“Agent Ruth, thanks for calling. It’s Mick Haller.”
“Haller? What the hell are you doing?”
“Is this a private line? I don’t think you want this recorded.”
“Yes, it’s private. What exactly is this about?”
“Well, it’s about Walter Lennon. And the fact that you called me back so quick pretty much confirms you know exactly who he is. Make that, was.”
“Haller, you have about three seconds before I hang up. Why are you calling me?”
“I’m taking a gamble, Agent Ruth. The other night when your partner Aiello wanted to throw me off the deck, you pulled him back. I’ve seen a lot of tape in my time of the good cop–bad cop routine, and I don’t think that’s what was going on there. You didn’t like what he was doing.”
“I’m asking you one more time before hanging up: What do you want?”
“Well, for one thing, I want you to testify.”
I heard sarcastic laughter.
“And barring that,” I said, undaunted, “I want you to tell me what was going on with Sam Scales aka Walter Lennon and BioGreen.”
“You’re crazy, Haller,” Ruth said. “You expect me to just throw my job away?”
“I expect you to do the right thing, is all. Isn’t that why you became an FBI agent? I’m basing this on what happened the other night but I’m guessing that whatever is going on—this cover-up—you’re not down with it. Your partner may be all in, but you’re not. You know I didn’t kill Sam Scales and you can help me prove it.”
“I’ll say it again. You’re crazy if you think I’m going to throw away my career for you. And, no, I don’t know whether or not you killed Sam Scales.”
“Well, maybe you don’t have to throw away your career. Maybe you can do the right thing and still keep it. I know this: your partner isn’t keeping his.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He was going to throw me off the deck.”
“Please, you’re exaggerating. He was over the top, I’ll give you that, but you were pushing our buttons, Haller. And he wasn’t threatening to push you over. That’s totally insane.”
I didn’t respond, so she kept going.
“Besides, it would be your word against two agents’. Do the math on that.”
“Is that why you guys always travel in pairs?”
She didn’t respond. I pressed on.
“Look, Agent Ruth, for some reason I like you. It’s not been my experience with feds, but like I said, you pulled him off me. So I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to stop you from filing a false report on that incident when I make the complaint. It’ll probably save your job and then maybe you’ll do right by me.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about now. This is—”
“Do you have a private email address? Give it to me and I’ll send you something tonight. You’ll know what I’m talking about then. I have a camera on the balcony, Agent Ruth. I caught the whole thing. It would be the word of two agents against a video. You would lose.”
There was a long silence and I looked out the window. I saw we were going by the new billion-dollar football stadium. Then I heard Ruth recite an email address. I snapped on the overhead light and wrote it down on a legal pad.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll send you the video as soon as I get home and get steady Wi-Fi. Probably be an hour. Hopefully I hear something back from you and this whole thing can be avoided—for you and your partner.”
She disconnected without a further word. I put the burner into my jacket pocket and snapped off the overhead light.
“That video must be pretty good, huh?” Bishop asked from the front seat.
I stared at him in the darkness, his face catching a dim glow from the dashboard lights. I once again wondered about Cisco having cleared him as a possible spy for the prosecution. Either way, he didn’t need to know my business.
“Nah,” I said. “I was just bluffing.”
28
Thursday, January 16
The next morning came quickly, thanks to a 7 a.m. hammering on the front door. Kendall jumped out of bed first and then I sat up so fast I thought I felt a muscle in my lower back twinge.
“What is it?” she cried.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Just get dressed.”
I pulled on the pants I had discarded on the floor the night before and grabbed a fresh shirt out of the closet. I buttoned it as I walked barefoot down the hall, the dread growing with each step that I might be going back to Twin Towers. Only the cops pounded on your door this early.
I opened the door, and sure enough, there was Drucker and another detective I didn’t recognize. Behind them stood two uniformed officers. Drucker was holding up a document I did recognize, a search warrant.
“Hello, sir, we have a warrant to search these premises,” Drucker said. “May we come in?”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” I said.
I took the warrant, which was several pages stapled together. I knew to skip through all the preamble and the probable-cause statement to get to the meat of what they were looking for.
“You want billing records,” I said. “I don’t have any of that here. My office manager has all of the current stuff, and the rest is in storage.”
“My partner is serving a warrant at Ms. Taylor’s residence,” Drucker said. “And we have a third for your storage unit. I was hoping you would cooperate and meet us there to facilitate that search after this.”
I stepped back from the doorway and held my arm out, signaling them to enter. I noticed Kendall in the door to the hallway leading to the back. She was holding up my phone.
“It’s Lorna,” she said.
“Tell her I know she’s getting searched,” I said. “I’ll call her back in five.”
I turned to the four law officers now standing in my living room.
“I have a home office in the back,” I said. “I assume you’ll want to start there. But like I said, I don’t keep billing records here. Lorna handles all of that.”
Drucker was not put off.
“If you could show us the way,” he said. “We’ll try to make this as painless as possible.”
They followed me down the hall. I saw that Kendall had retreated to our bedroom and closed the door. As we went by, I knocked on the door to get her attention.
“Kendall, I need to stay with these guys,” I said. “Will you bring me some socks and my shoes?”
I then moved to the last door in the hallway, which led to a bedroom I’d converted into an office. There was a desk covered in paperwork and files.
“These are case files that contain privileged information you are not entitled to look at,” I said.
I reached down and started opening drawers in the desk so they would see they were mostly empty.
“Knock yourself out but, as you can see, no billing records,” I said. “You’re wasting your time and mine.”
I moved back around from behind the desk so there was room for the searchers. There was a couch in the office, where I slept on occasion. I sat down as Kendall entered with a fresh pair of socks and my black lace-up Ferro Aldo boots. She also handed me my cell phone.
“You people are unbelievable,” Kendall said. “Why don’t you just leave him alone?”
“It’s okay, Kendall,” I said. “They’re wrong, but they’re just doing their job. The sooner we let them get to it, the sooner they’re out of here.”
Kendall left the room in a huff. I called Lorna back.
“Mickey, they’re searching my records,” she said upon answering.
“I know,” I said. “They can look at the billing. Just make sure they’re not looking at privileged material.”
“I’m not letting them near that. But you know, all the stuff with Sam Scales is not here.”
“Detective Drucker is here. I told him that but they’re going to do what they want to do.”
Lorna lowered her voice to a whisper for her next questi
on.
“What does this mean, Mickey? What are they looking for?”
I hadn’t really had time to think about those questions. I told Lorna I would call her back and disconnected. I then sat on the couch, unmoving, as I watched Drucker and the unnamed detective going through the drawers of my desk. The uniformed officers were milling about in the hallway. They were there to enforce the search if there was pushback. But since I was cooperating, they had nothing to do but stand with their hands on their equipment belts.
I knew that Death Row Dana was shoring up her case. I guessed that this search was about accounts receivable and motive. They were looking for documentation that Sam Scales had stiffed me. They wanted my own records to prove it, and that told me that the murder-for-financial-gain charge was still in play.
A few minutes later Drucker closed all the drawers in the desk and looked at me.
“Let’s check the garage,” he said.
“There’s nothing in the garage,” I said. “The California bar frowns on client records being stored in unsecured locations. You want to just skip all of this and go to my warehouse. I know what you’re looking for, and if I have it, it’s there.”
“Where’s your warehouse?”
“Over the hill. Studio City.”
“Let’s check the garage and then go.”
“Whatever.”
It was too early for Bishop to be around. After the garage was cleared—my first time being in there since the murder—I drove the Lincoln, and as I made my way north through Laurel Canyon, I thought about how many times I had chided clients for being cooperative with the people working to take away their freedom. Do you think by being nice and helping them out you’ll convince them you didn’t do it? Not a chance. These people want to take everything away from you: your family, your home, your freedom. Do not cooperate with them!
And yet here I was, leading a parade of police cars to the place where I kept the records of my practice and livelihood. This was the moment when I thought maybe I did have a fool for a client. Maybe I should have just told Drucker to fuck off and let him find the warehouse on his own, then cut the locks and figure out where the files were.
My phone buzzed and it was Lorna again.
“I thought you were going to call me back.”
“Sorry, I forgot.”
“Well, they’re gone. I heard them say they were going to the warehouse.”
“Yeah, I’m heading there now.”
“Mickey, what are the chances they’re going to finish their search and then arrest you on new charges?”
“I thought about that, but they let me drive my own car and lead them up here. No way Drucker would have done that if he had an arrest warrant in his pocket.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Have you heard from Jennifer yet today?”
“Not yet.”
“Okay, I’ll call her to let her know what’s going on. Hang in there, Lorna.”
“I just wish this would all be over.”
“Me too.”
I led the police brigade up Lankershim to the climate-controlled warehouse where I kept my records along with male and female mannequins and other props I had used at trials over the years. I also had two racks of suits there of various sizes that I kept for clients to wear in court and the third of my three Lincoln Town Cars. There was also an upright AMSEC gun safe for when I took firearms in trade for services rendered. As a condition of my bail, I could have no firearms, so I’d had Cisco take the guns to the home he shared with Lorna until the case came to an end.
The warehouse had a roll-up garage door, which I opened for the searchers. I then led them to a locked storage room within the warehouse, where I kept archived records in locked filing cabinets, in full compliance with California bar guidelines for securing client records. I used a key to unlock the first four-drawer cabinet.
“Have at it, gentlemen,” I said. “This row contains the business records going back to ’05, I believe. You will find the P and Os, the accounting and tax returns, all the financial stuff. That’s what you are entitled to see under the scope of the warrant. The other drawers contain case files and they’re off-limits—even the Sam Scales files.”
The room was too small for the whole group, which now included Drucker’s partner, Lopes. I backed out of the room to where the uniformed cops stood and I hovered by the doorway, where I could keep a watch on the search.
There was a folding table in the file-storage room that I used when I had to look through old cases. The detectives remained standing but opened the files they were interested in on the table. If there was something they wanted to take, they placed it to the side.
With the three of them working it, the search was conducted quickly, and by the time they were finished, they had placed four documents aside to seize under the authority of the search warrant. I asked to see them.
“There is nothing in the warrant that directs me to share with you what we seize,” Drucker said.
“And there’s nothing in there that directs me to cooperate with you,” I said. “But I did. Whatever you take, it comes back to me in discovery anyway, Detective. So, why be a dick about it?”
“You know, Haller, you didn’t have to be a dick yourself and rake me over the coals in public.”
“What? You’re talking about the other day in court? If you think that’s raking somebody over the coals, wait till you testify in front of the jury. Make sure you wear your Depends, Detective.”
Drucker gave me a smile without a note of humor in it.
“Have a good day,” he said.
He brushed by me, holding the documents to his chest so I could not get even a glimpse of them. Lopes and the unnamed detective followed him out. Then the whole entourage of detectives and uniformed escorts left the warehouse. I texted Lorna to let her know I had not been re-arrested. Yet.
29
Friday, January 17
The Catalina Express moved swiftly over the dark waters of the Pacific. The sun was just starting to dip behind the island that lay ahead of us. The wind was biting cold but Kendall and I faced it on the open deck, arms wrapped around each other. It was Friday afternoon and I had told Team Haller that I was disappearing for the holiday weekend. My bail restrictions prohibited me from leaving L.A. County without the judge’s permission, so I chose a spot as far away as I could get without breaking the rules.
The boat docked at the pier in the Avalon Harbor at 4 p.m., and there was a chauffeured golf cart from the Zane Grey Pueblo waiting for us. It carried us and our one bag up the hill, the driver making small talk about the renovations recently completed at the historic hotel, which had once been the home of the author and the place where he had written several of his novels about the western frontier.
“He lived out here because he loved the fishing,” the driver said. “He always said that he wrote so he could fish—whatever that means.”
I just nodded and looked at Kendall. She smiled.
“Did you know he was a dentist?” the driver asked.
“Who was?” I asked.
“Zane Grey,” he said. “And that wasn’t his real first name. His real name was Pearl—like the woman’s name. No wonder he went by Zane. That was his middle name, actually.”
“Interesting,” Kendall said.
It was off-season and the hotel was nearly empty. We had the pick of several rooms, all named after the author’s most popular novels. We took the Riders of the Purple Sage suite, not because I knew the book but because it had a view of the harbor and a working fireplace. I had been in the room before, many times, many years ago, with Maggie McPherson when we were still married.
Our plan was to stay in for most of the weekend and enjoy each other’s company. No phones, no computers, no intrusions. We did, however, rent a golf cart from the hotel for sorties to restaurants and the grocery store down in the town.
The setup was great but there was something sad for me about the trip. I was fe
eling depressed and couldn’t shake it. Kendall and I spent time in front of the fireplace talking and reminiscing and planning. And we made love the first two nights and on Sunday morning. But by Monday we had stopped talking about anything that mattered, and I sat most of the day in front of the flat-screen, watching CNN reports on the ongoing impeachment saga as well as the mystery virus in China. The Centers for Disease Control had announced that it was deploying medical staff to LAX to meet flights from Wuhan and check passengers for fever and other symptoms of illness. Those who were determined to be sick would be quarantined.
The news was a diversion. I had made a good show of it, turning my phone off and never pulling it out of the suitcase the whole weekend. But I couldn’t take my mind off other things. The weight of what was ahead and the stakes involved was coming down on me.
I had the premonition that Kendall and I were spending our last days together, that her return to L.A. and our trying to rekindle our romance would ultimately be a failed experiment. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why this was. But thoughts intruded about Maggie and the meeting at USC that had briefly reunited our lost family. And the kiss. It was amazing to me how something so casual, quick, and unexpected could shake the fragile foundations of the relationship at hand.
30
Tuesday, January 21
When Tuesday dawned with a gray overcast sky and heavy fog cover between the island and the mainland, it somehow seemed appropriate to me.
The dread that had steadily built through the weekend was confirmed shortly after I turned on my phone for the first time in three and a half days. Just as we were about to check out and head to the boat, I got a call from Jennifer Aronson.
“Mickey, where are you?”
“Catalina.”
“What?”
“Kendall and I went for the weekend. I told you. Anyway, we’re about to head back. What’s up?”
“I just got a call from Berg. They want you to turn yourself in. They dropped the current murder charge against you this morning, then got a grand jury indictment for murder with special circumstances—financial gain.”
The Law of Innocence Page 18
