The Lincoln Lawyer Collection

by Connelly, Michael

  “What?”

  “What’s that mean, he ‘paid himself too quickly’?”

  “It means—let me just start at the start. The way it works is you take on a client and you receive an advance. That money goes into the client trust account. It’s their money but you are holding it because you want to make sure you can get it when you earn it. You follow?”

  “Yeah, you can’t trust your clients because they’re criminals. So you get the money up front and put it in a trust account. Then you pay yourself from it as you do the work.”

  “More or less. Anyway, it’s in the trust and as you do the work, make appearances, prepare the case and so forth, you take your fees from the trust account. You move it into the operating account. Then, from the operating account you pay your own bills and salaries. Rent, secretary, investigator, car costs and so on and so forth. You also pay yourself.”

  “Okay, so how did Vincent pay himself too quickly?”

  “Well, I am not exactly saying he did. It’s a matter of custom and practice. But it looks from the books that he liked to keep a low balance in operating. He happened to have had a franchise client who paid a large advance up front and that money went through the trust and operating accounts pretty quickly. After costs, the rest went to Jerry Vincent in salary.”

  Bosch’s body language indicated I was hitting on something that jibed with something else and was important to him. He had leaned slightly toward me and seemed to have tightened his shoulders and neck.

  “Walter Elliot,” he said. “Was he the franchise?”

  “I can’t give out that information but I think it’s an easy guess to make.”

  Bosch nodded and I could see that he was working on something inside. I waited and he said nothing.

  “How does this help you, Detective?” I finally asked.

  “I can’t give out that information but I think it’s an easy guess to make.”

  I nodded. He’d nailed me back.

  “Look, we both have rules we have to follow,” I said. “We’re flip sides of the same coin. I’m just doing my job. And if there is nothing else I can help you with, I’ll get back to it.”

  Bosch stared at me and seemed to be deciding something.

  “Who did Jerry Vincent bribe on the Elliot case?” he finally asked.

  The question came out of left field. I wasn’t expecting it but in the moments after he asked it, I realized that it was the question he had come to ask. Everything else up until this point had been window dressing.

  “What, is that from the FBI?”

  “I haven’t talked to the FBI.”

  “Then, what are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about a payoff.”

  “To who?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you.”

  I shook my head and smiled.

  “Look, I told you. The books are clean. There’s—”

  “If you were going to bribe someone with a hundred thousand dollars, would you put it in your books?”

  I thought about Jerry Vincent and the time I turned down the subtle quid pro quo on the Barnett Woodson case. I turned him down and ended up hanging a not-guilty verdict on him. It changed Vincent’s life and he was still thanking me for it from the grave. But maybe it didn’t change his ways in the years that followed.

  “I guess you’re right,” I said to Bosch. “I wouldn’t do it that way. So what aren’t you telling me?”

  “This is in confidence, Counselor. But I need your help and I think you need to know this in order to help me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Then, say it.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you will treat this information in confidence.”

  “I thought I did. I will. I’ll keep it confidential.”

  “Not even your staff. Just you.”

  “Fine. Just me. Tell me.”

  “You have Vincent’s work accounts. I have his private accounts. You said he paid himself the money from Elliot quickly. He—”

  “I didn’t say it was Elliot. You did.”

  “Whatever. The point is, that five months ago he accumulated a hundred grand in a personal investment account and a week later called his broker and told him he was cashing out.”

  “You mean he took a hundred thousand out in cash?”

  “That’s what I just said.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I don’t know. But you can’t just go into a broker’s and pick up a hundred grand in cash. You have to order that kind of money. It took a couple days to put it together and then he went in to pick it up. His broker asked a lot of questions to make sure there wasn’t a security issue. You know, like somebody being held hostage while he went and got the money. A ransom or something like that. Vincent said everything was fine, that he needed the money to buy a boat and that if he made the deal in cash, he would get the best deal and save a lot of money.”

  “So where’s the boat?”

  “There is no boat. The story was a lie.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “We’ve checked all state transactions and asked questions all over Marina del Rey and San Pedro. We can’t find any boat. We’ve searched his home twice and reviewed his credit-card purchases. No receipts or records of boat-related expenses. No photos, no keys, no fishing poles. No coast guard registration—required on a transaction that large. He didn’t buy a boat.”

  “What about Mexico?”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “This guy hadn’t left L.A. in nine months. He didn’t go down to Mexico and he didn’t go anywhere else. I’m telling you, he didn’t buy a boat. We would’ve found it. He bought something else and your client Walter Elliot probably knows what it was.”

  I tracked his logic and could see it coming to the doorway of Walter Elliot. But I wasn’t going to open it with Bosch looking over my shoulder.

  “I think you’ve got it wrong, Detective.”

  “I don’t think so, Counselor.”

  “Well, I can’t help you. I have no idea about this and have seen no indication of it in any of the books or records I’ve got. If you can connect this alleged bribe to my client, then arrest him and charge him. Otherwise, I’ll tell you right now he’s off limits. He’s not talking to you about this or anything else.”

  Bosch shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t waste my time trying to talk to him. He used his lawyer as cover on this and I’ll never be able to get past the attorney-client protection. But you should take it as a warning, Counselor.”

  “Yeah, how’s that?”

  “Simple. His lawyer got killed, not him. Think about it. And remember, that little trickle on the back of your neck and running down your spine? That’s the feeling you get when you know you have to look over your shoulder. When you know you’re in danger.”

  I smiled back at him.

  “Oh, is that what that is? I thought it was the feeling I get when I know I’m being bullshitted.”

  “I’m only telling you the truth.”

  “You’ve been running a game on me for two days. Spinning bullshit about bribes and the FBI. You’ve been trying to manipulate me and it’s been a waste of my time. You have to go now, Detective, because I have real work to do.”

  I stood up and extended a hand toward the door. Bosch stood up but didn’t turn to go.

  “Don’t kid yourself, Haller. Don’t make a mistake.”

  “Thanks for the advice.”

  Bosch finally turned and started to leave. But then he stopped and came back to the desk, pulling something from the inside pocket of his jacket as he approached.

  It was a photograph. He put it down on the desk.

  “You recognize that man?” Bosch asked.

  I studied the photo. It was a grainy still taken off a video. It showed a man pushing out through the front door of an office building.

  “This is the front entrance of the Legal Center, isn’t it?”

  “Do you r
ecognize him?”

  The shot was taken at a distance and blown up, spreading the pixels of the image and making it unclear. The man in the photograph looked to me to be of Latin origin. He had dark skin and hair and had a Poncho Villa mustache, like Cisco used to wear. He wore a panama hat and an open-collared shirt beneath what appeared to be a leather sport coat. As I looked more closely at the photograph, I realized why it was the frame they had chosen to take from the surveillance video. The man’s jacket had pulled open as he’d pushed through the glass door. I could see what looked like the top of a pistol tucked into the belt line of his pants.

  “Is that a gun? Is this the killer?”

  “Look, can you answer one goddamn question without another question? Do you recognize this man? That’s all I want to know.”

  “No, I don’t, Detective. Happy?”

  “That’s another question.”

  “Sorry.”

  “You sure you haven’t seen him before?”

  “Not a hundred percent. But that’s not a great photo you’ve got there. Where is it from?”

  “A street camera on Broadway and Second. It sweeps the street and we got this guy for only a few seconds. This is the best we can do.”

  I knew that the city had been quietly installing street cameras on main arteries in the last few years. Streets like Hollywood Boulevard were completely visually wired. Broadway would have been a likely candidate. It was always crowded during the day with pedestrians and traffic. It was also the street used most often for protest marches organized by the underclasses.

  “Well, then I guess it’s better than having nothing. You think the hair and the mustache are a disguise?”

  “Let me ask the questions. Could this guy be one of your new clients?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t met them all. Leave me the photo and I’ll show it to Wren Williams. She’d know better than me if he’s a client.”

  Bosch reached down and took the photo back.

  “It’s my only copy. When will she be in?”

  “In about an hour.”

  “I’ll come back later. Meantime, Counselor, watch yourself.”

  He pointed a finger at me like it was a gun, then turned and walked out of the room, closing the door behind him. I sat there thinking about what he had said and staring at the door, half expecting him to come back in and drop another ominous warning on me.

  But when the door opened one minute later it was Lorna who entered.

  “I just saw that detective in the hallway.”

  “Yeah, he was here.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To scare me.”

  “And?”

  “He did a pretty good job.”

  Twenty-two

  Lorna wanted to convene another staff meeting and update me on things that had happened while I was out of the office visiting Malibu and Walter Elliot the day before. She even said I had a court hearing scheduled later on a mystery case that wasn’t on the calendar we had worked up. But I needed some time to think about what Bosch had just revealed and what it meant.

  “Where’s Cisco?”

  “He’s coming. He left early to meet one of his sources before he came into the office.”

  “Did he have breakfast?”

  “Not with me.”

  “Okay, wait till he gets in and then we’ll go over to the Dining Car and have breakfast. We’ll go over everything then.”

  “I already ate breakfast.”

  “Then, you can do all the talking while we do all the eating.”

  She put a phony frown on her face but went out into the reception office and left me alone. I got up from behind the desk and started to pace the office, hands in my pockets, trying to evaluate what the information from Bosch meant.

  According to Bosch, Jerry Vincent had paid a sizable bribe to a person or persons unknown. The fact that the $100,000 came out of the Walter Elliot advance would indicate the bribe was somehow linked to the Elliot case, but this was by no means conclusive. Vincent could easily have used money from Elliot to pay a debt or a bribe relating to another case or something else entirely. It could have been a gambling debt he wanted to hide. The only fact was that Vincent had diverted the $100K from his account to an unknown destination and had wanted to hide the transaction.

  Next to consider was the timing of the transaction and whether it was linked to Vincent’s murder. Bosch said the money transfer had gone down five months ago. Vincent’s murder was just three nights before and Elliot’s trial was set to begin in a week. Again there was nothing definitive. The distance between the transaction and the murder seemed to me to strain any possibility of a link between the two.

  But still, I could not push the two apart, and the reason for this was Walter Elliot himself. Through the filter of Bosch’s information I now began to fill in some answers and to view my client—and myself—differently. I now saw Elliot’s confidence in his innocence and eventual acquittal coming possibly from his belief that it had already been bought and paid for. I now saw his unwillingness to consider delaying the trial as a timing issue relating to the bribe. And I saw his willingness to quickly allow me to carry the torch for Vincent without checking a single reference as a move made so he could get to the trial without delay. It had nothing to do with any confidence in my skills and tenacity. I had not impressed him. I had simply been the one who showed up. I was simply a lawyer who would work in the scheme of things. In fact, I was perfect. I was pulled out of the lost-and-found bin. I had been on the shelf and was hungry and ready. I could be dusted off and suited up and sent in to replace Vincent, no questions asked.

  The reality jolt this sent through me was as uncomfortable as the first night in rehab. But I also understood that this self-knowledge could give me an edge. I was in the middle of some sort of play but at least now I knew it was a play. That was an advantage. I could now make it my own play.

  There was a reason for the hurry-up to trial and I now thought I knew what it was. The fix was in. Money had been paid for a specific fix, and that fix was tied to the trial remaining on schedule. The next question in this string was why. Why must the trial take place as scheduled? I didn’t have an answer for that yet but I was going to get it.

  I walked over to the windows and split the Venetian blinds with my hand. Out on the street I saw a van from Channel 5 parked with two wheels up on the curb. A camera crew and a reporter were on the sidewalk and they were getting ready to do a live shot, offering their viewers the latest on the Vincent case—the latest being the exact same report given the morning before: no arrests, no suspects, no news.

  I left the window and stepped back into the middle of the room to continue my pacing. The next thing I needed to consider was the man in the photograph Bosch showed me. There was a contradiction at work here. The early indications of evidence were that Vincent had known the person who killed him and allowed him to get close. But the man in the photograph appeared to be in disguise. Would Jerry have lowered his window for the man in the photograph? The fact that Bosch had zeroed in on this man didn’t make sense when applied to what was known about the crime scene.

  The calls from the FBI to Vincent’s cell phone were also part of the unknown equation. What did the bureau know and why had no agent come forward to Bosch? It might be that the agency was hiding its tracks. But I also knew that it might not want to come out of the shadows to reveal an ongoing investigation. If this was the case, I would need to step more carefully than I had been. If I ended up the least bit tainted in a federal corruption probe, I would never recover from it.

  The last unknown to consider was the murder itself. Vincent had paid the bribe and was ready for trial as scheduled. Why had he become a liability? His murder certainly threatened the timetable and was an extreme response. Why was he killed?

  There were too many questions and too many unknowns for now. I needed more information before I could draw any solid conclusions about how to proceed. But there was a basic con
clusion I couldn’t stop myself from reaching. It seemed uncomfortably clear that I was being mushroomed by my own client. Elliot was keeping me in the dark about the interior machinations of the case.

  But that could work both ways. I decided that I would do exactly what Bosch had asked: keep the information the detective had given me confidential. I would not share it with my staff and certainly, at this point, I would not question Walter Elliot about his knowledge of these things. I would keep my head above the dark waters of the case and keep my eyes wide open.

  I shifted focus from my thoughts to what was directly in front of me. I was looking at the gaping mouth of Patrick Henson’s fish.

  The door opened and Lorna reentered the office to find me standing there staring at the tarpon.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Thinking.”

  “Well, Cisco’s here and we’ve got to go. You have a busy court schedule today and I don’t want to make you late.”

  “Then, let’s go. I’m starved.”

  I followed her out but not before glancing back at the big beautiful fish hanging on the wall. I thought I knew exactly how he felt.

  Twenty-three

  I had Patrick drive us over to the Pacific Dining Car, and Cisco and I ordered steak and eggs while Lorna had tea and honey. The Dining Car was a place where downtown power brokers liked to gather before a day of fighting it out in the glass towers nearby. The food was overpriced but good. It instilled confidence, made the downtown warrior feel like a heavy hitter.

  As soon as the waiter took our order and left us, Lorna put her silverware to the side and opened a spiral-bound At-A-Glance calendar on the table.

  “Eat fast,” she said. “You have a busy day.”

  “Tell me.”

  “All right, the easy stuff first.”

  She flipped a couple of pages back and forth in the calendar, then proceeded.

  “You have a ten a.m. in chambers with Judge Holder. She wants an updated client inventory.”

  “She told me I had a week,” I protested. “Today’s Thursday.”

  “Yeah, well, Michaela called and said the judge wants an interim update. I think she—the judge, that is—saw in the paper that you are continuing on as Elliot’s lawyer. She’s afraid you’re spending all your time on Elliot and none on the other clients.”