“Then why didn’t you turn it off?”
“Because I couldn’t find the damn remote. Anyway, why did you come see me without bringing me any sustenance? You were just here yesterday, right? Pastrami from Art’s in the Valley.”
“You’re right, Legal, and I’m glad you remember it.”
“Then why’d you come back so soon?”
“Because today I need sustenance. Legal sustenance.”
“How do you mean?”
“The La Cosse case. Things are happening and it’s getting hard to see the forest for the trees.”
I ticked off the cast of characters on my fingers.
“I’ve got a shady DEA agent out there, a crooked DA investigator, a cartel thug, and a disbarred lawyer. Then I’ve got my own client in the clink, and the victim in all of this is the only one I really like — or liked — in the first place. To top it all off, I’m being watched — but I’m not exactly sure by who.”
“Tell me all about it.”
I spent the next thirty minutes summarizing the story and answering his questions. I backed up beyond the last update I had given him and then brought the story forward, going into much finer detail than I had previously given. He asked many questions as I told the story but never offered anything back. He was simply gathering data and holding his response. I took him right up to the confrontation I’d just had with Lankford in the DA’s Office waiting room, and the uneasy feeling I had that I was missing something — something right in front of me.
When I was finished, I waited for a response but he said nothing. He made a gesture with his frail hands, as if to throw the whole thing up into the air and let the wind take it. I noticed that both of his arms were purple from all the needles and the prodding and poking they did to him in this place. Getting old was not for the weak.
“That’s it?” I said. “Just throw it to the wind like a bunch of flower petals? You’ve got nothing to say?”
“Oh, I got plenty to say and you’re not going to like hearing it.”
I motioned with my hand inviting him to hit me with it all.
“You’re missing the big picture, Mouse.”
“Really?” I said sarcastically. “What is the big picture?”
“Now you see, that’s the wrong question,” he lectured. “Your first question should not be what but why. Why am I missing the big picture?”
I nodded, going along only grudgingly.
“Then why am I missing the big picture?”
“Let’s start with the report you just gave on the state of your case. You said it took that rookie shortstop you hired out of the five-and-dime to make you see things the right way at the staff meeting this morning.”
He was talking about Jennifer Aronson. It was true that I’d hired her out of Southwestern, which was housed in the old Bullocks Department Store building on Wilshire. It engendered her nickname, but referring to the law school as a five-and-dime was a new low.
“I was only trying to give credit where credit was due,” I said. “Jennifer may still be a rookie but she’s sharper than any three lawyers I could’ve hired out of SC.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s all well and good. She’s a good lawyer, I grant you that. The thing is, you always expect yourself to be the better lawyer and deep down you hold yourself to that. So when all of a sudden this morning it’s the team rookie who sees things with clarity, then that gets under your skin. You’re supposed to be the smartest guy in the room.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. Legal pressed on.
“I’m not your shrink. I’m a lawyer. But I think you gotta stop hitting the booze at night and you gotta get your house in order.”
I stood up and started pacing in front of the bed.
“Legal, what are you talking about? My house is—”
“Your judgment and your ability to cut through the obstacles in front of you are, at best, clouded by an outside agenda.”
“You’re talking about my kid? My having to live with knowing my kid wants nothing to do with me? I wouldn’t call that an agenda.”
“I’m not talking about that per se. I am talking about the root of that. I’m talking about the guilt you carry over all of it. It is impacting you as a lawyer. Your performance as a lawyer, as a defender of the accused. And in this case, most likely, the wrongly accused.”
He was talking about Sandy and Katie Patterson and the accident that took their lives. I leaned down and grabbed the iron railing at the foot of his bed with both hands. Legal Siegel was my mentor. He could tell me anything. He could dress me down lower than even my ex-wife and I would accept it.
“Listen to me,” he said. “There is no more noble a cause on this planet than to stand for the wrongly accused. You can’t fuck this up, kid.”
I nodded and kept my head bowed.
“Guilt,” he said. “You have to get by it. Let the ghosts go or they’ll take you under and you’ll never be the lawyer you are supposed to be. You will never see the big picture.”
I threw up my hands.
“Please, enough with the big picture crap! What are you talking about, Legal? What am I missing?”
“To see what you’re missing, you have to step back and widen the angle. Then you see the bigger picture.”
I looked at him, trying to understand.
“When was the habeas filed?” he asked quietly.
“November.”
“When was Gloria Dayton murdered?”
“November.”
I said it impatiently. We both knew the answers to these questions.
“And when were you papered by the lawyer?”
“Just now — yesterday.”
“And this federal agent you talked about, when was he served?”
“I don’t know if he was served. But Valenzuela had the paper yesterday.”
“And then there’s the phony subpoena Fulgoni cooked up for the other girl from back then.”
“Kendall Roberts, right.”
“Any idea why he would dummy up paper for her and not you?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I guess he knew I’d know if it was legit or not. She’s not a lawyer, so she wouldn’t. He’d save the costs of filing with the court. I’ve heard of lawyers who roll that way.”
“Seems thin to me.”
“Well, that’s all I got off the top of—”
“So six months after the habeas was filed with the court they put out their first subpoenas? I tell you, if I ran a shop like that I’d a been out of business and on the street. It’s not the timely exercise of the law, that’s for sure.”
“This kid Fulgoni doesn’t know his ass from—”
I stopped in midsentence. I had suddenly caught a glimpse of the elusive big picture. I looked at Legal.
“Maybe these weren’t the first subpoenas.”
He nodded.
“Now I think you’re getting it,” Legal said.
21
I told Earl to drop down to Olympic and take me out to Century City and Sly Fulgoni Jr.’s office. I then settled in with a fresh legal pad and started charting timelines on the Gloria Dayton murder case and the Hector Moya habeas petition. Pretty soon I saw how the cases were entwined like a double helix. I saw the big picture.
“You sure you got the right address, boss?”
I looked up from my chart and out the window. Earl had slowed the Lincoln in front of a row of French provincial — style town house offices. We were still on Olympic but on the eastern edge of Century City. I was sure the address carried the correct zip code and all the cachet that came with it, but it was a far cry from the gleaming towers on the Avenue of the Stars that people think of when they imagine a Century City legal firm. I had to think there would be buyer’s remorse for any client who arrived here for the first time and found these digs. Then again, who was I to talk? Many was the time I dealt with buyer’s remorse when my clients learned I worked out of the backseat of my car.