“I under-”

“I’ve decided, Mr. Haller. You impressed me when you were in here. I would like to engage your services for trial. You will be my one lawyer.”

I had to calm my voice before answering.

“I’m glad to hear that. Call me Mickey.”

“And you can call me Walter. But I insist on one condition before we agree to this arrangement.”

“What is that?”

“No delay. We go to trial on schedule. I want to hear you say it.”

I hesitated. I wanted a delay. But I wanted the case more.

“We won’t delay,” I said. “We’ll be ready to go next Thursday.”

“Then, welcome aboard. What do we do next?”

“Well, I’m still on the lot. I could turn around and come back.”

“I’m afraid I have meetings until seven and then a screening of our film for the awards season.”

I thought that his trial and freedom would have trumped his meetings and movies but I let it go. I would educate Walter Elliot and bring him to reality the next time I saw him.

“Okay, then, for now you give me a fax number and I’ll have my assistant send over a contract. It will have the same fee structure as you had with Jerry Vincent.”

There was silence and I waited. If he was going to try to knock down the fee, this is when he would do it. But instead he repeated a fax number I could hear Mrs. Albrecht giving him. I wrote it down on the outside of one of the files.

“What’s tomorrow look like, Walter?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Yes, if not tonight, then tomorrow. We need to get started. You don’t want a delay; I want to be even more prepared than I am now. We need to talk and go over things. There are a few gaps in the defense case and I think you can help me fill them in. I could come back to the studio or meet you anywhere else in the afternoon.”

I heard muffled voices as he conferred with Mrs. Albrecht.

“I have a four o’clock open,” he finally said. “Here at the bungalow.”

“Okay, I’ll be there. And cancel whatever you have at five. We’re going to need at least a couple hours to start.”

Elliot agreed to the two hours and we were about to end the conversation, when I thought of something else.

“Walter, I want to see the crime scene. Can I get into the house in Malibu tomorrow sometime before we meet?”

Again there was a pause.

“When?”

“You tell me what will work.”

Again he covered the phone and I heard his muffled conversation with Mrs. Albrecht. Then he came back on the line with me.

“How about eleven? I’ll have someone meet you there to let you in.”

“That’ll work. See you tomorrow, Walter.”

I closed the phone and looked at Cisco in the mirror.

“We got him.”

Cisco hit the Lincoln’s horn in celebration. It was a long blast that made the driver in front of us hold up a fist and send us back the finger. Out in the street the striking writers took the blast as a sign of support from inside the hated studio. I heard a loud cheer go up from the masses.

Fifteen

Bosch arrived early the next morning. He was alone. His peace offering was the extra cup of coffee he carried and handed over to me. I don’t drink coffee anymore – trying to avoid any addiction in my life – but I took it from him anyway, thinking that maybe the smell of caffeine would get me going. It was only 7:45 but I had been in Jerry Vincent’s office for more than two hours already.

I led Bosch back into the file room. He looked more tired than I felt and I was pretty sure he was in the same suit he’d been wearing when I saw him the day before.

“Long night?” I asked.

“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.”