Twenty-five

I got to Joanne Giorgetti’s office shortly before the noon break. I knew that getting there a minute after twelve would be too late. The DA’s Offices literally empty during the lunch hour, the inhabitants seeking sunlight, fresh air and sustenance outside the CCB. I told the receptionist I had an appointment with Giorgetti and she made a call. Then she buzzed the door lock and told me to go back.

Giorgetti had a small, windowless office with most of the floor space taken up by cardboard file boxes. It was the same way in every prosecutor’s office I had ever been in, big or small. She was at her desk but was hidden behind a wall of stacked motions and files. I carefully reached over the wall to shake her hand.

“How’s it going, Joanne?”

“Not bad, Mickey. How about you?”

“I’m doing okay.”

“You just got a lot of cases, I hear.”

“Yeah, quite a few.”

The conversation was stilted. I knew she and Maggie were tight, and there was no telling whether my ex-wife had opened up to her about my difficulties in the past year.

“So you’re here for Wyms?”

“That’s right. I didn’t even know I had the case till this morning.”

She handed me a file with an inch-thick stack of documents in it.

“What do you think happened to Jerry’s file?” she asked.

“I think maybe the killer took it.”

She made a cringing face.

“Weird. Why would the killer take this file?”

“Probably unintended. The file was in Jerry’s briefcase along with his laptop, and the killer just took the whole thing.”

“Hmmm.”

“Well, is there anything unusual about this case? Anything that would have made Jerry a target?”

“I don’t think so. Just your usual everyday crazy-with-a-gun sort of thing.”

I nodded.

“Have you heard anything about a federal grand jury taking a look at the state courts?”

She knitted her eyebrows.

“Why would they be looking at this case?”

“I’m not saying they were. I’ve been out of the loop for a while. I was wondering what you’ve heard.”

She shrugged.

“Just the usual rumors on the gossip circuit. Seems like there’s always a federal investigation of something.”

“Yeah.”

I said nothing else, hoping she would fill me in on the rumor. But she didn’t and it was time to move on.

“The hearing today is to set a trial date?” I asked.

“Yes, but I assume you’ll want a continuance so you can get up to speed.”

“Well, let me go look at the file during lunch and I’ll let you know if that’s what the plan is.”

“Okay, Mickey. But just so you know. I won’t oppose a continuance, considering what happened with Jerry.”

“Thanks, CoJo.”

She smiled as I used the name her young basketball players called her by at the Y.

“You seen Maggie lately?” she asked.

“Saw her last night when I went to pick up Hayley. She seems to be doing okay. Have you seen her?”

“Just at basketball practice. But she usually sits there with her nose in a file. We used to go out after with the girls to Hamburger Hamlet but Maggie’s been too busy.”

I nodded. She and Maggie had been foxhole buddies since day one, coming up through the ranks of the prosecutor’s office. Competitors but not competitive with each other. But time goes by and distances work their way into any relationship.

“Well, I’ll take this and look it all over,” I said. “The hearing’s with Friedman at two, right?”

“Yeah, two. I’ll see you then.”

“Thanks for doing this, Joanne.”

“No problem.”

I left the DA’s Office and waited ten minutes to get on an elevator with the lunch crowd. The last one on, I rode down with my face two inches from the door. I hated the elevators more than anything else in the entire Criminal Courts Building.

“Hey, Haller.”

It was a voice from behind me. I didn’t recognize it but it was too crowded for me to turn around to see who it was.

“What?”

“Heard you scored all of Vincent’s cases.”

I wasn’t going to discuss my business in a crowded elevator. I didn’t respond. We finally hit bottom, and the doors spread open. I stepped out and looked back for the person who had spoken.

It was Dan Daly, another defense attorney who was part of a coterie of lawyers who took in Dodgers games occasionally and martinis routinely at Four Green Fields. I had missed the last season of booze and baseball.

“How ya doin’, Dan?”

We shook hands, an indication of how long it had been since we’d seen each other.

“So, who’d you grease?”

He said it with a smile but I could tell there was something behind it. Maybe a dose of jealousy over my scoring the Elliot case. Every lawyer in town knew it was a franchise case. It could pay top dollar for years – first the trial and then the appeals that would come after a conviction.

“Nobody,” I said. “Jerry put me in his will.”

We started walking toward the exit doors. Daly’s ponytail was longer and grayer. But what was most notable was that it was intricately braided. I hadn’t seen that before.

“Then, lucky you,” Daly said. “Let me know if you need a second chair on Elliot.”

“He wants only one lawyer at the table, Dan. He said no dream team.”

“Well, then keep me in mind as a writer in regard to the rest.”

This meant he was available to write appeals on any convictions my new set of clients might incur. Daly had forged a solid reputation as an expert appeals man with a good batting average.

“I’ll do that,” I said. “I’m still reviewing everything.”

“Good enough.”

We came through the doors and I could see the Lincoln at the curb, waiting. Daly was going the other way. I told him I’d keep in touch.

“We miss you at the bar, Mick,” he said over his shoulder.

“I’ll drop by,” I called back.

But I knew I wouldn’t drop by, that I had to stay away from places like that.

I got in the back of the Lincoln – I tell my drivers never to get out and open the door for me – and told Patrick to take me over to Chinese Friends on Broadway. I told him to drop me and go get lunch on his own. I needed to sit and read and didn’t want any conversation.

I got to the restaurant between the first and second waves of patrons and waited no more than five minutes for a table. Wanting to get to work immediately, I ordered a plate of the fried pork chops right away. I knew they would be perfect. They were paper-thin and delicious and I’d be able to eat them with my fingers without taking my eyes off the Wyms documents.

I opened the file Joanne Giorgetti had given me. It contained copies only of what the prosecutor had turned over to Jerry Vincent under the rules of discovery – primarily sheriff’s documents relating to the incident, arrest and follow-up investigation. Any notes, strategies or defense documents that Vincent had generated were lost with the original file.

The natural starting point was the arrest report, which included the initial and most basic summary of what had transpired. As is often the case, it started with 911 calls to the county communications-and-dispatch center. Multiple reports of gunfire came in from a neighborhood next to a park in Calabasas. The calls fell under Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction because Calabasas was in an unincorporated area north of Malibu and near the western limits of the county.

The first deputy to respond was listed on the report as Todd Stallworth. He worked the night shift out of the Malibu substation and had been dispatched at 10:21 p.m. to the neighborhood off Las Virgenes Road. From there he was directed into the nearby Malibu Creek State Park, where the shots were being fired. Now hearing shots himself, Stallworth called for backup and drove into the park to investigate.

There were no lights in the rugged mountain park, as it was posted CLOSED AT SUNSET. As Stallworth entered on the main road, the headlights of his patrol car picked up a reflection, and the deputy saw a vehicle parked in a clearing ahead. He put on his spotlight and illuminated a pickup truck with its tailgate down. There was a pyramid of beer cans on the tailgate and what looked like a gun bag with several rifle barrels protruding from it.