’s clients were transferred to a replacement counsel of good standing and competent skill.”

Now I understood. She had called me in to explain why I would not be appointed to Vincent’s clients. She was going to go against the dead lawyer’s wishes and appoint somebody else, most likely one of the high-dollar contributors to her last reelection campaign. Last I had checked, I’d contributed exactly nothing to her coffers over the years.

But then the judge surprised me.

“I’ve checked with some of the judges,” she said, “and I am aware that you have not been practicing law for almost a year. I have found no explanation for this. Before I issue the order appointing you replacement counsel in this matter, I need to be assured that I am not turning Mr. Vincent’s clients over to the wrong man.”

I nodded in agreement, hoping it would buy me a little time before I had to respond.

“Judge, you’re right. I sort of took myself out of the game for a while. But I just started taking steps to get back in.”

“Why did you take yourself out?”

She asked it bluntly, her eyes holding mine and looking for anything that would indicate evasion of the truth in my answer. I spoke very carefully.

“Judge, I had a case a couple years ago. The client’s name was Louis Roulet. He was-”

“I remember the case, Mr. Haller. You got shot. But, as you say, that was a couple years ago. I seem to remember you practicing law for some time after that. I remember the news stories about you coming back to the job.”

“Well,” I said, “what happened is I came back too soon. I had been gut shot, Judge, and I should’ve taken my time. Instead, I hurried back and the next thing I knew I started having pain and the doctors said I had a hernia. So I had an operation for that and there were complications. They did it wrong. There was even more pain and another operation and, well, to make a long story short, it knocked me down for a while. I decided the second time not to come back until I was sure I was ready.”

The judge nodded sympathetically. I guessed I had been right to leave out the part about my addiction to pain pills and the stint in rehab.

“Money wasn’t an issue,” I said. “I had some savings and I also got a settlement from the insurance company. So I took my time coming back. But I’m ready. I was just about to take the back cover of the Yellow Pages.”

“Then, I guess inheriting an entire practice is quite convenient, isn’t it?” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to her question or the smarmy tone in which she said it.

“All I can tell you, Judge, is that I would take good care of Jerry Vincent’s clients.”

The judge nodded but she didn’t look at me as she did so. I knew the tell. She knew something. And it bothered her. Maybe she knew about the rehab.

“According to bar records, you’ve been disciplined several times,” she said.

Here we were again. She was back to throwing the cases to another lawyer. Probably some campaign contributor from Century City who couldn’t find his way around a criminal proceeding if his Riviera membership depended on it.

“All of it ancient history, Judge. All of it technicalities. I’m in good standing with the bar. If you called them today, then I’m sure you were told that.”

She stared at me for a long moment before dropping her eyes to the document in front of her on the desk.

“Very well, then,” she said.

She scribbled a signature on the last page of the document. I felt the flutter of excitement begin to build in my chest.

“Here is an order transferring the practice to you,” the judge said. “You might need it when you go to his office. And let me tell you this. I am going to be monitoring you. I want an updated inventory of cases by the beginning of next week. The status of every case on the client list. I want to know which clients will work with you and which will find other representation. After that, I want biweekly status updates on all cases in which you remain counsel. Am I being clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Judge. For how long?”

“What?”

“For how long do you want me to give you biweekly updates?”

She stared at me and her face hardened.

“Until I tell you to stop.”

She handed me the order.

“You can go now, Mr. Haller, and if I were you, I would get over there and protect my new clients from any unlawful search and seizure of their files by the police. If you have any problem, you can always call on me. I have put my after-hours number on the order.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

“Good luck, Mr. Haller.”

I stood up and headed out of the room. When I got to the doorway of her chambers I glanced back at her. She had her head down and was working on the next court order.

Out in the courthouse hallway, I read the two-page document the judge had given me, confirming that what had just happened was real.

It was. The document I held appointed me substitute counsel, at least temporarily, on all of Jerry Vincent’s cases. It granted me immediate access to the fallen attorney’s office, files and bank accounts into which client advances had been deposited.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Lorna Taylor. I asked her to look up the address of Jerry Vincent’s office. She gave it to me and I told her to meet me there and to pick up two sandwiches on her way.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I haven’t had lunch.”

“No, why are we going to Jerry Vincent’s office?”

“Because we’re back in business.”

Six

I was in my Lincoln driving toward Jerry Vincent’s office, when I thought of something and called Lorna Taylor back. When she didn’t answer I called her cell and caught her in her car.

“I’m going to need an investigator. How would you feel if I called Cisco?”

There was a hesitation before she answered. Cisco was Dennis Wojciechowski, her significant other as of the past year. I was the one who had introduced them when I used him on a case. Last I heard, they were now living together.

“Well, I have no problem working with Cisco. But I wish you would tell me what this is all about.”

Lorna knew Jerry Vincent as a voice on the phone. It was she who would take his calls when he was checking to see if I could stand in on a sentence or babysit a client through an arraignment. I couldn’t remember if they had ever met in person. I had wanted to tell her the news in person but things were moving too quickly for that.

“Jerry Vincent is dead.”

“What?”

“He was murdered last night and I’m getting first shot at all of his cases. Including Walter Elliot.”

She was silent for a long moment before responding.

“My God… How? He was such a nice man.”

“I couldn’t remember if you had ever met him.”

Lorna worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. All my calls and billing went through her. If there was a brick-and-mortar office for the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates, then her place was it. But there weren’t any associates and when I worked, my office was the backseat of my car. This left few occasions for Lorna to meet face-to-face with any of the people I represented or associated with.

“He came to our wedding, don’t you remember?”

“That’s right. I forgot.”

“I can’t believe this. What happened?”

“I don’t know. Holder said he was shot in the garage at his office. Maybe I’ll find out something when I get there.”

“Did he have a family?”

“I think he was divorced but I don’t know if there were kids or what. I don’t think so.”

Lorna didn’t say anything. We both had our own thoughts occupying us.

“Let me go so I can call Cisco,” I finally said. “Do you know what he’s doing today?”

“No, he didn’t say.”

“All right, I’ll see.”

“What kind of sandwich do you want?”

“Which way you coming?”

“Sunset.”

“Stop at Dusty’s and get me one of those turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce. It’s been almost a year since I’ve had one of those.”

“You got it.”

“And get something for Cisco in case he’s hungry.”

“All right.”

I hung up and looked up the number for Dennis Wojciechowski in the address book I keep in the center console compartment. I had his cell phone. When he answered I heard a mixture of wind and exhaust blast in the phone. He was on his bike and even though I knew his helmet was set up with an earpiece and mike attached to his cell, I had to yell.

“It’s Mickey Haller. Pull over.”

I waited and heard him cut the engine on his ’sixty-three panhead.

“What’s up, Mick?” he asked when it finally got quiet. “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”

“You gotta put the baffles back in your pipes, man. Or you’ll be deaf before you’re forty and then you won’t be hearing from anybody.”

“I’m already past forty and I hear you just fine. What’s going on?”

Wojciechowski was a freelance defense investigator I had used on a few cases. That was how he had met Lorna, collecting his pay. But I had known him for more than ten years before that because of his association with the Road Saints Motorcycle Club, a group for which I served as a de facto house counsel for several years. Dennis never flew RSMC colors but was considered an associate member. The group even bestowed a nickname on him, largely because there was already a Dennis in the membership – known, of course, as Dennis the Menace – and his last name, Wojciechowski, was intolerably difficult to pronounce. Riffing off his dark looks and mustache, they christened him the Cisco Kid. It didn’t matter that he was one hundred percent Polish out of the south side of Milwaukee.

Cisco was a big, imposing man but he kept his nose clean while riding with the Saints. He never caught an arrest record and that paid off when he later applied to the state for his private investigator’s license. Now, many years later, the long hair was gone and the mustache was trimmed and going gray. But the name Cisco and the penchant for riding classic Harleys built in his hometown had stuck for life.

Cisco was a thorough and thoughtful investigator. And he had another value as well. He was big and strong and could be physically intimidating when necessary. That attribute could be highly useful when tracking down and dealing with people who fluttered around the edges of a criminal case.

“First of all, where are you?” I asked.

“Burbank.”

“You on a case?”

“No, just a ride. Why, you got something for me? You taking on a case finally?”

“A lot of cases. And I’m going to need an investigator.”

I gave him the address of Vincent’s office and told him to meet me there as soon as he could. I knew that Vincent would have used either a stable of investigators or just one in particular, and that there might be a loss of time as Cisco got up to speed on the cases, but all of that was okay with me. I wanted an investigator I could trust and already had a working relationship with. I was also going to need Cisco to immediately start work by running down the locations of my new clients. My experience with criminal defendants is that they are not always found at the addresses they put down on the client info sheet when they first sign up for legal representation.

After closing the phone I realized I had driven right by the building where Vincent’s office was located. It was on Broadway near Third Street and there was too much traffic with cars and pedestrians for me to attempt a U-turn. I wasted ten minutes working my way back to it, catching red lights at every corner. By the time I got to the right place, I was so frustrated that I resolved to hire a driver again as soon as possible so that I could concentrate on cases instead of addresses.

Vincent’s office was in a six-story structure called simply the Legal Center. Being so close to the main downtown courthouses – both criminal and civil – meant it was a building full of trial lawyers. Just the kind of place most cops and doctors – lawyer haters – probably wished would implode every time there was an earthquake. I saw the opening for the parking garage next door and pulled in.

As I was taking the ticket out of the machine, a uniformed police officer approached my car. He was carrying a clipboard.

“Sir? Do you have business in the building here?”

“That’s why I’m parking here.”

“Sir, could you state your business?”

“What business is it of yours, Officer?”

“Sir, we are conducting a crime scene investigation in the garage and I need to know your business before I can allow you in.”

“My office is in the building,” I said. “Will that do?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had Judge Holder’s court order in my coat pocket. That gave me an office in the building.

The answer seemed to work. The cop asked to see my ID and I could’ve argued that he had no right to request my identification but decided that there was no need to make a federal case out of it. I pulled my wallet and gave him the ID and he wrote my name and driver’s license number down on his clipboard. Then he let me through.

“At the moment there’s no parking on the second level,” he said. “They haven’t cleared the scene.”

I waved and headed up the ramp. When I reached the second floor, I saw that it was empty of vehicles except for two patrol cars and a black BMW coupe that was being hauled onto the bed of a truck from the police garage. Jerry Vincent’s car, I assumed. Two other uniformed cops were just beginning to pull down the yellow crime scene tape that had been used to cordon off the parking level. One of them signaled for me to keep going. I saw no detectives around but the police weren’t giving up the murder scene just yet.

I kept going up and didn’t find a space I could fit the Lincoln into until I got to the fifth floor. One more reason I needed to get a driver again.

The office I was looking for was on the second floor at the front of the building. The opaque glass door was closed but not locked. I entered a reception room with an empty sitting area and a nearby counter behind which sat a woman whose eyes were red from crying. She was on the phone but when she saw me, she put it down on the counter without so much as a “hold on” to whomever she was talking to.

“Are you with the police?” she asked.

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“Then, I’m sorry, the office is closed today.”

I approached the counter, pulling the court order from Judge Holder out of the inside pocket of my suit coat.

“Not for me,” I said as I handed it to her.

She unfolded the document and stared at it but didn’t seem to be reading it. I noticed that in one of her hands she clutched a wad of tissues.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That’s a court order,” I said. “My name is Michael Haller and Judge Holder has appointed me replacement counsel in regard to Jerry Vincent’s clients. That means we’ll be working together. You can call me Mickey.”

She shook her head as if warding off some invisible threat. My name usually didn’t carry that sort of power.

“You can’t do this. Mr. Vincent wouldn’t want this.”

I took the court papers out of her hand and refolded them. I started putting the document back into my pocket.

“Actually, I can. The chief judge of Los Angeles Superior Court has directed me to do this. And if you look closely at the contracts of representation that Mr. Vincent had his clients sign, you will find my name already on them, listed as associate counsel. So, what you think Mr. Vincent would have wanted is immaterial at this point because he did in fact file the papers that named me his replacement should he become incapacitated or… dead.”

The woman had a dazed look on her face. Her mascara was heavy and running beneath one eye. It gave her an uneven, almost comical look. For some reason a vision of Liza Minnelli jumped to my mind.

“If you want, you can call Judge Holder’s clerk and talk about it with her,” I said. “Meantime, I really need to get started here. I know this has been a very difficult day for you. It’s been difficult for me – I knew Jerry going back to his days at the DA. So you have my sympathy.”

I nodded and looked at her and waited for a response but I still wasn’t getting one. I pressed on.

“I’m going to need some things to get started here. First of all, his calendar. I want to put together a list of all the active cases Jerry was handling. Then, I’m going to need you to pull the files for those-”

“It’s gone,” she said abruptly.

“What’s gone?”

“His laptop. The police told me whoever did this took his briefcase out of the car. He kept everything on his laptop.”

“You mean his calendar? He didn’t keep a hard copy?”

“That’s gone, too. They took his portfolio. That was in the briefcase.”

Her eyes were staring blankly ahead. I tapped the top of the computer screen on her desk.

“What about this computer?” I asked. “Didn’t he back up his calendar anywhere?”

She didn’t say anything, so I asked again.

“Did Jerry back up his calendar anywhere else? Is there any way to access it?”

She finally looked up at me and seemed to take pleasure in responding.

“I didn’t keep the calendar. He did. He kept it all on his laptop and he kept a hard copy in the old portfolio he carried. But they’re both gone. The police made me look everywhere in here but they’re gone.”

I nodded. The missing calendar was going to be a problem but it wasn’t insurmountable.

“What about files? Did he have any in the briefcase?”

“I don’t think so. He kept all the files here.”

“Okay, good. What we’re going to have to do is pull all the active cases and rebuild the calendar from the files. I’ll also need to see any ledgers or checkbooks pertaining to the trust and operating accounts.”

She looked up at me sharply.

“You’re not going to take his money.”

“It’s not-”

I stopped, took a deep breath and then started again in a calm but direct tone.

“First of all, I apologize. I did this backwards. I don’t even know your name. Let’s start over. What is your name?”

“Wren.”

“Wren? Wren what?”

“Wren Williams.”

“Okay, Wren, let me explain something. It’s not his money. It’s his clients’ money and until they say otherwise, his clients are now my clients. Do you understand? Now, I have told you that I am aware of the emotional upheaval of the day and the shock you are experiencing. I’m experiencing some of it myself. But you need to decide right now if you are with me or against me, Wren. Because if you are with me, I need you to get me the things I asked for. And I’m going to need you to work with my case manager when she gets here. If you are against me, then I need you just to go home right now.”

She slowly shook her head.

“The detectives told me I had to stay until they were finished.”

“What detectives? There were only a couple uniforms left out there when I drove in.”

“The detectives in Mr. Vincent’s office.”

“You let-”

I didn’t finish. I stepped around the counter and headed toward two separate doors on the back wall. I picked the one on the left and opened it.

I walked into Jerry Vincent’s office. It was large and opulent and empty. I turned in a full circle until I found myself staring into the bugged eyes of a large fish mounted on the wall over a dark wood credenza next to the door I had come through. The fish was a beautiful green with a white underbelly. Its body was arched as if it had frozen solid just at the moment it had jumped out of the water. Its mouth was open so wide I could have put my fist in it.

Mounted on the wall beneath the fish was a brass plate. It said:

IF I’D KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT I WOULDN’T BE HERE

Words to live by, I thought. Most criminal defendants talk their way into prison. Few talk their way out. The best single piece of advice I have ever given a client is to just keep your mouth shut. Talk to no one about your case, not even your own wife. You keep close counsel with yourself. You take the nickel and you live to fight another day.

The unmistakable sound of a metal drawer being rolled and then banged closed spun me back around. On the other side of the room were two more doors. Both were open about a foot and through one I could see a darkened bathroom. Through the other I could see light.

I approached the lighted room quickly and pushed the door all the way open. It was the file room, a large, windowless walk-in closet with rows of steel filing cabinets going down both sides. A small worktable was set up against the back wall.

There were two men sitting at the worktable. One old, one young. Probably one to teach and one to learn. They had their jackets off and draped over the chairs. I saw their guns and holsters and their badges clipped to their belts.

“What are you doing?” I asked gruffly.

The men looked up from their reading. I saw a stack of files on the table between them. The older detective’s eyes momentarily widened in surprise when he saw me.

“LAPD,” he said. “And I guess I should ask you the same question.”

“Those are my files and you’re going to have to put them down right now.”

The older man stood up and came toward me. I started pulling the court order from my jacket again.

“My name is-”

“I know who you are,” the detective said. “But I still don’t know what you’re doing here.”

I handed him the court order.

“Then, this should explain it. I’ve been appointed by the chief judge of the superior court as replacement counsel to Jerry Vincent’s clients. That means his cases are now my cases. And you have no right to be in here looking through files. That is a clear violation of my clients’ right to protection against unlawful search and seizure. These files contain privileged attorney-client communications and information.”

The detective didn’t bother looking at the paperwork. He quickly flipped through it to the signature and seal on the last page. He didn’t seem all that impressed.

“Vincent’s been murdered,” he said. “The motive could be sitting in one of these files. The identity of the killer could be in one of them. We have to-”

“No, you don’t. What you have to do is get out of this file room right now.”

The detective didn’t move a muscle.

“I consider this part of a crime scene,” he said. “It’s you who has to leave.”

“Read the order, Detective. I’m not going anywhere. Your crime scene is out in the garage, and no judge in L.A. would let you extend it to this office and these files. It’s time for you to leave and for me to take care of my clients.”

He made no move to read the court order or to vacate the premises.

“If I leave,” he said, “I’m going to shut this place down and seal it.”

I hated getting into pissing matches with cops but sometimes there was no choice.

“You do that and I’ll have it unsealed in an hour. And you’ll be standing in front of the chief judge of the superior court explaining how you trampled on the rights of every one of Vincent’s clients. You know, depending on how many clients we’re talking about, that might be a record – even for the LAPD.”

The detective smiled at me like he was mildly amused by my threats. He held up the court order.

“You say this gives you all of these cases?”

“That’s right, for now.”

“The entire law practice?”

“Yes, but each client will decide whether to stick with me or find someone else.”

“Well, I guess that puts you on our list.”

“What list?”

“Our suspect list.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would I be on it?”

“You just told us why. You inherited all of the victim’s clients. That’s got to amount to some sort of a financial windfall, doesn’t it? He’s dead and you get the whole business. Think that’s enough motivation for murder? Care to tell us where you were last night between eight and midnight?”

He grinned at me again without any warmth, giving me that cop’s practiced smile of judgment. His brown eyes were so dark I couldn’t see the line between iris and pupil. Like shark eyes, they didn’t seem to carry or reflect any light.

“I’m not even going to begin to explain how ludicrous that is,” I said. “But for starters you can check with the judge and you’ll find out that I didn’t even know I was in line for this.”

“So you say. But don’t worry, we’ll be checking you out completely.”

“Good. Now please leave this room or I make the call to the judge.”

The detective stepped back to the table and took his jacket off the chair. He carried it rather than put it on. He picked a file up off the table and brought it toward me. He shoved it into my chest until I took it from him.

“Here’s one of your new files back, Counselor. Don’t choke on it.”

He stepped through the door, and his partner went with him. I followed them out into the office and decided to take a shot at reducing the tension. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time I saw them.

“Look, detectives, I’m sorry it’s like this. I try to have a good relationship with the police and I am sure we can work something out. But at the moment my obligation is to the clients. I don’t even know what I have here. Give me some time to-”

“We don’t have time,” the older man said. “We lose momentum and we lose the case. Do you understand what you’re getting yourself into here, Counselor?”

I looked at him for a moment, trying to understand the meaning behind his question.

“I think so, Detective. I’ve only been working cases for about eighteen years but-”

“I’m not talking about your experience. I’m talking about what happened in that garage. Whoever killed Vincent was waiting for him out there. They knew where he was and just how to get to him. He was ambushed.”

I nodded like I understood.

“If I were you,” the detective said, “I’d watch myself with those new clients of yours. Jerry Vincent knew his killer.”

“What about when he was a prosecutor? He put people in prison. Maybe one of-”

“We’ll check into it. But that was a long time ago. I think the person we’re looking for is in those files.”

With that, he and his partner started moving toward the door.

“Wait,” I said. “You have a card? Give me a card.”

The detectives stopped and turned back. The older one pulled a card out of his pocket and gave it to me.

“That’s got all my numbers.”

“Let me just get the lay of the land here and then I’ll call and set something up. There’s got to be a way for us to cooperate and still not trample on anybody’s rights.”

“Whatever you say, you’re the lawyer.”

I nodded and looked down at the name on the card. Harry Bosch. I was sure I had never met the man before, yet he had started the confrontation by saying he knew who I was.

“Look, Detective Bosch,” I said, “Jerry Vincent was a colleague. We weren’t that close but we were friends.”

“And?”

“And good luck, you know? With the case. I hope you crack it.”

Bosch nodded and there was something familiar about the physical gesture. Maybe we did know each other.

He turned to follow his partner out of the office.

“Detective?”

Bosch once more turned back to me.

“Did we ever cross paths on a case before? I think I recog-nize you.”

Bosch smiled glibly and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “If we’d been on a case, you’d remember me.”

Seven

An hour later I was behind Jerry Vincent’s desk with Lorna Taylor and Dennis Wojciechowski sitting across from me. We were eating our sandwiches and about to go over what we had put together from a very preliminary survey of the office and the cases. The food was good but nobody had much of an appetite considering where we were sitting and what had happened to the office’s predecessor.

I had sent Wren Williams home early. She had been unable to stop crying or objecting to my taking control of her dead boss’s cases. I decided to remove the barricade rather than have to keep walking around it. The last thing she asked before I escorted her through the door was whether I was going to fire her. I told her the jury was still out on that question but that she should report for work as usual the next day.

With Jerry Vincent dead and Wren Williams gone, we’d been left stumbling around in the dark until Lorna figured out the filing system and started pulling the active case files. From calendar notations in each file, she’d been able to start to put together a master calendar – the key component in any trial lawyer’s professional life. Once we had worked up a rudimentary calendar, I began to breathe a little easier and we’d broken for lunch and opened the sandwich cartons Lorna had brought from Dusty’s.

The calendar was light. A few case hearings here and there but for the most part it was obvious that Vincent was keeping things clear in advance of the Walter Elliot trial, which was scheduled to begin with jury selection in nine days.

“So let’s start,” I said, my mouth still full with my last bite. “According to the calendar we’ve pieced together, I’ve got a sentencing in forty-five minutes. So I was thinking we could have a preliminary discussion now, and then I could leave you two here while I go to court. Then I’ll come back and see how much farther we’ve gotten before Cisco and I go out and start knocking on doors.”

They both nodded, their mouths still working on their sandwiches as well. Cisco had cranberry in his mustache but didn’t know it.

Lorna was as neat and as beautiful as ever. She was a stunner with blonde hair and eyes that somehow made you think you were the center of the universe when she was looking at you. I never got tired of that. I had kept her on salary the whole year I was out. I could afford it with the insurance settlement and I didn’t want to run the risk that she’d be working for another lawyer when it was time for me to come back to work.

“Let’s start with the money,” I said.

Lorna nodded. As soon as she had gotten the active files together and placed them in front of me, she had moved on to the bank books, perhaps the only thing as important as the case calendar. The bank books would tell us more than just how much money Vincent’s firm had in its coffers. They would give us an insight into how he ran his one-man shop.

“All right, good and bad news on the money,” she said. “He’s got thirty-eight thousand in the operating account and a hundred twenty-nine thousand in the trust account.”

I whistled. That was a lot of cash to keep in the trust account. Money taken in from clients goes into the trust account. As work for each client proceeds, the trust account is billed and the money transferred to the operating account. I always want more money in the operating account than in the trust account, because once it’s moved into the operating account, the money’s mine.

“There’s a reason why it’s so lopsided,” Lorna said, picking up on my surprise. “He just took in a check for a hundred thousand dollars from Walter Elliot. He deposited it Friday.”

I nodded and tapped the makeshift calendar I had on the table in front of me. It was drawn on a legal pad. Lorna would have to go out and buy a real calendar when she got the chance. She would also input all of the court appointments on my computer and on an online calendar. Lastly, and as Jerry Vincent had not done, she would back it all up on an off-site data-storage account.

“The Elliot trial is scheduled to start Thursday next week,” I said. “He took the hundred up front.”

Saying the obvious prompted a sudden realization.

“As soon as we’re done here, call the bank,” I told Lorna. “See if the check has cleared. If not, try to push it through. As soon as Elliot hears that Vincent’s dead, he’ll probably try to put a stop-payment on it.”

“Got it.”

“What else on the money? If a hundred of it’s from Elliot, who’s the rest for?”

Lorna opened one of the accounting books she had on her lap. Each dollar in a trust fund must be accounted for with regard to which client it is being held for. At any time, an attorney must be able to determine how much of a client’s advance has been transferred to the operating fund and used and how much is still on reserve in trust. A hundred thousand of Vincent’s trust account was earmarked for the Walter Elliot trial. That left only twenty-nine thousand received for the rest of the active cases. That wasn’t a lot, considering the stack of files we had pulled together while going through the filing cabinets looking for live cases.

“That’s the bad news,” Lorna said. “It looks like there are only five or six other cases with trust deposits. With the rest of the active cases, the money’s already been moved into operating or been spent or the clients owe the firm.”

I nodded. It wasn’t good news. It was beginning to look like Jerry Vincent was running ahead of his cases, meaning he’d been on a treadmill, bringing in new cases to keep money flowing and paying for existing cases. Walter Elliot must have been the get-well client. As soon as his hundred thousand cleared, Vincent would have been able to turn the treadmill off and catch his breath – for a while, at least. But he never got the chance.

“How many clients with payment plans?” I asked.

Lorna once again referred to the records on her lap.

“He’s got two on pretrial payments. Both are well behind.”

“What are the names?”

It took her a moment to answer as she looked through the records.

“Uh, Samuels is one and Henson is the other. They’re both about five thousand behind.”

“And that’s why we take credit cards and don’t put out paper.”

I was talking about my own business routine. I had long ago stopped providing credit services. I took nonrefundable cash payments. I also took plastic, but not until Lorna had run the card and gotten purchase approval.

I looked down at the notes I had kept while conducting a quick review of the calendar and the active files. Both Samuels and Henson were on a sub list I had drawn up while reviewing the actives. It was a list of cases I was going to cut loose if I could. This was based on my quick review of the charges and facts of the cases. If there was something I didn’t like about a case – for any reason – then it went on the sub list.

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll cut ’em loose.”

Samuels was a manslaughter DUI case and Henson was a felony grand theft and drug possession. Henson momentarily held my interest because Vincent was going to build a defense around the client’s addiction to prescription painkillers. He was going to roll sympathy and deflection defenses into one. He would lay out a case in which the doctor who overprescribed the drugs to Henson was the one most responsible for the consequences of the addiction he created. Patrick Henson, Vincent would argue, was a victim, not a criminal.

I was intimately familiar with this defense because I had employed it repeatedly over the past two years to try to absolve myself of the many infractions I had committed in my roles as father, ex-husband and friend to people in my life. But I put Henson into what I called the dog pile because I knew at heart the defense didn’t hold up – at least not for me. And I wasn’t ready to go into court with it for him either.

Lorna nodded and made notes about the two cases on a pad of paper.

“So what is the score on that?” she asked. “How many cases are you putting in the dog pile?”

“We came up with thirty-one active cases,” I said. “Of those, I’m thinking only seven look like dogs. So that means we’ve got a lot of cases where there’s no money in the till. I’ll either have to get new money or they’ll go in the dog pile, too.”

I wasn’t worried about having to go and get money out of the clients. Skill number one in criminal defense is getting the money. I was good at it and Lorna was even better. It was getting paying clients in the first place that was the trick, and we’d just had two dozen of them dropped into our laps.

“You think the judge is just going to let you drop some of these?” she asked.

“Nope. But I’ll figure something out on that. Maybe I could claim conflict of interest. The conflict being that I like to be paid for my work and the clients don’t like to pay.”

No one laughed. No one even cracked a smile. I moved on.

“Anything else on the money?” I asked.

Lorna shook her head.

“That’s about it. When you’re in court, I’m going to call the bank and get that started. You want us both to be signers on the accounts?”

“Yeah, just like with my accounts.”

I hadn’t considered the potential difficulty of getting my hands on the money that was in the Vincent accounts. That was what I had Lorna for. She was good on the business end in ways I wasn’t. Some days she was so good I wished we had either never gotten married or never gotten divorced.

“See if Wren Williams can sign checks,” I said. “If she’s on there, take her off. For now I want just you and me on the accounts.”

“Will do. You may have to go back to Judge Holder for a court order for the bank.”

“That’ll be no problem.”

My watch said I had ten minutes before I had to get going to court. I turned my attention to Wojciechowski.

“Cisco, whaddaya got?”

I had told him earlier to work his contacts and to monitor the investigation of Vincent’s murder as closely as possible. I wanted to know what moves the detectives were making because it appeared from what Bosch had said that the investigation was going to be entwined with the cases I had just inherited.

“Not much,” Cisco said. “The detectives haven’t even gotten back to Parker Center yet. I called a guy I know in forensics and they’re still processing everything. Not a lot of info on what they do have but he told me about something they don’t. Vincent was shot at least two times that they could tell at the scene. And there were no shells. The shooter cleaned up.”

There was something telling in that. The killer had either used a revolver or had had the presence of mind after killing a man to pick up the bullet casings ejected from his gun.

Cisco continued his report.

“I called another contact in communications and she told me the first call came in at twelve forty-three. They’ll narrow down time of death at autopsy.”

“Is there a general idea of what happened?”

“It looks like Vincent worked late, which was apparently his routine on Mondays. He worked late every Monday, preparing for the week ahead. When he was finished he packed his briefcase, locked up and left. He goes to the garage, gets in his car and gets popped through the driver’s side window. When they found him the car was in park, the ignition on. The window was down. It was in the low sixties last night. He could’ve put the window down because he liked the chill, or he could’ve lowered it for somebody coming to the car.”

“Somebody he knew.”

“That’s one possibility.”

I thought about this and what Detective Bosch had said.

“Nobody was working in the garage?”

“No, the attendant leaves at six. You have to put your money in the machine after that or use your monthly pass. Vincent had a monthly.”

“Cameras?”

“Only cameras are where you drive in and out. They’re license plate cameras so if somebody says they lost their ticket they can tell when the car went in, that sort of thing. But from what I hear from my guy in forensics, there was nothing on tape that was useful. The killer didn’t drive into the garage. He walked in either through the building or through one of the pedestrian entrances.”

“Who found Jerry?”

“The security guard. They got one guard for the building and the garage. He hits the garage a couple times a night and noticed Vincent’s car on his second sweep. The lights were on and it was running, so he checked it out. He thought Vincent was sleeping at first, then he saw the blood.”

I nodded, thinking about the scenario and how it had gone down. The killer was either incredibly careless and lucky or he knew the garage had no cameras and he would be able to intercept Jerry Vincent there on a Monday night when the space was almost deserted.

“Okay, stay on it. What about Harry Potter?”

“Who?”

“The detective. Not Potter. I mean-”

“Bosch. Harry Bosch. I’m working on that, too. Supposedly he’s one of the best. Retired a few years ago and the police chief himself recruited him back. Or so the story goes.”

Cisco referred to some notes on a pad.

“Full name is Hieronymus Bosch. He has a total of thirty-three years on the job and you know what that means.”

“No, what does it mean?”

“Well, under the LAPD’s pension program you max out at thirty years, meaning that you are eligible for retirement with full pension and no matter how long you stay on the job, after thirty years your pension doesn’t grow. So it makes no economic sense to stay.”

“Unless you’re a man on a mission.”

Cisco nodded.

“Exactly. Anybody who stays past thirty isn’t staying for the money or the job. It’s more than a job.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You said Hieronymus Bosch? Like the painter?”

The second question confused him.

“I don’t know anything about any painter. But that’s his name. Rhymes with ‘anonymous,’ I was told. Weird name, if you ask me.”

“No weirder than Wojciechowski – if you ask me.”

Cisco was about to defend his name and heritage when Lorna cut in.

“I thought you said you didn’t know him, Mickey.”

I looked over at her and shook my head.

“I never met him before today but the name… I know the name.”

“You mean from the paintings?”

I didn’t want to get into a discussion of past history so distant I couldn’t be sure about it.

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s nothing and I’ve got to get going.”

I stood up.

“Cisco, stay on the case and find out what you can about Bosch. I want to know how much I can trust the guy.”

“You’re not going to let him look at the files, are you?” Lorna asked.

“This wasn’t a random crime. There’s a killer out there who knew how to get to Jerry Vincent. I’ll feel a lot better about things if our man with a mission can figure it out and bring the bad guy in.”

I stepped around the desk and headed toward the door.

“I’ll be in Judge Champagne’s court. I’m taking a bunch of the active files with me to read while I’m waiting.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Lorna said.

I saw her throw a look and nod at Cisco so that he would stay behind. We walked out to the reception area. I knew what Lorna was going to say but I let her say it.

“Mickey, are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Absolutely.”

“This wasn’t the plan. You were going to come back slowly, remember? Take a couple cases and build from there. Instead, you’re taking on an entire practice.”

“I’m not practicing.”

“Look, be serious.”

“I am. And I’m ready. Don’t you see that this is better than the plan? The Elliot case not only brings in all that money but it’s going to be like having a billboard on top of the CCB that says I’M BACK in big neon letters!”

“Yeah, that’s great. And the Elliot case alone is going to put so much pressure on you that…”

She didn’t finish but she didn’t have to.

“Lorna, I’m done with all of that. I’m fine, I’m over it and I’m ready for this. I thought you’d be happy about this. We’ve got money coming in for the first time in a year.”

“I don’t care about that. I want to make sure you are okay.”

“I’m more than okay. I’m excited. I feel like in one day I’ve suddenly got my mojo back. Don’t drag me down. Okay?”

She stared at me and I stared back and finally a reluctant smile peeked through her stern expression.

“All right,” she said. “Then, go get ’em.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

Eight

Despite the assurances I had given Lorna, thoughts about all the cases and all the setup work that needed to be done played in my mind as I walked down the hallway to the bridge that linked the office building with the garage. I had forgotten that I had parked on the fifth level and ended up walking up three ramps before I found the Lincoln. I popped the trunk and put the thick stack of files I was carrying into my bag.

The bag was a hybrid I had picked up at a store called Suitcase City while I was plotting my comeback. It was a backpack with straps I could put over my shoulders on the days I was strong. It also had a handle so I could carry it like a briefcase if I wanted. And it had two wheels and a telescoping handle so I could just roll it behind me on the days I was weak.

Lately, the strong days far outnumbered the weak and I probably could have gotten by with the traditional lawyer’s leather briefcase. But I liked the bag and was going to keep using it. It had a logo on it – a mountain ridgeline with the words “Suitcase City” printed across it like the Hollywood sign. Above it, skylights swept the horizon, completing the dream image of desire and hope. I think that logo was the real reason I liked the bag. Because I knew Suitcase City wasn’t a store. It was a place. It was Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really dropped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare. Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally, metaphorically – any way you want to look at it – everybody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.

As I closed the trunk, I was startled to see a man standing between my car and the one parked next to it. The open trunk lid had blocked my view of his approach. He was a stranger to me but I could tell he knew who I was. Bosch’s warning about Vincent’s killer shot through my mind and the fight-or-flight instinct gripped me.

“Mr. Haller, can I talk to you?”

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing sneaking around people’s cars?”

“I wasn’t sneaking around. I saw you and cut between the other cars, that’s all. I work for the Times and was wondering if I could talk to you about Jerry Vincent.”

I shook my head and blew out my breath.

“You scared the shit out of me. Don’t you know he got killed in this garage by somebody who came up to his car?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I was just-”

“Forget it. I don’t know anything about the case and I have to get to court.”

“But you’re taking over his cases, aren’t you?”

Signaling him out of the way, I moved to the door of my car.

“Who told you that?”

“Our court reporter got a copy of the order from Judge Holder. Why did Mr. Vincent pick you? Were you two good friends or something?”

I opened the door.

“Look, what’s your name?”

“Jack McEvoy. I work the police beat.”

“Good for you, Jack. But I can’t talk about this right now. You want to give me a card, I’ll call you when I can talk.”

He made no move to give me a card or to indicate he’d understood what I said. He just asked another question.

“Has the judge put a gag order on you?”

“No, she hasn’t put out a gag order. I can’t talk to you because I don’t know anything, okay? When I have something to say, I’ll say it.”

“Well, could you tell me why you are taking over Vincent’s cases?”

“You already know the answer to that. I was appointed by the judge. I have to get to court now.”

I ducked into the car but left the door open as I turned the key. McEvoy put his elbow on the roof and leaned in to continue to try to talk me into an interview.

“Look,” I said, “I’ve got to go, so could you stand back so I can close my door and back this tank up?”

“I was hoping we could make a deal,” he said quickly.

“Deal? What deal? What are you talking about?”

“You know, information. I’ve got the police department wired and you’ve got the courthouse wired. It would be a two-way street. You tell me what you’re hearing and I’ll tell you what I’m hearing. I have a feeling this is going to be a big case. I need any information I can get.”

I turned and looked up at him for a moment.

“But won’t the information you’d be giving me just end up in the paper the next day? I could just wait and read it.”

“Not all of it will be in there. Some stuff you can’t print, even if you know it’s true.”

He looked at me as though he were passing on a great piece of wisdom.

“I have a feeling you’ll be hearing things before I do,” I said.

“I’ll take my chances. Deal?”

“You got a card?”

This time he took a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. I held it between my fingers and draped my hand over the steering wheel. I held the card up and looked at it again. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get a line on inside information on the case.

“Okay, deal.”

I signaled him away again and pulled the door closed, then started the car. He was still there. I lowered the window.

“What?” I asked.

“Just remember, I don’t want to see your name in the other papers or on the TV saying stuff I don’t have.”

“Don’t worry. I know how it works.”

“Good.”

I dropped it into reverse but thought of something and kept my foot on the brake.

“Let me ask you a question. How tight are you with Bosch, the lead investigator on the case?”

“I know him, but nobody’s really tight with him. Not even his own partner.”

“What’s his story?”

“I don’t know. I never asked.”

“Well, is he any good at it?”

“At clearing cases? Yes, he’s very good. I think he’s considered one of the best.”

I nodded and thought about Bosch. The man on a mission.

“Watch your toes.”

I backed the Lincoln out. McEvoy called out to me just as I put the car in drive.

“Hey, Haller, love the plate.”

I waved a hand out the window as I drove down the ramp. I tried to remember which of my Lincolns I was driving and what the plate said. I have a fleet of three Town Cars left over from my days when I carried a full case load. But I had been using the cars so infrequently in the last year that I had put all three into a rotation to keep the engines in tune and the dust out of the pipes. Part of my comeback strategy, I guess. The cars were exact duplicates, except for the license plates, and I wasn’t sure which one I was driving.

When I got down to the parking attendant’s booth and handed in my stub, I saw a small video screen next to the cash register. It showed the view from a camera located a few feet behind my car. It was the camera Cisco had told me about, designed to pick up an angle on the rear bumper and license plate.

On the screen I could see my vanity plate.

IWALKEM

I smirked. I walk ’em, all right. I was heading to court to meet one of Jerry Vincent’s clients for the first time. I was going to shake his hand and then walk him right into prison.

Nine

Judge Judith Champagne was on the bench and hearing motions when I walked into her courtroom with five minutes to spare. There were eight other lawyers cooling their heels, waiting their turn. I parked my roller bag against the rail and whispered to the courtroom deputy, explaining that I was there to handle the sentencing of Edgar Reese for Jerry Vincent. He told me the judge’s motions calendar was running long but Reese would be first out for his sentencing as soon as the motions were cleared. I asked if I could see Reese, and the deputy got up and led me through the steel door behind his desk to the court-side holding cell. There were three prisoners in the cell.

“Edgar Reese?” I said.

A small, powerfully built white man came over to the bars. I saw prison tattoos climbing up his neck and felt relieved. Reese was heading back to a place he already knew. I wasn’t going to be holding the hand of a wide-eyed prison virgin. It would make things easier for me.

“My name’s Michael Haller. I’m filling in for your attorney today.”

I didn’t think there was much point in explaining to this guy what had happened to Vincent. It would only make Reese ask me a bunch of questions I didn’t have the time or knowledge to answer.

“Where’s Jerry?” Reese asked.

“Couldn’t make it. You ready to do this?”

“Like I got a choice?”

“Did Jerry go over the sentence when you pled out?”

“Yeah, he told me. Five years in state, out in three if I behave.”

It was more like four but I wasn’t going to mess with it.

“Okay, well, the judge is finishing some stuff up out there and then they’ll bring you out. The prosecutor will read you a bunch of legalese, you answer yes that you understand it, and then the judge will enter the sentence. Fifteen minutes in and out.”

“I don’t care how long it takes. I ain’t got nowhere to go.”

I nodded and left him there. I tapped lightly on the metal door so the deputy – bailiffs in L.A. County are sheriffs’ deputies – in the courtroom would hear it but hopefully not the judge. He let me out and I sat in the first row of the gallery. I opened up my case and pulled out most of the files, putting them down on the bench next to me.

The top file was the Edgar Reese file. I had already reviewed this one in preparation for the sentencing. Reese was one of Vincent’s repeat clients. It was a garden-variety drug case. A seller who used his own product, Reese was set up on a buy-bust by a customer working as a confidential informant. According to the background information in the file, the CI zeroed in on Reese because he held a grudge against him. He had previously bought cocaine from Reese and found it had been hit too hard with baby laxative. This was a frequent mistake made by dealers who were also users. They cut the product too hard, thereby increasing the amount kept for their own personal use but diluting the charge delivered by the powder they sold. It was a bad business practice because it bred enemies. A user trying to work off a charge by cooperating as a CI is more inclined to set up a dealer he doesn’t like than a dealer he does. This was the business lesson Edgar Reese would have to think about for the next five years in state prison.

I put the file back in my bag and looked at what was next on the stack. The file on top belonged to Patrick Henson, the painkiller case I had told Lorna I would be dropping. I leaned over to put the file back in the bag, when I suddenly sat back against the bench and held it on my lap. I flapped it against my thigh a couple times as I reconsidered things and then opened it.

Henson was a twenty-four-year-old surfer from Malibu by way of Florida. He was a professional but at the low end of the spectrum, with limited endorsements and winnings from the pro tour. In a competition on Maui, he’d wiped out in a wave that drove him down hard into the lava bottom of Pehei. It crimped his shoulder, and after surgery to scrape it out, the doctor prescribed oxycodone. Eighteen months later Henson was a full-blown addict, chasing pills to chase the pain. He lost his sponsors and was too weak to compete anymore. He finally hit bottom when he stole a diamond necklace from a home in Malibu to which he’d been invited by a female friend. According to the sheriff’s report, the necklace belonged to his friend’s mother and contained eight diamonds representing her three children and five grandchildren. It was listed on the report as worth $25,000 but Henson hocked it for $400 and went down to Mexico to buy two hundred tabs of oxy over the counter.

Henson was easy to connect to the caper. The diamond necklace was recovered from the pawnshop and the film from the security camera showed him pawning it. Because of the high value of the necklace, he was hit with a full deck, dealing in stolen property and grand theft, along with illegal drug possession. It also didn’t help that the lady he stole the necklace from was married to a well-connected doctor who had contributed liberally to the reelection of several members of the county board of supervisors.

When Vincent took Henson on as a client, the surfer made the initial $5,000 advance payment in trade. Vincent took all twelve of his custom-made Trick Henson boards and sold them through his liquidator to collectors and on eBay. Henson was also placed on the $1,000-a-month payment plan but had never made a single payment because he had gone into rehab the day after being bailed out of jail by his mother, who lived back in Melbourne, Florida.

The file said Henson had successfully completed rehab and was working part-time at a surf camp for kids on the beach in Santa Monica. He was barely making enough to live on, let alone pay $1,000 a month to Vincent. His mother, meanwhile, had been tapped out by his bail and the cost of his stay in rehab.

The file was replete with motions to continue and other filings as delay tactics undertaken by Vincent while he waited for Henson to come across with more cash. This was standard practice. Get your money up front, especially when the case is probably a dog. The prosecutor had Henson on tape selling the stolen merchandise. It meant the case was worse than a dog. It was roadkill.

There was a phone number in the file for Henson. One thing every lawyer drilled into nonincarcerated clients was the need to maintain a method of contact. Those facing criminal charges and the likelihood of prison often had unstable home lives. They moved around, sometimes were completely homeless. But a lawyer had to be able to reach them at a moment’s notice. The number was listed in the file as Henson’s cell, and if it was still good, I could call him right now. The question was, did I want to?

I looked up at the bench. The judge was still in the middle of oral arguments on a bail motion. There were still three other lawyers waiting their turn at other motions and no sign of the prosecutor who was assigned to the Edgar Reese case. I got up and whispered to the deputy again.

“I’m going out into the hallway to make a call. I’ll be close.”

He nodded.

“If you’re not back when it’s time, I’ll come grab you,” he said. “Just make sure you turn that phone off before coming back in. The judge doesn’t like cell phones.”

He didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew firsthand that the judge didn’t like cell phones in her court. My lesson was learned when I was making an appearance before her and my phone started playing the William Tell Overture – my daughter’s ringtone choice, not mine. The judge slapped me with a $100-dollar fine and had taken to referring to me ever since as the Lone Ranger. That last part I didn’t mind so much. I sometimes felt like I was the Lone Ranger. I just rode in a black Lincoln Town Car instead of on a white horse.

I left my case and the other files on the bench in the gallery and walked out into the hallway with only the Henson file. I found a reasonably quiet spot in the crowded hallway and called the number. It was answered after two rings.

“This is Trick.”

“Patrick Henson?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“I’m your new lawyer. My name is Mi- ”

“Whoa, wait a minute. What happened to my old lawyer? I gave that guy Vincent-”

“He’s dead, Patrick. He passed away last night.”

“Nooooo.”

“Yes, Patrick. I’m sorry about that.”

I waited a moment to see if he had anything else to say about it, then started in as perfunctorily as a bureaucrat.

“My name is Michael Haller and I’m taking over Jerry Vincent’s cases. I’ve been reviewing your file here and I see you haven’t made a single payment on the schedule Mr. Vincent put you on.”

“Ah, man, this is the deal. I’ve been concentrating on getting right and staying right and I’ve got no fucking money. Okay? I already gave that guy Vincent all my boards. He counted it as five grand but I know he got more. A couple of those long boards were worth at least a grand apiece. He told me that he got enough to get started but all he’s been doing is delaying things. I can’t get back to shit until this thing is all over.”

“Are you staying right, Patrick? Are you clean?”

“As a fucking whistle, man. Vincent told me it was the only way I’d have a shot at staying out of jail.”

I looked up and down the hallway. It was crowded with lawyers and defendants and witnesses and the families of those victimized or accused. It was a football field long and everybody in it was hoping for one thing. A break. For the clouds to open and something to go their way just this one time.

“Jerry was right, Patrick. You have to stay clean.”

“I’m doing it.”

“You got a job?”

“Man, don’t you guys see? No one’s going to give a guy like me a job. Nobody’s going to hire me. I’m waiting on this case and I might be in jail before it’s all over. I mean, I teach water babies part-time on the beach but it don’t pay me jack. I’m living out of my damn car, sleeping on a lifeguard stand at Hermosa Beach. This time two years ago? I was in a suite at the Four Seasons in Maui.”

“Yeah, I know, life sucks. You still have a driver’s license?”

“That’s about all I got left.”

I made a decision.

“Okay, you know where Jerry Vincent’s office is? You ever been there?”

“Yeah, I delivered the boards there. And my fish.”

“Your fish?”

“He took a sixty-pound tarpon I caught when I was a kid back in Florida. Said he was going to put it on the wall and pretend like he caught it or something.”

“Yeah, well, your fish is still there. Anyway, be at the office at nine sharp tomorrow morning and I’ll interview you for a job. If it goes right, then you’ll start right away.”

“Doing what?”

“Driving me. I’ll pay you fifteen bucks an hour to drive and another fifteen toward your fees. How’s that?”

There was a moment of silence before Henson responded in an accommodating voice.

“That’s good, man. I can be there for that.”

“Good. See you then. Just remember something, Patrick. You gotta stay clean. If you’re not, I’ll know. Believe me, I’ll know.”

“Don’t worry, man. I will never go back to that shit. That shit fucked my life up for good.”

“Okay, Patrick, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey, man, why are you doing this?”

I hesitated before answering.

“You know, I don’t really know.”

I closed the phone and made sure to turn it off. I went back into the courtroom wondering if I was doing something good or making the kind of mistake that would catch up and bite me on the ass.

It was perfect timing. The judge finished with the last motion as I came back in. I saw that a deputy district attorney named Don Pierce was sitting at the prosecution table, ready to go with the sentencing. He was an ex-navy guy who kept the crew cut going and was one of the regulars at cocktail hour at Four Green Fields. I quickly packed all the files back into my bag and wheeled it through the gate to the defense table.

“Well,” the judge said, “I see the Lone Ranger rides again.”

She said it with a smile and I smiled back at her.

“Yes, Your Honor. Nice to see you.”

“I haven’t seen you in quite a while, Mr. Haller.”

Open court was not the place to tell her where I had been. I kept my responses short. I spread my hands as if presenting the new me.

“All I can say is, I’m back now, Judge.”

“I’m glad to see that. Now, you are here in place of Mr. Vincent, is that correct?”

It was said in a routine tone. I could tell she did not know about Vincent’s demise. I knew I could keep the secret and get through the sentencing with it. But then she would hear the story and wonder why I hadn’t brought it up and told her. It was not a good way to keep a judge on your side.

“Unfortunately, Your Honor,” I said, “Mr. Vincent passed away last night.”

The judge’s eyebrows arched in shock. She had been a longtime prosecutor before being a longtime judge. She was wired into the legal community and most likely knew Jerry Vincent well. I had just hit her with a major jolt.

“Oh, my, he was so young!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”

I shook my head like I didn’t know.

“It wasn’t a natural death, Your Honor. The police are investigating it and I don’t really know a lot about it other than that he was found in his car last night at his office. Judge Holder called me in today and appointed me replacement counsel. That’s why I am here for Mr. Reese.”

The judge looked down and took a moment to get over her shock. I felt bad about being the messenger. I bent down and pulled the Edgar Reese file out of my bag.

“I’m very sorry to hear this,” the judge finally said.

I nodded in agreement and waited.

“Very well,” the judge said after another long moment. “Let’s bring the defendant out.”

Jerry Vincent garnered no further delay. Whether the judge had suspicions about Jerry or the life he led, she didn’t say. But life would move on in the Criminal Courts Building. The wheels of justice would grind without him.

Ten

The message from Lorna Taylor was short and to the point. I got it the moment I turned my phone on after leaving the courtroom and seeing Edgar Reese get his five years. She told me she had just been in touch with Judge Holder’s clerk about obtaining the court order the bank was requiring before putting Lorna’s and my names on the Vincent bank accounts. The judge had agreed to draw up the order and I could just walk down the hallway to her chambers to pick it up.

The courtroom was once again dark but the judge’s clerk was in her pod next to the bench. She still reminded me of my third-grade teacher.

“Mrs. Gill?” I said. “I’m supposed to pick up an order from the judge.”

“Yes, I think she still has it with her in chambers. I’ll go check.”

“Any chance I could get in there and talk to her for a few minutes, too?”

“Well, she has someone with her at the moment but I will check.”

She got up and went down the hallway located behind the clerk’s station. At the end was the door to the judge’s chambers and I watched her knock once before being summoned to enter. When she opened the door, I could see a man sitting in the same chair I had sat in a few hours earlier. I recognized him as Judge Holder’s husband, a personal-injury attorney named Mitch Lester. I recognized him from the photograph on his ad. Back when he was doing criminal defense we had once shared the back of the Yellow Pages, my ad taking the top half and his the bottom. He hadn’t worked criminal cases in a long time.

A few minutes later Mrs. Gill came out carrying the court order I needed. I thought this meant I wasn’t going to get in to see the judge but Mrs. Gill told me I would be allowed back as soon as the judge finished up with her visitor.

It wasn’t enough time to continue my review of the files in my roller bag, so I wandered the courtroom, looking around and thinking about what I was going to say to the judge. At the empty bailiff’s desk, I looked down and scanned a calendar sheet from the week before. I knew the names of several of the attorneys who were listed and had been scheduled for emergency hearings and motions. One of them was Jerry Vincent on behalf of Walter Elliot. It had probably been one of Jerry’s last appearances in court.

After three minutes I heard a bell tone at the clerk’s station and Mrs. Gill said I was free to go back to the judge’s chambers.

When I knocked on the door it was Mitch Lester who opened it. He smiled and bid me entrance. We shook hands and he remarked that he had just heard about Jerry Vincent.

“It’s a scary world out there,” he said.

“It can be,” I said.

“If you need any help with anything, let me know.”

He left the office and I took his seat in front of the judge’s desk.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Haller? You got the order for the bank?”

“Yes, I got the order, Your Honor. Thank you for that. I wanted to update you a little bit and ask a question about something.”

She took off a pair of reading glasses and put them down on her blotter.

“Please go ahead, then.”

“Well, on the update. Things are going a bit slowly because we started without a calendar. Both Jerry Vincent’s laptop computer and his hard-copy calendar were stolen after he was killed. We had to build a new calendar after pulling the active files. We think we have that under control and, in fact, I just came from a sentencing in Judge Champagne’s in regard to one of the cases. So we haven’t missed anything.”

The judge seemed unimpressed by the efforts made by my staff and me.

“How many active cases are we talking about?” she asked.

“Uh, it looks like there are thirty-one active cases – well, thirty now that I handled that sentencing. That case is done.”

“Then, I would say you inherited quite a thriving practice. What is the problem?”

“I’m not sure there is a problem, Judge. So far I’ve had a conversation with only one of the active clients and it looks like I will be continuing as his lawyer.”

“Was that Walter Elliot?”

“Uh, no, I have not talked to him yet. I plan to try to do that later today. The person I talked to was involved in something a little less serious. A felony theft, actually.”

“Okay.”

She was growing impatient so I moved to the point of the meeting.

“What I wanted to ask about was the police. You were right this morning when you warned me about guarding against police intrusion. When I got over to the office after leaving here, I found a couple of detectives going through the files. Jerry’s receptionist was there but she hadn’t tried to stop them.”

The judge’s face grew hard.

“Well, I hope you did. Those officers should have known better than to start going through files willy-nilly.”

“Yes, Your Honor, they backed off once I got there and objected. In fact, I threatened to make a complaint to you. That’s when they backed off.”

She nodded, her face showing pride in the power the mention of her name had.

“Then, why are you here?”

“Well, I’m wondering now whether I should let them back in.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Haller. Let the police back in?”

“The detective in charge of the investigation made a good point. He said the evidence suggests that Jerry Vincent knew his killer and probably even allowed him to get close enough to, you know, shoot him. He said that makes it a good bet that it was one of his own clients. So they were going through the files looking for potential suspects when I walked in on them.”

The judge waved one of her hands in a gesture of dismissal.

“Of course they were. And they were trampling on those clients’ rights as they were doing it.”

“They were in the file room and were looking through old cases. Closed cases.”

“Doesn’t matter. Open or closed, it still constitutes a violation of the attorney-client privilege.”

“I understand that, Judge. But after they were gone, I saw they had left behind a stack of files on the table. These were the files they were either going to take or wanted to look more closely at. I looked them over and there were threats in those files.”

“Threats against Mr. Vincent?”

“Yes. They were cases in which his clients weren’t happy about the outcome, whether it was the verdict or the disposition or the terms of imprisonment. There were threats, and in each of the cases, he took the threats seriously enough to make a detailed record of exactly what was said and who said it. That was what the detectives were pulling together.”

The judge leaned back and clasped her hands, her elbows on the arms of her leather chair. She thought about the situation I had described and then brought her eyes to mine.

“You believe we are inhibiting the investigation by not allowing the police to do their job.”

I nodded.

“I was wondering if there was a way to sort of serve both sides,” I said. “Limit the harm to the clients but let the police follow the investigation wherever it goes.”

The judge considered this in silence again, then sighed.

“I wish my husband had stayed,” she finally said. “I value his opinion greatly.”

“Well, I had an idea.”

“Of course you did. What is it?”

“I was thinking that I could vet the files myself and draw up a list of the people who threatened Jerry. Then I could pass it on to Detective Bosch and give him some of the details of the threats as well. This way, he would have what he needs but he wouldn’t have the files themselves. He’s happy, I’m happy.”

“Bosch is the lead detective?”

“Yes, Harry Bosch. He’s with Robbery-Homicide. I can’t remember his partner’s name.”

“You have to understand, Mr. Haller, that even if you just give this man Bosch the names, you are still breaching client confidentiality. You could be disbarred for this.”

“Well, I was thinking about that and I believe there’s a way out. One of the mechanisms of relief from the client confidentiality bond is in the case of threat to safety. If Jerry Vincent knew a client was coming to kill him last night, he could have called the police and given that client’s name to them. There would’ve been no breach in that.”

“Yes, but what you are considering here is completely different.”

“It’s different, Judge, but not completely. I’ve been directly told by the lead detective on the case that it is highly likely that the identity of Jerry Vincent’s killer is contained in Jerry’s own files. Those files are now mine. So that information constitutes a threat to me. When I go out and start meeting these clients, I could shake hands with the killer and not even know it. You add that up any way and I feel I am in some jeopardy here, Judge, and that qualifies for relief.”

She nodded her head again and put her glasses back on. She reached over and picked up a glass of water that had been hidden from my view by her desktop computer.

After drinking deeply from the glass she spoke.

“All right, Mr. Haller. I believe that if you vet the files as you have suggested, then you will be acting in an appropriate and acceptable manner. I would like you to file a motion with this court that explains your actions and the feeling of threat you are under. I will sign it and seal it and with any good luck it will be something that never sees the light of day.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Anything else?”

“I think that is it.”

“Then, have a good day.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

I got up and headed toward the door but then remembered something and turned back to stand in front of the judge’s desk.

“Judge? I forgot something. I saw your calendar from last week out there and noticed that Jerry Vincent came in on the Elliot matter. I haven’t thoroughly reviewed the case file yet, but do you mind my asking what the hearing was about?”

The judge had to think for a moment to recall the hearing.

“It was an emergency motion. Mr. Vincent came in because Judge Stanton had revoked bail and ordered Mr. Elliot remanded to custody. I stayed the revocation.”

“Why was it revoked?”

“Mr. Elliot had traveled to a film festival in New York without getting permission. It was one of the qualifiers of bail. When Mr. Golantz, the prosecutor, saw a picture of Elliot at the festival in People magazine, he asked Judge Stanton to revoke bail. He obviously wasn’t happy that bail had been allowed in the first place. Judge Stanton revoked and then Mr. Vincent came to me for an emergency stay of his client’s arrest and incarceration. I decided to give Mr. Elliot a second chance and to modify his freedom by making him wear an ankle monitor. But I can assure you that Mr. Elliot will not receive a third chance. Keep that in mind if you should retain him as a client.”

“I understand, Judge. Thank you.”

I nodded and left the chambers, thanking Mrs. Gill as I walked out through the courtroom.

Harry Bosch’s card was still in my pocket. I dug it out while I was going down in the elevator. I had parked in a pay lot by the Kyoto Grand Hotel and had a three-block walk that would take me right by Parker Center. I called Bosch’s cell phone as I headed to the courthouse exit.

“This is Bosch.”

“It’s Mickey Haller.”

There was a hesitation. I thought that maybe he didn’t recognize my name.

“What can I do for you?” he finally asked.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“It’s going, but nothing I can talk to you about.”

“Then I’ll just get to the point. Are you in Parker Center right now?”

“That’s right. Why?”

“I’m heading over from the courthouse. Meet me out front by the memorial.”

“Look, Haller, I’m busy. Can you just tell me what this is about?”

“Not on the phone, but I think it will be worth your while. If you’re not there when I go by, then I’ll know you’ve passed on the opportunity and I won’t bother you with it again.”

I closed the phone before he could respond. It took me five minutes to get over to Parker Center by foot. The place was in its last years of life, its replacement being built a block over on Spring Street. I saw Bosch standing next to the fountain that was part of the memorial for officers killed in the line of duty. I saw thin white wires leading from his ears to his jacket pocket. I walked up and didn’t bother with a handshake or any other greeting. He pulled the earbuds out and shoved them into his pocket.

“Shutting the world out, Detective?”

“Helps me concentrate. Is there a purpose to this meeting?”

“After you left the office today I looked at the files you had stacked on the table. In the file room.”

“And?”

“And I understand what you are trying to do. I want to help you but I want you to understand my position.”

“I understand you, Counselor. You have to protect those files and the possible killer hiding in them because those are the rules.”

I shook my head. This guy didn’t want to make it easy for me to help him.

“I’ll tell you what, Detective Bosch. Come back by the office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and I will give you what I can.”

I think the offer surprised him. He had no response.

“You’ll be there?” I asked.

“What’s the catch?” he asked right back.

“No catch. Just don’t be late. I’ve got an interview at nine, and after that I’ll probably be on the road for client conferences.”

“I’ll be there at eight.”

“Okay, then.”

I was ready to walk away but it looked like he wasn’t.

“What is it?”

“I was going to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Did Vincent have any federal cases?”

I thought for a moment, going over what I knew of the files. I shook my head.

“We’re still reviewing everything but I don’t think so. He was like me, liked to stay in state court. It’s a numbers game. More cases, more fuck-ups, more holes to slip through. The feds kind of like to stack the deck. They don’t like to lose.”

I thought he might take the slight personally. But he had moved past it and was putting something in place. He nodded.

“Okay.”

“That’s it? That’s all you wanted to ask?”

“That’s it.”

I waited for further explanation but none came.

“Okay, Detective.”

I clumsily put out my hand. He shook it and appeared to feel just as awkward about it. I decided to ask a question I had been holding back on.

“Hey, there was something I was meaning to ask you, too.”

“What’s that?”

“It doesn’t say it on your card but I heard that your full name is Hieronymus Bosch. Is that true?”

“What about it?”

“I was just wondering, where’d you get a name like that?”

“My mother gave it to me.”

“Your mother? Well, what did your father think about it?”

“I never asked him. I have to get back to the investigation now, Counselor. Is there anything else?”

“No, that was it. I was just curious. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”

“I’ll be there.”

I left him standing there at the memorial and walked away. I headed down the block, thinking the whole time about why he had asked if Jerry Vincent had had any federal cases. When I turned left at the corner, I glanced back and saw Bosch still standing by the fountain. He was watching me. He didn’t look away, but I did, and I kept walking.

Eleven

Cisco and Lorna were still at work in Jerry Vincent’s office when I got back. I handed the court order for the bank over to Lorna and told her about the two early appointments I had set for the next day.

“I thought you put Patrick Henson into the dog pile,” Lorna said.

“I did. But now I moved him back.”

She put her eyebrows together the way she did whenever I confounded her – which was a lot. I didn’t want to explain things. Moving on, I asked if anything new had developed while I had gone to court.

“A couple things,” Lorna said. “First of all, the check from Walter Elliot cleared. If he heard about Jerry it’s too late to stop payment.”

“Good.”

“It gets better. I found the contracts file and took a look at Jerry’s deal with Elliot. That hundred thousand deposited Friday for trial was only a partial payment.”

She was right. It was getting better.

“How much?” I asked.

“According to the deal,” she said, “Vincent took two fifty up front. That was five months ago and it looks like that is all gone. But he was going to get another two fifty for the trial. Nonrefundable. The hundred was only the first part of that. The rest is due on the first day of testimony.”

I nodded with satisfaction. Vincent had made a great deal. I had never had a case with that kind of money involved. But I wondered how he had blown through the first $250,000 so quickly. Lorna would have to study the ins and outs of the accounts to get that answer.

“Okay, all of that’s real good – if we get Elliot. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter. What else do we have?”

Lorna looked disappointed that I didn’t want to linger over the money and celebrate her discovery. She had lost sight of the fact that I still had to nail Elliot down. Technically, he was a free agent. I would get the first shot at him but I still had to secure him as a client before I could consider what it would be like to get a $250,000 trial fee.

Lorna answered my question in a monotone.

“We had a series of visitors while you were in court.”

“Who?”

“First, one of the investigators Jerry used came by after hearing the news. He took one look at Cisco and almost got into it with him. Then he got smart and backed down.”

“Who was it?”

“Bruce Carlin. Jerry hired him to work the Elliot case.”

I nodded. Bruce Carlin was a former LAPD bull who had crossed to the dark side and did defense work now. A lot of attorneys used him because of his insider’s knowledge of how things worked in the cop shop. I had used him on a case once and thought he was living off an undeserved reputation. I never hired him again.

“Call him back,” I said. “Set up a time for him to come back in.”

“Why, Mick? You’ve got Cisco.”

“I know I’ve got Cisco but Carlin was doing work on Elliot and I doubt it’s all in the files. You know how it is. If you keep it out of the file, you keep it out of discovery. So bring him in. Cisco can sit down with him and find out what he’s got. Pay him for his time – whatever his hourly rate is – and then cut him loose when he’s no longer useful. What else? Who else came in?”

“A real loser’s parade. Carney Andrews waltzed in, thinking she was going to just pick the Elliot case up off the pile and waltz back out with it. I sent her away empty-handed. I then looked through the P and Os in the operating account and saw she was hired five months ago as associate counsel on Elliot. A month later she was dropped.”

I nodded and understood. Vincent had been judge shopping for Elliot. Carney Andrews was an untalented attorney and weasel, but she was married to a superior court judge named Bryce Andrews. He had spent twenty-five years as a prosecutor before being appointed to the bench. In the view of most criminal defense attorneys who worked in the CCB, he had never left the DA’s office. He was believed to be one of the toughest judges in the building, one who at times acted in concert with, if not as a direct arm of, the prosecutor’s office. This created a cottage industry in which his wife made a very comfortable living by being hired as co-counsel on cases in her husband’s court, thereby creating a conflict of interest that would require the reassignment of the cases to other, hopefully more lenient, judges.

It worked like a charm and the best part was that Carney Andrews never really had to practice law. She just had to sign on to a case, make an appearance as co-counsel in court and then wait until it was reassigned from her husband’s calendar. She could then collect a substantial fee and move on to the next case.

I didn’t have to even look into the Elliot file to see what had happened. I knew. Case assignments were generated by random selection in the chief judge’s office. The Elliot case had obviously been initially assigned to Bryce Andrews’s court and Vincent didn’t like his chances there. For starters, Andrews would never allow bail on a double-murder case, let alone the hard line he would take against the defendant when it got to trial. So Vincent hired the judge’s wife as co-counsel and the problem went away. The case was then randomly reassigned to Judge James P. Stanton, whose reputation was completely the opposite of Andrews’s. The bottom line was that whatever Vincent had paid Carney, it had been worth it.

“Did you check?” I asked Lorna. “How much did he pay her?”

“She took ten percent of the initial advance.”

I whistled. Twenty-five thousand dollars for nothing. That at least explained where some of the first quarter million went.

“Nice work if you can get it,” I said.

“But then you’d have to sleep at night with Bryce Andrews,” Lorna said. “I’m not sure that would be worth it.”

Cisco laughed. I didn’t but Lorna did have a point. Bryce Andrews had at least twenty years and almost two hundred pounds on his wife. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

“That it on the visitors?” I asked.

“No,” Lorna said. “We also had a couple of clients drop by to ask for their files after they heard on the radio about Jerry’s death.”

“And?”

“We stalled them. I told them that only you could turn over a file and that you would get back to them within twenty-four hours. It looked like they wanted to argue about it but with Cisco here they decided it would be better to wait.”

She smiled at Cisco and the big man bowed as if to say “at your service.”

Lorna handed me a slip of paper.

“Those are the names. There’s contact info, too.”

I looked at the names. One was in the dog pile, so I would be happily turning the file over. The other was a public indecency case that I thought I could do something with. The woman was charged when a sheriff’s deputy ordered her out of the water on a Malibu beach. She was swimming nude but this was not apparent until the deputy ordered her out of the water. Because the charge was a misdemeanor, the deputy had to witness the crime to make an arrest. But by ordering her out of the water, he created the crime he arrested her for. That wouldn’t fly in court. It was a case I knew I could get dismissed.

“I’ll go see these two tonight,” I said. “In fact, I want to hit the road with all of the cases soon. Starting with a stop at Archway Pictures. I’m going to take Cisco with me, and Lorna, I want you to gather up whatever you need from here and head on home. I don’t want you being here by yourself.”

She nodded but then said, “Are you sure Cisco should go with you?”

I was surprised she had asked the question in front of him. She was referring to his size and appearance – the tattoos, the earring, the boots, leather vest and so on – the overall menace his appearance projected. Her concern was that he might scare away more clients than he would help lock down.

“Yeah,” I said. “He should go. When I want to be subtle he can just wait in the car. Besides I want him driving so I can look at the files.”

I looked at Cisco. He nodded and seemed fine with the arrangement. He might look foolish in his bike vest behind the wheel of a Lincoln but he wasn’t complaining yet.

“Speaking of the files,” I said. “We have nothing in federal court, right?”

Lorna shook her head.

“Not that I know of.”

I nodded. It confirmed what I had indicated to Bosch and made me more curious about why he had asked about federal cases. I was beginning to get an idea about it and planned to bring it up when I saw him the next morning.

“Okay,” I said. “I guess it’s time for me to be a Lincoln lawyer again. Let’s hit the road.”

Twelve

In the last decade Archway Pictures had grown from a movie industry fringe dweller to a major force. This was because of the one thing that had always ruled Hollywood. Money. As the cost of producing films grew exponentially at the same time the industry focused on the most expensive kinds of films to make, the major studios began increasingly to look for partners to share the cost and risk.

This is where Walter Elliot and Archway Pictures came in. Archway was previously an overrun lot. It was on Melrose Avenue just a few blocks from the behemoth that was Paramount Studios. Archway was built to act as the remora fish does with the great white shark. It would hover near the mouth of the bigger fish and take whatever torn scraps somehow missed being sucked into the giant maw. Archway offered production facilities and soundstages for rent when everything was booked at the big studios. It leased office space to would-be and has been producers who weren’t up to the standards of or didn’t have the same deals as on-lot producers. It nurtured independent films, the movies that were less expensive to make but more risky and supposedly less likely to be hits than their studio-bred counterparts.

Walter Elliot and Archway Pictures limped along in this fashion for a decade, until luck and lightning struck twice. In a space of only three years Elliot hit gold with two of the independent films he’d backed by providing soundstages, equipment and production facilities in exchange for a piece of the action. The films went on to defy Hollywood expectations and became huge hits – critically and financially. One even took home the Academy Award as best picture. Walter and his stepchild studio suddenly basked in the glow of huge success. More than one hundred million people heard Walter being personally thanked on the Academy Awards broadcast. And, more important, Archway’s worldwide cut from the two films was more than a hundred million dollars apiece.

Walter did a wise thing with that newfound money. He fed it to the sharks, cofinancing a number of productions in which the big studios were looking for risk partners. There were some misses, of course. The business, after all, was Hollywood. But there were enough hits to keep the nest egg growing. Over the next decade Walter Elliot doubled and then tripled his stake and along the way became a player who made regular appearances on the power 100 lists in industry minds and magazines. Elliot had taken Archway from being an address associated with Hollywood pariahs to a place where there was a three-year wait for a windowless office.

All the while, Elliot’s personal wealth grew commensurately. Though he had come west twenty-five years before as the rich scion of a Florida phosphate family, that money was nothing like the riches provided by Hollywood. Like many on those power 100 lists, Elliot traded in his wife for a newer model and together they started accumulating houses. First in the canyons, then down in the Beverly Hills flats and then on out to Malibu and up to Santa Barbara. According to the information in the files I had, Walter Elliot and his wife owned seven different homes and two ranches in or around Los Angeles. Never mind how often they used each place. Real estate was a way of keeping score in Hollywood.

All those properties and top 100 lists came in handy when Elliot was charged with double murder. The studio boss flexed his political and financial muscles and pulled off something rarely accomplished in a murder case. He got bail. With the prosecution objecting all the way, bail was set at $20 million and Elliot quickly ponied it up in real estate. He’d been out of jail and awaiting trial ever since – his brief flirtation with bail revocation the week before notwithstanding.

One of the properties Elliot put up as collateral for bail was the house where the murders took place. It was a waterfront weekender on a secluded cove. On the bail escrow its value was listed at $6 million. It was there that thirty-nine-year-old Mitzi Elliot was murdered along with her lover in a twelve-hundred-square-foot bedroom with a glass wall that looked out on the big blue Pacific.

The discovery file was replete with forensic reports and color copies of the crime scene photographs. The death room was completely white – walls, carpet, furniture and bedding. Two naked bodies were sprawled on the bed and floor. Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz. The scene was red on white. Two large bullet holes in the man’s chest. Two in the woman’s chest and one in her forehead. He by the bedroom door. She on the bed. Red on white. It was not a clean scene. The wounds were large. Though the murder weapon was missing, an accompanying report said that slugs had been identified through ballistic markings as coming from a Smith amp; Wesson model 29, a.44 magnum revolver. Fired at close quarters, it was overkill.

Walter Elliot had been suspicious about his wife. She had announced her intentions to divorce him and he believed there was another man involved. He told the sheriff’s homicide investigators that he had gone to the Malibu beach house because his wife had told him she was going to meet with the interior designer. Elliot thought that was a lie and timed his approach so that he would be able to confront her with a paramour. He loved her and wanted her back. He was willing to fight for her. He had gone to confront, he repeated, not to kill. He didn’t own a.44 magnum, he told them. He didn’t own any guns.

According to the statement he gave investigators, when Elliot got to Malibu he found his wife and her lover naked and already dead. It turned out that the lover was in fact the interior designer, Johan Rilz, a German national Elliot had always thought was gay.

Elliot left the house and got back in his car. He started to drive away but then thought better of it. He decided to do the right thing. He turned around and pulled back into the driveway. He called 911 and waited out front for the deputies to arrive.

The chronology and details of how the investigation proceeded from that point would be important in mounting a defense. According to the reports in the file, Elliot gave investigators an initial account of his discovery of the two bodies. He was then transported by two detectives to the Malibu substation so he would be out of the way while the investigation of the crime scene proceeded. He was not under arrest at this time. He was placed in an unlocked interview room where he waited three long hours for the two lead detectives to finally clear the crime scene and come to the substation. A videotaped interview was then conducted but, according to the transcript I reviewed, quickly crossed the line into interrogation. At this point Elliot was finally advised of his rights and asked if he wanted to continue to answer questions. Elliot wisely chose to stop talking and to ask for an attorney. It was a decision made better late than never but Elliot would have been better off if he had never said word one to the investigators. He should’ve just taken the nickel and kept his mouth shut.

While investigators had been working the crime scene and Elliot was cooling his heels in the substation interview room, a homicide investigator working in the sheriff’s headquarters in Whittier drew up several search warrants that were faxed to a superior court judge and signed. These allowed investigators to search throughout the beach house and Elliot’s car and permitted them to conduct a gunshot residue test on Elliot’s hands and clothes to determine if there were gas nitrates and microscopic particles of burned gunpowder on them. After Elliot refused further cooperation, his hands were bagged in plastic at the substation and he was transported to Sheriff’s Headquarters, where a criminalist conducted the GSR test in the crime lab. This consisted of wiping chemically treated disks on Elliot’s hands and clothing. When the disks were processed by a lab technician, those that had been wiped on his hands and sleeves tested positive for high levels of gunshot residue.

At that point Elliot was formally arrested on suspicion of murder. With his one phone call he contacted his personal lawyer, who in turn called in Jerry Vincent, whom he had attended law school with. Elliot was eventually transported to the county jail and booked on two counts of murder. The sheriff’s investigators then called the department’s media office and suggested that a press conference should be set up. They had just bagged a big one.

I closed the file as Cisco stopped the Lincoln in front of Archway Studios. There were a number of picketers walking the sidewalk. They were writers on strike, holding up red-and-white signs that said WE WANT A FAIR SHARE! and WRITERS UNITED! Some signs showed a fist holding a pen. Another said YOUR FAVORITE LINE? A WRITER WROTE IT. Anchored on the sidewalk was a large blow-up figure of a pig smoking a cigar with the word PRODUCER branded on its rear end. The pig and most of the signs were well-worn clichés and I would have thought that with the protesters being writers, they would have come up with something better. But maybe that kind of creativity happened only when they were getting paid.

I had ridden in the backseat for the sake of appearances on this first stop. I was hoping that Elliot might catch a glimpse of me through his office window and take me for an attorney of great means and skill. But the writers saw a Lincoln with a rider in the back and thought I was a producer. As we turned into the studio, they descended on the car with their signs and started chanting, “Greedy Bastard! Greedy Bastard!” Cisco gunned it and plowed through, a few of the hapless scribes dodging the fenders.

“Careful!” I barked. “All I need is to run over an out-of-work writer.”

“Don’t worry,” Cisco replied calmly. “They always scatter.”

“Not this time.”

When he got up to the guardhouse, Cisco pulled forward enough that my window was even with the door. I checked to make sure none of the writers had followed us onto studio property and then lowered the glass so I could speak to the man who stepped out. His uniform was a beige color with a dark brown tie and matching epaulets. It looked ridiculous.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m Walter Elliot’s attorney. I don’t have an appointment but I need to see him right away.”

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

I got it out and handed it through the window.

“I am handling this for Jerry Vincent. That’s the name Mr. Elliot’s secretary will recognize.”

The guard went into the booth and slid the door closed. I didn’t know if this was to keep the air-conditioning from escaping or to prevent me from hearing what was said when he picked up the phone. Whatever the reason, he soon slid the door back open and extended the phone to me, his hand covering the mouthpiece.

“Mrs. Albrecht is Mr. Elliot’s executive assistant. She wants to speak to you.”

I took the phone.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Haller, is it? What is this all about? Mr. Elliot has dealt exclusively with Mr. Vincent on this matter and there is no appointment on his calendar.”

This matter. It was a strange way of referring to double charges of murder.

“Mrs. Albrecht, I’d rather not talk about this at the front gate. As you can imagine, it’s quite a delicate ‘matter,’ to use your word. Can I come to the office and see Mr. Elliot?”

I turned in my seat and looked out the back window. There were two cars in the guardhouse queue behind my Lincoln. They must not have been producers. The writers had let them through unmolested.

“I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Mr. Haller. Can I place you on hold while I call Mr. Vincent?”

“You won’t get through to him.”

“He’ll take a call from Mr. Elliot, I am sure.”

“I am sure he won’t, Mrs. Albrecht. Jerry Vincent’s dead. That’s why I’m here.”

I looked at Cisco’s reflection in the rearview mirror and shrugged as though to say I had no choice but to hit her with the news. The plan had been to finesse my way through the arch and then be the one to personally tell Elliot his lawyer was dead.

“Excuse me, Mr. Haller. Did you say Mr. Vincent is… dead?”

“That’s what I said. And I’m his court-appointed replacement. Can I come in now?”

“Yes, of course.”

I handed the phone back and soon the gate opened.

Thirteen

We were assigned to a prime parking space in the executive lot. I told Cisco to wait in the car and went in alone, carrying the two thick files Vincent had put together on the case. One contained discovery materials turned over so far by the prosecution, including the important investigative documents and interview transcripts, and the other contained documents and other work product generated by Vincent during the five months he had handled the case. Between the two files I was able to get a good handle on what the prosecution had and didn’t have, and the direction in which the prosecutor wanted to take the trial. There was still work to be done and pieces were missing from the defense’s case and strategy. Perhaps those pieces had been carried in Jerry Vincent’s head, or in his laptop or on the legal pad in his portfolio, but unless the cops arrested a suspect and recovered the stolen property, whatever was there would be of no help to me.

I followed a sidewalk across a beautifully manicured lawn on the way to Elliot’s office. My plan for the meeting was threefold. The first order of business was to secure Elliot as a client. That done, I would ask his approval in delaying the trial to give me time to get up to speed and prepare for it. The last part of the plan would be to see if Elliot had any of the pieces missing from the defense case. Parts two and three obviously didn’t matter if I was unsuccessful with part one.

Walter Elliot’s office was in Bungalow One on the far reaches of the Archway lot. “Bungalows” sounded small but they were big in Hollywood. A sign of status. It was like having your own private home on the lot. And as in any private home, activities inside could be kept secret.

A Spanish-tiled entranceway led to a step-down living room with a fireplace blowing gas flames on one wall and a mahogany wood bar set up in an opposite corner. I stepped into the middle of the room and looked around and waited. I looked at the painting over the fireplace. It depicted an armored knight on a white steed. The knight had reached up and flipped open the visor on his helmet and his eyes stared out intently. I took a few steps further into the room and realized the eyes had been painted so that they stared at the viewer of the painting from any angle in the room. They followed me.

“Mr. Haller?”

I turned as I recognized the voice from the guardhouse phone. Elliot’s gatekeeper, Mrs. Albrecht, had stepped into the room from some unseen entrance. Elegance was the word that came to mind. She was an aging beauty who appeared to take the process in stride. Gray streaked through her un-dyed hair and tiny wrinkles were working their way toward her eyes and mouth, seemingly unchecked by injection or incision. Mrs. Albrecht looked like a woman who liked her own skin. In my experience, this was a rare thing in Hollywood.

“Mr. Elliot will see you now.”

I followed her around a corner and down a short hallway to a reception office. She passed an empty desk – hers, I assumed – and pushed open a large door to Walter Elliot’s office.

Elliot was an overly tanned man with more gray hair sprouting from his open shirt collar than from the top of his head. He sat behind a large glass worktable. No drawers beneath it and no computer on top of it, though paperwork and scripts were spread across it. It didn’t matter that he was facing two counts of murder. He was staying busy. He was working and running Archway the way he always did. Maybe it was on the advice of some Hollywood self-help guru but it wasn’t an unusual behavior or philosophy for the accused. Act like you are innocent and you will be perceived as innocent. Finally, you will become innocent.

There was a sitting area to the right but he chose to remain behind the worktable. He had dark, piercing eyes that seemed familiar and then I realized I had just been looking at them – the knight on the steed out in the living room was Elliot.

“Mr. Elliot, this is Mr. Haller,” Mrs. Albrecht said.

She signaled me to the chair across the table from Elliot. After I sat down Elliot made a dismissive gesture without looking at Mrs. Albrecht and she left the room without another word. Over the years I had represented and been in the company of a couple dozen killers. The one rule is that there are no rules. They come in all sizes and shapes, rich and poor, humble and arrogant, regretful and cold to the bone. The percentages told me that it was most likely Elliot was a killer. That he had calmly dispatched his wife and her lover and arrogantly thought he could and would get away with it. But there was nothing about him on first meeting that told me one way or the other for sure. And that’s the way it always was.

“What happened to my lawyer?” he asked.

“Well, for a detailed explanation I would have to refer you to the police. The shorthand is that somebody killed him last night in his car.”

“And where does that leave me? I’m on trial for my life in a week!”

That was a slight exaggeration. Jury selection was scheduled in nine days and the DA’s office had not announced that it would seek the death penalty. But it didn’t hurt that he was thinking in such terms.

“That’s why I’m here, Mr. Elliot. At the moment you are left with me.”

“And who are you? I’ve never heard of you.”

“You haven’t heard of me because I make it a practice not to be heard of. Celebrity lawyers bring too much attention to their clients. They feed their own celebrity by offering up their clients. I don’t operate that way.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. I could tell I had just scored a point.

“And you’re taking over Vincent’s practice?” he asked.

“Let me explain it, Mr. Elliot. Jerry Vincent had a one-man shop. Just like I do. On occasion one of us would need help with a case or need another attorney to fill in here and there. We filled that role for each other. If you look at the contract of representation you signed with him, you will find my name in a paragraph with language that allowed Jerry to discuss your case with me and to include me within the bonds of the attorney-client relationship. In other words, Jerry trusted me with his cases. And now that he is gone, I am prepared to carry on in his stead. Earlier today the chief judge of the superior court issued an order placing me in custody of Jerry’s cases. Of course, you ultimately get to choose who represents you at trial. I am very familiar with your case and prepared to continue your legal representation without so much as a hiccup. But, as I said, you must make the choice. I’m only here to tell you your options.”

Elliot shook his head.

“I really can’t believe this. We were set for trial next week and I’m not pushing it back. I’ve been waiting five months to clear my name! Do you have any idea what it is like for an innocent man to have to wait and wait and wait for justice? To read all the innuendo and bullshit in the media? To have a prosecutor with his nose up my ass, waiting for me to make the move that gets my bail pulled? Look at this!”

He stretched out a leg and pulled his left pant leg up to reveal the GPS monitor Judge Holder had ordered him to wear.

“I want this over!”

I nodded in a consoling manner and knew that if I told him I wanted to delay his case, I would be looking at a quick dismissal from consideration. I decided I would bring that up in a strategy session after I closed the deal – if I closed the deal.

“I’ve dealt with many clients wrongly accused,” I lied. “The wait for justice can be almost intolerable. But it also makes the vindication all the more meaningful.”

Elliot didn’t respond and I didn’t let the silence last long.

“I spent most of the afternoon reviewing the files and evidence in your case. I’m confident you won’t have to delay the trial, Mr. Elliot. I would be more than prepared to proceed. Another attorney, maybe not. But I would be ready.”

There it was, my best pitch to him, most of it lies and exaggerations. But I didn’t stop there.

“I’ve studied the trial strategy Mr. Vincent outlined. I wouldn’t change it but I believe I can improve on it. And I’d be ready to go next week if need be. I think a delay can always be useful, but it won’t be necessary.”

Elliot nodded and rubbed a finger across his mouth.

“I would have to think about this,” he said. “I need to talk to some people and have you checked out. Just like I had Vincent checked out before I went with him.”

I decided to gamble and to try to force Elliot into a quick decision. I didn’t want him checking me out and possibly discovering I had disappeared for a year. That would raise too many questions.

“It’s a good idea,” I said. “Take your time but don’t take too much time. The longer you wait to decide, the greater the chance that the judge will find it necessary to push the trial back. I know you don’t want that, but in the absence of Mr. Vincent or any attorney of record, the judge is probably already getting nervous and considering it. If you choose me, I will try to get before the judge as soon as possible and tell him we’re still good to go.”

I stood up and reached into my coat pocket for a card. I put it down on the glass.

“Those are all my numbers. Call anytime.”

I hoped he would tell me to sit back down and we’d start planning for trial. But Elliot just reached over and picked up the card. He seemed to be studying it when I left him. Before I reached the door to the office it opened from the outside and Mrs. Albrecht stood there. She smiled warmly.

“I’m sure we will be in touch,” she said.

I had a feeling that she’d heard every word that had been spoken between me and her boss.

“Thank you, Mrs. Albrecht,” I said. “I certainly hope so.”

Fourteen

I found Cisco leaning against the Lincoln, smoking a cigarette.

“That was fast,” he said.

I opened the back door in case there were cameras in the parking lot and Elliot was watching me.

“Look at you with the encouraging word.”

I got in and he did the same.

“I’m just saying that it seemed kind of quick,” he said. “How’d it go?”

“I gave it my best shot. We’ll probably know something soon.”

“You think he did it?”

“Probably, but it doesn’t matter. We’ve got other things to worry about.”

It was hard to go from thinking about a quarter-million-dollar fee to some of the also-rans on Vincent’s client list, but that was the job. I opened my bag and pulled out the other active files. It was time to decide where our next stop was going to be.

Cisco backed out of the space and started heading toward the arch.

“Lorna’s waiting to hear,” he said.

I looked up at him in the mirror.

“What?”

“Lorna called me while you were inside. She really wants to know what happened with Elliot.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll call her. First let me figure out where we’re going.”

The address of each client – at least the address given upon signing for Vincent’s services – was printed neatly on the outside of each file. I quickly checked through the files, looking for addresses in Hollywood. I finally came across the file belonging to the woman charged with indecent exposure. The client who had come to Vincent’s office earlier to ask for the return of her file.

“Here we go,” I said. “When you get out of here, head down Melrose to La Brea. We ’ve got a client right there. One of the ones who came in today for her file.”

“Got it.”

“After that stop, I’ll ride in the front seat. Don’t want you to feel too much like a chauffeur.”

“It ain’t a bad gig. I think I could get used to it.”

I got out my phone.

“Hey, Mick, I gotta tell you something,” Cisco said.

I took my thumb off the speed-dial button for Lorna.

“Yeah, what?”

“I just wanted to tell you myself before you heard it somewhere else. Me and Lorna… we’re gonna get married.”

I had figured that they were headed in that direction. Lorna and I had been friends for fifteen years before we were married for one. It had been a rebound marriage for me and as ill-advised as anything I had ever done. We ended it when we realized the mistake and somehow managed to remain close. There was no one I trusted more in the world. We were no longer in love but I still loved her and would always protect her.

“That okay with you, Mick?”

I looked at Cisco in the rearview.

“I’m not part of the equation, Cisco.”

“I know but I want to know if it’s okay with you. Know what I mean?”

I looked out the window and thought a moment before answering. Then I looked back at him in the mirror.

“Yes, it’s all right with me. But I’ll tell you something, Cisco. She’s one of the four most important people in my life. You have maybe seventy-five pounds on me – and granted, all of them in muscle. But if you hurt her, I’m going to find a way to hurt you back. That okay with you?”

He looked away from the mirror to the road ahead. We were in the exit line, moving slowly. The striking writers were massing out on the sidewalk and delaying the people trying to leave the studio.

“Yeah, Mick, I’m okay with that.”

We were silent for a while after that as we inched along. Cisco kept glancing at me in the mirror.

“What?” I finally asked.

“Well, I got your daughter. That makes one. And then Lorna. I was wondering who the other two were.”

Before I could answer, the electronic version of the William Tell Overture started to play in my hand. I looked down at my phone. It said PRIVATE CALLER on the screen. I opened it up.

“Haller.”

“Please hold for Walter Elliot,” Mrs. Albrecht said.

Not much time went by before I heard the familiar voice.

“Mr. Haller?”

“I’m here. What can I do for you?”

I felt the stirring of anxiety in my gut. He had decided.

“Have you noticed something about my case, Mr. Haller?”

The question caught me off guard.

“How do you mean?”

“One lawyer. I have one lawyer, Mr. Haller. You see, I not only must win this case in court but I must also win it in the court of public opinion.”

“I see,” I said, though I didn’t quite understand the point.

“In the last ten years I’ve picked a lot of winners. I’m talking about films in which I invested my money. I picked winners because I believe I have an accurate sense of public opinion and taste. I know what people like because I know what they are thinking.”

“I’m sure you do, sir.”

“And I think that the public believes that the more guilty you are, the more lawyers you need.”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

“So the first thing I said to Mr. Vincent when I hired him was, no dream team, just you. We had a second lawyer on board early on but that was temporary. She served a purpose and was gone. One lawyer, Mr. Haller. That’s how I want it. The best one lawyer I can get.”

“I under-”

“I’ve decided, Mr. Haller. You impressed me when you were in here. I would like to engage your services for trial. You will be my one lawyer.”

I had to calm my voice before answering.

“I’m glad to hear that. Call me Mickey.”

“And you can call me Walter. But I insist on one condition before we agree to this arrangement.”

“What is that?”

“No delay. We go to trial on schedule. I want to hear you say it.”

I hesitated. I wanted a delay. But I wanted the case more.

“We won’t delay,” I said. “We’ll be ready to go next Thursday.”

“Then, welcome aboard. What do we do next?”

“Well, I’m still on the lot. I could turn around and come back.”

“I’m afraid I have meetings until seven and then a screening of our film for the awards season.”

I thought that his trial and freedom would have trumped his meetings and movies but I let it go. I would educate Walter Elliot and bring him to reality the next time I saw him.

“Okay, then, for now you give me a fax number and I’ll have my assistant send over a contract. It will have the same fee structure as you had with Jerry Vincent.”

There was silence and I waited. If he was going to try to knock down the fee, this is when he would do it. But instead he repeated a fax number I could hear Mrs. Albrecht giving him. I wrote it down on the outside of one of the files.

“What’s tomorrow look like, Walter?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, if not tonight, then tomorrow. We need to get started. You don’t want a delay; I want to be even more prepared than I am now. We need to talk and go over things. There are a few gaps in the defense case and I think you can help me fill them in. I could come back to the studio or meet you anywhere else in the afternoon.”

I heard muffled voices as he conferred with Mrs. Albrecht.

“I have a four o’clock open,” he finally said. “Here at the bungalow.”

“Okay, I’ll be there. And cancel whatever you have at five. We’re going to need at least a couple hours to start.”

Elliot agreed to the two hours and we were about to end the conversation, when I thought of something else.

“Walter, I want to see the crime scene. Can I get into the house in Malibu tomorrow sometime before we meet?”

Again there was a pause.

“When?”

“You tell me what will work.”

Again he covered the phone and I heard his muffled conversation with Mrs. Albrecht. Then he came back on the line with me.

“How about eleven? I’ll have someone meet you there to let you in.”

“That’ll work. See you tomorrow, Walter.”

I closed the phone and looked at Cisco in the mirror.

“We got him.”

Cisco hit the Lincoln’s horn in celebration. It was a long blast that made the driver in front of us hold up a fist and send us back the finger. Out in the street the striking writers took the blast as a sign of support from inside the hated studio. I heard a loud cheer go up from the masses.

Fifteen

Bosch arrived early the next morning. He was alone. His peace offering was the extra cup of coffee he carried and handed over to me. I don’t drink coffee anymore – trying to avoid any addiction in my life – but I took it from him anyway, thinking that maybe the smell of caffeine would get me going. It was only 7:45 but I had been in Jerry Vincent’s office for more than two hours already.

I led Bosch back into the file room. He looked more tired than I felt and I was pretty sure he was in the same suit he’d been wearing when I saw him the day before.

“Long night?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Chasing leads or chasing tail?”

It was a question I had once heard one detective ask another in a courthouse hallway. I guess it was a question reserved for brothers of the badge because it didn’t go over so well with Bosch. He made some sort of guttural noise and didn’t answer.

In the file room I told him to have a seat at the small table. There was a yellow legal tablet on the table, but no files. I took the other seat and put my coffee down.

“So,” I said, picking up the legal pad.

“So,” Bosch said when I offered nothing else.

“So I met with Judge Holder in chambers yesterday and worked out a plan by which we can give you what you need from the files without actually giving you the files.”

Bosch shook his head.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“You should’ve told me this yesterday at Parker Center,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”

“I thought you’d appreciate this.”

“It’s not going to work.”

“How do you know that? How can you be sure?”

“How many homicides have you investigated, Haller? And how many have you cleared?”

“All right, point taken. You’re the homicide guy. But I am certainly capable of reviewing files and discerning what constituted a legitimate threat to Jerry Vincent. Possibly because of my experience as a criminal defense attorney I could even perceive a threat that you would miss in your capacity as a detective.”

“So you say.”

“Yeah, I say.”

“Look, all I’m pointing out here is the obvious. I’m the detective. I’m the one who should look through the files because I know what I am looking for. No offense, but you are an amateur at this. So I’m in a position here where I have to take what an amateur is giving me and trust that I’m getting everything there is to get from the files. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust the evidence unless I find it myself.”

“Again, your point is well taken, Detective, but this is the way it is. This is the only method Judge Holder approved, and I gotta tell you that you’re lucky to get this much. She wasn’t interested in helping you out at all.”

“So you’re saying you went to bat for me?”

He said it in a disbelieving, sarcastic tone, as if it were some sort of a mathematical impossibility for a defense attorney to help a police detective.

“That’s right,” I said defiantly. “I went to bat for you. I told you yesterday, Jerry Vincent was a friend. I’d like to see you take down the person who took him down.”

“You’re probably worried about your own ass, too.”

“I’m not denying that.”

“If I were you I would be.”

“Look, do you want the list or not?”

I held the legal pad up as if I were teasing a dog with a toy. He reached for it and I pulled it back, immediately regretting the move. I quickly handed it to him. It was an awkward exchange, like shaking hands had been the day before.

“There are eleven names on that list, with a brief summary of the threat each made to Jerry Vincent. We were lucky that Jerry thought it was important to memorialize an account of each threat he received. I’ve never done that.”

Bosch didn’t respond. He was reading the first page of the legal pad.

“I prioritized them,” I said.

Bosch looked at me and I knew he was ready to step on me again for assuming the role of detective. I raised a hand to stop him.

“Not from the standpoint of your investigation. From the standpoint of being a lawyer. Of putting myself in Jerry Vincent’s shoes and looking at these things and determining which ones would concern me the most. Like the first one on that list. James Demarco. The guy goes away on weapons charges and thinks Jerry fucked up the case. A guy like that can get a gun as soon as he gets out.”

Bosch nodded and dropped his eyes back to the legal pad. He spoke without looking up from it.

“What else do you have for me?”

“What do you mean?”

He looked at me and waved the pad up and down as if it were as light as a feather and the information on it was equally so.

“I’ll run these names and see where these guys are at now. Maybe your gunrunner is out and about and looking for revenge. But these are dead cases. Most likely if these threats were legit, they would’ve been carried out long ago. Same with any threats he got when he was a prosecutor. So this is just busywork you’re giving me, Counselor.”

“Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just busywork. I don’t understand your attitude on this.”

Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.

“I don’t really care what you think about my attitude,” he said. “We’ll check your leads out. But I’m looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent’s open cases.”

“Well, I can’t help you there.”

“Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I assume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You’re going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That’s when you call me.”

I stared at him without answering.

“You never know,” he said. “It might save you from…”

He shrugged and didn’t finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.

“It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”

Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.

“What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”

“I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”

“You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”

He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.

“I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”

“Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”

Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.

“This time you go first,” I prompted.

He nodded.

“Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone – either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”

“Okay.”

“I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him.”

“Who?”

“I can’t tell. All outgoing calls from over there register on the main number. All I know is he got calls from the bureau, no names.”

“How long were the calls?”

Bosch hesitated, unsure what to divulge. He looked down at the tablet in his hand and I saw him grudgingly decide to share more. He was going to get angry when I had nothing to share back.

“They were all short calls.”

“How short?”

“None of them over a minute.”

“Then, maybe they were just wrong numbers.”

He shook his head.

“That’s too many wrong numbers. They wanted something from him.”

“Anybody from there check in on the homicide investigation?”

“Not yet.”

I thought about this and shrugged.

“Well, maybe they will and then you’ll know.”

“Yeah, and maybe they won’t. It’s not their style, if you know what I mean. Now your turn. What do you have that’s federal?”

“Nothing. I confirmed that Vincent had no federal cases.”

I watched Bosch do a slow burn as he realized I had played him.

“You’re telling me you have found no federal connections? Not even a bureau business card in that office?”

“That’s right. Nothing.”

“There’s been a rumor going around about a federal grand jury looking into corruption in the state courts. You know anything about that?”

I shook my head.

“I’ve been on the shelf for a year.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Look, Detective, I don’t get this. Why can’t you just call over there and ask who was calling your victim? Isn’t that how an investigation should proceed?”

Bosch smiled like he was dealing with a child.

“If they want me to know something, they’ll come to me. If I call them, they’lI just shine me on. If this was part of a corruption probe or they’ve got something else going, the chances of them talking to a local cop are between slim and none. If they’re the ones who got him killed, then make it none.”

“How would they get him killed?”

“I told you, they kept calling. They wanted something. They were pressuring him. Maybe someone else knew about it and thought he was a risk.”

“That’s a lot of conjecture about five calls that don’t even add up to five minutes.”

Bosch held up the yellow pad.

“No more conjecture than this list.”

“What about the laptop?”

“What about it?”

“Is that what this is all about, something in his computer?”

“You tell me.”

“How can I tell you when I have no idea what was in it?”

Bosch nodded the point and stood up.

“Have a good day, Counselor.”

He walked out, carrying the legal pad at his side. I was left wondering whether he had been warning me or playing me the whole time he had been in the room.

Sixteen

Lorna and Cisco arrived together fifteen minutes after Bosch’s departure and we convened in Vincent’s office. I took a seat behind the dead lawyer’s desk and they sat side by side in front of it. It was another score-keeping session in which we went over cases, what had been accomplished the previous night and what still needed to be done.

With Cisco driving, I had visited eleven of Vincent’s clients the night before, signing up eight of them and giving back files to the remaining three. These were the priority cases, potential clients I hoped to keep because they could pay or their cases had garnered some form of merit in my review. They were cases I could win or be challenged by.

So it had not been a bad night. I had even convinced the woman charged with indecent exposure to keep me on as her attorney. And of course, bagging Walter Elliot was the icing on the cake. Lorna reported that she had faxed him a representation contract and it had already been signed and returned. We were in good shape there. I could start chipping away at the hundred thousand in the trust account.

We next set the plan for the day. I told Lorna that I wanted her and Wren – if she showed up – to run down the remaining clients, apprise them of Jerry Vincent’s demise and set up appointments for me to discuss the options of legal representation. I also wanted Lorna to continue building the calendar and familiarizing herself with Vincent’s files and financial records.

I told Cisco I wanted him to focus his attention on the Elliot case, with particular emphasis on witness maintenance. This meant that he had to take the preliminary defense witness list, which had already been compiled by Jerry Vincent, and prepare subpoenas for the law enforcement officers and other witnesses who might be considered hostile to the defense’s cause. For the paid expert witness and others who were willingly going to testify at trial for the defense, he had to make contact and assure them that the trial was moving forward as scheduled, with me replacing Vincent at the helm.

“Got it,” Cisco said. “What about the Vincent investigation? You still want me monitoring?”

“Yes, keep tabs on that and let me know what you find out.”

“I found out that they spent last night sweating somebody but kicked him loose this morning.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“A suspect?”

“They cut him loose, so whoever it was is cleared. For now.”

I nodded as I thought about this. No wonder Bosch looked like he had been up all night.

“What are you going to be doing today?” Lorna asked.

“My priority starting today is Elliot. There are a few things on these other cases that I’ll need to pay some attention to but for the most part I’m going to be on Elliot from here on out. We’ve got jury selection in eight days. Today I want to start at the crime scene.”

“I should go with you,” Cisco said.

“No, I just want to get a feel for the place. You can get in there with a camera and tape measure later.”

“Mick, isn’t there any way you can convince Elliot to delay?” Lorna asked. “Doesn’t he realize that you need time to study and understand the case?”

“I told him that, but he’s not interested. He made it a condition of my hire. I had to agree to go to trial next week or he’d find another lawyer who could. He says he’s innocent and doesn’t want to wait a single day longer to prove it.”

“Do you believe him?”

I shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter. He believes it. And he’s got this strange confidence in it all turning out his way – like the Monday morning box office. So I either get ready to go to trial at the end of next week or I lose the client.”

Just then the door to the office swung open and revealed Wren Williams standing tentatively in the doorway.

“Excuse me,” she said.

“Hello, Wren,” I said. “Glad you’re here. Could you wait out there in reception, and Lorna will be right out to work with you?”

“No problem. You also have one of the clients waiting out here. Patrick Henson. He was already waiting when I came in.”

I looked at my watch. It was five of nine. It was a good sign in regard to Patrick Henson.

“Then, send him in.”

A young man walked in. Patrick Henson was smaller than I thought he would be, but maybe it was the low center of gravity that made him a good surfer. He had the requisite hardened tan but his hair was cropped short. No earrings, no white shell necklace or shark’s tooth. No tattoos that I could see. He wore black cargo pants and what probably passed as his best shirt. It had a collar.

“Patrick, we spoke on the phone yesterday. I’m Mickey Haller and this is my case manager, Lorna Taylor. This big guy is Cisco, my investigator.”

He stepped toward the desk and shook our hands. His grip was firm.

“I’m glad you decided to come in. Is that your fish on the wall back there?”

Without moving his feet Henson swiveled at the hips as if on a surfboard and looked at the fish hanging on the wall.

“Yeah, that’s Betty.”

“You gave a stuffed fish a name?” Lorna asked. “What, was it a pet?”

Henson smiled, more to himself than to us.

“No, I caught it a long time ago. Back in Florida. We hung it by the front door in the place I was sharing in Malibu. My roommates and me, we’d always say, ‘Hellooo, Betty’ to it when we came home. It was kind of stupid.”

He swiveled back and looked at me.

“Speaking of names, do we call you Trick?”

“Nah, that was just the name my agent came up with. I don’t have him anymore. You can just call me Patrick.”

“Okay, and you told me you had a valid driver’s license?”

“Sure do.”

He reached into a front pocket and removed a thick nylon wallet. He pulled his license out and handed it to me. I studied it for a moment and then handed it to Cisco. He studied it a little longer and then nodded, giving it his official approval.

“Okay, Patrick, I need a driver,” I said. “I provide the car and gas and insurance and you show up here every morning at nine to drive me wherever I need to go. I told you the pay schedule yesterday. You still interested?”

“I’m interested.”

“Are you a safe driver?” Lorna asked.

“I’ve never had an accident.” Patrick said.

I nodded my approval. They say an addict is best suited for spotting another addict. I was looking for signs that he was still using. Heavy eyelids, slow speech, avoidance of eye contact. But I didn’t pick up on anything.

“When can you start?”

He shrugged.

“I don’t have anything… I mean, whenever you want, I guess.”

“How about we start right now? Today will be a test-drive. We’ll see how you do and we can talk about it at the end of the day.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Okay, well, we’re going to get out of here and hit the road and I’ll explain in the car how I like things to work.”

“Cool.”

He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and awaited the next move or instruction. He looked like he was about thirty but that was because of what the sun had done to his skin. I knew from the file that he was only twenty-four and still had a lot to learn.

Today the plan was to take him back to school.

Seventeen

We took the 10 out of downtown and headed west toward Malibu. I sat in the back and opened my computer on the fold-down table. While I waited for it to boot up I told Patrick Henson how it all worked.

“Patrick, I haven’t had an office since I left the Public Defenders Office twelve years ago. My car is my office. I’ve got two other Lincolns just like this one. I keep them in rotation. Each one’s got a printer, a fax and I’ve got a wireless card in my computer. Anything I have to do in an office I can do back here while I’m on the road to the next place. There are more than forty courthouses spread across L.A. County. Being mobile is the best way to do business.”

“Cool,” Patrick said. “I wouldn’t want to be in an office either.”

“Damn right,” I said. “Too claustrophobic.”

My computer was ready. I went to the file where I kept generic forms and motions and began to customize a pretrial motion to examine evidence.

“I’m working on your case right now, Patrick.”

He looked at me in the mirror.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I reviewed your file and there’s something Mr. Vincent hadn’t done that I think we need to do that may help.”

“What’s that?”

“Get an independent appraisal of the necklace you took. They list the value as twenty-five thousand and that bumps you up to a felony theft category. But it doesn’t look like anybody ever challenged that.”

“You mean like if the diamonds are bogus there’s no felony?”

“It could work out like that. But I was thinking of something else, too.”

“What?”

I pulled his file out of my bag so I could check a name.

“Let me ask you a few questions first, Patrick,” I said. “What were you doing in that house where you took the necklace?”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I was dating the old lady’s youngest daughter. I met her on the beach and was sort of teaching her to surf. We went out a few times and hung out. One time there was a birthday party at the house and I was invited and the mother was given the necklace as a gift.”

“That’s when you learned its value.”

“Yeah, the father said they were diamonds when he gave it to her. He was real proud of ’em.”

“So then, the next time you were there at the house, you stole the necklace.”

He didn’t respond.

“It wasn’t a question, Patrick. It’s a fact. I’m your lawyer now and we need to discuss the facts of the case. Just don’t ever lie to me or I won’t be your lawyer anymore.”

“Okay.”

“So the next time you were in the house, you stole the necklace.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me about it.”

“We were there alone using the pool and I said I had to go to the can, only I really just wanted to check the medicine cabinet for pills. I was hurting. There weren’t any in the bathroom downstairs so I went upstairs and looked around. I looked in the old lady’s jewelry box and saw the necklace. I just took it.”

He shook his head and I knew why. He was thoroughly embarrassed and defeated by the actions his addiction had made him take. I had been there myself and knew that looking back from sobriety was almost as scary as looking forward.

“It’s all right, Patrick. Thank you for being honest. What did the guy say when you pawned it?”

“He said he’d only give me four bills because the chain was gold but he didn’t think the diamonds were legit. I told him he was full of shit but what could I do? I took the money and went down to TJ. I needed the tabs and so I took what he was giving. I was so messed up on the stuff, I didn’t care.”

“What’s the name of the girl? It’s not in the file.”

“Mandolin, like the instrument. Her parents call her Mandy.”

“Have you talked to her since you were arrested?”

“No, man. We’re done.”

Now the eyes in the mirror looked sad and humiliated.

“Stupid,” Henson said. “The whole thing was stupid.”

I thought about things for a moment and then reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out a Polaroid photograph. I handed it over the seat and tapped Patrick on the shoulder with it.

“Take a look at that.”

He took the photo and held it on top of the steering wheel while he looked at it.

“What the hell happened to you?” he asked.

“I tripped over a curb and did a nice face plant in front of my house. Broke a tooth and my nose, opened up my forehead pretty good, too. They took that picture for me in the ER. To carry around as a reminder.”

“Of what?”

“I had just gotten out of my car after driving my eleven-year-old daughter home to her mother. By then I was up to three hundred twenty milligrams of OxyContin a day. Crushing and snorting first thing in the morning, except for me, the mornings were the afternoon.”

I let him register that for a few moments before continuing.

“So, Patrick, you think what you did was stupid? I was driving my little girl around on three hundred twenty migs of hillbilly heroin.”

Now I shook my head.

“There’s nothing you can do about the past, Patrick. Except keep it there.”

He was staring directly at me in the mirror.

“I’m going to help you get through the legal stuff,” I said. “It’s up to you to do the rest. And the rest is the hard part. But you already know that.”

He nodded.

“Anyway, I see a ray of light here, Patrick. Something Jerry Vincent didn’t see.”

“What is it?”

“The victim’s husband gave her that necklace. His name is Roger Vogler and he’s a big supporter of lots of elected people in the county.”

“Yeah, he’s big into politics. Mandolin told me that. They hold fund-raisers and stuff at the house.”

“Well, if the diamonds on that necklace are phony, he’s not going to want that coming up in court. Especially if his wife doesn’t know.”

“But how’s he gonna stop it?”

“He’s a contributor, Patrick. His contributions helped elect at least four members of the county board of supervisors. The county supervisors control the budget of the District Attorney’s Office. The DA is prosecuting you. It’s a food chain. If Dr. Vogler wants to send a message, believe me, it will be sent.”

Henson nodded. He was beginning to see the light.

“The motion I’m going to file requests that we be allowed to independently examine and appraise the evidence, to wit, the diamond necklace. You never know, that word ‘appraise’ may stir things up. We’ll just have to sit back and see what happens.”

“Do we go to court to file it?”

“No. I’m going to write this thing up right now and send it to the court in an e-mail.”

“That’s cool!”

“The beauty of the Internet.”

“Thanks, Mr. Haller.”

“You’re welcome, Patrick. Can I have my picture back now?”

He handed it over the seat and I took a look at it. I had a marble under my lip, and my nose was pointing in the wrong direction. There was also a bloody friction abrasion on my forehead. The eyes were the toughest part to study. Dazed and lost, staring unsteadily at the camera. This was me at my lowest point.

I put the photo back in my pocket for safekeeping.

We drove in silence for the next fifteen minutes while I finished the motion, went online and sent it. It was definitely a shot across the prosecution’s bow and it felt good. The Lincoln lawyer was back on the beat. The Lone Ranger was riding again.

I made sure I looked up from the computer when we hit the tunnel that marks the end of the freeway and dumps out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I cracked the window open. I always loved the feeling I got when I’d swing out of the tunnel and see and smell the ocean.

We followed the PCH as it took us north to Malibu. It was hard for me to go back to the computer when I had the blue Pacific right outside my office window. I finally gave up, lowered the window all the way and just rode.

Once we got past the mouth of Topanga Canyon I started seeing packs of surfers on the swells. I checked Patrick and saw him taking glances out toward the water.

“It said in the file you did your rehab at Crossroads in Antigua,” I said.

“Yeah. The place Eric Clapton started.”

“Nice?”

“As far as those places go, I suppose.”

“True. Any waves there?”

“None to speak of. I didn’t get much of a chance to use a board anyway. Did you do rehab?”

“Yeah, in Laurel Canyon.”

“That place all the stars go to?”

“It was close to home.”

“Yeah, well, I went the other way. I was as far from my friends and my home as possible. It worked.”

“You thinking about going back into surfing?”

He glanced out the window before answering. A dozen surfers in wet suits were straddling their boards out there, waiting on the next set.

“I don’t think so. At least not on a professional level. My shoulder’s shot.”

I was about to ask what he needed his shoulder for when he continued his answer.

“The paddling’s one thing but the key thing is getting up. I lost my move when I fucked up my shoulder. Excuse the language.”

“That’s okay.”

“Besides, I’m taking things one day at a time. They taught you that in Laurel Canyon, didn’t they?”

“They did. But surfing’s a one-day-at-a-time, one-wave-at-a-time sort of thing, isn’t it?”

He nodded and I watched his eyes. They kept tripping to the mirror and looking back at me.

“What do you want to ask me, Patrick?”

“Um, yeah, I had a question. You know how Vincent kept my fish and put it on the wall?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I was, uh, wondering if he kept any of my boards somewhere.”

I opened his file again and looked through it until I found the liquidator’s report. It listed twelve surfboards and the prices obtained for them.

“You gave him twelve boards, right?”

“Yeah, all of them.”

“Well, he gave them to his liquidator.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a guy he used when he took assets from clients – you know, jewelry, property, cars, mostly – and would turn them into cash to be applied toward his fee. According to the report here, the liquidator sold all twelve of them, took twenty percent and gave Vincent forty-eight hundred dollars.”

Patrick nodded his head but didn’t say anything. I watched him for a few moments and then looked back at the liquidator’s inventory sheet. I remembered that Patrick had said in that first phone call that the two long boards were the most valuable. On the inventory, there were two boards described as ten feet long. Both were made by One World in Sarasota, Florida. One sold for $1,200 to a collector and the other for $400 on eBay, the online auction site. The disparity between the two sales made me think the eBay sale was bogus. The liquidator had probably sold the board to himself cheap. He would then turn around and sell it at a profit he’d keep for himself. Everybody’s got an angle. Including me. I knew that if he hadn’t resold the board yet, then I still had a shot at it.

“What if I could get you one of the long boards back?” I asked.

“That would be awesome! I just wish I had kept one, you know?”

“No promises. But I’ll see what I can do.”

I decided to pursue it later by putting my investigator on it. Cisco showing up and asking questions would probably make the liquidator more accommodating.

Patrick and I didn’t speak for the rest of the ride. In another twenty minutes we pulled into the driveway of Walter Elliot’s house. It was of Moorish design with white stone and dark brown shutters. The center facade rose into a tower silhouetted against the blue sky. A silver midlevel Mercedes was parked on the cobblestone pavers. We parked next to it.

“You want me to wait here?” Patrick asked.

“Yeah. I don’t think I’ll take too long.”

“I know this house. It’s all glass in the back. I tried to surf behind it a couple times but it closes out on the inside and the rip’s really bad.”

“Pop the trunk for me.”

I got out and went to the back to retrieve my digital camera. I turned it on to make sure I had some battery power and took a quick shot of the front of the house. The camera was working and I was good to go.

I walked to the entrance and the front door opened before I could push the bell. Mrs. Albrecht stood there, looking as lovely as I had seen her the day before.

Eighteen

When Walter Elliot had told me he would have someone meet me at the house in Malibu, I hadn’t expected it to be his executive assistant.

“Mrs. Albrecht, how are you today?”

“Very well. I just got here and thought maybe I had missed you.”

“Nope. I just got here too.”

“Come in, please.”

The house had a two-story entry area below the tower. I looked up and saw a wrought-iron chandelier hanging in the atrium. There were cobwebs on it, and I wondered if they had formed because the house had gone unused since the murders or because the chandelier was too high up and too hard to get to with a duster.

“This way,” Mrs. Albrecht said.

I followed her into the great room, which was larger than my entire home. It was a complete entertainment area with a glass wall on the western exposure that brought the Pacific right into the house.

“Beautiful,” I said.

“It is indeed. Do you want to see the bedroom?”

Ignoring the question, I turned the camera on and took a few shots of the living room and its view.

“Do you know who has been in here since the Sheriff’s Department relinquished control of it?” I asked.

Mrs. Albrecht thought for a moment before answering.

“Very few people. I do not believe that Mr. Elliot has been out here. But, of course, Mr. Vincent came out once and his investigator came out a couple of times, I believe. And the Sheriff’s Department has come back twice since turning the property back over to Mr. Elliot. They had search warrants.”

Copies of the search warrants were in the case file. Both times they were looking for only one thing – the murder weapon. The case against Elliot was all circumstantial, even with the gunshot residue on his hands. They needed the murder weapon to ice the case but they didn’t have it. The notes in the file said that divers had searched the waters behind the house for two days after the murders but had also failed to come up with the gun.

“What about cleaners?” I asked. “Did someone come in and clean the place up?”

“No, no one like that. We were told by Mr. Vincent to leave things as they were in case he needed to use the place during the trial.”

There was no mention in the case files of Vincent possibly using the house in any way during the trial. I wasn’t sure what the thinking would have been there. My instinctive response upon seeing the place was that I wouldn’t want a jury anywhere near it. The view and sheer opulence of the property would underline Elliot’s wealth and serve to disconnect him from the jurors. They would understand that they weren’t really a jury of his peers. They would know that he was from a completely different planet.

“Where’s the master suite?” I asked.

“It comprises the entire top floor.”

“Then, let’s go up.”

As we went up a winding white staircase with an ocean-blue banister, I asked Mrs. Albrecht what her first name was. I told her I felt uncomfortable being so formal with her, especially when her boss and I were on a first-name basis.

“My name is Nina. You can call me that if you want.”

“Good. And you can call me Mickey.”

The stairs led to a door that opened into a bedroom suite the size of some courtrooms I had been in. It was so big it had twin fireplaces on the north and south walls. There was a sitting area, a sleeping area and his-and-her bathrooms. Nina Albrecht pushed a button near the door, and the curtains covering the west view silently began to split and reveal a wall of glass that looked out over the sea.

The custom-made bed was double the size of a regular king. It had been stripped of the top mattress and all linens and pillows and I assumed these had been taken for forensic analysis. In two locations in the room, six-foot-square segments of carpet had been cut out, again, I believed, for the collection and analysis of blood evidence.

On the wall next to the door, there were blood-spatter marks that had been circled and marked with letter codes by investigators. There were no other signs of the violence that had occurred in the room.

I walked to the corner by the glass wall and looked back into the room. I raised the camera and took a few shots from different angles. Nina walked into the shot a couple times but it didn’t matter. The photos weren’t for court. I would use them to refresh my memory of the place while I was working out the trial strategy.

A murder scene is a map. If you know how to read it, you can sometimes find your way. The lay of the land, the repose of victims in death, the angle of views and light and blood. The spatial restrictions and geometric differentiations were all elements of the map. You can’t always get all of that from a police photo. Sometimes you have to see it for yourself. This is why I had come to the house in Malibu. For the map. For the geography of murder. When I understood it, I would be ready to go to trial.

From the corner, I looked at the square cut out of the white carpet near the bedroom door. This is where the male victim, Johan Rilz, had been shot down. My eyes traveled to the bed, where Mitzi Elliot had been shot, her naked body sprawled diagonally across it.

The investigative summary in the file suggested that the naked couple had heard an intruder in the house. Rilz went to the bedroom door and opened it, only to be immediately surprised by the killer. Rilz was shot down in the doorway and the killer stepped over his body and into the room.

Mitzi Elliot jumped up from the bed and stood frozen by its side, clutching a pillow in front of her naked body. The state believed that the elements of the crime suggested that she knew her killer. She might have pleaded for her life or might have known her death could not be stopped. She was shot twice through the pillow from a distance estimated at three feet and knocked back onto the bed. The pillow she had used as a shield fell to the floor. The killer then stepped forward to the bed and pressed the barrel of the gun against her forehead for the kill shot.

That was the official version anyway. Standing there in the corner of the room, I knew there were enough unfounded assumptions built into it that I would have no trouble slicing and dicing it at trial.

I looked at the glass doors that led out to a deck overlooking the Pacific. There had been nothing in the files about whether the curtain and doors had been open at the time of the murders. I was not sure it meant anything one way or the other but it was a detail I would’ve liked to know.

I walked over to the glass doors and found them locked. I had a hard time figuring out how to open them. Nina finally came over and helped me, holding her finger down on a safety lever while turning the bolt with her other hand. The doors opened outward and brought in the sounds of the crashing surf.

I immediately knew that if the doors had been open at the time of the murders, then the sound of the surf could have easily drowned out any noise an intruder might have made in the house. This would contradict the state’s theory that Rilz was killed at the bedroom door because he had gone to the door after hearing an intruder. It would then raise a new question about what Rilz was doing naked at the door, but that didn’t matter to the defense. I only needed to raise questions and point out discrepancies to plant the seed of doubt in a juror’s mind. It took only one doubt in one juror’s mind for me to be successful. It was the distort-or-destroy method of criminal defense.

I stepped out onto the deck. I didn’t know if it was high or low tide but suspected it was somewhere in between. The water was close. The waves were coming in and washing right up to the piers on which the house was built.

There were six-foot swells but no surfers out there. I remembered what Patrick had said about attempting to surf in the cove.

I walked back inside, and as soon as I reentered the bedroom, I realized my phone was ringing but I had been unable to hear it because of the ocean noise. I checked to see who it was but it said PRIVATE CALLER on the screen. I knew that most people in law enforcement blocked their ID.

“Nina, I have to take this. Do you mind going out to my car and asking my driver to come in?”

“No problem.”

“Thank you.”

I took the call.

“Hello?”

“It’s me. I’m just checking to see when you’re coming by.”

“Me” was my first ex-wife, Maggie McPherson. Under the recently revamped custody agreement, I got to be with my daughter on Wednesday nights and every other weekend only. It was a long way from the shared custody we’d once had. But I had blown that along with the second chance I’d had with Maggie.

“Probably around seven thirty. I have a meeting with a client this afternoon and it might run a little late.”

There was silence and I sensed I had given the wrong answer.

“What, you’ve got a date?” I asked. “What time you want me there?”

“I’m supposed to leave at seven thirty.”

“Then, I’ll be there before that. Who’s the lucky guy?”

“That wouldn’t be any of your business. But speaking of lucky, I heard you got Jerry Vincent’s whole practice.”

Nina Albrecht and Patrick Henson entered the bedroom. I saw Patrick looking at the missing square in the carpet. I covered the phone and asked them to go back downstairs and wait for me. I then went back to the phone conversation. My ex-wife was a deputy district attorney assigned to the Van Nuys courthouse. This put her in a position to hear things about me.

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m his replacement, but I don’t know how lucky that makes me.”

“You should get a good ride on the Elliot case.”

“I’m standing in the murder house right now. Nice view.”

“Well, good luck in getting him off. If anyone can, it’s certainly you.”

She said it with a prosecutor’s sneer.

“I guess I won’t respond to that.”

“I know how you would anyway. One other thing. You’re not going to have company over tonight, are you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about two weeks ago. Hayley said a woman was there. I believe her name was Lanie? She felt very awkward about it.”

“Don’t worry, she won’t be there tonight. She’s just a friend and she used the guest room. But for the record, I can have anybody I want over at my house at any time because it’s my house, and you are free to do the same at your house.”

“And I’m also free to go to the judge and say you’re exposing our daughter to people who are drug addicts.”

I took a deep breath before responding as calmly as I could.

“How would you know who I am exposing Hayley to?”

“Because your daughter isn’t stupid and her hearing is perfect. She told me a little bit of what was said and it was quite easy to figure out that your… friend is from rehab.”

“And so that’s a crime, consorting with people from rehab?”

“It’s not a crime, Michael. I just don’t think it is best for Hayley to be exposed to a parade of addicts when she stays with you.”

“Now it’s a parade. I guess the one addict you’re most concerned with is me.”

“Well, if the shoe fits…”

I almost lost it but once again calmed myself by gulping down some of the fresh sea air. When I spoke I was calm. I knew that showing anger would only hurt me in the long run when it came time to re-address the custody arrangement.

“Maggie, this is our daughter we’re talking about here. Don’t hurt her by trying to hurt me. She needs her father and I need my daughter.”

“And that’s my point. You are doing well. Hooking up with an addict is not a good idea.”

I was squeezing my phone so hard I thought it might break. I could feel the scarlet burn of embarrassment on my cheeks and neck.

“I have to go.”

My words came out strangled by my own failures.

“And so do I. I’ll tell Hayley you’ll be there by seven thirty.”

She always did that, ended the call with inferences that I would disappoint my daughter if I was late or couldn’t make a scheduled pickup. She hung up before I could respond.

The living room downstairs was empty but then I saw Patrick and Nina out on the lower deck. I stepped out and over to the railing where Patrick stood staring at the waves. I tried to put the upset from the conversation with my ex-wife out of my head.

“Patrick, you said you tried surfing here but the rip was too strong?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you talking about a riptide?”

“Yeah, it’s tough out here. The shape of the cove creates it. The energy of the waves coming in on the north side is redirected under the surface and sort of ricochets south. It follows the contour of the cove and carries it all the way down and then out. I got caught in that pipeline a couple times, man. It took me all the way out past those rocks at the south end.”

I studied the cove as he described what was happening beneath the surface. If he was right and there was a riptide on the day of the murders, then the sheriff’s divers had probably searched in the wrong place for the murder weapon.

And now it was too late. If the killer had thrown the gun into the surf, it could have been carried in the underwater pipeline completely out of the cove and out to sea. I began to feel confident that the murder weapon would not be making a surprise appearance at trial.

As far as my client was concerned, that was a good thing.

I stared out at the waves and thought about how beneath the beautiful surface a hidden power never stopped moving.

Nineteen

The writers had taken the day off or moved their picket line to another protest location. At Archway Studios we made it through the security checkpoint without any of the delay of the day before. It helped that Nina Albrecht was in the car in front of us and had smoothed the way.

It was late and the studio was emptying out for the day. Patrick was able to get a parking spot right in front of Elliot’s bungalow. Patrick was excited because he had never been inside the gates of a movie studio. I told him he was free to look around but to keep his phone handy because I was unsure how long the meeting with my client would last and I needed to stick to a schedule for picking up my daughter.

As I followed Nina in I asked her if there was a place for me to meet with Elliot other than his office. I said I had paperwork to spread out and that the table we had sat at the day before was too small. She said she would take me to the executive boardroom and I could set up there while she went to get her boss and bring him to the meeting. I said that would be fine. But the truth was I wasn’t going to spread documents out. I just wanted to meet with Elliot in a neutral spot. If I was sitting across from him at his worktable, he would have command of the meeting. That was made clear during our first encounter. Elliot was a forceful personality. But I needed to be the one in charge from here on out.

It was a big room with twelve black leather chairs around the polished oval table. There was an overhead projector and a long box on the far wall containing the drop-down screen. The other walls were hung with framed posters of the movies that had been made on the lot. I assumed that these were the films that had made the studio money.

I took a seat and pulled the case files out of my bag. Twenty-five minutes later I was looking through the state’s discovery documents when the door opened and Elliot finally walked in. I didn’t bother to get up or extend my hand. I tried to look annoyed as I pointed him to a chair across the table from me.

Nina trailed him into the room to see what she could get us for refreshment.

“Nothing, Nina,” I said before Elliot could respond. “We’re going to be fine and we need to get started. We’ll let you know if we need anything.”

She seemed momentarily taken aback by the issuance of orders from someone other than Elliot. She looked to him for clarification and he simply nodded. She left, closing the double doors behind her. Elliot sat down in the chair I had pointed him to.

I looked across the table at my client for a long moment before speaking.

“I can’t figure you out, Walter.”

“What do you mean? What’s to figure out?”

“Well, for starters, you spend a lot of time protesting your innocence. But I don’t think you are taking this that seriously.”

“You’re wrong about that.”

“Am I? You understand that if you lose this trial, you are going to prison? And there won’t be any bail on a double-murder conviction while you appeal. You get a bad verdict and they’ll cuff you in the courtroom and take you away.”

Elliot leaned a few inches toward me before responding again.

“I understand exactly the position I am in. So don’t dare tell me I am not taking it seriously.”

“Okay, then, when we set a meeting, let’s be on time for it. There is a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to cover it. I know you have a studio to run but that is no longer the priority. For the next two weeks you have one priority. This case.”

Now he looked at me for a long moment before responding. It may have been the first time in his life he had been chided for being late and then told what to do. Finally, he nodded.

“Fair enough,” he said.

I nodded back. Our positions were now understood. We were in his boardroom and on his studio lot, but I was the alpha dog now. His future depended on me.

“Good,” I said. “Now, the first thing I need to ask is whether we are speaking privately in here.”

“Of course we are.”

“Well, we weren’t yesterday. It was pretty clear that Nina’s got your office wired. That may be fine for your movie meetings but it’s not fine when we’re discussing your case. I’m your lawyer, and no one should hear our discussion. No one. Nina has no privilege. She could be subpoenaed to testify against you. In fact, it won’t surprise me if she ends up on the prosecution’s witness list.”

Elliot leaned back in his padded chair and raised his face toward the ceiling.

“Nina,” he said. “Mute the feed. If I need anything I will call you on the line.”

He looked at me and opened his hands. I nodded that I was satisfied.

“Thank you, Walter. Now let’s get to work.”

“I have a question first.”

“Sure.”

“Is this the meeting where I tell you I didn’t do it and then you tell me that it doesn’t matter to you whether I did it or not?”

I nodded.

“Whether you did it or not is irrelevant, Walter. It’s what the state can prove beyond a-”

“No!”

He slammed an open palm down on the table. It sounded like a shot. I was startled but hoped I didn’t show it.

“I am tired of that legal bullshit! That it doesn’t matter whether I did it, only what can be proved. It does matter! Don’t you see? It does matter. I need to be believed, goddamnit! I need you to believe me. I don’t care what the evidence is against me. I did NOT do this. Do you understand me? Do you believe me? If my own lawyer doesn’t believe me or care, then I don’t have a chance.”

I was sure Nina was going to come charging in to see if everything was all right. I leaned back in my padded chair and waited for her and to make sure Elliot was finished.

As expected, one of the doors opened and Nina was about to step in. But Elliot dismissed her with a wave of his hand and a harsh command not to bother us. The door closed again and he locked eyes with me. I held my hand up to stop him from speaking. It was my turn.

“Walter, there are two things I have to concern myself with,” I said calmly. “Whether I understand the state’s case and whether I can knock it down.”

I tapped a finger on the discovery file as I spoke.

“At the moment I do understand the state’s case. It’s straightforward prosecution one-oh-one. The state believes that they have motive and opportunity in spades.

“Let’s go with motive first. Your wife was having an affair and that made you angry. Not only that, but the prenuptial agreement she signed twelve years before had vested and the only way you could get rid of her without splitting everything up was to kill her. Next is opportunity. They have the time your car left through the gate at Archway that morning. They’ve made the run and timed it again and again and say you could’ve easily been at the Malibu house at the time of the killings. That is opportunity.

“And what the state is counting on is motive and opportunity being enough to sway the jury and win the day, while the actual evidence against you is quite thin and very circumstantial. So my job is to figure out a way of making the jury understand that there is a lot of smoke here but no real fire. If I do that, then you walk away.”

“I still want to know if you believe I am innocent.”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Walter, I’m telling you, it doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me. One way or the other, I need to know.”

I relented and held my hands up in surrender.

“All right, then, I’ll tell you what I think, Walter. I have studied the file forwards and backwards. I’ve read everything in here at least twice and most of it three times. I have now been out to the beach house where this unfortunate event happened and studied the geography of these murders. I have done all of that and I can see the very real possibility that you are innocent of these charges. Does that mean that I believe that you are an innocent man? No, Walter, it doesn’t. I’m sorry but I have been doing this too long, and the reality is, I haven’t seen too many innocent clients. So the best I can tell you is that I don’t know. If that’s not good enough for you, then I am sure you will have no trouble finding a lawyer who will tell you exactly what you want to hear, whether he believes it or not.”

I rocked back in my chair while awaiting his response. He clasped his hands together on the table in front of him while he chewed on my words and then he finally nodded.

“Then, I guess that is the best I can ask for,” he said.

I tried to let out my breath without his noticing. I still had the case. For the moment.

“But you know what I do believe, Walter?”

“What do you believe?”

“That you’re holding out on me.”

“Holding out? What are you talking about?”

“There’s something I don’t know about this case and you are holding back on it with me.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You are too confident, Walter. It’s like you know you are going to walk.”

“I am going to walk. I’m innocent.”

“Being innocent is not enough. Innocent men sometimes get convicted and deep down everybody knows it. That’s why I’ve never met a truly innocent man who wasn’t scared. Scared that the system won’t work right, that it’s built to find guilty people guilty and not innocent people innocent. That’s what you’re missing, Walter. You’re not scared.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should I be scared?”

I stared across the table at him, trying to read him. I knew my instincts were right. There was something I didn’t know, something that I had missed in the files or that Vincent had carried in his head instead of his files. Whatever it was, Elliot wasn’t sharing it with me yet.

For now that was okay. Sometimes you don’t want to know what your client knows, because once the smoke comes out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in.

“All right, Walter,” I said. “To be continued. Meantime, let’s go to work.”

Without waiting for a reply I opened the defense file and looked at the notes I had written on the inside flap.

“I think we’re set in terms of witnesses and strategy when it comes to the state’s case. What I have not found in the file is a solid strategy for putting forth your defense.”

“What do you mean?” Elliot asked. “Jerry told me we were ready.”

“Maybe not, Walter. I know it’s not something you want to see or hear but I found this in the file.”

I slid a two-page document across the polished table to him. He glanced at it but didn’t really look at it.

“What is it?”

“That is a motion for a continuance. Jerry drew it up but hadn’t filed it. But it seems clear that he wanted to delay the trial. The coding on the motion indicates he printed it out Monday – just a few hours before he was killed.”

Elliot shook his head and shoved the document back across the table.

“No, we talked about it and he agreed with me to move forward on schedule.”

“That was Monday?”

“Yes, Monday. The last time I talked to him.”

I nodded. That covered one of the questions I had. Vincent kept billing records in each of his files, and I had noted in the Elliot file that he had billed an hour on the day of his murder.

“Was that a conference at his office or yours?”

“It was a phone call. Monday afternoon. He’d left a message earlier and I called him back. Nina can get you the exact time if you need it.”

“He has it down here at three. He talked to you about a delay?”

“That’s right but I told him no delay.”

Vincent had billed an hour. I wondered how long he and Elliot had sparred over the delay.

“Why did he want a continuance?” I asked.

“He just wanted more time to prepare and maybe pad his bill. I told him we were ready, like I’m telling you. We are ready!”

I sort of laughed and shook my head.

“The thing is, you’re not the lawyer here, Walter. I am. And that’s what I’m trying to tell you, I’m not seeing much here in terms of a defense strategy. I think that’s why Jerry wanted to delay the trial. He didn’t have a case.”

“No, it’s the prosecution that doesn’t have the case.”

I was growing tired of Elliot and his insistence on calling the legal shots.

“Let me explain how this works,” I said wearily. “And forgive me if you know all of this, Walter. It’s going to be a two-part trial, okay? The prosecutor goes first and he lays out his case. We get a chance to attack it as he goes. Then we get our shot and that’s when we put up our evidence and alternate theories of the crime.”

“Okay.”

“And what I can tell from my study of the files is that Jerry Vincent was relying more on the prosecution’s case than on a defense case. There are-”

“How so?”

“What I’m saying is that he’s locked and loaded on the prosecution side. He has counter witnesses and cross-examination plans ready for everything the prosecution is going to put forward. But I’m missing something on the defense side of the equation. We’ve got no alibi, no alternate suspects, no alternate theories, nothing. At least nothing in the file. And that’s what I mean when I say we have no case. Did he ever discuss with you how he planned to roll out the defense?”

“No. We were going to have that conversation but then he got killed. He told me that he was working all of that out. He said he had the magic bullet and the less I knew, the better. He was going to tell me when we got closer to trial but he never did. He never got the chance.”

I knew the term. The “magic bullet” was your get-out-of-jail-and-go-home card. It was the witness or piece of evidence that you had in your back pocket that was going to either knock all the evidence down like dominoes or firmly and permanently fix reasonable doubt in the mind of every juror on the panel. If Vincent had a magic bullet, he hadn’t noted it in the case file. And if he had a magic bullet, why was he talking about a delay on Monday?

“You have no idea what this magic bullet was?” I asked Elliot.

“Just what he told me, that he found something that was going to blow the state out of the water.”

“That doesn’t make sense if on Monday he was talking about delaying the trial.”

Elliot shrugged.

“I told you, he just wanted more time to be prepared. Probably more time to charge me more money. But I told him, when we make a movie, we pick a date, and that movie comes out on that date no matter what. I told him we were going to trial without delay.”

I nodded my head at Elliot’s no-delay mantra. But my mind was on Vincent’s missing laptop. Was the magic bullet in there? Had he saved his plan on the computer and not put it into the hard file? Was the magic bullet the reason for his murder? Had his discovery been so sensitive or dangerous that someone had killed him for it?

I decided to move on with Elliot while I had him in front of me.

“Well, Walter, I don’t have the magic bullet. But if Jerry could find it, then so can I. I will.”

I checked my watch and tried to give the outward appearance that I was not troubled by not knowing what was assuredly the key element in the case.

“Okay. Let’s talk about an alternate theory.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that the state has its theory and we should have ours. The state’s theory is that you were upset over your wife’s infidelity and what it would cost you to divorce her. So you went out to Malibu and killed both your wife and her lover. You then got rid of the murder weapon in some way – either hid it or threw it into the ocean – and then called nine-one-one to report that you had discovered the murders. That theory gives them all they need. Motive and opportunity. But to back it up they have the GSR and almost nothing else.”

“GSR?”

“Gunshot residue. Their evidentiary case – what little there is – firmly rests on it.”

“That test was a false positive!” Elliot said forcefully. “I never shot any weapon. And Jerry told me he was bringing in the top expert in the country to knock it all down. A woman from John Jay in New York. She’ll testify that the sheriff’s lab procedures were sloppy and lax, prone to come up with the false positive.”

I nodded. I liked the fervor of his denial. It could be useful if he testified.

“Yes, Dr. Arslanian – we still have her coming in,” I said. “But she’s no magic bullet, Walter. The prosecution will counter with their own expert saying exactly the opposite – that the lab is well run and that all procedures were followed. At best, the GSR will be a wash. The prosecution will still be leaning heavily on motive and opportunity.”

“What motive? I loved her and I didn’t even know about Rilz. I thought he was a faggot.”

I held my hands up in a slow-it-down gesture.

“Look, do yourself a favor, Walter, and don’t call him that. In court or anywhere else. If it is appropriate to reference his sexual orientation, you say you thought he was gay. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, the prosecution will simply say that you did know Johan Rilz was your wife’s lover, and they’ll trot out evidence and testimony that will indicate that a divorce forced by your wife’s infidelity would cost you in excess of a hundred million dollars and possibly dilute your control of the studio. They plant all of that in the jury’s minds and you start having a pretty good motivation for murder.”

“And it’s all bullshit.”

“And I’ll be able to potshot the hell out of it at trial. A lot of their positives can be turned into negatives. It will be a dance, Walter. We’ll trade punches. We’ll try to distort and destroy but ultimately they’ll land more punches than we can block and that’s why we’re the underdog and why it’s always good for the defense to float an alternate theory. We give the jury a plausible explanation for why these two people were killed. We throw suspicion away from you and at somebody else.”

“Like the one-armed man in The Fugitive?”

I shook my head.

“Not exactly.”

I remembered the movie and the television show before it. In both cases, there actually was a one-armed man. I was talking about a smoke screen, an alternate theory concocted by the defense because I wasn’t buying into Elliot’s “I-am-innocent rap” – at least not yet.

There was a buzzing sound and Elliot took a phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen.

“Walter, we have work here,” I said.

He didn’t take the call and reluctantly put the phone away. I continued.

“Okay, during the prosecution phase we are going to use cross-examination to make one thing crystal clear to the jury. That is, that once that GSR test came back positive on you, then-”

“False positive!”

“Whatever. The point is, once they had what they believed was a positive indication that you had very recently fired a weapon, all bets were off. A wide-open investigation became very tightly focused on one thing. You. It went from what they call a full-field investigation to a full investigation of you. So, what happened is that they left a lot of stones unturned. For example, Rilz had only been in this country four years. Not a single investigator went to Germany to check on his background and whether he had any enemies back there who wanted him dead. That’s just one thing. They didn’t thoroughly background the guy in L.A. either. This was a man who was allowed entry into the homes and lives of some of the wealthiest women in this city. Excuse my bluntness, but was he banging other married clients, or just your wife? Were there other important and powerful men he could have angered, or just you?”

Elliot didn’t respond to the crude questions. I had asked them that way on purpose, to see if it got a rise out of him or any reaction that contradicted his statements of loving his wife. But he showed no reaction either way.

“You see what I’m getting at, Walter? The focus, from almost the very start, was on you. When it’s the defense’s turn, we’re going to put it on Rilz. And from that we’ll grow doubts like stalks in a cornfield.”

Elliot nodded thoughtfully as he looked down at his reflection in the polished tabletop.

“But this can’t be the magic bullet Jerry told you about,” I said. “And there are risks in going after Rilz.”

Elliot raised his eyes to mine.

“Because the prosecutor knows this was a deficiency when the investigators brought in the case. He’s had five months to anticipate that we might go this way, and if he is good, as I am sure he is, then he’s been quietly getting ready for us to go in this direction.”

“Wouldn’t that come out in the discovery material?”

“Not always. There is an art to discovery. Most of the time it’s what is not in the discovery file that is important and that you have to watch out for. Jeffrey Golantz is a seasoned pro. He knows just what he has to put in and what he can keep for himself.”

“You know Golantz? You’ve gone to trial against him before?”

“I don’t know him and have never gone up against him. It’s his reputation I know. He’s never lost at trial. He’s something like twenty-seven and oh.”

I checked my watch. The time had passed quickly and I needed to keep things moving if I was going to pick my daughter up on time.

“Okay,” I said. “There are a couple other things we need to cover. Let’s talk about whether you testify.”

“That’s not a question. That’s a given. I want to clear my name. The jury will want me to say I did not do this.”

“I knew you were going to say that and I appreciate the fervor I see in your denials. But your testimony has to be more than that. It has to offer an explanation and that’s where we can get into trouble.”

“I don’t care.”

“Did you kill your wife and her lover?”

“No!”

“Then why did you go out there to the house?”

“I was suspicious. If she was there with somebody, I was going to confront her and throw him out on his ass.”

“You expect this jury to believe that a man who runs abillion-dollar movie studio took the afternoon off to drive out to Malibu to spy on his wife?”

“No, I’m no spy. I had suspicions and went out there to see for myself.”

“And to confront her with a gun?”

Elliot opened his mouth to speak but then hesitated and didn’t respond.

“You see, Walter?” I said. “You get up there and you open yourself up to anything – most of it not good.”

He shook his head.

“I don’t care. It’s a given. Guilty guys don’t testify. Everybody knows it. I’m testifying that I did not do this.”

He poked a finger at me with each syllable of the last sentence. I still liked his forcefulness. He was believable. Maybe he could survive on the stand.

“Well, ultimately it is your decision,” I said. “We’ll get you prepared to testify but we won’t make the decision until we get into the defense phase of the trial and we see where we stand.”

“It’s decided now. I’m testifying.”

His face began to turn a deep shade of crimson. I had to tread lightly here. I didn’t want him to testify but it was unethical for me to forbid it. It was a client decision, and if he ever claimed I took it away from him or refused to let him testify, I would have the bar swarming me like angry bees.

“Look, Walter,” I said. “You’re a powerful man. You run a studio and make movies and put millions of dollars on the line every day. I understand all of that. You are used to making decisions with nobody questioning them. But when we go into trial, I’m the boss. And while it will be you who makes this decision, I need to know that you are listening to me and considering my counsel. There’s no use going further if you don’t.”

He rubbed his hand roughly across his face. This was hard for him.

“Okay. I understand. We make a final decision on this later.”

He said it grudgingly. It was a concession he didn’t want to make. No man wants to relinquish his power to another.

“Okay, Walter,” I said. “I think that puts us on the same page.”

I checked my watch again. There were a few more things on my list and I still had some time.

“Okay, let’s move on,” I said.

“Please.”

“I want to add a couple people to the defense team. They will be ex-”

“No. I told you, the more lawyers a defendant has, the guiltier he looks. Look at Barry Bonds. Tell me people don’t think he’s guilty. He’s got more lawyers than teammates.”

“Walter, you didn’t let me finish. These are not lawyers I’m talking about, and when we go to trial, I promise it is going to be just you and me sitting at the table.”

“Then, who do you want to add?”

“A jury-selection consultant and somebody to work with you on image and testimony, all of that.”

“No jury consultant. Makes it look like you’re trying to rig things.”

“Look, the person I want to hire will be sitting out in the gallery. No one will notice her. She plays poker for a living and just reads people’s faces and looks for tells – little giveaways. That’s it.”

“No, I won’t pay for that mumbo jumbo.”

“Are you sure, Walter?”

I spent five minutes trying to convince him, telling him that picking the jury might be the most important part of the trial. I stressed that in circumstantial cases the priority had to be in picking jurors with open minds, ones who didn’t believe that just because the police or prosecution say something, it’s automatically true. I told him that I prided myself on my skills in picking a jury but that I could use the help of an expert who knew how to read faces and gestures. At the end of my plea Elliot simply shook his head.

“Mumbo jumbo. I will trust your skills.”

I studied him for a moment and decided we’d talked enough for the day. I would bring up the rest with him the next time. I had come to realize that while he was paying lip service to the idea that I was the trial boss, there was no doubt that he was firmly in charge of things.

And I couldn’t help but believe it might lead him straight to prison.

Twenty

By the time I dropped Patrick back at his car in downtown and headed to the Valley in heavy evening traffic, I knew I was going to be late and would tip off another confrontation with my ex-wife. I called to let her know but she didn’t pick up and I left a message. When I finally got to her apartment complex in Sherman Oaks it was almost seven forty and I found mother and daughter out at the curb, waiting. Hayley had her head down and was looking at the sidewalk. I noticed she had begun to adopt this posture whenever her parents came into close proximity of one another. It was like she was just standing on the transporter circle and waiting to be beamed far away from us.

I popped the locks as I pulled to a stop, and Maggie helped Hayley into the back with her school backpack and her overnight bag.

“Thanks for being on time,” she said in a flat voice.

“No problem,” I said, just to see if it would put the flares in her eyes. “Must be a hot date if you’re waiting out here for me.”

“No, not really. Parent-teacher conference at the school.”

That got through my defenses and hit me in the jaw.

“You should’ve told me. We could’ve gotten a babysitter and gone together.”

“I’m not a baby,” Hayley said from behind me.

“We tried that,” Maggie said from my left. “Remember? You jumped on the teacher so badly about Hayley’s math grade – the circumstance of which you knew nothing about – that they asked me to handle communications with the school.”

The incident sounded only vaguely familiar. It had been safely locked away somewhere in my oxycodone-corrupted memory banks. But I felt the burn of embarrassment on my face and neck. I didn’t have a comeback.

“I have to go,” Maggie said quickly. “Hayley, I love you. Be good for your father and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Okay, Mom.”

I stared out the window for a moment at my ex-wife before pulling away.

“Give ’em hell, Maggie McFierce,” I said.

I pulled away from the curb and put my window up. My daughter asked me why her mother was nicknamed Maggie McFierce.

“Because when she goes into battle, she always knows she is going to win,” I said.

“What battle?”

“Any battle.”

We drove silently down Ventura Boulevard and stopped for dinner at DuPar’s. It was my daughter’s favorite place to eat dinner because I always let her order pancakes. Somehow, the kid thought ordering breakfast for dinner was crossing some line and it made her feel rebellious and brave.

I ordered a BLT with Thousand Island dressing on it and, considering my last cholesterol count, figured I was the one being rebellious and brave. We did her homework together, which was a breeze for her and taxing for me, then I asked her what she wanted to do. I was willing to do anything – a movie, the mall, whatever she wanted – but I was hoping she’d just want to go home to my place and hang out, maybe pull out some old family scrapbooks and look at the yellowed photos.

She hesitated in responding and I thought I knew why.

“There’s nobody staying at my place if that’s what you’re worried about, Hay. The lady you met, Lanie? She doesn’t visit me anymore.”

“You mean like she’s not your girlfriend anymore?”

“She never was my girlfriend. She was a friend. Remember when I stayed in the hospital last year? I met her there and we became friends. We try to watch out for each other, and every now and then she comes over when she doesn’t want to stay home alone.”

It was the shaded truth. Lanie Ross and I had met in rehab during group therapy. We continued the relationship after leaving the program but never consummated it as a romance, because we were emotionally incapable of it. The addiction had cauterized those nerve endings and they were slow to come back. We spent time with each other and were there for each other – a two-person support group. But once we were back in the real world, I began to recognize in Lanie a weakness. I instinctively knew she wasn’t going to go the distance and I couldn’t make the journey with her. There are three roads that can be taken in recovery. There is the clean path of sobriety and there is the road to relapse. The third way is the fast out. It is when the traveler realizes that relapse is just a slow suicide and there is no reason to wait. I didn’t know which of those second two roads Lanie would go down but I couldn’t follow either one. We finally went our separate ways, the day after Hayley had met her.

“You know, Hayley, you can always tell me if you don’t like something or there’s something I am doing that is bothering you.”

“I know.”

“Good.”

We were silent for a few moments and I thought she wanted to say something else. I gave her the time to work up to it.

“Hey Dad?”

“What, baby?”

“If that lady wasn’t your girlfriend, does that mean you and Mom might get back together?”

The question left me without words for a few moments. I could see the hope in Hayley’s eyes and wanted her to see the same in mine.

“I don’t know, Hay. I messed things up pretty good when we tried that last year.”

Now the pain entered her eyes, like the shadows of clouds on the ocean.

“But I’m still working on it, baby,” I said quickly. “We just have to take it one day at a time. I’m trying to show her that we should be a family again.”

She didn’t respond. She looked down at her plate.

“Okay, baby?”

“Okay.”

“Did you decide what you want to do?”

“I think I just want to go home and watch TV.”

“Good. That’s what I want to do.”

We packed up her schoolbooks and I put money down on the bill. On the drive over the hill, she said her mother had told her I had gotten an important new job. I was surprised but happy.

“Well, it’s sort of a new job. I’m going back to work doing what I always did. But I have a lot of new cases and one big one. Did your mom tell you that?”

“She said you had a big case and everybody would be jealous but you would do real good.”

“She said that?”

“Yeah.”

I drove for a while, thinking about that and what it might mean. Maybe I hadn’t entirely blown things with Maggie. She still respected me on some level. Maybe that meant something.

“Um…”

I looked at my daughter in the rearview mirror. It was dark out now but I could see her eyes looking out the window and away from mine. Children are so easy to read sometimes. If only grown-ups were the same.

“What’s up, Hay?”

“Um, I was just wondering, sort of, why you can’t do what Mom does.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like putting bad people in jail. She said your big case is with a man who killed two people. It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys.”

I was quiet for a moment before finding my words.

“The man I am defending is accused of killing two people, Hayley. Nobody has proved he did anything wrong. Right now he’s not guilty of anything.”

She didn’t respond and her skepticism was almost palpably emanating from the backseat. So much for the innocence of children.

“Hayley, what I do is just as important as what your mother does. When somebody is accused of a crime in our country, they are entitled to defend themselves. What if at school you were accused of cheating and you knew that you didn’t cheat? Wouldn’t you want to be able to explain and defend yourself?”

“I think so.”

“I think so, too. It’s like that with the courts. If you get accused of a crime, you can have a lawyer like me help you explain and defend yourself. The laws are very complicated and it’s hard for someone to do it by themselves when they don’t know all the rules of evidence and things like that. So I help them. It doesn’t mean I agree with them or what they have done – if they have done it. But it’s part of the system. An important part.”

The explanation felt hollow to me as I said it. On an intellectual level I understood and believed the argument, every word of it. But on a father-daughter level I felt like one of my clients, squirming on the witness stand. How could I get her to believe it when I wasn’t sure I believed it anymore myself?

“Have you helped any innocent people?” my daughter asked.

This time I didn’t look in the mirror.

“A few, yes.”

It was the best I could honestly say.

“Mom’s made a lot of bad people go to jail.”

I nodded.

“Yes, she has. I used to think we were a great balancing act. What she did and what I did. Now…”

There was no need to finish the thought. I turned the radio on and hit the preset button that tuned in the Disney music channel.

The last thing I thought about on the drive home was that maybe grown-ups were just as easy to read as their children.

Twenty-one

After dropping my daughter off at school Thursday morning I drove directly to Jerry Vincent’s law offices. It was still early and traffic was light. When I got into the garage adjoining the legal center, I found that I almost had my pick of the place – most lawyers don’t get into the office until closer to nine, when court starts. I had all of them beat by at least an hour. I drove up to the second level so I could park on the same floor as the office. Each level of the garage had its own entrance into the building.

I drove by the spot where Jerry Vincent had been parked when he was shot to death and parked farther up the ramp. As I walked toward the bridge that connected the garage to the Legal Center, I noticed a parked Subaru station wagon with surfboard racks on the roof. There was a sticker on the back window that showed the silhouette of a surfer riding the nose of a board. It said ONE WORLD on the sticker.

The back windows on the wagon were darkly tinted and I couldn’t see in. I moved up to the front and looked into the car through the driver’s side window. I could see that the backseat had been folded flat. Half the rear area was cluttered with open cardboard boxes full of clothes and personal belongings. The other half served as a bed for Patrick Henson. I knew this because he was lying there asleep, his face turned from the light into the folds of a sleeping bag. And it was only then that I remembered something he had said during our first phone conversation when I had asked if he was interested in a job as my driver. He had told me he was living out of his car and sleeping in a lifeguard stand.

I raised my fist to knock on the window but then decided to let Patrick sleep. I wouldn’t need him until later in the morning. There was no need to roust him. I crossed into the office complex, made a turn and headed down a hallway toward the door marked with Jerry Vincent’s name. Standing in front of that door was Detective Bosch. He was listening to his music and waiting for me. He had his hands in his pockets and looked pensive, maybe even a little put out. I was pretty sure we had no appointment, so I didn’t know what he was upset about. Maybe it was the music. He pulled out the earbuds as I approached and put them away.

“What, no coffee?” I said by way of a greeting.

“Not today. I could tell you didn’t want it yesterday.”

He stepped aside so I could use a key to open the door.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

“If I said no, you’d ask anyway.”

“You’re probably right.”

I opened the door.

“So then, just ask the question.”

“All right. Well, you don’t seem like an iPod sort of guy to me. Who were you listening to there?”

“Somebody I am sure you never heard of.”

“I get it. It’s Tony Robbins, the self-help guru?”

Bosch shook his head, not rising to take the bait.

“Frank Morgan,” he said.

I nodded.

“The saxophone player? Yeah, I know Frank.”

Bosch looked surprised as we entered the reception area.

“You know him,” he said in a disbelieving tone.

“Yeah, I usually drop by and say hello when he plays at the Catalina or the Jazz Bakery. My father loved jazz and back in the fifties and sixties he was Frank’s lawyer. Frank got into a lot of trouble before he got straight. Ended up playing in San Quentin with Art Pepper – you’ve heard of him, right? By the time I met Frank, he didn’t need any help from a defense attorney. He was doing good.”

It took Bosch a moment to recover from my surprise knowledge of Frank Morgan, the obscure heir to Charlie Parker who for two decades squandered the inheritance on heroin. We crossed the reception area and went into the main office.

“So how’s the case going?” I asked.

“It’s going,” he said.

“I heard that before you came and saw me yesterday, you spent the night in Parker Center sweating a suspect. No arrest, though?”

I moved around behind Vincent’s desk and sat down. I started pulling the files out of my bag. Bosch stayed standing.

“Who told you that?” Bosch asked.

There wasn’t anything casual about the question. It was more of a demand. I acted nonchalant about it.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I must’ve heard it somewhere. Maybe a reporter. Who was the suspect?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Then, what is my business with you, Detective? Why are you here?”

“I came to see if you had any more names for me.”

“What happened to the names I gave you yesterday?”

“They’ve checked out.”

“How could you check them all out already?”

He leaned down and put both hands on the desk.

“Because I’m not working this case alone, okay? I have help and we checked out every one of your names. Every one of them is in jail, dead or was not worried about Jerry Vincent anymore. We also checked out several of the people he put away as a prosecutor. It’s a dead end.”

I felt a real sense of disappointment and realized that maybe I had put too much hope in the possibility of one of those names from the past belonging to the killer, and his arrest being the end of any threat to me.

“What about Demarco, the gun dealer?”

“I took that one myself and it didn’t take long to scratch him off the list. He’s dead, Haller. Died two years ago in his cell up at Corcoran. Internal bleeding. When they opened him up they found a toothbrush shiv lodged in the anal cavity. It was never determined whether he’d put it up there for safekeeping himself or somebody else did it for him, but it was a good lesson for the rest of the inmates. They even put up a sign. Never put sharp objects up your ass.”

I leaned back in my seat, as much repelled by the story as by the loss of a potential suspect. I recovered and tried to continue in nonchalant form.

“Well, what can I tell you, Detective? Demarco was my best shot. Those names were all I had. I told you I can’t reveal anything about active cases, but here’s the deal: There’s nothing to reveal.”

He shook his head in disbelief.

“I mean it, Detective. I’ve been through all of the active cases. There is nothing in any of them that constitutes a threat or reason for Vincent to feel threatened. There is nothing in any of them that connects to the FBI. There is nothing in any of them that indicates Jerry Vincent stumbled onto something that put him in harm’s way. Besides, when you find out bad things about your clients, they’re protected. So there’s nothing there. I mean, he wasn’t representing mobsters. He wasn’t representing drug dealers. There wasn’t anything in-”

“He represents murderers.”

“Accused murderers. And at the time of his death he had only one murder case – Walter Elliot – and there isn’t anything there. Believe me, I’ve looked.”

I wasn’t so sure I believed it as I said it but Bosch didn’t seem to notice. He finally sat down on the edge of the chair in front of the desk, and his face seemed to change. There was an almost desperate look to it.

“Jerry was divorced,” I offered. “Did you check out the ex-wife?”

“They got divorced nine years ago. She’s happily remarried and about to have her second kid. I don’t think a woman seven months pregnant is going to come gunning for an ex-husband she hasn’t talked to in nine years.”

“Any other relatives?”

“A mother in Pittsburgh. The family angle is dry.”

“Girlfriend?”

“He was banging his secretary but there was nothing serious there. And her alibi checks out. She was also banging his investigator. And they were together that night.”

I felt my face turning red. That sordid scenario wasn’t too far from my own current situation. At least Lorna, Cisco and I had been entangled at different times. I rubbed my face as if I were tired and hoped it would account for my new coloration.

“That’s convenient,” I said. “That they alibi each other.”

Bosch shook his head.

“It checks out through witnesses. They were with friends at a screening at Archway. That big-shot client of yours got them the invitation.”

I nodded and took an educated guess at something, then threw a zinger at Bosch.

“The guy you sweated in a room that first night was the investigator, Bruce Carlin.”

“Who told you that?”

“You just did. You had a classic love triangle. It would’ve been the place to start.”

“Smart lawyer. But like I said, it didn’t pan out. We spent a night on it and in the morning we were still at square one. Tell me about the money.”

He’d thrown a zinger right back at me.

“What money?”

“The money in the business accounts. I suppose you’re going to tell me they are protected territory, too.”

“Actually, I’d probably need to talk to the judge for an opinion on that, but I don’t need to bother. My case manager is one of the best accounts people I’ve ever run across. She’s been working with the books and she tells me they’re clean. Every penny Jerry took in is accounted for.”

Bosch didn’t respond, so I continued.

“Let me tell you something, Detective. When lawyers get into trouble, most of the time it’s because of the money. The books. It’s the one place where there are no gray areas. It’s the one place where the California bar loves to stick its nose in. I keep the cleanest books in the business because I don’t ever want to give them a reason to come after me. So I would know and Lorna, my case manager, would know if there was something in these books that didn’t add up. But there isn’t. I think Jerry probably paid himself a little too quickly but there is nothing technically wrong with that.”

I saw Bosch’s eyes light on something I had said.

“What?”

“What’s that mean, he ‘paid himself too quickly’?”

“It means – let me just start at the start. The way it works is you take on a client and you receive an advance. That money goes into the client trust account. It’s their money but you are holding it because you want to make sure you can get it when you earn it. You follow?”

“Yeah, you can’t trust your clients because they’re criminals. So you get the money up front and put it in a trust account. Then you pay yourself from it as you do the work.”

“More or less. Anyway, it’s in the trust and as you do the work, make appearances, prepare the case and so forth, you take your fees from the trust account. You move it into the operating account. Then, from the operating account you pay your own bills and salaries. Rent, secretary, investigator, car costs and so on and so forth. You also pay yourself.”

“Okay, so how did Vincent pay himself too quickly?”

“Well, I am not exactly saying he did. It’s a matter of custom and practice. But it looks from the books that he liked to keep a low balance in operating. He happened to have had a franchise client who paid a large advance up front and that money went through the trust and operating accounts pretty quickly. After costs, the rest went to Jerry Vincent in salary.”

Bosch’s body language indicated I was hitting on something that jibed with something else and was important to him. He had leaned slightly toward me and seemed to have tightened his shoulders and neck.

“Walter Elliot,” he said. “Was he the franchise?”

“I can’t give out that information but I think it’s an easy guess to make.”

Bosch nodded and I could see that he was working on something inside. I waited and he said nothing.

“How does this help you, Detective?” I finally asked.

“I can’t give out that information but I think it’s an easy guess to make.”

I nodded. He’d nailed me back.

“Look, we both have rules we have to follow,” I said. “We’re flip sides of the same coin. I’m just doing my job. And if there is nothing else I can help you with, I’ll get back to it.”

Bosch stared at me and seemed to be deciding something.

“Who did Jerry Vincent bribe on the Elliot case?” he finally asked.

The question came out of left field. I wasn’t expecting it but in the moments after he asked it, I realized that it was the question he had come to ask. Everything else up until this point had been window dressing.

“What, is that from the FBI?”

“I haven’t talked to the FBI.”

“Then, what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about a payoff.”

“To who?”

“That’s what I’m asking you.”

I shook my head and smiled.

“Look, I told you. The books are clean. There’s-”

“If you were going to bribe someone with a hundred thousand dollars, would you put it in your books?”

I thought about Jerry Vincent and the time I turned down the subtle quid pro quo on the Barnett Woodson case. I turned him down and ended up hanging a not-guilty verdict on him. It changed Vincent’s life and he was still thanking me for it from the grave. But maybe it didn’t change his ways in the years that followed.

“I guess you’re right,” I said to Bosch. “I wouldn’t do it that way. So what aren’t you telling me?”

“This is in confidence, Counselor. But I need your help and I think you need to know this in order to help me.”

“Okay.”

“Then, say it.”

“Say what?”

“That you will treat this information in confidence.”

“I thought I did. I will. I’ll keep it confidential.”

“Not even your staff. Just you.”

“Fine. Just me. Tell me.”

“You have Vincent’s work accounts. I have his private accounts. You said he paid himself the money from Elliot quickly. He-”

“I didn’t say it was Elliot. You did.”

“Whatever. The point is, that five months ago he accumulated a hundred grand in a personal investment account and a week later called his broker and told him he was cashing out.”

“You mean he took a hundred thousand out in cash?”

“That’s what I just said.”

“What happened to it?”

“I don’t know. But you can’t just go into a broker’s and pick up a hundred grand in cash. You have to order that kind of money. It took a couple days to put it together and then he went in to pick it up. His broker asked a lot of questions to make sure there wasn’t a security issue. You know, like somebody being held hostage while he went and got the money. A ransom or something like that. Vincent said everything was fine, that he needed the money to buy a boat and that if he made the deal in cash, he would get the best deal and save a lot of money.”

“So where’s the boat?”

“There is no boat. The story was a lie.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve checked all state transactions and asked questions all over Marina del Rey and San Pedro. We can’t find any boat. We’ve searched his home twice and reviewed his credit-card purchases. No receipts or records of boat-related expenses. No photos, no keys, no fishing poles. No coast guard registration – required on a transaction that large. He didn’t buy a boat.”

“What about Mexico?”

Bosch shook his head.

“This guy hadn’t left L.A. in nine months. He didn’t go down to Mexico and he didn’t go anywhere else. I’m telling you, he didn’t buy a boat. We would’ve found it. He bought something else and your client Walter Elliot probably knows what it was.”

I tracked his logic and could see it coming to the doorway of Walter Elliot. But I wasn’t going to open it with Bosch looking over my shoulder.

“I think you’ve got it wrong, Detective.”

“I don’t think so, Counselor.”

“Well, I can’t help you. I have no idea about this and have seen no indication of it in any of the books or records I’ve got. If you can connect this alleged bribe to my client, then arrest him and charge him. Otherwise, I’ll tell you right now he’s off limits. He’s not talking to you about this or anything else.”

Bosch shook his head.

“I wouldn’t waste my time trying to talk to him. He used his lawyer as cover on this and I’ll never be able to get past the attorney-client protection. But you should take it as a warning, Counselor.”

“Yeah, how’s that?”

“Simple. His lawyer got killed, not him. Think about it. And remember, that little trickle on the back of your neck and running down your spine? That’s the feeling you get when you know you have to look over your shoulder. When you know you’re in danger.”

I smiled back at him.

“Oh, is that what that is? I thought it was the feeling I get when I know I’m being bullshitted.”

“I’m only telling you the truth.”

“You’ve been running a game on me for two days. Spinning bullshit about bribes and the FBI. You’ve been trying to manipulate me and it’s been a waste of my time. You have to go now, Detective, because I have real work to do.”

I stood up and extended a hand toward the door. Bosch stood up but didn’t turn to go.

“Don’t kid yourself, Haller. Don’t make a mistake.”

“Thanks for the advice.”

Bosch finally turned and started to leave. But then he stopped and came back to the desk, pulling something from the inside pocket of his jacket as he approached.

It was a photograph. He put it down on the desk.

“You recognize that man?” Bosch asked.

I studied the photo. It was a grainy still taken off a video. It showed a man pushing out through the front door of an office building.

“This is the front entrance of the Legal Center, isn’t it?”

“Do you recognize him?”

The shot was taken at a distance and blown up, spreading the pixels of the image and making it unclear. The man in the photograph looked to me to be of Latin origin. He had dark skin and hair and had a Poncho Villa mustache, like Cisco used to wear. He wore a panama hat and an open-collared shirt beneath what appeared to be a leather sport coat. As I looked more closely at the photograph, I realized why it was the frame they had chosen to take from the surveillance video. The man’s jacket had pulled open as he’d pushed through the glass door. I could see what looked like the top of a pistol tucked into the belt line of his pants.

“Is that a gun? Is this the killer?”

“Look, can you answer one goddamn question without another question? Do you recognize this man? That’s all I want to know.”

“No, I don’t, Detective. Happy?”

“That’s another question.”

“Sorry.”

“You sure you haven’t seen him before?”

“Not a hundred percent. But that’s not a great photo you’ve got there. Where is it from?”

“A street camera on Broadway and Second. It sweeps the street and we got this guy for only a few seconds. This is the best we can do.”

I knew that the city had been quietly installing street cameras on main arteries in the last few years. Streets like Hollywood Boulevard were completely visually wired. Broadway would have been a likely candidate. It was always crowded during the day with pedestrians and traffic. It was also the street used most often for protest marches organized by the underclasses.

“Well, then I guess it’s better than having nothing. You think the hair and the mustache are a disguise?”

“Let me ask the questions. Could this guy be one of your new clients?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t met them all. Leave me the photo and I’ll show it to Wren Williams. She’d know better than me if he’s a client.”

Bosch reached down and took the photo back.

“It’s my only copy. When will she be in?”

“In about an hour.”

“I’ll come back later. Meantime, Counselor, watch yourself.”

He pointed a finger at me like it was a gun, then turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. I sat there thinking about what he had said and staring at the door, half expecting him to come back in and drop another ominous warning on me.

But when the door opened one minute later it was Lorna who entered.

“I just saw that detective in the hallway.”

“Yeah, he was here.”

“What did he want?”

“To scare me.”

“And?”

“He did a pretty good job.”

Twenty-two

Lorna wanted to convene another staff meeting and update me on things that had happened while I was out of the office visiting Malibu and Walter Elliot the day before. She even said I had a court hearing scheduled later on a mystery case that wasn’t on the calendar we had worked up. But I needed some time to think about what Bosch had just revealed and what it meant.

“Where’s Cisco?”

“He’s coming. He left early to meet one of his sources before he came into the office.”

“Did he have breakfast?”

“Not with me.”

“Okay, wait till he gets in and then we’ll go over to the Dining Car and have breakfast. We’ll go over everything then.”

“I already ate breakfast.”

“Then, you can do all the talking while we do all the eating.”

She put a phony frown on her face but went out into the reception office and left me alone. I got up from behind the desk and started to pace the office, hands in my pockets, trying to evaluate what the information from Bosch meant.

According to Bosch, Jerry Vincent had paid a sizable bribe to a person or persons unknown. The fact that the $100,000 came out of the Walter Elliot advance would indicate the bribe was somehow linked to the Elliot case, but this was by no means conclusive. Vincent could easily have used money from Elliot to pay a debt or a bribe relating to another case or something else entirely. It could have been a gambling debt he wanted to hide. The only fact was that Vincent had diverted the $100K from his account to an unknown destination and had wanted to hide the transaction.

Next to consider was the timing of the transaction and whether it was linked to Vincent’s murder. Bosch said the money transfer had gone down five months ago. Vincent’s murder was just three nights before and Elliot’s trial was set to begin in a week. Again there was nothing definitive. The distance between the transaction and the murder seemed to me to strain any possibility of a link between the two.

But still, I could not push the two apart, and the reason for this was Walter Elliot himself. Through the filter of Bosch’s information I now began to fill in some answers and to view my client – and myself – differently. I now saw Elliot’s confidence in his innocence and eventual acquittal coming possibly from his belief that it had already been bought and paid for. I now saw his unwillingness to consider delaying the trial as a timing issue relating to the bribe. And I saw his willingness to quickly allow me to carry the torch for Vincent without checking a single reference as a move made so he could get to the trial without delay. It had nothing to do with any confidence in my skills and tenacity. I had not impressed him. I had simply been the one who showed up. I was simply a lawyer who would work in the scheme of things. In fact, I was perfect. I was pulled out of the lost-and-found bin. I had been on the shelf and was hungry and ready. I could be dusted off and suited up and sent in to replace Vincent, no questions asked.

The reality jolt this sent through me was as uncomfortable as the first night in rehab. But I also understood that this self-knowledge could give me an edge. I was in the middle of some sort of play but at least now I knew it was a play. That was an advantage. I could now make it my own play.

There was a reason for the hurry-up to trial and I now thought I knew what it was. The fix was in. Money had been paid for a specific fix, and that fix was tied to the trial remaining on schedule. The next question in this string was why. Why must the trial take place as scheduled? I didn’t have an answer for that yet but I was going to get it.

I walked over to the windows and split the Venetian blinds with my hand. Out on the street I saw a van from Channel 5 parked with two wheels up on the curb. A camera crew and a reporter were on the sidewalk and they were getting ready to do a live shot, offering their viewers the latest on the Vincent case – the latest being the exact same report given the morning before: no arrests, no suspects, no news.

I left the window and stepped back into the middle of the room to continue my pacing. The next thing I needed to consider was the man in the photograph Bosch showed me. There was a contradiction at work here. The early indications of evidence were that Vincent had known the person who killed him and allowed him to get close. But the man in the photograph appeared to be in disguise. Would Jerry have lowered his window for the man in the photograph? The fact that Bosch had zeroed in on this man didn’t make sense when applied to what was known about the crime scene.

The calls from the FBI to Vincent’s cell phone were also part of the unknown equation. What did the bureau know and why had no agent come forward to Bosch? It might be that the agency was hiding its tracks. But I also knew that it might not want to come out of the shadows to reveal an ongoing investigation. If this was the case, I would need to step more carefully than I had been. If I ended up the least bit tainted in a federal corruption probe, I would never recover from it.

The last unknown to consider was the murder itself. Vincent had paid the bribe and was ready for trial as scheduled. Why had he become a liability? His murder certainly threatened the timetable and was an extreme response. Why was he killed?

There were too many questions and too many unknowns for now. I needed more information before I could draw any solid conclusions about how to proceed. But there was a basic conclusion I couldn’t stop myself from reaching. It seemed uncomfortably clear that I was being mushroomed by my own client. Elliot was keeping me in the dark about the interior machinations of the case.

But that could work both ways. I decided that I would do exactly what Bosch had asked: keep the information the detective had given me confidential. I would not share it with my staff and certainly, at this point, I would not question Walter Elliot about his knowledge of these things. I would keep my head above the dark waters of the case and keep my eyes wide open.

I shifted focus from my thoughts to what was directly in front of me. I was looking at the gaping mouth of Patrick Henson’s fish.

The door opened and Lorna reentered the office to find me standing there staring at the tarpon.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Thinking.”

“Well, Cisco’s here and we’ve got to go. You have a busy court schedule today and I don’t want to make you late.”

“Then, let’s go. I’m starved.”

I followed her out but not before glancing back at the big beautiful fish hanging on the wall. I thought I knew exactly how he felt.

Twenty-three

I had Patrick drive us over to the Pacific Dining Car, and Cisco and I ordered steak and eggs while Lorna had tea and honey. The Dining Car was a place where downtown power brokers liked to gather before a day of fighting it out in the glass towers nearby. The food was overpriced but good. It instilled confidence, made the downtown warrior feel like a heavy hitter.

As soon as the waiter took our order and left us, Lorna put her silverware to the side and opened a spiral-bound At-A-Glance calendar on the table.

“Eat fast,” she said. “You have a busy day.”

“Tell me.”

“All right, the easy stuff first.”

She flipped a couple of pages back and forth in the calendar, then proceeded.

“You have a ten a.m. in chambers with Judge Holder. She wants an updated client inventory.”

“She told me I had a week,” I protested. “Today’s Thursday.”

“Yeah, well, Michaela called and said the judge wants an interim update. I think she – the judge, that is – saw in the paper that you are continuing on as Elliot’s lawyer. She’s afraid you’re spending all your time on Elliot and none on the other clients.”

“That’s not true. I filed a motion for Patrick yesterday and Tuesday I took the sentencing on Reese. I mean, I haven’t even met all the clients yet.”

“Don’t worry, I have a hard-copy inventory back at the office for you to take with you. It shows who you’ve met, who you signed up and calendars on all of them. Just hit her with the paperwork and she won’t be able to complain.”

I smiled. Lorna was the best case manager in the business.

“Great. What else?”

“Then at eleven you have an in-chambers with Judge Stanton on Elliot.”

“Status conference?”

“Yes. He wants to know if you are going to be able to go next Thursday.”

“No, but Elliot won’t have it any other way.”

“Well, the judge will get to hear Elliot say that for himself. He’s requiring the defendant’s presence.”

That was unusual. Most status conferences were routine and quick. The fact that Stanton wanted Elliot there bumped this one up into a more important realm.

I thought of something and pulled out my cell phone.

“Did you let Elliot know? He might-”

“Put it away. He knows and he’ll be there. I talked to his assistant – Mrs. Albrecht – this morning and she knows he has to show and that the judge can revoke if he doesn’t.”

I nodded. It was a smart move. Threaten Elliot’s freedom as a means of making sure he shows up.

“Good,” I said. “That it?”

I wanted to get to Cisco to ask what else he had been able to find out about the Vincent investigation and whether his sources had mentioned anything about the man in the surveillance photo Bosch had shown me.

“Not by a long shot, my friend,” Lorna responded. “Now we get to the mystery case.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“We got a call yesterday afternoon from Judge Friedman’s clerk, who called Vincent’s office blind to see if there was anyone there taking over the cases. When the clerk was informed that you were taking over, she asked if you were aware of the hearing scheduled before Friedman today at two. I checked our new calendar and you didn’t have a two o’clock on there for today. So there is the mystery. You have a hearing at two for a case we not only don’t have on calendar but don’t have a file for either.”

“What’s the client’s name?”

“Eli Wyms.”

It meant nothing to me.

“Did Wren know the name?”

Lorna shook her head in a dismissive way.

“Did you check the dead cases? Maybe it was just misfiled.”

“No, we checked. There is no file anywhere in the office.”

“And what’s the hearing? Did you ask the clerk?”

Lorna nodded.

“Pretrial motions. Wyms is charged with attempted murder of a peace officer and several other weapons-related charges. He was arrested May second at a county park in Calabasas. He was arraigned, bound over and sent out to Camarillo for ninety days. He must’ve been found competent because the hearing today is to set a trial date and consider bail.”

I nodded. From the shorthand, I could read between the lines. Wyms had gotten into some sort of confrontation involving weapons with the Sheriff’s Department, which provided law enforcement services in the unincorporated area known as Calabasas. He was sent to the state’s mental evaluation center in Camarillo, where the shrinks took three months deciding whether he was a crazy man or competent to stand trial on the charges against him. The docs determined he was competent, meaning he knew right from wrong when he tried to kill a peace officer, most likely the sheriff’s deputy who confronted him.

It was a bare-bones sketch of the trouble Eli Wyms was in. There would be more detail in the file but we had no file.

“Is there any reference to Wyms in the trust account deposits?” I asked.

Lorna shook her head. I should’ve assumed she would be thorough and check the bank accounts in search of Eli Wyms.

“Okay, so it looks like maybe Jerry took him on pro bono.”

Attorneys occasionally provide legal services free of charge – pro bono – to indigent or special clients. Sometimes this is an altruistic endeavor and sometimes it’s because the client just won’t pay up. Either way, the lack of an advance from Wyms was understandable. The missing file was another story.

“You know what I was thinking?” Lorna said.

“What?”

“That Jerry had the file with him – in his briefcase – when he left Monday night.”

“And it got taken, along with his laptop and cell phone, by the killer.”

She nodded and I nodded back.

It made sense. He was spending the evening preparing for the week and he had a hearing Thursday on Wyms. Maybe he had run out of gas and thrown the file in his briefcase to look at later. Or maybe he kept the file with him because it was important in a way I couldn’t see yet. Maybe the killer wanted the Wyms file and not the laptop or the cell phone.

“Who’s the prosecutor on the case?”

“Joanne Giorgetti, and I’m way ahead of you. I called her yesterday and explained our situation and asked if she wouldn’t mind copying the discovery again for us. She said no problem. You can pick it up after your eleven with Judge Stanton and then have a couple hours to familiarize yourself with it before the hearing at two.”

Joanne Giorgetti was a top-flight prosecutor who worked in the crimes-against-law-officers section of the DA’s Office. She was also a longtime friend of my ex-wife’s and was my daughter’s basketball coach in the YMCA league. She had always been cordial and collegial with me, even after Maggie and I split up. It didn’t surprise me that she would run off a copy of the discovery materials for me.

“You think of everything, Lorna,” I said. “Why don’t you just take over Vincent’s practice and run with it? You don’t need me.”

She smiled at the compliment and I saw her eyes flick in the direction of Cisco. The read I got was that she wanted him to realize her value to the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates.

“I like working in the background,” she said. “I’ll leave center stage for you.”

Our plates were served and I spread a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce on both my steak and the eggs. Sometimes hot sauce was the only way I knew I was still alive.

I was finally able to hear what Cisco had come up with on the Vincent investigation but he dug into his meal and I knew better than to try to keep him from his food. I decided to wait and asked Lorna how things were working out with Wren Williams. She answered in a low voice, as if Wren were sitting nearby in the restaurant and listening.

“She’s not a lot of help, Mickey. She seems to have no idea of how the office worked or where Jerry put things. She’d be lucky to remember where she parked her car this morning. If you ask me, she was working there for some other reason.”

I could have told her the reason – as it had been told to me by Bosch – but decided to keep it to myself. I didn’t want to distract Lorna with gossip.

I looked over and saw Cisco mopping up the steak juice and hot sauce on his plate with a piece of toast. He was good to go.

“What do you have going today, Cisco?”

“I’m working on Rilz and his side of the equation.”

“How’s that going?”

“I think there’ll be a couple things you can use. You want to hear about it?”

“Not yet. I’ll ask when I need it.”

I didn’t want to be given any information about Rilz that I might have to turn over to the prosecution in discovery. At the moment, the less I knew, the better. Cisco understood this and nodded.

“I also have the Bruce Carlin debriefing this afternoon,” Cisco added.

“He wants two hundred an hour,” Lorna said. “Highway robbery, if you ask me.”

I waved off her protest.

“Just pay it. It’s a onetime expense and he probably has information we can use, and that might save Cisco some time.”

“Don’t worry, we’re paying him. I’m just not happy about it. He’s gouging us because he knows he can.”

“Technically, he’s gouging Elliot and I don’t think he’s going to care.”

I turned back to my investigator.

“You have anything new on the Vincent case?”

Cisco updated me with what he had. It consisted mostly of forensic details, suggesting that the source he had inside the investigation came from that side of the equation. He said Vincent had been shot twice, both times in the area of the left temple. The spread on the entry wounds was less than an inch, and powder burns on the skin and hair indicated the weapon was nine to twelve inches away when fired. Cisco said this indicated that the killer had fired two quick shots and was fairly skilled. It was unlikely that an amateur would fire twice quickly and be able to cluster the impacts.

Additionally, Cisco said, the slugs never left the body and were recovered during the autopsy conducted late the day before.

“They were twenty-fives,” he said.

I had handled countless cross-examinations of tool marks and ballistics experts. I knew my bullets and I knew a.25 caliber round came out of a small weapon but could do great damage, especially if fired into the cranial vault. The slugs would ricochet around inside. It would be like putting the victim’s brain in a blender.

“They know the exact weapon yet?”

I knew that by studying the markings – lands and grooves – on the slugs they would be able to tell what kind of gun fired the rounds. Just as with the Malibu murders, in which the investigators knew what gun had been used, even though they didn’t have it.

“Yeah. A twenty-five caliber Beretta Bobcat. Nice and small, you could almost hide it in your hand.”

A completely different weapon than the one used to kill Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz.

“So what’s all of this tell us?”

“It’s a hitter’s gun. You take it when you know it’s going to be a head shot.”

I nodded my agreement.

“So this was planned. The killer knew just what he was going to do. He waits in the garage, sees Jerry come out and comes right up to the car. The window goes down or it was already down, and the guy pops Jerry twice in the head, then reaches in for the briefcase that has the laptop, the cell phone, the portfolio and, we think, the Eli Wyms file.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, what about the suspect?”

“The guy they sweated the first night?”

“No, that was Carlin. They cut him loose.”

Cisco looked surprised.

“How’d you find out it was Carlin?”

“Bosch told me this morning.”

“Are you saying they have another suspect?”

I nodded.

“He showed me a photo of a guy coming out of the building at the time of the shooting. He had a gun and was wearing an obvious disguise.”

I saw Cisco’s eyes flare. It was a point of professional pride that he provide me with information like that. He didn’t like it happening the other way around.

“He didn’t have a name, just the photo,” I said. “He wanted to know if I had ever seen the guy before or if it was one of the clients.”

Cisco’s eyes darkened as he realized that his inside source was holding out on him. If I’d told him about the FBI calls, he probably would have picked the table up and thrown it through the window.

“I’ll see what I can find out,” he said quietly through a tight jaw.

I looked at Lorna.

“Bosch said he was coming back later to show the photo to Wren.”

“I’ll tell her.”

“Make sure you look at it, too. I want everybody to be on alert for this guy.”

“Okay, Mickey.”

I nodded. We were finished. I put a credit card on the tab and pulled out my cell phone to call Patrick. Calling my driver reminded me of something.

“Cisco, there’s one other thing I want you to try to do today.”

Cisco looked at me, happy to move on from the idea that I had a better source on the investigation than he did.

“Go to Vincent’s liquidator and see if he’s sitting on one of Patrick’s surfboards. If he is, I want it back for Patrick.”

Cisco nodded.

“I can do that. No problem.”

Twenty-four

Waylaid by the slow-moving elevators in the CCB, I was four minutes late when I walked into Judge Holder’s courtroom and hustled through the clerk’s corral toward the hallway leading to her chambers. I didn’t see anyone and the door was closed. I knocked lightly and I heard the judge call for me to enter.

She was behind her desk and wearing her black robe. This told me she probably had a hearing in open court scheduled soon and my being late was not a good thing.

“Mr. Haller, our meeting was set for ten o’clock. I believe you were given proper notice of this.”

“Yes, Your Honor, I know. I’m sorry. The elevators in this building are-”

“All lawyers take the same elevators and most seem to be on time for meetings with me.”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Did you bring your checkbook?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Well, we can do this one of two ways,” the judge said. “I can hold you in contempt of court, fine you and let you explain yourself to the California bar, or we can go informal and you take out your checkbook and make a donation to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. It’s one of my favorite charities. They do good things for sick children.”

This was incredible. I was being fined for being four minutes late. The arrogance of some judges was amazing. I somehow was able to swallow my outrage and speak.

“I like the idea of helping out sick children, Your Honor,” I said. “How much do I make it out for?”

“As much as you want to contribute. And I will even send it in for you.”

She pointed to a stack of paperwork on the left side of her desk. I saw two other checks, most likely stroked out by two other poor bastards who had run afoul of the judge this week. I leaned down and rummaged through the front pocket of my backpack until I found my checkbook. I wrote a check for $250 to Make-A-Wish, tore it out and handed it across the desk. I watched the judge’s eyes as she looked at the amount I was donating. She nodded approvingly and I knew I was all right.

“Thank you, Mr. Haller. They’ll be sending you a receipt for your taxes in the mail. It will go to the address on the check.”

“Like you said, they do good work.”

“Yes, they do.”

The judge put the check on top of the two others and then turned her attention back to me.

“Now, before we go over the cases, let me ask you a question,” she said. “Do you know if the police are making any headway on the investigation of Mr. Vincent’s death?”

I hesitated a moment, wondering what I should be telling the chief judge of the superior court.

“I’m not really in the loop on that, Judge,” I said. “But I was shown a photograph of a man I assume they’re looking at as a suspect.”

“Really? What kind of photo?”

“Like a surveillance shot from out on the street. A guy, and it looks like he has a gun. I think they matched it up timewise to the shooting in the garage.”

“Did you recognize the man?”

I shook my head.

“No, the shot was too grainy. It looked like he might have had a disguise on anyway.”

“When was this?”

“The night of the shooting.”

“No, I mean, when was it that you were shown this photo?”

“Just this morning. Detective Bosch came to the office with it.”

The judge nodded. We were quiet for a moment and then the judge got to the point of the meeting.

“Okay, Mr. Haller, why don’t we talk about clients and cases now?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

I reached down and unzipped my bag, taking out the scorecard Lorna had prepared for me.

Judge Holder kept me at her desk for the next hour while I went over every case and client, detailing the status and conversations I’d had with each. By the time she finally let me go, I was late for my eleven o’clock hearing in Judge Stanton’s chambers.

I left Holder’s court and didn’t bother with the elevators. I hit the exit stairs and charged up two flights to the floor where Stanton’s courtroom was located. I was running eight minutes late and wondered if it was going to cost me another donation to another judge’s favorite charity.

The courtroom was empty but Stanton’s clerk was in her corral. She pointed with a pen to the open door to the hallway leading to the judge’s chambers.

“They’re waiting for you,” she said.

I quickly moved by her and down the hall. The door to the chambers was open and I saw the judge sitting behind his desk. To his left rear side was a stenographer and across the desk from him were three chairs. Walter Elliot was sitting in the chair to the right, the middle chair was empty and Jeffrey Golantz was in the third. I had never met the prosecutor before but he was recognizable because I had seen his face on TV and in the newspapers. In the last few years, he had successfully handled a series of high-profile cases and was making a name for himself. He was the undefeated up-and-comer in the DA’s Office.

I loved going up against undefeated prosecutors. Their confidence often betrayed them.

“Sorry I’m late, Your Honor,” I said as I slid into the empty seat. “Judge Holder called me into a hearing and she ran long.”

I hoped that mentioning the chief judge as the reason for my tardiness would keep Stanton from further assaulting my checkbook and it seemed to work.

“Let’s go on the record now,” he said.

The stenographer leaned forward and put her fingers on the keys of her machine.

“In the matter of California versus Walter Elliot, we are in chambers today for a status conference. Present is the defendant, along with Mr. Golantz for the state and Mr. Haller, who is here in the late Mr. Vincent’s stead.”

The judge had to break there to give the stenographer the proper spellings of all the names. He spoke in an authoritative voice that a decade on the bench often gives a jurist. The judge was a handsome man with a full head of bristly gray hair. He was in good shape, the black robe doing little to disguise his well-developed shoulders and chest.

“So,” he then said, “we’re scheduled in this matter for voir dire next Thursday – a week from today – and I notice, Mr. Haller, that I have received no motion from you to continue the matter while you get up to speed on the case.”

“We don’t want a delay,” Elliot said.

I reached over and put my hand on my client’s forearm and shook my head.

“Mr. Elliot, in this session I want you to let your lawyer do the talking,” the judge said.

“Sorry, Your Honor,” I said. “But the message is the same whether from me or directly from Mr. Elliot. We want no delay. I have spent the week getting up to speed and I will be prepared to begin jury selection next Thursday.”

The judge squinted his eyes at me.

“You sure about that, Mr. Haller?”

“Absolutely. Mr. Vincent was a good lawyer and he kept thorough records. I understand the strategy he built and will be ready to go on Thursday. The case has my full attention. That of my staff as well.”

The judge leaned back in his high-backed chair and swiveled side to side as he thought. He finally looked at Elliot.

“Mr. Elliot, it turns out you do get to speak after all. I would like to hear directly from you that you are in full agreement with your new attorney here and that you understand the risk you run, bringing in a fresh lawyer so close to the start of trial. It’s your freedom at stake here, sir. Let’s hear what you have to say about it.”

Elliot leaned forward and spoke in a defiant tone.

“Judge, first of all, I am in complete agreement. I want to get this thing to trial so I can blow the district attorney here right out of the water. I am an innocent man being persecuted and prosecuted for something I did not do. I don’t want to spend a single extra day as the accused, sir. I loved my wife and I’ll miss her forever. I didn’t kill her and it pierces my heart when I hear the people on TV saying these vile things about me. What hurts the most is knowing that the real killer is out there someplace. The sooner Mr. Haller gets to prove my innocence to the world, the better.”

It was O.J. 101 but the judge studied Elliot and nodded thoughtfully, then turned his attention to the prosecutor.

“Mr. Golantz? What is the state’s view of this?”

The deputy district attorney cleared his throat. The word to describe him was telegenic. He was handsome and dark and his eyes seemed to carry the very wrath of justice in them.

“Your Honor, the state is prepared for trial and has no objection to proceeding on schedule. But I would ask that, if Mr. Elliot is so sure about proceeding without delay, he formally waive any appellate redress in this regard should things not go as he predicts in trial.”

The judge swiveled his chair so that his focus could go back on me.

“What about that, Mr. Haller?”

“Your Honor, I don’t think it’s necessary for my client to waive any protections that might be afforded to-”

“I don’t mind,” Elliot said, cutting in on me. “I’ll waive whatever you damn well please. I want to go to trial.”

I looked sharply at him. He looked at me and shrugged.

“We’re going to win this thing,” he explained.

“You want to take a moment in the corridor, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

“Thank you, Judge.”

I got up and signaled Elliot up.

“Come with me.”

We walked out into the short hallway that led to the courtroom. I closed the door behind us. Elliot spoke before I could, underlining the problem.

“Look, I want this thing over and I-”

“Shut up!” I said in a forced whisper.

“What?”

“You heard me. Shut the fuck up. You understand? I am sure you are quite used to talking whenever you want and having everybody listen to every brilliant word you say. But you are not in Hollywood anymore, Walter. You aren’t talking make-believe movies with this week’s mogulito. You understand what I’m saying? This is real life. You don’t speak unless you are spoken to. If you have something to say otherwise, then you whisper it into my ear and if I think it is worth repeating, then I – not you – will say it to the judge. You got it?”

It took Elliot a long time to answer. His face turned dark and I understood that I might be about to lose the franchise. But in the moment I didn’t care. What I had said needed to be said. It was a welcome-to-my-world speech that was long overdue.

“Yes,” he finally said, “I get it.”

“Good, then remember it. Now, let’s go back in there and see if we can avoid giving away your right to appeal if you happen to get convicted because I fucked up by being unprepared for trial.”

“That won’t happen. I have faith in you.”

“I appreciate that, Walter. But the truth is, you have no basis for that faith. And whether you do or don’t, it doesn’t mean we have to give anything away. Let’s go back in now, and let me do the talking. That’s why I get the big bucks, right?”

I clapped him on the shoulder. We went in and sat back down. And Walter didn’t say another word. I argued that he shouldn’t have to give away his right to appellate review just because he wanted the speedy trial he was entitled to. But Judge Stanton sided with Golantz, ruling that if Elliot declined the offer to delay the trial, he couldn’t come complaining after a conviction that his attorney hadn’t had enough time to prepare. Faced with the ruling, Elliot stuck to his guns and declined the delay, as I knew he would. That was okay with me. Under the Byzantine rules of law, almost nothing was safe from appeal. I knew that if necessary, Elliot would still be able to appeal the ruling the judge had just made.

We moved on to what the judge called housekeeping after that. The first order of business was to have both sides sign off on a motion from Court TV to be allowed to broadcast segments of the trial live on its daily programming. Neither I nor Golantz objected. After all, it was free advertising – me for new clients, Golantz to further his political aspirations. And as far as Walter Elliot was concerned, he whispered to me that he wanted the cameras there to record his not-guilty verdict.

Next the judge outlined the schedule for submitting final discovery and witness lists. He gave us until Monday on the discovery materials and the witness lists were due the day after that.

“No exceptions, gentlemen,” he said. “I look dimly on surprise additions after deadline.”

This was not going to be a problem from the defense’s side of the aisle. Vincent had already made two previous discovery filings and there was very little new since then for me to share with the prosecution. Cisco Wojciechowski was doing a good job of keeping me in the dark as to what he was finding out about Rilz. And what I didn’t know I couldn’t put in the discovery file.

When it comes to witnesses, my plan was to give Golantz the usual runaround. I would be submitting a list of potential witnesses, naming every law officer and forensic tech mentioned in the sheriff’s reports. That was standard operating procedure. Golantz would have to puzzle over who I really would call to testify and who was important to the defense’s case.

“All right, guys, I’ve probably got a courtroom full of lawyers out there waiting for me,” Stanton finally said. “Are we clear on everything?”

Golantz and I nodded our heads. I couldn’t help but wonder if either the judge or the prosecutor was the recipient of the bribe. Was I sitting with the man who would turn the case my client’s way? If so, he had done nothing to give himself away. I finished the meeting thinking that Bosch had it all wrong. There was no bribe. There was a hundred-thousand-dollar boat somewhere in a harbor in San Diego or Cabo and it had Jerry Vincent’s name on the title.

“Okay, then,” the judge said. “We’ll get this going next week. We can talk about ground rules Thursday morning. But I want to make it clear right now, I’m going to run this trial like a well-oiled machine. No surprises, no shenanigans, no funny stuff. Again, are we clear?”

Golantz and I both agreed once more that we were clear. But the judge swiveled his chair and looked directly at me. He squinted his eyes in suspicion.

“I’m going to hold you to that,” he said.

It seemed to be a message intended only for me, a message that would never show on the stenographer’s record.

How come, I wondered, it’s always the defense attorney who gets the judicial squint?

Twenty-five

I got to Joanne Giorgetti’s office shortly before the noon break. I knew that getting there a minute after twelve would be too late. The DA’s Offices literally empty during the lunch hour, the inhabitants seeking sunlight, fresh air and sustenance outside the CCB. I told the receptionist I had an appointment with Giorgetti and she made a call. Then she buzzed the door lock and told me to go back.

Giorgetti had a small, windowless office with most of the floor space taken up by cardboard file boxes. It was the same way in every prosecutor’s office I had ever been in, big or small. She was at her desk but was hidden behind a wall of stacked motions and files. I carefully reached over the wall to shake her hand.

“How’s it going, Joanne?”

“Not bad, Mickey. How about you?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“You just got a lot of cases, I hear.”

“Yeah, quite a few.”

The conversation was stilted. I knew she and Maggie were tight, and there was no telling whether my ex-wife had opened up to her about my difficulties in the past year.

“So you’re here for Wyms?”

“That’s right. I didn’t even know I had the case till this morning.”

She handed me a file with an inch-thick stack of documents in it.

“What do you think happened to Jerry’s file?” she asked.

“I think maybe the killer took it.”

She made a cringing face.

“Weird. Why would the killer take this file?”

“Probably unintended. The file was in Jerry’s briefcase along with his laptop, and the killer just took the whole thing.”

“Hmmm.”

“Well, is there anything unusual about this case? Anything that would have made Jerry a target?”

“I don’t think so. Just your usual everyday crazy-with-a-gun sort of thing.”

I nodded.

“Have you heard anything about a federal grand jury taking a look at the state courts?”

She knitted her eyebrows.

“Why would they be looking at this case?”

“I’m not saying they were. I’ve been out of the loop for a while. I was wondering what you’ve heard.”

She shrugged.

“Just the usual rumors on the gossip circuit. Seems like there’s always a federal investigation of something.”

“Yeah.”

I said nothing else, hoping she would fill me in on the rumor. But she didn’t and it was time to move on.

“The hearing today is to set a trial date?” I asked.

“Yes, but I assume you’ll want a continuance so you can get up to speed.”

“Well, let me go look at the file during lunch and I’ll let you know if that’s what the plan is.”

“Okay, Mickey. But just so you know. I won’t oppose a continuance, considering what happened with Jerry.”

“Thanks, CoJo.”

She smiled as I used the name her young basketball players called her by at the Y.

“You seen Maggie lately?” she asked.

“Saw her last night when I went to pick up Hayley. She seems to be doing okay. Have you seen her?”

“Just at basketball practice. But she usually sits there with her nose in a file. We used to go out after with the girls to Hamburger Hamlet but Maggie’s been too busy.”

I nodded. She and Maggie had been foxhole buddies since day one, coming up through the ranks of the prosecutor’s office. Competitors but not competitive with each other. But time goes by and distances work their way into any relationship.

“Well, I’ll take this and look it all over,” I said. “The hearing’s with Friedman at two, right?”

“Yeah, two. I’ll see you then.”

“Thanks for doing this, Joanne.”

“No problem.”

I left the DA’s Office and waited ten minutes to get on an elevator with the lunch crowd. The last one on, I rode down with my face two inches from the door. I hated the elevators more than anything else in the entire Criminal Courts Building.

“Hey, Haller.”

It was a voice from behind me. I didn’t recognize it but it was too crowded for me to turn around to see who it was.

“What?”

“Heard you scored all of Vincent’s cases.”

I wasn’t going to discuss my business in a crowded elevator. I didn’t respond. We finally hit bottom, and the doors spread open. I stepped out and looked back for the person who had spoken.

It was Dan Daly, another defense attorney who was part of a coterie of lawyers who took in Dodgers games occasionally and martinis routinely at Four Green Fields. I had missed the last season of booze and baseball.

“How ya doin’, Dan?”

We shook hands, an indication of how long it had been since we’d seen each other.

“So, who’d you grease?”

He said it with a smile but I could tell there was something behind it. Maybe a dose of jealousy over my scoring the Elliot case. Every lawyer in town knew it was a franchise case. It could pay top dollar for years – first the trial and then the appeals that would come after a conviction.

“Nobody,” I said. “Jerry put me in his will.”

We started walking toward the exit doors. Daly’s ponytail was longer and grayer. But what was most notable was that it was intricately braided. I hadn’t seen that before.

“Then, lucky you,” Daly said. “Let me know if you need a second chair on Elliot.”

“He wants only one lawyer at the table, Dan. He said no dream team.”

“Well, then keep me in mind as a writer in regard to the rest.”

This meant he was available to write appeals on any convictions my new set of clients might incur. Daly had forged a solid reputation as an expert appeals man with a good batting average.

“I’ll do that,” I said. “I’m still reviewing everything.”

“Good enough.”

We came through the doors and I could see the Lincoln at the curb, waiting. Daly was going the other way. I told him I’d keep in touch.

“We miss you at the bar, Mick,” he said over his shoulder.

“I’ll drop by,” I called back.

But I knew I wouldn’t drop by, that I had to stay away from places like that.

I got in the back of the Lincoln – I tell my drivers never to get out and open the door for me – and told Patrick to take me over to Chinese Friends on Broadway. I told him to drop me and go get lunch on his own. I needed to sit and read and didn’t want any conversation.

I got to the restaurant between the first and second waves of patrons and waited no more than five minutes for a table. Wanting to get to work immediately, I ordered a plate of the fried pork chops right away. I knew they would be perfect. They were paper-thin and delicious and I’d be able to eat them with my fingers without taking my eyes off the Wyms documents.

I opened the file Joanne Giorgetti had given me. It contained copies only of what the prosecutor had turned over to Jerry Vincent under the rules of discovery – primarily sheriff’s documents relating to the incident, arrest and follow-up investigation. Any notes, strategies or defense documents that Vincent had generated were lost with the original file.

The natural starting point was the arrest report, which included the initial and most basic summary of what had transpired. As is often the case, it started with 911 calls to the county communications-and-dispatch center. Multiple reports of gunfire came in from a neighborhood next to a park in Calabasas. The calls fell under Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction because Calabasas was in an unincorporated area north of Malibu and near the western limits of the county.

The first deputy to respond was listed on the report as Todd Stallworth. He worked the night shift out of the Malibu substation and had been dispatched at 10:21 p.m. to the neighborhood off Las Virgenes Road. From there he was directed into the nearby Malibu Creek State Park, where the shots were being fired. Now hearing shots himself, Stallworth called for backup and drove into the park to investigate.

There were no lights in the rugged mountain park, as it was posted CLOSED AT SUNSET. As Stallworth entered on the main road, the headlights of his patrol car picked up a reflection, and the deputy saw a vehicle parked in a clearing ahead. He put on his spotlight and illuminated a pickup truck with its tailgate down. There was a pyramid of beer cans on the tailgate and what looked like a gun bag with several rifle barrels protruding from it.

Stallworth stopped his car eighty yards from the pickup and decided to wait until backup arrived. He was on the radio to the Malibu station, describing the pickup truck and saying that he was not close enough to read its license plate, when suddenly there was a gunshot and the searchlight located above the side-view mirror exploded with the bullet’s impact. Stallworth killed the rest of the car’s lights and bailed out, crawling into the cover of some bushes that lined the clearing. He used his handheld radio to call for additional backup and the special weapons and tactics team.

A three-hour standoff ensued, with the gunman hidden in the wooded terrain near the clearing. He fired his weapon repeatedly but apparently his aim was at the sky. No deputies were struck by bullets. No other vehicles were damaged. Finally, a deputy in black SWAT gear worked his way close enough to the pickup truck to read the license plate by using high-powered binoculars equipped with night-vision lenses. The plate number led to the name Eli Wyms, which in turn led to a cell-phone number. The shooter answered on the first ring and a SWAT team negotiator began a conversation.

The shooter was indeed Eli Wyms, a forty-four-year-old housepainter from Inglewood. He was characterized in the arrest report as drunk, angry and suicidal. Earlier in the day, he had been kicked out of his home by his wife, who informed him that she was in love with another man. Wyms had driven to the ocean and then north to Malibu and then over the mountains to Calabasas. He saw the park and thought it looked like a good place to stop the truck and sleep, but he drove on by and bought a case of beer at a gas station near the 101 Freeway. He then turned around and went back to the park.

Wyms told the negotiator that he started shooting because he heard noises in the dark and was afraid. He believed he was shooting at rabid coyotes that wanted to eat him. He said he could see their red eyes glowing in the dark. He said he shot out the spotlight on the first patrol car that arrived because he was afraid the light would give his position away to the animals. When asked about the shot from eighty yards, he said he had qualified as an expert marksman during the first war in Iraq.

The report estimated that Wyms fired at least twenty-seven times while deputies were on the scene and dozens of times before that. Investigators eventually collected a total of ninety-four spent bullet casings.

Wyms did not surrender that night until he ran out of beer. Shortly after crushing the last empty in his hand, he told the cell-phone negotiator that he would trade one rifle for a six-pack of beer. He was turned down. He then announced that he was sorry and ready for the incident and everything else to be over, that he was going to kill himself and literally go out with a bang. The negotiator tried to talk him out of it and kept the conversation going while a two-man SWAT unit moved through the heavy terrain toward his position in a dense stand of eucalyptus trees. But soon the negotiator heard snoring on the cell line. Wyms had passed out.

The SWAT team moved in and Wyms was captured without a shot being fired by law enforcement. Order was restored. Since Deputy Stallworth had taken the initial call and was the one fired upon, he was given the collar. The gunman was placed in Stallworth’s squad car and transported to the Malibu substation and jailed.

Other documents in the file continued the Eli Wyms saga. At his arraignment the morning after his arrest, Wyms was declared indigent and assigned a public defender. The case moved slowly in the system, with Wyms being held in the Men’s Central Jail. But then Vincent stepped in and offered his services pro bono. His first order of business was to ask for and receive a competency evaluation of his client. This had the effect of slowing the case down even further as Wyms was carted off to the state hospital in Camarillo for a ninety-day psych evaluation.

That evaluation period was over and the reports were now in. All of the doctors who examined, tested and talked to Wyms in Camarillo had agreed that he was competent and ready to stand trial.

In the hearing scheduled before Judge Mark Friedman at two, a trial date would be set and the case clock would begin to tick again. To me it was all a formality. One read of the case documents and I knew there would be no trial. What the day’s hearing would do was set the time period I would have to negotiate a plea agreement for my client.

It was a cut-and-dried case. Wyms would enter a plea and probably face a year or two of incarceration and mental-health counseling. The only question I got from my survey of the file was why Vincent had taken the case in the first place. It didn’t fall into line with the kinds of cases he usually handled, with paying or higher-profile clients. There didn’t seem to be much of a challenge to the case either. It was routine and Wyms’s crime wasn’t even unusual. Was it simply a case Jerry took on to satisfy a need for pro bono work? It seemed to me if that was the case that Vincent could have found something more interesting, which would pay off in other ways, such as publicity. The Wyms case had initially drawn media attention because of the public spectacle in the park. But when it came to trial or disposition of the case, it would likely fly well below the media radar.

My next thought was to suspect that there was a connection to the Elliot case. Vincent had found some sort of link.

But on first read I couldn’t nail it down. There were two general connections in that the Wyms incident had happened less than twelve hours before the beach house murders and both crimes had occurred in the Sheriff’s Department’s Malibu district. But those connections didn’t hold up to further scrutiny. In terms of topography they weren’t remotely connected. The murders were on the beach and the Wyms shooting spree took place far inland, in the county park on the other side of the mountains. As far as I could recall, none of the names in the Wyms file were mentioned in the Elliot materials I had reviewed. The Wyms incident happened on the night shift; the Elliot murders on the day shift.

I couldn’t nail down any specific connection and in great frustration closed the file with the question unanswered. I checked my watch and saw I had to get back to the CCB if I wanted time to meet my client in lockup before the two o’clock hearing.

I called Patrick to come get me, paid for lunch and stepped out to the curb. I was on my cell, talking with Lorna, when the Lincoln pulled up and I jumped into the back.

“Has Cisco met with Carlin yet?” I asked her.

“No, that’s at two.”

“Have Cisco ask him about the Wyms case, too.”

“Okay, what about it?”

“Ask him why Vincent even took it.”

“You think they’re connected? Elliot and Wyms?”

“I think it but I don’t see it.”

“Okay, I’ll tell him.”

“Anything else going on?”

“Not at the moment. You’re getting a lot of calls from the media. Who’s this guy Jack McEvoy?”

The name rang a bell but I couldn’t place it.

“I don’t know. Who is he?”

“He works at the Times. He called up all huffy about not hearing from you, saying you had an exclusive deal with him.”

Now I remembered. The two-way street.

“Don’t worry about him. I haven’t heard from him either. What else?”

“Court TV wants to sit down and talk about Elliot. They’re going to carry live coverage throughout the trial, making it their feature, and so they’re hoping to get daily commentary from you at the end of court each day.”

“What do you think, Lorna?”

“I think it’s like free national advertising. You better do it. They told me they’re giving the trial its own logo wrap at the bottom of the screen. ‘Murder in Malibu,’ they’re calling it.”

“Then, set it up. What else?”

“Well, while we’re on the subject, I got a notice a week ago that your bus bench contract expires at the end of the month. I was just going to let it go because there was no money, but now you’re back and you’ve got money. Should we renew?”

For the past six years I had advertised on bus benches strategically located in high-crime andtraffic locations around the city. Although I had dropped out for the past year, the benches still spawned a steady stream of calls, all of which Lorna deferred or referred.

“That’s a two-year contract, right?”

“Yes.”

I made a quick decision.

“Okay, renew it. Anything else?”

“That’s it from here. Oh, wait. One other thing. The landlord for the building came in today. Called herself the leasing agent, which is just a fancy way of saying landlord. She wants to know if we’re going to keep the office. Jerry’s death is a lease breaker if we want it to be. I got the feeling there’s a waiting list on the building and this is an opportunity to jack the rent up for the next lawyer who comes in here.”

I looked out the window of the Lincoln as we cruised across the 101 overpass and back into the civic center area. I could see the newly built Catholic cathedral and past that, the waving steel skin of the Disney Concert Hall. It caught the sunlight and took on a warm orange glow.

“I don’t know, Lorna, I like working from the backseat here. It’s never boring. What do you think?”

“I’m not particularly fond of putting on makeup every morning.”

Meaning she liked working out of her condo more than she liked getting ready and driving downtown to an office each day. As usual, we were on the same page.

“Something to think about,” I said. “No makeup. No office overhead. No fighting for a spot in the parking garage.”

She didn’t respond. It was going to be my call. I looked ahead and saw we were a block from my drop-off point in front of the CCB.

“Let’s talk about it later,” I said. “I gotta jump out.”

“Okay, Mickey. Be safe.”

“You, too.”

Twenty-six

Eli Wyms was still doped up from the three months he’d spent in Camarillo. He’d been sent back to county with a prescription for a drug therapy that wasn’t going to help me defend him, let alone help him answer any questions about possible connections to the murders on the beach. It took me less than two minutes in courtside lockup to grasp the situation and to decide to submit a motion to Judge Friedman, requesting that all drug therapy be halted. I went back to the courtroom and found Joanne Giorgetti at her place at the prosecution table. The hearing was scheduled to start in five minutes.

She was writing something on the inside flap of a file when I walked up to the table. Without looking up she somehow knew it was me.

“You want a continuance, don’t you?”

“And a cease-and-desist on the drugs. The guy’s a zombie.”

She stopped writing and looked up at me.

“Considering he was potshotting my deputies, I’m not sure I object to his being in that condition.”

“But Joanne, I’ve got to be able to ask the guy basic questions in order to defend him.”

“Really?”

She said it with a smile but the point was taken. I shrugged and crouched down so we were on an even eye line.

“You’re right, I don’t think we’re talking about a trial here,” I said. “I’d be happy to listen to any offers.”

“Your client shot at an occupied sheriff’s car. The state is interested in sending a message on this one. We don’t like people doing that.”

She folded her arms to signal the state’s unwillingness to compromise on this. She was an attractive and athletically built woman. She drummed her fingers on one of her biceps and I couldn’t help but notice the red fingernail polish. As long as I could remember dealing with Joanne Giorgetti, her nails were always painted bloodred. She did more than represent the state. She represented cops who had been shot at, assaulted, ambushed and spit on. And she wanted the blood of every miscreant who had the bad luck to be prosecuted by her.

“I would argue that my client, panicked as he was by the coyotes, was shooting at the light on the car, not into the car. Your own documents say he was an expert marksman in the U.S. Army. If he wanted to shoot the deputy, he could have. But he didn’t.”

“He was discharged from the army fifteen years ago, Mickey.”

“Right, but some skills never go away. Like riding a bike.”

“Well, that’s an argument you could surely make to the jury.”

My knees were about to give out. I reached over to one of the chairs at the defense table, wheeled it over and sat down.

“Sure, I can make that argument but it is probably in the state’s best interest to bring this case to a close, get Mr. Wyms off the street and into some sort of therapy that will help prevent this from ever happening again. So what do you say? Should we go off into a corner someplace and work this out, or go at it in front of a jury?”

She thought for a moment before responding. It was the classic prosecutor’s dilemma. It was a case she could easily win. She had to decide whether to pad her stats or do what might be the right thing.

“As long as I get to pick the corner.”

“That’s fine with me.”

“Okay, I won’t oppose a continuance if you make the motion.”

“Sounds good, Joanne. What about the drug therapy?”

“I don’t want this guy acting out again, even in Men’s Central.”

“Look, wait till they bring him out. You’ll see, he’s a zombie. You don’t want this to go down and then have him challenge the deal because the state made him incompetent to make a decision. Let’s get his head clear, do the deal and then you can have them pump him up with whatever you want.”

She thought about it, saw the logic and finally nodded.

“But if he acts out in jail one time, I’m going to blame you and take it out on him.”

I laughed. The idea of blaming me was absurd.

“Whatever.”

I got up and started to push the chair back to the defense table. But then I turned back to the prosecutor.

“Joanne, let me ask you something else. Why did Jerry Vincent take on this case?”

She shrugged and shook her head.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, did it surprise you?”

“Sure. It was kind of strange, him showing up. I knew him from way back when, you know?”

Meaning when he was a prosecutor.

“Yeah, so what happened?”

“One day – a few months ago – I got notice of a competency motion on Wyms, and Jerry’s name was on it. I called him up and said, ‘What the hell,’ you know? ‘You don’t even call to say, I’m taking over the case?’ And he just said he wanted to get some pro bono in and asked the PD for a case. But I know Angel Romero, the PD who had the case originally. A couple months back, I ran into him on one of the floors and he asked me what was happening on Wyms. And in the course of the conversation, he told me that Jerry didn’t just come in asking for a PB referral. He went to Wyms first in Men’s Central, signed him up and then came in and told Angel to turn over the file.”

“Why do you think he took the case?”

I’ve learned over the years that sometimes if you ask the same question more than once you get different responses.

“I don’t know. I specifically asked him that and he didn’t really answer. He changed the subject to something else and it was all kind of awkward. I remember thinking there was something else here, like maybe he had a connection to Wyms. But then when he sent him off to Camarillo, I knew he wasn’t doing the guy any favors.”

“What do you mean?”

“Look, you just spent a couple hours with the case and you know how it’s going to go. This is a plea. Jail time, counseling and supervision. That’s what it was before he was sent to Camarillo. So Wyms’s time there wasn’t really necessary. Jerry just prolonged the inevitable.”

I nodded. She was right. Sending a client to the psych ward at Camarillo wasn’t doing him any favors. The mystery case was getting more mysterious. Only, my client was in no condition to tell me why. His lawyer – Vincent – had kept him drugged up and locked away for three months.

“Okay, Joanne. Thanks. Let’s-”

I was interrupted by the clerk, who called court into session, and I looked up to see Judge Friedman taking the bench.

Twenty-seven

Angel Romero was one of those human interest stories you read in the paper every now and then. The story about the gangbanger who grew up hard on the streets of East L.A. but fought his way through to an education and even law school, then turned around and gave back to the community. Angel’s way to give back was to go into the Public Defenders Office and represent the underdogs of society. He was a lifer in the PD and had seen many young lawyers – myself included – come and go on their way to private practice and the supposed big bucks that came with it.

After the Wyms hearing – in which the judge granted the motion to continue in order to give Giorgetti and me time to work out a plea – I went down to the PD’s office on the tenth floor and asked for Romero. I knew he was a working lawyer, not a supervisor, and that most likely meant he was in a courtroom somewhere in the building. The receptionist typed something into her computer and looked at the screen.

“Department one-twenty-four,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Department 124 was Judge Champagne’s courtroom on the thirteenth floor, the same floor I had just come from. But that was life in the CCB. It seemed to run in circles. I took the elevator back up and walked down the hall to 124, powering my phone down as I approached the double doors. Court was in session and Romero was in front of the judge, arguing a motion to reduce bail. I slid into the back row of the gallery and hoped for a quick ruling so I could get to Romero without a long wait.

My ears perked up when I heard Romero mention his client by name, calling him Mr. Scales. I slid further down the bench so I had a better visual angle on the defendant sitting next to Romero. He was a white guy in an orange jail jumpsuit. When I saw his profile, I knew it was Sam Scales, a con man and former client. The last I remembered of Scales, he had gone off to prison on a plea deal I’d obtained for him. That was three years ago. He obviously had gotten out and gotten right back into trouble – only this time he hadn’t called me.

After Romero finished his bail argument, the prosecutor stood up and vigorously opposed bail, outlining in his argument the new charges against Scales. When I had represented him, he had been accused in a credit-card fraud in which he ripped off people donating to a tsunami relief organization. This time it was worse. He was once more charged with fraud but in this case the victims were the widows of military servicemen killed in Iraq. I shook my head and almost smiled. I was glad Sam hadn’t called me. The public defender could have him.

Judge Champagne ruled quickly after the prosecutor finished. She called Scales a predator and a menace to society and kept his bail at a million dollars. She noted that if she’d been asked, she probably would have raised it. It was then that I remembered it had been Judge Champagne who had sentenced Scales in the earlier fraud. There was nothing worse for a defendant than coming back and facing the same judge for another crime. It was almost as if the judges took the failings of the justice system personally.

I slouched in my seat and used another observer in the gallery as a blind so that Scales couldn’t see me when the court deputy stood him up, cuffed him and took him back into lockup. After he was gone, I straightened back up and was able to catch Romero’s eye. I signaled him out into the hallway and he flashed five fingers at me. Five minutes. He still had some business to take care of in the court.

I went out into the hallway to wait for him and turned my phone back on. No messages. I was calling Lorna to check in when I heard Romero’s voice behind me. He was four minutes early.

“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a killer by the toe. If his lawyer’s Haller, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Hey bro.”

He was smiling. I closed the phone and we bumped fists. I hadn’t heard that homespun jingle since I was with the PD’s Office. Romero had made it up after I had gotten the not-guilty verdict in the Barnett Woodson case back in ’ninety-two.

“What’s up?” Romero asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s up. You’re guzzling my clients, man. Sam Scales used to be mine.”

I said it with a knowing smile and Romero smiled right back.

“You want him? You can have him. That’s one dirty white boy. As soon as the media gets wind of this case, they’re going to lynch his ass for what he’s done.”

“Taking war widows’ money, huh?”

“Stealing government death benefits. I tell you, I’ve repped a lot of bad guys who did a lot of bad things, but I put Scales up there with the baby rapers, man. I can’t stand the guy.”

“Yeah, what are you doing with a white boy anyway? You work gang crimes.”

Romero’s face turned serious and he shook his head.

“Not anymore, man. They thought I was getting too close to the customers. You know, once a vato always a vato. So they took me off gangs. After nineteen years, I’m off gangs.”

“Sorry to hear that, buddy.”

Romero had grown up in Boyle Heights in a neighborhood ruled by a gang called Quatro Flats. He had the tattoos to prove it, if you could ever see his arms. It didn’t matter how hot a day it was, he always wore long sleeves when he was working. And when he represented a banger accused of a crime, he did more than defend him in court. He worked to spring the man from the clutches of gang life. To pull him away from gang cases was an act of stupidity that could only happen in a bureaucracy like the justice system.

“What do you want with me, Mick? You didn’t really come here to take Scales from me, right?”

“No, you get to keep Scales, Angel. I wanted to ask you about another client you had for a while earlier this year. Eli Wyms.”

I was about to give the details of the case as a prompt but Romero immediately recognized the case and nodded.

“Yeah, Vincent took that one off me. You got it now with him being dead?”

“Yeah, I got all of Vincent’s cases. I just found out about Wyms today.”

“Well, good luck with them, bro. What do you need to know about Wyms? Vincent took it off me three months ago, at least.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I know. I got a handle on the case. What I’m curious about is Vincent taking it. According to Joanne Giorgetti, he went after it. Is that right?”

Romero checked the memory banks for a few moments before answering. He raised a hand and rubbed his chin as he did so. I could see faint scars across his knuckles from where he’d had tattoos removed.

“Yeah, he went down to the jail and talked Wyms into it. Got a signed discharge letter and brought it in. After that, the case was his. I gave him my file and I was done, man.”

I moved in closer to him.

“Did he say why he wanted the case? I mean, he didn’t know Wyms, did he?”

“I don’t think so. He just wanted the case. He gave me the big wink, you know?”

“No, what do you mean? What’s the ‘big wink’?”

“I asked him why he was taking on a Southside homeboy who went up there in white-people country and shot the place up. Pro bono, no less. I thought he had some sort of racial angle on it or something. Something that would get him a little publicity. But he just sort of gave me the wink, like there was something else.”

“Did you ask him what?”

Romero took an involuntary step back as I pressed his personal space.

“Yeah, man, I asked. But he wouldn’t tell me. He just said that Wyms had fired the magic bullet. I didn’t know what the hell he meant and I didn’t have any more time to play games with him. I gave him the file and I went on to the next one.”

There it was again. The magic bullet. I was getting close to something here and I could feel the blood in my veins start to move with high velocity.

“Is that it, Mick? I gotta get back inside.”

My eyes focused on Romero and I realized he was looking at me strangely.

“Yeah, Angel, thanks. That’s all. Go back in there and give ’em hell.”

“Yeah, man, that’s what I do.”

Romero went back toward the door to Department 124 and I headed off quickly to the elevators. I knew what I would be doing for the rest of the day and into the night. Tracing a magic bullet.

Twenty-eight

I entered the office and blew right by Lorna and Cisco, who were at the reception desk, looking at the computer. I spoke without stopping on my way to the inner sanctum.

“If you two have any updates for me or anything else I should know, then come in now. I’m about to go into lockdown.”

“And hello to you, too,” Lorna called after me.

But Lorna knew well what was about to happen. Lockdown was when I closed all the doors and windows, drew the curtains and killed the phones and went to work on a file and a case with total concentration and absorption. Lockdown for me was the ultimate DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door. Lorna knew that once I was in lockdown mode, there was no getting me out until I had found what I was looking for.

I moved around Jerry Vincent’s desk and dropped into the seat. I opened my bag on the floor and started pulling out the files. I viewed what I needed to do here as me against them. Somewhere in the files, I would find the key to Jerry Vincent’s last secret. I would find the magic bullet.

Lorna and Cisco came into the office soon after I was settled.

“I didn’t see Wren out there,” I said before either could speak.

“And you never will again,” Lorna said. “She quit.”

“That was kind of abrupt.”

“She went out to lunch and never came back.”

“Did she call?”

“Yeah, she finally called. She said she got a better offer. She’s going to be Bruce Carlin’s secretary now.”

I nodded. That seemed to make a certain amount of sense.

“Now, before you go into lockdown, we need to go over some things,” Lorna said.

“That’s what I said when I came in. What’ve you got?”

Lorna sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Cisco stayed standing, more like pacing, behind her.

“All right,” Lorna said. “Couple things while you were in court. First, you must’ve touched a nerve with that motion you filed on the evidence in Patrick’s case.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The prosecutor’s called three times today, wanting to talk about a dispo.”

I smiled. The motion to examine the evidence had been a long shot but it looked like it might come through and I would be able to help Patrick.

“What’s going on with that?” Lorna asked. “You didn’t tell me you filed motions.”

“From the car yesterday. And what’s going on is that I think Dr. Vogler gave his wife phony diamonds for her birthday. Now, to make sure she never knows it, they’re going to float a deal to Patrick if I withdraw my request to examine the evidence.”

“Good. I think I like Patrick.”

“I hope he gets the break. What’s next?”

Lorna looked at the notes on her steno pad. I knew she didn’t like to be rushed but I was rushing her.

“You’re still getting a lot of calls from the local media. About Jerry Vincent or Walter Elliot or both. You want to go over them?”

“No. I don’t have the time for any media calls.”

“Well, that’s what I’ve been telling them but it’s not making them happy. Especially that guy from the Times. He’s being an asshole.”

“So what if they’re not happy? I don’t care.”

“Well, you better be careful, Mickey. Hell hath no fury like the media scorned.”

It was a good point. The media can love you one day and bury you the next. My father had spent twenty years as a media darling. But toward the end of his professional life, he had become a pariah because the reporters had grown weary of him getting guilty men off. He became the embodiment of a justice system that had different rules for well-heeled defendants with powerful attorneys.

“I’ll try to be more accommodating,” I said. “Just not now.”

“Fine.”

“Anything else to report?”

“I think that’s – I told you about Wren, so that’s all I have. You’ll call the prosecutor on Patrick’s case?”

“Yes, I will call him.”

I looked over Lorna’s shoulder at Cisco, who was still standing.

“Okay, Cisco, your turn. What’ve you got?”

“Still working on Elliot. Mostly in regard to Rilz and some hand-holding with our witnesses.”

“I have a question about witnesses,” Lorna interrupted. “Where do you want to put up Dr. Arslanian?”

Shamiram Arslanian was the gunshot residue authority Vincent had scheduled to bring in from New York as an expert witness to knock down the state’s expert witness at trial. She was the best in the field and, with Walter Elliot’s financial reserves, Vincent was going with the best money could buy. I wanted her close to the downtown CCB but the choice of hotels was limited.

“Try Checkers first,” I said. “And get her a suite. If they’re booked, then try the Standard and then the Kyoto Grand. But get a suite so we have room to work.”

“Got it. And what about Muniz? You want him in close, too?”

Julio Muniz was a freelance videographer who lived in Topanga Canyon. Because of his home’s proximity to Malibu he had been the first member of the media to respond to the crime scene after hearing the call out for homicide investigators on the sheriff’s radio band. He had shot video of Walter Elliot with the sheriff’s deputies outside the beach house. He was a valuable witness because his videotape and his own recollections could be used to confirm or contradict testimony offered by sheriff’s deputies and investigators.

“I don’t know,” I said. “It can take anywhere from an hour to three hours to get from Topanga to downtown. I’d rather not risk it. Cisco, is he willing to come in and stay at a hotel?”

“Yeah, just as long as we’re paying and he can order room service.”

“Okay, then bring him in. Also, where’s the video? There are only notes on it in the file. I don’t want the first time I look at the video to be in court.”

Cisco looked puzzled.

“I don’t know. But if it’s not around here, I can have Muniz dub off a copy.”

“Well, I haven’t seen it around here. So get me a copy. What else?”

“Couple other things. First, I got with my source on the Vincent thing and he didn’t know anything about a suspect or this photo Bosch showed you this morning.”

“Nothing?”

“Nada.”

“What do you think? Does Bosch know your guy’s the leak and is shutting him out?”

“I don’t know. But everything I was telling him about this photo was news to him.”

I took a few moments to consider what this meant.

“Did Bosch ever come back and show the photo to Wren?”

“No,” Lorna said. “I was with her all morning. Bosch never came in then or after lunch.”

I wasn’t sure what any of this meant but I couldn’t become bogged down with it. I had to get to the files.

“What was the second thing?” I asked Cisco.

“What?”

“You said you had a couple other things to tell me. What was the second thing?”

“Oh, yeah. I called Vincent’s liquidator and you had that right. He’s still got one of Patrick’s long boards.”

“What’s he want for it?”

“Nothing.”

I looked at Cisco and raised my eyebrows, asking where the catch was.

“Let’s just say he’d like to do you the favor. He lost a good client in Vincent. I think he’s hoping you’ll use him for future liquidations. And I didn’t dissuade him from the idea or tell him you usually don’t barter property for services with your clients.”

I understood. The surfboard would not come with any real strings attached.

“Thanks, Cisco. Did you take it with you?”

“No, he didn’t have it at the office. But he made a call and somebody was supposed to bring it in to him this afternoon. I could go back and get it if you want.”

“No, just get me an address and I’ll have Patrick pick it up. What happened with Bruce Carlin? Didn’t you debrief him today? Maybe he’s got the Muniz tape.”

I was anxious to hear about Bruce Carlin on several levels. Most important, I wanted to know if he had worked for Vincent on the Eli Wyms case. If so, he might be able to lead me to the magic bullet.

But Cisco didn’t answer my question. Lorna turned and they looked at each other as if wondering which one of them should deliver the bad news.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Lorna turned back to me.

“Carlin’s fucking with us,” she said.

I could see the angry set of her jaw. And I knew she reserved that kind of language for special occasions. Something had gone wrong with Carlin’s debriefing and she was particularly upset.

“How so?”

“Well, he never showed up at two like he said he would. Instead, he called at two – right after Wren called and quit – and gave us the new parameters of his deal.”

I shook my head in annoyance.

“His deal? How much does he want?”

“Well, I guess he realized that at two hundred dollars an hour he wouldn’t make much, since he was probably going to bill only two or three hours tops. That’s all Cisco would need with him. So he called up and said he wanted a flat fee or we could figure out things on our own.”

“Like I said, how much?”

“Ten thousand dollars.”

“You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“My words exactly.”

I looked from her to Cisco.

“This is extortion. Isn’t there a state agency that regulates you guys? Can’t we come down on his shit somehow?”

Cisco shook his head.

“There are all kinds of regulatory agencies but this is a shady area.”

“Yeah, I know it’s shady. He’s shady. I’ve thought that for years.”

“What I mean is, he had no deal with Vincent. We can’t find any contract. So he’s not required to give us anything. We simply need to hire him and he’s setting his price at ten grand. It’s a bullshit rip-off but it’s probably legal. I mean, you’re the lawyer. You tell me.”

I thought about it for a few moments and then tried to push it aside. I was still riding on the adrenaline charge I’d picked up in the courthouse. I didn’t want it to dissipate with distractions.

“All right, I’ll ask Elliot if he wants to pay it. Meantime, I’m going to hit all the files again tonight, and if I get lucky and crack through, then we won’t need him. We say fuck you and are done with him.”

“Asshole,” Lorna muttered.

I was pretty sure that was directed at Bruce Carlin and not me.

“Okay, is that it?” I asked. “Anything else?”

I looked from one face to the other. Nobody had anything else to bring up.

“Okay, then, thank you both for all you’ve been putting up with and doing this week. Go out and have a good night.”

Lorna looked at me curiously.

“You’re sending us home?” she asked.

I checked my watch.

“Why not?” I said. “It’s almost four thirty and I’m going to dive into the files and I don’t want any distractions. You two go on home, have a good night and we’ll start again tomorrow.”

“You’re going to work here alone tonight?” Cisco asked.

“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’ll lock the door and I won’t let anybody in – even if I know him.”

I smiled. Lorna and Cisco didn’t. I pointed to the open door to the office. It had a slide bolt that could be used to lock it at the top of the doorframe. If necessary I would be able to secure both outside and inside perimeters. It gave new meaning to the idea of going into lockdown.

“Come on, I’ll be fine. I’ve got work to do.”

They slowly, reluctantly, started to make their way out of my office.

“Lorna,” I called after them. “Patrick should be out there. Tell him to keep hanging. I might have something to tell him after I make that call.”

Twenty-nine

I opened the Patrick Henson file on my desk and looked up the prosecutor’s number. I wanted to get this out of the way before I went to work on the Elliot case.

The prosecutor was Dwight Posey, a guy I had dealt with before on cases and never liked. Some prosecutors deal with defense attorneys as though they are only one step removed from their clients. As pseudocriminals, not as educated and experienced professionals. Not as necessary cogs in the winding gears of the justice system. Most cops have this view and I can live with it. But it bothers me when fellow lawyers adopt the pose. Unfortunately, Dwight Posey was one of these, and if I could’ve gone through the rest of my life without ever having to talk to him, I would have been a happy man. But that was not going to be the case.

“So, Haller,” he said after taking the call, “they’ve got you walking in a dead man’s shoes, don’t they?”

“What?”

“They gave you all of Jerry Vincent’s cases, right? That’s how you ended up with Henson.”

“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, I’m returning your call, Dwight. Actually, your three calls. What’s up? You get the motion I filed yesterday?”

I reminded myself that I had to step carefully here if I wanted to get everything I could out of the phone call. I couldn’t let my distaste for the prosecutor affect the outcome for my client.

“Yes, I got the motion. It’s sitting right here on my desk. That’s why I’ve been calling.”

He left it open for me to step in.

“And?”

“And, uh, well, we’re not going to do that, Mick.”

“Do what, Dwight?”

“Put our evidence out there for examination.”

It was looking more and more like I had struck a major nerve with my motion.

“Well, Dwight, that’s the beauty of the system, right? You don’t get to make that decision. A judge does. That’s why I didn’t ask you. I put it in a motion and asked the judge.”

Posey cleared his throat.

“No, actually, we do this time,” he said. “We’re going to drop the theft charge and just proceed with the drug charge. So you can withdraw your motion or we can inform the judge that the point is moot.”

I smiled and nodded. I had him. I knew then that Patrick was going to walk.

“Only problem with that, Dwight, is that the drug charge came out of the theft investigation. You know that. When they popped my client, the warrant was for the theft. The drugs were found during the arrest. So you don’t have one without the other.”

I had the feeling that he knew everything I was saying and that the call was simply following a script. We were going where Posey wanted us to go and that was fine with me. This time I wanted to go there, too.

“Then, maybe we can just talk about a disposition on the matter,” he said as if the idea had just occurred to him.

And there we were. We had come to the place Posey had wanted to get to from the moment he’d answered the call.

“I’m open to it, Dwight. You should know that my client voluntarily entered a rehab program after his arrest. He has completed the program, has full-time employment and has been clean for four months. He’ll give his piss anytime, anywhere, to prove it.”

“That is really good to hear,” Posey said with false enthusiasm. “The DA’s Office, as well as the courts, always look favorably upon voluntary rehabilitation.”

Tell me something I don’t know, I almost said.

“The kid is doing good. I can vouch for that. What do you want to do for him?”

I knew how the script would read now. Posey would turn it into a goodwill gesture from the prosecution. He would make it seem as though the D.A.’s Office were giving out the favor here, when the truth was that the prosecution was acting to insulate an important figure from political and personal embarrassment. That was fine with me. I didn’t care about the political ends of the deal as long as my client got what I wanted him to get.

“Tell you what, Mick. Let’s make it go away, and maybe Patrick can use this opportunity to move ahead with being a productive member of society.”

“Sounds like a plan to me, Dwight. You’re making my day. And his.”

“Okay, then get me his rehab records and we’ll put it into a package for the judge.”

Posey was talking about making it a pretrial intervention case. Patrick would have to take biweekly drug tests and in six months the case would go away if he kept clean. He would still have an arrest on his record but no conviction. Unless…

“You willing to expunge his record?” I asked.

“Uh…, that’s asking a lot, Mickey. He did, after all, break in and steal the diamonds.”

“He didn’t break in, Dwight. He was invited in. And the alleged diamonds are what this is all about, right? Whether or not he actually did steal any diamonds.”

Posey must have realized he had misspoken by bringing up the diamonds. He folded his tent quickly.

“All right, fine. We’ll put it into the package.”

“You’re a good man, Dwight.”

“I try to be. You will withdraw your motion now?”

“First thing tomorrow. When do we go to court? I have a trial starting the end of next week.”

“Then we’ll go for Monday. I’ll let you know.”

I hung up the phone and called the reception desk on the intercom. Luckily, Lorna answered.

“I thought you were sent home,” I said.

“We’re about to go through the door. I’m going to leave my car here and go with Cisco.”

“What, on his donorcycle?”

“Excuse me, Dad, but I don’t think you have anything to say about that.”

I groaned.

“But I do have a say over who works as my investigator. If I can keep you two apart, maybe I can keep you alive.”

“Mickey, don’t you dare!”

“Can you just tell Cisco I need that address for the liquidator?”

“I will. And I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hope so. Wear a helmet.”

I hung up and Cisco came in, carrying a Post-it in one hand and a gun in a leather holster in the other. He walked around the desk, put the Post-it down in front of me, then opened a drawer and put the weapon in it.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “You can’t give me a gun.”

“It’s totally legal and registered to me.”

“That’s great but you can’t give it to me. That’s il-”

“I’m not giving it to you. I’m just storing it here because I’m done work for the day. I’ll get it in the morning, okay?”

“Whatever. I think you two are overreacting.”

“Better than underreacting. See you tomorrow.”

“Thank you. Will you send Patrick in before you go?”

“You got it. And by the way, I always make her wear a helmet.”

I looked at him and nodded.

“That’s good, Cisco.”

He left the room, and Patrick soon came in.

“Patrick, Cisco talked to Vincent’s liquidator and he still has one of your long boards. You can go by and pick it up. Just tell him you are picking it up for me and to call me if there is any problem.”

“Oh man, thank you!”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got even better news than that on your case.”

“What happened?”

I went over the phone call I’d just had with Dwight Posey. As I told Patrick that he would do no jail time if he stayed clean, I watched his eyes gain a little light. It was as if I could see the burden drop off his shoulders. He could look once again at the future.

“I have to call my mom,” he said. “She’s gonna be so happy.”

“Yeah, well, I hope you are, too.”

“I am, I am.”

“Now, the way I figure it, you owe me a couple thousand for my work on this. That’s about two and a half weeks of driving. If you want, you can stick with me until it’s paid off. After that, we can talk about it and see where we’re at.”

“That sounds good. I like the job.”

“Good, Patrick, then it’s a deal.”

Patrick smiled broadly and was turning to go.

“One other thing, Patrick.”

He turned back to me.

“I saw you sleeping in your car in the garage this morning.”

“Sorry. I’ll find another spot.”

He looked down at the floor.

“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot that you told me when we talked on the phone the first time that you were living in your car and sleeping on a lifeguard stand. I just don’t know how safe it is to be sleeping in the same garage where a guy got shot the other night.”

“I’ll find someplace else.”

“Well, if you want, I can give you an advance on your pay. Would that help you maybe get a motel room or something?”

“Um, I guess.”

I was glad to help him out but I knew that living out of a weekly motel was almost as depressing as living out of a car.

“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “If you want, you could stay with me for a couple weeks. Until you get some money in your pocket and maybe get a better plan going.”

“At your place?”

“Yeah, you know, temporarily.”

“With you?”

I realized my mistake.

“Nothing like that, Patrick. I’ve got a house and you’d have your own room. In fact, on Wednesday nights and every other weekend, it would be better if you stayed with a friend or in a motel. That’s when I have my daughter.”

He thought about it and nodded.

“Yeah, I could do that.”

I reached across the desk and signaled him to give me back the Post-it with the liquidator’s address on it. I wrote my own address on it while I spoke.

“Why don’t you go pick up your board and then head over to my place at this second address. Fareholm is right off Laurel Canyon, one street before Mount Olympus. You go up the stairs to the front porch and there’s a table and chairs out there and an ashtray. The extra key’s under the ashtray. The guest bedroom is right next to the kitchen. Just make yourself at home.”

“Thanks.”

He took the Post-it back and looked at the address I’d written.

“I probably won’t get there till late,” I told him. “I’ve got a trial starting next week and a lot of work to do before then.”

“Okay.”

“Look, we’re only talking about a few weeks. Till you get on your feet again. Meantime, maybe we can help each other out. You know, like if one of us starts to feel the pull, maybe the other one will be there to talk about it. Okay?”

“Okay.”

We were quiet for a moment, probably both of us thinking about the deal. I didn’t tell Patrick that he might end up helping me more than I would help him. In the past forty-eight hours, the pressure of the new caseload had begun to weigh on me. I could feel myself being pulled back, feel the desire to go to the cotton-wrapped world the pills could give me. The pills opened the space between where I was and the brick wall of reality. I was beginning to crave that distance.

Up front and deep down I knew I didn’t want that again, and maybe Patrick could help me avoid it.

“Thanks, Mr. Haller.”

I looked up at him from my thoughts.

“Call me Mickey,” I said. “And I should be the one saying thanks.”

“Why are you doing all of this for me?”

I looked at the big fish on the wall behind him for a moment, then back at him.

“I’m not sure, Patrick. But I’m hoping that if I help you, then I’ll be helping myself.”

Patrick nodded like he knew what I was talking about. That was strange because I wasn’t sure myself what I had meant.

“Go get your board, Patrick,” I said. “I’ll see you at the house. And make sure you remember to call your mother.”

Thirty

After I was finally alone in the office, I started the process the way I always do, with clean pages and sharp points. From the supply closet I retrieved two fresh legal pads and four Black Warrior pencils. I sharpened their points and got down to work.

Vincent had broken the Elliot case into two files. One file contained the state’s case, and the second, thinner file contained the defense case. The weight of the defense file was not of concern to me. The defense played by the same rules of discovery as the prosecution. Anything that went into the second file went to the prosecutor. A seasoned defense attorney knew to keep the file thin. Keep the rest in your head, or hidden on a microchip in your computer if it is safe. I had neither Vincent’s head nor his laptop. But I was sure the secrets Jerry Vincent kept were hidden somewhere in the hard copy. The magic bullet was there. I just had to find it.

I began with the thicker file, the prosecution’s case. I read straight through, every page and every word. I took notes on one legal pad and drew a time-and-action flowchart on the other. I studied the crime scene photographs with a magnifying glass I took from the desk drawer. I drew up a list of every single name I encountered in the file.

From there, I moved on to the defense file and again read every word on every page. The phone rang two different times but I didn’t even look up to see what name was on the screen. I didn’t care. I was in relentless pursuit and cared about only one thing. Finding the magic bullet.

When I was finished with the Elliot files, I opened the Wyms case and read every document and report it contained, a time-consuming process. Because Wyms was arrested following a public incident that had drawn several uniform and SWAT deputies, this file was thick with reports from the various units involved and personnel at the scene. It was stuffed with transcriptions of the conversations with Wyms, as well as weapons and ballistics reports, a lengthy evidence inventory, witness statements, dispatch records and patrol deployment reports.

There were a lot of names in the file and I checked every one of them against the list of names from the Elliot files. I also cross-referenced every address.

I had this client once. I don’t even know her name because I was sure that the name she was under in the system was not her own. She was in on a first offense but she knew the system too well to be a virgin. In fact, she knew everything too well. Whatever her name was, she had somehow rigged the system and it had her down as someone she wasn’t.

The charge was burglary of an occupied dwelling. But there was so much more than that behind the one charge. This woman liked to target hotel rooms where men with large amounts of money slept. She knew how to pick them, follow them, then finesse the door locks and the room safes while they slept. In one candid moment – probably the only one in our relationship – she told me of the white-hot adrenaline high she got every time the last digit fell into place and she heard the electronic gears of the hotel safe start to move and unlock. Opening the safe and finding what was inside was never as good as that magic moment when the gears began to grind and she felt the velocity of her blood moving in her veins. Nothing before or after was as good as that moment. The jobs weren’t about the money. They were about the velocity of blood.

I nodded when she told me all of this. I had never broken into a hotel room while some guy was snoring on the bed. But I knew about the moment when the gears began to grind. I knew about the velocity.

I found what I was looking for an hour into my second run at the files. It had been there in front of me the whole time. First in Elliot’s arrest report and then on the time-and-action chart I had drawn myself. I called the chart the Christmas tree. It always started basic and unadorned. Just the bare-bones facts of the case. Then, as I continued to study and make the case my own, I started hanging lights and ornaments on it. Details and witness statements, evidence and lab results. Soon the tree was lit up and bright. Everything about the case was there for me to see in the context of time and action.

I had paid particular attention to Walter Elliot as I had drawn the Christmas tree. He was the tree trunk and all branches came from him. I had his movements, statements and actions noted by time.

12:40 p.m. – WE arrives at beach house

12:50 p.m. – WE discovers bodies

1:05 p.m. – WE calls 911

1:24 p.m. – WE calls 911 again

1:28 p.m. – Deputies arrive on scene

1:30 p.m. – WE secured

2:15 p.m. – Homicide arrives

2:40 p.m. – WE taken to Malibu station

4:55 p.m. – WE interviewed, advised

5:40 p.m. – WE transported to Whittier

7:00 p.m. – GSR testing

8:00 p.m. – Second interview attempt, declined, arrested

8:40 p.m. – WE transported to Men’s Central

Some of the times I estimated but most came directly from the arrest report and other documents in the file. Law enforcement in this country is as much about the paperwork as anything else. I could always count on the prosecution file for reconstructing a time line.

On the second go-round I used both the pencil point and eraser and started adding decorations to the tree.

12:40 p.m. – WE arrives at beach house front door unlocked

12:50 p.m. – WE discovers bodies balcony door open

1:05 p.m. – WE calls 911 waits outside

1:24 p.m. – WE calls 911 again what’s the holdup?

1:28 p.m. – Deputies arrive on scene Murray (-4-alpha-1) and Harber (-4-alpha-2)

1:30 p.m. – WE secured placed in patrol car Murray/Harber search house

2:15 p.m. – Homicide arrives first team: Kinder (#14492) and Ericsson (#21101) second team: Joshua (#22234) and Toles (#15154)

2:30 p.m. – WE taken inside house, describes discovery

2:40 p.m. – WE taken to Malibu station Joshua and Toles transport

4:55 p.m. – WE interviewed, advised Kinder takes lead in interview

5:40 p.m. – WE transported to Whittier Joshua/Toles

7:00 p.m. – GSR testing F.T. Anita Sherman Lab Transport, Sherman

8:00 p.m. – Second interview, Ericsson in lead, WE declines got smart

8:40 p.m. – WE transported to Men’s Central Joshua/Toles

As I had constructed the Christmas tree, I kept a separate list on another page of every human being mentioned in the sheriff’s reports. I knew this would become the witness list I would turn over to the prosecution the following week. As a rule I blanket the case, subpoenaing anybody mentioned in the investigative record just to be safe. You can always cut down a witness list at trial. Sometimes adding to it can be a problem.

From the witness list and the Christmas tree, I would be able to infer how the prosecution would roll out its case. I would also be able to determine which witnesses the prosecution team was avoiding and possibly why. It was while I was studying my work and thinking in these terms that I felt the gears begin to grind and the cold finger of revelation went down my spine. Everything became clear and bright and I found Jerry Vincent’s magic bullet.

Walter Elliot had been taken from the crime scene to the Malibu station so that he would be out of the way and secured while the lead detectives continued their on-site investigation. One short interview was conducted at the station before Elliot ended it. He was then transported to sheriff’s headquarters in Whittier, where a gunshot residue test was conducted and his hands tested positive for nitrates associated with gunpowder. Afterward, Kinder and Ericsson took another stab at interviewing their suspect but he wisely declined. He was then formally placed under arrest and booked into county jail.

It was standard procedure and the arrest report documented the chain of Elliot’s custody. He was handled solely by the homicide detectives as he was moved from crime scene to substation to headquarters to jail. But it was how he was handled previous to their arrival that caught my eye. It was here that I saw something I had missed earlier. Something as simple as the designations of the uniform deputies who first responded to the call. According to the records, deputies Murray and Harber had the designations 4-alpha-1 and 4-alpha-2 after their names. And I had seen at least one of those designations in the Wyms file.

Jumping from case to case and from file to file, I found the Wyms arrest report and quickly scanned the narrative, not stopping until my eyes came to the first reference to the 4-alpha-1 designation.

Deputy Todd Stallworth had the designation written after his name. He was the deputy originally called to investigate the report of gunfire at Malibu Creek State Park. He was the deputy driving the car Wyms fired upon, and at the end of the standoff he was the deputy who formally placed Wyms under arrest and took him to jail.

I realized that 4-alpha-1 did not refer to a specific deputy but to a specific patrol zone or responsibility. The Malibu district covered the huge unincorporated areas of the west county, from the beaches of Malibu up over the mountains and into the communities of Thousand Oaks and Calabasas. I assumed that this was the fourth district and alpha was the specific designation for a patrol unit – a specific car. It seemed to be the only way to explain why deputies who worked different shifts would share the same designation on different arrest reports.

Adrenaline crashed into my veins and my blood took off running as everything came together. All in a moment I realized what Vincent had been up to and what he had been planning. I didn’t need his laptop or his legal pads anymore. I didn’t need his investigator. I knew exactly what the defense strategy was.

At least I thought I did.

I pulled my cell phone and called Cisco. I skipped the pleasantries.

“Cisco, it’s me. Do you know any sheriff’s deputies?”

“Uh, a few. Why?”

“Any of them work out of the Malibu station?”

“I know one guy who used to. He’s in Lynwood now. Malibu was too boring.”

“Can you call him tonight?”

“Tonight? Sure, I guess. What’s up?”

“I need to know what the patrol designation four-alpha-one means. Can you get that?”

“Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll call you back. But hold on a sec for Lorna. She wants to talk to you.”

I waited while she was given the phone. I could hear TV noise in the background. I had interrupted a scene of domestic bliss.

“Mickey, are you still there at the office?”

“I’m here.”

“It’s eight-thirty. I think you should go home.”

“I think I should, too. I’m going to wait to hear back from Cisco – he’s checking something out for me – and then I think I’m going over to Dan Tana’s to have steak and spaghetti.”

She knew I went to Dan Tana’s when I had something to celebrate. Usually a good verdict.

“You had steak for breakfast.”

“Then I guess this will make it a perfect day.”

“Things went well tonight?”

“I think so. Real well.”

“You’re going alone?”

She said it with sympathy in her voice, like now that she had hooked up with Cisco, she was starting to feel sorry for me, alone out there in the big bad world.

“Craig or Christian will keep me company.”

Craig and Christian worked the door at Dan Tana’s. They took care of me whether I came in alone or not.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Lorna.”

“Okay, Mickey. Have fun.”

“I already am.”

I hung up and waited, pacing in the room and thinking it all through again. The dominoes went down one after the other. It felt good and it all fit. Vincent had not taken on the Wyms case out of any obligation to the law or the poor or the disenfranchised. He was using Wyms as camouflage. Rather than move the case toward the obvious plea agreement, he had stashed Wyms out at Camarillo for three months, thereby keeping the case alive and active. Meantime, he gathered information under the flag of the Wyms defense that he would use in the Elliot case, thereby hiding his moves and strategy from the prosecution.

Technically, he was probably acting within bounds, but ethically it was underhanded. Eli Wyms had spent ninety days in a state facility so Vincent could build a defense for Elliot. Elliot got the magic bullet while Wyms got the zombie cocktail.

The good thing was, I didn’t have to worry about the sins of my predecessor. Wyms was out of Camarillo, and besides, they weren’t my sins. I could just take the benefit of Vincent’s discoveries and go to trial.

It didn’t take too long before Cisco called back.

“I talked to my guy in Lynwood. Four-alpha is Malibu’s lead car. The four is for the Malibu station and the alpha is for… alpha. Like the alpha dog. The leader of the pack. Hot shots – the priority calls – usually go to the alpha car. Four-alpha-one would be the driver, and if he’s riding with a partner, then the partner would be four-alpha-two.”

“So the alpha car covers the whole fourth district?”

“That’s what he told me. Four-alpha is free to roam the district and scoop the cream off the top.”

“What do you mean?”

“The best calls. The hot shots.”

“Got it.”

My theory was confirmed. A double murder and shots fired near a residential neighborhood would certainly be alpha-car calls. One designation but different deputies responding. Different deputies responding but one car. The dominoes clicked and fell.

“Does that help, Mick?”

“It does, Cisco. But it also means more work for you.”

“On the Elliot case?”

“No, not Elliot. I want you to work on the Eli Wyms case. Find out everything you can about the night he was arrested. Get me details.”

“That’s what I’m here for.”

Thirty-one

The night’s discovery pushed the case off the paper and into my imagination. I was starting to get courtroom images in my head. Scenes of examinations and cross-examinations. I was laying out the suits I would wear to court and the postures I would take in front of the jury. The case was coming alive inside and this was always a good thing. It was a momentum thing. You time it right and you go into trial with the inescapable conviction that you will not lose. I didn’t know what had happened to Jerry Vincent, how his actions might have brought about his demise, or whether his death was linked at all to the Elliot case, but I felt as though I had a bead on things. I had velocity and I was getting battle ready.

My plan was to sit in a corner booth at Dan Tana’s and sketch out some of the key witness examinations, listing the baseline questions and probable answers for each. I was excited about getting to it, and Lorna need not have worried about me. I wouldn’t be alone. I would have my case with me. Not Jerry Vincent’s case. Mine.

After quickly repacking the files and adding fresh pencils and legal pads, I killed the lights and locked the office door. I headed down the hallway and then across the bridge to the parking garage. Just as I was entering the garage, I saw a man walking up the ramp from the first floor. He was fifty yards away and it was only a few moments and a few strides before I recognized him as the man in the photograph Bosch had shown me that morning.

My blood froze in my heart. The fight-or-flight instinct stabbed into my brain. The rest of the world didn’t matter. There was just this moment and I had to make a choice. My brain assessed the situation faster than any computer IBM ever made. And the result of the computation was that I knew the man coming toward me was the killer and that he had a gun.

I swung around and started to run.

“Hey!” a voice called from behind me.

I kept running. I moved back across the bridge to the glass doors leading back into the building. One clear, single thought fired through every synapse in my brain. I had to get inside and get to Cisco’s gun. I had to kill or be killed.

But it was after hours and the doors had locked behind me as I had left the building. I shot my hand into my pocket in search of the key, then jerked it out, bills, coins and wallet flying out with it.

As I jammed the key into the lock, I could hear running steps coming up quickly behind me. The gun! Get the gun!

I finally yanked the door open and bolted down the hallway toward the office. I glanced behind me and saw the man catch the door just before it closed and locked. He was still coming.

Key still in my hand, I reached the office door and fumbled the key while getting it into the lock. I could feel the killer closing in. Finally getting the door open, I entered, slammed it shut and threw the lock. I hit the light switch, then crossed the reception area and charged into Vincent’s office.

The gun Cisco left for me was there in the drawer. I grabbed it, yanked it out of its holster and went back out to the reception area. Across the room I could see the killer’s shape through the frosted glass. He was trying to open the door. I raised the gun and pointed at the blurred image.

I hesitated and then raised the gun higher and fired two shots into the ceiling. The sound was deafening in the closed room.

“That’s right!” I yelled. “Come on in!”

The image on the other side of the glass door disappeared. I heard footsteps moving away in the hallway and then the door to the bridge opening and closing. I stood stock-still and listened for any other sound. There was nothing.

Without taking my eyes off the door, I stepped over to the reception desk and picked up the phone. I called 911 and it was answered right away, but I got a recording that told me my call was important and that I needed to hold on for the next available emergency dispatcher.

I realized I was shaking, not with fear but with the overload of adrenaline. I put the gun on the desk, checked my pocket and found that I hadn’t lost my cell phone. With the office phone in one hand, I used the other to open the cell and call Harry Bosch. He answered on the first ring.

“Bosch! That guy you showed me was just here!”

“Haller? What are you talking about? Who?”

“The guy in the photo you showed me today! The one with the gun!”

“All right, calm down. Where is he? Where are you?”

I realized that the stress of the moment had pulled my voice tight and sharp. Embarrassed, I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself before answering.

“I’m at the office. Vincent’s office. I was leaving and I saw him in the garage. I ran back inside and he ran in after me. He tried to get into the office. I think he’s gone but I’m not sure. I fired a couple of shots and then-”

“You have a gun?”

“Goddamn right I do.”

“I suggest you put it away before somebody gets hurt.”

“If that guy’s still out there, he’ll be the one getting hurt. Who the hell is he?”

There was a pause before he answered.

“I don’t know yet. Look, I’m still downtown and was just heading home myself. I’m in the car. Sit tight and I’ll be there in five minutes. Stay in the office and keep the door locked.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not moving.”

“And don’t shoot me when I get there.”

“I won’t.”

I reached over and hung up the office phone. I didn’t need 911 if Bosch was coming. I picked the gun back up.

“Hey, Haller?”

“What?”

“What did he want?”

“What?”

“The guy. What did he come there for?”

“That’s a good goddamn question. But I don’t have the answer.”

“Look, stop fucking around and tell me!”

“I’m telling you! I don’t know what he’s after. Now quit talking and get over here!”

I involuntarily squeezed my hands into fists as I yelled and put an accidental shot into the floor. I jumped as though I had been shot at by someone else.

“Haller!” Bosch yelled. “What the hell was that?”

I pulled in a deep breath and took my time composing myself before answering.

“Haller? What’s going on?”

“Get over here and you’ll find out.”

“Did you hit him? Did you put him down?”

Without answering I closed the phone.

Thirty-two

Bosch made it in six minutes but it felt like an hour. A dark image appeared on the other side of the glass and he knocked sharply.

“Haller, it’s me, Bosch.”

Carrying the gun at my side, I unlocked the door and let him in. He, too, had his gun out and at his side.

“Anything since we were on the phone?” he asked.

“Haven’t seen or heard him. I guess I scared his ass away.”

Bosch holstered his gun and threw me a look, as if to say my tough-guy pose was convincing no one except maybe myself.

“What was that last shot?”

“An accident.”

I pointed toward the hole in the floor.

“Give me that gun before you get yourself killed.”

I handed it over and he put it into the waistband of his pants.

“You don’t own a gun – not legally. I checked.”

“It’s my investigator’s. He leaves it here at night.”

Bosch scanned the ceiling, until he saw the two holes I had put there. He then looked at me and shook his head.

He went over to the blinds and checked the street. Broadway was dead out there this time of night. A couple nearby buildings had been converted into residential lofts but Broadway still had a way to go before recapturing the nightlife it had had eighty years before.

“Okay, let’s sit down,” he said.

He turned from the window to see me standing behind him.

“In your office.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to talk about this.”

I moved into the office and took a seat behind the desk. Bosch sat down across from me.

“First of all, here’s your stuff. I found it out there on the bridge.”

From the pocket of his jacket he pulled my wallet and loose bills. He put it all on the desk and then reached back in for the coins.

“Okay, now what?” I asked as I put my property back in my pocket.

“Now we talk,” Bosch said. “First off, do you want to file a report on this?”

“Why bother? You know about it. It’s your case. Why don’t you know who this guy is?”

“We’re working on it.”

“That’s not good enough, Bosch! He came after me! Why can’t you ID him?”

Bosch shook his head.

“Because we think he’s a hitter brought in from out of town. Maybe out of the country.”

“That’s fucking fantastic! Why did he come back here?”

“Obviously, because of you. Because of what you know.”

“Me? I don’t know anything.”

“You’ve been in here for three days. You must know something that makes you a danger to him.”

“I’m telling you, I’ve got nothing.”

“Then, you have to ask yourself, why did that guy come back? What did he leave behind or forget the first time?”

I just stared at him. I actually wanted to help. I was tired of being under the gun – in more ways than one – and if I could’ve given Bosch just one answer, I would have.

I shook my head.

“I can’t think of a single-”

“Come on, Haller!” Bosch barked at me. “Your life is threatened here! Don’t you get it? What’ve you got?”

“I told you!”

“Who did Vincent bribe?”

“I don’t know and I couldn’t tell you if I did.”

“What did the FBI want with him?”

“I don’t know that, either!”

He started pointing at me.

“You fucking hypocrite. You’re hiding behind the protections of the law, while the killer is out there waiting. Your ethics and rules won’t stop a bullet, Haller. Tell me what you’ve got!”

“I told you! I don’t have anything and don’t point your fucking finger at me. This isn’t my job. It’s your job. And maybe if you would get it done, people around here would feel-”

“Excuse me?”

The voice came from behind Bosch. In one fluid move he turned and pivoted out of his chair, drawing his gun and aiming it at the door.

A man holding a trash bag stood there, his eyes going wide in fright.

Bosch immediately lowered his weapon, and the office cleaner looked like he might faint.

“Sorry,” Bosch said.

“I come back later,” the man said in a thick accent from Eastern Europe.

He turned and disappeared quickly through the door.

“Goddamn it!” Bosch cursed, clearly unhappy about pointing his gun at an innocent man.

“I doubt we’ll ever get our trash cans emptied again,” I said.

Bosch went over to the door and closed and bolted it. He came back to the desk and looked at me with angry eyes. He sat back down, took a deep breath and proceeded in a much calmer voice.

“I’m glad you can keep your sense of humor, Counselor. But enough with the fucking jokes.”

“All right, no jokes.”

Bosch looked like he was struggling internally with what to say or do next. His eyes swept the room and then held on me.

“All right, look, you’re right. It is my job to catch this guy. But you had him right here. Right goddamn here! And so it stands to reason that he was here with a purpose. He came to either kill you, which seems unlikely, since he apparently doesn’t even know you, or he came to get something from you. The question is, what is it? What is in this office or in one of your files that could lead to the identity of the killer?”

I tried to match him with an even-tempered voice of my own.

“All I can tell you is that I have had my case manager in here since Tuesday. I’ve had my investigator in here, and Jerry Vincent’s own receptionist was in here up until lunchtime today, when she quit. And none of us, Detective, none of us, has been able to find the smoking gun you’re so sure is here. You tell me that Vincent paid somebody a bribe. But I can find no indication in any file or from any client that that is true. I spent the last three hours in here looking at the Elliot file and I saw no indication – not one – that he paid anybody off or bribed somebody. In fact, I found out that he didn’t need to bribe anybody. Vincent had a magic bullet and he had a shot at winning the case fair and square. So when I tell you I have nothing, I mean it. I’m not playing you. I’m not holding back. I have nothing to give you. Nothing.”

“What about the FBI?”

“Same answer. Nothing.”

Bosch didn’t respond. I saw true disappointment cloud his face. I continued.

“If this mustache man is the killer, then, of course there is a reason that brought him back here. But I don’t know it. Am I concerned about it? No, not concerned. I’m fucking scared shitless about it. I’m fucking scared shitless that this guy thinks I have something, because if I have it, I don’t even know I have it, and that is not a good place to be.”

Bosch abruptly stood up. He pulled Cisco’s gun out of his waistband and put it down on the desk.

“Keep it loaded. And if I were you, I would stop working at night.”

He turned and headed toward the door.

“That’s it?” I called after him.

He spun in his tracks and came back to the desk.

“What else do you want from me?”

“All you want is information from me. Most of the time information I can’t give. But you in turn give nothing back, and that’s half the reason I’m in danger.”

Bosch looked like he might be about to jump over the desk at me. But then I saw him calm himself once more. All except for the palpitation high on his cheek near his left temple. That didn’t go away. That was his tell, and it was a tell that once again gave me a sense of familiarity.

“Fuck it,” he finally said. “What do you want to know, Counselor? Go ahead. Ask me a question – any question – and I’ll answer it.”

“I want to know about the bribe. Where did the money go?”

Bosch shook his head and laughed in a false way.

“I give you a free shot and I say to myself that I’ll answer your question, no matter what it is, and you go and ask me the question I don’t have an answer to. You think if I knew where the money went and who got the bribe that I’d be here right now with you? Uh-uh, Haller, I’d be booking a killer.”

“So you’re sure one thing had to do with the other? That the bribe – if there was a bribe – is connected to the killing.”

“I’m going with the percentages.”

“But the bribe – if there was a bribe – went down five months ago. Why was Jerry killed now? Why’s the FBI calling him now?”

“Good questions. Let me know if you come up with any answers. Meantime, anything else I can do for you, Counselor? I was heading home when you called.”

“Yeah, there is.”

He looked at me and waited.

“I was on my way out, too.”

“What, you want me to hold your hand on the way to the garage? Fine, let’s go.”

I closed the office once again and we proceeded down the hall to the bridge to the garage. Bosch had stopped talking and the silence was nerve-racking. I finally broke it.

“I was going to go have a steak. You want to come? Maybe we’ll solve the world’s problems over some red meat.”

“Where, Musso’s?”

“I was thinking Dan Tana’s.”

Bosch nodded.

“If you can get us in.”

“Don’t worry. I know a guy.”

Thirty-three

Bosch followed me but when I slowed on Santa Monica Bou-levard to pull into the valet stop in front of the restaurant, he kept going. I saw him drive by and turn right on Doheny.

I went in by myself and Craig sat me in one of the cherished corner booths. It was a busy night but things were tapering off. I saw the actor James Woods finishing dinner in a booth with a movie producer named Mace Neufeld. They were regulars and Mace gave me a nod. He had once tried to option one of my cases for a film but it didn’t work out. I saw Corbin Bernsen in another booth, the actor who had given the best approximation of an attorney I had ever seen on television. And then in another booth, the man himself, Dan Tana, was having a late dinner with his wife. I dropped my eyes to the checkered tablecloth. Enough who’s who. I had to prepare for Bosch. During the drive, I had thought long and hard about what had just happened back at the office and now I only wanted to think about how best to confront Bosch about it. It was like preparing for the cross-examination of a hostile witness.

Ten minutes after I was seated, Bosch finally appeared in the doorway and Craig led him to me.

“Get lost?” I asked as he squeezed into the booth.

“I couldn’t find a parking space.”

“I guess they don’t pay you enough for valet.”

“No, valet’s a beautiful thing. But I can’t give my city car to a valet. Against the rules.”

I nodded, guessing that it was probably because he packed a shotgun in the trunk.

I decided to wait until after we ordered to make a play with Bosch. I asked if he wanted to look at the menu and he said he was ready to order. When the waiter came, we both ordered the Steak Helen with spaghetti and red sauce on the side. Bosch ordered a beer and I asked for a bottle of flat water.

“So,” I said, “where’s your partner been lately?”

“He’s working on other aspects of the investigation.”

“Well, I guess it’s good to hear there are other aspects to it.”

Bosch studied me for a long moment before replying.

“Is that supposed to be a crack?”

“Just an observation. Doesn’t seem from my end to be much happening.”

“Maybe that’s because your source dried up and blew away.”

“My source? I don’t have any source.”

“Not anymore. I figured out who was feeding your guy and that ended today. I just hope you weren’t paying him for the information because IAD will take him down for that.”

“I know you won’t believe me, but I have no idea who or what you are talking about. I get information from my investigator. I don’t ask him how he gets it.”

Bosch nodded.

“That’s the best way to do it, right? Insulate yourself and then you don’t get any blowback in your face. In the meantime, if a police captain loses his job and pension, those are the breaks.”

I hadn’t realized Cisco’s source was so highly placed.

The waiter brought our drinks and a basket of bread. I drank some of the water as I contemplated what to say next. I put the glass down and looked at Bosch. He raised his eyebrows like he was expecting something.

“How’d you know when I was leaving the office tonight?”

Bosch looked puzzled.

“What do you mean?”

“I figure it was the lights. You were out there on Broadway, and when I killed the lights, you sent your guy into the garage.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Sure you do. The photo of the guy with the gun coming out of the building. It was a phony. You set it up – choreographed it – and used it to smoke out your leak, then you tried to scam me with it.”

Bosch shook his head and looked out of the booth as if he were looking for someone to help him interpret what I was saying. It was a bad act.

“You set up the phony picture and then you showed it to me because you knew it would come back around through my investigator to your leak. You’d know that whoever asked you about the photo was the leak.”

“I can’t discuss any aspect of the investigation with you.”

“And then you used it to try to play me. To see if I was hiding something and to scare it out of me.”

“I told you, I can’t-”

“Well, you don’t have to, Bosch. I know it’s what you did. You know what your mistakes were? First of all, not coming back like you said you would to show the photo to Vincent’s secretary. If the guy in the picture was legit, you would’ve shown it to her because she knows the clients better than me. Your second mistake was the gun in the waistband of your hit man. Vincent was shot with a twenty-five – too small for a waistband. I missed that when you showed me the photo, but I’ve got it now.”

Bosch looked toward the bar in the middle of the restaurant. The overhead TV was showing sports highlights. I leaned across the table closer to him.

“So who’s the guy in the photo? Your partner with a stick-on mustache? Some clown from vice? Don’t you have better things to do than to be running a game on me?”

Bosch leaned back and continued to look around the place, his eyes moving everywhere but to me. He was contemplating something and I gave him all the time he needed. Finally, he looked at me.

“Okay, you got me. It was a scam. I guess that makes you one smart lawyer, Haller. Just like the old man. I wonder why you’re wasting it defending scumbags. Shouldn’t you be out there suing doctors or defending big tobacco or something noble like that?”

I smiled.

“Is that how you like to play it? You get caught being underhanded, so you respond by accusing the other guy of being underhanded?”

Bosch laughed, his face colored red as he turned away from me. It was a gesture that struck me as familiar, and his mention of my father brought him to mind. I had a vague memory of my father laughing uneasily and looking away as he leaned back at the dinner table. My mother had accused him of something I was too young to understand.

Bosch put both arms on the table and leaned toward me.

“You’ve heard of the first forty-eight, right?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The first forty-eight. The chances of clearing a homicide diminish by almost half each day if you don’t solve it in the first forty-eight hours.”

He looked at his watch before continuing.

“I’m coming up on seventy-two hours and I’ve got nothing,” he said. “Not a suspect, not a viable lead, nothing. And I was hoping that tonight I might be able to scare something out of you. Something that would point me in the right direction.”

I sat there, staring at him, digesting what he had said. Finally, I found my voice.

“You actually thought I knew who killed Jerry and wasn’t telling?”

“It was a possibility I had to consider.”

“Fuck you, Bosch.”

Just then the waiter came with our steaks and spaghetti. As the plates were put down, Bosch looked at me with a knowing smile on his face. The waiter asked what else he could get for us and I waved him away without breaking eye contact.

“You’re an arrogant son of a bitch,” I said. “You can just sit there with a smile on your face after accusing me of hiding evidence or knowledge in a murder. A murder of a guy I knew.”

Bosch looked down at his steak, picked up his knife and fork and cut into it. I noticed he was left-handed. He put a chunk of meat into his mouth and stared at me while he ate it. He rested his fists on either side of his plate, fork and knife in his grips, as if guarding the food from poachers. A lot of my clients who had spent time in prison ate the same way.

“Why don’t you take it easy there, Counselor,” he said. “You have to understand something. I’m not used to being on the same side of the line as the defense lawyer, okay? It has been my experience that defense attorneys have tried to portray me as stupid, corrupt, bigoted, you name it. So with that in mind, yes, I tried to run a game on you in hopes that it would help me solve a murder. I apologize all to hell and back. If you want, I will have them wrap up my steak and I’ll take it to go.”

I shook my head. Bosch had a talent for trying to make me feel guilty for his transgressions.

“Maybe now you should be the one who takes it easy,” I said. “All I’m saying is that from the start, I have acted openly and honestly with you. I have stretched the ethical bounds of my profession. And I have told you what I could tell you, when I could tell you. I didn’t deserve to have the shit scared out of me tonight. And you’re damn lucky I didn’t put a bullet in your man’s chest when he was at the office door. He made a beautiful target.”

“You weren’t supposed to have a gun. I checked.”

Bosch started eating again, keeping his head down as he worked on the steak. He took several bites and then moved to the side plate of spaghetti. He wasn’t a twirler. He chopped at the pasta with his fork before putting a bite into his mouth. He spoke after he swallowed his food.

“So now that we have that out of the way, will you help me?”

I blew out my breath in a laugh.

“Are you kidding? Have you heard a single thing I’ve said here?”

“Yeah, I heard it all. And no, I’m not kidding. When all is said and done, I still have a dead lawyer – your colleague – on my hands and I could still use your help.”

I started cutting my first piece of steak. I decided he could wait for me to eat, like I had waited for him.

Dan Tana’s was considered by many to serve the best steak in the city. Count me as one of the many. I was not disappointed. I took my time, savoring the first bite, then put my fork down.

“What kind of help?”

“We draw out the killer.”

“Great. How dangerous will it be?”

“Depends on a lot of things. But I’m not going to lie to you. It could get dangerous. I need you to shake some things up, make whoever’s out there think there’s a loose end, that you might be dangerous to them. Then we see what happens.”

“But you’ll be there. I’ll be covered.”

“Every step of the way.”

“How do we shake things up?”

“I was thinking a newspaper story. I assume you’ve been getting calls from the reporters. We pick one and give them the story, an exclusive, and we plant something in there that gets the killer thinking.”

I thought about this and remembered what Lorna had warned about playing fair with the media.

“There’s a guy at the Times,” I said. “I kind of made a deal with him to get him off my back. I told him that when I was ready to talk, I would talk to him.”

“That’s a perfect setup. We’ll use him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“So, are you in?”

I picked up my fork and knife and remained silent while I cut into the steak again. Blood ran onto the plate. I thought about my daughter getting to the point of asking me the same questions her mother asked and that I could never answer. It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys. It wasn’t as simple as that but knowing this didn’t take away the sting or the look I remembered seeing in her eyes.

I put the knife and fork down without taking a bite. I suddenly was no longer hungry.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m in.”