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Synopsis:

Things are finally looking up for defense attorney Mickey Haller. After two years of wrong turns, Haller
is back in the courtroom. When Hollywood lawyer Jerry Vincent is murdered, Haller inherits his biggest
case yet: the defense of Walter Elliott, a prominent studio executive accused of murdering his wife and
her lover. But as Haller prepares for the case that could launch him into the big time, he learns that
Vincent’s killer may be coming for him next.

Enter Harry Bosch. Determined to find Vincent’s killer, he is not opposed to using Haller as bait. But as
danger mounts and the stakes rise, these two loners realize their only choice is to work together.

Bringing together Michael Connelly’s two most popular characters, The Brass Verdict is sure to be his
biggest book yet.
THE BRASS VERDICT
By
Michael Connelly

Book 14 in the Harry Bosch series

Copyright © 2008

In memory of Terry Hansen and Frank Morgan

PART ONE
—Rope a Dope

1992

One

Everybody lies.
Cops lie. Lawyers lie. Witnesses lie. The victims lie.

A trial is a contest of lies. And everybody in the courtroom knows this. The judge knows this. Even the
jury knows this. They come into the building knowing they will be lied to. They take their seats in the box
and agree to be lied to.

The trick if you are sitting at the defense table is to be patient. To wait. Not for just any lie. But for the
one you can grab on to and forge like hot iron into a sharpened blade. You then use that blade to rip the
case open and spill its guts out on the floor.

That’s my job, to forge the blade. To sharpen it. To use it without mercy or conscience. To be the truth in
a place where everybody lies.

Two

2
I was in the fourth day of trial in Department 109 in the downtown Criminal Courts Building when I got
the lie that became the blade that ripped the case open. My client, Barnett Woodson, was riding two
murder charges all the way to the steel-gray room in San Quentin where they serve you Jesus juice direct
through the arm.

Woodson, a twenty-seven-year-old drug dealer from Compton, was accused of robbing and killing two
college students from Westwood. They had wanted to buy cocaine from him. He decided instead to take
their money and kill them both with a sawed-off shotgun. Or so the prosecution said. It was a black-on-
white crime and that made things bad enough for Woodson — especially coming just four months after
the riots that had torn the city apart. But what made his situation even worse was that the killer had
attempted to hide the crime by weighing down the two bodies and dropping them into the Hollywood
Reservoir. They stayed down for four days before popping to the surface like apples in a barrel. Rotten
apples. The idea of dead bodies moldering in the reservoir that was a primary source of the city’s drinking
water caused a collective twist in the community’s guts. When Woodson was linked by phone records to
the dead men and arrested, the public outrage directed toward him was almost palpable. The District
Attorney’s Office promptly announced it would seek the death penalty.

The case against Woodson, however, wasn’t all that palpable. It was constructed largely of circumstantial
evidence — the phone records — and the testimony of witnesses who were criminals themselves. And
state’s witness Ronald Torrance sat front and center in this group. He claimed that Woodson confessed
the killings to him.

Torrance had been housed on the same floor of the Men’s Central Jail as Woodson. Both men were kept
in a high-power module that contained sixteen single-prisoner cells on two tiers that opened onto a
dayroom. At the time, all sixteen prisoners in the module were black, following the routine but
questionable jail procedure of “segregating for safety,” which entailed dividing prisoners according to
race and gang affiliation to avoid confrontations and violence. Torrance was awaiting trial on robbery and
aggravated assault charges stemming from his involvement in looting during the riots. High-power
detainees had six a.m. to six p.m. access to the dayroom, where they ate and played cards at tables and
otherwise interacted under the watchful eyes of guards in an overhead glass booth. According to
Torrance, it was at one of these tables that my client had confessed to killing the two Westside boys.

The prosecution went out of its way to make Torrance presentable and believable to the jury, which had
only three black members. He was given a shave, his hair was taken out of cornrows and trimmed short
and he was dressed in a pale blue suit with no tie when he arrived in court on the fourth day of
Woodson’s trial. In direct testimony elicited by Jerry Vincent, the prosecutor, Torrance described the
conversation he allegedly had with Woodson one morning at one of the picnic tables. Woodson not only
confessed to the killings, he said, but furnished Torrance with many of the telling details of the murders.
The point made clear to the jury was that these were details that only the true killer would know.

During the testimony, Vincent kept Torrance on a tight leash with long questions designed to elicit short
answers. The questions were overloaded to the point of being leading but I didn’t bother objecting, even
when Judge Companioni looked at me with raised eyebrows, practically begging me to jump in. But I
didn’t object, because I wanted the counterpoint. I wanted the jury to see what the prosecution was doing.
When it was my turn, I was going to let Torrance run with his answers while I hung back and waited for
the blade.

Vincent finished his direct at eleven a.m. and the judge asked me if I wanted to take an early lunch before
I began my cross. I told him no, I didn’t need or want a break. I said it like I was disgusted and couldn’t
wait another hour to get at the man on the stand. I stood up and took a big, thick file and a legal pad with
me to the lectern.

3
“Mr. Torrance, my name is Michael Haller. I work for the Public Defenders Office and represent Barnett
Woodson. Have we met before?”

“No, sir.”

“I didn’t think so. But you and the defendant, Mr. Woodson, you two go back a long way, correct?”

Torrance gave an “aw, shucks” smile. But I had done the due diligence on him and I knew exactly who I
was dealing with. He was thirty-two years old and had spent a third of his life in jails and prisons. His
schooling had ended in the fourth grade when he stopped going to school and no parent seemed to notice
or care. Under the state’s three-strike law, he was facing the lifetime achievement award if convicted of
charges he robbed and pistol-whipped the female manager of a coin laundry. The crime had been
committed during three days of rioting and looting that ripped through the city after the not-guilty
verdicts were announced in the trial of four police officers accused of the excessive beating of Rodney
King, a black motorist pulled over for driving erratically. In short, Torrance had good reason to help the
state take down Barnett Woodson.

“Well, we go back a few months is all,” Torrance said. “To high-power.”

“Did you say ‘higher power’?” I asked, playing dumb. “Are you talking about a church or some sort of
religious connection?”

“No, high-power module. In county.”

“So you’re talking about jail, correct?”

“That’s right.”

“So you’re telling me that you didn’t know Barnett Woodson before that?”

I asked the question with surprise in my voice.

“No, sir. We met for the first time in the jail.”

I made a note on the legal pad as if this were an important concession.

“So then, let’s do the math, Mr. Torrance. Barnett Woodson was transferred into the high-power module
where you were already residing on the fifth of September earlier this year. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah, I remember him coming in, yeah.”

“And why were you there in high-power?”

Vincent stood and objected, saying I was covering ground he had already trod in direct testimony. I
argued that I was looking for a fuller explanation of Torrance’s incarceration, and Judge Companioni
allowed me the leeway. He told Torrance to answer the question.

“Like I said, I got a count of assault and one of robbery.”

“And these alleged crimes took place during the riots, is that correct?”

With the anti-police climate permeating the city’s minority communities since even before the riots, I had
fought during jury selection to get as many blacks and browns on the panel as I could. But here was a
chance to work on the five white jurors the prosecution had been able to get by me. I wanted them to
4
know that the man the prosecution was hanging so much of its case on was one of those responsible for
the images they saw on their television sets back in May.

“Yeah, I was out there like everybody else,” Torrance answered. “Cops get away with too much in this
town, you ask me.”

I nodded like I agreed.

“And your response to the injustice of the verdicts in the Rodney King beating case was to go out and rob
a sixty-two-year-old woman and knock her unconscious with a steel trash can? Is that correct, sir?”

Torrance looked over at the prosecution table and then past Vincent to his own lawyer, sitting in the first
row of the gallery. Whether or not they had earlier rehearsed a response to this question, his legal team
couldn’t help Torrance now. He was on his own.

“I didn’t do that,” he finally said.

“You’re innocent of the crime you are charged with?”

“That’s right.”

“What about looting? You committed no crimes during the riots?”

After a pause and another glance at his attorney, Torrance said, “I take the fifth on that.”

As expected. I then took Torrance through a series of questions designed so that he had no choice but to
incriminate himself or refuse to answer under the protections of the Fifth Amendment. Finally, after he
took the nickel six times, the judge grew weary of the point being made over and over and prodded me
back to the case at hand. I reluctantly complied.

“All right, enough about you, Mr. Torrance,” I said. “Let’s get back to you and Mr. Woodson. You knew
the details of this double-murder case before you even met Mr. Woodson in lockup?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you sure? It got a lot of attention.”

“I been in jail, man.”

“They don’t have television or newspapers in jail?”

“I don’t read no papers and the module’s TV been broke since I got there. We made a fuss and they said
they’d fix it but they ain’t fixed shit.”

The judge admonished Torrance to check his language and the witness apologized. I moved on.

“According to the jail’s records, Mr. Woodson arrived in the high-power module on the fifth of
September and, according to the state’s discovery material, you contacted the prosecution on October
second to report his alleged confession. Does that sound right to you?”

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

“Well, not to me, Mr. Torrance. You are telling this jury that a man accused of a double murder and
facing the possible death penalty confessed to a man he had known for less than four weeks?”
5
Torrance shrugged before answering.

“That’s what happened.”

“So you say. What will you get from the prosecution if Mr. Woodson is convicted of these crimes?”

“I don’t know. Nobody has promised me nothing.”

“With your prior record and the charges you currently face, you are looking at more than fifteen years in
prison if you’re convicted, correct?”

“I don’t know about any of that.”

“You don’t?”

“No, sir. I let my lawyer handle all that.”

“He hasn’t told you that if you don’t do something about this, you might go to prison for a long, long
time?”

“He hasn’t told me none of that.”

“I see. What have you asked the prosecutor for in exchange for your testimony?”

“Nothing. I don’t want nothing.”

“So then, you are testifying here because you believe it is your duty as a citizen, is that correct?”

The sarcasm in my voice was unmistakable.

“That’s right,” Torrance responded indignantly.

I held the thick file up over the lectern so he could see it.

“Do you recognize this file, Mr. Torrance?”

“No. Not that I recall, I don’t.”

“You sure you don’t remember seeing it in Mr. Woodson’s cell?”

“Never been in his cell.”

“Are you sure that you didn’t sneak in there and look through his discovery file while Mr. Woodson was
in the dayroom or in the shower or maybe in court sometime?”

“No, I did not.”

“My client had many of the investigative documents relating to his prosecution in his cell. These
contained several of the details you testified to this morning. You don’t think that is suspicious?”

Torrance shook his head.

“No. All I know is that he sat there at the table and told me what he’d done. He was feeling poorly about
it and opened up to me. It ain’t my fault people open up to me.”
6
I nodded as if sympathetic to the burden Torrance carried as a man others confided in — especially when
it came to double murders.

“Of course not, Mr. Torrance. Now, can you tell the jury exactly what he said to you? And don’t use the
shorthand you used when Mr. Vincent was asking the questions. I want to hear exactly what my client
told you. Give us his words, please.”

Torrance paused as if to probe his memory and compose his thoughts.

“Well,” he finally said, “we were sittin’ there, the both of us by ourselves, and he just started talkin’ about
feelin’ bad about what he’d done. I asked him, ‘What’d you do?’ and he told me about that night he killed
the two fellas and how he felt pretty rough about it.”

The truth is short. Lies are long. I wanted to get Torrance talking in long form, something Vincent had
successfully avoided. Jailhouse snitches have something in common with all con men and professional
liars. They seek to hide the con in misdirection and banter. They wrap cotton around their lies. But in all
of that fluff you often find the key to revealing the big lie.

Vincent objected again, saying the witness had already answered the questions I was asking and I was
simply badgering him at this point.

“Your Honor,” I responded, “this witness is putting a confession in my client’s mouth. As far as the
defense is concerned, this is the case right here. The court would be remiss if it did not allow me to fully
explore the content and context of such damaging testimony.”

Judge Companioni was nodding in agreement before I finished the last sentence. He overruled Vincent’s
objection and told me to proceed. I turned my attention back to the witness and spoke with impatience in
my voice.

“Mr. Torrance, you are still summarizing. You claim Mr. Woodson confessed to the murders. So then, tell
the jury what he said to you. What were the exact words he said to you when he confessed to this crime?”

Torrance nodded as if he were just then realizing what I was asking for.

“The first thing he said to me was ‘Man, I feel bad.’ And I said, ‘For what, my brother?’ He said he kept
thinking about those two guys. I didn’t know what he was talking about ’cause, like I said, I hadn’t heard
nothin’ about the case, you know? So I said, ‘What two guys?’ and he said, ‘The two niggers I dumped in
the reservoir.’ I asked what it was all about and he told me about blasting them both with a shorty and
wrappin’ them up in chicken wire and such. He said, ‘I made one bad mistake’ and I asked him what it
was. He said, ‘I shoulda taken a knife and opened up their bellies so they wouldn’t end up floatin’ to the
top the way they did.’ And that was what he told me.”

In my peripheral vision I had seen Vincent flinch in the middle of Torrance’s long answer. And I knew
why. I carefully moved in with the blade.

“Did Mr. Woodson use that word? He called the victims ‘niggers’?”

“Yeah, he said that.”

I hesitated as I worked on the phrasing of the next question. I knew Vincent was waiting to object if I
gave him the opening. I could not ask Torrance to interpret. I couldn’t use the word “why” when it came
to Woodson’s meaning or motivation. That was objectionable.

“Mr. Torrance, in the black community the word ‘nigger’ could mean different things, could it not?”
7
“ ’Spose.”

“Is that a yes?”

“Yes.”

“The defendant is African-American, correct?”

Torrance laughed.

“Looks like it to me.”

“As are you, correct, sir?”

Torrance started to laugh again.

“Since I was born,” he said.

The judge tapped his gavel once and looked at me.

“Mr. Haller, is this really necessary?”

“I apologize, Your Honor.”

“Please move on.”

“Mr. Torrance, when Mr. Woodson used that word, as you say he did, did it shock you?”

Torrance rubbed his chin as he thought about the question. Then he shook his head.

“Not really.”

“Why weren’t you shocked, Mr. Torrance?”

“I guess it’s ’cause I hear it all a’ time, man.”

“From other black men?”

“That’s right. I heard it from white folks, too.”

“Well, when fellow black men use that word, like you say Mr. Woodson did, who are they talking
about?”

Vincent objected, saying that Torrance could not speak for what other men were talking about.
Companioni sustained the objection and I took a moment to rework the path to the answer I wanted.

“Okay, Mr. Torrance,” I finally said. “Let’s talk only about you, then, okay? Do you use that word on
occasion?”

“I think I have.”

“All right, and when you have used it, who were you refer-ring to?”

8
Torrance shrugged.

“Other fellas.”

“Other black men?”

“That’s right.”

“Have you ever on occasion referred to white men as niggers?”

Torrance shook his head.

“No.”

“Okay, so then, what did you take the meaning to be when Barnett Woodson described the two men who
were dumped in the reservoir as niggers?”

Vincent moved in his seat, going through the body language of making an objection but not verbally
following through with it. He must have known it would be useless. I had led Torrance down the path and
he was mine.

Torrance answered the question.

“I took it that they were black and he killed ’em both.”

Now Vincent’s body language changed again. He sank a little bit in his seat because he knew his gamble
in putting a jailhouse snitch on the witness stand had just come up snake eyes.

I looked up at Judge Companioni. He knew what was coming as well.

“Your Honor, may I approach the witness?”

“You may,” the judge said.

I walked to the witness stand and put the file down in front of Torrance. It was legal size, well worn and
faded orange — a color used by county jailers to denote private legal documents that an inmate is
authorized to possess.

“Okay, Mr. Torrance, I have placed before you a file in which Mr. Woodson keeps discovery documents
provided to him in jail by his attorneys. I ask you once again if you recognize it.”

“I seen a lotta orange files in high-power. It don’t mean I seen that one.”

“You are saying you never saw Mr. Woodson with his file?”

“I don’t rightly remember.”

“Mr. Torrance, you were with Mr. Woodson in the same module for thirty-two days. You testified he
confided in you and confessed to you. Are you saying you never saw him with that file?”

He didn’t answer at first. I had backed him into a no-win corner. I waited. If he continued to claim he had
never seen the file, then his claim of a confession from Woodson would be suspect in the eyes of the jury.
If he finally conceded that he was familiar with the file, then he opened a big door for me.

9
“What’m saying is that I seen him with his file but I never looked at what was in it.”

Bang. I had him.

“Then, I’ll ask you to open the file and inspect it.”

The witness followed the instruction and looked from side to side at the open file. I went back to the
lectern, checking on Vincent on my way. His eyes were downcast and his face was pale.

“What do you see when you open the file, Mr. Torrance?”

“One side’s got photos of two bodies on the ground. They’re stapled in there — the photos, I mean. And
the other side is a bunch of documents and reports and such.”

“Could you read from the first document there on the right side? Just read the first line of the summary.”

“No, I can’t read.”

“You can’t read at all?”

“Not really. I didn’t get the schooling.”

“Can you read any of the words that are next to the boxes that are checked at the top of the summary?”

Torrance looked down at the file and his eyebrows came together in concentration. I knew that his
reading skills had been tested during his last stint in prison and were determined to be at the lowest
measurable level — below second-grade skills.

“Not really,” he said. “I can’t read.”

I quickly walked over to the defense table and grabbed another file and a Sharpie pen out of my briefcase.
I went back to the lectern and quickly printed the word CAUCASIAN on the outside of the file in large
block letters. I held the file up so that Torrance, as well as the jury, could see it.

“Mr. Torrance, this is one of the words checked on the summary. Can you read this word?”

Vincent immediately stood but Torrance was already shaking his head and looking thoroughly
humiliated. Vincent objected to the demonstration without proper foundation and Companioni sustained. I
expected him to. I was just laying the groundwork for my next move with the jury and I was sure most of
them had seen the witness shake his head.

“Okay, Mr. Torrance,” I said. “Let’s move to the other side of the file. Could you describe the bodies in
the photos?”

“Um, two men. It looks like they opened up some chicken wire and some tarps and they’re laying there.
A bunch a police is there investigatin’ and takin’ pictures.”

“What race are the men on the tarps?”

“They’re black.”

“Have you ever seen those photographs before, Mr. Torrance?”

10
Vincent stood to object to my question as having previously been asked and answered. But it was like
holding up a hand to stop a bullet. The judge sternly told him he could take his seat. It was his way of
telling the prosecutor he was going to have to just sit back and take what was coming. You put the liar on
the stand, you take the fall with him.

“You may answer the question, Mr. Torrance,” I said after Vincent sat down. “Have you ever seen those
photographs before?”

“No, sir, not before right now.”

“Would you agree that the pictures portray what you described to us earlier? That being the bodies of two
slain black men?”

“That’s what it looks like. But I ain’t seen the picture before, just what he tell me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Something like these I wouldn’t forget.”

“You’ve told us Mr. Woodson confessed to killing two black men, but he is on trial for killing two white
men. Wouldn’t you agree that it appears that he didn’t confess to you at all?”

“No, he confessed. He told me he killed those two.”

I looked up at the judge.

“Your Honor, the defense asks that the file in front of Mr. Torrance be admitted into evidence as defense
exhibit one.”

Vincent made a lack-of-foundation objection but Companioni overruled.

“It will be admitted and we’ll let the jury decide whether Mr. Torrance has or hasn’t seen the photographs
and contents of the file.”

I was on a roll and decided to go all in.

“Thank you,” I said. “Your Honor, now might also be a good time for the prosecutor to reacquaint his
witness with the penalties for perjury.”

It was a dramatic move made for the benefit of the jury. I was expecting I would have to continue with
Torrance and eviscerate him with the blade of his own lie. But Vincent stood and asked the judge to
recess the trial while he conferred with opposing counsel.

This told me I had just saved Barnett Woodson’s life.

“The defense has no objection,” I told the judge.

Three

11
After the jury filed out of the box, I returned to the defense table as the courtroom deputy was moving in
to cuff my client and take him back to the courtroom holding cell.

“That guy’s a lying sack of shit,” Woodson whispered to me. “I didn’t kill two black guys. They were
white.”

My hope was that the deputy hadn’t heard that.

“Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” I whispered right back. “And next time you see that lying sack of shit
in lockup, you ought to shake his hand. Because of his lies the prosecutor’s about to come off of the death
penalty and float a deal. I’ll be back there to tell you about it as soon as I get it.”

Woodson shook his head dramatically.

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t want no deal now. They put a goddamn liar on the stand, man. This whole
case should go down the toilet. We can win this motherfucker, Haller. Don’t take no deal.”

I stared at Woodson for a moment. I had just saved his life but he wanted more. He felt entitled because
the state hadn’t played fair — never mind responsibility for the two kids he had just admitted to killing.

“Don’t get greedy, Barnett,” I told him. “I’ll be back with the news as soon as I get it.”

The deputy took him through the steel door that led to the holding cells attached to the courtroom. I
watched him go. I had no false conceptions about Barnett Woodson. I had never directly asked him but I
knew he had killed those two Westside boys. That wasn’t my concern. My job was to test the state’s case
against him with the best of my skills — that’s how the system worked. I had done that and had been
given the blade. I would now use it to improve his situation significantly, but Woodson’s dream of
walking away from those two bodies that had turned black in the water was not in the cards. He might not
have understood this but his underpaid and underappreciated public defender certainly did.

After the courtroom cleared, Vincent and I were left looking at each other from our respective tables.

“So,” I said.

Vincent shook his head.

“First of all,” he said. “I want to make it clear that obviously I didn’t know Torrance was lying.”

“Sure.”

“Why would I sabotage my own case like this?”

I waved off the mea culpa.

“Look, Jerry, don’t bother. I told you in pretrial that the guy had copped the discovery my client had in
his cell. It’s common sense. My guy wouldn’t have said shit to your guy, a perfect stranger, and
everybody knew it except you.”

Vincent emphatically shook his head.

“I did not know it, Haller. He came forward, was vetted by one of our best investigators, and there was no
indication of a lie, no matter how improbable it would seem that your client talked to him.”

12
I laughed that off in an unfriendly way.

“Not ‘talked’ to him, Jerry. Confessed to him. A little difference there. So you better check with this
prized investigator of yours because he isn’t worth the county paycheck.”

“Look, he told me the guy couldn’t read, so there was no way he could have gotten what he knew out of
the discovery. He didn’t mention the photos.”

“Exactly, and that’s why you should find yourself a new investigator. And I’ll tell you what, Jerry. I’m
usually pretty reasonable about this sort of stuff. I try to go along to get along with the DA’s office. But I
gave you fair warning about this guy. So after the break, I’m going to gut him right there on the stand and
all you’re going to be able to do is sit there and watch.”

I was in full outrage now, and a lot of it was real.

“It’s called ‘rope a dope.’ But when I’m done with Torrance, he’s not the only one who’s going to look
like a dope. That jury’s going to know that you either knew this guy was a liar or you were too dumb to
realize it. Either way, you’re not coming off too good.”

Vincent looked down blankly at the prosecution table and calmly straightened the case files stacked in
front of him. He spoke in a quiet voice.

“I don’t want you going forward with the cross,” he said.

“Fine. Then, cut the denials and the bullshit and give me a dispo I can—”

“I’ll drop the death penalty. Twenty-five to life without.”

I shook my head without hesitation.

“That’s not going to do it. The last thing Woodson said before they took him back was that he was willing
to roll the dice. To be exact, he said, ‘We can win this motherfucker.’ And I think he could be right.”

“Then, what do you want, Haller?”

“I’ll go fifteen max. I think I can sell that to him.”

Vincent emphatically shook his head.

“No way. They’ll send me back to filing buy-busts if I give you that for two cold-blooded murders. My
best offer is twenty-five with parole. That’s it. Under current guidelines he could be out in sixteen,
seventeen years. Not bad for what he did, killing two kids like that.”

I looked at him, trying to read his face, looking for the tell. I decided I believed it was going to be the best
he would do. And he was right, it wasn’t a bad deal for what Barnett Woodson had done.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I think he’ll say roll the dice.”

Vincent shook his head and looked at me.

“Then, you’ll have to sell it to him, Haller. Because I can’t go lower and if you continue the cross, then
my career in the DA’s office is probably finished.”

Now I hesitated before responding.

13
“Wait a minute, what are you saying, Jerry? That I have to clean your mess up for you? I catch you with
your pants around your ankles and it’s my client that has to take it in the ass?”

“I’m saying it’s a fair offer to a man who is guilty as sin. More than fair. Go talk to him and work your
magic, Mick. Convince him. We both know you’re not long for the Public Defenders Office. You might
need a favor from me someday when you’re out there in the big bad world with no steady paycheck
coming in.”

I just stared back at him, registering the quid pro quo of the offer. I help him and somewhere down the
line he helps me, and Barnett Woodson does an extra couple of years in stir.

“He’ll be lucky to last five years in there, let alone twenty,” Vincent said. “What’s the difference to him?
But you and I? We’re going places, Mickey. We can help each other here.”

I nodded slowly. Vincent was only a few years older than me but was trying to act like some kind of wise
old sage.

“The thing is, Jerry, if I did what you suggest, then I’d never be able to look another client in the eye
again. I think I’d end up being the dope that got roped.”

I stood up and gathered my files. My plan was to go back and tell Barnett Woodson to roll the dice and let
me see what I could do.

“I’ll see you after the break,” I said.

And then I walked away.

PART TWO
—Suitcase City

2007

Four

It was a little early in the week for Lorna Taylor to be calling and checking on me. Usually she waited
until at least Thursday. Never Tuesday. I picked up the phone, thinking it was more than a check-in call.

“Lorna?”

“Mickey, where’ve you been? I’ve been calling all morning.”

“I went for my run. I just got out of the shower. You okay?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“Sure. What is—?”

“You got a forthwith from Judge Holder. She wants to see you — like an hour ago.”
14
This gave me pause.

“About what?”

“I don’t know. All I know is first Michaela called, then the judge herself called. That usually doesn’t
happen. She wanted to know why you weren’t responding.”

I knew that Michaela was Michaela Gill, the judge’s clerk. And Mary Townes Holder was the chief judge
of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The fact that she had called personally didn’t make it sound like they
were inviting me to the annual justice ball. Mary Townes Holder didn’t call lawyers without a good
reason.

“What did you tell her?”

“I just said you didn’t have court today and you might be out on the golf course.”

“I don’t play golf, Lorna.”

“Look, I couldn’t think of anything.”

“It’s all right, I’ll call the judge. Give me the number.”

“Mickey, don’t call. Just go. The judge wants to see you in chambers. She was very clear about that and
she wouldn’t tell me why. So just go.”

“Okay, I’m going. I have to get dressed.”

“Mickey?”

“What?”

“How are you really doing?”

I knew her code. I knew what she was asking. She didn’t want me appearing in front of a judge if I wasn’t
ready for it.

“You don’t have to worry, Lorna. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Call me and let me know what is going on as soon as you can.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

I hung up the phone, feeling like I was being bossed around by my wife, not my ex-wife.

Five

As the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge Mary Townes Holder did most of her work
behind closed doors. Her courtroom was used on occasion for emergency hearings on motions but rarely
used for trials. Her work was done out of the view of the public. In chambers. Her job largely pertained to
15
the administration of the justice system in Los Angeles County. More than two hundred fifty judgeships
and forty courthouses fell under her purview. Every jury summons that went into the mail had her name
on it, and every assigned parking space in a courthouse garage had her approval. She assigned judges by
both geography and designation of law — criminal, civil, juvenile and family. When judges were newly
elected to the bench, it was Judge Holder who decided whether they sat in Beverly Hills or Compton, and
whether they heard high-stakes financial cases in civil court or soul-draining divorce cases in family
court.

I had dressed quickly in what I considered my lucky suit. It was an Italian import from Corneliani that I
used to wear on verdict days. Since I hadn’t been in court for a year, or heard a verdict for even longer, I
had to take it out of a plastic bag hanging in the back of the closet. After that I sped downtown without
delay, thinking that I might be headed toward some sort of verdict on myself. As I drove, my mind raced
over the cases and clients I had left behind a year earlier. As far as I knew, nothing had been left open or
on the table. But maybe there had been a complaint or the judge had picked up on some courthouse gossip
and was running her own inquiry. Regardless, I entered Holder’s courtroom with a lot of trepidation. A
summons from any judge was usually not good news; a summons from the chief judge was even worse.

The courtroom was dark and the clerk’s pod next to the bench was empty. I walked through the gate and
was heading toward the door to the back hallway, when it opened and the clerk stepped through it.
Michaela Gill was a pleasant-looking woman who reminded me of my third-grade teacher. But she wasn’t
expecting to find a man approaching the other side of the door when she opened it. She startled and nearly
let out a shriek. I quickly identified myself before she could make a run for the panic button on the
judge’s bench. She caught her breath and then ushered me back without delay.

I walked down the hallway and found the judge alone in her chambers, working at a massive desk made
of dark wood. Her black robe was hanging on a hat rack in the corner. She was dressed in a maroon suit
with a conservative cut. She was attractive and neat, midfifties with a slim build and brown hair kept in a
short, no-nonsense style.

I had never met Judge Holder before but I knew about her. She had put twenty years in as a prosecutor
before being appointed to the bench by a conservative governor. She presided over criminal cases, had a
few of the big ones, and was known for handing out maximum sentences. Consequently, she had been
easily retained by the electorate after her first term. She had been elected chief judge four years later and
had held the position ever since.

“Mr. Haller, thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m glad your secretary finally found you.”

There was an impatient if not imperious tone to her voice.

“She’s not actually my secretary, Judge. But she found me. Sorry it took so long.”

“Well, you’re here. I don’t believe we have met before, have we?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, this will betray my age but I actually opposed your father in a trial once. One of his last cases, I
believe.”

I had to readjust my estimate of her age. She would have to be at least sixty if she had ever been in a
courtroom with my father.

“I was actually third chair on a case, just out of USC Law and green as can be. They were trying to give
me some trial exposure. It was a murder case and they let me handle one witness. I prepared a week for

16
my examination and your father destroyed the man on cross in ten minutes. We won the case but I never
forgot the lesson. Be prepared for anything.”

I nodded. Over the years I had met several older lawyers who had Mickey Haller Sr. stories to share. I had
very few of my own. Before I could ask the judge about the case on which she’d met him, she pressed on.

“But that’s not why I called you here,” she said.

“I didn’t think so, Judge. It sounded like you have something … kind of urgent?”

“I do. Did you know Jerry Vincent?”

I was immediately thrown by her use of the past tense.

“Jerry? Yes, I know Jerry. What about him?”

“He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Murdered, actually.”

“When?”

“Last night. I’m sorry.”

My eyes dropped and I looked at the nameplate on her desk. Honorable M. T. Holder was carved in script
into a two-dimensional wooden display that held a ceremonial gavel and a fountain pen and inkwell.

“How close were you?” she asked.

It was a good question and I didn’t really know the answer. I kept my eyes down as I spoke.

“We had cases against each other when he was with the DA and I was at the PD. We both left for private
practice around the same time and both of us had one-man shops. Over the years we worked some cases
together, a couple of drug trials, and we sort of covered for each other when it was needed. He threw me a
case occasionally when it was something he didn’t want to handle.”

I had had a professional relationship with Jerry Vincent. Every now and then we clicked glasses at Four
Green Fields or saw each other at a ball game at Dodger Stadium. But for me to say we were close would
have been an exaggeration. I knew little about him outside of the world of law. I had heard about a
divorce a while back on the courthouse gossip line but had never even asked him about it. That was
personal information and I didn’t need to know it.

“You seem to forget, Mr. Haller, but I was with the DA back when Mr. Vincent was a young up-and-
comer. But then he lost a big case and his star faded. That was when he left for private practice.”

I looked at the judge but said nothing.

“And I seem to recall that you were the defense attorney on that case,” she added.

I nodded.

17
“Barnett Woodson. I got an acquittal on a double murder. He walked out of the courtroom and
sarcastically apologized to the media for getting away with murder. He had to rub the DA’s face in it and
that pretty much ended Jerry’s career as a prosecutor.”

“Then, why would he ever work with you or throw you cases?”

“Because, Judge, by ending his career as a prosecutor, I started his career as a defense attorney.”

I left it at that but it wasn’t enough for her.

“And?”

“And a couple of years later he was making about five times what he had made with the DA. He called
me up one day and thanked me for showing him the light.”

The judge nodded knowingly.

“It came down to money. He wanted the money.”

I shrugged like I was uncomfortable answering for a dead man and didn’t respond.

“What happened to your client?” the judge asked. “What became of the man who got away with murder?”

“He would’ve been better off taking a conviction. Woodson got killed in a drive-by about two months
after the acquittal.”

The judge nodded again, this time as if to say end of story, justice served. I tried to put the focus back on
Jerry Vincent.

“I can’t believe this about Jerry. Do you know what happened?”

“That’s not clear. He was apparently found late last night in his car in the garage at his office. He had
been shot to death. I am told that the police are still there at the crime scene and there have been no
arrests. All of this comes from a Times reporter who called my chambers to make an inquiry about what
will happen now with Mr. Vincent’s clients — especially Walter Elliot.”

I nodded. For the last twelve months I had been in a vacuum but it wasn’t so airtight that I hadn’t heard
about the movie mogul murder case. It was just one in a string of big-time cases Vincent had scored over
the years. Despite the Woodson fiasco, his pedigree as a high profile prosecutor had set him up from the
start as an upper-echelon criminal defense attorney. He didn’t have to go looking for clients; they came
looking for him. And usually they were clients who could pay or had something to say, meaning they had
at least one of three attributes: They could pay top dollar for legal representation, they were demonstrably
innocent of the charges lodged against them, or they were clearly guilty but had public opinion and
sentiment on their side. These were clients he could get behind and forthrightly defend no matter what
they were accused of. Clients who didn’t make him feel greasy at the end of the day.

And Walter Elliot qualified for at least one of those attributes. He was the chairman/owner of Archway
Pictures and a very powerful man in Hollywood. He had been charged with murdering his wife and her
lover in a fit of rage after discovering them together in a Malibu beach house. The case had all sorts of
connections to sex and celebrity and was drawing wide media attention. It had been a publicity machine
for Vincent and now it would go up for grabs.

The judge broke through my reverie.

18
“Are you familiar with RPC two-three-hundred?” she asked.

I involuntarily gave myself away by squinting my eyes at the question.

“Uh … not exactly.”

“Let me refresh your memory. It is the section of the California bar’s rules of professional conduct
referring to the transfer or sale of a law practice. We, of course, are talking about a transfer in this case.
Mr. Vincent apparently named you as his second in his standard contract of representation. This allowed
you to cover for him when he needed it and included you, if necessary, in the attorney-client relationship.
Additionally, I have found that he filed a motion with the court ten years ago that allowed for the transfer
of his practice to you should he become incapacitated or deceased. The motion has never been altered or
updated, but it’s clear what his intentions were.”

I just stared at her. I knew about the clause in Vincent’s standard contract. I had the same in mine, naming
him. But what I realized was that the judge was telling me that I now had Jerry’s cases. All of them,
Walter Elliot included.

This, of course, did not mean I would keep all of the cases. Each client would be free to move on to
another attorney of their choosing once apprised of Vincent’s demise. But it meant that I would have the
first shot at them.

I started thinking about things. I hadn’t had a client in a year and the plan was to start back slow, not with
a full caseload like the one I had apparently just inherited.

“However,” the judge said, “before you get too excited about this proposition, I must tell you that I would
be remiss in my role as chief judge if I did not make every effort to ensure that Mr. Vincent’s clients were
transferred to a replacement counsel of good standing and competent skill.”

Now I understood. She had called me in to explain why I would not be appointed to Vincent’s clients.
She was going to go against the dead lawyer’s wishes and appoint somebody else, most likely one of the
high-dollar contributors to her last reelection campaign. Last I had checked, I’d contributed exactly
nothing to her coffers over the years.

But then the judge surprised me.

“I’ve checked with some of the judges,” she said, “and I am aware that you have not been practicing law
for almost a year. I have found no explanation for this. Before I issue the order appointing you
replacement counsel in this matter, I need to be assured that I am not turning Mr. Vincent’s clients over to
the wrong man.”

I nodded in agreement, hoping it would buy me a little time before I had to respond.

“Judge, you’re right. I sort of took myself out of the game for a while. But I just started taking steps to get
back in.”

“Why did you take yourself out?”

She asked it bluntly, her eyes holding mine and looking for anything that would indicate evasion of the
truth in my answer. I spoke very carefully.

“Judge, I had a case a couple years ago. The client’s name was Louis Roulet. He was—”

19
“I remember the case, Mr. Haller. You got shot. But, as you say, that was a couple years ago. I seem to
remember you practicing law for some time after that. I remember the news stories about you coming
back to the job.”

“Well,” I said, “what happened is I came back too soon. I had been gut shot, Judge, and I should’ve taken
my time. Instead, I hurried back and the next thing I knew I started having pain and the doctors said I had
a hernia. So I had an operation for that and there were complications. They did it wrong. There was even
more pain and another operation and, well, to make a long story short, it knocked me down for a while. I
decided the second time not to come back until I was sure I was ready.”

The judge nodded sympathetically. I guessed I had been right to leave out the part about my addiction to
pain pills and the stint in rehab.

“Money wasn’t an issue,” I said. “I had some savings and I also got a settlement from the insurance
company. So I took my time coming back. But I’m ready. I was just about to take the back cover of the
Yellow Pages.”

“Then, I guess inheriting an entire practice is quite convenient, isn’t it?” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to her question or the smarmy tone in which she said it.

“All I can tell you, Judge, is that I would take good care of Jerry Vincent’s clients.”

The judge nodded but she didn’t look at me as she did so. I knew the tell. She knew something. And it
bothered her. Maybe she knew about the rehab.

“According to bar records, you’ve been disciplined several times,” she said.

Here we were again. She was back to throwing the cases to another lawyer. Probably some campaign
contributor from Century City who couldn’t find his way around a criminal proceeding if his Riviera
membership depended on it.

“All of it ancient history, Judge. All of it technicalities. I’m in good standing with the bar. If you called
them today, then I’m sure you were told that.”

She stared at me for a long moment before dropping her eyes to the document in front of her on the desk.

“Very well, then,” she said.

She scribbled a signature on the last page of the document. I felt the flutter of excitement begin to build in
my chest.

“Here is an order transferring the practice to you,” the judge said. “You might need it when you go to his
office. And let me tell you this. I am going to be monitoring you. I want an updated inventory of cases by
the beginning of next week. The status of every case on the client list. I want to know which clients will
work with you and which will find other representation. After that, I want biweekly status updates on all
cases in which you remain counsel. Am I being clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Judge. For how long?”

“What?”

“For how long do you want me to give you biweekly updates?”

20
She stared at me and her face hardened.

“Until I tell you to stop.”

She handed me the order.

“You can go now, Mr. Haller, and if I were you, I would get over there and protect my new clients from
any unlawful search and seizure of their files by the police. If you have any problem, you can always call
on me. I have put my after-hours number on the order.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

“Good luck, Mr. Haller.”

I stood up and headed out of the room. When I got to the doorway of her chambers I glanced back at her.
She had her head down and was working on the next court order.

Out in the courthouse hallway, I read the two-page document the judge had given me, confirming that
what had just happened was real.

It was. The document I held appointed me substitute counsel, at least temporarily, on all of Jerry
Vincent’s cases. It granted me immediate access to the fallen attorney’s office, files and bank accounts
into which client advances had been deposited.

I pulled out my cell phone and called Lorna Taylor. I asked her to look up the address of Jerry Vincent’s
office. She gave it to me and I told her to meet me there and to pick up two sandwiches on her way.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I haven’t had lunch.”

“No, why are we going to Jerry Vincent’s office?”

“Because we’re back in business.”

Six

I was in my Lincoln driving toward Jerry Vincent’s office, when I thought of something and called Lorna
Taylor back. When she didn’t answer I called her cell and caught her in her car.

“I’m going to need an investigator. How would you feel if I called Cisco?”

There was a hesitation before she answered. Cisco was Dennis Wojciechowski, her significant other as of
the past year. I was the one who had introduced them when I used him on a case. Last I heard, they were
now living together.

“Well, I have no problem working with Cisco. But I wish you would tell me what this is all about.”

21
Lorna knew Jerry Vincent as a voice on the phone. It was she who would take his calls when he was
checking to see if I could stand in on a sentence or babysit a client through an arraignment. I couldn’t
remember if they had ever met in person. I had wanted to tell her the news in person but things were
moving too quickly for that.

“Jerry Vincent is dead.”

“What?”

“He was murdered last night and I’m getting first shot at all of his cases. Including Walter Elliot.”

She was silent for a long moment before responding.

“My God…. How? He was such a nice man.”

“I couldn’t remember if you had ever met him.”

Lorna worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. All my calls and billing went through her. If there
was a brick-and-mortar office for the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates, then her place was it.
But there weren’t any associates and when I worked, my office was the backseat of my car. This left few
occasions for Lorna to meet face-to-face with any of the people I represented or associated with.

“He came to our wedding, don’t you remember?”

“That’s right. I forgot.”

“I can’t believe this. What happened?”

“I don’t know. Holder said he was shot in the garage at his office. Maybe I’ll find out something when I
get there.”

“Did he have a family?”

“I think he was divorced but I don’t know if there were kids or what. I don’t think so.”

Lorna didn’t say anything. We both had our own thoughts occupying us.

“Let me go so I can call Cisco,” I finally said. “Do you know what he’s doing today?”

“No, he didn’t say.”

“All right, I’ll see.”

“What kind of sandwich do you want?”

“Which way you coming?”

“Sunset.”

“Stop at Dusty’s and get me one of those turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce. It’s been almost a year
since I’ve had one of those.”

“You got it.”

22
“And get something for Cisco in case he’s hungry.”

“All right.”

I hung up and looked up the number for Dennis Wojciechowski in the address book I keep in the center
console compartment. I had his cell phone. When he answered I heard a mixture of wind and exhaust
blast in the phone. He was on his bike and even though I knew his helmet was set up with an earpiece and
mike attached to his cell, I had to yell.

“It’s Mickey Haller. Pull over.”

I waited and heard him cut the engine on his ’sixty-three panhead.

“What’s up, Mick?” he asked when it finally got quiet. “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”

“You gotta put the baffles back in your pipes, man. Or you’ll be deaf before you’re forty and then you
won’t be hearing from anybody.”

“I’m already past forty and I hear you just fine. What’s going on?”

Wojciechowski was a freelance defense investigator I had used on a few cases. That was how he had met
Lorna, collecting his pay. But I had known him for more than ten years before that because of his
association with the Road Saints Motorcycle Club, a group for which I served as a de facto house counsel
for several years. Dennis never flew RSMC colors but was considered an associate member. The group
even bestowed a nickname on him, largely because there was already a Dennis in the membership —
known, of course, as Dennis the Menace — and his last name, Wojciechowski, was intolerably difficult to
pronounce. Riffing off his dark looks and mustache, they christened him the Cisco Kid. It didn’t matter
that he was one hundred percent Polish out of the south side of Milwaukee.

Cisco was a big, imposing man but he kept his nose clean while riding with the Saints. He never caught
an arrest record and that paid off when he later applied to the state for his private investigator’s license.
Now, many years later, the long hair was gone and the mustache was trimmed and going gray. But the
name Cisco and the penchant for riding classic Harleys built in his hometown had stuck for life.

Cisco was a thorough and thoughtful investigator. And he had another value as well. He was big and
strong and could be physically intimidating when necessary. That attribute could be highly useful when
tracking down and dealing with people who fluttered around the edges of a criminal case.

“First of all, where are you?” I asked.

“Burbank.”

“You on a case?”

“No, just a ride. Why, you got something for me? You taking on a case finally?”

“A lot of cases. And I’m going to need an investigator.”

I gave him the address of Vincent’s office and told him to meet me there as soon as he could. I knew that
Vincent would have used either a stable of investigators or just one in particular, and that there might be a
loss of time as Cisco got up to speed on the cases, but all of that was okay with me. I wanted an
investigator I could trust and already had a working relationship with. I was also going to need Cisco to
immediately start work by running down the locations of my new clients. My experience with criminal

23
defendants is that they are not always found at the addresses they put down on the client info sheet when
they first sign up for legal representation.

After closing the phone I realized I had driven right by the building where Vincent’s office was located. It
was on Broadway near Third Street and there was too much traffic with cars and pedestrians for me to
attempt a U-turn. I wasted ten minutes working my way back to it, catching red lights at every corner. By
the time I got to the right place, I was so frustrated that I resolved to hire a driver again as soon as
possible so that I could concentrate on cases instead of addresses.

Vincent’s office was in a six-story structure called simply the Legal Center. Being so close to the main
downtown courthouses — both criminal and civil — meant it was a building full of trial lawyers. Just the
kind of place most cops and doctors — lawyer haters — probably wished would implode every time there
was an earthquake. I saw the opening for the parking garage next door and pulled in.

As I was taking the ticket out of the machine, a uniformed police officer approached my car. He was
carrying a clipboard.

“Sir? Do you have business in the building here?”

“That’s why I’m parking here.”

“Sir, could you state your business?”

“What business is it of yours, Officer?”

“Sir, we are conducting a crime scene investigation in the garage and I need to know your business before
I can allow you in.”

“My office is in the building,” I said. “Will that do?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had Judge Holder’s court order in my coat pocket. That gave me an office in the
building.

The answer seemed to work. The cop asked to see my ID and I could’ve argued that he had no right to
request my identification but decided that there was no need to make a federal case out of it. I pulled my
wallet and gave him the ID and he wrote my name and driver’s license number down on his clipboard.
Then he let me through.

“At the moment there’s no parking on the second level,” he said. “They haven’t cleared the scene.”

I waved and headed up the ramp. When I reached the second floor, I saw that it was empty of vehicles
except for two patrol cars and a black BMW coupe that was being hauled onto the bed of a truck from the
police garage. Jerry Vincent’s car, I assumed. Two other uniformed cops were just beginning to pull
down the yellow crime scene tape that had been used to cordon off the parking level. One of them
signaled for me to keep going. I saw no detectives around but the police weren’t giving up the murder
scene just yet.

I kept going up and didn’t find a space I could fit the Lincoln into until I got to the fifth floor. One more
reason I needed to get a driver again.

The office I was looking for was on the second floor at the front of the building. The opaque glass door
was closed but not locked. I entered a reception room with an empty sitting area and a nearby counter
behind which sat a woman whose eyes were red from crying. She was on the phone but when she saw me,
she put it down on the counter without so much as a “hold on” to whomever she was talking to.
24
“Are you with the police?” she asked.

“No, I’m not,” I replied.

“Then, I’m sorry, the office is closed today.”

I approached the counter, pulling the court order from Judge Holder out of the inside pocket of my suit
coat.

“Not for me,” I said as I handed it to her.

She unfolded the document and stared at it but didn’t seem to be reading it. I noticed that in one of her
hands she clutched a wad of tissues.

“What is this?” she asked.

“That’s a court order,” I said. “My name is Michael Haller and Judge Holder has appointed me
replacement counsel in regard to Jerry Vincent’s clients. That means we’ll be working together. You can
call me Mickey.”

She shook her head as if warding off some invisible threat. My name usually didn’t carry that sort of
power.

“You can’t do this. Mr. Vincent wouldn’t want this.”

I took the court papers out of her hand and refolded them. I started putting the document back into my
pocket.

“Actually, I can. The chief judge of Los Angeles Superior Court has directed me to do this. And if you
look closely at the contracts of representation that Mr. Vincent had his clients sign, you will find my
name already on them, listed as associate counsel. So, what you think Mr. Vincent would have wanted is
immaterial at this point because he did in fact file the papers that named me his replacement should he
become incapacitated or … dead.”

The woman had a dazed look on her face. Her mascara was heavy and running beneath one eye. It gave
her an uneven, almost comical look. For some reason a vision of Liza Minnelli jumped to my mind.

“If you want, you can call Judge Holder’s clerk and talk about it with her,” I said. “Meantime, I really
need to get started here. I know this has been a very difficult day for you. It’s been difficult for me — I
knew Jerry going back to his days at the DA. So you have my sympathy.”

I nodded and looked at her and waited for a response but I still wasn’t getting one. I pressed on.

“I’m going to need some things to get started here. First of all, his calendar. I want to put together a list of
all the active cases Jerry was handling. Then, I’m going to need you to pull the files for those—”

“It’s gone,” she said abruptly.

“What’s gone?”

“His laptop. The police told me whoever did this took his briefcase out of the car. He kept everything on
his laptop.”

“You mean his calendar? He didn’t keep a hard copy?”

25
“That’s gone, too. They took his portfolio. That was in the briefcase.”

Her eyes were staring blankly ahead. I tapped the top of the computer screen on her desk.

“What about this computer?” I asked. “Didn’t he back up his calendar anywhere?”

She didn’t say anything, so I asked again.

“Did Jerry back up his calendar anywhere else? Is there any way to access it?”

She finally looked up at me and seemed to take pleasure in responding.

“I didn’t keep the calendar. He did. He kept it all on his laptop and he kept a hard copy in the old portfolio
he carried. But they’re both gone. The police made me look everywhere in here but they’re gone.”

I nodded. The missing calendar was going to be a problem but it wasn’t insurmountable.

“What about files? Did he have any in the briefcase?”

“I don’t think so. He kept all the files here.”

“Okay, good. What we’re going to have to do is pull all the active cases and rebuild the calendar from the
files. I’ll also need to see any ledgers or checkbooks pertaining to the trust and operating accounts.”

She looked up at me sharply.

“You’re not going to take his money.”

“It’s not—”

I stopped, took a deep breath and then started again in a calm but direct tone.

“First of all, I apologize. I did this backwards. I don’t even know your name. Let’s start over. What is
your name?”

“Wren.”

“Wren? Wren what?”

“Wren Williams.”

“Okay, Wren, let me explain something. It’s not his money. It’s his clients’ money and until they say
otherwise, his clients are now my clients. Do you understand? Now, I have told you that I am aware of the
emotional upheaval of the day and the shock you are experiencing. I’m experiencing some of it myself.
But you need to decide right now if you are with me or against me, Wren. Because if you are with me, I
need you to get me the things I asked for. And I’m going to need you to work with my case manager
when she gets here. If you are against me, then I need you just to go home right now.”

She slowly shook her head.

“The detectives told me I had to stay until they were finished.”

“What detectives? There were only a couple uniforms left out there when I drove in.”

26
“The detectives in Mr. Vincent’s office.”

“You let—”

I didn’t finish. I stepped around the counter and headed toward two separate doors on the back wall. I
picked the one on the left and opened it.

I walked into Jerry Vincent’s office. It was large and opulent and empty. I turned in a full circle until I
found myself staring into the bugged eyes of a large fish mounted on the wall over a dark wood credenza
next to the door I had come through. The fish was a beautiful green with a white underbelly. Its body was
arched as if it had frozen solid just at the moment it had jumped out of the water. Its mouth was open so
wide I could have put my fist in it.

Mounted on the wall beneath the fish was a brass plate. It said:

IF I’D KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT I WOULDN’T BE HERE

Words to live by, I thought. Most criminal defendants talk their way into prison. Few talk their way out.
The best single piece of advice I have ever given a client is to just keep your mouth shut. Talk to no one
about your case, not even your own wife. You keep close counsel with yourself. You take the nickel and
you live to fight another day.

The unmistakable sound of a metal drawer being rolled and then banged closed spun me back around. On
the other side of the room were two more doors. Both were open about a foot and through one I could see
a darkened bathroom. Through the other I could see light.

I approached the lighted room quickly and pushed the door all the way open. It was the file room, a large,
windowless walk-in closet with rows of steel filing cabinets going down both sides. A small worktable
was set up against the back wall.

There were two men sitting at the worktable. One old, one young. Probably one to teach and one to learn.
They had their jackets off and draped over the chairs. I saw their guns and holsters and their badges
clipped to their belts.

“What are you doing?” I asked gruffly.

The men looked up from their reading. I saw a stack of files on the table between them. The older
detective’s eyes momentarily widened in surprise when he saw me.

“LAPD,” he said. “And I guess I should ask you the same question.”

“Those are my files and you’re going to have to put them down right now.”

The older man stood up and came toward me. I started pulling the court order from my jacket again.

“My name is—”

“I know who you are,” the detective said. “But I still don’t know what you’re doing here.”

I handed him the court order.

“Then, this should explain it. I’ve been appointed by the chief judge of the superior court as replacement
counsel to Jerry Vincent’s clients. That means his cases are now my cases. And you have no right to be in

27
here looking through files. That is a clear violation of my clients’ right to protection against unlawful
search and seizure. These files contain privileged attorney-client communications and information.”

The detective didn’t bother looking at the paperwork. He quickly flipped through it to the signature and
seal on the last page. He didn’t seem all that impressed.

“Vincent’s been murdered,” he said. “The motive could be sitting in one of these files. The identity of the
killer could be in one of them. We have to—”

“No, you don’t. What you have to do is get out of this file room right now.”

The detective didn’t move a muscle.

“I consider this part of a crime scene,” he said. “It’s you who has to leave.”

“Read the order, Detective. I’m not going anywhere. Your crime scene is out in the garage, and no judge
in L.A. would let you extend it to this office and these files. It’s time for you to leave and for me to take
care of my clients.”

He made no move to read the court order or to vacate the premises.

“If I leave,” he said, “I’m going to shut this place down and seal it.”

I hated getting into pissing matches with cops but sometimes there was no choice.

“You do that and I’ll have it unsealed in an hour. And you’ll be standing in front of the chief judge of the
superior court explaining how you trampled on the rights of every one of Vincent’s clients. You know,
depending on how many clients we’re talking about, that might be a record — even for the LAPD.”

The detective smiled at me like he was mildly amused by my threats. He held up the court order.

“You say this gives you all of these cases?”

“That’s right, for now.”

“The entire law practice?”

“Yes, but each client will decide whether to stick with me or find someone else.”

“Well, I guess that puts you on our list.”

“What list?”

“Our suspect list.”

“That’s ridiculous. Why would I be on it?”

“You just told us why. You inherited all of the victim’s clients. That’s got to amount to some sort of a
financial windfall, doesn’t it? He’s dead and you get the whole business. Think that’s enough motivation
for murder? Care to tell us where you were last night between eight and midnight?”

He grinned at me again without any warmth, giving me that cop’s practiced smile of judgment. His brown
eyes were so dark I couldn’t see the line between iris and pupil. Like shark eyes, they didn’t seem to carry
or reflect any light.
28
“I’m not even going to begin to explain how ludicrous that is,” I said. “But for starters you can check with
the judge and you’ll find out that I didn’t even know I was in line for this.”

“So you say. But don’t worry, we’ll be checking you out completely.”

“Good. Now please leave this room or I make the call to the judge.”

The detective stepped back to the table and took his jacket off the chair. He carried it rather than put it on.
He picked a file up off the table and brought it toward me. He shoved it into my chest until I took it from
him.

“Here’s one of your new files back, Counselor. Don’t choke on it.”

He stepped through the door, and his partner went with him. I followed them out into the office and
decided to take a shot at reducing the tension. I had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last time I saw them.

“Look, detectives, I’m sorry it’s like this. I try to have a good relationship with the police and I am sure
we can work something out. But at the moment my obligation is to the clients. I don’t even know what I
have here. Give me some time to—”

“We don’t have time,” the older man said. “We lose momentum and we lose the case. Do you understand
what you’re getting yourself into here, Counselor?”

I looked at him for a moment, trying to understand the meaning behind his question.

“I think so, Detective. I’ve only been working cases for about eighteen years but—”

“I’m not talking about your experience. I’m talking about what happened in that garage. Whoever killed
Vincent was waiting for him out there. They knew where he was and just how to get to him. He was
ambushed.”

I nodded like I understood.

“If I were you,” the detective said, “I’d watch myself with those new clients of yours. Jerry Vincent knew
his killer.”

“What about when he was a prosecutor? He put people in prison. Maybe one of—”

“We’ll check into it. But that was a long time ago. I think the person we’re looking for is in those files.”

With that, he and his partner started moving toward the door.

“Wait,” I said. “You have a card? Give me a card.”

The detectives stopped and turned back. The older one pulled a card out of his pocket and gave it to me.

“That’s got all my numbers.”

“Let me just get the lay of the land here and then I’ll call and set something up. There’s got to be a way
for us to cooperate and still not trample on anybody’s rights.”

“Whatever you say, you’re the lawyer.”

29
I nodded and looked down at the name on the card. Harry Bosch. I was sure I had never met the man
before, yet he had started the confrontation by saying he knew who I was.

“Look, Detective Bosch,” I said, “Jerry Vincent was a colleague. We weren’t that close but we were
friends.”

“And?”

“And good luck, you know? With the case. I hope you crack it.”

Bosch nodded and there was something familiar about the physical gesture. Maybe we did know each
other.

He turned to follow his partner out of the office.

“Detective?”

Bosch once more turned back to me.

“Did we ever cross paths on a case before? I think I recog-nize you.”

Bosch smiled glibly and shook his head.

“No,” he said. “If we’d been on a case, you’d remember me.”

Seven

An hour later I was behind Jerry Vincent’s desk with Lorna Taylor and Dennis Wojciechowski sitting
across from me. We were eating our sandwiches and about to go over what we had put together from a
very preliminary survey of the office and the cases. The food was good but nobody had much of an
appetite considering where we were sitting and what had happened to the office’s predecessor.

I had sent Wren Williams home early. She had been unable to stop crying or objecting to my taking
control of her dead boss’s cases. I decided to remove the barricade rather than have to keep walking
around it. The last thing she asked before I escorted her through the door was whether I was going to fire
her. I told her the jury was still out on that question but that she should report for work as usual the next
day.

With Jerry Vincent dead and Wren Williams gone, we’d been left stumbling around in the dark until
Lorna figured out the filing system and started pulling the active case files. From calendar notations in
each file, she’d been able to start to put together a master calendar — the key component in any trial
lawyer’s professional life. Once we had worked up a rudimentary calendar, I began to breathe a little
easier and we’d broken for lunch and opened the sandwich cartons Lorna had brought from Dusty’s.

The calendar was light. A few case hearings here and there but for the most part it was obvious that
Vincent was keeping things clear in advance of the Walter Elliot trial, which was scheduled to begin with
jury selection in nine days.

30
“So let’s start,” I said, my mouth still full with my last bite. “According to the calendar we’ve pieced
together, I’ve got a sentencing in forty-five minutes. So I was thinking we could have a preliminary
discussion now, and then I could leave you two here while I go to court. Then I’ll come back and see how
much farther we’ve gotten before Cisco and I go out and start knocking on doors.”

They both nodded, their mouths still working on their sandwiches as well. Cisco had cranberry in his
mustache but didn’t know it.

Lorna was as neat and as beautiful as ever. She was a stunner with blonde hair and eyes that somehow
made you think you were the center of the universe when she was looking at you. I never got tired of that.
I had kept her on salary the whole year I was out. I could afford it with the insurance settlement and I
didn’t want to run the risk that she’d be working for another lawyer when it was time for me to come back
to work.

“Let’s start with the money,” I said.

Lorna nodded. As soon as she had gotten the active files together and placed them in front of me, she had
moved on to the bank books, perhaps the only thing as important as the case calendar. The bank books
would tell us more than just how much money Vincent’s firm had in its coffers. They would give us an
insight into how he ran his one-man shop.

“All right, good and bad news on the money,” she said. “He’s got thirty-eight thousand in the operating
account and a hundred twenty-nine thousand in the trust account.”

I whistled. That was a lot of cash to keep in the trust account. Money taken in from clients goes into the
trust account. As work for each client proceeds, the trust account is billed and the money transferred to
the operating account. I always want more money in the operating account than in the trust account,
because once it’s moved into the operating account, the money’s mine.

“There’s a reason why it’s so lopsided,” Lorna said, picking up on my surprise. “He just took in a check
for a hundred thousand dollars from Walter Elliot. He deposited it Friday.”

I nodded and tapped the makeshift calendar I had on the table in front of me. It was drawn on a legal pad.
Lorna would have to go out and buy a real calendar when she got the chance. She would also input all of
the court appointments on my computer and on an online calendar. Lastly, and as Jerry Vincent had not
done, she would back it all up on an off-site data-storage account.

“The Elliot trial is scheduled to start Thursday next week,” I said. “He took the hundred up front.”

Saying the obvious prompted a sudden realization.

“As soon as we’re done here, call the bank,” I told Lorna. “See if the check has cleared. If not, try to push
it through. As soon as Elliot hears that Vincent’s dead, he’ll probably try to put a stop-payment on it.”

“Got it.”

“What else on the money? If a hundred of it’s from Elliot, who’s the rest for?”

Lorna opened one of the accounting books she had on her lap. Each dollar in a trust fund must be
accounted for with regard to which client it is being held for. At any time, an attorney must be able to
determine how much of a client’s advance has been transferred to the operating fund and used and how
much is still on reserve in trust. A hundred thousand of Vincent’s trust account was earmarked for the
Walter Elliot trial. That left only twenty-nine thousand received for the rest of the active cases. That

31
wasn’t a lot, considering the stack of files we had pulled together while going through the filing cabinets
looking for live cases.

“That’s the bad news,” Lorna said. “It looks like there are only five or six other cases with trust deposits.
With the rest of the active cases, the money’s already been moved into operating or been spent or the
clients owe the firm.”

I nodded. It wasn’t good news. It was beginning to look like Jerry Vincent was running ahead of his
cases, meaning he’d been on a treadmill, bringing in new cases to keep money flowing and paying for
existing cases. Walter Elliot must have been the get-well client. As soon as his hundred thousand cleared,
Vincent would have been able to turn the treadmill off and catch his breath — for a while, at least. But he
never got the chance.

“How many clients with payment plans?” I asked.

Lorna once again referred to the records on her lap.

“He’s got two on pretrial payments. Both are well behind.”

“What are the names?”

It took her a moment to answer as she looked through the records.

“Uh, Samuels is one and Henson is the other. They’re both about five thousand behind.”

“And that’s why we take credit cards and don’t put out paper.”

I was talking about my own business routine. I had long ago stopped providing credit services. I took
nonrefundable cash payments. I also took plastic, but not until Lorna had run the card and gotten purchase
approval.

I looked down at the notes I had kept while conducting a quick review of the calendar and the active files.
Both Samuels and Henson were on a sub list I had drawn up while reviewing the actives. It was a list of
cases I was going to cut loose if I could. This was based on my quick review of the charges and facts of
the cases. If there was something I didn’t like about a case — for any reason — then it went on the sub
list.

“No problem,” I said. “We’ll cut ’em loose.”

Samuels was a manslaughter DUI case and Henson was a felony grand theft and drug possession. Henson
momentarily held my interest because Vincent was going to build a defense around the client’s addiction
to prescription painkillers. He was going to roll sympathy and deflection defenses into one. He would lay
out a case in which the doctor who overprescribed the drugs to Henson was the one most responsible for
the consequences of the addiction he created. Patrick Henson, Vincent would argue, was a victim, not a
criminal.

I was intimately familiar with this defense because I had employed it repeatedly over the past two years to
try to absolve myself of the many infractions I had committed in my roles as father, ex-husband and
friend to people in my life. But I put Henson into what I called the dog pile because I knew at heart the
defense didn’t hold up — at least not for me. And I wasn’t ready to go into court with it for him either.

Lorna nodded and made notes about the two cases on a pad of paper.

“So what is the score on that?” she asked. “How many cases are you putting in the dog pile?”
32
“We came up with thirty-one active cases,” I said. “Of those, I’m thinking only seven look like dogs. So
that means we’ve got a lot of cases where there’s no money in the till. I’ll either have to get new money
or they’ll go in the dog pile, too.”

I wasn’t worried about having to go and get money out of the clients. Skill number one in criminal
defense is getting the money. I was good at it and Lorna was even better. It was getting paying clients in
the first place that was the trick, and we’d just had two dozen of them dropped into our laps.

“You think the judge is just going to let you drop some of these?” she asked.

“Nope. But I’ll figure something out on that. Maybe I could claim conflict of interest. The conflict being
that I like to be paid for my work and the clients don’t like to pay.”

No one laughed. No one even cracked a smile. I moved on.

“Anything else on the money?” I asked.

Lorna shook her head.

“That’s about it. When you’re in court, I’m going to call the bank and get that started. You want us both
to be signers on the accounts?”

“Yeah, just like with my accounts.”

I hadn’t considered the potential difficulty of getting my hands on the money that was in the Vincent
accounts. That was what I had Lorna for. She was good on the business end in ways I wasn’t. Some days
she was so good I wished we had either never gotten married or never gotten divorced.

“See if Wren Williams can sign checks,” I said. “If she’s on there, take her off. For now I want just you
and me on the accounts.”

“Will do. You may have to go back to Judge Holder for a court order for the bank.”

“That’ll be no problem.”

My watch said I had ten minutes before I had to get going to court. I turned my attention to
Wojciechowski.

“Cisco, whaddaya got?”

I had told him earlier to work his contacts and to monitor the investigation of Vincent’s murder as closely
as possible. I wanted to know what moves the detectives were making because it appeared from what
Bosch had said that the investigation was going to be entwined with the cases I had just inherited.

“Not much,” Cisco said. “The detectives haven’t even gotten back to Parker Center yet. I called a guy I
know in forensics and they’re still processing everything. Not a lot of info on what they do have but he
told me about something they don’t. Vincent was shot at least two times that they could tell at the scene.
And there were no shells. The shooter cleaned up.”

There was something telling in that. The killer had either used a revolver or had had the presence of mind
after killing a man to pick up the bullet casings ejected from his gun.

Cisco continued his report.

33
“I called another contact in communications and she told me the first call came in at twelve forty-three.
They’ll narrow down time of death at autopsy.”

“Is there a general idea of what happened?”

“It looks like Vincent worked late, which was apparently his routine on Mondays. He worked late every
Monday, preparing for the week ahead. When he was finished he packed his briefcase, locked up and left.
He goes to the garage, gets in his car and gets popped through the driver’s side window. When they found
him the car was in park, the ignition on. The window was down. It was in the low sixties last night. He
could’ve put the window down because he liked the chill, or he could’ve lowered it for somebody coming
to the car.”

“Somebody he knew.”

“That’s one possibility.”

I thought about this and what Detective Bosch had said.

“Nobody was working in the garage?”

“No, the attendant leaves at six. You have to put your money in the machine after that or use your
monthly pass. Vincent had a monthly.”

“Cameras?”

“Only cameras are where you drive in and out. They’re license plate cameras so if somebody says they
lost their ticket they can tell when the car went in, that sort of thing. But from what I hear from my guy in
forensics, there was nothing on tape that was useful. The killer didn’t drive into the garage. He walked in
either through the building or through one of the pedestrian entrances.”

“Who found Jerry?”

“The security guard. They got one guard for the building and the garage. He hits the garage a couple
times a night and noticed Vincent’s car on his second sweep. The lights were on and it was running, so he
checked it out. He thought Vincent was sleeping at first, then he saw the blood.”

I nodded, thinking about the scenario and how it had gone down. The killer was either incredibly careless
and lucky or he knew the garage had no cameras and he would be able to intercept Jerry Vincent there on
a Monday night when the space was almost deserted.

“Okay, stay on it. What about Harry Potter?”

“Who?”

“The detective. Not Potter. I mean—”

“Bosch. Harry Bosch. I’m working on that, too. Supposedly he’s one of the best. Retired a few years ago
and the police chief himself recruited him back. Or so the story goes.”

Cisco referred to some notes on a pad.

“Full name is Hieronymus Bosch. He has a total of thirty-three years on the job and you know what that
means.”

34
“No, what does it mean?”

“Well, under the LAPD’s pension program you max out at thirty years, meaning that you are eligible for
retirement with full pension and no matter how long you stay on the job, after thirty years your pension
doesn’t grow. So it makes no economic sense to stay.”

“Unless you’re a man on a mission.”

Cisco nodded.

“Exactly. Anybody who stays past thirty isn’t staying for the money or the job. It’s more than a job.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “You said Hieronymus Bosch? Like the painter?”

The second question confused him.

“I don’t know anything about any painter. But that’s his name. Rhymes with ‘anonymous,’ I was told.
Weird name, if you ask me.”

“No weirder than Wojciechowski — if you ask me.”

Cisco was about to defend his name and heritage when Lorna cut in.

“I thought you said you didn’t know him, Mickey.”

I looked over at her and shook my head.

“I never met him before today but the name … I know the name.”

“You mean from the paintings?”

I didn’t want to get into a discussion of past history so distant I couldn’t be sure about it.

“Never mind,” I said. “It’s nothing and I’ve got to get going.”

I stood up.

“Cisco, stay on the case and find out what you can about Bosch. I want to know how much I can trust the
guy.”

“You’re not going to let him look at the files, are you?” Lorna asked.

“This wasn’t a random crime. There’s a killer out there who knew how to get to Jerry Vincent. I’ll feel a
lot better about things if our man with a mission can figure it out and bring the bad guy in.”

I stepped around the desk and headed toward the door.

“I’ll be in Judge Champagne’s court. I’m taking a bunch of the active files with me to read while I’m
waiting.”

“I’ll walk you out,” Lorna said.

I saw her throw a look and nod at Cisco so that he would stay behind. We walked out to the reception
area. I knew what Lorna was going to say but I let her say it.
35
“Mickey, are you sure you’re ready for this?”

“Absolutely.”

“This wasn’t the plan. You were going to come back slowly, remember? Take a couple cases and build
from there. Instead, you’re taking on an entire practice.”

“I’m not practicing.”

“Look, be serious.”

“I am. And I’m ready. Don’t you see that this is better than the plan? The Elliot case not only brings in all
that money but it’s going to be like having a billboard on top of the CCB that says I’M BACK in big neon
letters!”

“Yeah, that’s great. And the Elliot case alone is going to put so much pressure on you that…”

She didn’t finish but she didn’t have to.

“Lorna, I’m done with all of that. I’m fine, I’m over it and I’m ready for this. I thought you’d be happy
about this. We’ve got money coming in for the first time in a year.”

“I don’t care about that. I want to make sure you are okay.”

“I’m more than okay. I’m excited. I feel like in one day I’ve suddenly got my mojo back. Don’t drag me
down. Okay?”

She stared at me and I stared back and finally a reluctant smile peeked through her stern expression.

“All right,” she said. “Then, go get ’em.”

“Don’t worry. I will.”

Eight

Despite the assurances I had given Lorna, thoughts about all the cases and all the setup work that needed
to be done played in my mind as I walked down the hallway to the bridge that linked the office building
with the garage. I had forgotten that I had parked on the fifth level and ended up walking up three ramps
before I found the Lincoln. I popped the trunk and put the thick stack of files I was carrying into my bag.

The bag was a hybrid I had picked up at a store called Suitcase City while I was plotting my comeback. It
was a backpack with straps I could put over my shoulders on the days I was strong. It also had a handle so
I could carry it like a briefcase if I wanted. And it had two wheels and a telescoping handle so I could just
roll it behind me on the days I was weak.

Lately, the strong days far outnumbered the weak and I probably could have gotten by with the traditional
lawyer’s leather briefcase. But I liked the bag and was going to keep using it. It had a logo on it — a
mountain ridgeline with the words “Suitcase City” printed across it like the Hollywood sign. Above it,

36
skylights swept the horizon, completing the dream image of desire and hope. I think that logo was the real
reason I liked the bag. Because I knew Suitcase City wasn’t a store. It was a place. It was Los Angeles.

Los Angeles was the kind of place where everybody was from somewhere else and nobody really
dropped anchor. It was a transient place. People drawn by the dream, people running from the nightmare.
Twelve million people and all of them ready to make a break for it if necessary. Figuratively, literally,
metaphorically — any way you want to look at it — everybody in L.A. keeps a bag packed. Just in case.

As I closed the trunk, I was startled to see a man standing between my car and the one parked next to it.
The open trunk lid had blocked my view of his approach. He was a stranger to me but I could tell he knew
who I was. Bosch’s warning about Vincent’s killer shot through my mind and the fight-or-flight instinct
gripped me.

“Mr. Haller, can I talk to you?”

“Who the hell are you, and what are you doing sneaking around people’s cars?”

“I wasn’t sneaking around. I saw you and cut between the other cars, that’s all. I work for the Times and
was wondering if I could talk to you about Jerry Vincent.”

I shook my head and blew out my breath.

“You scared the shit out of me. Don’t you know he got killed in this garage by somebody who came up to
his car?”

“Look, I’m sorry. I was just—”

“Forget it. I don’t know anything about the case and I have to get to court.”

“But you’re taking over his cases, aren’t you?”

Signaling him out of the way, I moved to the door of my car.

“Who told you that?”

“Our court reporter got a copy of the order from Judge Holder. Why did Mr. Vincent pick you? Were you
two good friends or something?”

I opened the door.

“Look, what’s your name?”

“Jack McEvoy. I work the police beat.”

“Good for you, Jack. But I can’t talk about this right now. You want to give me a card, I’ll call you when
I can talk.”

He made no move to give me a card or to indicate he’d understood what I said. He just asked another
question.

“Has the judge put a gag order on you?”

“No, she hasn’t put out a gag order. I can’t talk to you because I don’t know anything, okay? When I have
something to say, I’ll say it.”
37
“Well, could you tell me why you are taking over Vincent’s cases?”

“You already know the answer to that. I was appointed by the judge. I have to get to court now.”

I ducked into the car but left the door open as I turned the key. McEvoy put his elbow on the roof and
leaned in to continue to try to talk me into an interview.

“Look,” I said, “I’ve got to go, so could you stand back so I can close my door and back this tank up?”

“I was hoping we could make a deal,” he said quickly.

“Deal? What deal? What are you talking about?”

“You know, information. I’ve got the police department wired and you’ve got the courthouse wired. It
would be a two-way street. You tell me what you’re hearing and I’ll tell you what I’m hearing. I have a
feeling this is going to be a big case. I need any information I can get.”

I turned and looked up at him for a moment.

“But won’t the information you’d be giving me just end up in the paper the next day? I could just wait
and read it.”

“Not all of it will be in there. Some stuff you can’t print, even if you know it’s true.”

He looked at me as though he were passing on a great piece of wisdom.

“I have a feeling you’ll be hearing things before I do,” I said.

“I’ll take my chances. Deal?”

“You got a card?”

This time he took a card out of his pocket and handed it to me. I held it between my fingers and draped
my hand over the steering wheel. I held the card up and looked at it again. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to get
a line on inside information on the case.

“Okay, deal.”

I signaled him away again and pulled the door closed, then started the car. He was still there. I lowered
the window.

“What?” I asked.

“Just remember, I don’t want to see your name in the other papers or on the TV saying stuff I don’t have.”

“Don’t worry. I know how it works.”

“Good.”

I dropped it into reverse but thought of something and kept my foot on the brake.

“Let me ask you a question. How tight are you with Bosch, the lead investigator on the case?”

“I know him, but nobody’s really tight with him. Not even his own partner.”
38
“What’s his story?”

“I don’t know. I never asked.”

“Well, is he any good at it?”

“At clearing cases? Yes, he’s very good. I think he’s considered one of the best.”

I nodded and thought about Bosch. The man on a mission.

“Watch your toes.”

I backed the Lincoln out. McEvoy called out to me just as I put the car in drive.

“Hey, Haller, love the plate.”

I waved a hand out the window as I drove down the ramp. I tried to remember which of my Lincolns I
was driving and what the plate said. I have a fleet of three Town Cars left over from my days when I
carried a full case load. But I had been using the cars so infrequently in the last year that I had put all
three into a rotation to keep the engines in tune and the dust out of the pipes. Part of my comeback
strategy, I guess. The cars were exact duplicates, except for the license plates, and I wasn’t sure which
one I was driving.

When I got down to the parking attendant’s booth and handed in my stub, I saw a small video screen next
to the cash register. It showed the view from a camera located a few feet behind my car. It was the camera
Cisco had told me about, designed to pick up an angle on the rear bumper and license plate.

On the screen I could see my vanity plate.

IWALKEM

I smirked. I walk ’em, all right. I was heading to court to meet one of Jerry Vincent’s clients for the first
time. I was going to shake his hand and then walk him right into prison.

Nine

Judge Judith Champagne was on the bench and hearing motions when I walked into her courtroom with
five minutes to spare. There were eight other lawyers cooling their heels, waiting their turn. I parked my
roller bag against the rail and whispered to the courtroom deputy, explaining that I was there to handle the
sentencing of Edgar Reese for Jerry Vincent. He told me the judge’s motions calendar was running long
but Reese would be first out for his sentencing as soon as the motions were cleared. I asked if I could see
Reese, and the deputy got up and led me through the steel door behind his desk to the court-side holding
cell. There were three prisoners in the cell.

“Edgar Reese?” I said.

A small, powerfully built white man came over to the bars. I saw prison tattoos climbing up his neck and
felt relieved. Reese was heading back to a place he already knew. I wasn’t going to be holding the hand of
a wide-eyed prison virgin. It would make things easier for me.

39
“My name’s Michael Haller. I’m filling in for your attorney today.”

I didn’t think there was much point in explaining to this guy what had happened to Vincent. It would only
make Reese ask me a bunch of questions I didn’t have the time or knowledge to answer.

“Where’s Jerry?” Reese asked.

“Couldn’t make it. You ready to do this?”

“Like I got a choice?”

“Did Jerry go over the sentence when you pled out?”

“Yeah, he told me. Five years in state, out in three if I behave.”

It was more like four but I wasn’t going to mess with it.

“Okay, well, the judge is finishing some stuff up out there and then they’ll bring you out. The prosecutor
will read you a bunch of legalese, you answer yes that you understand it, and then the judge will enter the
sentence. Fifteen minutes in and out.”

“I don’t care how long it takes. I ain’t got nowhere to go.”

I nodded and left him there. I tapped lightly on the metal door so the deputy — bailiffs in L.A. County are
sheriffs’ deputies — in the courtroom would hear it but hopefully not the judge. He let me out and I sat in
the first row of the gallery. I opened up my case and pulled out most of the files, putting them down on
the bench next to me.

The top file was the Edgar Reese file. I had already reviewed this one in preparation for the sentencing.
Reese was one of Vincent’s repeat clients. It was a garden-variety drug case. A seller who used his own
product, Reese was set up on a buy-bust by a customer working as a confidential informant. According to
the background information in the file, the CI zeroed in on Reese because he held a grudge against him.
He had previously bought cocaine from Reese and found it had been hit too hard with baby laxative. This
was a frequent mistake made by dealers who were also users. They cut the product too hard, thereby
increasing the amount kept for their own personal use but diluting the charge delivered by the powder
they sold. It was a bad business practice because it bred enemies. A user trying to work off a charge by
cooperating as a CI is more inclined to set up a dealer he doesn’t like than a dealer he does. This was the
business lesson Edgar Reese would have to think about for the next five years in state prison.

I put the file back in my bag and looked at what was next on the stack. The file on top belonged to Patrick
Henson, the painkiller case I had told Lorna I would be dropping. I leaned over to put the file back in the
bag, when I suddenly sat back against the bench and held it on my lap. I flapped it against my thigh a
couple times as I reconsidered things and then opened it.

Henson was a twenty-four-year-old surfer from Malibu by way of Florida. He was a professional but at
the low end of the spectrum, with limited endorsements and winnings from the pro tour. In a competition
on Maui, he’d wiped out in a wave that drove him down hard into the lava bottom of Pehei. It crimped his
shoulder, and after surgery to scrape it out, the doctor prescribed oxycodone. Eighteen months later
Henson was a full-blown addict, chasing pills to chase the pain. He lost his sponsors and was too weak to
compete anymore. He finally hit bottom when he stole a diamond necklace from a home in Malibu to
which he’d been invited by a female friend. According to the sheriff’s report, the necklace belonged to his
friend’s mother and contained eight diamonds representing her three children and five grandchildren. It
was listed on the report as worth $25,000 but Henson hocked it for $400 and went down to Mexico to buy
two hundred tabs of oxy over the counter.
40
Henson was easy to connect to the caper. The diamond necklace was recovered from the pawnshop and
the film from the security camera showed him pawning it. Because of the high value of the necklace, he
was hit with a full deck, dealing in stolen property and grand theft, along with illegal drug possession. It
also didn’t help that the lady he stole the necklace from was married to a well-connected doctor who had
contributed liberally to the reelection of several members of the county board of supervisors.

When Vincent took Henson on as a client, the surfer made the initial $5,000 advance payment in trade.
Vincent took all twelve of his custom-made Trick Henson boards and sold them through his liquidator to
collectors and on eBay. Henson was also placed on the $1,000-a-month payment plan but had never made
a single payment because he had gone into rehab the day after being bailed out of jail by his mother, who
lived back in Melbourne, Florida.

The file said Henson had successfully completed rehab and was working part-time at a surf camp for kids
on the beach in Santa Monica. He was barely making enough to live on, let alone pay $1,000 a month to
Vincent. His mother, meanwhile, had been tapped out by his bail and the cost of his stay in rehab.

The file was replete with motions to continue and other filings as delay tactics undertaken by Vincent
while he waited for Henson to come across with more cash. This was standard practice. Get your money
up front, especially when the case is probably a dog. The prosecutor had Henson on tape selling the stolen
merchandise. It meant the case was worse than a dog. It was roadkill.

There was a phone number in the file for Henson. One thing every lawyer drilled into nonincarcerated
clients was the need to maintain a method of contact. Those facing criminal charges and the likelihood of
prison often had unstable home lives. They moved around, sometimes were completely homeless. But a
lawyer had to be able to reach them at a moment’s notice. The number was listed in the file as Henson’s
cell, and if it was still good, I could call him right now. The question was, did I want to?

I looked up at the bench. The judge was still in the middle of oral arguments on a bail motion. There were
still three other lawyers waiting their turn at other motions and no sign of the prosecutor who was
assigned to the Edgar Reese case. I got up and whispered to the deputy again.

“I’m going out into the hallway to make a call. I’ll be close.”

He nodded.

“If you’re not back when it’s time, I’ll come grab you,” he said. “Just make sure you turn that phone off
before coming back in. The judge doesn’t like cell phones.”

He didn’t have to tell me that. I already knew firsthand that the judge didn’t like cell phones in her court.
My lesson was learned when I was making an appearance before her and my phone started playing the
William Tell Overture — my daughter’s ringtone choice, not mine. The judge slapped me with a $100-
dollar fine and had taken to referring to me ever since as the Lone Ranger. That last part I didn’t mind so
much. I sometimes felt like I was the Lone Ranger. I just rode in a black Lincoln Town Car instead of on
a white horse.

I left my case and the other files on the bench in the gallery and walked out into the hallway with only the
Henson file. I found a reasonably quiet spot in the crowded hallway and called the number. It was
answered after two rings.

“This is Trick.”

“Patrick Henson?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

41
“I’m your new lawyer. My name is Mi— ”

“Whoa, wait a minute. What happened to my old lawyer? I gave that guy Vincent—”

“He’s dead, Patrick. He passed away last night.”

“Nooooo.”

“Yes, Patrick. I’m sorry about that.”

I waited a moment to see if he had anything else to say about it, then started in as perfunctorily as a
bureaucrat.

“My name is Michael Haller and I’m taking over Jerry Vincent’s cases. I’ve been reviewing your file here
and I see you haven’t made a single payment on the schedule Mr. Vincent put you on.”

“Ah, man, this is the deal. I’ve been concentrating on getting right and staying right and I’ve got no
fucking money. Okay? I already gave that guy Vincent all my boards. He counted it as five grand but I
know he got more. A couple of those long boards were worth at least a grand apiece. He told me that he
got enough to get started but all he’s been doing is delaying things. I can’t get back to shit until this thing
is all over.”

“Are you staying right, Patrick? Are you clean?”

“As a fucking whistle, man. Vincent told me it was the only way I’d have a shot at staying out of jail.”

I looked up and down the hallway. It was crowded with lawyers and defendants and witnesses and the
families of those victimized or accused. It was a football field long and everybody in it was hoping for
one thing. A break. For the clouds to open and something to go their way just this one time.

“Jerry was right, Patrick. You have to stay clean.”

“I’m doing it.”

“You got a job?”

“Man, don’t you guys see? No one’s going to give a guy like me a job. Nobody’s going to hire me. I’m
waiting on this case and I might be in jail before it’s all over. I mean, I teach water babies part-time on the
beach but it don’t pay me jack. I’m living out of my damn car, sleeping on a lifeguard stand at Hermosa
Beach. This time two years ago? I was in a suite at the Four Seasons in Maui.”

“Yeah, I know, life sucks. You still have a driver’s license?”

“That’s about all I got left.”

I made a decision.

“Okay, you know where Jerry Vincent’s office is? You ever been there?”

“Yeah, I delivered the boards there. And my fish.”

“Your fish?”

42
“He took a sixty-pound tarpon I caught when I was a kid back in Florida. Said he was going to put it on
the wall and pretend like he caught it or something.”

“Yeah, well, your fish is still there. Anyway, be at the office at nine sharp tomorrow morning and I’ll
interview you for a job. If it goes right, then you’ll start right away.”

“Doing what?”

“Driving me. I’ll pay you fifteen bucks an hour to drive and another fifteen toward your fees. How’s
that?”

There was a moment of silence before Henson responded in an accommodating voice.

“That’s good, man. I can be there for that.”

“Good. See you then. Just remember something, Patrick. You gotta stay clean. If you’re not, I’ll know.
Believe me, I’ll know.”

“Don’t worry, man. I will never go back to that shit. That shit fucked my life up for good.”

“Okay, Patrick, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Hey, man, why are you doing this?”

I hesitated before answering.

“You know, I don’t really know.”

I closed the phone and made sure to turn it off. I went back into the courtroom wondering if I was doing
something good or making the kind of mistake that would catch up and bite me on the ass.

It was perfect timing. The judge finished with the last motion as I came back in. I saw that a deputy
district attorney named Don Pierce was sitting at the prosecution table, ready to go with the sentencing.
He was an ex-navy guy who kept the crew cut going and was one of the regulars at cocktail hour at Four
Green Fields. I quickly packed all the files back into my bag and wheeled it through the gate to the
defense table.

“Well,” the judge said, “I see the Lone Ranger rides again.”

She said it with a smile and I smiled back at her.

“Yes, Your Honor. Nice to see you.”

“I haven’t seen you in quite a while, Mr. Haller.”

Open court was not the place to tell her where I had been. I kept my responses short. I spread my hands as
if presenting the new me.

“All I can say is, I’m back now, Judge.”

“I’m glad to see that. Now, you are here in place of Mr. Vincent, is that correct?”

43
It was said in a routine tone. I could tell she did not know about Vincent’s demise. I knew I could keep
the secret and get through the sentencing with it. But then she would hear the story and wonder why I
hadn’t brought it up and told her. It was not a good way to keep a judge on your side.

“Unfortunately, Your Honor,” I said, “Mr. Vincent passed away last night.”

The judge’s eyebrows arched in shock. She had been a longtime prosecutor before being a longtime
judge. She was wired into the legal community and most likely knew Jerry Vincent well. I had just hit her
with a major jolt.

“Oh, my, he was so young!” she exclaimed. “What happened?”

I shook my head like I didn’t know.

“It wasn’t a natural death, Your Honor. The police are investigating it and I don’t really know a lot about
it other than that he was found in his car last night at his office. Judge Holder called me in today and
appointed me replacement counsel. That’s why I am here for Mr. Reese.”

The judge looked down and took a moment to get over her shock. I felt bad about being the messenger. I
bent down and pulled the Edgar Reese file out of my bag.

“I’m very sorry to hear this,” the judge finally said.

I nodded in agreement and waited.

“Very well,” the judge said after another long moment. “Let’s bring the defendant out.”

Jerry Vincent garnered no further delay. Whether the judge had suspicions about Jerry or the life he led,
she didn’t say. But life would move on in the Criminal Courts Building. The wheels of justice would
grind without him.

Ten

The message from Lorna Taylor was short and to the point. I got it the moment I turned my phone on
after leaving the courtroom and seeing Edgar Reese get his five years. She told me she had just been in
touch with Judge Holder’s clerk about obtaining the court order the bank was requiring before putting
Lorna’s and my names on the Vincent bank accounts. The judge had agreed to draw up the order and I
could just walk down the hallway to her chambers to pick it up.

The courtroom was once again dark but the judge’s clerk was in her pod next to the bench. She still
reminded me of my third-grade teacher.

“Mrs. Gill?” I said. “I’m supposed to pick up an order from the judge.”

“Yes, I think she still has it with her in chambers. I’ll go check.”

“Any chance I could get in there and talk to her for a few minutes, too?”

“Well, she has someone with her at the moment but I will check.”
44
She got up and went down the hallway located behind the clerk’s station. At the end was the door to the
judge’s chambers and I watched her knock once before being summoned to enter. When she opened the
door, I could see a man sitting in the same chair I had sat in a few hours earlier. I recognized him as Judge
Holder’s husband, a personal-injury attorney named Mitch Lester. I recognized him from the photograph
on his ad. Back when he was doing criminal defense we had once shared the back of the Yellow Pages,
my ad taking the top half and his the bottom. He hadn’t worked criminal cases in a long time.

A few minutes later Mrs. Gill came out carrying the court order I needed. I thought this meant I wasn’t
going to get in to see the judge but Mrs. Gill told me I would be allowed back as soon as the judge
finished up with her visitor.

It wasn’t enough time to continue my review of the files in my roller bag, so I wandered the courtroom,
looking around and thinking about what I was going to say to the judge. At the empty bailiff’s desk, I
looked down and scanned a calendar sheet from the week before. I knew the names of several of the
attorneys who were listed and had been scheduled for emergency hearings and motions. One of them was
Jerry Vincent on behalf of Walter Elliot. It had probably been one of Jerry’s last appearances in court.

After three minutes I heard a bell tone at the clerk’s station and Mrs. Gill said I was free to go back to the
judge’s chambers.

When I knocked on the door it was Mitch Lester who opened it. He smiled and bid me entrance. We
shook hands and he remarked that he had just heard about Jerry Vincent.

“It’s a scary world out there,” he said.

“It can be,” I said.

“If you need any help with anything, let me know.”

He left the office and I took his seat in front of the judge’s desk.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Haller? You got the order for the bank?”

“Yes, I got the order, Your Honor. Thank you for that. I wanted to update you a little bit and ask a
question about something.”

She took off a pair of reading glasses and put them down on her blotter.

“Please go ahead, then.”

“Well, on the update. Things are going a bit slowly because we started without a calendar. Both Jerry
Vincent’s laptop computer and his hard-copy calendar were stolen after he was killed. We had to build a
new calendar after pulling the active files. We think we have that under control and, in fact, I just came
from a sentencing in Judge Champagne’s in regard to one of the cases. So we haven’t missed anything.”

The judge seemed unimpressed by the efforts made by my staff and me.

“How many active cases are we talking about?” she asked.

“Uh, it looks like there are thirty-one active cases — well, thirty now that I handled that sentencing. That
case is done.”

“Then, I would say you inherited quite a thriving practice. What is the problem?”

45
“I’m not sure there is a problem, Judge. So far I’ve had a conversation with only one of the active clients
and it looks like I will be continuing as his lawyer.”

“Was that Walter Elliot?”

“Uh, no, I have not talked to him yet. I plan to try to do that later today. The person I talked to was
involved in something a little less serious. A felony theft, actually.”

“Okay.”

She was growing impatient so I moved to the point of the meeting.

“What I wanted to ask about was the police. You were right this morning when you warned me about
guarding against police intrusion. When I got over to the office after leaving here, I found a couple of
detectives going through the files. Jerry’s receptionist was there but she hadn’t tried to stop them.”

The judge’s face grew hard.

“Well, I hope you did. Those officers should have known better than to start going through files willy-
nilly.”

“Yes, Your Honor, they backed off once I got there and objected. In fact, I threatened to make a
complaint to you. That’s when they backed off.”

She nodded, her face showing pride in the power the mention of her name had.

“Then, why are you here?”

“Well, I’m wondering now whether I should let them back in.”

“I don’t understand you, Mr. Haller. Let the police back in?”

“The detective in charge of the investigation made a good point. He said the evidence suggests that Jerry
Vincent knew his killer and probably even allowed him to get close enough to, you know, shoot him. He
said that makes it a good bet that it was one of his own clients. So they were going through the files
looking for potential suspects when I walked in on them.”

The judge waved one of her hands in a gesture of dismissal.

“Of course they were. And they were trampling on those clients’ rights as they were doing it.”

“They were in the file room and were looking through old cases. Closed cases.”

“Doesn’t matter. Open or closed, it still constitutes a violation of the attorney-client privilege.”

“I understand that, Judge. But after they were gone, I saw they had left behind a stack of files on the table.
These were the files they were either going to take or wanted to look more closely at. I looked them over
and there were threats in those files.”

“Threats against Mr. Vincent?”

“Yes. They were cases in which his clients weren’t happy about the outcome, whether it was the verdict
or the disposition or the terms of imprisonment. There were threats, and in each of the cases, he took the

46
threats seriously enough to make a detailed record of exactly what was said and who said it. That was
what the detectives were pulling together.”

The judge leaned back and clasped her hands, her elbows on the arms of her leather chair. She thought
about the situation I had described and then brought her eyes to mine.

“You believe we are inhibiting the investigation by not allowing the police to do their job.”

I nodded.

“I was wondering if there was a way to sort of serve both sides,” I said. “Limit the harm to the clients but
let the police follow the investigation wherever it goes.”

The judge considered this in silence again, then sighed.

“I wish my husband had stayed,” she finally said. “I value his opinion greatly.”

“Well, I had an idea.”

“Of course you did. What is it?”

“I was thinking that I could vet the files myself and draw up a list of the people who threatened Jerry.
Then I could pass it on to Detective Bosch and give him some of the details of the threats as well. This
way, he would have what he needs but he wouldn’t have the files themselves. He’s happy, I’m happy.”

“Bosch is the lead detective?”

“Yes, Harry Bosch. He’s with Robbery-Homicide. I can’t remember his partner’s name.”

“You have to understand, Mr. Haller, that even if you just give this man Bosch the names, you are still
breaching client confidentiality. You could be disbarred for this.”

“Well, I was thinking about that and I believe there’s a way out. One of the mechanisms of relief from the
client confidentiality bond is in the case of threat to safety. If Jerry Vincent knew a client was coming to
kill him last night, he could have called the police and given that client’s name to them. There would’ve
been no breach in that.”

“Yes, but what you are considering here is completely different.”

“It’s different, Judge, but not completely. I’ve been directly told by the lead detective on the case that it is
highly likely that the identity of Jerry Vincent’s killer is contained in Jerry’s own files. Those files are
now mine. So that information constitutes a threat to me. When I go out and start meeting these clients, I
could shake hands with the killer and not even know it. You add that up any way and I feel I am in some
jeopardy here, Judge, and that qualifies for relief.”

She nodded her head again and put her glasses back on. She reached over and picked up a glass of water
that had been hidden from my view by her desktop computer.

After drinking deeply from the glass she spoke.

“All right, Mr. Haller. I believe that if you vet the files as you have suggested, then you will be acting in
an appropriate and acceptable manner. I would like you to file a motion with this court that explains your
actions and the feeling of threat you are under. I will sign it and seal it and with any good luck it will be
something that never sees the light of day.”
47
“Thank you, Your Honor.”

“Anything else?”

“I think that is it.”

“Then, have a good day.”

“Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

I got up and headed toward the door but then remembered something and turned back to stand in front of
the judge’s desk.

“Judge? I forgot something. I saw your calendar from last week out there and noticed that Jerry Vincent
came in on the Elliot matter. I haven’t thoroughly reviewed the case file yet, but do you mind my asking
what the hearing was about?”

The judge had to think for a moment to recall the hearing.

“It was an emergency motion. Mr. Vincent came in because Judge Stanton had revoked bail and ordered
Mr. Elliot remanded to custody. I stayed the revocation.”

“Why was it revoked?”

“Mr. Elliot had traveled to a film festival in New York without getting permission. It was one of the
qualifiers of bail. When Mr. Golantz, the prosecutor, saw a picture of Elliot at the festival in People
magazine, he asked Judge Stanton to revoke bail. He obviously wasn’t happy that bail had been allowed
in the first place. Judge Stanton revoked and then Mr. Vincent came to me for an emergency stay of his
client’s arrest and incarceration. I decided to give Mr. Elliot a second chance and to modify his freedom
by making him wear an ankle monitor. But I can assure you that Mr. Elliot will not receive a third chance.
Keep that in mind if you should retain him as a client.”

“I understand, Judge. Thank you.”

I nodded and left the chambers, thanking Mrs. Gill as I walked out through the courtroom.

Harry Bosch’s card was still in my pocket. I dug it out while I was going down in the elevator. I had
parked in a pay lot by the Kyoto Grand Hotel and had a three-block walk that would take me right by
Parker Center. I called Bosch’s cell phone as I headed to the courthouse exit.

“This is Bosch.”

“It’s Mickey Haller.”

There was a hesitation. I thought that maybe he didn’t recognize my name.

“What can I do for you?” he finally asked.

“How’s the investigation going?”

“It’s going, but nothing I can talk to you about.”

“Then I’ll just get to the point. Are you in Parker Center right now?”

48
“That’s right. Why?”

“I’m heading over from the courthouse. Meet me out front by the memorial.”

“Look, Haller, I’m busy. Can you just tell me what this is about?”

“Not on the phone, but I think it will be worth your while. If you’re not there when I go by, then I’ll know
you’ve passed on the opportunity and I won’t bother you with it again.”

I closed the phone before he could respond. It took me five minutes to get over to Parker Center by foot.
The place was in its last years of life, its replacement being built a block over on Spring Street. I saw
Bosch standing next to the fountain that was part of the memorial for officers killed in the line of duty. I
saw thin white wires leading from his ears to his jacket pocket. I walked up and didn’t bother with a
handshake or any other greeting. He pulled the earbuds out and shoved them into his pocket.

“Shutting the world out, Detective?”

“Helps me concentrate. Is there a purpose to this meeting?”

“After you left the office today I looked at the files you had stacked on the table. In the file room.”

“And?”

“And I understand what you are trying to do. I want to help you but I want you to understand my
position.”

“I understand you, Counselor. You have to protect those files and the possible killer hiding in them
because those are the rules.”

I shook my head. This guy didn’t want to make it easy for me to help him.

“I’ll tell you what, Detective Bosch. Come back by the office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning and I
will give you what I can.”

I think the offer surprised him. He had no response.

“You’ll be there?” I asked.

“What’s the catch?” he asked right back.

“No catch. Just don’t be late. I’ve got an interview at nine, and after that I’ll probably be on the road for
client conferences.”

“I’ll be there at eight.”

“Okay, then.”

I was ready to walk away but it looked like he wasn’t.

“What is it?”

“I was going to ask you something.”

“What?”
49
“Did Vincent have any federal cases?”

I thought for a moment, going over what I knew of the files. I shook my head.

“We’re still reviewing everything but I don’t think so. He was like me, liked to stay in state court. It’s a
numbers game. More cases, more fuck-ups, more holes to slip through. The feds kind of like to stack the
deck. They don’t like to lose.”

I thought he might take the slight personally. But he had moved past it and was putting something in
place. He nodded.

“Okay.”

“That’s it? That’s all you wanted to ask?”

“That’s it.”

I waited for further explanation but none came.

“Okay, Detective.”

I clumsily put out my hand. He shook it and appeared to feel just as awkward about it. I decided to ask a
question I had been holding back on.

“Hey, there was something I was meaning to ask you, too.”

“What’s that?”

“It doesn’t say it on your card but I heard that your full name is Hieronymus Bosch. Is that true?”

“What about it?”

“I was just wondering, where’d you get a name like that?”

“My mother gave it to me.”

“Your mother? Well, what did your father think about it?”

“I never asked him. I have to get back to the investigation now, Counselor. Is there anything else?”

“No, that was it. I was just curious. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”

“I’ll be there.”

I left him standing there at the memorial and walked away. I headed down the block, thinking the whole
time about why he had asked if Jerry Vincent had had any federal cases. When I turned left at the corner,
I glanced back and saw Bosch still standing by the fountain. He was watching me. He didn’t look away,
but I did, and I kept walking.

Eleven

50
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