"Ah, that's nice," she said. "Our little teacup."
I followed her eyes and saw she was looking at the photo of our daughter I kept on the desk. I thrilled at the idea I had inadvertently scored a point of some kind with her.
"Yeah," I said, fumbling any chance of capitalizing.
"Which way to the bedroom?" she asked.
"Well, aren't you being forward. To the right."
"Sorry, Haller, I'm not staying long. I only got a couple extra hours out of Stacey, and with that traffic, I've got to turn around and head back over the hill soon."
She walked me into the bedroom and we sat down next to each other on the bed.
"Thank you for doing this," I said.
"One good turn deserves another, I guess," she said.
"I thought I got my good turn that night I took you home."
She put her hand on my cheek and turned my face toward hers. She kissed me. I took this as confirmation that we actually had made love that night. I felt incredibly left out at not remembering.
"Guinness," she said, tasting her lips as she pulled away.
"And some vodka."
"Good combination. You'll be hurting in the morning."
"It's so early I'll be hurting tonight. Tell you what, why don't we go get dinner at Dan Tana's? Craig's on the door now and -"
"No, Mick. I have to go home to Hayley and you have to go to sleep."
I made a gesture of surrender.
"Okay, okay."
"Call me in the morning. I want to talk to you when you're sober."
"Okay."
"You want to get undressed and get under the covers?"
"No, I'm all right. I'll just . . ."
I leaned back on the bed and kicked my shoes off. I then rolled over to the edge and opened a drawer in the night table. I took out a bottle of Tylenol and a CD that had been given to me by a client named Demetrius Folks. He was a banger from Norwalk known on the street as Lil' Demon. He had told me once that he'd had a vision one night and that he knew he was destined to die young and violently. He gave me the CD and told me to play it when he was dead. And I did. Demetrius's prophecy came true. He was killed in a drive-by shooting about six months after he had given me the disc. In Magic Marker he had writtenWreckrium for Lil' Demon on it. It was a collection of ballads he had burned off of Tupac CDs.
I loaded the CD into the Bose player on the night table and soon the rhythmic beat of "God Bless the Dead" started to play. The song was a salute to fallen comrades.
"You listen to this stuff?" Maggie asked, her eyes squinting at me in disbelief.
I shrugged as best I could while leaning on an elbow.
"Sometimes. It helps me understand a lot of my clients better."
"These are the people who should be in jail."
"Maybe some of them. But a lot of them have something to say. Some are true poets and this guy was the best of them."
"Was? Who is it, the one that got shot outside the car museum on Wilshire?"
"No, you're talking about Biggie Smalls. This is the late great Tupac Shakur."
"I can't believe you listen to this stuff."
"I told you. It helps me."
"Do me a favor. Do not listen to this around Hayley."
"Don't worry about it, I won't."
"I've gotta go."
"Just stay a little bit."
She complied but she sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. I could tell she was trying to pick up the lyrics. You needed an ear for it and it took some time. The next song was "Life Goes On," and I watched her neck and shoulders tighten as she caught some of the words.
"Can I please go now?" she asked.
"Maggie, just stay a few minutes."
I reached over and turned it down a little.
"Hey, I'll turn it off if you'll sing to me like you used to."
"Not tonight, Haller."
"Nobody knows the Maggie McFierce I know."
She smiled a little and I was quiet for a moment while I remembered those times.
"Maggie, why do you stay with me?"
"I told you, I can't stay."
"No, I don't mean tonight. I'm talking about how you stick with me, how you don't run me down with Hayley and how you're there when I need you. Like tonight. I don't know many people who have ex-wives who still like them."
She thought a little bit before answering.
"I don't know. I guess because I see a good man and a good father in there waiting to break out one day."
I nodded and hoped she was right.
"Tell me something. What would you do if you couldn't be a prosecutor?"
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, what would you do?"
"I've never really thought about it. Right now I get to do what I've always wanted to do. I'm lucky. Why would I want to change?"
I opened the Tylenol bottle and popped two without a chaser. The next song was "So Many Tears," another ballad for all of those lost. It seemed appropriate.
"I think I'd be a teacher," she finally said. "Grade school. Little girls like Hayley."
I smiled.
"Mrs. McFierce, Mrs. McFierce, my dog ate my homework."
She slugged me on the arm.
"Actually, that's nice," I said. "You'd be a good teacher . . . except when you're sending kids off to detention without bail."
"Funny. What about you?"
I shook my head.
"I wouldn't be a good teacher."
"I mean what would you do if you weren't a lawyer."
"I don't know. But I've got three Town Cars. I guess I could start a limo service, take people to the airport."
Now she smiled at me.
"I'd hire you."
"Good. There's one customer. Give me a dollar and I'll tape it to the wall."
But the banter wasn't working. I leaned back, put my palms against my eyes and tried to push away the day, to push out the memory of Raul Levin on the floor of his house, eyes staring at a permanent black sky.
"You know what I used to be afraid of?" I asked.
"What?"
"That I wouldn't recognize innocence. That it would be there right in front of me and I wouldn't see it. I'm not talking about guilty or not guilty. I mean innocence. Just innocence."
She didn't say anything.
"But you know what I should have been afraid of?"
"What, Haller?"
"Evil. Pure evil."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, most of the people I defend aren't evil, Mags. They're guilty, yeah, but they aren't evil. You know what I mean? There's a difference. You listen to them and you listen to these songs and you know why they make the choices they make. People are just trying to get by, just to live with what they're given, and some of them aren't given a damn thing in the first place. But evil is something else. It's different. It's like . . . I don't know. It's out there and when it shows up . . . I don't know. I can't explain it."
"You're drunk, that's why."
"All I know is I should have been afraid of one thing but I was afraid of the complete opposite."
She reached over and rubbed my shoulder. The last song was "to live & die in l.a.," and it was my favorite on the homespun CD. I started to softly hum and then I sang along with the refrain when it came up on the track. to live & die in l.a. it's the place to be you got to be there to know it ev'ybody wanna see
Pretty soon I stopped singing and pulled my hands down from my face. I fell asleep with my clothes on. I never heard the woman I had loved more than anyone else in my life leave the house. She would tell me later that the last thing I had mumbled before passing out was, "I can't do this anymore."
I wasn't talking about my singing.
Wednesday, April 13
TWENTY-SIX
Islept almost ten hours but I still woke up in darkness. It said 5:18 on the Bose. I tried to go back to the dream but the door was closed. By 5:30 I rolled out of bed, struggled for equilibrium, and hit the shower. I
stayed under the spray until the hot-water tank ran cold. Then I got out and got dressed for another day of fighting the machine.
It was still too early to call Lorna to check on the day's schedule but I keep a calendar on my desk that is usually up-to-date. I went into the home office to check it and the first thing I noticed was a dollar bill taped to the wall over the desk.
My adrenaline jogged up a couple notches as my mind raced and I thought an intruder had left the money on the wall as some sort of threat or message. Then I remembered.
"Maggie," I said out loud.
I smiled and decided to leave the dollar bill taped to the wall.
I got the calendar out of the briefcase and checked my schedule. It looked like I had the morning free until an 11A.M. hearing in San Fernando Superior. The case was a repeat client charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. It was a bullshit charge, hardly worth the time and money, but Melissa Menkoff was already on probation for a variety of drug offenses. If she took a fall for something as minor as drug paraphernalia, her probated sentence would kick in and she would end up behind a steel door for six to nine months.
That was all I had on the calendar. After San Fernando my day was clear and I silently congratulated myself for the foresight I must have used in keeping the day after opening day clear. Of course, I didn't know when I set up the schedule that the death of Raul Levin would send me into Four Green Fields so early, but it was good planning just the same.
The hearing on the Menkoff matter involved my motion to suppress the crack pipe found during a search of her vehicle after a reckless driving stop in Northridge. The pipe had been found in the closed center console of her car. She had told me that she had not given permission to the police to search the car but they did anyway. My argument was that there was no consent to search and no probable cause to search. If Menkoff had been pulled over by police for driving erratically, then there was no reason to search the closed compartments of her car.
It was a loser and I knew it, but Menkoff's father paid me well to do the best I could for his troubled daughter. And that was exactly what I was going to do at eleven o'clock in San Fernando Court
.
For breakfast I had two Tylenols and chased them with fried eggs, toast and coffee. I doused the eggs liberally with pepper and salsa. It all hit the right spots and gave me the fuel to carry on the battle. I turned the pages of theTimes as I ate, looking for a story on the murder of Raul Levin. Inexplicably, there was no story. I didn't understand this at first. Why would Glendale keep the wraps on this? Then I remembered that theTimes put out several regional editions of the paper each morning. I lived on the Westside, and Glendale was considered part of the San Fernando Valley. News of a murder in the Valley may have been deemed byTimes editors as unimportant to Westside readers, who had their own region's murders to worry about. I got no story on Levin.
I decided I would have to buy a second copy of theTimes off a newsstand on the way to San Fernando Court
and check again. Thoughts about which newsstand I would direct Earl Briggs to reminded me that I had no car. The Lincoln was in the parking lot at Four Green Fields-unless it had been stolen during the night-and I couldn't get my keys until the pub opened at eleven for lunch. I had a problem. I had seen Earl's car in the commuter lot where I picked him up each morning. It was a pimped-out Toyota with a low-rider profile and spinning chrome rims. My guess was that it had the permanent stink of weed in it, too. I didn't want to ride in it. In the north county it was an invitation to a police stop. In the south county it was an invitation to get shot at. I also didn't want Earl to pick me up at the house. I never let my drivers know where I live.
The plan I came up with was to take a cab to my warehouse in North Hollywood and use one of the new Town Cars. The Lincoln at Four Green Fields had over fifty thousand miles on it, anyway. Maybe breaking out the new wheels would help me get past the depression sure to set in because of Raul Levin.
After I had cleaned the frying pan and the dish in the sink I decided it was late enough to risk waking Lorna with a call to confirm my day's schedule. I went back into the home office and when I picked up the house phone to make the call I heard the broken dial tone that told me I had at least one message waiting.
I called the retrieval number and was told by an electronic voice that I had missed a call at 11:07A.M. the day before. When the voice recited the number that the missed call had come from, I froze. The number was Raul Levin's cell phone. I had missed his last call.
"Hey, it's me. You probably left for the game already and I guess you got your cell turned off. If you don't get this I'll just catch you there. But I've got another ace for you. I guess you -"
He broke off for a moment at the background sound of a dog barking.
"- could say I've got Jesus's ticket out of the Q. I've gotta go, lad."
That was it. He hung up without a good-bye and had used that stupid brogue at the end. The brogue had always annoyed me. Now it sounded endearing. I missed it already.
I pushed the button to replay the message and listened again and then did it three more times before finally saving the message and hanging up. I then sat there in my desk chair and tried to apply the message to what I knew. The first puzzle involved the time of the call. I did not leave for the game until at least 11:30, yet I had somehow missed the call from Levin that had come in more than twenty minutes earlier.
This made no sense until I remembered the call from Lorna. At 11:07 I had been on the phone with Lorna. My home phone was used so infrequently and so few people had the number that I did not bother to have call waiting installed on the line. This meant that Levin's last call would have been kicked over to the voicemail system and I would have never known about it as I spoke to Lorna.
That explained the circumstances of the call but not its contents.
Levin had obviously found something. He was no lawyer but he certainly knew evidence and how to evaluate it. He had found something that could help me get Menendez out of prison. He had found Jesus's ticket out.
The last thing left to consider was the interruption of the dog barking and that was easy. I had been to Levin's home before and I knew the dog was a high-strung yapper. Every time I had come to the house, I had heard the dog start barking before I had even knocked on the door. The barking in the background on the phone message and Levin hurriedly ending the call told me someone was coming to his door. He had a visitor and it may very well have been his killer.
I thought about things for a few moments and decided that the timing of the call was something I could not in good conscience keep from the police. The contents of the message would raise new questions that I might have difficulty answering, but that was outweighed by the value of the call's timing. I went into the bedroom and dug through the pockets of the blue jeans I had worn the day before to the game. In one of the back pockets I found the ticket stub from the game and the business cards Lankford and Sobel had given me at the end of my visit to Levin's house.
I chose Sobel's card and noticed it only saidDetective Sobel on it. No first name. I wondered why that was as I made the call. Maybe she was like me, with two different business cards in alternate pockets. One with her complete name in one, one with the more formal name in the other.
She answered the call right away and I decided to see what I could get from her before I gave her what I had.
"Anything new on the investigation?" I asked.
"Not a lot. Not a lot that I can share with you. We are sort of organizing the evidence we have. We got some ballistics back and -"
"They already did an autopsy?" I said. "That was quick."
"No, the autopsy won't be until tomorrow."
"Then how'd you get ballistics already?"
She didn't answer but then I figured it out.
"You found a casing. He was shot with an automatic that ejected the shell."
"You're good, Mr. Haller. Yes, we found a cartridge."
"I've done a
lot of trials. And call me Mickey. It's funny, the killer ransacked the place but didn't pick up the shell."
"Maybe that's because it rolled across the floor and fell into a heating vent. The killer would have needed a screwdriver and a lot of time."
I nodded. It was a lucky break. I couldn't count the number of times clients had gone down because the cops had caught a lucky break. Then again, there were a lot of clients who walked because they caught the break. It all evened out in the end.