The Law of Innocence

1

Monday, October 28

It had been a good day for the defense. I had walked a man right out of the courtroom. I had turned a felony battery charge into a righteous case of self-defense in front of the jury. The so-called victim had a history of violence of his own that both prosecution and defense witnesses, including an ex-wife, were eager to describe on cross-examination. I delivered the knockout punch when I recalled him to the witness stand and led him down a path of questioning that put him over the edge. He lost his cool and threatened me, said he’d like to meet me out in the street, where it would be just him and me.

“Would you then claim I attacked you, like you have with the defendant in this case?” I asked.

The prosecutor objected and the judge sustained. But that was all it took. The judge knew it. The prosecutor knew it. Everybody in the courtroom knew it. I notched the NG after less than half an hour of jury deliberation. It wasn’t my quickest verdict ever, but it came close.

Within the informal downtown defense bar, there is a sacred duty to celebrate a not-guilty verdict the way a golfer celebrates a hole in one at the clubhouse. That is, drinks all around. My celebration took place at the Redwood on Second Street, just a few blocks from the civic center, where there were no fewer than three courthouses to draw celebrants from. The Redwood was no country club but it was convenient. The party — meaning the open bar — started early and ended late, and when Moira, the heavily tattooed bartender who had been keeping the tab, handed me the damage, let’s just say I put more on my credit card than I would ever see from the client I had just set free.

I had parked in a lot on Broadway. I got behind the wheel, took a left out of the lot and then another to put me back on Second Street. The traffic lights were with me and I followed the street into the tunnel that went under Bunker Hill. I was halfway through when I saw the reflection of blue lights on the tunnel’s exhaust-smoked green tiles. I checked the mirror and saw an LAPD cruiser behind me. I hit the blinker and pulled into the slow lane to let him pass. But the cruiser followed my lead into the same lane and came up six feet behind me. I got the picture then. I was being pulled over.

I waited until I was out of the tunnel and took a right onto Figueroa. I pulled to a stop, killed the engine, and lowered the window. In the Lincoln’s side-view mirror a uniformed officer was walking up to my door. I saw no one else in the patrol car behind him. The officer approaching me was working alone.

“Can I see your license, car registration, and proof of insurance, sir?” he asked.

I turned to look at him. His name tag said Milton.

“You sure can, Officer Milton,” I said. “But can I ask why you pulled me over? I know I wasn’t speeding and all the lights were green.”

“License,” Milton said. “Registration. Insurance.”

“Well, I guess you’ll eventually tell me. My license is in my pocket inside my coat. The other stuff is in the glove box. Which do you want me to go for first?”

“Let’s start with your license.”

“You got it.”

As I pulled my wallet and worked the license out of one of its slots, I reviewed my situation and wondered if Milton had been watching the Redwood for lawyers exiting my party and possibly too tipsy to drive. There had been rumors about patrol cops doing that on nights when there was an NG celebration going on, and defense lawyers could be picked off for a variety of moving-vehicle violations.

I handed Milton my license and then went for the glove box. Soon enough the officer had all he had asked for.

“Now are you going to tell me what this is about?” I asked. “I know I didn’t—”

“Step out of the car, sir,” Milton said.

“Oh, come on, man. Really?”

“Please step out of the car.”

“Whatever.”

I threw the door open, aggressively forcing Milton to take a step back, and got out.

“Just so you know,” I said. “I spent the last four hours in the Redwood but I didn’t have a drop of alcohol. I haven’t had a drink in more than five years.”

“Good for you. Please step to the back of your vehicle.”

“Make sure your car camera is on, because this is going to be embarrassing.”

I walked past him to the back of the Lincoln and stepped into the lights of the patrol car behind it.

“You want me to walk a line?” I said. “Count backward, touch my nose with my finger, what? I’m a lawyer. I know all the games and this one is bullshit.”

Milton followed me to the back of the car. He was tall and lean, white, with a high and tight haircut. I saw the Metro Division badge on his shoulder and four chevrons on his long sleeves. I knew they gave them out for five years of service each. He was a veteran Metro bullethead all the way.

“You see why I stopped you, sir?” he said. “Your car has no plate.”

I looked down at the rear bumper of the Lincoln. There was no license plate.

“Goddamn it,” I said. “Uh... this is some kind of a prank. We were celebrating — I won a case today and walked my client. The plate says iwalkem and one of those guys must’ve thought it was a joke to steal the plate.”

I tried to think about who had left the Redwood before I did, and who would have thought this was a funny thing to do. Daly, Mills, Bernardo... it could have been anyone.

“Check the trunk,” Milton said. “Maybe it’s in there.”

“No, they would need a key to put it in the trunk,” I said. “I’m going to make a call, see if I can—”

“Sir, you’re not making a call until we’re finished here.”

“That’s bullshit. I know the law. I’m not in custody — I can make a call.”

I paused there to see if Milton had any further challenge. I noticed the camera on his chest.

“My phone’s in the car,” I said.

I started moving back to the open door.

“Sir, stop right there,” Milton said from behind me.

I turned around.

“What?”

He snapped on a flashlight and pointed the beam down at the ground behind the car.

“Is that blood?” he asked.

I stepped back and looked down at the cracked asphalt. The officer’s light was centered on a blotch of liquid beneath the bumper of my car. It was dark maroon at the center and almost translucent at its edges.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But whatever it is, it was already there. I’m—”

Just as I said it, we both saw another drop come down from the bumper and hit the asphalt.

“Sir, open the trunk, please,” Milton demanded as he put the flashlight into a belt holster.

A variety of questions cascaded through my mind, starting with what was in the trunk and ending with whether Milton had probable cause to open it if I refused.

Another drop of what I now assumed to be bodily fluid of some sort hit the asphalt.

“Write me the ticket for the plate, Officer Milton,” I said. “But I am not opening the trunk.”

“Sir, then I am placing you under arrest,” Milton said. “Put your hands on the trunk.”

“Arrest? For what? I’m not—”

Milton moved in on me, grabbing me and spinning me toward my car. He threw all of his weight into me and doubled me over the trunk.

“Hey! You can’t—”

One at a time, my arms were roughly pulled behind my back and I was handcuffed. Milton then put his hand into the back collar of my shirt and jacket and yanked me up off the car.

“You’re under arrest,” he said.

“For what?” I said. “You can’t just—”

“For your safety and mine I’m putting you into the back of the patrol car.”

He grabbed my elbow to turn me again, and walked me to the rear passenger door of his car. He put his hand on top of my head as he pushed me into the plastic seat in the back. He then leaned across to buckle me in.

“You know you can’t open the trunk,” I said. “You have no probable cause. You don’t know if that’s blood and you don’t know if it’s coming from the interior of the car. I could’ve driven through whatever it is.”

Milton pulled back out of the car and looked down at me.

“Exigent circumstances,” he said. “There might be someone in there who needs help.”

He slammed the door. I watched him go back to my Lincoln and study the trunk lid for some sort of release mechanism. Finding none, he went to the open driver’s door and reached in to remove the keys.

He used the key fob to pop the trunk, standing off to the side should someone come out of the trunk shooting. The lid went up and an interior light went on. Milton supplemented it with his own flashlight. He moved from left to right, stepping sideways and keeping his eyes and the beam on the contents of the trunk. From my angle in the back of the patrol car, I could not see into the trunk but could tell by the way Milton was maneuvering and bending down for a closer look that there was something there.

Milton tilted his head to talk into the radio mic on his shoulder and then made a call. Probably for backup. Probably for a homicide unit. I didn’t have to see into the trunk to know that Milton had found a body.

2

Sunday, December 1

Edgar Quesada sat next to me at a dayroom table as I read the last pages of the transcript from his trial. He had asked me to review his case files as a favor, hoping there was something I could see or do to help his situation. We were in the high-power module in the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles. This was where they housed inmates on keep-away status as they waited for trial or, as in Quesada’s case, sentencing to state prison. It was the first Sunday evening in December and the jail was cold. Quesada wore white long johns under his blue jumpsuit, the sleeves all the way down to his wrists.

Quesada was in familiar surroundings. He had been down this path before and had the tattoos to prove it. He was a third-generation White Fence gang member from Boyle Heights with lots of inked allegiance to the gang and the Mexican Mafia, which was the largest and most powerful gang in California’s jail and prison systems.

According to the documents I had been reading, Quesada had been the driver of a car that carried two other members of White Fence as they fired automatic weapons through the plate-glass windows of a bodega on East First Street, where the owner had fallen two weeks behind on the gang tax that White Fence had been extorting from him for almost twenty-five years. The shooters had aimed high, the attack intended to be a warning. But a ricochet went low and hit the bodega owner’s granddaughter on the top of the head as she crouched behind the counter. Her name was Marisol Serrano. She died instantly, according to testimony I read from the deputy coroner.

No witnesses to the crime identified the shooters. That would have been a fatal exercise in bravery. But a traffic cam caught the license plate on the getaway car. It was traced to a car stolen from the long-term parking garage at nearby Union Station. And cameras there caught a glimpse of the thief: Edgar Quesada. His trial lasted only four days and he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder. His sentencing was in a week and he was looking at a minimum of fifteen years in prison with the likelihood of many more beyond that. All because he had been behind the wheel on a drive-by warning-turned-murder.

“So?” Quesada said as I flipped the last page over.

“Well, Edgar,” I said. “I think you’re kind of fucked.”

“Man, don’t tell me that. There’s nothing? Nothing at all?”

“There’s always things you can do. But they’re long shots, Edgar. I’d say you have more than enough here for an IAC motion but—”

“What’s that?”

“Ineffective assistance of counsel. Your lawyer sat on his hands the whole trial. He let objection after objection pass. He just let the prosecutor— Well, here, you see this page?”

I moved back through the transcript to a page where I had folded a corner over.

“Here the judge even says, ‘Are you going to object, Mr. Seguin, or do I have to keep doing it for you?’ That is not good trial work, Edgar, and you might have a shot at proving that, but here is the thing: at best you win the motion and get a do-over, but that doesn’t change the evidence. It’s still the same evidence and with the next jury you’ll go down again, even if you have a new lawyer who knows how to keep the prosecutor inside the lines.”

Quesada shook his head. He was not my client, so I didn’t know all the details of his life but he was about thirty-five and looking at a lot of hard time.

“How many convictions do you have?” I asked.

“Two,” he said.

“Felonies?”

He nodded and I didn’t have to say anything else. My original assessment stood. He was fucked. He was probably going away forever. Unless...

“You know why they got you here in high-power instead of the gang module, right?” I said. “Any day now they’re going to pull you out of here, put you in a room, and ask you the big question. Who was in the car with you that day?”

I gestured to the thick transcript.

“There’s nothing here that will help you,” I said. “The only thing you can do is deal the time down by giving up names.”

I said the last part in a whisper. But Quesada didn’t respond as quietly.

“That’s bullshit!” he yelled.

I checked the mirrored window of the control room overhead even though I knew I could see nothing behind it. I then looked at Quesada and saw the veins in his neck start to pulse — even beneath the inked necklace of cemetery stones that circled it.

“Cool down, Edgar,” I said. “You asked me to look at your file and that’s all I’m doing. I’m not your lawyer. You should really talk to him about—”

“I can’t go to him,” Quesada said. “Haller, you don’t know shit!” I stared at him and finally understood. His lawyer was controlled by the very people he would need to inform on: White Fence. Going to him would almost assuredly result in a Mexican Mafia — engineered snitch shanking, whether he was in the high-power module or not. It was said that the eMe, as it was more informally known, could get to anybody anywhere in a California lockdown.

I was literally saved by the bell. The five-minute warning horn before bed check sounded. Quesada reached across the table and roughly grabbed up his documents. He was through with me. He got up while still smoothing all the loose pages into a neat stack. Without a Thank you or a Fuck you, he headed off to his cell.

And I headed to mine.

3

At 8 p.m. The steel door of my cell automatically slid closed with a metallic bang that jolted my entire being. Every night it went through me like a train. I had been in lockup for five weeks now and it was something I couldn’t and didn’t ever want to get used to. I sat down on the three-inch-thin mattress and closed my eyes. I knew the overhead light would stay on another hour and I needed to use that time, but this was my ritual. To try to blank out all the harsh sounds and fears. To remind myself of who I still was. A father, a lawyer — but not a murderer.

“You got Q all hot and bothered out there.”

I opened my eyes. It was Bishop in the next cell. There was a grated air vent high up on the wall that separated our cells.

“Didn’t mean to,” I said. “I guess next time somebody needs a jailhouse lawyer in here I’ll just pass.”

“Good plan,” Bishop said.

“And where were you, by the way? It was about to become kill-the-messenger time with him. I looked around, no Bishop.”

“Don’t worry, homes, I had you covered. I was watching from up on the rail. I had your back.”

I was paying Bishop four hundred a week for protection, the payment delivered in cash to his girlfriend and mother of his son in Inglewood. His protection extended throughout the quarter of the high-power octagon where we were housed: two tiers, twenty-four single cells, with twenty-two other inmates presenting varying levels of known and unknown threat to me.

On my first night, Bishop had offered to protect me or hurt me. I didn’t negotiate. He usually stuck close when I was in the dayroom but I had not seen him on the second-tier walkway rail when I gave Quesada the bad news about his case. I knew very little about Bishop, because you didn’t ask questions in jail. His dark black skin hid tattoos to the point of making me wonder why he even got them. But I had been able to make out the words Crip Life inked across the knuckles of both his hands.

I reached under the bed for the cardboard file box that held my own case docs. I checked the rubber bands first. I had wrapped each of the four stacks of documents with two bands each, horizontal and vertical, with the bands crossing at distinct spots on the top sheet. This told me if Bishop or anyone else had snuck in and gone through my stuff. I had a client once who almost went down on a first-degree murder because a jailhouse snitch had gotten to the files in his cell and read enough discovery material to concoct a convincing but phony confession he claimed my client had made to him. Lesson learned. I set rubber-band traps and would know if someone had looked through my paperwork.

I was now facing a first-degree murder charge myself and was going pro se — defending myself. I know what Lincoln said and probably many wise men before him and since. Maybe I did have a fool for a client, but I couldn’t see putting my future in any hands other than my own. So, in the matter of The State of California versus J. Michael Haller, the defense’s war room was cell 13, level K-10 at Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

I pulled my motions packet out of the box and snapped off the rubber bands after confirming that the documents had not been tampered with. A motions hearing was scheduled for the following morning and I wanted to prep. I had three requests before the court, beginning with a motion to lower bail. It had been set at my arraignment at $5 million, with the prosecution successfully arguing that I was not only a flight risk but a threat to witnesses in the case because I knew the inner workings of the local justice system like the back of my hand. It didn’t help that the judge handling the arraignment was the Honorable Richard Rollins Hagan, whose rulings in prior cases I had twice gotten overturned on appeal. He got some payback on me, agreeing with the prosecution’s request to more than double down on the schedule that recommended a $2 million bail for first-degree murder.

At the time, the difference between $2 million and $5 million didn’t matter. I had to decide if I wanted to put everything I had into my freedom or into my defense. I decided on the latter and took up residence in Twin Towers, qualifying for keep-away status as an officer of the court who had potential enemies in all of the gen-pop dorms.

But tomorrow I would stand before a different judge — one I believed I had never crossed — and ask for a reduction in bail. I had two other motions as well and now reviewed my notes so I could stand and argue before the judge instead of read.

More important than the bail motion was the discovery motion that accused the prosecution of withholding information and evidence I was entitled to, and the challenge to the probable cause of the police stop that led to my arrest.

I had to assume that Judge Violet Warfield, who had drawn the case on rotation, would put a time cap on arguments on all the motions. I would need to be ready, succinct, and on point.

“Hey, Bishop?” I said. “You still awake?”

“I’m awake,” Bishop said. “What’s up?”

“I want to practice on you.”

“Practice what?”

“My arguments, Bishop.”

“That ain’t part of our deal, man.”

“I know but the lights are about to go out and I’m not ready. I want you to listen and tell me what you think.”

At that moment the lights on the tier went out.

“Okay,” Bishop said. “Let’s hear it. But you pay extra for this.”

4

Monday, December 2

In the morning, I was on the first bus to the courthouse, having dined on a baloney sandwich and a bruised red apple for breakfast. It was the same breakfast every morning and it was served again at lunch for good measure. In my five weeks here we caught a break from it on Thanksgiving only, when the baloney was replaced with a slice of pressed turkey and served at all three meals. I was long past any revulsion with the food at Twin Towers. It was the routine and now I put it away quickly and easily every breakfast and every lunch. Still, I estimated that I had already lost between ten and twenty pounds during my incarceration and I looked at it as getting down to fighting weight for what would surely be the bout of my life.

On the bus, I was with thirty-nine other inmates, most of whom were heading to morning arraignment court. As a lawyer, I had seen the wide-eyed look of fear in clients when I met them for initial consultation at first appearances. But that was always in court and always with me calming and preparing them for what lay ahead. On the buses, I was surrounded by it. Men facing their first experience of incarceration. Men who had been in lockup many times before. Rookie or recidivist, there was a palpable sense of desperation coming from all of them.

I found the bus rides to and from court to be my own moments of biggest fear. It was random selection when you were loaded on. I had no Bishop, no bodyguard. Should anything happen to me, the deputies were behind an iron grate at the front: the driver and so-called safety deputy. Their role would be simply to sort out the dead and dying when whatever happened was over. They weren’t there to protect and serve, just to move people along in the underbelly of the justice system.

This time it was one of the modern buses with compartmentalized seating, the sight of which filled me with even more dread. The newer fleet was designed after there had been full-scale riots on buses that had raged out of control. With the Sheriff’s Department responsible for the safety of inmates, the riots resulted in scores of lawsuits against the agency for failure to protect those who had been injured and killed. I had lodged a couple of those lawsuits myself and so was aware of the weaknesses of the old and new designs.

The new buses were sectioned off by steel fencing into seating compartments of eight inmates each. This way, if a fight broke out, it was contained to a maximum of eight combatants. The buses had five such compartments and were loaded back to front, filling the seats in the rear section first and so on. The prisoners were cuffed together four to a chain, with one group on either side of the aisle in each compartment.

This design also was the blueprint for a significant problem. Should the bus be in transit and a fight break out in the rear compartment, the unarmed safety deputy must unlock and move through five doors and four compartments — four tight spaces filled with inmates accused in some cases of violent crimes — to break up a fight in the fifth. The idea was preposterous, and to my thinking, the department’s solution had actually doubled down on the problem. Fights in the rear compartments were allowed to play out until the bus got to its destination. Those who could walk off did and those who couldn’t were tended to.

The bus pulled into the cavernous garage beneath the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center and we were off-loaded and escorted into the building’s vertical maze of holding cells that served its twenty-four different courtrooms.

As a pro se, I was entitled to some legal niceties not afforded most of the men and women who came off the buses. I was led to a private holding cell where I could confer with my investigator and stand-in attorney — the lawyer assigned as my backup to handle the printing, filing, and in some cases fine-tuning of motions and other documents produced as part of the case. My investigator was Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski and the stand-in was my law partner, Jennifer Aronson.

Everything moves slowly in incarceration. My 4 a.m. wake-up at Twin Towers resulted in me getting to my private conference room at 8:40 a.m., a total travel distance of four blocks. I had brought one rubber-banded stack of documents with me — the motions — and was spreading them on the metal table when my team was shown in by a detention deputy at nine sharp.

Cisco and Jennifer were required to sit across the table from me. No handshakes or hugs. The meeting fell under attorney-client privilege and was private. But there was a camera in one corner of the ceiling. We would be watched, but the camera carried no audio back to the deputy who monitored it — or so it was claimed. I didn’t fully believe this, and during prior team meetings I had occasionally made a remark or issued an order designed to send the prosecution off on a wild-goose chase if they happened to be illegally listening in. I used the code word Baja in each statement to alert my team to the ruse.

I was in dark blue scrubs with lac detention stenciled across the front and back of my shirt. Like Edgar Quesada the evening before, I wore long johns underneath. I had learned quickly during my stay with the county that the early-morning bus rides and courthouse holding cells were unheated, and I dressed accordingly.

Jennifer was dressed for court in a charcoal-gray suit and cream-colored blouse. Cisco, as was his routine, was dressed for a sunset ride down the Pacific Coast Highway on his classic Harley Panhead, Cody Jinks blasting on his helmet stereo: black jeans, boots, and T-shirt. It appeared that his skin was impervious to the cold, damp air of the conference cell. That he was originally from Wisconsin might have had something to do with that.

“How’s my team this fine morning?” I said cheerily.

Although I was the one incarcerated and wearing the jailhouse scrubs, I knew it was important to keep my people engaged and not worried about my predicament. Act like a winner and you’ll become a winner — as David “Legal” Siegel, my father’s partner and the man who mentored me in the law, used to say.

“All good, boss,” Cisco said.

“How are you doing?” Jennifer asked.

“Better to be in the courthouse than the jail,” I said. “Which suit did Lorna pick out?”

Lorna Taylor was my case manager as well as my sartorial consultant. This second duty extended from when she was my wife — my second wife, in a union that lasted only a year and preceded her marriage to Cisco. Though I would not be appearing this day before a jury, I had previously secured Judge Warfield’s approval of a motion allowing me to dress in my professional clothes during all appearances in open court. My case had drawn considerable attention from the media and I didn’t want a photo of me in convict garb going viral. The world outside the courthouse was a jury pool from which twelve people would be drawn to judge me. I didn’t want them, whoever they were, to have already seen me in jailhouse blues. My carefully curated selection of European suits also added to my confidence when I stood before the court to argue my case.

“The blue Hugo Boss with pink shirt and gray tie,” Jennifer said. “The courtroom deputy has it.”

“Perfect,” I said.

Cisco rolled his eyes at my vanity. I ignored it.

“What about the time?” I asked. “You talk to the clerk?”

“Yes, the judge slotted an hour,” Jennifer said. “Will that be enough?”

“Probably not, with argument from Dana. I might have to drop something if Warfield sticks to the schedule.”

Dana was Dana Berg, the Major Crimes Unit star prosecutor assigned to convicting me and sending me off to prison for the rest of my life. Among members of the downtown defense bar, she was known as Death Row Dana because of her propensity to seek maximum penalties, or, alternately, as Iceberg because of her demeanor when it came to negotiating pleas. The fact was that her resolve couldn’t be melted and she was most often assigned cases where trial was inevitable.

And that was the situation with me. The day after my arrest, I had put out a media statement through Jennifer that forcefully denied the allegations against me and promised vindication at trial. It was most likely that statement that got the case assigned to Dana Berg.

“Then what do we drop?” Jennifer asked.

“Let’s put bail on the back burner,” I said.

“Wait, no,” Cisco said.

“What? I wanted to go with that right out of the gate,” Jennifer said. “We need to get you out of there and into unrestricted strategy sessions in an office, not a cell.”

Jennifer raised her hands to take in the space where we were sitting. I knew that they would both protest my decision on bail. But I intended to make better use of today’s time in front of the judge.

“Look, it’s not like I’m having a great time at Twin Towers,” I said. “It’s not the Ritz. But there are things that are more important to accomplish today. I want to get a full hearing on the probable-cause challenge. That’s number one. And then I want to argue the discovery issues. You ready on that, Bullocks?”

It had been a long time since I had called Jennifer by her baby-lawyer nickname. I had hired her right out of Southwestern Law School, which was housed in a former Bullock’s department store. I had wanted somebody with a working-class law degree and an underdog’s drive and fierceness. In the years since, she had proved me a genius, rising from associate counsel to whom I handed off low-money cases to full partner and trusted confidante who could hold her own and win in any courtroom in the county. I wasn’t interested in using her as a mere filer of documents. I wanted her going toe to toe with Dana Berg on the prosecution’s delays in discovery. This was the most important case of my career and I wanted her side by side with me at the defense table.

“I’m ready,” she said. “But I’m also ready to argue bail. You need to be out so you can prepare for trial without needing a bodyguard watching your back while you’re eating baloney fucking sandwiches.”

I laughed. I guessed I had complained a little too often about the Twin Towers menu.

“Look, I get that,” I said. “And I don’t mean to laugh. But I need to keep payroll going and I just don’t want to come out of this thing bankrupt and with nothing left for my daughter. Somebody’s got to pay for law school, and it’s not going to be Maggie McFierce.”

My first ex-wife and the mother of my child was a prosecutor in the District Attorney’s Office. Real name: Maggie McPherson. She made a comfortable living and had raised our daughter, Hayley, in a safe neighborhood in Sherman Oaks — not counting a two-year stint in Ventura County, where she went to work for the D.A. while waiting for a political fire to burn itself out down here. I had paid for private schools all the way and now Hayley was 1L at USC after graduating from Chapman in May. That carried a steep price tag that fell solely to me to pay. I had planned for it and had it covered in savings, but not if I pulled the cash and put it into a nonrefundable bond just to spring myself loose to prep for trial.

I had done the math and it wasn’t worth it. Even if we persuaded Judge Warfield to cut bail in half, I was still looking at needing $250,000 to buy a bond that really only amounted to three months of freedom. After all, I had refused to waive my right to a speedy trial and had the state on a clock — sixty court days within which to put me on trial. This meant that the trial was only two months away, in February, and the verdict would either give me back my freedom or permanently suspend it. On many previous occasions, I had counseled clients to save their bond money and nut it out in Twin Towers.

Usually that was to make sure they had money to pay me. But now, that was the counsel I gave myself.

“Have you talked to Maggie about this?” Jennifer asked. “Has she even visited you over there yet?”

“Yes, she’s visited and, yes, we’ve talked,” I said. “She says the same thing you say, and I don’t disagree it would be better. But it’s about priorities. Case priorities.”

“Look, you know that Lorna, Cisco, and I have all said we can defer paychecks till this is over. I really think this is a case priority and you need to reconsider. Besides, what about Hayley? You already missed Thanksgiving with her. You want to miss Christmas too?”

“Okay, duly noted. Let’s see if there’s time to get to it today. If not, we’ll take it up in the next round. Let’s move on past the motions. Cisco, what’s happening with the review of previous cases?”

“Me and Lorna are through more than half the files,” Cisco said. “So far nothing stands out. But we’re working on it and making a list of possibles.”

He was talking about a list of former clients and enemies who might have the motive and wherewithal to pin a murder rap on me.

“Okay, I need that,” I said. “I can’t just go into court and say I was framed. A third-party-culpability case requires a third party.”

“We’re on it,” Cisco said. “If it’s there, we’ll find it.”

“If?” I asked.

“I didn’t mean it like that, boss,” Cisco said. “I just meant—”

“Listen,” I said. “I’ve spent the past twenty-five years of my life telling clients that it didn’t matter to me whether they did it, because my job was to defend them, not judge them. Guilty or innocent, you get the same deal and the same effort. But now that I’m on the other side of it, I know that’s bullshit. I need you two and Lorna to believe in me on this.”

“Of course we do,” Jennifer said.

“Goes without saying,” Cisco added.

“Don’t be so quick to answer,” I said. “You must have questions about it. The state’s case is more than persuasive. So if at any point Death Row Dana turns you into a believer, I need you to step up and step out. I don’t want you on the team.”

“Not going to happen,” Cisco said.

“Never,” added Jennifer.

“Good,” I said. “Then let’s go to war. Jennifer, can you go get my suit and bring it in so I can get ready?”

“Be right back,” she said.

She got up and hammered on the steel door with one hand while waving to the overhead camera with the other. Soon I heard the sharp metal crack of the door unlocking. A deputy opened it to let her out.

“So,” I said, once Cisco and I were alone. “What’s the water temp these days down in Baja?”

“Oh, it’s nice,” Cisco said. “I talked to my guy down there and he said high eighties.”

“Too warm for me. Tell him to let me know when it gets down to about seventy. That would be perfect for me.”

“I’ll tell him.”

I nodded to Cisco and tried not to smile for the overhead camera. Hopefully, this last bit of conversation was intriguing enough to any illegal listeners to send them fishing for a red herring down in Mexico.

“So, what about our victim?” I said.

“Still working it,” Cisco said hesitantly. “I’m hoping Jennifer gets more stuff in discovery today so I can run down his movements and how and when he ended up in your trunk.”

“Sam Scales was a slippery guy. Nailing him down is going to be tough, but I’m going to need that.”

“Don’t worry. You’ll have it.”

I nodded. I liked Cisco’s confidence. I hoped it would pay off. I thought for a moment about my former client Sam Scales, the ultimate con man who had even conned me. Now the victim in the biggest con of all, I was set up for a murder that I knew was going to be a hard frame to break.

“Hey, boss, you okay?” Cisco asked.

“Yeah, fine,” I said. “Just thinking about things. This is going to be fun.”

Cisco nodded. He knew it was going to be anything but fun, but he understood the sentiment. Act like a winner and you’ll become a winner.

The cell door slid open again and Jennifer came back in, carrying my court clothes on two hangers. I usually reserved the pink oxford for appearances before a jury, but that was okay. Just seeing the sharp cut of the suit kicked my mood up to a new level. I started getting ready for battle.

5

My suit fit me loosely. I felt like I was swimming in it. The first thing I told Jennifer when they moved me into court and took off the chains was to ask Lorna to go to my house, pick out two of my suits, and take them to a tailor to be altered.

“That’s going to be kind of hard without you there to be measured,” she said.

“I don’t care, it’s important,” I said. “I don’t want to look like a guy in a borrowed suit in front of the media. That gets out to the jury pool and sends a message.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“Tell her to have them taken in a full size all around.”

Before she could respond, Dana Berg stepped over to the defense table and put down a set of documents.

“Our answers to your motions,” she said. “I’m sure it will all come out in oral.”

“Timely,” Jennifer said, meaning it was anything but.

She started reading. I didn’t bother. Berg seemed to hesitate, as if expecting a retort from me. I just looked up and smiled.

“Good morning, Dana,” I said. “How was your weekend?”

“Better than yours, I’m sure,” she said.

“I think that would be a given,” I said.

She smirked and returned to the prosecution table.

“No surprise, she’s objecting to everything,” Jennifer said. “Including bail reduction.”

“Par for the course,” I said. “Like I said, don’t worry about bail today. We’ll—”

I was silenced by the booming voice of Morris Chan, the courtroom deputy, announcing the arrival of Judge Warfield. We were instructed to remain seated and come to order.

I believed I got lucky when we drew Warfield on the case. She was a tough law-and-order jurist but she was also a former member of the defense bar. Oftentimes defense lawyers who become judges seem to go out of their way to show impartiality by favoring the prosecution. That was not what I had heard about Warfield. While I had never had a case before her, I had listened to the conversations of some of the other defense pros at the Redwood and Four Green Fields in the past, and the picture I got was of a judge who threw her pitches right down the middle. In addition, she was African American and that made her an underdog. Coming up, she had had to be better than the other lawyers. That demanded a mindset I liked. She knew full well the disadvantages I faced in trying to defend myself. My guess was that she would include that knowledge in her decisions.

“We’re on the record in California versus Haller and we have a series of defense motions to consider,” the judge said. “Mr. Haller, will you be offering argument or will it be your co-counsel, Ms. Aronson?”

I stood to reply.

“May it please the court,” I began, “we would like to tag-team a little bit today. I would like to start with the motion to suppress.”

“Very well,” Warfield said. “Proceed.”

Here is where it got tricky. I had filed what was technically a motion in limine to exclude evidence that had been unconstitutionally obtained. I was challenging the traffic stop that led to the discovery of the body of Sam Scales in the trunk of my car. If I won the motion, the case against me would probably be DOA. But it was a long shot to believe that a judge, even as impartial as I had heard Warfield to be, would throw such a wrench into the state’s case. And that was what I was counting on, because I didn’t want that to happen either. With any other client, I would want that ruling. But this was my own case. I did not want to win on a technicality. I needed to be exonerated. The trick here was to have a full-blown hearing on the constitutionality of the traffic stop that put me in jail. But I only wanted it in order to get Officer Milton on the stand so that I could draw out his story and lock it down under oath. Because I believed I was set up and that the setup had to have included Milton in some way, whether knowingly or not.

Carrying the printout of the motion, I walked to the lectern between the prosecution and defense tables. On the way, I casually checked the gallery and saw at least two people I recognized as journalists covering the hearing. They were the conduit I would use to get my defense out into the world.

I also saw my daughter, Hayley, in the back row. I assumed she was cutting class at USC Law but I couldn’t be too upset. I had forbidden her to visit me in jail. I didn’t want her ever to see me in jail scrubs and had gone so far as to leave her off my approved visitors list. So court was where she could see and support me, and that was not lost on me. I also knew that she was leaving the make-believe world of law school and getting a real education in the law by being here.

I threw her a nod and a smile, but seeing her now reminded me how ill-fitting my suit was. It looked borrowed and announced that I was a convict to all courtroom observers. I might as well have been wearing the scrubs. I tried to shake off these thoughts when I got to the lectern and I turned my attention to the judge.

“Your Honor,” I said. “As the motion before the court states, the defense contends that I was set up and framed in this case. And that setup came into play with the illegal and unconstitutional stop by the police on the night I was arrested. I have re—”

“Set up by whom, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

I was thrown by the question. As valid as it might have been, it was unexpected from the judge, especially before I finished my argument.

“Judge, that is irrelevant at this hearing,” I said. “This is about the traffic stop and whether it was constitutional. It—”

“But you are saying you were framed. Do you know who framed you?”

“Again, Your Honor, that is irrelevant. In February it will be very relevant when we go to trial, but I don’t see why I have to reveal my case to the prosecution while challenging the validity of the traffic stop.”

“Then continue.”

“Thank you, Your Honor, I will. The—”

“Is that a shot?”

“Excuse me?”

“What you just said, is that a shot at me, Mr. Haller?”

I shook my head, confused. I couldn’t even remember what I had said.

“Uh, no, not a shot, Judge,” I said. “I don’t remember what I said but it was in no way intended to—”

“Very well, let’s move on,” the judge said.

I remained confused. The judge appeared to be sensitive to anything she construed as a questioning of her skill or authority. But it was good to register this early in the process.

“Okay, well, I apologize if anything I said sounded disrespectful,” I said. “As I was saying, I’ve filed a motion to suppress, challenging the probable cause to stop and the probable cause supporting a warrantless search of the trunk of the vehicle I was driving. An evidentiary hearing is required on the issues raised, with the attendance of the officer who stopped me and searched my vehicle. I would like to schedule a time for that hearing. But before we can do that, I have other matters that need to be addressed. My investigator has been trying for five weeks, Your Honor, to talk to the officer who stopped me — Officer Roy Milton — and has been unsuccessful despite numerous requests to him and the police department. I know we will be discussing our discovery motion later but, same thing, no cooperation from the D.A.’s Office in regard to the arrest. This is a continuation of the prosecution’s effort since day one to prevent a fair trial from occurring.”

Berg stood up but Warfield held up a hand to prevent her from speaking.

“Let me stop you right there, Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “That is a very serious accusation you just made. You’d better back that up right now.”

I composed my thoughts before proceeding.

“Your Honor,” I finally began. “The prosecution clearly does not want me to question Officer Milton, and you can see this all the way back in the decision to go to a grand jury for an indictment and have him testify in secret instead of holding a preliminary hearing where I would be able to question him.”

In the California courts, a felony charge can advance to trial only after a preliminary hearing in which evidence of probable cause for the arrest is presented to a judge and the defendant is ordered to trial. An alternative to the preliminary hearing is for the prosecution to present the case to a grand jury and ask for an indictment on the charge. That was what Berg had done in this case. The difference between the two procedures is that a preliminary hearing is held in open court, where the defense is allowed to question any witness who testifies in front of the judge, while a grand jury operates in secret.

“The grand jury is a perfectly valid option for the prosecution to choose,” Warfield said.

“And it prevents me from questioning my accusers,” I said. “Officer Milton was clearly wearing a body camera the night of my arrest, in keeping with LAPD regulations, and we have not been given that video. I also noted that there was a video camera in the police car, and we have not been given that video either.”

“Your Honor?” Dana Berg said. “The state objects to defense’s argument. He is turning a motion to suppress evidence in the case into a request for evidence. I’m confused.”

“So am I,” Warfield said. “Mr. Haller, I allowed you to defend yourself because you are an experienced lawyer, but you are sounding more and more like an amateur. Please stay on point.”

“Well, then, I, too, am confused, Your Honor,” I said. “I filed a legally sufficient motion to suppress the fruits of a warrantless search. Ms. Berg bears the burden of demonstrating the justification for the search. Yet I don’t see Officer Milton in the courtroom. So unless the prosecution is about to announce a concession, Ms. Berg is not ready to defend against the motion. Yet Ms. Berg acts as though she is outraged and as though I’m supposed to merely argue and be done with it.

“Judge, the point is, I request an evidentiary hearing and an opportunity to prepare for that hearing after receiving the discovery I am entitled to. I can’t properly and fully argue the motion to suppress, because the prosecution is violating the rules of discovery. I ask the court to table this for today, order the prosecution to fulfill its discovery obligations, and schedule a full evidentiary hearing on the motion at a time when witnesses, including Officer Milton, may appear.”

The judge looked at Berg.

“I know we have a discovery motion in Mr. Haller’s stack,” Warfield said, “but where are we on those items just mentioned? The video from the officer and the car. Those should have been turned over by now.”

“Judge,” Berg said. “We had technical issues with the transfer of—”

“Your Honor,” I roared, “they can’t be pulling this technical difficulty excuse! I was arrested five weeks ago today. My freedom is on the line here, and for them to say technical issues have delayed my due process rights is patently unfair. They are trying to keep me from getting to Milton. Plain and simple. They did it when they went to a grand jury instead of a prelim and they are doing it again here. I have not waived my right to a speedy trial and the prosecution is doing anything and everything it can to push me toward a delay.”

“Ms. Berg?” Warfield said. “Response to that?”

“Judge,” Berg said. “If the defendant would stop interrupting me before I even finish a sentence, he would have heard that we had — that’s past tense — technical difficulties, but they were cleared up and I have the videos from the officer’s car and body cam to give to the defendant today. Additionally, the state objects to any suggestion that it is dragging its feet or pressuring the defendant in any way to delay this case. We are ready to go, Your Honor. We are not interested in a delay.”

“Very well,” Warfield said. “Turn the videos over to the defense and we will—”

“Your Honor, point of order,” I said.

“What is it, Mr. Haller?” the judge said. “I’m losing my patience.”

“Counsel just referred to me as the defendant,” I said. “Yes, I am the accused in this case, but when I am arguing before the court, I am counsel for the defense and I request that the court direct Ms. Berg to refer to me properly.”

“You are talking about semantics, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “The court sees no need for such direction to the prosecution. You are the defendant. You are also the defense counsel. Same difference in this case.”

“Members of a jury might see the difference, Your Honor,” I said.

Warfield once again held her hand up like a traffic cop before Berg could voice an objection.

“No argument from the People is needed,” she said. “The defense request is denied. We are going to continue this motion to Thursday morning. Ms. Berg, I will expect you to have Officer Milton here to be questioned about the traffic stop of Mr. Haller. I will be happy to sign a subpoena to that effect if needed. But rest assured that if he does not appear, I’ll be inclined to grant the motion. Is that understood, Ms. Berg?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Berg said.

“Very well, let’s move on to the next motion,” Warfield said. “I have to leave the courthouse at eleven for an outside meeting. Let’s press on.”

“Your Honor, my co-counsel, Jennifer Aronson, will discuss the motion to compel discovery.”

Jennifer got up and approached the lectern. I went back to the defense table and we lightly touched arms as we passed each other.

“Go get ’em,” I whispered.

6

The perks I received as a pro se inmate extended to the detention center, where I was afforded space and time for daily meetings with my legal team. I set these meetings Monday through Friday at 3 p.m. whether or not there were issues or strategy to discuss. I needed the connection to the outside, if only for the mental health maintenance.

The meetings were a hardship for Cisco and Jennifer because they and their belongings were searched coming in and going out, and the rule was that the team had to be in place in the attorney-client room before I was even pulled from the module where I was housed. Everything in the jail moved at an indifferent pace set by the deputies running the show. The last thing afforded an inmate, even a pro se, was punctuality. It was the same reason my wake-ups were at 4 a.m. for a hearing six hours later and only four blocks away. These delays and harassments meant that they usually had to present themselves at the jail’s attorneys’ entrance at 2 p.m. so that I might see them for an hour beginning at 3 p.m.

The meeting that followed the court hearing was more important than a mental health hour. Judge Warfield had signed an order allowing Jennifer Aronson to bring a disc player into the jail for the legal-team conference so that I could view the videos that had finally been turned over by the prosecution.

I was late to the meeting because it had taken nearly four hours to bus me back from the courthouse to the jail. By the time they put me in the lawyer room, Jennifer and Cisco had been waiting nearly an hour.

“Sorry, guys,” I said as I was ushered in by a deputy. “I don’t control things around here.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” said Cisco.

It was the same setup as with the attorney room in the courthouse. They sat across from me. There was a camera that supposedly had no audio feed. The difference here was that I was allowed to use a pen when I was in the room to keep notes or handwrite motions to the court. I was not allowed to take a pen back to my cell because it could be used as a weapon, a pipe, or a source for tattoo ink. In fact, I was allowed a red-ink pen only, because it was considered an undesirable tattoo color should I somehow smuggle it back to my pod.

“Have you looked at the videos yet?” I asked.

“Only about ten times while we were waiting,” Cisco said.

“And?”

I looked at Jennifer with the question. She was the lawyer.

“Your recall of what was said and done was excellent,” she said.

“Good,” I said. “Can you stand to watch it again? I want to take notes for the Q and A with Officer Milton.”

“Do you think that’s the best way to go?” Jennifer asked.

I looked at her.

“You mean me asking the guy who arrested me the questions?”

“Yes. Might look vindictive to the jury.”

I nodded.

“It could. But there won’t be a jury.”

“There will probably be reporters. It will get out to the pool.”

“Okay, I’m still going to write questions, and we’ll make it a game-time decision. You should write up what you would ask and we’ll compare tomorrow or Wednesday.”

I was not allowed to touch the computer. Cisco turned the screen toward me. He played the video from Milton’s body cam first. The camera was attached to his uniform at chest height. The footage began with a view of the steering wheel of his car and quickly moved to him exiting the car and moving up the shoulder of the road toward a car I recognized as my Lincoln.

“Stop it,” I said. “This is bullshit.”

Cisco hit the stop button.

“What is bullshit?” Jennifer asked.

“The video,” I said. “Berg knows what I want and she’s fucking with us even though she made the grand gesture of compliance in court today. I want you to go back to the judge tomorrow with a motion requesting the full video. I want to see where this guy was and what he was doing before I supposedly happened to cross his path. Tell the judge we want to go back half an hour minimum on the body cam. And we want the full video before we go in for the hearing Thursday.”

“Got it.”

“Okay, go ahead with what they gave us.”

Cisco hit the play button again and I watched. There was a time code in the corner of the screen and I immediately started writing down times and notes to go with them. The traffic stop and what happened afterward was pretty much how I remembered it. I saw several places where I thought I could score points questioning Milton, and a few others where I thought I might be able to lead him into a lie trap.

Where I saw new stuff on the video was when Milton opened the trunk of the Lincoln and looked down to examine Sam Scales for any sign of life. I had been in the back seat of Milton’s patrol car at that point, my view of the trunk limited and from a low angle. Now I was looking at Sam’s body on its side, knees pulled up toward the chest and arms behind his back, secured with several wraps of duct tape. He was overweight and looked as though he was crammed into the trunk.

I could see bullet wounds in the chest and shoulder areas, and what looked like an entrance wound on the left temple and an exit through the right eye. This wasn’t new to me. We had already gotten crime scene photos in the first batch of discovery from Berg but the video lent a visceral realness to the crime and the crime scene.

Sam Scales in life deserved no sympathy but in death he looked pitiful. Blood from his wounds had spread across the floor of the trunk and dripped out through a hole created by the bullet that had exited his eye.

“Oh, shit,” Milton could be heard saying.

And then he followed his exclamation with a low humming that sounded like a stifled laugh.

“Play that part again,” I said. “After Milton says ‘Oh, shit.’”

Cisco replayed the sequence and I listened again to the sound Milton had made. It was almost like he was gloating. I thought it might be useful for a jury to hear.

“Okay, freeze it,” I said.

The image on the screen froze. I looked at Sam Scales. I had represented him for several years and through different charges and had somehow liked him even as I privately joined the public in their outrage at the scams he pulled. A weekly newspaper had once labeled him “The Most Hated Man in America” and it wasn’t hyperbole. He was a disaster con artist. Without showing a scintilla of guilt or conscience, he set up websites to take donations for survivors of earthquakes, tsunamis, mudslides, and school shootings. Wherever there was a tragedy that caught up the rest of the world in horror, Sam Scales was there with the quickly built website, the false testimonials, and the button that said DONATE NOW!

Though truly believing in the ideal that everybody charged with a crime deserves the best defense possible, even I could not take Sam Scales for very long. It wasn’t that he had refused to pay an agreed-upon fee for the last case I handled for him. The final straw came with the case I didn’t handle — his arrest for soliciting donations to pay for coffins for children killed in a childcare-center massacre in Chicago. Donations poured into a website Scales had built, but as usual, the money went right into his pocket. He called me from jail after his arrest. When I heard the details of the scam, I told Sam our relationship was over. I got a request for his files from a lawyer with the Public Defender’s Office, and that had been the last I had heard about Sam Scales — until he ended up dead in the trunk of my car.

“Anything unique on the car cam?” I asked.

“Not really,” Cisco said. “Same stuff, different angle.”

“Okay, then let’s skip that for now. We’re running out of time. What else was in the latest discovery from Death Row Dana?”

My attempt to inject a little levity into the discussion fell on deaf ears. The stakes were too high for these two to make jokes. Cisco answered my question in the full-on professional tone that contradicted his look and demeanor.

“We also got video from the black hole,” he said. “I haven’t had time to go through it all but it will be my priority once I get out of here.”

The black hole was what regular downtown commuters called the massive underground parking garage located beneath the civic center. It spiraled down into the earth seven levels deep. I had parked there on the day of the Sam Scales murder, giving my driver the day off because I expected to be in trial all day. The prosecution’s theory was that I had abducted Sam Scales the night before, put him in the trunk, and shot him, leaving his body there overnight and the next day while I was in court. To me that theory defied common sense and I was confident I could convince a jury of that. But there was still time between now and the trial for the prosecution to change theories and come up with something better.

Time of death had been set at approximately twenty-four hours before the body’s discovery by Officer Milton. This also accounted for the leakage under the car that had supposedly alerted Milton and led to the grim discovery of the trunk’s contents. The body was beginning to break down and decompose, and fluids were leaking through the bullet hole in the floor of the trunk.

“Any theory on why the prosecution wanted those angles in the garage?” I asked.

“I think they want to be able to say that nobody tampered with your car all day,” Jennifer said. “And if the camera angles are clear enough to show the dripping of bodily fluids under the car, then they have that too.”

“We’ll know more when I can get a look,” Cisco added.

A sudden chill went through me as I thought about how someone had murdered Sam Scales in my car, most likely while it was parked in my garage, and then how I had driven around with the body for a day.

“Okay, what else?” I asked.

“This is new,” Cisco said. “We have a witness report from your next-door neighbor, who heard the voices of two men arguing at your house the night before.”

I shook my head.

“Didn’t happen,” I said. “Who was it, Mrs. Shogren or that idiot Chasen who lives downhill from me?”

Cisco looked at the report.

“Millicent Shogren,” he read. “Couldn’t make out the words. Just angry voices.”

“Okay, you need to interview her — and don’t scare her,” I said. “Then you talk to Gary Chasen on the other side of the house. He’s always picking up strays in West Hollywood and then they get into arguments. If Millie heard an argument, it was coming from Chasen’s. Since it’s a stepped neighborhood and she’s at the top of the hill, she hears everything.”

“What about you?” Jennifer asked. “What did you hear?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I told you about that night. I went to bed early and didn’t hear a thing.”

“And you went to bed alone,” Jennifer confirmed.

“Unfortunately,” I said. “If I knew I was going to be tagged with a murder, maybe I would have picked up a stray myself.”

Again, stakes too high. Nobody cracked a smile. But the discussion of what Millie Shogren heard and from where she heard it prompted a question.

“Millie didn’t tell them she heard the shots, right?” I asked.

“Doesn’t say it here,” Cisco said.

“Then make sure you ask her,” I said. “We might be able to turn their witness into ours.”

Cisco shook his head.

“What?” I asked.

“No go, boss,” he said. “We also got the ballistics report in the discovery package, and it doesn’t look good.”

Now I realized why they had been so somber, with me trying to cheer them up instead of the other way around. They had buried the lede and now I was about to hear it.

“Tell me,” I said.

“Okay, well, the one shot that went through the victim’s head and that punctured the floor of the trunk was found on the floor of your garage,” Cisco said. “Along with blood. The slug hit the concrete and flattened, so matching of the rifling was no good. But they did metal-alloy tests and matched it to the other bullets that were in the body. According to what we got in the package, the DNA is still out on the blood but we can assume that will be matched to Sam Scales as well.”

I nodded. This meant that the state could prove that Sam Scales was murdered in my home’s garage at a time I had confirmed that I was at home. I thought about the legal conclusion I had offered Edgar Quesada the night before. I was now in the same sinking boat. Legally speaking, I was fucked.

“Okay,” I finally said. “I need to sit with this and think. If you two have no more surprises, then you can get out of this place and I’ll do some strategizing. This doesn’t change anything. It’s still a setup. It’s just a fucking good one and I need to close my eyes and figure things out.”

“You sure, boss?” Cisco asked.

“We can work it with you,” Jennifer offered.

“No, I need to be alone with this,” I said. “You two go.”

Cisco got up and went to the door, where he knocked hard on the metal with the side of his meaty fist.

“Same time tomorrow?” Jennifer asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Same time. At some point we have to stop trying to figure out their case and start building ours.”

The door opened and a deputy collected my colleagues for exit processing. The door was closed and I was left alone. I closed my eyes and waited for them to come get me next. I heard the banging of steel doors and the echoing shouts of caged men. Echoes and iron were the inescapable sounds of my life at Twin Towers.

7

Tuesday, December 3

In the morning I notified the dayroom deputy that I needed to go to the law library to do research on my case. It was ninety minutes before another deputy came to escort me there. The library was just a small room on B level where there were four desks and a wall of shelves containing two copies of the California Penal Code and several volumes containing case law and reported decisions of the state’s supreme court and lower appellate courts. I had checked a handful of the books on my first visit to the library and found them seriously out of date and useless. Everything was on computer these days and updated immediately upon the change of a law or the setting of a precedent. Books on shelves were for show.

But that was not why I needed the library. I needed to write down my sleepless night’s thoughts on the case and I was allowed to check out and use a pen at the library. Of course, Bishop had long ago offered to rent me a pencil stub that I could surreptitiously use in my cell, but I declined because I knew that before it got to me it would have come into the jail and been passed module to module in a series of visitor and inmate rectums. When not actually using the pencil, I would also be expected to hide it from the hacks in such a manner.

I chose the law library instead and set to work, writing on the back of the pages of a motion that had already been filed and dismissed.

What I put together was essentially a to-do list for my investigator and co-counsel. We’d had some setbacks in the early going — no cameras in the lot where I had parked the night of the Redwood party; no cameras that worked, at least, at my across-the-street neighbors’. My own camera on the front deck of my house did not pick up a view of the garage or street below. But I felt that there was still much that could be done to shift things and get momentum going in our favor. First and foremost, we needed to get full-data downloads off my cell phone and car, both of which were currently in police custody. We needed to file motions to examine these and retrieve the data. I knew that a cell phone was the best personal tracker on the planet. In my case, it would show that on the night in question, mine was in my home the entire night. Data off the Lincoln’s navigation system would show that the car was parked in the garage all evening and night and through the estimated time of death of Sam Scales. This, of course, didn’t mean I could not have slipped out in a borrowed car or with a co-conspirator to abduct Sam Scales, but then logic and common sense starts undercutting the state’s case. If I had planned the crime so carefully, why did I then drive around for a day with the body in the trunk?

The car and phone data would be two powerful points to put in front of a jury and they would also serve to corner the prosecution in regard to opportunity, a key building block of guilt. The prosecution carried the burden of proof and therefore would have to explain how I committed this crime in my own garage when it could not be proven that either my car or I had ever left the property.

Had I lured Sam Scales to the house and then killed him? Prove it.

Had I used a different vehicle to secretly leave the house to abduct Sam and then bring him back to place him in the trunk of my own car and then kill him? Prove it.

These were motions I would need Jennifer to research and write. For Cisco I had a different task. I had initially put him on a survey of my prior cases in search of someone who might want to do me harm: an unhappy client, a snitch, someone I had thrown under the bus at trial. Framing me for a murder was a bit extreme as far as revenge plots go, but I knew that I was being set up by somebody and had to leave no possibility unchecked. Now I would shift Cisco away from that angle of investigation and turn it over to Lorna Taylor. She knew my cases and my files better than anyone and would know what to look for. She could handle the paper chase while I put Cisco full-time on Sam Scales. I had not represented Scales in years and knew very little about him. I needed Cisco to background him and figure out how and why he was chosen as the victim in the plot to get to me. I needed to know everything Sam had his fingers in. I had no doubt that at the time of his murder, he was either scheming his next con or in the middle of it. Either way, I needed to know the details.

Part of vetting Sam Scales’s life was to also vet him in death. We had gotten the autopsy report in the very first but thin wave of discovery from the prosecution. It confirmed the obvious, that Scales had died of multiple gunshot wounds. But we had received only the initial autopsy report put together after the examination of the body. It did not include a toxicology report. That usually took two to four weeks to complete following the autopsy. That meant the toxicology results should be in by now and the fact that they had not been included in the latest batch of discovery was suspicious to me. The prosecution might be hiding something and I needed to find out what it was. I also wanted to know what level of mental function Sam Scales was at when he was put into the trunk of my car, presumably alive, and shot.

This could be handled two ways. Jennifer could simply file a motion seeking the report as part of discovery, or Cisco could go down to the coroner’s office and try to cadge a copy of it on his own. It was, after all, a public record.

On my to-do list, I assigned the job to Cisco for the simple reason that if he got a copy of the tox report, there was a good chance the prosecution would not be aware that we got it. This was the better strategy. Don’t let the prosecution know what you have and where you are going with it — unless it is required.

That was it for the list. For now. But I didn’t want to go back to the module. Too much noise, too many distractions. I liked the quiet of the library and decided that while I had a pen in hand, I might as well sketch out the brief on the motion to examine the cell phone and car. I wanted to hit Judge Warfield with it at Thursday’s hearing so we could move expeditiously. If I outlined it for Jennifer now, she could easily have it ready to submit.

But just as I began, the deputy assigned to the library got a call on his radio and told me I had a visitor. This was a bit of a surprise because I could be visited only by people I had put on the visitation list I filled out at booking. The list was short and primarily contained the names of the people on my defense team. I was already scheduled to have a team meeting in the afternoon.

I guessed the visitor would be Lorna Taylor. Though she managed my practice, she was neither a lawyer nor a licensed investigator, and that precluded her from being able to join the afternoon sessions with Jennifer and Cisco. But when I was escorted into the visitor booth and looked through the glass, I was pleasantly surprised to see the woman whose name I had written last on my list as a long-shot hope.

Kendall Roberts was on the other side of the glass. I had not seen her in more than a year. Not since she had told me she was leaving me.

I slid onto the stool in front of the glass and picked up the phone out of its cradle. She picked up the phone on the other side.

“Kendall,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” she said, “I heard about you getting arrested and I had to come. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. It’s all bullshit and I’ll beat this in court.”

“I believe you.”

When she had left me, she had also left the city.

“Uh, when did you get here?” I asked. “Into town, I mean.”

“Last night. Late.”

“Where are you staying?”

“I’m at a hotel. By the airport.”

“Well, how long are you staying?”

“I don’t know. I have no plans. When is the trial?”

“Not for, like, two months. But we’re in court this Thursday.”

“Maybe I’ll come by.”

She said it as if I had invited her to a happy hour or a party. I didn’t care. She looked beautiful. I didn’t think she had cut her hair since I had last seen her. It now framed her face as it fell to her shoulders. The dimples in her cheeks when she smiled were there like always. I felt my chest constrict. I had been with my two ex-wives for a total of seven years. I had spent almost as much time with Kendall. And it was good for every one of those years until we started drifting apart and she said she wanted to leave L.A.

I couldn’t leave my daughter or my practice. I offered to make more time for travel but I wasn’t going to leave. So, in the end, it was Kendall who left. She packed everything she owned one day while I was in trial and left me a note. I had put Cisco on it just so I had the comfort of knowing where she was and that she was all right — or so I told myself. He tracked her to Hawaii but I left it at that. Never flew across the ocean to find her and beg her to return. I simply waited and hoped.

“Where did you come in from?” I asked.

“Honolulu,” she said. “I’ve been living in Hawaii.”

“Did you open a studio?”

“No, but I teach classes. It’s better for me not to be the owner. I just teach now. I get by.”

She’d had a yoga studio on Ventura Boulevard for several years but sold it when she started getting restless.

“How long are you here?”

“I told you. I don’t know yet.”

“Well, if you want, you can stay at the house. I obviously won’t be using it and you could water the plants — some of which I think are actually yours.”

“Uh, maybe. We’ll see.”

“The extra key is still under the cactus on the front deck.”

“Thanks. Why are you here, Mickey? Don’t you have bail or...?”

“Right now they have me on five-million bail, which means I could get out with a ten percent bond. But you don’t get that money back at the end, innocent or guilty, and that would be about everything I’ve got, including the equity in my house. I can’t see giving all of that away for a couple months of freedom. I’ve got them on a speedy trial clock and I’m going to win this thing and get out without having to pay a bail bondsman a dime.”

She nodded.

“Good,” she said. “I believe you.”

The interviews were fifteen minutes only and then the phones would get cut off. I knew we were almost out of time. But seeing her made me think of all that was at stake.

“It is really nice of you to come see me,” I said. “I’m sorry the visits are so short and you came so far.”

“You put me on your visitors list,” she said. “I wasn’t sure when they asked me and then they found my name. That was nice.”

“I don’t know, I just thought maybe you’d come if you heard about it. I didn’t know if it would make news in Hawaii but it was big news here.”

“You knew I was in Hawaii?”

Ugh. I had slipped up.

“Uh, sort of,” I said. “When you left like you did, I just wanted to make sure you were okay, you know? I had Cisco check things out and he told me you flew to Hawaii. I didn’t know where or anything like that, or if it was permanent. Just that you had gone.”

I watched her think through my answer.

“Okay,” she said, accepting it.

“How is it there?” I asked, trying to move past my gaffe. “You like it?”

“It’s been okay. Isolating. I’m thinking of coming back.”

“Well, I don’t know what I can do from here, but if there’s anything you need, let me know.”

“Okay, thanks. I guess I should be going. They said I only get fifteen minutes.”

“Yeah, but they just shut down the phones when your time is up. You think you’ll come back to visit? I’m here every day if I’m not in court.”

I smiled like I was some sort of comedian hawking his stand-up act. Before she could answer, there was a loud electronic buzz on the phone and the line went dead. I saw her speak but didn’t hear it. She looked at the phone and then at me and slowly put it back in its cradle. The visit was over.

I nodded at her and smiled awkwardly. She made a slight wave and then got up from her stool. I did the same and started walking down the line of visitor booths, all of them open behind the prisoner’s stool. I looked through every window as I passed and caught a few glimpses of her moving parallel to me on the other side.

Then she was gone.

The hack asked me whether I was going back to the law library and I told him I wanted to go back to the module.

While I was being led back, I worked over my final view of Kendall on the phone. I had watched her lips as she spoke into the dead phone. I came to realize that she had said, “I don’t know.”

8

Thursday, December 5

Officer Roy Milton was in uniform and sitting in the first row of the gallery behind the prosecution table when I was led into the courtroom. I recognized him easily from the night of my arrest. Following Sheriff’s Department protocol I was manacled by a waist chain, with my hands cuffed at my sides. I was led to the defense table, where the escort deputy unchained me, and Jennifer, who was standing and waiting, helped me put on my suit jacket. Lorna had somehow gotten two-day tailoring done and the suit fit me perfectly. I turned toward the gallery as I shot the cuffs and addressed Milton.

“Officer Milton, how are you today?” I asked.

“Don’t answer that,” Dana Berg said from the prosecution table.

I looked at her and she stared right back at me.

“Mind your own business, Haller,” she said.

I spread my hands in a gesture of surprise.

“Just being cordial,” I said.

“Be cordial with someone on your side,” Berg said.

“All right,” I said. “Whatever.”

I did a 180 sweep of the gallery and saw my daughter in her usual spot. I smiled and nodded and she gave both back to me. I didn’t see Kendall Roberts anywhere but I wasn’t expecting to. I had come to view her visit the other day as her fulfilling some sort of duty to me. But that was all there would be.

I finally pulled out my chair at the defense table and sat down next to Jennifer.

“You look good,” she said. “Lorna did a good job with that suit.”

We had spoken earlier in the holding cell along with Cisco. But Cisco was gone now, with a full plate of investigative tasks to carry out.

I heard whispers directly behind me and turned to see that two of the reporters who had been covering the case from the beginning were now in their usual spots. Both were women, one from the Los Angeles Times, the other from the Daily News, competitors who liked to sit together and chat while waiting for court to start. I had known Audrey Finnel from the Times for years, as she had covered a few of my cases. Addie Gamble was new on the criminal courts beat for the News and I knew her by her byline only.

Soon Judge Warfield appeared in the doorway behind the clerk’s corral and court was called to order. Before getting to the motion to suppress, I told the judge that I had a new motion to file with the court on an emergency basis because the prosecution was still not playing fair when it came to the rules of discovery.

“What is it this time, Mr. Haller?” the judge asked.

Her voice took on a tone of exasperation, which I found disconcerting, since the hearing had just started. As I walked to the lectern, Jennifer carried copies of the new motion to the prosecution table and the court clerk, who then handed the documents to the judge.

“Your Honor, the defense just wants what it is entitled to,” I said. “You have a discovery motion in front of you for data from my own car and cell phone, which the prosecution has not provided because it knows it is exculpatory and will show that I was in my house and that my car was in my garage when I supposedly went out and abducted Mr. Scales and then took him back to my house to murder him.”

Dana Berg immediately stood up and objected. She didn’t even have to state her grounds for the objection. The judge was on it right away.

“Mr. Haller,” she boomed. “Making your case to the media instead of the court is unacceptable and... dangerous. Do you understand me?”

“I do, Judge, and I apologize,” I said. “Defending myself has taken me to some emotional depths I don’t usually deal with.”

“That is no excuse. Consider that your one and only warning.”

“Thank you, Your Honor.”

But as I spoke my apology, I couldn’t help wondering what the judge would do to me with a contempt citation. Put me in jail? I was already there. Fine me? Good luck collecting with me earning zero income while I fought a murder rap.

“Continue,” the judge instructed. “Carefully.”

“Judge, the motion is clear,” I said. “The state obviously has this information and we have not received it. It appears that it is the practice of the District Attorney’s Office to hold discovery and not share it unless it is specifically asked for by the defense, and that is not the way it works. This is vital information about my own property that I need in order to defend myself, and I need it right now, Your Honor. Not when the prosecution feels like it.”

The judge looked at Berg for a response and the prosecutor took the lectern, lowering the stem microphone to her level.

“Your Honor, Mr. Haller’s assumptions are completely wrong,” she said. “The information he seeks was acquired by the LAPD following the issuance of a search warrant, which took time to write and execute. The material that came from that search warrant was received by my office just yesterday and has not yet been reviewed by me or anyone on my team. I believe the rules of discovery allow me to at least review evidence before passing it to the defense.”

“When will the defense have this material?” Warfield asked.

“I would think by the end of the day tomorrow,” Berg said.

“Your Honor?” I said.

“Hold your horses, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “Ms. Berg, if you don’t have time to review the material, then get someone else to review it or turn it over blind. I want you to give it to the defense by the end of the day. That’s today I’m talking about. And that’s the workday. Not midnight.”

“Yes, Your Honor,” a chastened Berg said.

“Your Honor, I would still like to be heard,” I said.

“Mr. Haller, I just got you what you asked for,” Warfield said impatiently. “What else is there to say?”

I went to the lectern as Berg stepped away. I glanced back into the gallery and saw Kendall sitting next to my daughter. That gave me confidence. I raised the microphone stem back up.

“Judge,” I began, “the defense is troubled by this absurd idea that discovery does not need to be completed until a review of the discoverable evidence occurs. Review is an amorphous word, Your Honor. What is a review? How long is a review? Two days? Two weeks? Two months? I would ask the court to set out clear guidelines about this. As the court knows, I have not and will not waive my right to a speedy trial, and therefore any delay in the transfer of discovery puts the defense on an unfair footing.”

“Your Honor?” Berg said. “May I be heard?”

“No, Ms. Berg, there is no need for you to be heard,” Warfield said. “Let me make clear the rules of discovery in this courtroom. Discovery is a two-way street. What comes in must go out. Forthwith. No delay, no undue review. What the state gets, the defense gets. Conversely, what the defense gets, the state gets. Without delay. The penalty for violation is the disallowance of the material at the source of the complaint. Remember that. Now, can we take up the cause that this hearing was scheduled for? The motion in limine filed by Mr. Haller to essentially disallow the body in this case. Ms. Berg, you bear the burden of justifying a warrantless search and seizure. Do you have a witness to call in this matter?”

“Yes, Your Honor,” Berg said. “The People call Officer Roy Milton.”

Milton stood in the gallery and walked through the gate and to the witness stand. He raised his hand and was sworn in. After he was seated and the preliminaries of identity were completed, Berg elicited Milton’s version of my arrest.

“You are assigned to Metro Division, correct, Officer Milton?”

“Yes.”

“What is Metro’s jurisdiction?”

“Well, we have the whole city, I guess you could say.”

“But on the night in question, you were working downtown on Second Street, weren’t you?”

“That’s correct.”

“What was your assignment that night, Officer Milton?”

“I was on an SPU assignment and was posted near—”

“Let me stop you right there. What is SPU?”

“Special Problems Unit.”

“And what was the special problem that you were addressing that night?”

“We were encountering spikes in crimes in the civic center. Vandalism mostly. We had spotters in the center and I was in a support car posted just outside the zone. I was at Second and Broadway, with eyelines down both streets.”

“Eyelines for what, Officer Milton?”

“Everything, anything. I saw the defendant pull out of the parking lot on Broadway.”

“You did, didn’t you? Let’s talk about that. You were stationary, correct?”

“Yes, I was parked at the curb at the southeast corner on Second. I had a view up to the tunnel in front of me and down Broadway to my left. That was where I saw the vehicle leaving the pay lot.”

“Were you assigned that position, or did you choose it?”

“I was assigned that general location — the top corner of the box we were putting over the civic center.”

“But didn’t your position put you in a blind? The L.A. Times Building would block any view of the civic center, would it not?”

“Like I said, we had spotters inside — observers on the ground in the civic center. I was containment. I was placed in a position where I could react to anyone leaving the civic center on Broadway. Or I could come into the box if needed.”

Step-by-step she walked him through the pull-over and the discussion with me at the rear of my car. He described my reticence to open the trunk to see if the license plate was there, then his spotting the substance dripping from the car.

“I thought it was blood,” Milton said. “At that point I believed there were exigent circumstances and that I needed to open the trunk to see if someone was hurt inside.”

“Thank you, Officer Milton,” Berg said. “I have nothing further.”

The witness was turned over to me. My goal was to build a record I hoped would be useful at trial. Berg had not bothered to show any video during her questioning, because all she needed to do was establish exigent circumstances.

But we had received the extended versions of both his body-cam and the car-cam video from the prosecution the day before and had studied them during our three o’clock at Twin Towers. Jennifer had the body-cam tape cued up on her laptop and ready to go now if needed.

As I walked to the lectern, I took the rubber band off a rolled printout of an aerial shot of the downtown civic center. I asked permission of the judge to approach the witness, then unrolled the photo in front of him.

“Officer Milton, I see you have a pen in your pocket,” I said.

“Would you mark this photograph with the position you had taken on the night in question?”

Milton did as I requested, and I asked him to add his initials. I then took the photo back, rolled and banded it, and asked the judge to enter it as defense exhibit A. Milton, Berg, and the judge all looked a bit bewildered by what I had just done, but that was okay. I wanted Berg to be puzzled about what the defense was up to.

I returned to the lectern and asked the court’s permission to play both videos turned over to me in discovery. The judge gave her approval and I used Milton to authenticate and introduce the videos. I played them back-to-back without stopping to ask any questions. When they were finished, I asked only two.

“Officer Milton, do you believe those videos were an accurate accounting of your actions during the traffic stop?” I asked.

“Yes, it’s all there on tape,” Milton said.

“You see no indication that the tapes have been altered or edited in any way?”

“No, it’s all there.”

I asked the judge to accept the videos as defense exhibits B and C and Warfield complied.

I moved on, once again leaving the prosecutor and judge puzzled by the record I was building.

“Officer Milton, at what point did you decide to initiate a traffic stop on my car?”

“When you made the turn, I noticed there was no license plate on the vehicle. It’s a common capering move, so I followed and initiated the traffic stop when we were in the Second Street tunnel.”

“ ‘Capering,’ Officer Milton?”

“Sometimes when people are engaged in committing crimes, they take the plates off their car so witnesses can’t get the plate number.”

“I see. But it appeared from the video we just watched that the car in question still had a front plate, did it not?”

“It did.”

“Doesn’t that contradict your capering theory?”

“Not really. Getaway cars are usually seen driving away. It’s the rear plate that would be important to remove.”

“Okay. Did you see me walk down the street from the Redwood and turn right onto Broadway?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Was I doing anything suspicious?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Did you think I was drunk?”

“No.”

“And you saw me walk into the parking lot?”

“I did.”

“Was that suspicious to you?”

“Not really. You were dressed in a suit and I thought you probably had parked a car in the lot.”

“Were you aware that the Redwood is a bar frequented by defense lawyers?”

“I was not.”

“Who was it who told you to pull me over after I drove out of the lot?”

“Uh, no one. I saw the missing plate when you made the turn from Broadway onto Second, and I left my position and initiated the stop.”

“By that, you mean you followed me into the tunnel and then turned your lights on, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have advance knowledge that I would be leaving that lot without a rear plate on my car?”

“No.”

“You weren’t there in that spot specifically to pull me over?”

“No, I was not.”

Berg stood and objected, saying I was badgering Milton by asking him the same question in different ways. The judge agreed and told me to move on.

I looked down at the lectern at the notes I had written in red ink.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” I said.

The judge looked slightly confused by my examination and its abrupt end.

“Are you sure, Mr. Haller?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Very well. Does the state have recross?”

Berg also seemed confused by my questioning of Milton. Thinking I had done no damage, she told the judge she had no further questions. The judge shifted her focus back to me.

“Do you have another witness, Mr. Haller?”

“No, Your Honor.”

“Very well. Arguments?”

“Judge, my argument is submitted.”

“Nothing further? You don’t want to at least connect the dots for us after your examination of the witness?”

“Submitted, Your Honor.”

“Does the state wish to argue?”

Berg stood at her table and raised her hands as if to ask what there was to argue, then said she would go with her written response to my motion.

“Then the court is prepared to rule,” Warfield said. “The motion is denied and this court is in recess.”

The judge had spoken matter-of-factly. And I could hear whispers and sense the letdown of those in the courtroom. It was as though there was a collective What? from those in the gallery.

But I was pleased. I didn’t want to win the motion. I wanted to cut down the prosecution’s tree at trial and win the case. And I had just made the first swing of the ax.

9

We came into the three o’clock meeting with good spirits, despite the surroundings. Not only had we accomplished what we wanted to get done and on the record in the court hearing that morning, but both Jennifer and Cisco said they had good news to share. I told Jennifer to go first.

“Okay, you remember Andre La Cosse?” she asked.

“Of course I do,” I said. “My finest hour.”

It was true. The State of California versus Andre La Cosse might as well be etched on my tombstone at the end of my days. It was the case I was proudest of. An innocent man with the entire weight of the justice system against him charged with murder, and I walked him. And it wasn’t just an NG. It was the rarest of all birds in the justice system. It was the Big I. My work in trial had proved him innocent. So much so that the state paid damages for their malfeasance in charging him in the first place.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Well, he saw something about your case online and he wants to help,” Jennifer said.

“Help how?”

“Mickey, don’t you get it? You got him a seven-figure settlement for wrongful prosecution. He wants to return the favor. He called up Lorna and said he could go up to two hundred on bail.”

I was a bit stunned. Andre had barely survived the case while being held in this same place — Twin Towers — while we were in trial, and I had negotiated a settlement for him in compensation. I had taken a third, but that was seven years ago and it was long gone. He had apparently done better with his money and was now willing to chip off some of what he had in order to spring me.

“He knows he doesn’t get it back, right?” I said. “Two hundred out the window. That’s a big chunk of the money I got him.”

“He knows,” Jennifer said. “And he hasn’t just been sitting on that money. He invested it. Lorna said he’s into the whole crypto-currency thing and he says the settlement was only seed money. It has grown. A lot. He’s offering the two hundred, no strings attached. I want to go in and set up a bail hearing. We get Warfield to knock it down to two and a half or three million — where it should be — and you walk out of here.”

I nodded. Andre’s money could go for a 10 percent bond against the set bail. But there was a problem.

“That’s very generous of Andre, but I don’t think that’ll get it done,” I said. “Berg’s not going to roll over and play dead on a sixty percent reduction on bail. I don’t think Warfield will either. If Andre really wants to kick in, maybe we talk about using his money for expert witnesses, exhibits, and everybody on staff getting paid for the overtime they’re putting in.”

“No, boss,” Cisco said.

“We thought about that,” Jennifer said. “And there’s somebody else who wants to help. Another donor.”

“Who?” I said.

“Harry Bosch,” she said.

“No way,” I said. “He’s a retired cop, for god’s sake. He can’t—”

“Mickey, you got him a million-dollar settlement from the city last year and didn’t even take a cut. He wants—”

“I didn’t take a cut, because he might need that money. He’s going to max out his insurance and then he’ll need it. Besides, I set up a trust and he put it in there.”

“Look, Mickey, he can tap it or borrow against it,” Jennifer insisted. “The point is, you have to get out of here. Not only is it dangerous in this place, but you’re losing weight, you don’t look good, and your health is at risk. Remember what Legal Siegel used to say? ‘Look like a winner and you’ll become a winner’? You don’t look like a winner, Mickey. You can tailor your suits but you still look pale and sick. You need to get out of here and get yourself in shape for trial.”

“He actually said, ‘Act like a winner and you’ll be a winner.’ ”

“Doesn’t matter. Same thing. This is your chance. These people came to us. We didn’t go to them. In fact, Andre said he came because he saw you on TV from that last hearing and it reminded him of himself when he was in here.”

I nodded. I knew she was right. But I hated taking the money, especially from Bosch, my half brother, who I knew needed it for other things.

“Not only that, but you need to get home for Christmas and see your daughter,” Jennifer said. “This no-visitation thing is hurting her as much as it must hurt you.”

She nailed me with her final argument. I missed my daughter, missed her voice.

“Okay, I hear you,” I said.

“Good,” Jennifer said.

“I think we might be able to knock the bail down to three million,” I said. “But that’s probably it.”

“We can cover three million,” Jennifer said.

“Okay, set it up,” I said. “Don’t give any hint that we can go up to three million. I want Berg to think we’re coming in hat in hand. She’ll think dropping bail a couple million will still probably keep me in stir. We ask for one million and she compromises at two or three.”

“Right,” Jennifer said.

“And one last thing,” I said. “Are you sure Harry and Andre came in voluntarily with this? It wasn’t the other way around?”

Jennifer shrugged and looked at Cisco.

“Scout’s honor, boss,” he said. “That’s straight up from Lorna.”

I looked for any sign of deception and didn’t see any. But I could tell something was bothering Jennifer.

“Jennifer, what?” I asked.

“On bail, what if the judge makes a monitor part of the deal?” she asked. “An ankle bracelet. Can you live with that?”

I thought about it for a moment. It would be the ultimate invasion, having the state monitoring my every move while I was building my defense. But I recalled what Jennifer had said about spending time with my daughter.

“Don’t offer it,” I finally said. “But if it comes up as part of the deal, I’ll accept it.”

“Good,” Jennifer said. “I’ll file the motion as soon as we get out of here. If we’re lucky, we’ll get before the judge tomorrow and you’ll be home for the weekend.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said.

“There’s one other thing from Harry Bosch,” Jennifer said.

“What’s that?”

“He said he also wants to help with the defense, if we want him.” This was cause for hesitation. There had always been a low-level friction between Cisco and Bosch that stemmed from their origins as investigators. Bosch was retired now, but from law enforcement. Cisco was from the defense side from the start. Bringing Bosch on could be extremely useful because of his experience and connections. It could also throw off the chemistry of my team. I didn’t have to ponder the offer long before Cisco ended my uncertainty.

“We need him,” Cisco said.

“You sure?” I asked.

“Bring him on,” he said.

I knew what he was doing. He was casting all friction or animosity aside for me. If it had been any other case, he would have said we didn’t need Bosch, and that was probably true. But with my life and freedom on the line, Cisco wanted any possible advantage we could get.

I nodded my thanks to him and looked at Jennifer.

“Get me out of here first,” I said. “Then we meet with Bosch. Make sure he gets everything from the discovery file, especially all the crime scene photos. He’s good with that stuff.”

“I’m on it,” she said. “Is he on your visitors list here?”

“No, but I can add him,” I said. “He may have already tried to see me.”

I shifted my focus back to Cisco.

“Okay, Big Man, what’ve you got?” I asked.

“I got the full autopsy from a guy at the coroner’s,” he said. “You’re going to like the tox report.”

“Tell me.”

“Sam Scales had flunitrazepam in his blood. That’s what’s on the report. You look that up on Google and you get Rohypnol.”

“The date-rape drug,” Jennifer said.

“Okay,” I said. “How much was in his blood?”

“Enough to knock him out,” Cisco said. “He wasn’t conscious when they shot him.”

I liked that Cisco had said they. It told me he was all in on the theory that I had been framed and most likely by more than one person.

“So what does this tell us in terms of when he got dosed?” I asked.

“Not sure yet,” Cisco said.

“Jennifer, we’re going to need an expert for trial,” I said. “A good one. Can you work on that?”

“On it,” she said.

I thought about things for a few moments before continuing.

“I’m not sure it really helps us,” I said. “The state’s position will be that I dosed him, then abducted him and took him to the house. We still need to get into Sam Scales and where he was and what he was doing.”

“I’m on it,” Cisco said.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s talk about the garage next. Did Lorna get Wesley out to look at it?”

Wesley Brower was the installer I’d used to replace the emergency release on my garage door. This happened seven months earlier during fire season when a rolling brownout left my house without power. I could not open the garage door and was due in court on a sentencing. I had long misplaced the key to the emergency release. I called out Brower to get the garage open and he found that the keyed handle of the release pull was seized with rust. He still managed to get the door open, and I got to court — late. The next day Brower came back and installed a new emergency release system.

If my defense was going to claim that I was framed, then it would be my job at trial to explain to the jury exactly how that frame came together. And that would start with how the true killer or killers got into my garage to put Sam Scales in the trunk of my car and then shoot him. I had told my team to have Wesley Brower check the emergency release to see if it had been recently engaged or tampered with.

Jennifer answered my question by raising a hand and wagging it side to side to say she had good and bad news.

“Lorna got Brower out to the garage and he checked the emergency release,” she said. “He determined that it had been pulled, but he can’t say when. You put the new one in back in July, so all he can say is that it has been pulled since then.”

“How does he know?” I asked.

“Whoever pulled it put it back together after they got the door open. But they didn’t do it the way he left it back in July. So he knows it was pulled — he just won’t be able to testify when. It’s a wash, Mickey.”

“Damn.”

“I know, but it was a long shot.”

The good feelings that we had started the meeting with were dissipating.

“Okay, where are we on the suspects list?” I asked.

“Lorna is still working on it,” Jennifer said. “You’ve had a ton of cases in the past ten years. There’s still a lot to go through. I told her I’d work with her this weekend, and with any luck you’ll be out of this place and able to be there too.”

I nodded.

“Speaking of which, you should probably go if you’re going to file something today,” I said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jennifer said. “Anything else?”

I leaned across the table to talk in a low voice to Jennifer — in case the overhead camera had grown ears.

“I’m going to call you when I can get to a phone in the module,” I said. “I want to talk about Baja and I want you to record it. Can you do that?”

“Not a problem. I’ve got an app.”

“Good. Then we’ll talk later.”

10

It was almost an hour before they moved me back to the module. I found Bishop at one of the tables playing Mexican dominoes with a custody named Filbin. He gave me his customary greeting.

“Counselor,” he said.

“Bishop, I thought you had court today,” I said.

“Thought I did too until my lawyer put it over. Motherfucker mus’ think I’m stayin’ at the Ritz over here.”

I sat down, put my documents on the table, and looked around. A lot of guys were out of their cells and moving around the dayroom. The module had two phones mounted on the wall below the mirrored windows of the hack tower. You could either make a collect call on them or use a phone card purchased from the jail canteen. At the moment, both phones were being used and each one had a line of three men waiting. The calls cut off after fifteen minutes. That meant if I got in line now I would get a phone in roughly an hour.

I didn’t see Quesada on my survey of the dayroom. Then I saw that the door to his cell was closed. Every man in the module was on keep-away status, but being locked up in a cell in a keep-away module was reserved for those inmates who were either in imminent danger or highly valuable to a prosecution.

“Quesada’s on lockdown?” I said.

“Happened this morning,” Bishop said.

“Snitch,” Filbin said.

I almost smiled. Calling someone in the keep-away module a snitch was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. The most common reason for segregating people in the module in the first place was that they were informants. For all I knew, Filbin was one. I didn’t make it a practice of asking fellow inmates what they were being held for or why they were on keep-away status. I had no idea why Bishop was in the module and would never ask him. Sticking your nose in other people’s business could have consequences in a place like Twin Towers.

I watched them play until Bishop won the game and Filbin got up and walked off toward the stairs leading to the second tier of cells.

“You want to play, Counselor?” Bishop asked. “A dime a point?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t gamble.”

“Now, that’s some bullshit right there. You gambling with your own life right now bein’ in here with us criminals.”

“Speaking of that, I might be getting out soon.”

“Yeah? You sure you want to leave this wonderful place?”

“I need to. Gotta prep my case, and in here it’s not going to happen. Anyway, I’m only telling you because I want you to know that I’ll make good on our deal. I’ll pay till the end of my trial.”

“That’s mighty white of you.”

“I mean it. You’ve made me feel safe, Bishop, and I appreciate it. When you get out, you should look me up. I might have something for you. Something legitimate.”

“Like what?”

“Like driving. You have a driver’s license?”

“I could get one.”

“A real one?”

“As real as they get, Counselor. Driving what? Who?”

“Me. I work out of my car and I need a driver. It’s a Lincoln.”

My previous driver had been working off her son’s debt for my representation and was a week away from completing that when I was arrested. If I got out, I would need a new driver, and I wasn’t blind to what Bishop could bring in terms of intimidation and security in addition to the driving chores.

I checked the phone bank again. The line was down to two each. I knew I should get over there before it built up to three again. I leaned in close to Bishop and violated my own rule about getting into other people’s business.

“Bishop, say you were going to break into a garage at somebody’s house. How would you do it?”

“Whose house?”

“It’s a hypothetical. Any house. How would you do it?”

“What makes you think I would break into a house?”

“I don’t think that. It’s a hypothetical and I’m picking your brain. And it’s breaking into a garage, not the house.”

“Any windows or a side door?”

“No, just a double-wide garage door.”

“It got one of those pop-out handles in case of emergency?”

“Yeah, but you need a key.”

“No, you don’t. Those handles you can pop with a flathead.”

“A screwdriver? You sure?”

“I’m sure. I knew a guy, that was his specialty. He’d drive around and hit g’rages all day long. Got cars, tools, lawn mowers... all kinds of good shit to sell.”

I nodded and checked the phone bank. One phone had only one man waiting. I stood up.

“I have to hit the phone line, Bishop,” I said. “Thanks for the intel.”

“I got you, man.”

I walked over to the phones and got behind the single just as the man on the phone in front of him hung up angrily and said, “Fuck you, bitch!”

He walked away and the next man stepped up to the phone. My wait ended up being less than two minutes, as the man in front of me called collect and the call either went unanswered or the recipient declined to accept the charges. He walked away and I stepped up and put my paperwork down on top of the phone box. I entered Jennifer’s cell phone number for a collect call. While I waited for the electronic voice to tell her that she was receiving a collect call from the county jail, I studied the sign on the wall: all calls monitored.

Jennifer accepted.

“Mickey,” she said.

“Jennifer,” I said. “Hold on while I make this announcement. This is Michael Haller, pro se defendant, talking to his co-counsel, Jennifer Aronson, under privilege. This call should not be monitored.”

I waited a beat, presumably for the monitor to move on to another inmate’s call.

“Okay,” I said. “Just checking in. Did you file?”

“I did. Notifications went out. Hopefully we get a hearing tomorrow.”

“Did you and Cisco get that Baja thing set up?”

“Uh, yes... we did.”

“The whole package? Travel, everything?”

“Yep, everything.”

“Good. And the money is ready?”

“Yes.”

“What about the guy, you trust him?”

There was a pause. I assumed Jennifer was realizing what I was doing with the call.

“Absolutely,” she finally said. “He has it down to a science.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll only get one shot at this.”

“What if they make you wear a bracelet?”

Jennifer had caught on fast. Her mention of the bracelet was pure gold.

“Won’t be a problem,” I said. “We can use that guy Cisco used on that other thing that time. He’ll know what to do.”

“Right,” Jennifer said. “I forgot about him.”

There was another pause while I thought about how to wrap it up.

“So, you’ll have to come down, go fishing with me,” I said.

“I’ll have to brush up on my Spanish,” she said.

“Anything else to talk about?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, then. I guess all I can do is wait on the hearing. See you then.”

I hung up the phone and stepped aside for the man who had lined up behind me. Bishop was no longer at the table where we had talked. I went up the stairs to the second tier and was halfway to my cell when I remembered my paperwork. When I got back to the phone bank, the documents were gone.

I tapped the guy who was on the phone on the shoulder. He turned to me.

“My paperwork,” I said. “Where is it?”

“What?” he said. “I don’t have your fucking paperwork.”

He started to turn back toward the phone box.

“Who took it?” I said.

I hit him on the back again and he turned angrily toward me.

“I don’t know who took it, motherfucker. Get the fuck away from me.”

I turned and scanned the dayroom. There were several inmates moving about the room or sitting in front of an overhead television screen. I looked at their hands or what was beneath their chairs. I didn’t see my paperwork anywhere.

My eyes went to the cells, the bottom tier first and then the second level. I saw no one and nothing suspicious.

I moved to a spot below the mirrored glass of the hack tower. I waved my hands over my head to get attention. Eventually a voice came from the speaker below the glass.

“What is it?”

“Somebody took my legal papers.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. I left them on the phone box and then two minutes later they were gone.”

“You’re supposed to take care of your property.”

“I know that but somebody took it. I’m pro se and I need the documents. You have to search the module.”

“First of all, you don’t tell me what we have to do. And second, that’s not going to happen.”

“I’m going to report this to the judge. She’s not going to be happy.”

“You can’t see me but I’m shaking.”

“Look, I need to find those documents. They’re important to my case.”

“Then I guess you should have taken better care of them.”

I just stared up at the mirror for a long moment before turning away and heading to my cell. I knew at that moment that it didn’t matter how much money it cost, I needed to get out of this place.

11

Tuesday, December 10

Dana Berg claimed she needed time to prepare her opposition to Jennifer Aronson’s motion to reduce bail. That meant I got to spend another weekend and then some in my cell at Twin Towers. I waited for Tuesday like a man in shark-infested waters waiting for the rope that will finally pull him to safety.

I ate what I hoped would be my last jail baloney sandwich and apple on the bus to the CCB, then began my slow ascent through the courthouse’s vertical jail to the holding cell on the ninth floor beside Judge Warfield’s courtroom. I was delivered there shortly before my 10 a.m. hearing was due to begin, so there was no chance to convene ahead of time with Jennifer. My suit was brought in and I changed. Already tailored once, it was loose in the waist again, and it was mostly by this that I measured what incarceration had done to me. I was clipping on my tie when the courtroom deputy told me it was time for court.

The gallery was more crowded than usual. The reporters were in the same row they always took, and I also saw my daughter and Kendall Roberts as well as my would-be benefactors, Harry Bosch and Andre La Cosse — two men who could not have been more different but were seated there together and ready to shell out their savings for me. Next to them sat Fernando Valenzuela, the bail bondsman ready to make the transaction if the judge could be swayed in my favor. I had worked with Valenzuela on and off for two decades and had at times sworn I would never use him again, just as he had sworn on occasion never to bail out another of my clients. But here he was, apparently willing to let past grievances go and accept the risks of posting a bond for me.

I smiled at my daughter, winked at Kendall. Just as I was about to turn to the defense table, I saw the courtroom door open and Maggie McPherson enter. She scanned the gallery, saw our daughter, and slid in next to her. Hayley was now sitting between Maggie and Kendall, who had never met. She was making introductions when I took my seat next to Jennifer at the defense table.

“Did you ask Maggie McFierce to be here?” I whispered.

“Yes, I did,” Jennifer said.

“Why would you do that?”

“Because she’s a prosecutor and if she says you won’t flee, then that will carry a lot of weight with the judge.”

“Also a lot of weight with her bosses. You shouldn’t have put that kind of pressure on—”

“Mickey, my job today is to get you out of jail. I’ll use every tool I can get my hands on — and you would too.”

Before I could respond, Deputy Chan called the courtroom to order. A second later Judge Warfield stepped through the door behind the clerk’s station and moved quickly up the steps to the bench.

“Back on the record in California versus Haller,” she began. “We have a motion to reduce bail. Who will be arguing for the defense?”

“I will,” Jennifer said, standing at the defense table.

“Very well, Ms. Aronson,” Warfield said. “I have the motion before me. Do you have further argument before we hear from the People?”

Jennifer moved to the lectern with a legal pad and a stack of documents to distribute.

“Yes, Your Honor,” she said. “In addition to the cases mentioned in the moving papers, I have additional case law here that supports the motion for a lower bail. This is not charged as a case with extenuating or aggravating circumstances and at no time has the state even hinted at an argument that Mr. Haller is a risk to the community. As far as being a flight risk, he has shown nothing since his arrest except the absolute intention to fight this charge and exonerate himself, despite this baseless attempt to hamper his pro se defense by keeping him locked up and unable to fully prepare his case. Put simply, the prosecution wants to keep Mr. Haller in jail because they are afraid and want to go to trial on a slanted playing field.”

The judge waited a beat in case there was more. Berg stood up at her spot at the prosecution table and waited to be recognized.

“Additionally, Your Honor,” Jennifer said, “I do have a number of witnesses here who are willing to testify, if need be, to the character of Mr. Haller.”

“I’m sure that will not be necessary,” Warfield said. “Ms. Berg? I see you are waiting to respond.”

Berg moved to the lectern as Jennifer vacated it.

“Thank you, Judge Warfield,” she said. “The state opposes lowering bail in this matter because the defendant does have the means and motive to flee. As the court well knows, we are talking about a murder here, the victim of which was found in the trunk of the defendant’s car. And the evidence clearly indicates the murder took place in the defendant’s garage. In fact, Your Honor, the evidence in this case is overwhelming, and this gives the defendant all the reason in the world to flee.”

Jennifer objected to Berg’s characterization of the evidence and her presuming what my state of mind would be. The judge instructed Berg to refrain from such speculation and to continue.

“Additionally, Your Honor,” Berg said. “The state is considering adding a special-circumstance allegation to the charge in this case, which would render the question of bail moot.”

Jennifer shot up out of her seat.

“Objection!” she exclaimed.

I knew this was the battle line. An allegation of special circumstances — murder for hire or for financial gain — would bump the charge to the no-bail level.

“Counsel’s argument is preposterous,” Jennifer protested. “Not only is there no special circumstance that could be applied in this case, but the defense motion was filed last week, and if the state was considering a valid special circumstance allegation, it would have added it by now. The state is blowing smoke, hoping to stop the court from providing Mr. Haller’s right to bail.”

Warfield’s eyes moved from Jennifer to Berg.

“Defense counsel makes a good argument,” the judge said. “What is the special-circumstance allegation the state is supposedly considering?”

“Your Honor, the investigation of this crime is ongoing and we are developing evidence of a financial motive,” Berg said. “And as the court well knows, murder for financial gain is a special-circumstance crime.”

Jennifer angrily spread her hands wide.

“Your Honor,” she said, “is the District Attorney’s Office really asking for bail to be set on the basis of what evidence might be found down the line? This is incredible.”

“Incredible or not, this court is not going to consider what may lie in the future while making rulings in the present,” Warfield said. “Do both sides submit?”

“Submitted,” Jennifer said.

“One moment, Your Honor,” Berg said.

I watched her lean down to confer with her second, a young attorney who wore bow ties. I had a pretty good idea what they were talking about.

Warfield quickly grew impatient.

“Ms. Berg, you asked for time to prepare for this hearing and I gave it. There should be no need for a sidebar with your colleague. Are you ready to submit?”

Berg straightened up and looked at the judge.

“No, Your Honor,” she said. “The state believes that the court should be made aware that there is an ongoing investigation of the defendant relating to a plan to flee the country to Mexico, should he be released on bail.”

Jennifer stood up.

“Your Honor,” she protested. “More unfounded allegations? Is the state so desperate to keep this man in jail that it trumps up an investigation into—”

“Your Honor,” I said, as I stood up. “If I may address this allegation?”

“In a moment, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “Ms. Berg, this better be good. Tell me more about this alleged plan to flee the country.”

“Judge, all I know is that a confidential informant in the jail where Mr. Haller is being housed revealed to investigators that the defendant has openly spoken about a plan to cross the border and flee, if he can make bail. The plan includes circumventing an electronic monitor should the court order that as part of a bail reduction, and co-counsel is fully aware of this. The defendant has gone so far as to invite her down to go fishing.”

“What do you say about that, Mr. Haller?” Warfield asked.

“Your Honor, the prosecution’s claim is false on multiple levels, starting with the alleged confidential informant,” I said. “There is no CI. There are only the jail deputies listening in on privileged conversations and then feeding what they hear to the prosecution as intel.”

“That’s a serious allegation, Mr. Haller,” Warfield said. “Do you care to enlighten us with your knowledge?”

The judge gestured toward the lectern and I stepped over.

“Judge Warfield, thank you for the opportunity to bring this matter before the court,” I began. “I have been incarcerated at Twin Towers for six weeks. I elected to go pro se and defend myself with the help of my co-counsel, Ms. Aronson. This meant meetings with my team in the jail as well as calls from the community phones in the K-10 module. These meetings and calls are not supposed to be monitored in any way by law enforcement or anyone else. The privilege is supposed to be sacrosanct.”

“I hope you are going to get to a point soon, Mr. Haller,” the judge interjected.

“Arriving there now, Your Honor,” I responded. “As I said, the privilege is sacrosanct. But I became suspicious that that was not the case at Twin Towers and that somehow what was said in my meetings and phone calls with co-counsel and my investigator was getting back to the D.A.’s Office and Ms. Berg. And so, Your Honor, I set up a little test to either prove or disprove my theory. On a phone call with my co-counsel, I announced that I was having a call with counsel under privilege and stated that the call should not be monitored. But it was. And I spun a story that just came out of Ms. Berg’s mouth almost verbatim.”

Berg stood to speak and I gestured with my hand as if to say your turn. I wanted her to respond because I would then hang her with her own words.

“Your Honor,” Berg began. “Talk about incredible. The defendant’s plan to flee is revealed in court, and his response is to say, ‘Yes, but I was just kidding. I was just testing to see if anyone was listening.’ That’s a confirmation, Your Honor, and reason alone not to reduce bail in this matter but to raise it.”

“Does this mean that counsel for the People acknowledges listening to the privileged call?” I asked.

“It means no such thing,” Berg shot back.

“Excuse me!” the judge boomed. “I’m the judge here and I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind.”

She paused and stared down hard, first at me and then at Berg.

“When exactly was this call, Mr. Haller?” she asked.

“About five forty p.m. Thursday,” I responded.

Warfield shifted her focus to Berg.

“I would like to hear this phone call,” she said. “Is that possible, Ms. Berg?”

“No, Your Honor,” Berg said. “Privileged calls are destroyed by the monitors because they are privileged.”

“Destroyed after they are listened to?” the judge pressed.

“No, Your Honor,” Berg said. “Privileged calls are privileged. They are not listened to once they are established as protected conversation with counsel or others under the rules of privilege. The calls are then destroyed. That is why it is not possible to confirm or refute counsel’s outlandish allegation, and he knows it.”

“That’s wrong, Your Honor,” I said.

Warfield swung her eyes back to me and squinted them down to slots.

“What are you saying, Mr. Haller?” she asked.

“I’m saying we were running a test,” I said. “Ms. Aronson recorded the call and that recording is available to the court right now.”

The air momentarily went out of the room while Berg recalculated.

“Your Honor, I am going to object to any playing of a tape,” she said. “There is no way to validate its legitimacy.”

“I disagree, Judge,” I said. “The tape begins with the jail system’s collect call announcement, and more importantly, you will hear the exact words and story Ms. Berg just revealed to the court. Now, if I were to make a phony tape, how would I know exactly what she was going to say in court?”

Warfield registered that for a few moments before responding.

“Let’s hear the tape,” she said.

“Your Honor,” Berg said, panic creeping into her voice, “the People ob—”

“Objection overruled,” Warfield said. “I said, let’s hear the tape.”

Jennifer came forward with her cell phone, placed it on the lectern, and bent the stem microphone down to it before pushing the play button on the recording app.

Without my instruction Jennifer had been smart enough to record the call from the start, including the electronic voice saying she was receiving a collect call from the L.A. County jail. After the call was over, she had also added her own tag, announcing that the call had been a test to see if L.A. County authorities were violating my privilege rights.

The call was convincing. I wanted to see Berg’s reaction but could not pull my eyes away from the judge. Her face seemed to grow darker as she heard the parts of the conversation that Berg had said came from an informant.

When the tape ended with Jennifer’s tag, I asked the judge if she wished to hear it again. She said no, then took a moment to compose herself and her verbal response. As a former defense attorney, she had probably always had reason to be suspicious about the monitoring of calls from jailed clients to their lawyers.

“May I address the court?” Berg said. “I did not listen to that call. What I represented to the court earlier was the truth as it was told to me. The sheriff’s jail intelligence unit provided a report that gave me the information and said it came from an informant. I did not knowingly lie to or mislead the court.”

“Whether or not I believe you doesn’t matter,” Warfield said. “A serious intrusion upon the rights of this defendant has occurred, and there are consequences for that. There will be an investigation, and the truth will come out. In the meantime, I’m ready to rule on the defense motion on bail. Any other argument, Ms. Berg?”

“No, Your Honor,” Berg said.

“I didn’t think so,” the judge said.

“May I be heard, Your Honor?” I asked.

“There is no need, Mr. Haller. No need.”

12

A small group of friends, colleagues, and loved ones were there to greet me when I stepped through the inmate release door at Twin Towers. They erupted in cheers and applause as I came through. The media was there too, and they filmed me as I went down the line, hugging and hand shaking. It was embarrassing but felt good at the same time. I was breathing free air again and wanted to revel in it. One of my Lincolns was there at the curb, ready to go — obviously not the one Sam Scales had been murdered in.

Harry Bosch and Andre La Cosse were last in the well-wishers line. I thanked them both for being willing to stand up for me and put up their money as well.

“We got off cheap,” Bosch said.

“You played that perfectly in court,” La Cosse added. “As usual.”

“Well,” I said. “Twenty-five K apiece is still a lot of money in my book, and I will pay you guys back sooner than you think.”

Both men had generously agreed to put up as much as $200,000 each to pay for a 10 percent bond. But Judge Warfield was so enraged by the obvious eavesdropping on my jail calls that she dropped bail from $5 million to $500,000 as punishment for the wrongdoing. Unfortunately, she also ordered me to wear an ankle monitor, but this did not dampen the news that my two sponsors only had to put up a fraction of what they had offered.

It was a good day all around. I was free.

I took Andre aside for a private moment.

“Andre, you didn’t need to do this, man,” I said. “I mean, Harry’s my brother. There’s blood there, but you’re a client, and I hate like hell taking any of the money you earned with your own blood.”

“Yes, I did,” he said. “I had to do it. I wanted to do it.”

I nodded my thanks again and shook his hand. As I did so, Fernando Valenzuela walked up. He had missed the cheering section.

“So, don’t burn me on this, Haller,” he said.

“Val, my man,” I said.

We bumped fists.

“When I first heard that shit in court about Mexico, I thought, What the fuck?” Valenzuela said. “But then, man, you had it wired. Good show.”

“Ain’t no show, Val,” I said. “I had to get out.”

“And now you are. I’ll be monitoring you.”

“I’m sure you will.”

Valenzuela moved off and the others crowded around me again. I looked for Maggie but didn’t see her. Lorna asked what I wanted to do.

“Meet with the team? Be by yourself? What?” she asked.

“You know what I want?” I said. “I want to get in that Lincoln, open all the windows, and just drive out to the beach.”

“Can I go?” Hayley asked.

“Me too?” Kendall added.

“Of course,” I said. “Who’s got the keys?”

Lorna put the keys into my hand. Then she handed me a phone.

“The police still have yours,” she said. “But we think we have all your contacts and email on this.”

“Perfect,” I said.

Then I leaned down and whispered to her.

“Let’s get the team together later,” I said. “Call Christian at Dan Tana’s and see if we can get in. I’ve been eating baloney for six weeks. Tonight I want steak.”

“You got it,” Lorna said.

“And ask Harry to come,” I added. “Maybe he’s had a chance to look at the discovery file and will have something to say.”

“Will do.”

“One other thing: Did you talk to Maggie in court? She kind of disappeared, and I’m wondering if she’s pissed off at us for bringing her there as a character witness.”

“No, she’s not mad. Once the judge said she didn’t need any testimonials, she told me she had to get back to work. But she was there for you.”

I nodded. It was good to know.

I unlocked the Lincoln with the remote and walked around to the driver’s side.

“Fall in, ladies,” I said.

Kendall gave up the front seat to Hayley and took the back. That was nice of her and I smiled at her in the rearview.

“Eyes on the road, Dad,” Hayley said.

“Right,” I said.

We pulled away from the curb. I worked my way down to the 10 freeway and headed west. At that point it was time to put up the windows so we could hear one another talk.

“How do you feel?” Kendall asked.

“Pretty good for a guy still charged with murder,” I said.

“But you’re going to win, right, Dad?” Hayley asked urgently.

“Don’t worry, Hay, I’m going to win,” I said. “And that’s when I’ll go from feeling pretty good to feeling pretty great. Okay?”

“Okay,” she said.

We rode in silence for a few moments.

“Can I ask a dumb question?” Kendall said.

“There are no dumb questions when it comes to the law,” I said. “Only dumb answers.”

“What happens next?” she said. “Now that you’re out on bail, will the trial get delayed?”

“I won’t let them delay it,” I said. “I have them on speedy trial.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Kendall asked.

I looked over at my daughter.

“You’re One-L,” I said. “Why don’t you answer that?”

“I only know the answer because of you, not law school,” Hayley said.

She turned to look back over the seat at Kendall.

“If you’re accused of a crime, you’re entitled to a speedy trial,” she said. “In California that means they have ten court days from your arrest to hold a preliminary hearing or seek an indictment from a grand jury. Either way, you then get formally arraigned on the charges and the state must take you to trial within sixty calendar days or drop the charges and dismiss the case.”

I nodded. She had it right.

“What are calendar days?” Kendall asked.

“That just means workdays,” Hayley said. “It’s sixty days excluding weekends and holidays. My father was indicted and arraigned right before Thanksgiving — November twelfth, to be exact — and the sixty days push us into February. They count two days at Thanksgiving and a whole week from Christmas to New Year’s as holidays. Then you add in Martin Luther King Day and Presidents’ Day, when the courts are closed. It all adds up to February eighteenth.”

“D-Day,” I said.

I reached over and squeezed Hayley’s knee like the proud father I was.

The traffic was flowing and I took the freeway all the way to the curving tunnel that dumped out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I pulled into a lot that served one of the beach clubs down there and got out. An attendant came walking toward us. I reached into my pocket but realized all the belongings from my pockets the night I was arrested were in an envelope I had handed off to Lorna so I could shake hands and hug people.

“I don’t have any money,” I said. “Either of you have a five we can give this guy for ten minutes on the beach?”

“I got it,” Kendall said.

She paid the man and we all walked across the pedestrian and bike paths and across the sand toward the water. Kendall took off her heels and carried them in one hand. There was something very sexy about her doing that.

“Dad, you’re not going to jump in, right?” Hayley asked.

“Nah,” I said. “I just want to hear the waves. Everything sounds like echoes and iron where I’ve been. I need to wash it out of my ears with something good.”

We stopped on a berm that was just above the wet sand where the surf washed in. The sun was slinking down toward the blue-black water. I held both my companions’ hands and said nothing. I breathed deeply and thought about where I had been. I resolved at that moment that I had to win the case because there was no way I was going to go back into lockup. I would take all extreme alternatives to that.

I let go of Hayley’s hand and then pulled her close.

“All this about me,” I said. “How are you doing, Hay?”

“I’m good,” she said. “What you told me about first year being a bitch is true.”

“Yeah, but you’re smarter than I ever was. You’ll do fine.”

“We’ll see.”

“How’s your mom? I saw her in court, and Jennifer said she was going to vouch for me if needed.”

“She’s good. And, yeah, she was ready to speak up for you.”

“I’ll call her and thank her.”

“That would be nice.”

I turned and looked at Kendall. It almost felt like she had never left me for Hawaii.

“And you?” I said. “You doing all right?”

“I am now,” she said. “I didn’t like seeing you in the courtroom.”

I nodded. I got that. I looked out at the ocean. The pounding of the waves seemed to echo in my chest. The colors were vibrant, not the gray of my last six weeks. It was beautiful and I didn’t want to leave.

“Okay,” I finally said. “Time’s up. Back to work.”

The traffic was not as kind heading in the opposite direction. It took almost an hour to get Hayley to her apartment in K-town after she turned down my invitation to dinner in favor of her weekly study group. This week’s subject: The Rule Against Perpetuities.

After dropping her off, I stayed on the curb and called Lorna. She told me that dinner was set up at Dan Tana’s at 8 p.m. and that Harry Bosch would be in attendance.

“I think he has something to discuss,” Lorna said.

“Good,” I said. “I’ll want to hear it.”

I disconnected and looked at Kendall.

“So,” I said. “The dinner with my team is at eight and it sounds like they really want to work and discuss the case. I don’t think—”

“That’s okay,” she said. “I know you want to get to it. You can just drop me off.”

“Where?”

“Well, I took you up on your offer. I’ve been at your place. Is that okay?”

“Of course. I forgot, but that’s great. I want to go there anyway to change. This is the suit I was arrested in. It doesn’t fit anymore and it smells like jail to me.”

“Good, then. You’ll be taking off your clothes.”

I looked at her and she smiled provocatively.

“Um, I thought we were broken up,” I said.

“We are,” she said. “That’s why this is going to be so much fun.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Okay, then.”

I pulled the Lincoln away from the curb.

13

Somebody once said that a person’s favorite restaurant is where they know you. That might be true. They knew me at Dan Tana’s and I knew them: Christian at the door, Arturo at the table, Mike behind the bar. But that didn’t obscure the fact that the kitschy Italian joint with checkered tablecloths served up the best New York strip in the city. I liked the place because they knew me, but I liked the steak even better.

When I pulled up to the valet, I saw Bosch standing outside the restaurant’s front door by himself. He was at the smoking bench but I knew he didn’t smoke. After turning over the car keys, I walked over. I noticed he had an inch-thick file tucked under his arm. The discovery file, I assumed.

“You’re the first one here?” I asked.

“No, they’re all in there,” he said. “Table in the back corner.”

“But you’re here waiting for me. Is this where you ask me if I did it?”

“Give me a little more credit, Mick. If I thought you did it, I wouldn’t have put up the money.”

I nodded.

“And nothing in that file changed your mind?”

“Not really. Just made me think you’ve got yourself in a pretty tight box.”

“Tell me about it. Should we go in?”

“Sure, but one thing before we’re with the others. Like I said, somebody really put you in a box here, and I was thinking that you may want to run this out for as long as you can. You know, drop the speedy trial thing... take your time with it.”

“So much for the vote of confidence.”

“It is what it is.”

“Thanks for the advice but I’ll pass. One way or another, I want this thing done.”

“I get it.”

“What about you? You okay? Still taking your pills?”

“Every day. So far, so good.”

“I like hearing that. And Maddie? How’s she doing?”

“She’s good. In the academy.”

“Man, the second generation, just like the first.”

“I thought Hayley wants to be a prosecutor.”

“She’ll change her mind.”

I smiled at him.

“Let’s go in.”

“One other thing. I just wanted to explain why I never came to see you in the jail.”

“I don’t think you need to, Harry. Don’t worry about it.”

“I should have visited, I know. But I didn’t want to see you in there.”

“I know. Lorna told me. To be honest, I didn’t even put you on my list. I didn’t want you to see me in there either.”

He nodded and we went inside. Christian, the tuxedo-clad maître d’, greeted me warmly and had the class not to mention that I hadn’t been there in more than six weeks, even though he probably knew why. I introduced Bosch as my brother. Christian escorted us to the table where the others were waiting: Jennifer, Lorna, and Cisco. It was a table for six but with Cisco in the mix it was crowded.

The smell of food on the tables around us was almost overpowering. I was distracted by it and found myself turning and craning my neck to see what other patrons had ordered.

“You all right, boss?” Cisco asked.

I turned back to him.

“Fine, I’m fine,” I said. “But let’s order first. Where’s Arturo?”

Lorna waved to someone behind me and soon Arturo was at our table with his order pad. It was orders of Steak Helen all around except for Jennifer, who wasn’t a red-meat eater. She went with eggplant parmigiana on Arturo’s recommendation. Lorna ordered a bottle of red wine for the drinkers, and I asked for a big bottle of sparkling water. I also told Arturo to bring bread and butter as soon as he could.

“Okay,” I said when we were alone. “Tonight we can celebrate because I’m free and we knocked the prosecution down a notch or two in court. But that’s it. No hangovers tomorrow because we go back to work.”

Everybody nodded except Bosch. He just stared at me from the opposite side of the table.

“Harry, you’re dying to say something,” I said. “Probably something bad. You want to start? You have the discovery file. Did you read it?”

“Uh, sure,” he said. “I read the discovery and I also talked to some people I know.”

“Like who?” Jennifer asked.

Bosch looked at her for a moment. I raised my hand a few inches off the table as a signal to her to cool it. Bosch was long retired from the LAPD but he was still tightly connected. I knew that firsthand and did not need him to name his sources.

“What did they tell you?” I asked.

“Well, they’re pretty pissed off over at the D.A.’s Office because of the way you sandbagged Berg,” Bosch said.

“They get caught cheating and they’re pissed at us,” Jennifer said. “That’s just beautiful.”

“What’s the upshot?” I said. “What are they going to do about it?”

“For one, they’re going to go after special circumstances like it’s the holy grail,” Bosch said. “They want to punish you for that stunt today, put you back in jail.”

“That’s bullshit,” Cisco said.

“Yeah, but they can do it,” Bosch said, “if they find the evidence.”

“There is no evidence,” Jennifer said. “Financial gain? Murder for hire? It’s ridiculous.”

“All I’m saying is they’re looking,” Bosch said, staring at me as though the others at the table didn’t count. “And you have to be careful with your own moves.”

“I don’t understand,” Lorna said.

“You raised hell about car and phone data,” Bosch said. “I assume you need it to prove you never left your house. That might just end up being evidence supporting that you paid somebody to grab Scales and bring him to you. That gets you close to murder for hire.”

“Like I said, bullshit,” Cisco said.

“I’m saying, this is how they’re thinking,” Bosch said. “It’s how I would think.”

“Sam owed me money,” I said. “Never paid me the back end on the last case and we sued him. What was it, Lorna? Sixty K?”

“Seventy-five,” Lorna said. “With interest and penalty, it’s over a hundred now. But we did it just to get a judgment and lien. We knew he’d never pay.”

“Still, they could point to that, make it look like murder for financial gain,” I said. “If they could prove Sam had money, the lien would carry over in death.”

“Did he?” Bosch asked. “Have money? They have a newsclip that says he ripped off ten million dollars through all his cons. Where’d it go?”

“I remember that article,” I said. “‘The Most Hated Man in America,’ they called him. It was exaggerated and didn’t make me any friends, especially at home. But Sam was always on the con. He always had money coming in. It went somewhere.”

“But this is crazy,” Jennifer said. “They think you would kill a former client for an unpaid bill? For seventy-five thousand dollars? A hundred thousand?”

“No, they don’t think that,” I said. “That’s not the point. The point is, they’re pissed and if they can push this into special circumstances, my bail is pulled and I go back to Twin Towers. That’s what they want. To fuck me over. To tilt the table their way. Doesn’t matter if the added charge doesn’t hold up later in court.”

Jennifer shook her head.

“It still makes no sense,” she said. “I think your sources are crap.”

She looked pointedly at Bosch. He was the new guy, the outsider, and was suspect in her eyes. I tried to push past the moment.

“Okay, so how long do I have before they pull this shit?” I asked.

“They have to find the money and prove you knew about it,” Bosch said. “If they get there, they’ll drop the current charges and go back to the grand jury. Then they refile with special circumstances.”

“That will restart the speedy-trial clock and mean the money posted today for bond goes down the toilet,” Jennifer said. “You go to jail, the bond is forfeited.”

“That’s bullshit,” Cisco said again.

“Okay, well, we should be ready to go in to see Warfield the minute this all breaks,” I said. “Harry, you let us know what you hear when you hear it. Jennifer, we’ll need an argument. They’re subverting speedy trial, maybe vindictive prosecution, something.”

“I’m on it,” Jennifer said. “This makes me so fucking mad.”

“Don’t let your emotions into it,” I cautioned. “Let’s not go in mad, let’s make the judge mad. I saw some of that today when we played the tape. I know it took her back to when she was a defense attorney. If the D.A. is doing this just to fuck with me, then Warfield will see it before we say it.”

Both Jennifer and Bosch responded with nods.

“Fucking cowards,” Cisco said. “Afraid to go straight up with you, boss.”

I liked that my team seemed angrier about the prosecution’s end run than I was. It would help keep them sharp in the days and weeks running up to trial.

I returned my attention to Bosch. I realized more than the others what an incredibly good break it was to have him in our court. I had taken his side the year before and now he was taking mine. But the moral support paled in comparison with what he brought as an investigator.

“Harry, did you ever work with Drucker and Lopes?” I asked.

Kent Drucker and Rafael Lopes were the LAPD leads on the case. They worked out of the elite Robbery-Homicide Division, where Bosch had worked until the end of his LAPD career.

“Never directly on a case,” Bosch said. “They were in the squad but there wasn’t a lot of crossover on things. They were good detectives, though. You don’t get to RHD if you’re not. The question becomes, What do you do when you get there? — rest on your laurels or keep chopping wood? The fact that they were assigned this case answers that one.”

I nodded. Bosch looked hesitant. I wondered whether he had heard more, something he didn’t realize was valuable or was holding back until he could fill it out.

“What?” I asked. “You have something else?”

“Sort of,” he said.

“Might as well get it out so we can discuss it,” I said.

“Well, one of my last cases at RHD, I had an investigation where there was a financial fraud involved,” Bosch said. “A guy was embezzling funds, got found out, killed the guy who found out to shut him up. Pretty clean but we couldn’t find the money. His lifestyle showed nothing. He wasn’t spending it, he was hiding it, so we hired a financial forensics analyst to follow the money. Help us find it.”

“Okay,” I said. “Did it work?”

“Yeah, we found the money offshore and made the case,” Bosch said. “I bring it up now because my partner from back then is still on the job in RHD. She told me that Drucker came to her and asked for the contact info for the financial forensics guy.”

“We should look into getting our own,” Jennifer added.

She wrote a note down on a small pad on the table in front of her.

“Let’s look again through our files on Sam’s past cases,” I said. “Maybe there’s something in them with info on how he moved and hid cash. Harry, anything else?”

I looked over my shoulder for Arturo. It wasn’t that I was starving, but I couldn’t wait to have a real meal for the first time in six weeks.

“Just on the discovery file,” Bosch said. “I’ve been through the photos and the autopsy. It was all pretty self-explanatory, no surprises. But then I saw this.”

He was looking through his copy of the discovery and pulled out two documents and a crime scene photo. He handed them around the table and waited a moment until everyone had a look and they came back to him.

“The autopsy report stated that the victim’s fingernails were scraped for samples of what looked like dirt or grease,” he said. “Then the lab report came in, identifying the substance as a combination of vegetable oil, chicken fat, and some sugarcane — cooking grease, according to the report.”

“I saw that in the discovery,” I said. “Why is it significant?”

“Well, when you look at the crime scene photos, you see that all of this guy’s fingernails were dirty with this stuff,” Bosch said.

“I’m still not following,” I said. “If it was blood or something, I could—”

“I looked at this guy’s rap sheet,” Bosch interjected. “He was strictly white-collar cons. Internet mostly. And now he’s got grease under his nails.”

“So, what does it mean?” I pressed.

“Maybe he was working as a fucking dishwasher,” Cisco said.

“I think it means he was into something completely new,” Bosch said. “What that means to the case, I don’t know. But I think you should request a sample of the fingernail grease for your own testing.”

“Okay,” I said. “We can do that. Jennifer?”

“Got it,” she said.

She wrote it down. I was about to pass the baton to Lorna to see what she had come up with on the review of my past cases. But Arturo brought the steaks to the table at that moment and I kept my mouth closed until we were all served. I then started devouring my strip like a man who has eaten only apples and baloney sandwiches for a month and a half.

I soon became aware that I was being watched by the others. I spoke without looking up at them.

“What, you never seen a guy eat a steak before?” I asked.

“Just never seen one eat it so fast,” Lorna replied.

“Well, stand back, I might order another,” I said. “I need to get back to my fighting weight. Since you take so much time between bites, Lorna, why don’t you tell us where we stand on my enemies list.”

Before she could answer, I glanced over at Bosch to offer an explanation.

“Lorna has been going through the old case files and drawing up a list of enemies, people who might have wanted to do this to me,” I said. “Lorna?”

“Well, the list so far is short,” Lorna said. “You’ve had your problem clients and there have been some threats, but very few who we think have the skills, smarts, and general wherewithal to pull together a frame like this.”

“It’s a sophisticated frame,” Cisco added. “Your run-of-the-mill client could not do this.”

“So, who could?” I asked. “Who’s on your list?”

“I’ve been through everything twice and came up with only one name,” Lorna said.

“One name?” I said. “That’s it? Who?”

“Louis Opparizio,” she said.

“Wait, what?” I said. “Louis Opparizio...?”

The name rang a loud bell in my memory but I needed a moment to place it. I was sure I’d never had a client named Louis Opparizio. Then I remembered. Opparizio wasn’t a client. He was a witness. A man from a mob-connected family who straddled the line between criminal enterprise and legitimate business. I had used him. I had cornered him on the witness stand and made him look like the guilty party. It drew the jury’s attention away from my client and on to Opparizio. Compared to him, my client looked like an angel.

I remembered an encounter I’d had with Opparizio in a courthouse restroom. I remembered the anger, the hate. He was a bull of a man, built like a fireplug, and his arms hung away from his body like he was ready to use them to tear me apart. He’d backed me into a corner and had wanted to kill me right there.

“Who is Opparizio?” Bosch asked.

“He’s somebody I pinned a murder on once in court,” I said.

“He was mobbed up,” Cisco added. “From Vegas.”

“And did he do it?” Bosch asked.

“No, but I made it look like he did,” I said. “My client got the NG and walked.”

“And was your client really guilty?”

I hesitated but then answered truthfully.

“Yes, but I didn’t know it at the time.”

Bosch nodded and I took it as a judgment, as though I had just confirmed why people hate lawyers.

“So,” he said then. “Would Opparizio wanting to return the favor and pin a murder on you be out of the question?”

“No, not at all,” I said. “What happened in court back then, it caused him a lot of problems and cost him a lot of money. He was a sleeper. He was trying to move mob money into legitimate fields and I sort of blew that up when I had him on the stand.”

Bosch thought about that for a few moments and nobody interrupted.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Let me take Opparizio. Find out what he’s up to. And Cisco, you stay with Sam Scales. Maybe we cross paths somewhere and then we know why this whole thing went down.”

It sounded like a plan to me but I was going to let Cisco decide. It seemed we were all looking at him, waiting, when he nodded his approval.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

14

I got home late and parked on the street. I didn’t want to park in the garage and wasn’t sure I ever would again. I entered to find the house completely dark. In that moment, I thought Kendall was gone. That she had realized, now that I was out, that she didn’t want to live here with me again. But then I saw movement in the darkened hallway and she appeared. She was wearing just a robe.

“You’re home,” she said.

“Yeah, it went late,” I said. “A lot to discuss. You’ve been waiting in the dark?”

“Actually, I’ve been asleep since earlier. We never turned on any lights when we got here. We just went straight to the bed.”

I nodded that I understood. My eyes started adjusting to the shadows and the dark.

“So you didn’t eat?” I said. “You must be hungry.”

“No, I’m fine,” she said. “You must be tired.”

“Sort of. Yeah.”

“But still excited about being free?”

“Yeah.”

I had woken that day in a jail cell. I was now about to sleep in my own bed for the first time in six weeks. My back on a thick mattress and my head on a soft pillow. And if that wasn’t enough, my ex-girlfriend had come back and was standing in front of me with her robe open and nothing on underneath. I was still accused of murder but it was amazing how my fortunes had changed in a single day. As I stood there, I felt that nobody could ever touch me. I was golden. I was free.

“Well,” Kendall said, smiling. “I hope not too tired.”

“I think I can manage,” I said.

She turned and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway leading to the bedroom.

And I followed.