“I apologize, Your Honor. I got held up in Judge Flynn’s court in Compton.”
That was all I had to say. The judge knew about Flynn. Everybody did.
“And on St. Patrick’s Day, no less,” she said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I understand we have a disposition in the Tsunami Svengali matter.”
She immediately looked over at her court reporter.
“Michelle, strike that.”
She looked back at the lawyers.
“I understand we have a disposition in the Scales case. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” I said. “We’re ready to go on that.”
“Good.”
Bernasconi half read, half repeated from memory the legalese needed to take a plea from the defendant. Scales waived his rights and pleaded guilty to the charges. He said nothing other than the word. The judge accepted the disposition agreement and sentenced him accordingly.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Scales,” she said when it was over. “I believe Mr. Bernasconi was quite generous with you. I would not have been.”
“I don’t feel so lucky, Judge,” Scales said.
Deputy Frey tapped him on the shoulder from behind. Scales stood up and turned to me.
“I guess this is it,” he said.
“Good luck, Sam,” I said.
He was led off through the steel door and I watched it close behind them. I had not shaken his hand.
THIRTEEN
The Van Nuys Civic Center is a long concrete plaza enclosed by government buildings. Anchoring one end is the Van Nuys Division of the LAPD. Along one side are two courthouses sitting opposite a public library and a city administration building. At the end of the concrete and glass channel is a federal administration building and post office. I waited for Louis Roulet in the plaza on one of the concrete benches near the library. The plaza was largely deserted despite the great weather. Not like the day before, when the place was overrun with cameras and the media and the gadflies, all crowding around Robert Blake and his lawyers as they tried to spin a not-guilty verdict into innocence.
It was a nice, quiet afternoon and I usually liked being outside. Most of my work is done in windowless courtrooms or the backseat of my Town Car, so I take it outside whenever I can. But I wasn’t feeling the breeze or noticing the fresh air this time. I was annoyed because Louis Roulet was late and because what Sam Scales had said to me about being a street-legal con was festering like cancer in my mind. When finally I saw Roulet crossing the plaza toward me I got up to meet him.
“Where’ve you been?” I said abruptly.
“I told you I’d get here as soon as I could. I was in the middle of a showing when you called.”
“Let’s walk.”
I headed toward the federal building because it would give us the longest stretch before we would have to turn around to cross back. I had my meeting with Minton, the new prosecutor assigned to his case, in twenty-five minutes in the older of the two courthouses. I realized that we didn’t look like a lawyer and his client discussing a case. Maybe a lawyer and his realtor discussing a land grab. I was in my Hugo Boss and Roulet was in a tan suit over a green turtleneck. He had on loafers with small silver buckles.
“There won’t be any showings up in Pelican Bay,” I said to him.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Where’s that?”
“It’s a pretty name for a super max prison where they send violent sex offenders. You’re going to fit in there pretty good in your turtleneck and loafers.”
“Look, what’s the matter? What’s this about?”
“It’s about a lawyer who can’t have a client who lies to him. In twenty minutes I’m about to go up to see the guy who wants to send you to Pelican Bay. I need everything I can get my hands on to try to keep you out of there and it doesn’t help when I find out you’re lying to me.”
Roulet stopped and turned to me. He raised his hands out, palms open.
“I haven’t lied to you! I did not do this thing. I don’t know what that woman wants but I — ”
“Let me ask you something, Louis. You and Dobbs said you took a year of law at UCLA, right? Did they teach you anything at all about the lawyer-client bond of trust?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember. I wasn’t there long enough.”
I took a step toward him, invading his space.
“You see? You are a fucking liar. You didn’t go to UCLA law school for a year. You didn’t even go for a goddamn day.”
He brought his hands down and slapped them against his sides.
“Is that what this is all about, Mickey?”
“Yeah, that’s right and from now on, don’t call me Mickey. My friends call me that. Not my lying clients.”
“What does whether or not I went to law school ten years ago have to do with this case? I don’t — ”
“Because if you lied to me about that, then you’d lie to me about anything, and I can’t have that and be able to defend you.”
I said it too loud. I saw a couple of women on a nearby bench watching us. They had juror badges on their blouses.
“Come on. This way.”
I started walking back the other way, heading toward the police station.
“Look,” Roulet said in a weak voice. “I lied because of my mother, okay?”
“No, not okay. Explain it to me.”
“Look, my mother and Cecil think I went to law school for a year. I want them to continue to believe that. He brought it up with you and so I just sort of agreed. But it was ten years ago! What is the harm?”
“The harm is in lying to me,” I said. “You can lie to your mother, to Dobbs, to your priest and to the police. But when I ask you something directly, do not lie to me. I need to operate from the standpoint of having facts from you. Incontrovertible facts. So when I ask you a question, tell me the truth. All the rest of the time you can say what you want and whatever makes you feel good.”
“Okay, okay.”
“If you weren’t in law school, where were you?”
Roulet shook his head.
“Nowhere. I just didn’t do anything for a year. Most of the time I stayed in my apartment near campus and read and thought about what I really wanted to do with my life. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t want to be a lawyer. No offense intended.”
“None taken. So you sat there for a year and came up with selling real estate to rich people.”
“No, that came later.”
He laughed in a self-deprecating way.
“I actually decided to become a writer — I had majored in English lit — and I tried to write a novel. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I couldn’t do it. I eventually went to work for Mother. She wanted me to.”
I calmed down. Most of my anger had been a show, anyway. I was trying to soften him up for the more important questioning. I thought he was now ready for it.
“Well, now that you are coming clean and confessing everything, Louis, tell me about Reggie Campo.”
“What about her?”
“You were going to pay her for sex, weren’t you?”
“What makes you say — ”
I shut him up when I stopped again and grabbed him by one of his expensive lapels. He was taller than me and bigger, but I had the power in this conversation. I was pushing him.
“Answer the fucking question.”
“All right, yes, I was going to pay. But how did you know that?”
“Because I’m a good goddamn lawyer. Why didn’t you tell me this on that first day? Don’t you see how that changes the case?”
“My mother. I didn’t want my mother to know I . . . you know.”
“Louis, let’s sit down.”
I walked him over to one of the long benches by the police station. There was a lot of space and no one could overhear us. I sat in the middle of the bench and he sat to my right.
“Your mother wasn’t even in the room when we
were talking about the case. I don’t even think she was in there when we talked about law school.”
“But Cecil was and he tells her everything.”
I nodded and made a mental note to cut Cecil Dobbs completely out of the loop on case matters from now on.
“Okay, I think I understand. But how long were you going to let it go without telling me? Don’t you see how this changes everything?”
“I’m not a lawyer.”
“Louis, let me tell you a little bit about how this works. You know what I am? I’m a neutralizer. My job is to neutralize the state’s case. Take each piece of evidence or proof and find a way to eliminate it from contention. Think of it like one of those street entertainers you see on the Venice boardwalk. You ever gone down there and seen the guy spinning all those plates on those little sticks?”
“I think so. I haven’t been down there in a long time.”
“Doesn’t matter. The guy has these thin little sticks and he puts a plate on each one and starts spinning the plate so it will stay balanced and upright. He gets a lot of them going at once and he moves from plate to plate and stick to stick making sure everything is spinning and balanced and staying up. You with me?”
“Yes. I understand.”
“Well, that’s the state’s case, Louis. A bunch of spinning plates. And every one of those plates is an individual piece of evidence against you. My job is to take each plate, stop it from spinning and knock it to the ground so hard that it shatters and can’t be used anymore. If the blue plate contains the victim’s blood on your hands, then I need to find a way to knock it down. If the yellow plate has a knife with your bloody fingerprints on it, then once again I need to knock that sucker down. Neutralize it. You follow?”
“Yes, I follow. I — ”
“Now, in the middle of this field of plates is a big one. It’s a fucking platter, Louis, and if that baby falls over it’s going to take everything down with it. Every plate. The whole case goes down. Do you know what that platter is, Louis?”
He shook his head no.
“That big platter is the victim, the chief witness against you. If we can knock that platter over, then the whole act is over and the crowd moves on.”
I waited a moment to see if he would react. He said nothing.
“Louis, for almost two weeks you have concealed from me the method by which I could knock the big platter down. It asks the question why. Why would a guy with money at his disposal, a Rolex watch on his wrist, a Porsche out in the parking lot and a Holmby Hills address need to use a knife to get sex from a woman who sells it anyway? When you boil it all down to that question, the case starts to collapse, Louis, because the answer is simple. He wouldn’t. Common sense says he wouldn’t. And when you come to that conclusion, all the plates stop spinning. You see the setup, you see the trap, and now it’s the defendant who starts to look like the victim.”
I looked at him. He nodded.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“You should be,” I said. “The case would have started coming apart almost two weeks ago and we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now if you had been up-front with me from the start.”
In that moment I realized where my anger was truly coming from and it wasn’t because Roulet had been late or had lied or because of Sam Scales calling me a street-legal con. It was because I saw the franchise slipping away. There would be no trial in this case, no six-figure fee. I’d be lucky just to keep the retainer I’d gotten at the start The case was going to end today when I walked into the DA’s office and told Ted Minton what I knew and what I had.
“I’m sorry,” Roulet said again in a whiny voice. “I didn’t mean to mess things up.”
I was looking down at the ground between my feet now. Without looking at him I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you before, Louis.”
“What do we do now?”
“I have a few more questions to ask you about that night, and then I’m going to go up into that building over there and meet the prosecutor and knock down all his plates. I think that by the time I come out of there this may all be over and you’ll be free to go back to showing your mansions to rich people.”
“Just like that?”
“Well, formally he may want to go into court and ask a judge to dismiss the case.”
Roulet opened his mouth in shock.
“Mr. Haller, I can’t begin to tell you how — ”
“You can call me Mickey. Sorry about that before.”
“No problem. Thank you. What questions do you want to ask?”
I thought for a moment. I really didn’t need anything else to go into the meeting with Minton. I was locked and loaded. I had walking proof.
“What did the note say?” I asked.
“What note?”
“The one she gave you at the bar in Morgan’s.”
“Oh, it said her address and then underneath she wrote ‘four hundred dollars’ and then under that she wrote ‘Come after ten.”’
“Too bad we don’t have that. But I think we have enough.”
I nodded and looked at my watch. I still had fifteen minutes until the meeting but I was finished with Roulet.
“You can go now, Louis. I’ll call you when it’s all over.”
“You sure? I could wait out here if you want.”
“I don’t know how long it will take. I’m going to have to lay it all out for him. He’ll probably have to take it to his boss. It could be a while.”
“All right, well, I guess I’ll go then. But you’ll call me, right?”
“Yes, I will. We’ll probably go in to see the judge Monday or Tuesday, then it will all be over.”
He put his hand out and I shook it.
“Thanks, Mick. You’re the best. I knew I had the best lawyer when I got you.”
I watched him walk back across the plaza and go between the two courthouses toward the public parking garage.
“Yeah, I’m the best,” I said to myself.
I felt the presence of someone and turned to see a man sit down on the bench next to me. He turned and looked at me and we recognized each other at the same time. It was Howard Kurlen, a homicide detective from the Van Nuys Division. We had bumped up against each other on a few cases over the years.
“Well, well, well,” Kurlen said. “The pride of the California bar. You’re not talking to yourself, are you?”
“Maybe.”
“That could be bad for a lawyer if that got around.”
“I’m not worried. How are you doing, Detective?”
Kurlen was unwrapping a sandwich he had taken out of a brown bag.
“Busy day. Late lunch.”
He produced a peanut butter sandwich from the wrap. There was a layer of something else besides peanut butter in it but it wasn’t jelly. I couldn’t identify it. I looked at my watch. I still had a few minutes before I needed to get in line for the metal detectors at the courthouse entrance but I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend them with Kurlen and his horrible-looking sandwich. I thought about bringing up the Blake verdict, sticking it to the LAPD a little bit, but Kurlen stuck one in me first.
“How’s my man Jesus doin’?” the detective asked.
Kurlen had been lead detective on the Jesus Menendez case. He had wrapped him up so tightly that Menendez had no choice but to plead and hope for the best. He still got life.
“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t talk to Jesus anymore.”
“Yeah, I guess once they plead out and go upstate they’re not much use to you. No appeal work, no nothing.”
I nodded. Every cop had a jaundiced eye when it came to defense lawyers. It was as if they believed their own actions and investigations were beyond questioning or reproach. They didn’t believe in a justice system based on checks and balances.
“Just like you, I guess,” I said. “On to the next one. I hope your busy day means you’re working on getting me a new client.
”
“I don’t look at it that way. But I was wondering, do you sleep well at night?”
“You know what I was wondering? What the hell is in that sandwich?”
He held what was left of the sandwich up on display.
“Peanut butter and sardines. Lots of good protein to get me through another day of chasing scumbags. Talking to them, too. You didn’t answer my question.”
“I sleep fine, Detective. You know why? Because I play an important part in the system. A needed part — just like your part. When somebody is accused of a crime, they have the opportunity to test the system. If they want to do that, they come to me. That’s all any of this is about. When you understand that, you have no trouble sleeping.”
“Good story. When you close your eyes I hope you believe it.”
“How about you, Detective? You ever put your head on the pillow and wonder whether you’ve put innocent people away?”
“Nope,” he said quickly, his mouth full of sandwich. “Never happened, never will.”
“Must be nice to be so sure.”
“A guy told me once that when you get to the end of your road, you have to look at the community woodpile and decide if you added to it while you were here or whether you just took from it. Well, I add to the woodpile, Haller. I sleep good at night. But I wonder about you and your kind. You lawyers are all takers from the woodpile.”
“Thanks for the sermon. I’ll keep it in mind next time I’m chopping wood.”
“You don’t like that, then I’ve got a joke for you. What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”
“Hmmm, I don’t know, Detective.”
“One’s a bottom-feeding scum sucker and one’s a fish.”
He laughed uproariously. I stood up. It was time to go.
“I hope you brush your teeth after you eat something like that,” I said. “I’d hate to be your partner if you don’t.”
I walked away, thinking about what he had said about the woodpile and what Sam Scales had said about my being a street-legal con. I was getting it from all sides today.
“Thanks for the tip,” Kurlen called after me.
FOURTEEN
Ted Minton had arranged for us to discuss the Roulet case in private by scheduling our conference at a time he knew the deputy district attorney he shared space with had a hearing in court. Minton met me in the waiting area and walked me back. He did not look to me to be older than thirty but he had a self-assured presence. I probably had ten years and a hundred trials on him, yet he showed no sign of deference or respect. He acted as though the meeting was a nuisance he had to put up with. That was fine. That was the usual. And it put more fuel in my tank.
The Lincoln Lawyer Collection Page 13
