I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I’d anticipated.
“How close did you get to him and the woman?”
“Not close. You told me to take all precautions.”
“So you can’t describe her?”
“I just said I didn’t get close, Mick. I can describe her. I even got a picture of her on my camera.”
He had to stand up to get his big hand into one of the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a small, black, non-attention-getting camera and sat back down. He turned it on and looked at the screen on the back. He clicked some buttons on the top and then handed it across the table to me.
“They start there and you can scroll through till you get to the woman.”
I manipulated the camera and scrolled through a series of digital photos showing juror number seven at various times during the evening. The last three shots were of him sitting with a woman in Marmalade. She had jet-black hair that hung loose and shadowed her face. The photos also weren’t very crisp because they had been taken from long distance and without a flash.
I didn’t recognize the woman. I handed the camera back to Cisco.
“Okay, Cisco, you did good. You can drop it now.”
“Just drop it?”
“Yeah, and go back to this.”
I slid the file across the table to him. He nodded and smiled slyly as he took it.
“So what did you tell the judge up there at the sidebar?”
I had forgotten he had been in the courtroom, waiting to start his tail of juror seven.
“I told him I realized that you had done the original background search on the English-language default so I redid it to include French and German. I even printed the story out again Sunday so I would have a fresh date on it.”
“Nice. But I look like a fuckup.”
“I had to come up with something. If I’d told him you came across it a week ago and I’d been sitting on it since, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d probably be in lockup for contempt. Besides, the judge thinks Golantz is the fuckup for not finding it before the defense.”
That seemed to placate Cisco. He held up the file.
“So then, what do you want me to do with it?” he asked.
“Where’s the translator you used on the printout?”
“Probably in her dorm over in Westwood. She’s an exchange student I came up with on the Net.”
“Well, call her up and pick her up because you’re going to need her tonight.”
“I have a feeling Lorna isn’t going to like this. Me and a twenty-year-old French girl.”
“Lorna doesn’t speak French, so she will understand. They’re what, nine hours ahead over there in Paris?”
“Yeah, nine or ten. I forget.”
“Okay, then I want you to get with the translator and at midnight start working the phones. Call all the gendarmes, or whatever they call themselves, who worked that drug case and get one of them on a plane over here. At least three of them are named in that article. You can start there.”
“Just like that? You think one of those guys is going to just jump on a plane for us?”
“They’ll probably be stabbing one another in the back, trying to get the ticket. Tell them we’ll fly first class and put whoever comes out in the hotel where Mickey Rourke stays.”
“Yeah, what hotel’s that?”
“I don’t know but I hear he’s big over there. They think he’s like a genius or something. Anyway, look, what I’m saying is, just tell them whatever they want to hear. Spend whatever needs to be spent. If two want to come, then bring over two and we vet them and put the best one on the stand. Just get somebody over here. It’s Los Angeles, Cisco. Every cop in the world wants to see this place and then go back home and tell everybody what and who he saw.”
“Okay, I’ll get somebody on a plane. But what if he can’t leave right away?”
“Then get him going as soon as possible and let me know. I can stretch things in court. The judge wants to hurry everything along but I can slow it down if I need to. Probably next Tuesday or Wednesday is as far as I can go. Get somebody here by then.”
“You want me to call you tonight when I have it set up?”
“No, I need my beauty rest. I’m not used to being on my toes in court all day and I’m wiped out. I’m going to bed. Just call me in the morning.”
“Okay, Mick.”
He stood up and so did I. He slapped me on the shoulder with the file and then tucked it into the waistband at the back of his jeans. He descended the steps and I walked to the edge of the deck to look down on him as he mounted his horse by the curb, dropped it into neutral and silently started to glide down Fareholm toward Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
I then looked up and out at the city and thought about the moves I was making, my personal situation and my professional deceit in front of the judge in court. I didn’t ponder it all too long and I didn’t feel guilty about any of it. I was defending a man I believed was innocent of the murders he was charged with but complicit in the reason they had occurred. I had a sleeper on the jury whose placement was directly related to the murder of my predecessor. And I had a detective watching over me whom I was holding back on and couldn’t be sure was considering my safety ahead of his own desire to break open the case.
I had all of that and I didn’t feel guilty or fearful about anything. I felt like a guy flipping a three-hundred-pound sled in midair. It might not be a sport but it was dangerous as hell and it did what I hadn’t been able to do in more than a year’s time. It shook off the rust and put the charge back in my blood.
It gave it a fierce momentum.
I heard the sound of the pipes on Cisco’s panhead finally fire up. He had made it all the way down to Laurel Canyon before kicking over the engine. The throttle roared deeply as he headed into the night.
PART FIVE
– Take the Nickel
Forty-seven
On Monday morning I had my Corneliani suit on. I was sitting next to my client in the courtroom and was ready to begin to present his defense. Jeffrey Golantz, the prosecutor, sat at his table, ready to thwart my efforts. And the gallery behind us was maxed out once again. But the bench in front of us was empty. The judge was sequestered in his chambers and running almost an hour behind his own nine-o’clock start time. Something was wrong or something had come up, but we had not yet been informed. We had seen sheriff’s deputies escort a man I didn’t recognize into chambers and then out again but there had been no word on what was going on.
“Hey, Jeff, what do you think?” I finally asked across the aisle.
Golantz looked over at me. He was wearing his nice black suit, but he had been wearing it every other day to court and it wasn’t as impressive anymore. He shrugged.
“No idea,” he said.
“Maybe he’s back there reconsidering my request for a directed verdict.”
I smiled. Golantz didn’t.
“I’m sure he is,” he said with his best prosecutorial sarcasm.
The prosecution’s case had strung out through the entire previous week. I had helped with a couple of protracted cross-examinations but for the most part it had been Golantz engaging in overkill. He kept the medical examiner who had conducted the autopsies on Mitzi Elliot and Johan Rilz on the witness stand for nearly an entire day, describing in excruciating detail how and when the victims died. He kept Walter Elliot’s accountant on the stand for half a day, explaining the finances of the Elliot marriage and how much Walter stood to lose in a divorce. And he kept the sheriff’s forensic tech on for nearly as long, explaining his finding of high levels of gunshot residue on the defendant’s hands and clothes.
In between these anchor witnesses he conducted shorter examinations of lesser witnesses and then finally finished his case Friday afternoon with a tearjerker. He put Mitzi Elliot’s lifelong best friend on the stand. She testified about Mitzi confiding in her the plans to divorce her husband as soon as the prenuptial agreement vested. She told of the fight between husband and wife when the plan was revealed and of seeing bruises on Mitzi Elliot’s arms the next day. She never stopped crying during her hour on the stand and continually veered into hearsay testimony that I objected to.