“Then, let’s go. I’m starved.”
I followed her out but not before glancing back at the big beautiful fish hanging on the wall. I thought I knew exactly how he felt.
Twenty-three
I had Patrick drive us over to the Pacific Dining Car, and Cisco and I ordered steak and eggs while Lorna had tea and honey. The Dining Car was a place where downtown power brokers liked to gather before a day of fighting it out in the glass towers nearby. The food was overpriced but good. It instilled confidence, made the downtown warrior feel like a heavy hitter.
As soon as the waiter took our order and left us, Lorna put her silverware to the side and opened a spiral-bound At-A-Glance calendar on the table.
“Eat fast,” she said. “You have a busy day.”
“Tell me.”
“All right, the easy stuff first.”
She flipped a couple of pages back and forth in the calendar, then proceeded.
“You have a ten a.m. in chambers with Judge Holder. She wants an updated client inventory.”
“She told me I had a week,” I protested. “Today’s Thursday.”
“Yeah, well, Michaela called and said the judge wants an interim update. I think she – the judge, that is – saw in the paper that you are continuing on as Elliot’s lawyer. She’s afraid you’re spending all your time on Elliot and none on the other clients.”
“That’s not true. I filed a motion for Patrick yesterday and Tuesday I took the sentencing on Reese. I mean, I haven’t even met all the clients yet.”
“Don’t worry, I have a hard-copy inventory back at the office for you to take with you. It shows who you’ve met, who you signed up and calendars on all of them. Just hit her with the paperwork and she won’t be able to complain.”
I smiled. Lorna was the best case manager in the business.
“Great. What else?”
“Then at eleven you have an in-chambers with Judge Stanton on Elliot.”
“Status conference?”
“Yes. He wants to know if you are going to be able to go next Thursday.”
“No, but Elliot won’t have it any other way.”
“Well, the judge will get to hear Elliot say that for himself. He’s requiring the defendant’s presence.”
That was unusual. Most status conferences were routine and quick. The fact that Stanton wanted Elliot there bumped this one up into a more important realm.
I thought of something and pulled out my cell phone.
“Did you let Elliot know? He might-”
“Put it away. He knows and he’ll be there. I talked to his assistant – Mrs. Albrecht – this morning and she knows he has to show and that the judge can revoke if he doesn’t.”
I nodded. It was a smart move. Threaten Elliot’s freedom as a means of making sure he shows up.
“Good,” I said. “That it?”
I wanted to get to Cisco to ask what else he had been able to find out about the Vincent investigation and whether his sources had mentioned anything about the man in the surveillance photo Bosch had shown me.
“Not by a long shot, my friend,” Lorna responded. “Now we get to the mystery case.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“We got a call yesterday afternoon from Judge Friedman’s clerk, who called Vincent’s office blind to see if there was anyone there taking over the cases. When the clerk was informed that you were taking over, she asked if you were aware of the hearing scheduled before Friedman today at two. I checked our new calendar and you didn’t have a two o’clock on there for today. So there is the mystery. You have a hearing at two for a case we not only don’t have on calendar but don’t have a file for either.”
“What’s the client’s name?”
“Eli Wyms.”
It meant nothing to me.
“Did Wren know the name?”
Lorna shook her head in a dismissive way.
“Did you check the dead cases? Maybe it was just misfiled.”
“No, we checked. There is no file anywhere in the office.”
“And what’s the hearing? Did you ask the clerk?”
Lorna nodded.
“Pretrial motions. Wyms is charged with attempted murder of a peace officer and several other weapons-related charges. He was arrested May second at a county park in Calabasas. He was arraigned, bound over and sent out to Camarillo for ninety days. He must’ve been found competent because the hearing today is to set a trial date and consider bail.”
I nodded. From the shorthand, I could read between the lines. Wyms had gotten into some sort of confrontation involving weapons with the Sheriff’s Department, which provided law enforcement services in the unincorporated area known as Calabasas. He was sent to the state’s mental evaluation center in Camarillo, where the shrinks took three months deciding whether he was a crazy man or competent to stand trial on the charges against him. The docs determined he was competent, meaning he knew right from wrong when he tried to kill a peace officer, most likely the sheriff’s deputy who confronted him.
It was a bare-bones sketch of the trouble Eli Wyms was in. There would be more detail in the file but we had no file.
“Is there any reference to Wyms in the trust account deposits?” I asked.
Lorna shook her head. I should’ve assumed she would be thorough and check the bank accounts in search of Eli Wyms.
“Okay, so it looks like maybe Jerry took him on pro bono.”
Attorneys occasionally provide legal services free of charge – pro bono – to indigent or special clients. Sometimes this is an altruistic endeavor and sometimes it’s because the client just won’t pay up. Either way, the lack of an advance from Wyms was understandable. The missing file was another story.
“You know what I was thinking?” Lorna said.
“What?”
“That Jerry had the file with him – in his briefcase – when he left Monday night.”
“And it got taken, along with his laptop and cell phone, by the killer.”
She nodded and I nodded back.
It made sense. He was spending the evening preparing for the week and he had a hearing Thursday on Wyms. Maybe he had run out of gas and thrown the file in his briefcase to look at later. Or maybe he kept the file with him because it was important in a way I couldn’t see yet. Maybe the killer wanted the Wyms file and not the laptop or the cell phone.
“Who’s the prosecutor on the case?”
“Joanne Giorgetti, and I’m way ahead of you. I called her yesterday and explained our situation and asked if she wouldn’t mind copying the discovery again for us. She said no problem. You can pick it up after your eleven with Judge Stanton and then have a couple hours to familiarize yourself with it before the hearing at two.”
Joanne Giorgetti was a top-flight prosecutor who worked in the crimes-against-law-officers section of the DA’s Office. She was also a longtime friend of my ex-wife’s and was my daughter’s basketball coach in the YMCA league. She had always been cordial and collegial with me, even after Maggie and I split up. It didn’t surprise me that she would run off a copy of the discovery materials for me.
“You think of everything, Lorna,” I said. “Why don’t you just take over Vincent’s practice and run with it? You don’t need me.”
She smiled at the compliment and I saw her eyes flick in the direction of Cisco. The read I got was that she wanted him to realize her value to the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates.
“I like working in the background,” she said. “I’ll leave center stage for you.”
Our plates were served and I spread a liberal dose of Tabasco sauce on both my steak and the eggs. Sometimes hot sauce was the only way I knew I was still alive.
I was finally able to hear what Cisco had come up with on the Vincent investigation but he dug into his meal and I knew better than to try to keep him from his food. I decided to wait and asked Lorna how things were working out with Wren Williams. She answered in a low voice, as if Wren were sitting nearby in the restaurant and listening.