I shook my head but he couldn't see it.
"Can't do it, Deano. She's a stripper but she's also second year law at USC. So she can't take the hit on her record and gamble on an appeal. Every law firm runs background checks. She can't go in with a ding on her record. In some states she'd never be allowed to take the bar or practice. In some states she'd even have to register as a sex offender because of this."
"Then what's she doing stripping? She should be clerking somewhere."
"USC's goddamn expensive and she's paying her own way. Works the pole four nights a week. You'd have to see her to believe this, but she makes about ten times more stripping than she would clerking."
I momentarily thought about Linda Sandoval and the perfect triangle moving in rhythm on the stage. I had regretted not taking her up on her offer. I was sure I always would.
"Then she's going to make more stripping than she will practicing law," Seiver said, snapping me back to reality.
"You're stalling, Dean. What are you going to do?"
"You just want the whole thing to go away, huh?"
I nodded.
"It's a bad arrest," I said. "You refuse to file it and everybody wins. My client's record is clean and the integrity of the justice system is intact."
"Don't make me laugh. I could still go ahead with it and tie her up in appeals until she graduates."
"But you're a fair and decent guy and you know it's a bad arrest. That's why I came to you."
"Where's she work and what name does she dance under?"
"One of the Road Saints' places up in the Valley. Her professional name is Harmony."
"Of course it is. Look, Haller, things have changed since the last time you deigned to visit me. I'm restricted in what I can do here."
"Bullshit. You're the supervisor. You can do what you want. You always have."
"Actually, no. It's all about the budget now. Under some formula some genius put together at county, our budget now rises and falls with the number of cases we prosecute. So that edict resulted in an internal edict from on high which takes away my discretion. I cannot kick a case without approval from downtown. Because a nol-pros case doesn't get counted in the budget."
This sort of logic and practice did not surprise me, yet it surprised me to be confronted with it by Seiver. He had never been a company man.
"You're saying you cannot drop this case without approval because it would cost your department money from the county."
"Exactly."
"And what that means is that the interest of justice takes a backseat to budgetary considerations. My client must be illegally charged first, in order to satisfy some bureaucrat in the budget office, before you are then allowed to step in and drop the charge. Meantime, she's got an arrest on her record that may prevent or impede her eventual practice of law."
"No, I didn't say that."
"I'm paraphrasing."
"I still didn't say that last part."
"Sounded like it to me."
"No, I told you what the procedure is now. Technically, I don't have prefiling discretion in a case like this. Yes, I would have to file the case and then drop it. And, yes, we both know that the charge, no matter what the outcome of the case, will stay on her record forever."
I realized he was trying to tell me something.
"But you have an alternate plan," I prompted.
"Of course I do, Haller."
He stood up and moved what was left of his sandwich from the clear spot on his desk.
"Hold this, Haller."
I stood up and he handed me a file with the name Linda Sandoval on the tab. He then stepped up onto his desk chair and used it as a ladder to step up onto the clear spot of his desk.
"What are you doing, Seiver? Looking for a spot to tie the noose? That's not an alternative."
He laughed but didn't answer. He reached up and used both hands to push one of the tiles in the drop ceiling up and over. He reached a hand down to me and I gave him the file. He put it up into the space above the ceiling, then pulled the lightweight tile back into place.
Seiver got down and slapped the dust off his hands.
"There," he said.
"What did you just do?"
"The file is lost. The case won't be filed. Time will run out and then it will be too late for it to be filed. You come back in after the sixty days are up and get the arrest expunged. Harmony's record is clean by the time she takes the bar exam. If something comes up or the deputy asks questions, I say I never saw the file. Lost in transit from Malibu."
I nodded. It would work. The rules had changed but not Dean Seiver. I had to laugh.
"So that's what passes for discretion now."
"I call it Seiver's pretrial intervention."
"How many files you have up there, man?"
"A lot. In fact, tell Harmony to put some clothes on, get down on her knees, and pray to the stripper gods that the ceiling doesn't fall before her sixty days are run. 'Cause when the sky falls in here, then Chicken Little will have some 'splaining to do. I'll probably need a job when that happens."
We both looked up at the ceiling with a sense of apprehension. I wondered how many files the ceiling could hold before Seiver's pretrial intervention program came crashing down.
"Let's finish our sandwiches and not worry about it," Seiver finally said.
"Okay."
We resumed our positions on either side of the wall of files.
It was early evening and still bright outside. When I walked into the Snake Pit North I had to pause for my eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, I saw my client Harmony was on the main stage, her perfect triangle glittering in the spotlights. She moved with a natural rhythm that was as entrancing as her naked body. No tattoos as distraction. Just her, pure and beautiful.
That's why I had come. I could have delivered the good news by phone and been done with it. Said, See you around the courthouse in a year. But I had to see her one more time. Her body had left a memory imprint on me in the privacy booth. And I had started dreaming about being with her now that the case was closed and it could be argued — before the Bar if necessary — that she was no longer a client. Bar or no Bar, I wanted her. There was something intoxicating about having the smartest girl in the room moving up and down on you.
The song was an old one, "Sweet Child o' Mine," and had just started. I stood in the crowd and just watched and after a while she saw me and gave me the nod without breaking her rhythm. It might be a young girl's game but I thought she could give lessons for the next twenty years if need be. She moved with a rhythm that seemed to push the music, not the other way around.
I looked around and found an open bar table along the back wall. I sat down and watched Harmony dance until the song ended. While another dancer took the next song, she stood by the stairs at the back of the stage and put her orange G-string and zebra-striped camisole back on. The garter around her thigh was flowered with money — ones, fives, tens, and twenties. She walked down the steps, stopped at a few tables to kiss heavy donors on the cheek, and then came to me.
"Hello, Counselor. Do you have news for me?"
She took the other stool at the table.
"I sure do," I said. "The news is that your research was superb and your strategy excellent. The prosecutor bought it. He bought the whole thing."
She held still for a moment, as if basking in some unseen glow.
"What exactly is the disposition of the case?"
"It goes away. Completely."
"What about the record of my arrest?"
"I go back in a couple months from now and expunge it. There will be no record."
"Wow. I'm good."
"You sure are. And don't forget I had a little part to play in it, too."
"Thanks, Mickey. You just made my night."
"Yeah, well, I was hoping you could make mine."