The Crossing

  “It’s absurd, Your Honor. We have sat on nothing, and anything that we have found has gone into the discovery file. And I would like to ask why Mr. Haller didn’t alert us to this yesterday when he just admitted that he made this discovery Sunday and the printout is dated then as well.”

  I stared deadpan at Golantz when I answered.

  “If I had known you were fluent in French I would have given it to you, Jeff, and maybe you could’ve helped out. But I’m not fluent and I didn’t know what it said and I had to get it translated. I was handed that translation about ten minutes before I started my cross.”

  “All right,” the judge said, breaking up the stare-down. “This is still a printout of a newspaper article. What are you going to do about verifying the information it contains, Mr. Haller?”

  “Well, as soon as we break, I’m going to put my investigator on it and see if we can contact somebody in the Police Judiciaire. We’re going to be doing the job the Sheriff’s Department should have done six months ago.”

  “We’re obviously going to verify it as well,” Golantz added.

  “Rilz’s father and two brothers are sitting in the gallery. Maybe you can start with them.”

  The judge held up a hand in a calming gesture like he was a parent quelling an argument between two brothers.

  “Okay,” he said. “I am going to stop this line of cross-examination. Mr. Haller, I will allow you to lay the foundation for it during the presentation of the defense. You can call the witness back then, and if you can verify the report and the identity, then I will give you wide latitude in pursuing it.”

  “Your Honor, that puts the defense at a disadvantage,” I protested.

  “How so?”

  “Because now that the state’s been made aware of this information, it can take steps to hinder my verification of it.”

  “That’s absurd,” Golantz said.

  But the judge nodded.

  “I understand your concern and I am putting Mr. Golantz on notice that if I find any indication of that, then I will become… shall we say, very agitated. I think we are done here, gentlemen.”

  The judge rolled back into position and the lawyers returned to theirs. On my way back, I checked the clock on the back wall of the courtroom. It was ten minutes until five. I figured if I could stall for a few more minutes, the judge would recess for the day and the jurors would have the French connection to mull over for the night.

  I stood at the lectern and asked the judge for a few moments. I then acted like I was studying my notepad, trying to decide if there was anything else I wanted to ask Kinder about.

  “Mr. Haller, how are we doing?” the judge finally prompted.

  “We’re doing fine, Judge. And I look forward to exploring Mr. Rilz’s activities in France more thoroughly during the defense phase of the trial. Until then, I have no further questions for Detective Kinder.”

  I returned to the defense table and sat down. The judge then announced that court was recessed for the day.

  I watched the jury file out of the courtroom and picked up no read from any of them. I then glanced behind Golantz to the gallery. All three of the Rilz men were staring at me with hardened, dead eyes.

  Forty-six

  Cisco called me at home at ten o’clock. He said he was nearby in Hollywood and that he could come right over. He said he already had some news about juror number seven.

  After hanging up I told Patrick that I was going out on the deck to meet privately with Cisco. I put on a sweater because there was a chill in the air outside, grabbed the file I’d used in court earlier, and went out to wait for my investigator.

  The Sunset Strip glowed like a blast furnace fire over the shoulder of the hills. I’d bought the house in a flush year because of the deck and the view it offered of the city. It never ceased to entrance me, day or night. It never ceased to charge me and tell me the truth. That truth being that anything was possible, that anything could happen, good or bad.

  “Hey, boss.”

  I jumped and turned. Cisco had climbed the stairs and come up behind me without my even hearing him. He must’ve come up the hill on Fairfax and then killed the engine and freewheeled down to my house. He knew I’d be upset if his pipes woke up everybody in the neighborhood.

  “Don’t scare me like that, man.”

  “What are you so jumpy about?”

  “I just don’t like people sneaking up on me. Sit down out here.”

  I pointed him to the small table and chairs positioned under the roof’s eave and in front of the living room window. It was uncomfortable outdoor furniture I almost never used. I liked to contemplate the city from the deck and draw the charge. The only way to do that was standing.

  The file I’d brought out was on the table. Cisco pulled out a chair and was about to sit down when he stopped and used a hand to sweep the smog dust and crud off the seat.

  “Man, don’t you ever spray this stuff off?”

  “You’re wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Cisco. Just sit down.”

  He did and I did and I saw him look through the translucent window shade into the living room. The television was on and Patrick was in there watching the extreme-sports channel on cable. People were doing flips on snowmobiles.

  “Is that a sport?” Cisco asked.

  “To Patrick, I guess.”

  “How’s it working out with him?”

  “It’s working. He’s only staying a couple weeks. Tell me about number seven?”

  “Down to business. Okay.”

  He reached behind him and pulled a small journal out of his back pocket.

  “You got any light out here?”

  I got up, went to the front door, and reached in to turn on the deck light. I glanced at the TV and saw the medical staff attending to a snowmobile driver who apparently had failed to complete his flip and had three hundred pounds of sled land on him.

  I closed the door and sat back down across from Cisco. He was studying something in his journal.

  “Okay,” he said. “Juror number seven. I haven’t had much time on this but I’ve got a few things I wanted to get right to you. His name is David McSweeney and I think almost everything he put on his J-sheet is false.”

  The J-sheet was the single-page form each juror fills out as part of the voir dire process. The sheets carry the prospective juror’s name, profession, and area of residence by zip code as well as a checklist of basic questions designed to help attorneys form opinions about whether they want the individual on their jury. In this case the name would’ve been excised but all the other information was on the sheet I had given Cisco to start with.

  “Give me some examples.”

  “Well, according to the zip on the sheet, he lives down in Palos Verdes. Not true. I followed him from the courthouse directly to an apartment off of Beverly over there behind CBS.”

  Cisco pointed south in the general direction of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, where the CBS television studio was located.

  “I had a friend run the plate on the pickup he drove home from court and it came back to David McSweeney on Beverly, same address I saw him go into. I then had my guy run his DL and shoot me over the photo. I looked at it on my phone and McSweeney is our guy.”

  The information was intriguing but I was more concerned with how Cisco was conducting his investigation of juror number seven. We had already blown up one source on the Vincent investigation.

  “Cisco, man, your prints are going to be all over this. I told you I can’t have any blowback on this.”

  “Chill, man. There’s no fingerprints. My guy isn’t going to go volunteering that he did a search for me. It’s illegal for a cop to do an outside search. He’d lose his job. And if somebody comes looking, we still don’t need to worry, because he doesn’t use his terminal or user ID when he does these for me. He cadged an old lieutenant’s password. So there are no prints, okay? No trails. We’re safe on this.”

  I reluctantly nodded. Cops stealin
g from cops. Why didn’t that surprise me?

  “All right,” I said. “What else?”

  “Well, for one thing, he’s got an arrest record and he checked the box on the sheet that said he’d never been popped before.”

  “What was the arrest for?”

  “Two arrests. ADW in ’ninety-seven and conspiracy to commit fraud in ’ ninety-nine. No convictions but that is all I know for right now. When the court opens I can get more if you want.”

  I wanted to know more, especially about how arrests for fraud and assault with a deadly weapon could result in no convictions, but if Cisco pulled records on the case, then he’d have to show ID and that would leave a trail.

  “Not if you have to sign out the files. Let it go for now. You got anything else?”

  “Yeah, I’m telling you, I think it’s all phony. On the sheet he says he’s an engineer with Lockheed. As far as I can tell, that’s not true. I called Lockheed and they don’t have a David McSweeney in the phone directory. So unless the guy’s got a job with no phone, then…”

  He raised his hands palm up, as if to say there was no explanation but deception.

  “I’ve only had t’night on this, but everything’s coming up phony and that probably includes the guy’s name.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we don’t officially know his name, do we? It was blacked out on the J-sheet.”

  “Right.”

  “So I followed juror number seven and IDed him as David McSweeney, but who’s to say that’s the same name that was blacked out on the sheet. Know what I mean?”

  I thought for a moment and then nodded.

  “You’re saying that McSweeney could’ve hijacked a legitimate juror’s name and maybe even his jury summons and is masquerading as that person in the courthouse.”

  “Exactly. When you get a summons and show up at the juror check-in window, all they do is check your DL against the list. These are minimum-wage court clerks, Mick. It would not be difficult to get a dummy DL by one of them, and we both know how easy it is to get a dummy.”

  I nodded. Most people want to get out of jury duty. This was a scheme to get into it. Civic duty taken to extreme.

  Cisco said, “If you can somehow get me the name the court has for number seven, I would check it, and I’m betting I find out there is a guy at Lockheed with that name.”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s no way I can get it without leaving a trail.”

  Cisco shrugged.

  “So what’s going on with this, Mick? Don’t tell me that fucking prosecutor put a sleeper on the jury.”

  I thought a moment about telling him but decided against it.

  “At the moment it’s better if I don’t tell you.”

  “Down periscope.”

  It meant that we were taking the submarine—compartmentalizing so if one of us sprang a leak it wouldn’t sink the whole sub.

  “It’s best this way. Did you see this guy with anybody? Any KAs of interest?”

  “I followed him over to the Grove tonight and he met somebody for a coffee in Marmalade, one of the restaurants they’ve got over there. It was a woman. It looked like a casual thing, like they sort of ran into each other unplanned and sat down together to catch up. Other than that, I’ve got no known associates so far. I’ve really only been with the guy since five, when the judge cut the jury loose.”

  I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I’d anticipated.

  “How close did you get to him and the woman?”

  “Not close. You told me to take all precautions.”

  “So you can’t describe her?”

  “I just said I didn’t get close, Mick. I can describe her. I even got a picture of her on my camera.”

  He had to stand up to get his big hand into one of the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a small, black, non-attention-getting camera and sat back down. He turned it on and looked at the screen on the back. He clicked some buttons on the top and then handed it across the table to me.

  “They start there and you can scroll through till you get to the woman.”

  I manipulated the camera and scrolled through a series of digital photos showing juror number seven at various times during the evening. The last three shots were of him sitting with a woman in Marmalade. She had jet-black hair that hung loose and shadowed her face. The photos also weren’t very crisp because they had been taken from long distance and without a flash.

  I didn’t recognize the woman. I handed the camera back to Cisco.

  “Okay, Cisco, you did good. You can drop it now.”

  “Just drop it?”

  “Yeah, and go back to this.”

  I slid the file across the table to him. He nodded and smiled slyly as he took it.

  “So what did you tell the judge up there at the sidebar?”

  I had forgotten he had been in the courtroom, waiting to start his tail of juror seven.

  “I told him I realized that you had done the original background search on the English-language default so I redid it to include French and German. I even printed the story out again Sunday so I would have a fresh date on it.”

  “Nice. But I look like a fuckup.”

  “I had to come up with something. If I’d told him you came across it a week ago and I’d been sitting on it since, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d probably be in lockup for contempt. Besides, the judge thinks Golantz is the fuckup for not finding it before the defense.”

  That seemed to placate Cisco. He held up the file.

  “So then, what do you want me to do with it?” he asked.

  “Where’s the translator you used on the printout?”

  “Probably in her dorm over in Westwood. She’s an exchange student I came up with on the Net.”

  “Well, call her up and pick her up because you’re going to need her tonight.”

  “I have a feeling Lorna isn’t going to like this. Me and a twenty-year-old French girl.”

  “Lorna doesn’t speak French, so she will understand. They’re what, nine hours ahead over there in Paris?”

  “Yeah, nine or ten. I forget.”

  “Okay, then I want you to get with the translator and at midnight start working the phones. Call all the gendarmes, or whatever they call themselves, who worked that drug case and get one of them on a plane over here. At least three of them are named in that article. You can start there.”

  “Just like that? You think one of those guys is going to just jump on a plane for us?”

  “They’ll probably be stabbing one another in the back, trying to get the ticket. Tell them we’ll fly first class and put whoever comes out in the hotel where Mickey Rourke stays.”

  “Yeah, what hotel’s that?”

  “I don’t know but I hear he’s big over there. They think he’s like a genius or something. Anyway, look, what I’m saying is, just tell them whatever they want to hear. Spend whatever needs to be spent. If two want to come, then bring over two and we vet them and put the best one on the stand. Just get somebody over here. It’s Los Angeles, Cisco. Every cop in the world wants to see this place and then go back home and tell everybody what and who he saw.”

  “Okay, I’ll get somebody on a plane. But what if he can’t leave right away?”

  “Then get him going as soon as possible and let me know. I can stretch things in court. The judge wants to hurry everything along but I can slow it down if I need to. Probably next Tuesday or Wednesday is as far as I can go. Get somebody here by then.”

  “You want me to call you tonight when I have it set up?”

  “No, I need my beauty rest. I’m not used to being on my toes in court all day and I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed. Just call me in the morning.”

  “Okay, Mick.”

  He stood up and so did I. He slapped me on the shoulder with the file and then tucked it into the waistband at the back of his jeans. He descended the steps and I walked t
o the edge of the deck to look down on him as he mounted his horse by the curb, dropped it into neutral, and silently started to glide down Fareholm toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

  I then looked up and out at the city and thought about the moves I was making, my personal situation, and my professional deceit in front of the judge in court. I didn’t ponder it all too long and I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I was defending a man I believed was innocent of the murders he was charged with but complicit in the reason they had occurred. I had a sleeper on the jury whose placement was directly related to the murder of my predecessor. And I had a detective watching over me whom I was holding back on and couldn’t be sure was considering my safety ahead of his own desire to break open the case.

  I had all of that and I didn’t feel guilty or fearful about anything. I felt like a guy flipping a three-hundred-pound sled in midair. It might not be a sport but it was dangerous as hell and it did what I hadn’t been able to do in more than a year’s time. It shook off the rust and put the charge back in my blood.

  It gave it a fierce momentum.

  I heard the sound of the pipes on Cisco’s panhead finally fire up. He had made it all the way down to Laurel Canyon before kicking over the engine. The throttle roared deeply as he headed into the night.

  PART FIVE

  —Take the Nickel

  Forty-seven

  On Monday morning I had my Corneliani suit on. I was sitting next to my client in the courtroom and was ready to begin to present his defense. Jeffrey Golantz, the prosecutor, sat at his table, ready to thwart my efforts. And the gallery behind us was maxed out once again. But the bench in front of us was empty. The judge was sequestered in his chambers and running almost an hour behind his own nine-o’clock start time. Something was wrong or something had come up, but we had not yet been informed. We had seen sheriff’s deputies escort a man I didn’t recognize into chambers and then out again but there had been no word on what was going on.

  “Hey, Jeff, what do you think?” I finally asked across the aisle.

  Golantz looked over at me. He was wearing his nice black suit, but he had been wearing it every other day to court and it wasn’t as impressive anymore. He shrugged.