The Brass Verdict (44 page)

“Walter, what were you doing?”

He was smiling gleefully. He made a fist and pumped it into the air.

“Sticking it up their asses. The prosecutor and the sheriffs, all of them.”

“Yeah, well, you better wait on that. We’ve still got a ways to go. We may have won the day but we haven’t won the war yet.”

“Oh, come on. It’s in the bag, Mick. She was fucking outstanding in there. I mean, I want to marry her!”

“Yeah, that’s nice but let’s see how she does on cross before you buy the ring, okay?”

Another reporter came up and I told her to take a hike, then turned back to my client.

“Listen, Walter, we need to talk.”

“Okay, talk.”

“I had a private investigator check your story out in Florida and I just found out it was bullshit. You lied to me, Walter, and I told you never to lie to me.”

Elliot shook his head and looked annoyed with me for taking the wind out of his sails. To him, being caught in the lie was a minor inconvenience, an annoyance that I would even bring it up.

“Why did you lie to me, Walter? Why’d you spin that story?”

He shrugged and looked away from me when he spoke.

“The story? I read it in a script once. I turned the project down, actually. But I remembered the story.”

“But why? I’m your lawyer. You can tell me anything. I asked you to tell me the truth and you lied to me. Why?”

He finally looked me in the eyes.

“I knew I had to light a fire under you.”

“What fire? What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Mickey. Let’s not get—”

He was turning to go back to the courtroom but I grabbed him roughly by the arm.

“No, I want to hear. What fire did you light?”

“Everybody’s going back in. The break is over and we should be in there.”

I gripped him even harder.

“What fire, Walter?”

“You’re hurting my arm.”

I relaxed my grip but didn’t let go. And I didn’t take my eyes off his.

“What fire?”

He looked away from me and put an “aw, shucks” grin on his face. I finally let go of his arm.

“Look,” he said. “From the start I needed you to believe I didn’t do it. It was the only way for me to know you would bring your best game. That you would be goddamn relentless.”

I stared at him and saw the smile become a look of pride.

“I told you I could read people, Mick. I knew you needed something to believe in. I knew if I was a little bit guilty but not guilty of the big crime, then it would give you what you needed. It would give you your fire back.”

They say the best actors in Hollywood are on the wrong side of the camera. At that moment I knew that was true. I knew that Elliot had killed his wife and her lover and was even proud of it. I found my voice and spoke.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“Oh, I’d had it. Bought it under the table at a flea market back in the seventies. I was a big Dirty Harry fan and I wanted a forty-four mag. I kept it out at the beach house for protection. You know, a lot of drifters down on the beach.”

“What really happened in that house, Walter?”

He nodded like it was his plan all along to take this moment to tell me.

“What happened was I went out there to confront her and whoever she was fucking every Monday like clockwork. But when I got there, I realized it was Rilz. She’d passed him off in front of me as a faggot, had him to dinners and parties and premieres with us, and they probably laughed all about it later. Laughed about me, Mick.

“It got me mad. Enraged, actually. I got the gun out of the cabinet, put on rubber gloves from under the sink and I went upstairs. You should have seen the look on their faces when they saw that big gun.”

I stared at him for a long moment. I’d had clients confess to me before. But usually they were crying, wringing their hands, battling the demons their crimes had created inside. But not Walter Elliot. He was cold to the bone.

“How’d you get rid of the gun?”

“I hadn’t gone out there alone. I had somebody with me and they took the gun, the gloves and my first set of clothes, then walked down the beach, got back up to the PCH and caught a cab. Meantime, I washed up and changed, then I dialed nine-one-one.”

“Who was it that helped you?”

“You don’t need to know that.”

I nodded. Not because I agreed with him. I nodded because I already knew. I had a flash vision of Nina Albrecht easily unlocking the door to the deck when I couldn’t figure it out. It showed a familiarity with her boss’s bedroom that had struck me the moment I saw it.

I looked away from my client and down at the floor. It had been scuffed by a million people who had trod a million miles for justice.

“I never counted on the transference, Mick. When they said they wanted to do the test, I was all for it. I thought I was clean and they would see that and it would be the end of it. No gun, no residue, no case.”

He shook his head at such a close call.

“Thank God for lawyers like you.”

I jerked my eyes up to his.

“Did you kill Jerry Vincent?”

Elliot looked me in the eye and shook his head.

“No, I didn’t. But it was a lucky break because I ended up with a better lawyer.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I looked down the hall to the courtroom door. The deputy was there. He waved to me and signaled me into the courtroom. The break was over and the judge was ready to start. I nodded and held up one finger. Wait. I knew the judge wouldn’t take the bench until he was told the lawyers were in place.

“Go back in,” I said to Elliot. “I have to use the restroom.”

Elliot calmly walked toward the waiting deputy. I quickly stepped into the nearby restroom and went to one of the sinks. I splashed cold water on my face, spotting my best suit and shirt but not caring at all.

Fifty-one

T
hat night I sent Patrick to the movies because I wanted the house to myself. I wanted no television or conversation. I wanted no interruption and no one watching me. I called Bosch and told him I was in for the night. It was not so that I could prepare for what likely would be the last day of the trial. I was more than ready for that. I had the French police captain primed and ready to deliver another dose of reasonable doubt to the jury.

And it was not because I now knew that my client was guilty. I could count the truly innocent clients I’d had over the years on one hand. Guilty people were my specialty. But I was feeling bruised because I had been used so well. And because I had forgotten the basic rule: Everybody lies.

And I was feeling bruised because I knew that I, too, was guilty. I could not stop thinking about Rilz’s father and brothers, about what they had told Golantz about their decision to go home. They were not waiting to see the verdict if it first meant seeing their dead loved one dragged through the sewers of the American justice system. I had spent the good part of twenty years defending guilty and sometimes evil men. I had always been able to accept that and deal with it. But I didn’t feel very good about myself or the work that I would perform the next day.

It was in these moments that I felt the strongest desire to return to old ways. To find that distance again. To take the pill for the physical pain that I knew would numb me to the internal pain. It was in these moments that I realized that I had my own jury to face and that the coming verdict was guilty, that there would be no more cases after this one.

I went outside to the deck, hoping the city could pull me out of the abyss into which I had fallen. The night was cool and crisp and clear. Los Angeles spread out in front of me in a carpet of lights, each one a verdict on a dream somewhere. Some people lived the dream and some didn’t. Some people cashed in their dreams a dime on the dollar and some kept them close and as sacred as the night. I wasn’t sure if I even had a dream left. I felt like I only had sins to confess.

After a while a memory washed over me and somehow I smiled. It was one of my last clear memories of my father, the greatest lawyer of his time. An antique glass ball — an heirloom from Mexico passed down through my mother’s family — had been found broken beneath the Christmas tree. My mother brought me to the living room to view the damage and to give me the chance to confess my guilt. By then my father was sick and wasn’t going to get better. He had moved his work — what was left of it — home to the study next to the living room. I didn’t see him through the open door but from that room I heard his voice in a sing-song nursery rhyme.

In a pickle, take the nickel
…

I knew what it meant. Even at five years old I was my father’s son in blood and the law. I refused to answer my mother’s questions. I refused to incriminate myself.

Now I laughed out loud as I looked at the city of dreams. I leaned down, elbows on the railing, and bowed my head.

“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered to myself.

The song of the Lone Ranger suddenly burst from the open door behind me. I stepped back inside and looked at the cell phone left on the table with my keys. The screen said
PRIVATE NUMBER
. I hesitated, knowing exactly how long the song would play before the call went to message.

At the last moment I took the call.

“Is this Michael Haller, the lawyer?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“This is Los Angeles police officer Randall Morris. Do you know an individual named Elaine Ross, sir?”

I felt a fist grip my guts.

“Lanie? Yes. What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Uh, sir, I have Miss Ross up here on Mulholland Drive and she shouldn’t be driving. In fact, she sort of passed out after she handed me your card.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. The call seemed to confirm my fears about Lanie Ross. She had fallen back. An arrest would put her back into the system and probably cost her another stay in jail and rehab.

“Which jail are you taking her to?” I asked.

“I gotta be honest, Mr. Haller. I’m code seven in twenty minutes. If I take her down to book her, I’m looking at two more hours and I’m tapped on my overtime allowance this month. I was going to say, if you can come get her or send somebody for her, I’m willing to give her the break. You know what I mean?”

“Yes, I do. Thank you, Officer Morris. I’ll come get her if you give me the address.”

“You know where the overlook is above Fryman Canyon?”

“Yes, I do.”

“We’re right here. Make it quick.”

“I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”

Fryman Canyon was only a few blocks from the converted garage guesthouse where a friend allowed Lanie to live rent free. I could get her home, walk back to the park and retrieve her car afterward. It would take me less than an hour and it would keep Lanie out of jail and her car out of the tow lot.

I left the house and drove Laurel Canyon up the hill to Mulholland. When I reached the top, I took a left and headed west. I lowered the windows and let the cool air in as I felt the first pulls of fatigue from the day grab me. I followed the serpentine road for half a mile, slowing once when my headlights washed across a scruffy coyote standing vigil on the side of the road.

My cell phone buzzed as I had been expecting it to.

“What took you so long to call, Bosch?” I said by way of a greeting.

“I’ve been calling but there’s no cell coverage in the canyon,” Bosch said. “Is this some kind of test? Where the hell are you going? You called and said you were done for the night.”

“I got a call. A … client of mine got busted on a deuce up here. The cop’s giving her a break if I drive her home.”

“From where?”

“The Fryman Canyon overlook. I’m almost there.”

“Who was the cop?”

“Randall Morris. He didn’t say whether he was Hollywood or North Hollywood.”

Mulholland was a boundary between the two police divisions. Morris could work out of either one.

“Okay, pull over until I can check it out.”

“Pull over? Where?”

Mulholland was a winding two-lane road with no pull-over spots except for the overlooks. If you pulled over anywhere else, you would get plowed into by the next car to come around the bend.

“Then, slow down.”

“I’m already here.”

The Fryman Canyon overlook was on the Valley side. I took a right to turn in and drove right by the sign that said that the parking area was closed after sunset.

I didn’t see Lanie’s car or a police cruiser. The parking area was empty. I checked my watch. It had been only twelve minutes since I had told Officer Morris that I would be there in less than fifteen.

“Damn!”

“What?” Bosch asked.

I hit the heel of my palm on the steering wheel. Morris hadn’t waited. He’d gone ahead and taken Lanie to jail.

“What?” Bosch repeated.

“She’s not here,” I said. “And neither is the cop. He took her to jail.”

I would now have to figure out which station Lanie had been transported to and probably spend the rest of the night arranging bail and getting her home. I’d be wrecked in court the next day.

I put the car in park and got out and looked around. The lights of the Valley spread out below the precipice for miles and miles.

“Bosch, I gotta go. I have to try to find—”

I saw movement in my peripheral vision to the left. I turned and saw a crouching figure coming out of the tall brush next to the parking clearing. At first I thought coyote but then I saw that it was a man. He was dressed in black and a ski mask was pulled down over his face. As he straightened from the crouch, I saw that he was raising a gun at me.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “What is—”

“Drop the fucking phone!”

I dropped the phone and raised my hands.

“Okay, okay, what is this? Are you with Bosch?”

The man moved quickly toward me and shoved me backwards. I stumbled to the ground and then felt him grab the back of my jacket’s collar.

“Get up!”

“What is—?”

“Get up! Now!”

He started pulling me up.

“Okay, okay. I’m getting up.”

The moment I was on my feet I was shoved forward and crossed through the lights at the front of my car.