THE LINCOLN LAWYER (2005)

by Michael Connelly

  As I gathered my papers and documents in my briefcase, I also gathered the resolve to talk to Roulet. I glanced over at him. He was sitting there waiting to be dismissed by me.

  "So what do you think?" I asked.

  "I think you did very well. More than a few moments of reasonable doubt."

  I snapped the latches on the briefcase closed.

  "Today I was just planting seeds. Tomorrow they'll sprout and on Wednesday they'll bloom. You haven't seen anything yet."

  I stood up and lifted the briefcase off the table. It was heavy with all the case documents and my computer.

  "See you tomorrow."

  I walked out through the gate. Cecil Dobbs and Mary Windsor were waiting for Roulet in the hallway near the courtroom door. As I came out they turned to speak to me but I walked on by.

  "See you tomorrow," I said.

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," Dobbs called to my back.

  I turned around.

  "We're stuck out here," he said as he and Windsor walked to me. "How is it going in there?"

  I shrugged.

  "Right now it's the prosecution's case," I answered. "All I'm doing is bobbing and weaving, trying to protect. I think tomorrow will be our round. And Wednesday we go for the knockout. I've got to go prepare."

  As I headed to the elevator, I saw that a number of the jurors from the case had beaten me to it and were waiting to go down. The scorekeeper was among them. I went into the restroom next to the bank of elevators so I didn't have to ride down with them. I put my briefcase on the counter between the sinks and washed my face and hands. As I stared at myself in the mirror I looked for signs of stress from the case and everything associated with it. I looked reasonably sane and calm for a defense pro who was playing both his client and the prosecution at the same time.

  The cold water felt good and I felt refreshed as I came out of the restroom, hoping the jurors had cleared out.

  The jurors were gone. But standing in the hallway by the elevator were Lankford and Sobel. Lankford was holding a folded sheaf of documents in one hand.

  "There you are," he said. "We've been looking for you."

  THIRTY

  The document Lankford handed me was a search warrant granting the police the authority to search my home, office and car for a .22 caliber Colt Woodsman Sport Model pistol with the serial number 656300081-52. The authorization said the pistol was believed to have been the murder weapon in the April 12 homicide of Raul A. Levin. Lankford had handed the warrant to me with a proud smirk on his face. I did my best to act like it was business as usual, the kind of thing I handled every other day and twice on Fridays. But the truth was, my knees almost buckled.

  "How'd you get this?" I said.

  It was a nonsensical response to a nonsensical moment.

  "Signed, sealed and delivered," Lankford said. "So where do you want to start? You have your car here, right? That Lincoln you're chauffeured around in like a high-class hooker."

  I checked the judge's signature on the last page and saw it was a Glendale muni-court judge I had never heard of. They had gone to a local who probably knew he'd need the police endorsement come election time. I started to recover from the shock. Maybe the search was a front.

  "This is bullshit," I said. "You don't have the PC for this. I could have this thing quashed in ten minutes."

  "It looked pretty good to Judge Fullbright," Lankford said.

  "Fullbright? What does she have to do with this?"

  "Well, we knew you were in trial, so we figured we ought to ask her if it was okay to drop the warrant on you. Don't want to get a lady like that mad, you know. She said after court was over was fine by her-and she didn't say shit about the PC or anything else."

  They must have gone to Fullbright on the lunch break, right after I had seen them in the courtroom. My guess was, it had been Sobel's idea to check with the judge first. A guy like Lankford would have enjoyed pulling me right out of court and disrupting the trial.

  I had to think quickly. I looked at Sobel, the more sympathetic of the two.

  "I'm in the middle of a three-day trial," I said. "Any way we can put this on hold until Thursday?"

  "No fucking way," Lankford answered before his partner could. "We're not letting you out of our sight until we execute the search. We're not going to give you the time to dump the gun. Now where's your car, Lincoln lawyer?"

  I checked the authorization of the warrant. It had to be very specific and I was in luck. It called for the search of a Lincoln with the California license plate NT GLTY. I realized that someone must have written the plate down on the day I was called to Raul Levin's house from the Dodgers game. Because that was the old Lincoln-the one I was driving that day.

  "It's at home. Since I'm in trial I don't use the driver. I got a ride in with my client this morning and I was just going to ride back with him. He's probably waiting down there."

  I lied. The Lincoln I had been driving was in the courthouse parking garage. But I couldn't let the cops search it because there was a gun in a compartment in the backseat armrest. It wasn't the gun they were looking for but it was a replacement. After Raul Levin was murdered and I'd found my pistol box empty, I asked Earl Briggs to get me a gun for protection. I knew that with Earl there would be no ten-day waiting period. But I didn't know the gun's history or registration and I didn't want to find out through the Glendale Police Department.

  But I was in luck because the Lincoln with the gun inside wasn't the one described in the warrant. That one was in my garage at home, waiting on the buyer from the limo service to come by and take a look at. And that would be the Lincoln that would be searched.

  Lankford grabbed the warrant out of my hand and shoved it into an inside coat pocket.

  "Don't worry about your ride," Lankford said. "We're your ride. Let's go."

  On the way down and out of the courthouse, we didn't run into Roulet or his entourage. And soon I was riding in the back of a Grand Marquis, thinking that I had made the right choice when I had gone with the Lincoln. There was more room in the Lincoln and the ride was smoother.

  Lankford did the driving and I sat behind him. The windows were up and I could hear him chewing gum.

  "Let me see the warrant again," I said.

  Lankford made no move.

  "I'm not letting you inside my house until I've had a chance to completely study the warrant. I could do it on the way and save you some time. Or . . ."

  Lankford reached inside his jacket and pulled out the warrant. He handed it over his shoulder to me. I knew why he was hesitant. Cops usually had to lay out their whole investigation in the warrant application in order to convince a judge of probable cause. They didn't like the target reading it, because it gave away the store.

  I glanced out the window as we were passing the car lots on Van Nuys Boulevard

  . I saw a new model Town Car on a pedestal in front of the Lincoln dealership. I looked back down at the warrant, opened it to the summary section and read.

  Lankford and Sobel had started out doing some good work. I had to give them that. One of them had taken a shot-I was guessing Sobel-and put my name into the state's Automated Firearm System and hit the lotto. The AFS computer said I was the registered owner of a pistol of the same make and model as the murder weapon.

  It was a smooth move but it still wasn't enough to make probable cause. Colt made the Woodsman for more than sixty years. That meant there were probably a million of them out there and a million suspects who owned them.

  They had the smoke. They then rubbed other sticks together to make the required fire. The application summary stated that I had hidden from the investigators the fact that I owned the gun in question. It said I had also fabricated an alibi when initially interviewed about Levin's death, then attempted to throw detectives off the track by giving them a phony lead on the drug dealer Hector Arrande Moya.

  Though motivation was not necessarily a subject needed to obtain a search warrant, the PC sum
mary alluded to it anyway, stating that the victim-Raul Levin-had been extorting investigative assignments from me and that I had refused to pay him upon completion of those assignments.

  The outrage of such an assertion aside, the alibi fabrication was the key point of probable cause. The statement said that I had told the detectives I was home at the time of the murder, but a message on my home phone was left just before the suspected time of death and this indicated that I was not home, thereby collapsing my alibi and proving me a liar at the same time.

  I slowly read the PC statement twice more but my anger did not subside. I tossed the warrant onto the seat next to me.

  "In some ways it's really too bad I am not the killer," I said.

  "Yeah, why is that?" Lankford said.

  "Because this warrant is a piece of shit and you both know it. It won't stand up to challenge. I told you that message came in when I was already on the phone and that can be checked and proven, only you were too lazy or you didn't want to check it because it would have made it a little difficult to get your warrant. Even with your pocket judge in Glendale. You lied by omission and commission. It's a bad-faith warrant."

  Because I was sitting behind Lankford I had a better angle on Sobel. I watched her for signs of doubt as I spoke.

  "And the suggestion that Raul was extorting business from me and that I wouldn't pay is a complete joke. Extorted me with what? And what didn't I pay him for? I paid him every time I got a bill. Man, I tell you, if this is how you work all your cases, I gotta open up an office in Glendale. I'm going to shove this warrant right up your police chief's ass."

  "You lied about the gun," Lankford said. "And you owed Levin money. It's right there in his accounts book. Four grand."

  "I didn't lie about anything. You never asked if I owned a gun."

  "Lied by omission. Right back at ya."

  "Bullshit."

  "Four grand."

  "Oh yeah, the four grand-I killed him because I didn't want to pay him four grand," I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. "You got me there, Detective. Motivation. But I guess it never occurred to you to see if he had even billed me for the four grand yet, or to see if I hadn't just paid an invoice from him for six thousand dollars a week before he was murdered."

  Lankford was undaunted. But I saw the doubt start to creep into Sobel's face.

  "Doesn't matter how much or when you paid him," Lankford said. "A blackmailer is never satisfied. You never stop paying until you reach the point of no return. That's what this is about. The point of no return."

  I shook my head.

  "And what exactly was it that he had on me that made me give him jobs and pay him until I reached the point of no return?"

  Lankford and Sobel exchanged a look and Lankford nodded. Sobel reached down to a briefcase on the floor and took out a file. She handed it over the seat to me.

  "Take a look," Lankford said. "You missed it when you were ransacking his place. He'd hidden it in a dresser drawer."

  I opened the file and saw that it contained several 8 ¥ 10 color photos. They were taken from afar and I was in each one of them. The photographer had trailed my Lincoln over several days and several miles. Each image a frozen moment in time, the photos showed me with various individuals whom I easily recognized as clients. They were prostitutes, street dealers and Road Saints. The photos could be interpreted as suspicious because they showed one split second of time. A male prostitute in mini-shorts alighting from the backseat of the Lincoln. Teddy Vogel handing me a thick roll of cash through the back window. I closed the file and tossed it back over the seat.

  "You're kidding me, right? You're saying Raul came to me with that? He extorted me with that? Those are my clients. Is this a joke or am I just missing something?"

  "The California bar might not think it's a joke," Lankford said. "We hear you're on thin ice with the bar. Levin knew it. He worked it."

  I shook my head.

  "Incredible," I said.

  I knew I had to stop talking. I was doing everything wrong with these people. I knew I should just shut up and ride it out. But I felt an almost overpowering need to convince them. I began to understand why so many cases were made in the interview rooms of police stations. People just can't shut up.

  I tried to place the photographs that were in the file. Vogel giving me the roll of cash was in the parking lot outside the Saints' strip club on Sepulveda. That happened after Harold Casey's trial and Vogel was paying me for filing the appeal. The prostitute was named Terry Jones and I handled a soliciting charge for him the first week of April. I'd had to find him on the Santa Monica Boulevard

  stroll the night before a hearing to make sure he was going to show up.

  It became clear that the photos had all been taken between the morning I had caught the Roulet case and the day Raul Levin was murdered. They were then planted at the crime scene by the killer-all part of Roulet's plan to set me up so that he could control me. The police would have everything they needed to put the Levin murder on me-except the murder weapon. As long as Roulet had the gun, he had me.

  I had to admire the plan and the ingenuity at the same time that it made me feel the dread of desperation. I tried to put the window down but the button wouldn't work. I asked Sobel to open a window and she did. Fresh air started blowing into the car.

  After a while Lankford looked at me in the rearview and tried to jump-start the conversation.

  "We ran the history on that Woodsman," he said. "You know who owned it once, don't you?"

  "Mickey Cohen," I answered matter-of-factly, staring out the window at the steep hillsides of Laurel Canyon.

  "How'd you end up with Mickey Cohen's gun?"

  I answered without turning from the window.

  "My father was a lawyer. Mickey Cohen was his client."

  Lankford whistled. Cohen was one of the most famous gangsters to ever call Los Angeles home. He was from back in the day when the gangsters competed with movie stars for the gossip headlines.

  "And what? He just gave your old man a gun?"

  "Cohen was charged in a shooting and my father defended him. He claimed self-defense. There was a trial and my father got a not-guilty verdict. When the weapon was returned Mickey gave it to my father. Sort of a keepsake, you could say."

  "Your old man ever wonder how many people the Mick whacked with it?"

  "I don't know. I didn't really know my father."

  "What about Cohen? You ever meet him?"

  "My father represented him before I was even born. The gun came to me in his will. I don't know why he picked me to have it. I was only five years old when he died."

  "And you grew up to be a lawyer like dear old dad, and being a good lawyer you registered it."

  "I thought if it was ever stolen or something I would want to be able to get it back. Turn here on Fareholm."

  Lankford did as I instructed and we started climbing up the hill to my home. I then gave them the bad news.

  "Thanks for the ride," I said. "You guys can search my house and my office and my car for as long as you want, but I have to tell you, you are wasting your time. Not only am I the wrong guy for this, but you aren't going to find that gun."

  I saw Lankford's head jog up and he was looking at me in the rearview again.

  "And why is that, Counselor? You already dumped it?"

  "Because the gun was stolen out of my house and I don't know where it is."

  Lankford started laughing. I saw the joy in his eyes.

  "Uh-huh, stolen. How convenient. When did this happen?"

  "Hard to tell. I hadn't checked on the gun in years."

  "You make a police report on it or file an insurance claim?"

  "No."

  "So somebody comes in and steals your Mickey Cohen gun and you don't report it. Even after you just told us you registered it in case this very thing happened. You being a lawyer and all, doesn't that sound a little screwy to you?"

  "It does, except I knew who stole it.
It was a client. He told me he took it and if I were to report it, I would be violating a client trust because my police report would lead to his arrest. Kind of a catch-twenty-two, Detective."

  Sobel turned and looked back at me. I think maybe she thought I was making it up on the spot, which I was.

  "That sounds like legal jargon and bullshit, Haller," Lankford said.

  "But it's the truth. We're here. Just park in front of the garage."

  Lankford pulled the car into the space in front of my garage and killed the engine. He turned to look back at me before getting out.

  "Which client stole the gun?"