The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5)

by Michael Connelly

  “He said he is supposed to have his first appearance tomorrow morning and he wanted you there. He said he was set up and didn’t kill her.”

  “Was she a wife, girlfriend, business associate, or what?”

  “He said she worked for him but that’s all. I know you don’t like your clients talking on jailhouse phones, so I didn’t ask him anything about the case.”

  “That’s good, Lorna.”

  “Where are you, anyway?”

  “I went out to see Legal. I’m heading back downtown now. I’ll see if I can get in to see this guy and feel it out. Can you get a hold of Cisco and have him do some preliminaries?”

  “He’s already on it. I can hear him on the phone with somebody now.”

  Cisco Wojciechowski was my investigator. He was also Lorna’s husband, and they worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. Lorna also happened to be my ex-wife. She was wife number two, coming after the wife who bore me my only child—a child who was now sixteen years old and wanted nothing to do with me. Sometimes I thought I needed a flowchart on a whiteboard to keep track of everybody and their relationships, but at least there were no jealousies between me and Lorna and Cisco, just a solid working relationship.

  “Okay, have him call me. Or I’ll call him after I get out of jail.”

  “Okay, good luck.”

  “One last thing. Is La Cosse a paying customer?”

  “Oh, yeah. He said he didn’t have cash but he had gold and other ‘commodities’ he could trade.”

  “Did you give him a number?”

  “I told him you would need twenty-five just to get started, more later. He didn’t freak out or anything.”

  The number of defendants in the system at any given time who could not only afford a $25,000 retainer but were willing to part with it were few and far between. I knew nothing about this case but it was sounding better to me all the time.

  “Okay, I’ll check back when I know something.”

  “Cheers.”

  Some of the air came out of the balloon before I even laid eyes on my new client. I had filed an engagement letter with the jail office and was waiting for the detention deputies to find La Cosse and move him into an interview room, when Cisco called with the preliminary information he had been able to glean from human and digital sources in the hour or so since we had gotten the case.

  “Okay, a couple things. The LAPD put out a press release on the murder yesterday but so far nothing on the arrest. Giselle Dallinger, thirty-six years old, was found early Monday morning in her apartment on Franklin west of La Brea. She was found by firefighters who were called because the apartment had been set on fire. The body was burned but it is suspected that the fire was set in an attempt to cover up the murder and make it look accidental. Autopsy is still pending but the release says there were indications she had been strangled. The press release labeled her a businesswoman but the Times ran a short on it on their website that quotes law enforcement sources as saying she was a hooker.”

  “Great. Who is my guy then, a john?”

  “Actually, the Times report says the coppers were questioning a business associate. Whether that was La Cosse it doesn’t say but you put two and two together—”

  “And you get pimp.”

  “Sounds like it to me.”

  “Great. Seems like a swell guy.”

  “Look at the bright side, Lorna says he’s a paying client.”

  “I’ll believe it when the cash is in my pocket.”

  I suddenly thought of my daughter, Hayley, and one of the last things she had said to me before she cut off contact. She called the people on my client list the dregs of society, people who are takers and users and even killers. Right now I couldn’t argue with her. My roster included the carjacker who targeted old ladies, an accused date rapist, an embezzler who took money from a student trip fund, and various other societal miscreants. Now I would presumably add an accused murderer to the list—make that an accused murderer in the business of selling sex.

  I was beginning to feel that I deserved them as much as they deserved me. We were all hard-luck cases and losers, the kind of people the gods of guilt never smiled upon.

  My daughter had known the two people my client Sean Gallagher killed. Katie Patterson was in her class. Her mom was their homeroom mother. Hayley had to switch schools to avoid the scorn directed at her when it was revealed by the media—and I mean all the media—that J. Michael Haller Jr., candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney, had sprung Gallagher from his last DUI pop on a technicality.

  The bottom line is that Gallagher was out drinking and driving because of my so-called skills as a defense lawyer, and no matter how Legal Siegel tried to soothe my conscience with the old “you-were-just-doing-your-job” refrain, I knew in the dark shadows of my soul that the verdict was guilty. Guilty in the eyes of my daughter, guilty in my own eyes as well.

  “You still there, Mick?”

  I came out of the dark reverie, realizing I was still on the phone with Cisco.

  “Yeah. Do you know who’s working the case?”

  “The press release names Detective Mark Whitten of West Bureau as the lead. His partner isn’t listed.”

  I didn’t know Whitten and had never come up against him on a case, as far as I could remember.

  “Okay. Anything else?”

  “That’s all I have at the moment but I’m working it.”

  Cisco’s info had dampened my excitement. But I wasn’t going to jettison the case just yet. Guilty conscience aside, a paycheck was a paycheck. I needed the dough to keep Michael Haller & Associates solvent.

  “I’ll call you after I meet the man, which is right now.”

  A detention deputy was directing me into one of the attorney-client booths. I got up and headed in.

  Andre La Cosse was already in a chair on the other side of a table with a three-foot-high plexiglass divider cutting it in half. Most of the clients I visit in Men’s Central adopt a slouch and a laid-back, cavalier attitude about being in jail. It’s a protective measure. If you act unconcerned about being locked into a steel building with twelve hundred other violent criminals, then maybe they’ll leave you alone. On the other hand, if you show fear, then the predators will see it and exploit it. They’ll come for you.

  But La Cosse was different. First of all, he was smaller than I had expected. He was slightly built and looked to me like he had never once picked up a set of barbells. He was in a baggy orange jail jumper but seemed to carry himself with a pride that belied his circumstances. He didn’t exactly show fear, but he wasn’t showing the exaggerated nonchalance I had seen so many times before in these places. He sat upright on the edge of his chair and his eyes tracked me like lasers as I came into the small space. There was something formal about the way he held himself. His hair was carefully feathered at the sides and it looked like he might have been wearing eyeliner.

  “Andre?” I said as I sat down. “I’m Michael Haller. You called my office about handling your case.”

  “Yes, I did. I shouldn’t be here. Somebody killed her after I was there but nobody will believe me.”

  “Slow down a second and let me get set up here.”

  I took a legal pad out of my briefcase and the pen from my shirt pocket.

  “Before we talk about your case, let me ask a couple of things first.”

  “Please.”

  “And let me say from the beginning that you can never lie to me, Andre. You understand that? If you lie, I fly—that’s my rule. I can’t be working for you if we don’t have a relationship where I can believe that everything you tell me is the god’s honest truth.”

  “Yes, that won’t be a problem. The truth is the only thing I’ve got on my side right now.”

  I went down a list of the basics, gathering a quick bio for the files. La Cosse was thirty-two, unmarried, and living in a condo in West Hollywood. He had no local relatives, the nearest being his parents in Lincoln, Nebraska. He said he
had no criminal record in California, Nebraska, or anywhere else and had never had so much as a speeding ticket. He gave me phone numbers for his parents and his cell phone and landline—these would be used to track him down in the event he were to get out of jail and not live up to our fee arrangement. Once I had the basics I looked up from my legal pad.

  “What do you do for a living, Andre?”

  “I work from home. I’m a programmer. I build and manage websites.”

  “How did you know the victim in this case, Giselle Dallinger?”

  “I ran all her social media. Her websites, Facebook, e-mail, all of it.”

  “So you’re sort of a digital pimp?”

  La Cosse’s neck immediately grew scarlet.

  “Absolutely not! I am a businessman and she is—was—a businesswoman. And I did not kill her, but nobody around here will believe me.”

  I made a calming gesture with my free hand.

  “Let’s cool it down a little bit. I’m on your side, remember?”

  “Doesn’t seem like it when you ask a question like that.”

  “Are you gay, Andre?”

  “What does that matter?”

  “Maybe nothing but maybe it will mean a lot when the prosecutor starts talking about a motive. Are you?”

  “Yes, if you have to know. I don’t hide it.”

  “Well, in here maybe you should, for your own safety. I can also get you moved into a homosexual module once you’re arraigned tomorrow.”

  “Please don’t bother. I don’t want to be classified in any way.”

  “Suit yourself. What was Giselle’s website?”

  “Giselle-for-you-dot-com. That was the main one.”

  I wrote it down.

  “There were others?”

  “She had sites tailored to specific tastes that would come up if someone searched with certain words or things they were looking for. That’s what I offer—a multi-platform presence. That’s why she came to me.”

  I nodded as though I were admiring his creativity and business acumen.

  “And how long were you in business with her?”

  “She came to me about two years ago. She wanted a multidimensional online presence.”

  “She came to you? What does that mean? How did she come to you? Do you run ads online or something?”

  He shook his head as though he was dealing with a child.

  “No, no ads. I only work with people recommended to me by someone I already know and trust. She was recommended by another client.”

  “Who was that?”

  “There is a confidentiality issue there. I don’t want her dragged into this. She doesn’t know anything and has nothing to do with this.”

  I shook my head as though I was dealing with a child.

  “For now, Andre, I’ll let it pass. But if I take this case, I will at some point need to know who referred her. And you cannot be the one who decides whether someone or something has relevance to the case. I decide that. You understand?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll get a message to her,” he said. “As soon as I have her okay, I will connect you. But I do not lie and I do not betray confidences. My business and my life are built on trust.”

  “Good.”

  “And what do you mean, ‘if I take the case’? I thought you took the case. I mean, you’re here, aren’t you?”

  “I’m still deciding.”

  I checked my watch. The sergeant I checked in with said I would get only a half hour with La Cosse. I still had three separate areas of discussion to cover—the victim, the crime, and my compensation.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, so let’s move on. When was the last time you saw Giselle Dallinger in person?”

  “Sunday night late—and when I left her she was alive.”

  “Where?”

  “At her apartment.”

  “Why did you go there?”

  “I went to get money from her but I didn’t get any.”

  “What money and why didn’t you get it?”

  “She went out on a job and my arrangement with her is I get paid a percentage of what she makes. I had set her up on a Pretty Woman Special and I wanted my share—these girls, if you don’t get the money right away, it has a tendency to disappear up their noses and other places.”

  I wrote down a summary of what he had just said even though I wasn’t sure what most of it meant.

  “Are you saying that Giselle was a drug user?”

  “I would say so, yes. Not out of control, but it’s part of the job and part of the life.”

  “Tell me about the Pretty Woman Special. What does that mean?”

  “The client takes a suite at the Beverly Wilshire like in the movie Pretty Woman. Giz had the Julia Roberts thing going, you know? Especially after I had her photos airbrushed. I assume you can figure it out from there.”

  I had never seen the movie but knew it was a story about a prostitute with a heart of gold meeting the man of her dreams on a paid date at the Beverly Wilshire.

  “How much was the fee for that?”

  “It was supposed to be twenty-five hundred.”

  “And your take?”

  “A thousand, but there was no take. She said it was a dead call.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She gets there and there’s nobody home, or whoever answers the door says he didn’t call for her. I check these things out as best as I can. I check IDs, everything.”

  “So you didn’t believe her.”

  “Let’s just say I was suspicious. I had talked to the man in that room. I called him through the hotel operator. But she claimed there was nobody there and the room wasn’t even rented.”

  “So you argued about it?”

  “A little bit.”

  “And you hit her.”

  “What? No! I have never hit a woman. I’ve never hit a man, either! I didn’t do this. Can’t you be—”

  “Look, Andre, I’m just gathering information here. So you didn’t hit her or hurt her. Did you physically touch her anywhere?”

  La Cosse hesitated and in that I knew there was a problem.

  “Tell me, Andre.”

  “Well, I grabbed her. She wouldn’t look at me and so that made me think she was lying. So I grabbed her up around her neck—with one hand only. She got mad and I got mad and that was it. I left.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No, nothing. Well, out on the street, when I was going to my car, she threw an ashtray down at me from her balcony. It missed.”

  “But how did you leave it when you were up in the apartment?”

  “I said I was going to go back to the hotel and knock on the guy’s door myself and get our money. And I left.”

  “What room was it and what was the guy’s name?”

  “He was in eight thirty-seven. His name was Daniel Price.”

  “Did you go to the hotel?”

  “No, I just went home. I decided it wasn’t worth it.”

  “It seemed worth it when you grabbed her by the throat.”

  He nodded at the inconsistency but didn’t offer any further explanation. I moved off the subject—for now.

  “Okay, then what happened? When did the police come?”

  “They showed up at about five yesterday.”

  “Morning or afternoon?”

  “Afternoon.”

  “Did they say how they came up with you?”

  “They knew about her website. That led to me. They said they had questions and I agreed to talk to them.”

  Always a mistake, voluntarily talking to the cops.

  “Do you remember their names?”

  “There was Detective Whitten and he did most of the talking. His partner’s name was something like Weeder. Something like that.”

  “Why did you agree to talk to them?”

  “I don’t know, maybe because I did nothing wrong and wanted to help? I stupidly thought that they were trying to find out what happened to poor Gi
selle, not that they came with what they thought happened and just wanted to plug me into it.”

  Welcome to my world, I thought.

  “Did you know she was dead before they arrived?”

  “No, I had been calling and texting her all day and leaving messages. I was sorry about the whole blowup the night before. But she didn’t call back and I thought she was still mad about the argument. Then they came and said she was dead.”

  Obviously, when a prostitute is found dead, one of the first places the investigation goes is to the pimp, even if it is a digital pimp who doesn’t fit the stereotype of sadistic bruiser and who doesn’t keep the women in his stable in line through threat and physical abuse.

  “Did they record the conversation with you?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did they inform you of your constitutional right to have an attorney present?”

  “Yes, but that was later at the station. I didn’t think I needed an attorney. I did nothing wrong. So I said fine, let’s talk.”

  “Did you sign a waiver form of any kind?”

  “Yes, I signed something—I didn’t really read it.”

  I held my displeasure in check. Most people who enter the criminal justice system end up being their own worst enemies. They literally talk their way into the handcuffs.

  “Tell me how this went. You talked to them at first in your home and then they took you to West Bureau?”

  “Yes, first we were in my place for about fifteen minutes and then they took me to the station. They said they wanted me to look at some photos of suspects but that was just a lie. They never showed me any photos. They put me in a little interview room and kept asking questions. Then they told me I was under arrest.”

  I knew that for them to make the arrest they had to have physical or eyewitness evidence linking La Cosse to the murder in some way. In addition, something he told them must not have squared with the facts. Once he lied, or they thought he lied, he was arrested.

  “Okay, and you told them about going to the victim’s apartment on Sunday night?”

  “Yes, and I told them she was alive when I left.”

  “Did you tell them about grabbing her by the neck?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was that before or after they read you your rights and had you sign the waiver?”