I slouched in my seat and used another observer in the gallery as a blind so that Scales couldn’t see me when the court deputy stood him up, cuffed him and took him back into lockup. After he was gone, I straightened back up and was able to catch Romero’s eye. I signaled him out into the hallway and he flashed five fingers at me. Five minutes. He still had some business to take care of in the court.
I went out into the hallway to wait for him and turned my phone back on. No messages. I was calling Lorna to check in when I heard Romero’s voice behind me. He was four minutes early.
“Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a killer by the toe. If his lawyer’s Haller, let him go. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. Hey bro.”
He was smiling. I closed the phone and we bumped fists. I hadn’t heard that homespun jingle since I was with the PD’s Office. Romero had made it up after I had gotten the not-guilty verdict in the Barnett Woodson case back in ’ninety-two.
“What’s up?” Romero asked.
“I’ll tell you what’s up. You’re guzzling my clients, man. Sam Scales used to be mine.”
I said it with a knowing smile and Romero smiled right back.
“You want him? You can have him. That’s one dirty white boy. As soon as the media gets wind of this case, they’re going to lynch his ass for what he’s done.”
“Taking war widows’ money, huh?”
“Stealing government death benefits. I tell you, I’ve repped a lot of bad guys who did a lot of bad things, but I put Scales up there with the baby rapers, man. I can’t stand the guy.”
“Yeah, what are you doing with a white boy anyway? You work gang crimes.”
Romero’s face turned serious and he shook his head.
“Not anymore, man. They thought I was getting too close to the customers. You know, once a vato always a vato. So they took me off gangs. After nineteen years, I’m off gangs.”
“Sorry to hear that, buddy.”
Romero had grown up in Boyle Heights in a neighborhood ruled by a gang called Quatro Flats. He had the tattoos to prove it, if you could ever see his arms. It didn’t matter how hot a day it was, he always wore long sleeves when he was working. And when he represented a banger accused of a crime, he did more than defend him in court. He worked to spring the man from the clutches of gang life. To pull him away from gang cases was an act of stupidity that could only happen in a bureaucracy like the justice system.
“What do you want with me, Mick? You didn’t really come here to take Scales from me, right?”
“No, you get to keep Scales, Angel. I wanted to ask you about another client you had for a while earlier this year. Eli Wyms.”
I was about to give the details of the case as a prompt but Romero immediately recognized the case and nodded.
“Yeah, Vincent took that one off me. You got it now with him being dead?”
“Yeah, I got all of Vincent’s cases. I just found out about Wyms today.”
“Well, good luck with them, bro. What do you need to know about Wyms? Vincent took it off me three months ago, at least.”
I nodded.
“Yeah, I know. I got a handle on the case. What I’m curious about is Vincent taking it. According to Joanne Giorgetti, he went after it. Is that right?”
Romero checked the memory banks for a few moments before answering. He raised a hand and rubbed his chin as he did so. I could see faint scars across his knuckles from where he’d had tattoos removed.
“Yeah, he went down to the jail and talked Wyms into it. Got a signed discharge letter and brought it in. After that, the case was his. I gave him my file and I was done, man.”
I moved in closer to him.
“Did he say why he wanted the case? I mean, he didn’t know Wyms, did he?”
“I don’t think so. He just wanted the case. He gave me the big wink, you know?”
“No, what do you mean? What’s the ‘big wink’?”
“I asked him why he was taking on a Southside homeboy who went up there in white-people country and shot the place up. Pro bono, no less. I thought he had some sort of racial angle on it or something. Something that would get him a little publicity. But he just sort of gave me the wink, like there was something else.”
“Did you ask him what?”
Romero took an involuntary step back as I pressed his personal space.
“Yeah, man, I asked. But he wouldn’t tell me. He just said that Wyms had fired the magic bullet. I didn’t know what the hell he meant and I didn’t have any more time to play games with him. I gave him the file and I went on to the next one.”
There it was again. The magic bullet. I was getting close to something here and I could feel the blood in my veins start to move with high velocity.
“Is that it, Mick? I gotta get back inside.”
My eyes focused on Romero and I realized he was looking at me strangely.
“Yeah, Angel, thanks. That’s all. Go back in there and give ’em hell.”
“Yeah, man, that’s what I do.”
Romero went back toward the door to Department 124 and I headed off quickly to the elevators. I knew what I would be doing for the rest of the day and into the night. Tracing a magic bullet.
Twenty-eight
I entered the office and blew right by Lorna and Cisco, who were at the reception desk, looking at the computer. I spoke without stopping on my way to the inner sanctum.
“If you two have any updates for me or anything else I should know, then come in now. I’m about to go into lockdown.”
“And hello to you, too,” Lorna called after me.
But Lorna knew well what was about to happen. Lockdown was when I closed all the doors and windows, drew the curtains and killed the phones and went to work on a file and a case with total concentration and absorption. Lockdown for me was the ultimate DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging on the door. Lorna knew that once I was in lockdown mode, there was no getting me out until I had found what I was looking for.
I moved around Jerry Vincent’s desk and dropped into the seat. I opened my bag on the floor and started pulling out the files. I viewed what I needed to do here as me against them. Somewhere in the files, I would find the key to Jerry Vincent’s last secret. I would find the magic bullet.
Lorna and Cisco came into the office soon after I was settled.
“I didn’t see Wren out there,” I said before either could speak.
“And you never will again,” Lorna said. “She quit.”
“That was kind of abrupt.”
“She went out to lunch and never came back.”
“Did she call?”
“Yeah, she finally called. She said she got a better offer. She’s going to be Bruce Carlin’s secretary now.”
I nodded. That seemed to make a certain amount of sense.
“Now, before you go into lockdown, we need to go over some things,” Lorna said.
“That’s what I said when I came in. What’ve you got?”
Lorna sat down in one of the chairs in front of the desk. Cisco stayed standing, more like pacing, behind her.
“All right,” Lorna said. “Couple things while you were in court. First, you must’ve touched a nerve with that motion you filed on the evidence in Patrick’s case.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The prosecutor’s called three times today, wanting to talk about a dispo.”
I smiled. The motion to examine the evidence had been a long shot but it looked like it might come through and I would be able to help Patrick.
“What’s going on with that?” Lorna asked. “You didn’t tell me you filed motions.”
“From the car yesterday. And what’s going on is that I think Dr. Vogler gave his wife phony diamonds for her birthday. Now, to make sure she never knows it, they’re going to float a deal to Patrick if I withdraw my request to examine the evidence.”
“Good. I think I like Patrick.”
“I hope he gets the break. What’s next?”