I had ridden in the backseat for the sake of appearances on this first stop. I was hoping that Elliot might catch a glimpse of me through his office window and take me for an attorney of great means and skill. But the writers saw a Lincoln with a rider in the back and thought I was a producer. As we turned into the studio, they descended on the car with their signs and started chanting, “Greedy Bastard! Greedy Bastard!” Cisco gunned it and plowed through, a few of the hapless scribes dodging the fenders.
“Careful!” I barked. “All I need is to run over an out-of-work writer.”
“Don’t worry,” Cisco replied calmly. “They always scatter.”
“Not this time.”
When he got up to the guardhouse, Cisco pulled forward enough that my window was even with the door. I checked to make sure none of the writers had followed us onto studio property and then lowered the glass so I could speak to the man who stepped out. His uniform was a beige color with a dark brown tie and matching epaulets. It looked ridiculous.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m Walter Elliot’s attorney. I don’t have an appointment but I need to see him right away.”
“Can I see your driver’s license?”
I got it out and handed it through the window.
“I am handling this for Jerry Vincent. That’s the name Mr. Elliot’s secretary will recognize.”
The guard went into the booth and slid the door closed. I didn’t know if this was to keep the air-conditioning from escaping or to prevent me from hearing what was said when he picked up the phone. Whatever the reason, he soon slid the door back open and extended the phone to me, his hand covering the mouthpiece.
“Mrs. Albrecht is Mr. Elliot’s executive assistant. She wants to speak to you.”
I took the phone.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Haller, is it? What is this all about? Mr. Elliot has dealt exclusively with Mr. Vincent on this matter and there is no appointment on his calendar.”
This matter. It was a strange way of referring to double charges of murder.
“Mrs. Albrecht, I’d rather not talk about this at the front gate. As you can imagine, it’s quite a delicate ‘matter,’ to use your word. Can I come to the office and see Mr. Elliot?”
I turned in my seat and looked out the back window. There were two cars in the guardhouse queue behind my Lincoln. They must not have been producers. The writers had let them through unmolested.
“I’m afraid that’s not good enough, Mr. Haller. Can I place you on hold while I call Mr. Vincent?”
“You won’t get through to him.”
“He’ll take a call from Mr. Elliot, I am sure.”
“I am sure he won’t, Mrs. Albrecht. Jerry Vincent’s dead. That’s why I’m here.”
I looked at Cisco’s reflection in the rearview mirror and shrugged as though to say I had no choice but to hit her with the news. The plan had been to finesse my way through the arch and then be the one to personally tell Elliot his lawyer was dead.
“Excuse me, Mr. Haller. Did you say Mr. Vincent is… dead?”
“That’s what I said. And I’m his court-appointed replacement. Can I come in now?”
“Yes, of course.”
I handed the phone back and soon the gate opened.
Thirteen
We were assigned to a prime parking space in the executive lot. I told Cisco to wait in the car and went in alone, carrying the two thick files Vincent had put together on the case. One contained discovery materials turned over so far by the prosecution, including the important investigative documents and interview transcripts, and the other contained documents and other work product generated by Vincent during the five months he had handled the case. Between the two files I was able to get a good handle on what the prosecution had and didn’t have, and the direction in which the prosecutor wanted to take the trial. There was still work to be done and pieces were missing from the defense’s case and strategy. Perhaps those pieces had been carried in Jerry Vincent’s head, or in his laptop or on the legal pad in his portfolio, but unless the cops arrested a suspect and recovered the stolen property, whatever was there would be of no help to me.
I followed a sidewalk across a beautifully manicured lawn on the way to Elliot’s office. My plan for the meeting was threefold. The first order of business was to secure Elliot as a client. That done, I would ask his approval in delaying the trial to give me time to get up to speed and prepare for it. The last part of the plan would be to see if Elliot had any of the pieces missing from the defense case. Parts two and three obviously didn’t matter if I was unsuccessful with part one.
Walter Elliot’s office was in Bungalow One on the far reaches of the Archway lot. “Bungalows” sounded small but they were big in Hollywood. A sign of status. It was like having your own private home on the lot. And as in any private home, activities inside could be kept secret.
A Spanish-tiled entranceway led to a step-down living room with a fireplace blowing gas flames on one wall and a mahogany wood bar set up in an opposite corner. I stepped into the middle of the room and looked around and waited. I looked at the painting over the fireplace. It depicted an armored knight on a white steed. The knight had reached up and flipped open the visor on his helmet and his eyes stared out intently. I took a few steps further into the room and realized the eyes had been painted so that they stared at the viewer of the painting from any angle in the room. They followed me.
“Mr. Haller?”
I turned as I recognized the voice from the guardhouse phone. Elliot’s gatekeeper, Mrs. Albrecht, had stepped into the room from some unseen entrance. Elegance was the word that came to mind. She was an aging beauty who appeared to take the process in stride. Gray streaked through her un-dyed hair and tiny wrinkles were working their way toward her eyes and mouth, seemingly unchecked by injection or incision. Mrs. Albrecht looked like a woman who liked her own skin. In my experience, this was a rare thing in Hollywood.
“Mr. Elliot will see you now.”
I followed her around a corner and down a short hallway to a reception office. She passed an empty desk – hers, I assumed – and pushed open a large door to Walter Elliot’s office.
Elliot was an overly tanned man with more gray hair sprouting from his open shirt collar than from the top of his head. He sat behind a large glass worktable. No drawers beneath it and no computer on top of it, though paperwork and scripts were spread across it. It didn’t matter that he was facing two counts of murder. He was staying busy. He was working and running Archway the way he always did. Maybe it was on the advice of some Hollywood self-help guru but it wasn’t an unusual behavior or philosophy for the accused. Act like you are innocent and you will be perceived as innocent. Finally, you will become innocent.
There was a sitting area to the right but he chose to remain behind the worktable. He had dark, piercing eyes that seemed familiar and then I realized I had just been looking at them – the knight on the steed out in the living room was Elliot.
“Mr. Elliot, this is Mr. Haller,” Mrs. Albrecht said.
She signaled me to the chair across the table from Elliot. After I sat down Elliot made a dismissive gesture without looking at Mrs. Albrecht and she left the room without another word. Over the years I had represented and been in the company of a couple dozen killers. The one rule is that there are no rules. They come in all sizes and shapes, rich and poor, humble and arrogant, regretful and cold to the bone. The percentages told me that it was most likely Elliot was a killer. That he had calmly dispatched his wife and her lover and arrogantly thought he could and would get away with it. But there was nothing about him on first meeting that told me one way or the other for sure. And that’s the way it always was.