“Maybe from your side of things it’s a damn good offer. But it still means I have to convince a client to plead to something he says he didn’t do. Then on top of that, the dispo still opens the door to civil liability. So while he’s sitting up there in county trying to protect his asshole for sixty days, Reggie Campo and her lawyer are down here taking him to the cleaners. You see? It’s not so good when you look at it from his angle. If it was left to me, I’d ride the trial out. I think we’re winning. I know we’ve got the Bible guy, so we’ve got a hanger at minimum. But who knows, maybe we’ve got all twelve.”
Minton slapped his hand down on his table.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You know he did this thing, Haller. And six months-let alone sixty days-for what he did to that woman is a joke. It’s a fucking travesty that I’ll lose sleep over, but they’ve been watching and think you’ve got the jury, so I have to do it.”
I closed my briefcase with an authoritative snap and stood up.
“Then I hope you got something good for rebuttal, Ted. Because you’re going to get your wish for a jury verdict. And I have to tell you, man, you’re looking more and more like a guy who came naked to a razor fight. Better get your hands off your nuts and fight back.”
I headed through the gate. Halfway to the doors at the back of the courtroom I stopped and looked back at him.
“Hey, you know something? If you lose sleep over this or any other case, then you gotta quit the job and go do something else. Because you’re not going to make it, Ted.”
Minton sat at his table, staring straight ahead at the empty bench. He didn’t acknowledge what I had said. I left him there thinking about it. I thought I had played it right. I’d find out in the morning.
I went back over to Four Green Fields to work on my closing. I wouldn’t need the two hours the judge had given us. I ordered a Guinness at the bar and took it over to one of the tables to sit by myself. Table service didn’t start again until six. I sketched out some basic notes but I instinctively knew I would largely be reacting to the state’s presentation. In pretrial motions, Minton had already asked and received permission from Judge Fullbright to use a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the case to the jury. It had become all the rage with young prosecutors to put up the screen and flash computer graphics on it, as if the jurors couldn’t be trusted to think and make connections on their own. It now had to be fed to them like TV.
My clients rarely had the money to pay my fees, let alone for PowerPoint presentations. Roulet was an exception. Through his mother he could afford to hire Francis Ford Coppola to put together a PowerPoint for him if he wanted it. But I never even brought it up. I was strictly old school. I liked going into the ring on my own. Minton could throw whatever he wanted up on the big blue screen. When it was my turn I wanted the jury looking only at me. If I couldn’t convince them, nothing from a computer could, either.
At 5:30 I called Maggie McPherson at her office.
“It’s quitting time,” I said.
“Maybe for big-shot defense pros. Us public servants have to work till after dark.”
“Why don’t you take a break and come meet me for a Guinness and some shepherd’s pie, then you can go back to work and finish up.”
“No, Haller. I can’t do that. Besides, I know what you want.”
I laughed. There was never a time that she didn’t think she knew what I wanted. Most of the time she was right but not this time.
“Yeah? What do I want?”
“You’re going to try to corrupt me again and find out what Minton is up to.”
“Not a chance, Mags. Minton is an open book. Smithson’s observer is giving him bad marks. So Smithson’s told him to fold the tent, get something and get out. But Minton’s been working on his little PowerPoint closing and wants to gamble, take it all the way to the house. Besides that, he’s got genuine outrage in his blood, so he doesn’t like the idea of folding up.”
“Neither do I. Smithson’s always afraid of losing-especially since Blake. He always wants to sell short. You can’t be that way.”
“I always said they lost the Blake case the minute they passed you over. You tell ’em, Maggie.”
“If I ever get the chance.”
“Someday.”
She didn’t like dwelling on her own stalled career. She moved on.
“So you sound chipper,” she said. “Yesterday you were a murder suspect. Today you’ve got the DA by the short hairs. What changed?”
“Nothing. It’s just the calm before the storm, I guess. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever put a rush on ballistics?”
“What kind of ballistics?”
“Matching casing to casing and slug to slug.”
“Depends on who is doing it-which department, I mean. But if they put a real rush on it, they could have something in twenty-four hours.”
I felt the dull thud of dread drop into my stomach. I knew I could be on borrowed time.
“Most of the time, though, that doesn’t happen,” she continued. “Two or three days is what it will usually take on a rush. And if you want the whole package-casing and slug comparisons-it could take longer because the slug could be damaged and tough to read. They have to work with it.”
I nodded. I didn’t think any of that could help me. I knew they had recovered a bullet casing at the crime scene. If Lankford and Sobel got a match on that to the casing of a bullet fired fifty years ago from Mickey Cohen’s gun, they would come for me and worry about the slug comparison later.
“You still there?” Maggie asked.
“Yeah. I was just thinking of something.”
“You don’t sound so chipper anymore. You want to talk about this, Michael?”
“No, not right now. But if I end up needing a good lawyer, you know who I’ll call.”
“That’ll be the day.”
“You might be surprised.”
I let some more silence into the conversation. Just having her on the other end of the line was a calming comfort. I liked it.
“Haller, I should get back to my job now.”
“Okay, Maggie, put those bad guys away.”
“I will.”
“Good night.”
I closed the phone and thought about things for a few moments, then opened it up again and called the Sheraton Universal to see if they had a room available. I had decided that as a precaution I would not go home this night. There might be two detectives from Glendale waiting for me.
Wednesday, May 25
THIRTY-EIGHT
After a sleepless night in a bad hotel bed I got to the courthouse early on Wednesday morning and found no welcoming party, no Glendale detectives waiting with smiles and a warrant for my arrest. A flash of relief went through me as I made my way through the metal detector. I was wearing the same suit I had worn the day before but was hoping no one would notice. I did have a fresh shirt and tie on. I keep spares in the trunk of the Lincoln for summer days when I’m working up in the desert and the car’s air conditioner can get overwhelmed.
When I got to Judge Fullbright’s courtroom I was surprised to find I was not the first of the trial’s players to arrive. Minton was in the gallery, setting up the screen for his PowerPoint presentation. Because the courtroom had been designed before the era of computer-enhanced presentations, there was no place to put a twelve-foot screen in comfortable view of the jury, the judge, and the lawyers. A good chunk of the gallery space would be taken up by the screen, and any spectator who sat behind it wouldn’t get to see the show.
“Bright and early,” I said to Minton.
He looked over from his work and seemed a bit surprised to see me in early as well.
“Have to work out the logistics of this thing. It’s kind of a pain.”