The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5) (3 page)

“Now the question is, will he deal now?”

“It’s actually a she, and I think she’ll deal. You should’ve seen the witness after the scuffle. She was scared and I don’t think she’ll be wanting to come back for another trial. I’ll wait a week and have Jennifer call the prosecutor. I think she’ll be ready to deal.”

Jennifer was my associate Jennifer Aronson. She would need to take over representation of Leonard Watts, because if I stayed on, it would look like the setup it was and that Kristina Medina had alluded to in the courtroom.

Medina had refused to negotiate a plea agreement before the trial because Leonard Watts declined to give up his partner, the guy who drove the car that bumped into each of the victims. Watts wouldn’t snitch, and so Medina wouldn’t deal. Things would be different in a week, I thought, for a variety of reasons: I had seen most of the prosecution’s case laid out in the first trial, Medina’s main witness was spooked by what had happened in front of her in court today, and mounting a second trial would be a costly use of taxpayers’ money. Added to that, I had given Medina a glimpse of what might come if the defense presented a case to a jury—namely my intention to explore through expert witnesses the pitfalls of interracial recognition and identification. That was something no prosecutor wanted to deal with in front of a jury.

“Hell,” I said, “she might call me before I even have to go to her.”

That part was wishful thinking but I wanted Legal to feel good about the move he had strategized for me.

While I was up I took the extra blood capsule out of the briefcase and dropped it into the room’s hazardous-waste container. There was no need for it anymore and I didn’t want to risk it breaking open and ruining my paperwork.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket. It was my case manager, Lorna Taylor, calling but I decided to let it go to message. I’d call her back after my visit with Legal.

“What else you got going now?” Legal asked.

I spread my hands.

“Well, no trial now, so I guess I have the rest of the week off. I may go down to arraignment court tomorrow and see if I can pick up a client or two. I could use the work.”

Not only could I use the income but the work would keep me busy and not thinking about the things in my life that were wrong. In that sense the law had become more than a craft and a calling. It kept me sane.

By checking in at Department 130, the arraignment court in the downtown Criminal Courts Building, I had a shot at picking up clients the public defender was dropping because of conflict of interest. Every time the DA filed a multi-defendant case, the PD could take on only one defendant, putting all others in conflict. If those other defendants did not have private counsel, the judge would appoint counsel to them. If I happened to be there twiddling my thumbs, more often than not I’d pick up a case. It paid government scale but it was better than no work and no pay.

“And to think,” Legal said, “at one point last fall you were running five points up in the polls. And now here you are, scrounging around first-appearance court looking for handouts.”

As he had aged, Legal had lost most of the social filters normally employed in polite company.

“Thanks, Legal,” I said. “I can always count on you for a fair and accurate take on my lot in life. It’s refreshing.”

Legal Siegel raised his bony hands in what I guessed was an apologetic gesture.

“I’m just saying.”

“Sure.”

“So what about your daughter, then?”

This was how Legal’s mind worked. Sometimes he couldn’t remember what he’d had for breakfast, but he seemed to always remember that I had lost more than the election the year before. The scandal had cost me the love and companionship of my daughter and any shot I’d had at putting my broken family back together.

“Things are still the same there, but let’s not go down that road today,” I said.

I checked my phone again after feeling the vibration signaling I had received a text. It was from Lorna. She had surmised that I wasn’t taking calls or listening to voice-mail. A text was different.

Call me ASAP–187

Her mention of the California penal code number for murder got my attention. It was time to go.

“You know, Mickey, I only bring her up because you don’t.”

“I don’t want to bring her up. It’s too painful, Legal. I get drunk every Friday night so I can sleep through most of Saturday. You know why?”

“No, I don’t know why you would get drunk. You did nothing wrong. You did your job with that guy Galloway or whatever his name was.”

“I drink Friday nights so I am out of it Saturdays because Saturdays were when I used to see my daughter. His name was Gallagher, Sean Gallagher, and it doesn’t matter if I was doing my job. People died and it’s on me, Legal. You can’t hide behind just doing your job when two people get creamed at an intersection by the guy you set free. Anyway, I gotta go.”

I stood up and showed him the phone as if it were the reason I needed to go.

“What, I don’t see you for a month and now you already have to go? I’m not finished with my sandwich here.”

“I saw you last Tuesday, Legal. And I’ll see you sometime next week. If not then, then the week after. You hang in and hold fast.”

“Hold fast? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means hold on to what you got. My half brother, the cop, told me that one. Finish that sandwich before they come in here and take it from you.”

I moved toward the door.

“Hey, Mickey Mouse.”

I turned back to him. It was the name he bestowed on me when I was a baby, born at four and a half pounds. Normally I’d tell him not to call me that anymore. But I let him have it so I could go.

“What?”

“Your father always called the jurors the ‘gods of guilt.’ You remember that?”

“Yep. Because they decide guilty or not guilty. What’s your point, Legal?”

“The point is that there are plenty of people out there judging us every day of our lives and for every move we make. The gods of guilt are many. You don’t need to add to them.”

I nodded but couldn’t resist a reply.

“Sandy Patterson and her daughter Katie.”

Legal looked confused by my response. He didn’t recognize the names. I, of course, would never forget them.

“The mother and daughter Gallagher killed. They’re my gods of guilt.”

I closed the door behind me and left the do not disturb sign on the knob. Maybe he’d get the sandwich down before the nurses checked on him and discovered our crime.

B
ack in the Lincoln I called Lorna Taylor and by way of greeting she said the words that always put the two-edged sword right through me. Words that excited and repelled me at the same time.

“Mickey, you’ve got a murder case if you want it.”

The thought of a murder case could put the spark in your blood for many reasons. First and foremost, it was the worst crime on the books and with it came the highest stakes in the profession. To defend a murder suspect you had to be at the very top of your game. To get a murder case you had to have a certain reputation that put you at the top of the game. And in addition to all that, there was the money. A murder defense—whether the case goes to trial or not—is expensive because it is so time-consuming. You get a murder case with a paying customer and you likely make your whole nut for the year.

The downside is your client. While I have zero doubt that innocent people are charged with murder, for the most part the police and prosecutors get it right and you are left to negotiate or ameliorate the length and terms of punishment. All the while you sit at the table next to a person who has taken a life. It’s never a pleasant experience.

“What are the details?” I asked.

I was in the back of the Town Car with a legal pad ready on the fold-down worktable. Earl was heading toward downtown on Third Street, a straight shot in from the Fairfax District.

“The call came in collect from Men’s Central. I accepted and it was a guy named Andre La Cosse. He said he was arrested for murder last night and he wants to hire you. And get this, when I asked him where the referral came from, he said the woman he is accused of killing had recommended you. He said she told him you were the best.”

“Who is it?”

“That’s the crazy thing. Her name, according to him, is Giselle Dallinger. I ran her through our conflict app and her name doesn’t come up. You never represented her, so I am not sure how she got your name and made this recommendation even before she was supposedly killed by this guy.”

The conflict app was a computer program that digitized all our case files and allowed us to determine in seconds whether a prospective client had ever come up in a previous case as a witness, a victim, or even a client. At twenty-plus years into this career, I could not remember every client’s name, let alone the ancillary characters involved in cases. The conflict app saved us enormous amounts of time. Previously, I would often dig into a case only to find out I had a conflict of interest in representing the new client because of an old client, witness, or victim.

I looked down at my legal pad. So far I had written down only the names, nothing else.

“Okay, whose case is it?”

“LAPD West Bureau Homicide.”

“Do we know anything else about it? What else did this guy say?”

“He said he is supposed to have his first appearance tomorrow morning and he wanted you there. He said he was set up and didn’t kill her.”

“Was she a wife, girlfriend, business associate, or what?”

“He said she worked for him but that’s all. I know you don’t like your clients talking on jailhouse phones, so I didn’t ask him anything about the case.”

“That’s good, Lorna.”

“Where are you, anyway?”

“I went out to see Legal. I’m heading back downtown now. I’ll see if I can get in to see this guy and feel it out. Can you get a hold of Cisco and have him do some preliminaries?”

“He’s already on it. I can hear him on the phone with somebody now.”

Cisco Wojciechowski was my investigator. He was also Lorna’s husband, and they worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. Lorna also happened to be my ex-wife. She was wife number two, coming after the wife who bore me my only child—a child who was now sixteen years old and wanted nothing to do with me. Sometimes I thought I needed a flowchart on a whiteboard to keep track of everybody and their relationships, but at least there were no jealousies between me and Lorna and Cisco, just a solid working relationship.

“Okay, have him call me. Or I’ll call him after I get out of jail.”

“Okay, good luck.”

“One last thing. Is La Cosse a paying customer?”

“Oh, yeah. He said he didn’t have cash but he had gold and other ‘commodities’ he could trade.”

“Did you give him a number?”

“I told him you would need twenty-five just to get started, more later. He didn’t freak out or anything.”

The number of defendants in the system at any given time who could not only afford a $25,000 retainer but were willing to part with it were few and far between. I knew nothing about this case but it was sounding better to me all the time.

“Okay, I’ll check back when I know something.”

“Cheers.”

Some of the air came out of the balloon before I even laid eyes on my new client. I had filed an engagement letter with the jail office and was waiting for the detention deputies to find La Cosse and move him into an interview room, when Cisco called with the preliminary information he had been able to glean from human and digital sources in the hour or so since we had gotten the case.

“Okay, a couple things. The LAPD put out a press release on the murder yesterday but so far nothing on the arrest. Giselle Dallinger, thirty-six years old, was found early Monday morning in her apartment on Franklin west of La Brea. She was found by firefighters who were called because the apartment had been set on fire. The body was burned but it is suspected that the fire was set in an attempt to cover up the murder and make it look accidental. Autopsy is still pending but the release says there were indications she had been strangled. The press release labeled her a businesswoman but the
Times
ran a short on it on their website that quotes law enforcement sources as saying she was a hooker.”

“Great. Who is my guy then, a john?”

“Actually, the
Times
report says the coppers were questioning a business associate. Whether that was La Cosse it doesn’t say but you put two and two together—”

“And you get pimp.”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“Great. Seems like a swell guy.”

“Look at the bright side, Lorna says he’s a paying client.”

“I’ll believe it when the cash is in my pocket.”

I suddenly thought of my daughter, Hayley, and one of the last things she had said to me before she cut off contact. She called the people on my client list the dregs of society, people who are takers and users and even killers. Right now I couldn’t argue with her. My roster included the carjacker who targeted old ladies, an accused date rapist, an embezzler who took money from a student trip fund, and various other societal miscreants. Now I would presumably add an accused murderer to the list—make that an accused murderer in the business of selling sex.

I was beginning to feel that I deserved them as much as they deserved me. We were all hard-luck cases and losers, the kind of people the gods of guilt never smiled upon.

My daughter had known the two people my client Sean Gallagher killed. Katie Patterson was in her class. Her mom was their homeroom mother. Hayley had to switch schools to avoid the scorn directed at her when it was revealed by the media—and I mean
all
the media—that J. Michael Haller Jr., candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney, had sprung Gallagher from his last DUI pop on a technicality.

The bottom line is that Gallagher was out drinking and driving because of my so-called skills as a defense lawyer, and no matter how Legal Siegel tried to soothe my conscience with the old “you-were-just-doing-your-job” refrain, I knew in the dark shadows of my soul that the verdict was guilty. Guilty in the eyes of my daughter, guilty in my own eyes as well.