“Yes, I understand. I will have to pay to prove my innocence. I have the gold.”
“All right, then, have your delivery person bring the gold to my case manager. I’m going to need it in hand before your first appearance in court tomorrow. Then I’ll know you’re serious about this.”
I knew time was fleeting but I silently studied La Cosse for a long moment, trying to get a read on him. His story of innocence sounded plausible but I didn’t know what the police knew. I only had Andre’s tale and I suspected that as the evidence in the case was revealed, I would learn that he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be. It’s always that way.
“Okay, last thing, Andre. You told my case manager that I came recommended to you by Giselle herself, is that right?”
“Yes, she said you were the best lawyer in town.”
“How did she know that?”
La Cosse looked surprised, as if the whole conversation so far had been based on a given — that I knew Giselle Dallinger.
“She said she knew you, that you’d handled cases for her. She said you got her a really good deal once.”
“And you’re sure it was me she was talking about.”
“Yes, it was you. She said you hit a home run for her. She called you Mickey Mantle.”
That stopped my breath short. I’d had a client once — a prostitute, too — who would call me that. But I had not seen her in a long time. Not since I put her on a plane with enough money to start over and never come back.
“Giselle Dallinger was not her real name, was it?”
“I don’t know. It’s all I knew her by.”
There was a hard rap on the steel door behind me. My time was up. Some other lawyer needed the room to talk to some other client. I looked across the table at La Cosse. I was no longer second-guessing whether to take him on as my client.
Without a doubt, I was taking the case.
4
Earl drove me over to the Starbucks on Central Avenue and pulled to the curb out front. I stayed in the car while he went in to get us coffee. I opened my laptop on the worktable and used the coffee shop’s signal to get online. I tried three different variations before typing in www.Giselle4u.com and bringing up the website for the woman Andre La Cosse was accused of killing. The photos were airbrushed, the hair was different, and a plastic surgeon had gone to work since I had last seen her, but I had no doubt that Giselle Dallinger was my former client Gloria Dayton.
This changed things. Aside from the issue of legal conflict regarding my representing a client accused of killing another client, there were my feelings about Gloria Dayton and the sudden realization that I’d been used by her in a way that was not too different from the way she was used by men nearly all her life.
Gloria had been a project, a client I cared about beyond the usual boundaries of the attorney-client relationship. I cannot say why this came to be, only that she had a damaged smile, a sardonic wit, and a pessimistic self-knowledge that drew me in. I had handled at least six cases involving her over the years. All of them involved prostitution, drugs, solicitation of prostitution, and the like. She was deeply embedded in the life but always seemed to me to deserve a shot at rising above it and escaping. I was no hero but I did what I could for her. I got her into pretrial intervention programs, halfway houses, therapies, and even once enrolled her in Los Angeles City College after she had expressed an interest in writing. None of it worked for long. A year or so would go by and I’d get the call — she was in jail again and needed a lawyer. Lorna started telling me I needed to cut her loose or pass her off to another attorney, that she was a lost cause. But I couldn’t do that. The truth was I liked knowing Gloria Dayton, or Glory Days as she was known in the profession back then. She had a lopsided view of the world that matched her lopsided smile. She was a feral cat and she let no one but me pet her.
This is not to say there was anything romantic or sexual about our relationship. There was not. In fact, I’m not even sure we could have properly called us friends. We encountered each other too infrequently for that. But I cared about her and that’s why it hurt now to know she was dead. For the past seven years I thought she had gotten away and that I had helped. She had taken the money I gave her and flown off to Hawaii, where she claimed there was a longtime client who wanted to take her in and help her start over. I got postcards every now and then, a Christmas card or two. They all reported that she was doing well and had stayed clean. And they made me feel as though I had accomplished something rarely achieved in the courtrooms and corridors of law. I had changed the direction of a life.
When Earl got back with the coffee I closed the laptop and told him to take me home. I then called Lorna and told her to organize a complete staff meeting for eight the next morning. Andre La Cosse was due in arraignment court on second call, meaning he would make his first appearance sometime between ten a.m. and noon. I wanted to meet with my team and get things going before then. I told her to pull all our files on Gloria Dayton and bring them as well.
“Why do you want Gloria’s files?” she asked.
“Because she’s the victim,” I said.
“Oh my god, are you sure? That’s not the name Cisco gave me.”
“I’m sure. The cops don’t realize it yet, but it was her.”
“I’m sorry, Mickey. I know you… you liked her.”
“Yeah, I did. I was just thinking about her the other day and considering going to Hawaii when the courts are dark over Christmas. I was going to call her if I got there.”
Lorna didn’t respond. The Hawaii trip was an idea I had for getting through the holidays without seeing my kid. But I’d dismissed it out of hope that things would change. That maybe on Christmas Day I’d get a call and an invitation to come over for dinner. If I went to Hawaii, I’d miss the opportunity.
“Listen,” I said, breaking off the thought. “Is Cisco around?”
“No, I think he went over to where the victim — I mean, Gloria — lived, to see what he could find out.”
“Okay, I’ll call him. See you tomorrow.”
“Oh, Mickey, wait. Do you want Jennifer at the meeting, too? I think she has a couple of appearances in county court.”
“Yes, definitely. If she has a conflict, see if she can get one of the Jedi Knights to cover her.”
I had hired Jennifer a few years ago directly out of Southwestern Law School and she carried what was then our burgeoning foreclosure defense practice. That had slowed down in the past year, while criminal defense had picked back up, but Jennifer still carried a big caseload. There was a group of regular lawyers on the foreclosure circuit and they had taken to monthly lunches or dinners to swap stories and strategies. They called themselves the Jedi Knights, which was short for JEDTI, meaning Jurists Engaged in Defending Title Integrity, and the fellowship extended to covering each other’s court appearances when there were time conflicts.
I knew Jennifer wouldn’t mind being pulled away from the foreclosure work to visit the criminal side for a bit. When I hired her, she told me first thing that she wanted a career in criminal defense. And lately she had been suggesting repeatedly in e-mails and our weekly staff meetings that it was time to hire another associate to take over the foreclosure business while she immersed herself more fully in the criminal side. I had been resistant because hiring another associate pushed me closer toward needing the traditional setup with an office, a secretary, a copy machine, and all of that. I didn’t like the idea of the overhead or the brick-and-mortar anchor. I liked working out of the backseat and flying by the seat of my pants.