She stood up and Aronson and I followed. We dropped into the sort of small talk that often follows a meeting of great importance.
“So who’s going to be the next DA?” I asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Freeman said. “There’s no front-runner yet, that’s for sure.”
The office was currently operating with an interim district attorney following the appointment of its former holder to a top job in the U.S. Attorney General’s Office in Washington, D.C. A special election would be held in the fall to fill the slot and so far the field of candidates was uninspiring.
Finished with the pleasantries, we shook hands and Freeman left the office. Sitting back down, I looked at Aronson.
“So what do you think?”
“I think you’re right. The offer was too good and then she made it even better. Something’s gone wrong in her case.”
“Yeah, but what? We can’t exploit it if we don’t know what it is.”
I leaned forward to the phone and pushed the intercom. I told Cisco to come in. I swiveled in silence while we waited. Cisco entered, put my cell phone down on the desk and then took the seat where Freeman had sat.
“I have the trace underway. I’d give it three days. They don’t move that quickly.”
“Thanks.”
“So what’s up with the prosecutor?”
“She’s running scared and we don’t know why. I know you’ve vetted everything she’s given us and checked out the witnesses. I want to do it again. Something’s changed. Something they thought they had, they no longer have. We have to find out what it is.”
“Margo Schafer, probably.”
“How so?”
Cisco shrugged.
“Just speaking from experience. Eyewitnesses are unreliable. Schafer is a big part of a very circumstantial case. They lose her or she turns up shaky and they have a big problem. We already know it’s going to be tough to convince a jury that she saw what she claims she saw.”
“But we still haven’t talked to her?”
“She refused to be interviewed and is under no obligation to do so.”
I opened the middle drawer of the desk and pulled out a pencil. I pushed its point into the top opening of the cast and down between two fingers, then maneuvered the pencil back and forth to scratch my palm.
“What are you doing?” Cisco asked.
“What’s it look like? Itching my palm. It was driving me crazy the whole meeting.”
“You know what they say about itchy palms,” Aronson said.
I looked at her, wondering if there was some sort of sexual innuendo to the answer.
“No, what?”
“If it’s your right hand you are going to come into money. If it’s your left then you are going to pay out money. If you scratch them, you stop it from happening.”
“They teach you that in law school, Bullocks?”
“No, my mother always said it. She was superstitious. She thought it was true.”
“Well, if it is, I just saved us a bunch of money.”
I pulled the pencil out and put it back in the drawer.
“Cisco, take another run at Schafer. Try to catch her off guard. Show up somewhere she’d never expect it. See how she reacts. See if she talks.”
“You got it.”
“If she doesn’t talk, take another run at her background. Maybe there’s a connection we don’t know about.”
“If there is I’ll find it.”
“That’s what I’m counting on.”
Sixteen
As I had expected, Lisa Trammel wanted no part in a plea agreement that would put her in prison for as long as seven years, even though she faced the possibility of four times that amount if convicted at trial. She chose to take her chances on an acquittal and I couldn’t blame her. While I remained at a loss to explain the state’s change of heart, the offer of a defense-friendly disposition made me think the prosecution was running scared and that we had a legitimate fighting chance. If my client was willing to roll the dice, then so was I. It wasn’t my freedom at stake.
I was cruising home at the end of work the next day when I called Andrea Freeman to give her the news. She had left several messages early in the day and I had strategically not returned them, hoping to make her sweat. It turned out she was anything but feeling the heat. When I told her my client was passing on the offer she simply laughed.
“Uh, Haller, you might want to start returning your messages a little sooner. I tried several times this morning to get to you. That offer was permanently taken off the table at ten o’clock. She should’ve accepted it last night and it probably would have saved her about twenty years in prison.”
“Who pulled the offer, your boss?”
“I did. I changed my mind and that’s that.”
I couldn’t think of what could have caused such a dramatic change in less than twenty-four hours. The only activity on the case that morning that I knew of was Louis Opparizio’s attorney filing a motion to quash the subpoena we had served on him. But I didn’t see the connection to Freeman’s abrupt change in direction on the plea.
When I didn’t respond, Freeman moved to end the call.
“So, Counselor, I guess I’ll see you in court.”
“Yeah, and just so you know, I’m going to find it, Andrea.”
“Find what?”
“Whatever it is you’re hiding. The thing that went wrong yesterday, that made you bring me that offer. Doesn’t matter if you think it’s all fixed now, I’m going to find it. And when we get to trial, I’ll have it in my back pocket.”
She laughed into the phone in a way that immediately undercut the confidence I’d had in my statement.
“Like I said, I’ll see you in court,” she said.
“Yeah, I’ll be there,” I said.
I put the phone down on the armrest and tried to intuit what was going on. Then it struck me. I might already be carrying Freeman’s secret in my back pocket.
The letter from Bondurant to Opparizio had been hidden in the haystack of documents Freeman had turned over. Maybe she had found it only recently herself and realized what I could do with it, how I could build a defense case around it. It happens sometimes. A prosecutor gets a case with what seems like overwhelming evidence, and hubris sets in. You go with what you’ve got and other potential evidence goes undiscovered until late. Sometimes too late.
I became convinced. It had to be the letter. A day ago she was running scared because of the letter. Now she was confident. Why? The only difference between yesterday and today was the motion to quash the Opparizio subpoena. All at once I understood her strategy. The prosecution would support the dismissal of the subpoena. If Opparizio didn’t testify I might not be able to get the letter before the jury.
If I had it right, then there could be a severe setback for the defense at the hearing on the motion. I now knew I had to be prepared to fight as though my case depended on it. Because it did.
I decided to put the phone in my pocket. No more calls. It was Friday evening. I would put the case aside and take it all up again in the morning. Everything could wait until then.
“Rojas, put on some music. It’s the weekend, man!”
Rojas hit the button on the dash to play the CD. I had forgotten what I had in there but soon identified the song as Ry Cooder singing “Teardrops Will Fall,” a cover of the 1960s classic on his anthology disc. It sounded good and it sounded right. A song about love lost and being left alone.
The trial would start in less than three weeks. Whether or not we figured out what Freeman was hiding, the defense team was locked and loaded and ready to go. We still had some outstanding subpoenas to serve but otherwise we were fit for battle and I was growing more confident every day.
The following Monday I would hole up in my office and start choreographing the defense case. The hypothesis of innocence would be carefully revealed piece by piece and witness by witness until it all came together in a crushing wave
of reasonable doubt.
But I still had a weekend to fill before that and I wanted to put as much distance as I could between me and Lisa Trammel and everything else. Cooder was now on to “Poor Man’s Shangri-La,” the one about the UFOs and space vatos in Chávez Ravine before they took it away from the people and put up Dodger Stadium.
What’s that sound, what’s that light?
Streaking down through the night
I told Rojas to turn it up. I lowered the back windows and let the wind and music blow through my hair and ears.
UFO got a radio
Little Julian singing soft and low
Los Angeles down below
DJ says, we gotta go
To El Monte, to El Monte, pa El Monte
Na, na, na, na, na
Livin’ in a poor man’s Shangri-La
I closed my eyes as we cruised.
Seventeen
Rojas dropped me at the steps of my home and I slowly made my way up while he put the Lincoln in the garage. His own car was parked on the street. He’d take it home and come back Monday, the usual routine.
Before opening the door I stepped to the far end of the deck and looked out at the city. The sun still had a couple hours of work ahead, then would set on another week. From up here the city had a certain sound that was as identifiable as a train whistle. The low hiss of a million dreams in competition.
“You all right?”
I turned around. It was Rojas at the top of the steps.
“Yeah, fine. What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know. I saw you standing up here and thought maybe something was wrong, like you were locked out or something.”
“No, I was just checking out the city.”
I went over to the door, pulling out my house key.
“Have a good weekend, Rojas.”
“You too, Boss.”
“You know, you should probably stop calling me Boss.”
“Okay, Boss.”
“Whatever.”
I turned the lock and pushed the door open. I was immediately greeted with a sharp and multivoiced cheer of “Surprise!”
I once got shot in the gut after opening the same door. This surprise was a lot better. My daughter rushed forward and hugged me and I hugged her back. I looked around the room and saw everybody: Cisco, Lorna, Bullocks. My half brother Harry Bosch and his daughter, Maddie. And Maggie was there, too. She came up next to Hayley and kissed me on the cheek.
“Uh,” I said, “I’ve got some bad news. Today is not my birthday. I am afraid you’ve all been led astray by someone with some sort of devious plan to get cake.”
Maggie punched me on the shoulder.
“Your birthday’s Monday. Not a good day for a surprise party.”
“Yeah, exactly as I had planned it.”
“Come on, get out of the door and let Rojas in. Nobody’s staying that long. We just wanted to say happy birthday.”
I leaned forward and kissed her cheek and whispered in her ear.
“What about you? You’re not staying long either?”
“We’ll see about that.”
She escorted me in through a gauntlet of handshakes, kisses and back pats. It was nice and totally unexpected. I was placed in the seat of honor and handed a lemonade.
The party lasted another hour and I got time to visit with all my guests. I hadn’t seen Harry Bosch in a few months. I had heard he’d come by the hospital but I wasn’t awake for the visit. We had worked a case the year before, with me as a special prosecutor. It had been nice being on the same side and I had thought the experience would keep us close. But it hadn’t really worked out that way. Bosch remained as distant as ever and I remained as saddened about it as ever.
When I saw the opportunity I moved toward him and we stood side by side in front of the window that gave the best view of the city.
“From this angle it’s hard not to love it, isn’t it?” he asked.
I turned from the view to him and then back. He was drinking a lemonade, too. He had told me he’d stopped drinking when his teenage daughter had come to live with him.
“I know what you mean,” I said.
He drained his glass and thanked me for the party. I told him he could leave Maddie with us if she wanted to visit Hayley longer. But he said that he already had plans to take her to a shooting range in the morning.
“A shooting range? You’re taking your daughter to a shooting range?”
“I’ve got guns in the house. She should know how to use them.”
I shrugged. I guessed there was a logic in it.
Bosch and his daughter were the first to leave and soon afterward the party ended. Everybody left except for Maggie and Hayley. They had decided to stay the night.
Exhausted by the day and the week and the month, I took a long shower and then got into bed early. Soon Maggie came in, after talking Hayley to sleep in her room. She closed the door and that was when I knew my real birthday present was coming.
She hadn’t brought any nightclothes with her. Lying on my back, I watched her get undressed and then slip under the covers with me.
“You know, you’re a piece of work, Haller,” she whispered.
“What did I do this time?”
“You just trespassed all over the place.”
She moved in close and then over on top of me. She bent down, tenting my face with her hair. She kissed me and started slowly moving her hips, then put her lips against my ear.
“So,” she said. “Normal function and activity, that’s what the doctor told you, right?”
“That’s what he said.”
“We’ll see.”
PART THREE
Boléro
Eighteen
Louis Opparizio was a man who did not want to be served. As an attorney he knew that the only way he could be dragged into the Lisa Trammel trial was to be served with a subpoena to testify. Avoiding service meant avoiding testimony. Whether he had been tipped to the defense strategy or simply was smart enough to understand it on his own, he seemingly disappeared just at the time we began looking for him. His whereabouts became unknown and all the routine tricks of the trade to track him and draw him out had failed. We did not know if Opparizio was in the country, let alone in Los Angeles.
Opparizio had one very big thing going for him in his effort to hide. Money. With enough money you can hide from anybody in this world and Opparizio knew it. He owned numerous homes in numerous states, multiple vehicles and even a private jet to help him connect quickly to all his dots. When he moved, whether it was from state to state or from Beverly Hills home to Beverly Hills office, he traveled behind a phalanx of security men.
He also had one thing going against him. Money. The vast wealth he had accumulated by carrying out the bidding of banks and other lenders had also given him an Achilles’ heel. He had acquired the tastes and desires of the super rich.
And that was how we eventually got him.
In the course of his efforts to locate Opparizio, Cisco Wojciechowski amassed a tremendous amount of information about his quarry’s profile. From this data a trap was carefully planned and executed to perfection. A glossy presentation package announcing the closed-bid auction of an Aldo Tinto painting was sent to Opparizio’s office in Beverly Hills. The package said the painting would be on view for interested bidders for only two hours beginning at 7 P.M. two nights hence in Studio Z at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica. Bids would then be accepted until midnight.
The presentation looked professional and legitimate. The depiction of the painting had been lifted from an online art catalog that displayed private collections. We knew from a two-year-old profile of Opparizio in a bar journal that he had become a collector of second-tier painters and that the late Italian master Tinto was his obsession. When a man called the phone number on the portfolio, identified himself as a representative of Louis Opparizio and booked a private viewing of the painting, we had him.
At precisely the appoi
nted time, the Opparizio entourage entered the old Red Car trolley station, which had been turned into an upscale gallery complex. While three sunglassed security men fanned out across the grounds, two more swept Gallery Z before giving the all-clear signal. Only then did Opparizio emerge from the stretch Mercedes.
Inside the gallery Opparizio was met by two women who disarmed him with their smiles and excitement about the arts and the painting he was about to see. One woman handed him a glass flute of Cristal to celebrate the moment. The other gave him a thick folded packet of documents on the painting’s pedigree and exhibition history. Because he held the champagne in one hand he could not open the documents. He was told he could read it all later because he must see the painting now before the next appointment. He was led into the viewing room where the piece sat on an ornate easel covered with a satin drape. A lone spotlight lit the center of the room. The women told him he could remove the drape himself and one of them took his glass of champagne. She wore long gloves.
Opparizio stepped forward, his hand raised in anticipation. He carefully pulled the satin off the frame. And there pinned to the board was the subpoena. Confused, he leaned forward to look, perhaps thinking this was still the Italian master’s work.
“You’ve been served, Mr. Opparizio,” Jennifer Aronson said. “You have the original in your hand.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, but he did.
“And the whole thing from the moment you drove in is on videotape,” said Lorna.
She stepped to the wall and hit the switch, bathing the entire room in light. She pointed to the two overhead cameras. Jennifer lifted the champagne flute as if giving a toast.
“We have your prints, too, if needed.”
She turned and raised a toast to one of the cameras.
“No,” Opparizio said.
“Yes,” Lorna said.
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 14
