“Exactly. When you get a summons and show up at the juror check-in window, all they do is check your DL against the list. These are minimum-wage court clerks, Mick. It would not be difficult to get a dummy DL by one of them, and we both know how easy it is to get a dummy.”

I nodded. Most people want to get out of jury duty. This was a scheme to get into it. Civic duty taken to extreme.

Cisco said, “If you can somehow get me the name the court has for number seven, I would check it, and I’m betting I find out there is a guy at Lockheed with that name.”

I shook my head.

“There’s no way I can get it without leaving a trail.”

Cisco shrugged.

“So what’s going on with this, Mick? Don’t tell me that fucking prosecutor put a sleeper on the jury.”

I thought a moment about telling him but decided against it.

“At the moment it’s better if I don’t tell you.”

“Down periscope.”

It meant that we were taking the submarine – compartmentalizing so if one of us sprang a leak it wouldn’t sink the whole sub.

“It’s best this way. Did you see this guy with anybody? Any KAs of interest?”

“I followed him over to the Grove tonight and he met somebody for a coffee in Marmalade, one of the restaurants they’ve got over there. It was a woman. It looked like a casual thing, like they sort of ran into each other unplanned and sat down together to catch up. Other than that, I’ve got no known associates so far. I’ve really only been with the guy since five, when the judge cut the jury loose.”

I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I’d anticipated.

“How close did you get to him and the woman?”

“Not close. You told me to take all precautions.”

“So you can’t describe her?”

“I just said I didn’t get close, Mick. I can describe her. I even got a picture of her on my camera.”

He had to stand up to get his big hand into one of the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a small, black, non-attention-getting camera and sat back down. He turned it on and looked at the screen on the back. He clicked some buttons on the top and then handed it across the table to me.

“They start there and you can scroll through till you get to the woman.”

I manipulated the camera and scrolled through a series of digital photos showing juror number seven at various times during the evening. The last three shots were of him sitting with a woman in Marmalade. She had jet-black hair that hung loose and shadowed her face. The photos also weren’t very crisp because they had been taken from long distance and without a flash.

I didn’t recognize the woman. I handed the camera back to Cisco.

“Okay, Cisco, you did good. You can drop it now.”

“Just drop it?”

“Yeah, and go back to this.”

I slid the file across the table to him. He nodded and smiled slyly as he took it.

“So what did you tell the judge up there at the sidebar?”

I had forgotten he had been in the courtroom, waiting to start his tail of juror seven.

“I told him I realized that you had done the original background search on the English-language default so I redid it to include French and German. I even printed the story out again Sunday so I would have a fresh date on it.”

“Nice. But I look like a fuckup.”

“I had to come up with something. If I’d told him you came across it a week ago and I’d been sitting on it since, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d probably be in lockup for contempt. Besides, the judge thinks Golantz is the fuckup for not finding it before the defense.”

That seemed to placate Cisco. He held up the file.

“So then, what do you want me to do with it?” he asked.

“Where’s the translator you used on the printout?”

“Probably in her dorm over in Westwood. She’s an exchange student I came up with on the Net.”

“Well, call her up and pick her up because you’re going to need her tonight.”

“I have a feeling Lorna isn’t going to like this. Me and a twenty-year-old French girl.”

“Lorna doesn’t speak French, so she will understand. They’re what, nine hours ahead over there in Paris?”

“Yeah, nine or ten. I forget.”

“Okay, then I want you to get with the translator and at midnight start working the phones. Call all the gendarmes, or whatever they call themselves, who worked that drug case and get one of them on a plane over here. At least three of them are named in that article. You can start there.”

“Just like that? You think one of those guys is going to just jump on a plane for us?”

“They’ll probably be stabbing one another in the back, trying to get the ticket. Tell them we’ll fly first class and put whoever comes out in the hotel where Mickey Rourke stays.”

“Yeah, what hotel’s that?”

“I don’t know but I hear he’s big over there. They think he’s like a genius or something. Anyway, look, what I’m saying is, just tell them whatever they want to hear. Spend whatever needs to be spent. If two want to come, then bring over two and we vet them and put the best one on the stand. Just get somebody over here. It’s Los Angeles, Cisco. Every cop in the world wants to see this place and then go back home and tell everybody what and who he saw.”

“Okay, I’ll get somebody on a plane. But what if he can’t leave right away?”

“Then get him going as soon as possible and let me know. I can stretch things in court. The judge wants to hurry everything along but I can slow it down if I need to. Probably next Tuesday or Wednesday is as far as I can go. Get somebody here by then.”

“You want me to call you tonight when I have it set up?”

“No, I need my beauty rest. I’m not used to being on my toes in court all day and I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed. Just call me in the morning.”

“Okay, Mick.”

He stood up and so did I. He slapped me on the shoulder with the file and then tucked it into the waistband at the back of his jeans. He descended the steps and I walked to the edge of the deck to look down on him as he mounted his horse by the curb, dropped it into neutral and silently started to glide down Fareholm toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.

I then looked up and out at the city and thought about the moves I was making, my personal situation and my professional deceit in front of the judge in court. I didn’t ponder it all too long and I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I was defending a man I believed was innocent of the murders he was charged with but complicit in the reason they had occurred. I had a sleeper on the jury whose placement was directly related to the murder of my predecessor. And I had a detective watching over me whom I was holding back on and couldn’t be sure was considering my safety ahead of his own desire to break open the case.

I had all of that and I didn’t feel guilty or fearful about anything. I felt like a guy flipping a three-hundred-pound sled in midair. It might not be a sport but it was dangerous as hell and it did what I hadn’t been able to do in more than a year’s time. It shook off the rust and put the charge back in my blood.

It gave it a fierce momentum.

I heard the sound of the pipes on Cisco’s panhead finally fire up. He had made it all the way down to Laurel Canyon before kicking over the engine. The throttle roared deeply as he headed into the night.