I nodded. She was right. Sending a client to the psych ward at Camarillo wasn’t doing him any favors. The mystery case was getting more mysterious. Only, my client was in no condition to tell me why. His lawyer – Vincent – had kept him drugged up and locked away for three months.

“Okay, Joanne. Thanks. Let’s-”

I was interrupted by the clerk, who called court into session, and I looked up to see Judge Friedman taking the bench.

Twenty-seven

Angel Romero was one of those human interest stories you read in the paper every now and then. The story about the gangbanger who grew up hard on the streets of East L.A. but fought his way through to an education and even law school, then turned around and gave back to the community. Angel’s way to give back was to go into the Public Defenders Office and represent the underdogs of society. He was a lifer in the PD and had seen many young lawyers – myself included – come and go on their way to private practice and the supposed big bucks that came with it.

After the Wyms hearing – in which the judge granted the motion to continue in order to give Giorgetti and me time to work out a plea – I went down to the PD’s office on the tenth floor and asked for Romero. I knew he was a working lawyer, not a supervisor, and that most likely meant he was in a courtroom somewhere in the building. The receptionist typed something into her computer and looked at the screen.

“Department one-twenty-four,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

Department 124 was Judge Champagne’s courtroom on the thirteenth floor, the same floor I had just come from. But that was life in the CCB. It seemed to run in circles. I took the elevator back up and walked down the hall to 124, powering my phone down as I approached the double doors. Court was in session and Romero was in front of the judge, arguing a motion to reduce bail. I slid into the back row of the gallery and hoped for a quick ruling so I could get to Romero without a long wait.

My ears perked up when I heard Romero mention his client by name, calling him Mr. Scales. I slid further down the bench so I had a better visual angle on the defendant sitting next to Romero. He was a white guy in an orange jail jumpsuit. When I saw his profile, I knew it was Sam Scales, a con man and former client. The last I remembered of Scales, he had gone off to prison on a plea deal I’d obtained for him. That was three years ago. He obviously had gotten out and gotten right back into trouble – only this time he hadn’t called me.

After Romero finished his bail argument, the prosecutor stood up and vigorously opposed bail, outlining in his argument the new charges against Scales. When I had represented him, he had been accused in a credit-card fraud in which he ripped off people donating to a tsunami relief organization. This time it was worse. He was once more charged with fraud but in this case the victims were the widows of military servicemen killed in Iraq. I shook my head and almost smiled. I was glad Sam hadn’t called me. The public defender could have him.

Judge Champagne ruled quickly after the prosecutor finished. She called Scales a predator and a menace to society and kept his bail at a million dollars. She noted that if she’d been asked, she probably would have raised it. It was then that I remembered it had been Judge Champagne who had sentenced Scales in the earlier fraud. There was nothing worse for a defendant than coming back and facing the same judge for another crime. It was almost as if the judges took the failings of the justice system personally.

I slouched in my seat and used another observer in the gallery as a blind so that Scales couldn’t see me when the court deputy stood him up, cuffed him and took him back into lockup. After he was gone, I straightened back up and was able to catch Romero’s eye. I signaled him out into the hallway and he flashed five fingers at me. Five minutes. He still had some business to take care of in the court.

I went out into the hallway to wait for him and turned my phone back on. No messages. I was calling Lorna to check in when I heard Romero’s voice behind me. He was four minutes early.

“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a killer by the toe. If his lawyer’s Haller, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Hey bro.”

He was smiling. I closed the phone and we bumped fists. I hadn’t heard that homespun jingle since I was with the PD’s Office. Romero had made it up after I had gotten the not-guilty verdict in the Barnett Woodson case back in ’ninety-two.

“What’s up?” Romero asked.

“I’ll tell you what’s up. You’re guzzling my clients, man. Sam Scales used to be mine.”

I said it with a knowing smile and Romero smiled right back.

“You want him? You can have him. That’s one dirty white boy. As soon as the media gets wind of this case, they’re going to lynch his ass for what he’s done.”

“Taking war widows’ money, huh?”

“Stealing government death benefits. I tell you, I’ve repped a lot of bad guys who did a lot of bad things, but I put Scales up there with the baby rapers, man. I can’t stand the guy.”

“Yeah, what are you doing with a white boy anyway? You work gang crimes.”

Romero’s face turned serious and he shook his head.

“Not anymore, man. They thought I was getting too close to the customers. You know, once a vato always a vato. So they took me off gangs. After nineteen years, I’m off gangs.”

“Sorry to hear that, buddy.”

Romero had grown up in Boyle Heights in a neighborhood ruled by a gang called Quatro Flats. He had the tattoos to prove it, if you could ever see his arms. It didn’t matter how hot a day it was, he always wore long sleeves when he was working. And when he represented a banger accused of a crime, he did more than defend him in court. He worked to spring the man from the clutches of gang life. To pull him away from gang cases was an act of stupidity that could only happen in a bureaucracy like the justice system.

“What do you want with me, Mick? You didn’t really come here to take Scales from me, right?”

“No, you get to keep Scales, Angel. I wanted to ask you about another client you had for a while earlier this year. Eli Wyms.”

I was about to give the details of the case as a prompt but Romero immediately recognized the case and nodded.

“Yeah, Vincent took that one off me. You got it now with him being dead?”

“Yeah, I got all of Vincent’s cases. I just found out about Wyms today.”

“Well, good luck with them, bro. What do you need to know about Wyms? Vincent took it off me three months ago, at least.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, I know. I got a handle on the case. What I’m curious about is Vincent taking it. According to Joanne Giorgetti, he went after it. Is that right?”

Romero checked the memory banks for a few moments before answering. He raised a hand and rubbed his chin as he did so. I could see faint scars across his knuckles from where he’d had tattoos removed.

“Yeah, he went down to the jail and talked Wyms into it. Got a signed discharge letter and brought it in. After that, the case was his. I gave him my file and I was done, man.”

I moved in closer to him.

“Did he say why he wanted the case? I mean, he didn’t know Wyms, did he?”

“I don’t think so. He just wanted the case. He gave me the big wink, you know?”

“No, what do you mean? What’s the ‘big wink’?”

“I asked him why he was taking on a Southside homeboy who went up there in white-people country and shot the place up. Pro bono, no less. I thought he had some sort of racial angle on it or something. Something that would get him a little publicity. But he just sort of gave me the wink, like there was something else.”

“Did you ask him what?”

Romero took an involuntary step back as I pressed his personal space.