“That’s kind of cool. Except for the black eye.”
“Yeah. I told her to send me a selfie before she covered it with makeup. I wanted to see how bad it was. Swipe the other way.”
Haller did so and the image of Roberto Sanz’s tattoo came up on the screen. He hesitantly read the words out loud.
“‘Que Viene... el Cuco.’ What’s this?”
“You know what it means?”
“Not really.”
“You’re half Mexican.”
“I grew up in Beverly Hills.”
“It says se habla español on your billboards and bus benches all over town.”
“Hablo español, but it doesn’t mean I’m fluent in tattoo or every colloquial phrase out there. Are you going to tell me what or who El Cuco is?”
“It’s Mexican folklore. El Cuco is the bogeyman — the monster that lives under the bed or hides in the closet. He comes out to grab children who are bad. There’s a whole song about it. The bogeyman’s coming, he’s going to eat you, and so on. I remember the older kids singing it when I was in juvie hall. I guess you probably didn’t hear it in Beverly Hills.”
“With good reason. So adults sing that to their kids?”
“I guess it keeps them in line.”
“No doubt. So he had this tattoo? Sanz?”
“On his hip below the beltline, where most people wouldn’t see it unless they were in the locker room at the substation. Sanz was in a clique. A sheriff’s gang.”
Haller went silent again as he thought about this, his lawyer face firmly back in place. Bosch imagined that he had gone off to a courtroom in his mind and was seeing himself holding up the photo in front of a jury. Roberto Sanz’s obvious affiliation with the Cucos — the Bogeymen — changed things about the case.
Bosch finally interrupted his reverie.
“So, what do you think?”
“It raises a lot of possibilities, that’s what I think. We need to go out to Chino.”
“We?”
“Yeah. Tomorrow. I want to talk to her. I’ll clear the schedule. Today, you get your bony ass over to UCLA.”
“Okay. What about Silver?”
“I’ll deal with him. We’ll need his files.”
Bosch nodded. They were finished. For now. Both men stood up. Haller leaned in close to Bosch.
“You know, this could get...” Haller said.
His voice trailed off.
“I know,” Bosch said.
“We need to be careful,” Haller said. “No footprints till we’re ready.”
Haller bent down to grab his briefcase. Bosch looked up at the top of City Hall.
The vultures were still circling.
Part Two
The Needle
8
The commune consisted of a long row of side-by-side attorney offices on the right and an open space with work pods on the left for support staff. Only I didn’t see any support staff.
Each of the individual offices had a small frame mounted to the right of the door where an attorney could slot in or slide out his or her business card. It was a commune for legal transients, lawyers who came and went on the whims of cases and clients.
I looked at the cards as I walked down the row. All of them featured the standard scales-of-justice symbol with little variation. Some had a tiny photo of a smiling or seriously staring attorney. No embossing. The quality of all the cards suggested that the lawyers were attempting to keep costs down while also trying to project some semblance of success and dignity in the shared office space.
Six offices down, I saw the first card embossed in silver. It belonged to Frank Silver, of course, and the embossed card was either left over from better times or an effort to stand out from the others in the legal row. The office door was open but I reached in and knocked on it anyway. A man at a faux-wood-veneer desk looked up from a laptop screen.
“Frank Silver?”
“That’s me.”
I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. He was fifteen years my junior with a thin build and dark curly hair. I guessed that the walk from here to the courthouse kept him in fighting form.
“You. You’re the Lincoln Lawyer.”
I entered the room and extended my hand. We shook.
“Mickey Haller. Were we on a case previously?”
“Frank Silver. No, I recognize you from the billboards. ‘Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee’ — surprised the bar lets you get away with that one. Have a seat.”
I looked down at the one chair available for a visitor in the cramped office and saw a foot-high stack of files on it.
“Oh, sorry, wait a second,” Silver said. “Let me get that stuff out of the way.”
He came around the desk. I stepped back in the small space so he could get to the chair. He lifted the stack, took it back with him around the desk, and put it down next to his computer.
“Okay, now have a seat. What can I do for you? Need a tune-up?”
Silver laughed.
“What?” I asked as I sat down.
“You know, Lincoln Lawyer,” Silver said. “Need a tune-up.”
He laughed at his joke again. I didn’t. I was distracted by the wall behind him. It was lined with shelves containing lawbooks and penal codes, all beautifully leather bound with embossed titles on the spines. But it was all fake — a fake law library on wallpaper. He noticed my stare and glanced back at it.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Looks real on Zoom.”
I nodded.
“Got it,” I said. “That’s good.”
I pointed to the jumbled stack of files he had just moved to the desk.
“I’m here to help you declutter,” I said.
He cocked his head, unamused and worried that I was serious.
“How so?” he said.
“I need to pick up a file from you. A closed case your former client has asked me to take a look at.”
“Really? What case is that?”
“Lucinda Sanz. You remember her?”
Surprise played across Silver’s face. It wasn’t a name he was expecting.
“Lucinda — of course I remember her. But...”
“Yeah, she pled nolo. But now she wants me to take a look at it. If I could get the files on the case, I’ll get out of your hair and be on my—”
“Whoa, wait a second. What are you talking about? You can’t just come in here and take my case like that.”
“No, what are you talking about? It’s a closed case. She pleaded and has been in Chino for almost five years.”
“But she’s still my client.”
“She was your client. But she reached out to me. She wants me to take a look at her case. If you remember the case, then you remember she never said she did it. And she still doesn’t.”
“Yeah, but I got her that sweet deal. She would be doing life without if it weren’t for the dispo I got her. Manslaughter with a midrange sentence.”
I knew what this was about. Or I thought I did.
“Look, Frank,” I said, “if you’re worried about a five-oh-four, fear not. That’s not what this is about. I’m looking for actual innocence and whether I can prove it. That’s it. This is a habeas case to me or it’s nothing. If it’s a pass, I’ll send the files right back to you.”
One of the more disappointing and frustrating parts of being a criminal defense lawyer is being named in a 504 motion to vacate a conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel — bad lawyering. No matter how well you think you represented your client or how good you think the result was, if your client sits in prison long enough, you’ll be named in a Hail Mary effort to overturn the conviction. And no lawyer wants that. Not only can it damage a professional reputation, but it takes time to review and defend one’s steps in a case.