“I don’t think you’ll like this one. It starts two years ago with -”

I stopped and waited while the waitress put down our salads and the cheese bread. I asked for another vodka martini even though I was only halfway through the one I had. I wanted to make sure there was no gap.

“So,” I said after she was gone. “This whole thing starts two years ago with Jesus Menendez. You remember him, right?”

“Yeah, we mentioned him the other day. The DNA. He’s the client you always say is in prison because he wiped his prick on a fluffy pink towel.”

He smiled because it was true that I had often reduced Menendez’s case to such an absurdly vulgar basis. I had often used it to get a laugh when trading war stories at Four Green Fields with other lawyers. That was before I knew what I now knew.

I did not return the smile.

“Yeah, well, it turns out Jesus didn’t do it.”

“What do you mean? Somebody else wiped his prick on the towel?”

This time Levin laughed out loud.

“No, you don’t get it. I’m telling you Jesus Menendez was innocent.”

Levin’s face grew serious. He nodded, putting something together.

“He’s in San Quentin. You were up at the Q today.”

I nodded.

“Let me back up and tell the story,” I said. “You didn’t do much work for me on Menendez because there was nothing to be done. They had the DNA, his own incriminating statement and three witnesses who saw him throw a knife into the river. They never found the knife but they had the witnesses-his own roommates. It was a hopeless case. Truth is, I took it on the come line for publicity value. So basically all I did was walk him to a plea. He didn’t like it, said he didn’t do it, but there was no choice. The DA was going for the death penalty. He’d have gotten that or life without. I got him life with and I made the little fucker take it. I made him.”

I looked down at my untouched salad. I realized I didn’t feel like eating. I just felt like drinking and pickling the cork in my brain that contained all the guilt cells.

Levin waited me out. He wasn’t eating, either.

“In case you don’t remember, the case was about the murder of a woman named Martha Renteria. She was a dancer at The Cobra Room on East Sunset. You didn’t end up going there on this, did you?”

Levin shook his head.

“They don’t have a stage,” I said. “They have like a pit in the center and for each number, these guys dressed like Aladdin come out carrying this big cobra basket between two bamboo poles. They put it down and the music starts. Then the top comes off the basket and the girl comes up dancing. Then her top comes off, too. Kind of a new take on the dancer coming out of the cake.”

“It’s Hollywood, baby,” Levin said. “You gotta have a show.”

“Well, Jesus Menendez liked the show. He had eleven hundred dollars his brother the drug dealer gave him and he took a fancy to Martha Renteria. Maybe because she was the only dancer who was shorter than him. Maybe because she spoke Spanish to him. After her set they sat and talked and then she circulated a little bit and came back and pretty soon he knew he was in competition with another guy in the club. He trumped the other guy by offering her five hundred if she’d take him home.”

“But he didn’t kill her when he got there?”

“Uh-uh. He followed her car in his. Got there, had sex, flushed the condom, wiped his prick on the towel and then he went home. The story starts after he left.”

“The real killer.”

“The real killer knocks on the door, maybe fakes like it’s Jesus and that he’s forgotten something. She opens the door. Or maybe it was an appointment. She was expecting the knock and she opens the door.”

“The guy from the club? The one Menendez was bidding against?”

I nodded.

“Exactly. He comes in, punches her a few times to soften her up and then takes out his folding knife and holds it against her neck while he walks her to the bedroom. Sound familiar? Only she isn’t lucky like Reggie Campo would be in a couple years. He puts her on the bed, puts on a condom and climbs on top. Now the knife is on the other side of her neck and he keeps it there while he rapes her. And when he’s done, he kills her. He stabs her with that knife again and again. It’s a case of overkill if there ever was one. He’s working out something in his sick fucking mind while he’s doing it.”

My second martini came and I took it right from the waitress’s hand and gulped half of it down. She asked if we were finished with our salads and we both waved them away untouched.

“Your steaks will be right out,” she said. “Or do you want me to just dump them in the garbage and save you the time?”

I looked up at her. She was smiling but I was so caught up in the story I was telling that I had missed what it was she had said.

“Never mind,” she said. “They’ll be right out.”

I got right back to the story. Levin said nothing.

“After she’s dead the killer cleans up. He takes his time, because what’s the hurry, she’s not going anywhere or calling anybody. He wipes the place down to take care of any fingerprints he might have left. And in the process he wipes away Menendez’s prints. This will look bad for Menendez when he later goes to the police to explain that he is the guy in the sketches but he didn’t kill Martha. They’ll look at him and say, ‘Then why’d you wear gloves when you were there?’”

Levin shook his head.

“Oh man, if this is true…”

“Don’t worry, it’s true. Menendez gets a lawyer who once did a good job for his brother but this lawyer wouldn’t know an innocent man if he kicked him in the nuts. This lawyer is all about the deal. He never even asks the kid if he did it. He just assumes he did it because they got his fucking DNA on the towel and the witnesses who saw him toss the knife. The lawyer goes to work and gets the best possible deal he could get. He actually feels pretty good about it because he’s going to keep Menendez off death row and get him a shot at parole someday. So he goes to Menendez and brings down the hammer. He makes him take the deal and stand up there in court and say ‘Guilty.’ Jesus then goes off to prison and everybody’s happy. The state’s happy because it saves money on a trial and Martha Renteria’s family is happy because they don’t have to face a trial with all those autopsy photos and stories about their daughter dancing naked and taking men home for money. And the lawyer’s happy because he got on TV with the case at least six times, plus he kept another client off death row.”

I gulped down the rest of the martini and looked around for our waitress. I wanted another.

“Jesus Menendez goes off to prison a young man. I just saw him and he’s twenty-six going on forty. He’s a small guy. You know what happens to the little ones up there.”

I was looking straight down at the empty space on the table in front of me when an egg-shaped platter with a sizzling steak and steaming potato was put down. I looked up at the waitress and told her to bring me another martini. I didn’t say please.

“You better take it easy,” Levin said after she was gone. “There probably isn’t a cop in this county who wouldn’t love to pull you over on a deuce, take you back to lockup and put the flashlight up your ass.”

“I know, I know. It will be my last. And if it’s too much I won’t drive. They always have a cab out front of this place.”

Deciding that food might help I cut into my steak and ate a piece. I then took a piece of cheese bread out of the napkin it was folded into a basket with, but it was no longer warm. I dropped it on my plate and put my fork down.

“Look, I know you’re beating yourself up over this but you are forgetting something,” Levin said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“His exposure. He was facing the needle, man, and the case was a dog. I didn’t work it for you because there was nothing to work. They had him and you saved him from the needle. That’s your job and you did it well. So now you think you know what really went down. You can’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know then.”