“That’s good, Cisco.”
He left the room, and Patrick soon came in.
“Patrick, Cisco talked to Vincent’s liquidator and he still has one of your long boards. You can go by and pick it up. Just tell him you are picking it up for me and to call me if there is any problem.”
“Oh man, thank you!”
“Yeah, well, I’ve got even better news than that on your case.”
“What happened?”
I went over the phone call I’d just had with Dwight Posey. As I told Patrick that he would do no jail time if he stayed clean, I watched his eyes gain a little light. It was as if I could see the burden drop off his shoulders. He could look once again at the future.
“I have to call my mom,” he said. “She’s gonna be so happy.”
“Yeah, well, I hope you are, too.”
“I am, I am.”
“Now, the way I figure it, you owe me a couple thousand for my work on this. That’s about two and a half weeks of driving. If you want, you can stick with me until it’s paid off. After that, we can talk about it and see where we’re at.”
“That sounds good. I like the job.”
“Good, Patrick, then it’s a deal.”
Patrick smiled broadly and was turning to go.
“One other thing, Patrick.”
He turned back to me.
“I saw you sleeping in your car in the garage this morning.”
“Sorry. I’ll find another spot.”
He looked down at the floor.
“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I forgot that you told me when we talked on the phone the first time that you were living in your car and sleeping on a lifeguard stand. I just don’t know how safe it is to be sleeping in the same garage where a guy got shot the other night.”
“I’ll find someplace else.”
“Well, if you want, I can give you an advance on your pay. Would that help you maybe get a motel room or something?”
“Um, I guess.”
I was glad to help him out but I knew that living out of a weekly motel was almost as depressing as living out of a car.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said. “If you want, you could stay with me for a couple weeks. Until you get some money in your pocket and maybe get a better plan going.”
“At your place?”
“Yeah, you know, temporarily.”
“With you?”
I realized my mistake.
“Nothing like that, Patrick. I’ve got a house and you’d have your own room. In fact, on Wednesday nights and every other weekend, it would be better if you stayed with a friend or in a motel. That’s when I have my daughter.”
He thought about it and nodded.
“Yeah, I could do that.”
I reached across the desk and signaled him to give me back the Post-it with the liquidator’s address on it. I wrote my own address on it while I spoke.
“Why don’t you go pick up your board and then head over to my place at this second address. Fareholm is right off Laurel Canyon, one street before Mount Olympus. You go up the stairs to the front porch and there’s a table and chairs out there and an ashtray. The extra key’s under the ashtray. The guest bedroom is right next to the kitchen. Just make yourself at home.”
“Thanks.”
He took the Post-it back and looked at the address I’d written.
“I probably won’t get there till late,” I told him. “I’ve got a trial starting next week and a lot of work to do before then.”
“Okay.”
“Look, we’re only talking about a few weeks. Till you get on your feet again. Meantime, maybe we can help each other out. You know, like if one of us starts to feel the pull, maybe the other one will be there to talk about it. Okay?”
“Okay.”
We were quiet for a moment, probably both of us thinking about the deal. I didn’t tell Patrick that he might end up helping me more than I would help him. In the past forty-eight hours, the pressure of the new caseload had begun to weigh on me. I could feel myself being pulled back, feel the desire to go to the cotton-wrapped world the pills could give me. The pills opened the space between where I was and the brick wall of reality. I was beginning to crave that distance.
Up front and deep down I knew I didn’t want that again, and maybe Patrick could help me avoid it.
“Thanks, Mr. Haller.”
I looked up at him from my thoughts.
“Call me Mickey,” I said. “And I should be the one saying thanks.”
“Why are you doing all of this for me?”
I looked at the big fish on the wall behind him for a moment, then back at him.
“I’m not sure, Patrick. But I’m hoping that if I help you, then I’ll be helping myself.”
Patrick nodded like he knew what I was talking about. That was strange because I wasn’t sure myself what I had meant.
“Go get your board, Patrick,” I said. “I’ll see you at the house. And make sure you remember to call your mother.”
Thirty
After I was finally alone in the office, I started the process the way I always do, with clean pages and sharp points. From the supply closet I retrieved two fresh legal pads and four Black Warrior pencils. I sharpened their points and got down to work.
Vincent had broken the Elliot case into two files. One file contained the state’s case, and the second, thinner file contained the defense case. The weight of the defense file was not of concern to me. The defense played by the same rules of discovery as the prosecution. Anything that went into the second file went to the prosecutor. A seasoned defense attorney knew to keep the file thin. Keep the rest in your head, or hidden on a microchip in your computer if it is safe. I had neither Vincent’s head nor his laptop. But I was sure the secrets Jerry Vincent kept were hidden somewhere in the hard copy. The magic bullet was there. I just had to find it.
I began with the thicker file, the prosecution’s case. I read straight through, every page and every word. I took notes on one legal pad and drew a time-and-action flowchart on the other. I studied the crime scene photographs with a magnifying glass I took from the desk drawer. I drew up a list of every single name I encountered in the file.
From there, I moved on to the defense file and again read every word on every page. The phone rang two different times but I didn’t even look up to see what name was on the screen. I didn’t care. I was in relentless pursuit and cared about only one thing. Finding the magic bullet.
When I was finished with the Elliot files, I opened the Wyms case and read every document and report it contained, a time-consuming process. Because Wyms was arrested following a public incident that had drawn several uniform and SWAT deputies, this file was thick with reports from the various units involved and personnel at the scene. It was stuffed with transcriptions of the conversations with Wyms, as well as weapons and ballistics reports, a lengthy evidence inventory, witness statements, dispatch records and patrol deployment reports.
There were a lot of names in the file and I checked every one of them against the list of names from the Elliot files. I also cross-referenced every address.
I had this client once. I don’t even know her name because I was sure that the name she was under in the system was not her own. She was in on a first offense but she knew the system too well to be a virgin. In fact, she knew everything too well. Whatever her name was, she had somehow rigged the system and it had her down as someone she wasn’t.
The charge was burglary of an occupied dwelling. But there was so much more than that behind the one charge. This woman liked to target hotel rooms where men with large amounts of money slept. She knew how to pick them, follow them, then finesse the door locks and the room safes while they slept. In one candid moment – probably the only one in our relationship – she told me of the white-hot adrenaline high she got every time the last digit fell into place and she heard the electronic gears of the hotel safe start to move and unlock. Opening the safe and finding what was inside was never as good as that magic moment when the gears began to grind and she felt the velocity of her blood moving in her veins. Nothing before or after was as good as that moment. The jobs weren’t about the money. They were about the velocity of blood.