The woman said, 'You stop that! You stop that before I call the police!'
The sound tech said, 'You have to buzz it open.'
I said, 'Where?'
The sound tech hurried to the woman's desk and pressed the buzzer. The sound tech was grinning.
I kicked open the door and stormed in and found Jonathan Green on the phone. The two lesser attorneys were with him, along with a younger man with a notepad. Somebody's secretary. The smaller of the lesser attorneys fell over a chair trying to get out of my way. Green said, 'I'm calling the police!'
I pulled the phone out of his hands and tossed it aside. I said, 'Here's the bad news, Jonathan: You've become my hobby. I know what Truly knew, and I am telling it to anyone who will listen.'
Green maneuvered to keep his desk between us. His face had grown white. 'The police are on their way! I'm warning you!'
I threw a copy of the retainer agreement at him. 'I'm also passing out copies of this. The Examiner is going to print it in this evening's edition.'
Green looked at it without touching it and shook his head. 'This means nothing. For all anyone knows you wrote it yourself. It isn't admissible.'
'Not in a court of law, Jonathan. But we're going to try you in the court of public opinion.' I shoved his desk, and Jonathan jumped backward. 'I will hound you, and I will not stop. I will tell everyone that it was you who falsified the evidence, and you who ordered James Lester killed, and you who attempted to take the life of Louise Earle.' I started around the end of the desk, and Jonathan scrambled in the opposite direction.
'You can't do that! I'll get a restraining order!'
'What's that to a tough guy like me?'
'No one will believe you!'
'Sure they will, Jonathan. I am the World's Greatest Detective, remember? Above reproach. Trustworthy.'
Jonathan glared at the lesser attorneys and yelled, 'Don't just stand there! Do something!'
The larger lesser attorney ran out the door.
'I will keep this alive until the DA can finally build a case or until you are driven out of business. I will haunt you like a bad dream. I will come to your house and follow you into restaurants and send videotapes of my interviews to your clients.'
He drew himself up into a vision of outrage. 'We have laws against that, you idiot! That's libel! That's slander! You won't get away with it!'
I looked at the videographer. 'Are you getting this?'
The videographer was all smiles. 'Hell, yes! What an ending!'
I jumped across the desk and punched Jonathan Green hard in the mouth one time. He floundered backwards and went over his chair and landed on his ass. The smaller lesser attorney shouted, 'Oh, my God,' and then he ran, too.
Jonathan Green said, 'You hit me! You actually laid hands on me!' He felt his mouth, then looked at his red fingers and started crying. 'You broke my teeth!'
I walked over to Jonathan Green, looked down at him, and said, 'So sue me.'
And then I walked out.
Robert Crais
Robert Crais is the author of the best-selling Elvis Cole novels. A native of Louisiana, he grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in a blue collar family of oil refinery workers and police officers. He purchased a secondhand paperback of Raymond Chandler’s The Little Sister when he was fifteen, which inspired his lifelong love of writing, Los Angeles, and the literature of crime fiction. Other literary influences include Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Robert B. Parker, and John Steinbeck.
After years of amateur film-making and writing short fiction, he journeyed to Hollywood in 1976 where he quickly found work writing scripts for such major television series as Hill Street Blues, Cagney & Lacey, and Miami Vice, as well as numerous series pilots and Movies-of-the-Week for the major networks. He received an Emmy nomination for his work on Hill Street Blues, but is most proud of his 4-hour NBC miniseries, Cross of Fire, which the New York Times declared: "A searing and powerful documentation of the Ku Klux Klan’s rise to national prominence in the 20s."
In the mid-eighties, feeling constrained by the collaborative working requirements of Hollywood, Crais resigned from a lucrative position as a contract writer and television producer in order to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a novelist. His first efforts proved unsuccessful, but upon the death of his father in 1985, Crais was inspired to create Elvis Cole, using elements of his own life as the basis of the story. The resulting novel, The Monkey’s Raincoat, won the Anthony and Macavity Awards and was nominated for the Edgar Award. It has since been selected as one of the 100 Favorite Mysteries of the Century by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.
Crais conceived of the novel as a stand-alone, but realized that-in Elvis Cole-he had created an ideal and powerful character through which to comment upon his life and times. (See the WORKS section for additional titles.) Elvis Cole’s readership and fan base grew with each new book, then skyrocketed in 1999 upon the publication of L. A. Requiem, which was a New York Times and Los Angeles Times bestseller and forever changed the way Crais conceived of and structured his novels. In this new way of telling his stories, Crais combined the classic ‘first person’ narrative of the American detective novel with flashbacks, multiple story lines, multiple points-of-view, and literary elements to better illuminate his themes. Larger and deeper in scope, Publishers Weekly wrote of L. A. Requiem, "Crais has stretched himself the way another Southern California writer-Ross Macdonald-always tried to do, to write a mystery novel with a solid literary base." Booklist added, "This is an extraordinary crime novel that should not be pigeonholed by genre. The best books always land outside preset boundaries. A wonderful experience."
Crais followed with his first non-series novel, Demolition Angel, which was published in 2000 and featured former Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Technician Carol Starkey. Starkey has since become a leading character in the Elvis Cole series. In 2001, Crais published his second non-series novel, Hostage, which was named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a world-wide bestseller. Additionally, the editors of Amazon.com selected Hostage as the #1 thriller of the year. A film adaptation of Hostage was released in 2005, starring Bruce Willis as ex-LAPD SWAT negotiator Jeff Talley. Elvis Cole returned in 2003 with the publication of The Last Detective, followed by the tenth Elvis Cole novel, The Forgotten Man, in 2005. Both novels explore with increasing depth the natures and characters of Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. RC’s third stand-alone novel, The Two Minute Rule, was published in 2006, and was followed in 2007 by The Watchman, the first novel in the Elvis Cole/Joe Pike series to feature Joe Pike in the title role.
The novels of Robert Crais have been published in 42 countries and are bestsellers around the world. Robert Crais is the 2006 recipient of the Ross Macdonald Literary Award.
Currently, Robert Crais lives in the Santa Monica mountains with his wife, three cats, and many thousands of books.
