The Lincoln Lawyer Collection

by Connelly, Michael

  I did not return the smile.

  “Yeah, well, it turns out Jesus didn’t do it.”

  “What do you mean? Somebody else wiped his prick on the towel?”

  This time Levin laughed out loud.

  “No, you don’t get it. I’m telling you Jesus Menendez was innocent.”

  Levin’s face grew serious. He nodded, putting something together.

  “He’s in San Quentin. You were up at the Q today.”

  I nodded.

  “Let me back up and tell the story,” I said. “You didn’t do much work for me on Menendez because there was nothing to be done. They had the DNA, his own incriminating statement and three witnesses who saw him throw a knife into the river. They never found the knife but they had the witnesses — his own roommates. It was a hopeless case. Truth is, I took it on the come line for publicity value. So basically all I did was walk him to a plea. He didn’t like it, said he didn’t do it, but there was no choice. The DA was going for the death penalty. He’d have gotten that or life without. I got him life with and I made the little fucker take it. I made him.”

  I looked down at my untouched salad. I realized I didn’t feel like eating. I just felt like drinking and pickling the cork in my brain that contained all the guilt cells.

  Levin waited me out. He wasn’t eating, either.

  “In case you don’t remember, the case was about the murder of a woman named Martha Renteria. She was a dancer at The Cobra Room on East Sunset. You didn’t end up going there on this, did you?”

  Levin shook his head.

  “They don’t have a stage,” I said. “They have like a pit in the center and for each number, these guys dressed like Aladdin come out carrying this big cobra basket between two bamboo poles. They put it down and the music starts. Then the top comes off the basket and the girl comes up dancing. Then her top comes off, too. Kind of a new take on the dancer coming out of the cake.”

  “It’s Hollywood, baby,” Levin said. “You gotta have a show.”

  “Well, Jesus Menendez liked the show. He had eleven hundred dollars his brother the drug dealer gave him and he took a fancy to Martha Renteria. Maybe because she was the only dancer who was shorter than him. Maybe because she spoke Spanish to him. After her set they sat and talked and then she circulated a little bit and came back and pretty soon he knew he was in competition with another guy in the club. He trumped the other guy by offering her five hundred if she’d take him home.”

  “But he didn’t kill her when he got there?”

  “Uh-uh. He followed her car in his. Got there, had sex, flushed the condom, wiped his prick on the towel and then he went home. The story starts after he left.”

  “The real killer.”

  “The real killer knocks on the door, maybe fakes like it’s Jesus and that he’s forgotten something. She opens the door. Or maybe it was an appointment. She was expecting the knock and she opens the door.”

  “The guy from the club? The one Menendez was bidding against?”

  I nodded.

  “Exactly. He comes in, punches her a few times to soften her up and then takes out his folding knife and holds it against her neck while he walks her to the bedroom. Sound familiar? Only she isn’t lucky like Reggie Campo would be in a couple years. He puts her on the bed, puts on a condom and climbs on top. Now the knife is on the other side of her neck and he keeps it there while he rapes her. And when he’s done, he kills her. He stabs her with that knife again and again. It’s a case of overkill if there ever was one. He’s working out something in his sick fucking mind while he’s doing it.”

  My second martini came and I took it right from the waitress’s hand and gulped half of it down. She asked if we were finished with our salads and we both waved them away untouched.

  “Your steaks will be right out,” she said. “Or do you want me to just dump them in the garbage and save you the time?”

  I looked up at her. She was smiling but I was so caught up in the story I was telling that I had missed what it was she had said.

  “Never mind,” she said. “They’ll be right out.”

  I got right back to the story. Levin said nothing.

  “After she’s dead the killer cleans up. He takes his time, because what’s the hurry, she’s not going anywhere or calling anybody. He wipes the place down to take care of any fingerprints he might have left. And in the process he wipes away Menendez’s prints. This will look bad for Menendez when he later goes to the police to explain that he is the guy in the sketches but he didn’t kill Martha. They’ll look at him and say, ‘Then why’d you wear gloves when you were there?’”

  Levin shook his head.

  “Oh man, if this is true . . .”

  “Don’t worry, it’s true. Menendez gets a lawyer who once did a good job for his brother but this lawyer wouldn’t know an innocent man if he kicked him in the nuts. This lawyer is all about the deal. He never even asks the kid if he did it. He just assumes he did it because they got his fucking DNA on the towel and the witnesses who saw him toss the knife. The lawyer goes to work and gets the best possible deal he could get. He actually feels pretty good about it because he’s going to keep Menendez off death row and get him a shot at parole someday. So he goes to Menendez and brings down the hammer. He makes him take the deal and stand up there in court and say ‘Guilty.’ Jesus then goes off to prison and everybody’s happy. The state’s happy because it saves money on a trial and Martha Renteria’s family is happy because they don’t have to face a trial with all those autopsy photos and stories about their daughter dancing naked and taking men home for money. And the lawyer’s happy because he got on TV with the case at least six times, plus he kept another client off death row.”

  I gulped down the rest of the martini and looked around for our waitress. I wanted another.

  “Jesus Menendez goes off to prison a young man. I just saw him and he’s twenty-six going on forty. He’s a small guy. You know what happens to the little ones up there.”

  I was looking straight down at the empty space on the table in front of me when an egg-shaped platter with a sizzling steak and steaming potato was put down. I looked up at the waitress and told her to bring me another martini. I didn’t say please.

  “You better take it easy,” Levin said after she was gone. “There probably isn’t a cop in this county who wouldn’t love to pull you over on a deuce, take you back to lockup and put the flashlight up your ass.”

  “I know, I know. It will be my last. And if it’s too much I won’t drive. They always have a cab out front of this place.”

  Deciding that food might help I cut into my steak and ate a piece. I then took a piece of cheese bread out of the napkin it was folded into a basket with, but it was no longer warm. I dropped it on my plate and put my fork down.

  “Look, I know you’re beating yourself up over this but you are forgetting something,” Levin said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “His exposure. He was facing the needle, man, and the case was a dog. I didn’t work it for you because there was nothing to work. They had him and you saved him from the needle. That’s your job and you did it well. So now you think you know what really went down. You can’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know then.”

  I held my hand up in a stop there gesture.

  “The guy was innocent. I should’ve seen it. I should’ve done something about it. Instead, I just did my usual thing and went through the motions with my eyes closed.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “No, no bullshit.”

  “Okay, go back to the story. Who was the second guy who came to her door?”

  I opened my briefcase next to me and reached into it.

  “I went up to San Quentin today and showed Menendez a six-pack. All mug shots of my clients. Mostly former clients. Menendez picked one out in less than ten seconds.”

  I tossed the mug shot of Louis Roulet across the table. It landed facedown. Levin picked it up and loo
ked at it for a few moments, then put it back facedown on the table.

  “Let me show you something else,” I said.

  My hand went back into the briefcase and pulled out the two folded photographs of Martha Renteria and Reggie Campo. I looked around to make sure the waitress wasn’t about to deliver my martini and then handed them across the table.

  “It’s like a puzzle,” I said. “Put them together and see what you get.”

  Levin put the one face together from the two and nodded as he understood the significance. The killer — Roulet — zeroed in on women that fit a model or profile he desired. I next showed him the weapon sketch drawn by the medical examiner on the Renteria autopsy and read him the description of the two coercive wounds found on her neck.

  “You know that video you got from the bar?” I asked. “What it shows is a killer at work. Just like you, he saw that Mr. X was left-handed. When he attacked Reggie Campo he punched with his left and then held the knife with his left. This guy knows what he is doing. He saw an opportunity and took it. Reggie Campo is the luckiest woman alive.”

  “You think there are others? Other murders, I mean.”

  “Maybe. That’s what I want you to look into. Check out all the knife murders of women in the last few years. Then get the victim’s pictures and see if they match the physical profile. And don’t look at unsolved cases only. Martha Renteria was supposedly among the closed cases.”

  Levin leaned forward.

  “Look, man, I’m not going to throw a net over this like the police can. You have to bring the cops in on this. Or go to the FBI. They got their serial killer specialists.”

  I shook my head.

  “Can’t. He’s my client.”

  “Menendez is your client, too, and you have to get him out.”

  “I’m working on that. And that’s why I need you to do this for me, Mish.”

  We both knew that I called him Mish whenever I needed something that crossed the lines of our professional relationship into the friendship that was underneath it.

  “What about a hitman?” Levin said. “That would solve our problems.”

  I nodded, knowing he was being facetious.

  “Yeah, that would work,” I said. “It would make the world a better place, too. But it probably wouldn’t spring Menendez.”

  Levin leaned forward again. Now he was serious.

  “I’ll do what I can, Mick, but I don’t think this is the right way to go. You can declare conflict of interest and dump Roulet. Then work on jumping Menendez out of the Q.”

  “Jump him out with what?”

  “The ID he made on the six-pack. That was solid. He didn’t know Roulet from a hole in the ground and he goes and picks him out of the pack.”

  “Who is going to believe that? I’m his lawyer! Nobody from the cops to the clemency board is going to believe I didn’t set that up. This is all theory, Raul. You know it and I know it to be true but we can’t prove a damn thing.”

  “What about the wounds? They could match the knife they got from the Campo case to Martha Renteria’s wounds.”

  I shook my head.

  “She was cremated. All they have is the descriptions and photos from the autopsy and it wouldn’t be conclusive. It’s not enough. Besides, I can’t be seen as the guy pushing this on my own client. If I turn against a client, then I turn against all my clients. It can’t look that way or I’ll lose them all. I have to figure something else out.”

  “I think you’re wrong. I think — ”

  “For now I go along as if I don’t know any of this, you understand? But you look into it. All of it. Keep it separate from Roulet so I don’t have a discovery issue. File it all under Jesus Menendez and bill the time to me on that case. You understand?”

  Before Levin could answer, the waitress brought my third martini. I waved it away.

  “I don’t want it. Just the check.”

  “Well, I can’t pour it back into the bottle,” she said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll pay for it. I just don’t want to drink it. Give it to the guy who makes the cheese bread and just bring me the check.”

  She turned and walked away, probably annoyed that I hadn’t offered the drink to her. I looked back at Levin. He looked like he was pained by everything that had been revealed to him. I knew just how he felt.

  “Some franchise I got, huh?”

  “Yeah. How are you going to be able to act straight with this guy when you have to deal with him and meantime you’re digging out this other shit on the side?”

  “With Roulet? I plan to see him as little as possible. Only when it’s necessary. He left me a message today, has something to tell me. But I’m not calling back.”

  “Why did he pick you? I mean, why would he pick the one lawyer who might put this thing together?”

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t know. I thought about it the whole plane ride down. I think maybe he was worried I might hear about the case and put it together anyway. But if he was my client, then he knew I’d be ethically bound to protect him. At least at first. Plus there’s the money.”

  “What money?”

  “The money from Mother. The franchise. He knows how big a payday this is for me. My biggest ever. Maybe he thought I’d look the other way to keep the money coming in.”

  Levin nodded.

  “Maybe I should, huh?” I said.

  It was a vodka-spurred attempt at humor, but Levin didn’t smile and then I remembered Jesus Menendez’s face behind the prison Plexiglas and I couldn’t even bring myself to smile.

  “Listen, there’s one other thing I need you to do,” I said. “I want you to look at him, too. Roulet. Find out all you can without getting too close. And check out that story about the mother, about her getting raped in a house she was selling in Bel-Air.”

  Levin nodded.

  “I’m on it.”

  “And don’t farm it out.”

  This was a running joke between us. Like me, Levin was a one-man shop. He had no one to farm it out to.

  “I won’t. I’ll handle it myself.”

  It was his usual response but this time it lacked the false sincerity and humor he usually gave it. He’d answered by habit.

  The waitress moved by the table and put our check down without a thank you. I dropped a credit card on it without even looking at the damage. I just wanted to leave.

  “You want her to wrap up your steak?” I asked.

  “That’s okay,” Levin said. “I’ve kind of lost my appetite for right now.”

  “What about that attack dog you’ve got at home?”

  “That’s an idea. I forgot about Bruno.”

  He looked around for the waitress to ask for a box.

  “Take mine, too,” I said. “I don’t have a dog.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Despite the vodka glaze, I made it through the slalom that was Laurel Canyon without cracking up the Lincoln or getting pulled over by a cop. My house is on Fareholm Drive, which terraces up off the southern mouth of the canyon. All the houses are built to the street line and the only problem I had coming home was when I found that some moron had parked his SUV in front of my garage and I couldn’t get in. Parking on the narrow street is always difficult and the opening in front of my garage door was usually just too inviting, especially on a weekend night, when invariably someone on the street was throwing a party.

  I motored by the house and found a space big enough for the Lincoln about a block and a half away. The further I had gotten from my house, the angrier I had gotten with the SUV. The fantasy grew from spitting on the windshield to breaking off the side mirror, flattening the tires and kicking in the side panels. But instead I wrote a sedate little note on a page of yellow legal paper: This is not a parking space! Next time you will be towed. After all, you never know who’s driving an SUV in L.A., and if you threaten someone for parking in front of your garage, then they know where you live.

  I walked back and was placing the
note under the violator’s windshield wiper when I noticed the SUV was a Range Rover. I put my hand on the hood and it was cool to the touch. I looked up above the garage to the windows of my house that I could see, but they were dark. I slapped the folded note under the windshield wiper and started up the stairs to the front deck and door. I half expected Louis Roulet to be sitting in one of the tall director chairs, taking in the twinkling view of the city, but he was not there.

  Instead, I walked to the corner of the porch and looked out on the city. It was this view that had made me buy the place. Everything about the house once you went through the door was ordinary and outdated. But the front porch and the view right above Hollywood Boulevard could launch a million dreams. I had used money from the last franchise case for a down payment. But once I was in and there wasn’t another franchise, I took the equity out in a second mortgage. The truth was I struggled every month just to pay the nut. I needed to get out from under it but that view off the front deck paralyzed me. I’d probably be staring out at the city when they came to take the key and foreclose on the place.

  I know the question my house prompts. Even with my struggles to stay afloat with it, how fair is it that when a prosecutor and defense attorney divorce, the defense attorney gets the house on the hill with a million-dollar view while the prosecutor with the daughter gets the two-bedroom apartment in the Valley. The answer is that Maggie McPherson could buy a house of her choosing and I would help her to my maximum ability. But she had refused to move while she waited to be tapped for a promotion to the downtown office. Buying a house in Sherman Oaks or anywhere else would send the wrong message, one of sedentary contentment. She was not content to be Maggie McFierce of the Van Nuys Division. She was not content to be passed over by John Smithson or any of his young guns. She was ambitious and wanted to get downtown, where supposedly the best and brightest prosecuted the most important crimes. She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top, especially if they are elected. I knew that Maggie would never be invited downtown. She was too damn good.