My client was there at the defense table for the hearing but I was not. Jennifer Aronson held forth for the defense as best she could in a one-sided game. The judge had allowed the hearing to proceed only after questioning Lisa exhaustively to assure himself that her decision to go forward without me there was knowing, voluntary and strategic. Lisa acknowledged in open court that she was aware of Aronson’s lack of courtroom experience and waived any claim to the argument of ineffective counsel as grounds for an appeal of the judge’s eventual determination.
I watched most of it from the confines of my home where I was continuing to recover from my injuries. KTLA Channel 5 had carried the morning session live in lieu of other local programming before flipping back to the usual slate of insipid afternoon talk shows. This meant I missed only the last two hours of the hearing. But that was okay because by that point I knew how it would go. There were no surprises and the only disappointment was in not getting any sort of new read on how the prosecution would unfurl the flag at trial, when it all counted.
As decided during our prep sessions in my room at Holy Cross, Aronson presented no witnesses or any affirmative defense. We chose to reserve any indication of our hypothesis of innocence for trial, when the threshold of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt raised the game to almost an even match. Aronson used cross-examination of the state’s witnesses sparingly. These were all seasoned veterans of courtroom testimony-Kurlen, a forensic expert and the medical examiner among them. Freeman chose not to put Margo Schafer on the stand, using Kurlen to recount his interview with the eyewitness who placed Lisa Trammel a block from the murder. There wasn’t much to get from the state’s lineup and so our strategy was to observe and wait. To bide our time. We would simply go at them at trial where we stood the best chance.
At the end of the hearing Lisa was ordered to stand trial before Judge Coleman Perry on the sixth floor of the courthouse. Perry was yet another judge I had never stood before. But since I knew his courtroom was one of four possible destinations for my client, I had done some checking with other members of the defense bar. The overall report I got was that Perry was a straight shooter with a short temper. He was fair until you crossed him and then he was prone to hold a grudge that might last an entire trial. It was good knowledge to have as the case progressed to its final stage.
Two days later, I finally felt ready to return to the fray. My broken fingers were bound tightly in a form-fitted plaster cast and my bruised torso was losing the shadings of deep blue and purple for a sickly tone of yellow. My scalp stitches had been removed and I was able to delicately comb my hair back over the shaved wound as if I was hiding a bald spot. Best of all, my formerly twisted testicle, which the doctor had ultimately chosen not to remove, was improving a little bit every day, according to the doctor and his powers of observation and palpation. It was left to see whether it would resume normal activity and function, or die on the vine like an unpicked Roma tomato.
By previous arrangement, Rojas had the Lincoln at the bottom of the front steps at eleven o’clock sharp. I slowly made my way down, walking cane firmly in hand. Rojas was there to help me get into the back of the car. We moved carefully and soon I was in my usual place, ready to roll. Rojas jumped behind the wheel and we jerked forward and down the hill.
“Easy, Rojas. It hurts too much for me to wear a seat belt. So don’t send me into the front seat.”
“Sorry, Boss. I’ll do better. Where are we going today? The office?”
He had gotten that Boss stuff from Cisco. I hated being called a boss, even though I knew that was what I was.
“The office is later. First we go to Archway Pictures on Melrose.”
“You got it.”
Archway was a second-tier studio across Melrose from one of the behemoths, Paramount Pictures. Started as a studio lot to handle the overflow demand for soundstages and equipment, it grew into a self-sustaining studio under the guidance of the late Walter Elliot. It now made its own slate of films each year and created its own overflow demand. Coincidentally, Elliot happened to be a client of mine at one time.
It took Rojas twenty minutes to get from my house above Laurel Canyon to the studio. He pulled up to the security booth at the signature arch that spanned the studio’s entrance. I lowered the window and told the security man who approached me that I was there to see Clegg McReynolds. He asked for my name and ID and I gave him my driver’s license. He retreated to the booth and consulted a computer screen. He frowned.
“I’m sorry, sir, but you’re not on the drive-on list. Do you have an appointment?”
“No appointment but he’ll want to see me.”
I hadn’t wanted to give McReynolds too much advance notice.
“Well, I can’t let you in without an appointment.”
“Can you call him and tell him I’m here? He’ll want to see me. You know who he is, right?”
The implication was clear. This was one you didn’t want to screw up.
The guard slid the door shut while he made the call to McReynolds. Through the glass I saw him talking. He had a live one on the line. Then he slid the door open and extended the phone to me. It was on a long cord. I took it and then raised the window on the guard. Tit for tat.
“This is Michael Haller. Is this Mr. McReynolds?”
“No, this is Mr. McReynolds’s personal assistant. How can I help you, Mr. Haller? I see no appointment here in the book and, frankly, I don’t know who you are.”
The voice was female, young and confident.
“I’m the guy who is going to make your boss’s life miserable if you don’t get him on the line.”
There was a bubble of silence before the voice responded.
“I don’t think I like your threatening manner. Mr. McReynolds is on the set and-”
“It was not a threat. I don’t make threats. I just speak the truth. Where’s the set?”
“I’m not telling you that. You’re not getting anywhere near Clegg until I know what this is about.”
I noted that she was on a first-name basis with the boss. A horn blared from behind me. The cars were stacking up. The guard rapped his knuckles on my window, then bent down to try to see in through the smoked glass. I ignored him. A second horn honked from the rear.
“This is about your saving your boss a lot of grief. Are you familiar with the deal he announced last week regarding the woman accused of killing the banker foreclosing on her home?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Well, your boss acquired those rights illegally. I’m assuming this was through no fault or knowledge of his own. If I’m right, he’s the victim of a scam and I’m here to make it right for him. This is a one-time opportunity. After this, Clegg McReynolds gets pulled down into the quicksand.”
The final threat was punctuated with another long blast from the car directly behind me and a sharp rap on the window.
“Talk to the guard,” I said. “Tell him yea or nay.”
I lowered the window and handed the phone out to the angry guard. He held it to his ear.
“What’s it going to be? I’ve got a line of cars out to Melrose here.”
He listened and then stepped back into his booth and hung up the phone. Then he looked at me as he pushed the button that opened the gate.
“Stage nine,” he said. “Straight ahead and left at the end. You can’t miss it.”
I threw him a told-you-so smile as I raised the window and Rojas drove under the rising gate.
Stage 9 was a soundstage big enough to house an aircraft carrier. It was surrounded by equipment trucks, star wagons and craft services vans. Four stretch limos were parked end to end along one side, their engines running and drivers waiting for filming to end and the anointed to exit.