“Oh, yeah.”
“Chasing leads or chasing tail?”
It was a question I had once heard one detective ask another in a courthouse hallway. I guess it was a question reserved for brothers of the badge because it didn’t go over so well with Bosch. He made some sort of guttural noise and didn’t answer.
In the file room I told him to have a seat at the small table. There was a yellow legal tablet on the table, but no files. I took the other seat and put my coffee down.
“So,” I said, picking up the legal pad.
“So,” Bosch said when I offered nothing else.
“So I met with Judge Holder in chambers yesterday and worked out a plan by which we can give you what you need from the files without actually giving you the files.”
Bosch shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“You should’ve told me this yesterday at Parker Center,” he said. “I wouldn’t have wasted my time.”
“I thought you’d appreciate this.”
“It’s not going to work.”
“How do you know that? How can you be sure?”
“How many homicides have you investigated, Haller? And how many have you cleared?”
“All right, point taken. You’re the homicide guy. But I am certainly capable of reviewing files and discerning what constituted a legitimate threat to Jerry Vincent. Possibly because of my experience as a criminal defense attorney I could even perceive a threat that you would miss in your capacity as a detective.”
“So you say.”
“Yeah, I say.”
“Look, all I’m pointing out here is the obvious. I’m the detective. I’m the one who should look through the files because I know what I am looking for. No offense, but you are an amateur at this. So I’m in a position here where I have to take what an amateur is giving me and trust that I’m getting everything there is to get from the files. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust the evidence unless I find it myself.”
“Again, your point is well taken, Detective, but this is the way it is. This is the only method Judge Holder approved, and I gotta tell you that you’re lucky to get this much. She wasn’t interested in helping you out at all.”
“So you’re saying you went to bat for me?”
He said it in a disbelieving, sarcastic tone, as if it were some sort of a mathematical impossibility for a defense attorney to help a police detective.
“That’s right,” I said defiantly. “I went to bat for you. I told you yesterday, Jerry Vincent was a friend. I’d like to see you take down the person who took him down.”
“You’re probably worried about your own ass, too.”
“I’m not denying that.”
“If I were you I would be.”
“Look, do you want the list or not?”
I held the legal pad up as if I were teasing a dog with a toy. He reached for it and I pulled it back, immediately regretting the move. I quickly handed it to him. It was an awkward exchange, like shaking hands had been the day before.
“There are eleven names on that list, with a brief summary of the threat each made to Jerry Vincent. We were lucky that Jerry thought it was important to memorialize an account of each threat he received. I’ve never done that.”
Bosch didn’t respond. He was reading the first page of the legal pad.
“I prioritized them,” I said.
Bosch looked at me and I knew he was ready to step on me again for assuming the role of detective. I raised a hand to stop him.
“Not from the standpoint of your investigation. From the standpoint of being a lawyer. Of putting myself in Jerry Vincent’s shoes and looking at these things and determining which ones would concern me the most. Like the first one on that list. James Demarco. The guy goes away on weapons charges and thinks Jerry fucked up the case. A guy like that can get a gun as soon as he gets out.”
Bosch nodded and dropped his eyes back to the legal pad. He spoke without looking up from it.
“What else do you have for me?”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at me and waved the pad up and down as if it were as light as a feather and the information on it was equally so.
“I’ll run these names and see where these guys are at now. Maybe your gunrunner is out and about and looking for revenge. But these are dead cases. Most likely if these threats were legit, they would’ve been carried out long ago. Same with any threats he got when he was a prosecutor. So this is just busywork you’re giving me, Counselor.”
“Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just busywork. I don’t understand your attitude on this.”
Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.
“I don’t really care what you think about my attitude,” he said. “We’ll check your leads out. But I’m looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent’s open cases.”
“Well, I can’t help you there.”
“Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I assume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You’re going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That’s when you call me.”
I stared at him without answering.
“You never know,” he said. “It might save you from…”
He shrugged and didn’t finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.
“It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”
Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.
“What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”
“I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”
“You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”
He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.
“I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”
“Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”
Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.
“This time you go first,” I prompted.
He nodded.
“Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone—either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”
“Okay.”
“I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him.”
“Who?”
“I can’t tell. All outgoing calls from over there register on the main number. All I know is he got calls from the bureau, no names.”
“How long were the calls?”
Bosch hesitated, unsure what to divulge. He looked down at the tablet in his hand and I saw him grudgingly decide to share more. He was going to get angry when I had nothing to share back.
“They were all short calls.”
“How short?”
“None of them over a minute.”
“Then, maybe they were just wrong numbe
rs.”
He shook his head.
“That’s too many wrong numbers. They wanted something from him.”
“Anybody from there check in on the homicide investigation?”
“Not yet.”
I thought about this and shrugged.
“Well, maybe they will and then you’ll know.”
“Yeah, and maybe they won’t. It’s not their style, if you know what I mean. Now your turn. What do you have that’s federal?”
“Nothing. I confirmed that Vincent had no federal cases.”
I watched Bosch do a slow burn as he realized I had played him.
“You’re telling me you have found no federal connections? Not even a bureau business card in that office?”
“That’s right. Nothing.”
“There’s been a rumor going around about a federal grand jury looking into corruption in the state courts. You know anything about that?”
I shook my head.
“I’ve been on the shelf for a year.”
“Thanks for the help.”
“Look, Detective, I don’t get this. Why can’t you just call over there and ask who was calling your victim? Isn’t that how an investigation should proceed?”
Bosch smiled like he was dealing with a child.
“If they want me to know something, they’ll come to me. If I call them, they’ll just shine me on. If this was part of a corruption probe or they’ve got something else going, the chances of them talking to a local cop are between slim and none. If they’re the ones who got him killed, then make it none.”
“How would they get him killed?”
“I told you, they kept calling. They wanted something. They were pressuring him. Maybe someone else knew about it and thought he was a risk.”
“That’s a lot of conjecture about five calls that don’t even add up to five minutes.”
Bosch held up the yellow pad.
“No more conjecture than this list.”
“What about the laptop?”
“What about it?”
“Is that what this is all about, something in his computer?”
“You tell me.”
“How can I tell you when I have no idea what was in it?”
Bosch nodded the point and stood up.
“Have a good day, Counselor.”
He walked out, carrying the legal pad at his side. I was left wondering whether he had been warning me or playing me the whole time he had been in the room.
Sixteen
Lorna and Cisco arrived together fifteen minutes after Bosch’s departure and we convened in Vincent’s office. I took a seat behind the dead lawyer’s desk and they sat side by side in front of it. It was another score-keeping session in which we went over cases, what had been accomplished the previous night and what still needed to be done.
With Cisco driving, I had visited eleven of Vincent’s clients the night before, signing up eight of them and giving back files to the remaining three. These were the priority cases, potential clients I hoped to keep because they could pay or their cases had garnered some form of merit in my review. They were cases I could win or be challenged by.
So it had not been a bad night. I had even convinced the woman charged with indecent exposure to keep me on as her attorney. And of course, bagging Walter Elliot was the icing on the cake. Lorna reported that she had faxed him a representation contract and it had already been signed and returned. We were in good shape there. I could start chipping away at the hundred thousand in the trust account.
We next set the plan for the day. I told Lorna that I wanted her and Wren—if she showed up—to run down the remaining clients, apprise them of Jerry Vincent’s demise and set up appointments for me to discuss the options of legal representation. I also wanted Lorna to continue building the calendar and familiarizing herself with Vincent’s files and financial records.
I told Cisco I wanted him to focus his attention on the Elliot case, with particular emphasis on witness maintenance. This meant that he had to take the preliminary defense witness list, which had already been compiled by Jerry Vincent, and prepare subpoenas for the law enforcement officers and other witnesses who might be considered hostile to the defense’s cause. For the paid expert witness and others who were willingly going to testify at trial for the defense, he had to make contact and assure them that the trial was moving forward as scheduled, with me replacing Vincent at the helm.
“Got it,” Cisco said. “What about the Vincent investigation? You still want me monitoring?”
“Yes, keep tabs on that and let me know what you find out.”
“I found out that they spent last night sweating somebody but kicked him loose this morning.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“A suspect?”
“They cut him loose, so whoever it was is cleared. For now.”
I nodded as I thought about this. No wonder Bosch looked like he had been up all night.
“What are you going to be doing today?” Lorna asked.
“My priority starting today is Elliot. There are a few things on these other cases that I’ll need to pay some attention to but for the most part I’m going to be on Elliot from here on out. We’ve got jury selection in eight days. Today I want to start at the crime scene.”
“I should go with you,” Cisco said.
“No, I just want to get a feel for the place. You can get in there with a camera and tape measure later.”
“Mick, isn’t there any way you can convince Elliot to delay?” Lorna asked. “Doesn’t he realize that you need time to study and understand the case?”
“I told him that, but he’s not interested. He made it a condition of my hire. I had to agree to go to trial next week or he’d find another lawyer who could. He says he’s innocent and doesn’t want to wait a single day longer to prove it.”
“Do you believe him?”
I shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. He believes it. And he’s got this strange confidence in it all turning out his way—like the Monday morning box office. So I either get ready to go to trial at the end of next week or I lose the client.”
Just then the door to the office swung open and revealed Wren Williams standing tentatively in the doorway.
“Excuse me,” she said.
“Hello, Wren,” I said. “Glad you’re here. Could you wait out there in reception, and Lorna will be right out to work with you?”
“No problem. You also have one of the clients waiting out here. Patrick Henson. He was already waiting when I came in.”
I looked at my watch. It was five of nine. It was a good sign in regard to Patrick Henson.
“Then, send him in.”
A young man walked in. Patrick Henson was smaller than I thought he would be, but maybe it was the low center of gravity that made him a good surfer. He had the requisite hardened tan but his hair was cropped short. No earrings, no white shell necklace or shark’s tooth. No tattoos that I could see. He wore black cargo pants and what probably passed as his best shirt. It had a collar.
“Patrick, we spoke on the phone yesterday. I’m Mickey Haller and this is my case manager, Lorna Taylor. This big guy is Cisco, my investigator.”
He stepped toward the desk and shook our hands. His grip was firm.
“I’m glad you decided to come in. Is that your fish on the wall back there?”
Without moving his feet Henson swiveled at the hips as if on a surfboard and looked at the fish hanging on the wall.
“Yeah, that’s Betty.”
“You gave a stuffed fish a name?” Lorna asked. “What, was it a pet?”
Henson smiled, more to himself than to us.
“No, I caught it a long time ago. Back in Florida. We hung it by the front door in the place I was sharing in Malibu. My roommates and me, we’d always say, ‘Hellooo, Betty’ to it when we came home. It was kind of stupid.”
He swiveled back and looked at me.
&nbs
p; “Speaking of names, do we call you Trick?”
“Nah, that was just the name my agent came up with. I don’t have him anymore. You can just call me Patrick.”
“Okay, and you told me you had a valid driver’s license?”
“Sure do.”
He reached into a front pocket and removed a thick nylon wallet. He pulled his license out and handed it to me. I studied it for a moment and then handed it to Cisco. He studied it a little longer and then nodded, giving it his official approval.
“Okay, Patrick, I need a driver,” I said. “I provide the car and gas and insurance and you show up here every morning at nine to drive me wherever I need to go. I told you the pay schedule yesterday. You still interested?”
“I’m interested.”
“Are you a safe driver?” Lorna asked.
“I’ve never had an accident.” Patrick said.
I nodded my approval. They say an addict is best suited for spotting another addict. I was looking for signs that he was still using. Heavy eyelids, slow speech, avoidance of eye contact. But I didn’t pick up on anything.
“When can you start?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t have anything… I mean, whenever you want, I guess.”
“How about we start right now? Today will be a test-drive. We’ll see how you do and we can talk about it at the end of the day.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Okay, well, we’re going to get out of here and hit the road and I’ll explain in the car how I like things to work.”
“Cool.”
He hooked his thumbs in his pockets and awaited the next move or instruction. He looked like he was about thirty but that was because of what the sun had done to his skin. I knew from the file that he was only twenty-four and still had a lot to learn.
Today the plan was to take him back to school.
Seventeen
We took the 10 out of downtown and headed west toward Malibu. I sat in the back and opened my computer on the fold-down table. While I waited for it to boot up I told Patrick Henson how it all worked.
“Patrick, I haven’t had an office since I left the Public Defender’s Office twelve years ago. My car is my office. I’ve got two other Lincolns just like this one. I keep them in rotation. Each one’s got a printer and a fax and I’ve got a wireless card in my computer. Anything I have to do in an office I can do back here while I’m on the road to the next place. There are more than forty courthouses spread across L.A. County. Being mobile is the best way to do business.”