“I’ll be out here,” Bosch said. “You get a name from him, I’ll be ready to go to work on it.”
“I’ll let you know.”
“Good luck.”
I didn’t get into a room with Neiderland until forty minutes later. The ankle monitor set off alarms with the jail staff as I had thought it might. The letter from Judge Warfield was deemed not good enough because it could have been forged. Somebody called the judge’s office to confirm that she had granted permission for me to travel to Nevada but was told the judge was currently on the bench. It wasn’t until Warfield took the midafternoon break and returned the call from chambers that I was led to the attorney-client interview room. I was running a half hour late and Neiderland looked angry when I arrived.
He sat in a chair across a bolted-down table from another chair. His hands were cuffed and a lead chain ran from his wrists to a ring bolted to the front of his chair, which in turn was bolted to the floor. Still, he tried to stand and yanked hard against the chain as I slid into my seat.
“Mr. Neiderland, I’m Michael Haller,” I began. “I’m sorry—”
“I know who the fuck you are,” he said.
“You told my—”
“Fuck you.”
“Excuse me?”
“Get the fuck out of here.”
“I just flew here from L.A. because you told my—”
“Don’t you fucking get it?”
He yanked his cuffed hands up until the lead chain snapped taut again. His hands were gripped as if around an imaginary neck. My neck.
“They didn’t used to do this,” he said. “Chain you down like this. Not with your lawyer. I didn’t know. I didn’t fucking know. You should be dead by now, motherfucker.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would I be dead?”
“Because I would’ve broken your fucking neck.”
He pushed his words through gritted teeth. He wasn’t a big man or heavily muscled. He had thin blond hair and a sallow complexion — no surprise considering his current address. But the look of sheer hatred on his face was downright scary. My first thought was that somehow there had been a setup and he was working for Louis Opparizio — a hit man in an elaborate scheme to take me out. But then I dismissed it. The circumstances of my visit defied such a plan. And there was clearly emotion behind the hate on Neiderland’s face.
“You were going to kill me,” I said. “Why?”
“Because you killed my friend,” he said, again through clenched teeth.
“I didn’t kill Sam Scales. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find the person who did, and you just wasted a whole fucking day of my time and my investigator’s time. You may not believe me and I may even go down for it, but know this: there’s someone else out there who did it and walked away. And by not helping me, you help him.”
I got up and turned to the steel door, raising my arm to pound on it. I was frustrated and angry and wondering whether there would be an earlier flight back so that my entire day would not be wasted.
“Wait a minute,” Neiderland said.
I turned back to him.
“Prove it,” he said.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” I said. “And it doesn’t help when I go off on a wild—”
“No, I mean prove it right here.”
“How do I do that?”
“Sit down.”
He nodded to the empty seat. I reluctantly sat down.
“I can’t prove it to you,” I said. “Not yet, at least.”
“He told me you betrayed him,” Neiderland said. “Yeah, the famous Lincoln Lawyer. You went Hollywood when they made a movie about your ass and left all the people who counted on you in the gutter.”
“That’s not what happened. I didn’t go Hollywood. Sam stopped paying me. That was one thing. But the truth is, I just couldn’t do it anymore. He was hurting a lot of people, taking their money, making them feel like fools. He got off on it, but I’d had enough. I couldn’t take another case.”
Neiderland didn’t respond. I tried again. I wanted to win him over because I still thought he could be helpful.
“You were really going to kill me?” I asked. “With less than two years to go in here?”
“I don’t know,” Neiderland said. “But I was going to do something. I was mad. I still am.”
I nodded. I could feel the temperature in the room subsiding.
“For what it’s worth, I liked Sam,” I said. “He ripped off a lot of people, and that was hard to take, but somehow I always liked him. I just had to draw the line because what he was doing was reflecting on me in the media and at home. Added to that, he stopped paying me and that was the same as treating me like one of the fools he ripped off.”
“He outstayed his welcome with a lot of people,” Neiderland said.
I could see a door of communication opening.
“But not you?” I asked.
“No, I never abandoned him,” Neiderland said. “And he never abandoned me. We had plans for when I got out of here.”
“What were they?”
“Find one big score and then disappear.”
“What was the score? Did he already find it?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he could put it in one of his letters. Everything here is monitored — visitors, phone calls, letters. You’re not even supposed to have contact with any ex-cons on the outside.”
“So, how did you communicate?”
Neiderland shook his head. He wasn’t going to go there.
“Hey, I’m your lawyer,” I said. “You can tell me anything, and they can’t listen and I can’t repeat it. It’s privileged.”
Neiderland nodded and relented.
“He sent me letters,” he said. “Posing as my uncle.”
I paused for a moment. I knew the next question and answer could change everything about the case. I also knew that when people make up stories, plays, and even cons, they usually salt their stories with truth. Neiderland had promised Harry Bosch a name if I came to the prison. Maybe that was the truth in his con.
“What’s your uncle’s name?” I asked.
“Was,” Neiderland said. “He’s dead now. His name was Walter Lennon. My mother’s brother.”
“Did you ever send Sam letters — as your uncle?”
“Sure. What else is there to do in here?”
“And do you remember where you sent the letters?”
“He had a garage apartment in San Pedro. But that was three months ago, when he was alive. They probably put his shit out on the street.”
“Do you remember the address?”
“Yeah, I looked at a few of his letters this morning. The return was 272 °Cabrillo. He said it was small. He was saving and we were going to get something bigger when I got out. He said we’d buy a place.”
The vibe I was getting was that Neiderland was talking about a romantic relationship without actually saying it. I realized that I had never known Sam Scales’s sexual orientation because it didn’t play a part in his crimes or our attorney-client relationship.
“Did he tell you how he was getting the money he was saving?”
“He said he was working at the port.”
“Doing what?”
“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask.”
To Sam, working a job meant working a grift. I wrote the name and address down on my legal pad. It would be considered work product and not discoverable.
“Anything else you think I should know?” I asked.
“That’s it,” he said.
I thought about protecting the information I had just received — at least until we checked it out.
“An investigator from the LAPD might come to see you,” I said. “They think I killed Sam and that’s all they’re worried about. Just remember that you don’t have to talk to them. I’m your lawyer now, you can refer them to me.”