The Lincoln Lawyer Collection

by Connelly, Michael

  I tried to match him with an even-tempered voice of my own.

  “All I can tell you is that I have had my case manager in here since Tuesday. I’ve had my investigator in here, and Jerry Vincent’s own receptionist was in here up until lunchtime today, when she quit. And none of us, Detective, none of us, has been able to find the smoking gun you’re so sure is here. You tell me that Vincent paid somebody a bribe. But I can find no indication in any file or from any client that that is true. I spent the last three hours in here looking at the Elliot file and I saw no indication—not one—that he paid anybody off or bribed somebody. In fact, I found out that he didn’t need to bribe anybody. Vincent had a magic bullet and he had a shot at winning the case fair and square. So when I tell you I have nothing, I mean it. I’m not playing you. I’m not holding back. I have nothing to give you. Nothing.”

  “What about the FBI?”

  “Same answer. Nothing.”

  Bosch didn’t respond. I saw true disappointment cloud his face. I continued.

  “If this mustache man is the killer, then, of course there is a reason that brought him back here. But I don’t know it. Am I concerned about it? No, not concerned. I’m fucking scared shitless about it. I’m fucking scared shitless that this guy thinks I have something, because if I have it, I don’t even know I have it, and that is not a good place to be.”

  Bosch abruptly stood up. He pulled Cisco’s gun out of his waistband and put it down on the desk.

  “Keep it loaded. And if I were you, I would stop working at night.”

  He turned and headed toward the door.

  “That’s it?” I called after him.

  He spun in his tracks and came back to the desk.

  “What else do you want from me?”

  “All you want is information from me. Most of the time information I can’t give. But you in turn give nothing back, and that’s half the reason I’m in danger.”

  Bosch looked like he might be about to jump over the desk at me. But then I saw him calm himself once more. All except for the palpitation high on his cheek near his left temple. That didn’t go away. That was his tell, and it was a tell that once again gave me a sense of familiarity.

  “Fuck it,” he finally said. “What do you want to know, Counselor? Go ahead. Ask me a question—any question—and I’ll answer it.”

  “I want to know about the bribe. Where did the money go?”

  Bosch shook his head and laughed in a false way.

  “I give you a free shot and I say to myself that I’ll answer your question, no matter what it is, and you go and ask me the question I don’t have an answer to. You think if I knew where the money went and who got the bribe that I’d be here right now with you? Uh-uh, Haller, I’d be booking a killer.”

  “So you’re sure one thing had to do with the other? That the bribe—if there was a bribe—is connected to the killing.”

  “I’m going with the percentages.”

  “But the bribe—if there was a bribe—went down five months ago. Why was Jerry killed now? Why’s the FBI calling him now?”

  “Good questions. Let me know if you come up with any answers. Meantime, anything else I can do for you, Counselor? I was heading home when you called.”

  “Yeah, there is.”

  He looked at me and waited.

  “I was on my way out, too.”

  “What, you want me to hold your hand on the way to the garage? Fine, let’s go.”

  I closed the office once again and we proceeded down the hall to the bridge to the garage. Bosch had stopped talking and the silence was nerve-racking. I finally broke it.

  “I was going to go have a steak. You want to come? Maybe we’ll solve the world’s problems over some red meat.”

  “Where, Musso’s?”

  “I was thinking Dan Tana’s.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “If you can get us in.”

  “Don’t worry. I know a guy.”

  Thirty-three

  Bosch followed me but when I slowed on Santa Monica Boulevard to pull into the valet stop in front of the restaurant, he kept going. I saw him drive by and turn right on Doheny. I went in by myself and Craig sat me in one of the cherished corner booths. It was a busy night but things were tapering off. I saw the actor James Woods finishing dinner in a booth with a movie producer named Mace Neufeld. They were regulars and Mace gave me a nod. He had once tried to option one of my cases for a film but it didn’t work out. I saw Corbin Bernsen in another booth, the actor who had given the best approximation of an attorney I had ever seen on television. And then in another booth, the man himself, Dan Tana, was having a late dinner with his wife. I dropped my eyes to the checkered tablecloth. Enough who’s who. I had to prepare for Bosch. During the drive, I had thought long and hard about what had just happened back at the office and now I only wanted to think about how best to confront Bosch about it. It was like preparing for the cross-examination of a hostile witness.

  Ten minutes after I was seated, Bosch finally appeared in the doorway and Craig led him to me.

  “Get lost?” I asked as he squeezed into the booth.

  “I couldn’t find a parking space.”

  “I guess they don’t pay you enough for valet.”

  “No, valet’s a beautiful thing. But I can’t give my city car to a valet. Against the rules.”

  I nodded, guessing that it was probably because he packed a shotgun in the trunk.

  I decided to wait until after we ordered to make a play with Bosch. I asked if he wanted to look at the menu and he said he was ready to order. When the waiter came, we both ordered the Steak Helen with spaghetti and red sauce on the side. Bosch ordered a beer and I asked for a bottle of flat water.

  “So,” I said, “where’s your partner been lately?”

  “He’s working on other aspects of the investigation.”

  “Well, I guess it’s good to hear there are other aspects to it.”

  Bosch studied me for a long moment before replying.

  “Is that supposed to be a crack?”

  “Just an observation. Doesn’t seem from my end to be much happening.”

  “Maybe that’s because your source dried up and blew away.”

  “My source? I don’t have any source.”

  “Not anymore. I figured out who was feeding your guy and that ended today. I just hope you weren’t paying him for the information because IAD will take him down for that.”

  “I know you won’t believe me, but I have no idea who or what you are talking about. I get information from my investigator. I don’t ask him how he gets it.”

  Bosch nodded.

  “That’s the best way to do it, right? Insulate yourself and then you don’t get any blowback in your face. In the meantime, if a police captain loses his job and pension, those are the breaks.”

  I hadn’t realized Cisco’s source was so highly placed.

  The waiter brought our drinks and a basket of bread. I drank some of the water as I contemplated what to say next. I put the glass down and looked at Bosch. He raised his eyebrows like he was expecting something.

  “How’d you know when I was leaving the office tonight?”

  Bosch looked puzzled.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I figure it was the lights. You were out there on Broadway, and when I killed the lights, you sent your guy into the garage.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  “Sure you do. The photo of the guy with the gun coming out of the building. It was a phony. You set it up—choreographed it—and used it to smoke out your leak, then you tried to scam me with it.”

  Bosch shook his head and looked out of the booth as if he were looking for someone to help him interpret what I was saying. It was a bad act.

  “You set up the phony picture and then you showed it to me because you knew it would come back around through my investigator to your leak. You’d know that whoever asked you about the photo was the
leak.”

  “I can’t discuss any aspect of the investigation with you.”

  “And then you used it to try to play me. To see if I was hiding something and to scare it out of me.”

  “I told you, I can’t—”

  “Well, you don’t have to, Bosch. I know it’s what you did. You know what your mistakes were? First of all, not coming back like you said you would to show the photo to Vincent’s secretary. If the guy in the picture was legit, you would’ve shown it to her because she knows the clients better than me. Your second mistake was the gun in the waistband of your hit man. Vincent was shot with a twenty-five—too small for a waistband. I missed that when you showed me the photo, but I’ve got it now.”

  Bosch looked toward the bar in the middle of the restaurant. The overhead TV was showing sports highlights. I leaned across the table closer to him.

  “So who’s the guy in the photo? Your partner with a stick-on mustache? Some clown from vice? Don’t you have better things to do than to be running a game on me?”

  Bosch leaned back and continued to look around the place, his eyes moving everywhere but to me. He was contemplating something and I gave him all the time he needed. Finally, he looked at me.

  “Okay, you got me. It was a scam. I guess that makes you one smart lawyer, Haller. Just like the old man. I wonder why you’re wasting it defending scumbags. Shouldn’t you be out there suing doctors or defending big tobacco or something noble like that?”

  I smiled.

  “Is that how you like to play it? You get caught being underhanded, so you respond by accusing the other guy of being underhanded?”

  Bosch laughed, his face colored red as he turned away from me. It was a gesture that struck me as familiar, and his mention of my father brought him to mind. I had a vague memory of my father laughing uneasily and looking away as he leaned back at the dinner table. My mother had accused him of something I was too young to understand.

  Bosch put both arms on the table and leaned toward me.

  “You’ve heard of the first forty-eight, right?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The first forty-eight. The chances of clearing a homicide diminish by almost half each day if you don’t solve it in the first forty-eight hours.”

  He looked at his watch before continuing.

  “I’m coming up on seventy-two hours and I’ve got nothing,” he said. “Not a suspect, not a viable lead, nothing. And I was hoping that tonight I might be able to scare something out of you. Something that would point me in the right direction.”

  I sat there, staring at him, digesting what he had said. Finally, I found my voice.

  “You actually thought I knew who killed Jerry and wasn’t telling?”

  “It was a possibility I had to consider.”

  “Fuck you, Bosch.”

  Just then the waiter came with our steaks and spaghetti. As the plates were put down, Bosch looked at me with a knowing smile on his face. The waiter asked what else he could get for us and I waved him away without breaking eye contact.

  “You’re an arrogant son of a bitch,” I said. “You can just sit there with a smile on your face after accusing me of hiding evidence or knowledge in a murder. A murder of a guy I knew.”

  Bosch looked down at his steak, picked up his knife and fork and cut into it. I noticed he was left-handed. He put a chunk of meat into his mouth and stared at me while he ate it. He rested his fists on either side of his plate, fork and knife in his grips, as if guarding the food from poachers. A lot of my clients who had spent time in prison ate the same way.

  “Why don’t you take it easy there, Counselor,” he said. “You have to understand something. I’m not used to being on the same side of the line as the defense lawyer, okay? It has been my experience that defense attorneys have tried to portray me as stupid, corrupt, bigoted, you name it. So with that in mind, yes, I tried to run a game on you in hopes that it would help me solve a murder. I apologize all to hell and back. If you want, I will have them wrap up my steak and I’ll take it to go.”

  I shook my head. Bosch had a talent for trying to make me feel guilty for his transgressions.

  “Maybe now you should be the one who takes it easy,” I said. “All I’m saying is that from the start, I have acted openly and honestly with you. I have stretched the ethical bounds of my profession. And I have told you what I could tell you, when I could tell you. I didn’t deserve to have the shit scared out of me tonight. And you’re damn lucky I didn’t put a bullet in your man’s chest when he was at the office door. He made a beautiful target.”

  “You weren’t supposed to have a gun. I checked.”

  Bosch started eating again, keeping his head down as he worked on the steak. He took several bites and then moved to the side plate of spaghetti. He wasn’t a twirler. He chopped at the pasta with his fork before putting a bite into his mouth. He spoke after he swallowed his food.

  “So now that we have that out of the way, will you help me?”

  I blew out my breath in a laugh.

  “Are you kidding? Have you heard a single thing I’ve said here?”

  “Yeah, I heard it all. And no, I’m not kidding. When all is said and done, I still have a dead lawyer—your colleague—on my hands and I could still use your help.”

  I started cutting my first piece of steak. I decided he could wait for me to eat, like I had waited for him.

  Dan Tana’s was considered by many to serve the best steak in the city. Count me as one of the many. I was not disappointed. I took my time, savoring the first bite, then put my fork down.

  “What kind of help?”

  “We draw out the killer.”

  “Great. How dangerous will it be?”

  “Depends on a lot of things. But I’m not going to lie to you. It could get dangerous. I need you to shake some things up, make whoever’s out there think there’s a loose end, that you might be dangerous to them. Then we see what happens.”

  “But you’ll be there. I’ll be covered.”

  “Every step of the way.”

  “How do we shake things up?”

  “I was thinking a newspaper story. I assume you’ve been getting calls from the reporters. We pick one and give them the story, an exclusive, and we plant something in there that gets the killer thinking.”

  I thought about this and remembered what Lorna had warned about playing fair with the media.

  “There’s a guy at the Times,” I said. “I kind of made a deal with him to get him off my back. I told him that when I was ready to talk, I would talk to him.”

  “That’s a perfect setup. We’ll use him.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So, are you in?”

  I picked up my fork and knife and remained silent while I cut into the steak again. Blood ran onto the plate. I thought about my daughter getting to the point of asking me the same questions her mother asked and that I could never answer. It’s like you’re always working for the bad guys. It wasn’t as simple as that but knowing this didn’t take away the sting or the look I remembered seeing in her eyes.

  I put the knife and fork down without taking a bite. I suddenly was no longer hungry.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m in.”

  PART THREE

  —To Speak the Truth

  Thirty-four

  Everybody lies. Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Clients lie. Even jurors lie. There is a school of belief in criminal law that says every trial is won or lost in the choosing of the jury. I’ve never been ready to go all the way to that level but I do know that there is probably no phase in a murder trial more important than the selection of the twelve citizens who will decide your client’s fate. It is also the most complex and fleeting part of the trial, reliant on the whims of fate and luck and being able to ask the right question of the right person at the right time.

  And yet we begin each trial with it.

  Jury selection in the case of California v. Elliot began on s
chedule in Judge James P. Stanton’s courtroom at ten a.m. Thursday. The courtroom was packed, half filled with the venire—the eighty potential jurors called randomly from the jury pool on the fifth floor of the CCB—and half filled with media, courthouse professionals, well-wishers and just plain gawkers who had been able to squeeze in.

  I sat at the defense table alone with my client—fulfilling his wish for a legal team of just one. Spread in front of me was an open but empty manila file, a Post-it pad and three different markers, red, blue and black. Back at the office, I had prepared the file by using a ruler to draw a grid across it. There were twelve blocks, each the size of a Post-it. Each block was for one of the twelve jurors who would be chosen to sit in judgment of Walter Elliot. Some lawyers use computers to track potential jurors. They even have software that can take information revealed during the selection process, filter it through a sociopolitical pattern-recognition program and spit out instant recommendations on whether to keep or reject a juror. I had been using the old-school grid system since I had been a baby lawyer in the Public Defender’s Office. It had always worked well for me and I wasn’t changing now. I didn’t want to use a computer’s instincts when it came to picking a jury. I wanted to use my own. A computer can’t hear how someone gives an answer. It can’t see someone’s eyes when they lie.

  The way it works is that the judge has a computer-generated list from which he calls the first twelve citizens from the venire, and they take seats in the jury box. At that point each is a member of the jury. But they get to keep their seats only if they survive voir dire—the questioning of their background and views and understanding of the law. There is a process. The judge asks them a series of basic questions and then the lawyers get the chance to follow up with a more narrow focus.

  Jurors can be removed from the box in one of two ways. They can be rejected for cause if they show through their answers or demeanor or even their life’s circumstances that they cannot be fair judges of credibility or hear the case with an open mind. There is no limit to the number of challenges for cause at the disposal of the attorneys. Oftentimes the judge will make a dismissal for cause before the prosecutor or defense attorney even raises an objection. I have always believed that the quickest way off a jury panel is to announce that you are convinced that all cops lie or all cops are always right. Either way, a closed mind is a challenge for cause.