The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel (3 page)

I could hear the sound of hip-hop pulsing behind the closed windows of the Town Car as I approached. But Earl killed the music
as soon as I reached for the door handle. I slid into the back and told him to head toward Van Nuys.

“Who was that you were listening to?” I asked him.

“Um, that was Three Six Mafia.”

“Dirty south?”

“That’s right.”

Over the years, I had become knowledgeable in the subtle distinctions, regional and otherwise, in rap and hip-hop. Across
the
board, most of my clients listened to it, many of them developing their life strategies from it.

I reached over and picked up the shoebox full of cassette tapes from the Boyleston case and chose one at random. I noted the
tape number and the time in the little logbook I kept in the shoebox. I handed the tape over the seat to Earl and he slid
it into the dashboard stereo. I didn’t have to tell him to play it at a volume so low that it would amount to little more
than background noise. Earl had been with me for three months. He knew what to do.

Roger Boyleston was one of my few court-appointed clients. He was facing a variety of federal drug-trafficking charges. DEA
wiretaps on Boyleston’s phones had led to his arrest and the seizure of six kilos of cocaine that he had planned to distribute
through a network of dealers. There were numerous tapes—more than fifty hours of recorded phone conversations. Boyleston talked
to many people about what was coming and when to expect it. The case was a slam dunk for the government. Boyleston was going
to go away for a long time and there was almost nothing I could do but negotiate a deal, trading Boyleston’s cooperation for
a lower sentence. That didn’t matter, though. What mattered to me were the tapes. I took the case because of the tapes. The
federal government would pay me to listen to the tapes in preparation for defending my client. That meant I would get a minimum
of fifty billable hours out of Boyleston and the government before it was all settled. So I made sure the tapes were in heavy
rotation whenever I was riding in the Lincoln. I wanted to make sure that if I ever had to put my hand on the book and swear
to tell the truth, I could say in good conscience that I played every one of those tapes I billed Uncle Sugar for.

I called Lorna Taylor back first. Lorna is my case manager. The phone number that runs on my half-page ad in the yellow pages
and on thirty-six bus benches scattered through high-crime areas in the south and east county goes directly to the office/second
bedroom of her Kings Road condo in West Hollywood. The address the California bar and all the clerks of the courts have for
me is the condo as well.

Lorna is the first buffer. To get to me you start with her. My cell number is given out to only a few and Lorna is the gatekeeper.
She is tough, smart, professional and beautiful. Lately, though, I only get to verify this last attribute once a month or
so when I take her to lunch and sign checks—she’s my bookkeeper, too.

“Law office,” she said when I called in.

“Sorry, I was still in court,” I said, explaining why I didn’t get her call. “What’s up?”

“You talked to Val, right?”

“Yeah. I’m heading down to Van Nuys now. I got that at eleven.”

“He called here to make sure. He sounds nervous.”

“He thinks this guy is the golden goose, wants to make sure he’s along for the ride. I’ll call him back to reassure him.”

“I did some preliminary checking on the name Louis Ross Roulet. Credit check is excellent. The name in the
Times
archive comes up with a few hits. All real estate transactions. Looks like he works for a real estate firm in Beverly Hills.
It’s called Windsor Residential Estates. Looks like they handle all exclusive pocket listings—not the sort of properties where
they put a sign out front.”

“That’s good. Anything else?”

“Not on that. And just the usual so far on the phone.”

Which meant that she had fielded the usual number of calls drawn by the bus benches and the yellow pages, all from people
who wanted a lawyer. Before the callers hit my radar they had to convince Lorna that they could pay for what they wanted.
She was sort of like the nurse behind the desk in the emergency room. You have to convince her you have valid insurance before
she sends you back to see the doc. Next to Lorna’s phone she keeps a rate schedule that starts with a $5,000 flat fee to handle
a DUI and ranges to the hourly fees I charge for felony trials. She makes sure every potential client is a paying client and
knows the costs of the crime they have been charged with. There’s that saying, Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
Lorna likes to say that with me, it’s Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay for my time. She accepts MasterCard and Visa and
will get purchase approval before a client ever gets to me.

“Nobody we know?” I asked.

“Gloria Dayton called from Twin Towers.”

I groaned. The Twin Towers was the county’s main lockup in downtown. It housed women in one tower and men in the other. Gloria
Dayton was a high-priced prostitute who needed my legal services from time to time. The first time I represented her was at
least ten years earlier, when she was young and drug-free and still had life in her eyes. Now she was a pro bono client. I
never charged her. I just tried to convince her to quit the life.

“When did she get popped?”

“Last night. Or rather, this morning. Her first appearance is after lunch.”

“I don’t know if I can make that with this Van Nuys thing.”

“There’s also a complication. Cocaine possession as well as the usual.”

I knew that Gloria worked exclusively through contacts made on the Internet, where she billed herself on a variety of websites
as Glory Days. She was no streetwalker or barroom troller. When she got popped, it was usually after an undercover vice officer
was able to penetrate her check system and set up a date. The fact that she had cocaine on her person when they met sounded
like an unusual lapse on her part or a plant from the cop.

“All right, if she calls back tell her I will try to be there and if I’m not there I will have somebody take it. Will you
call the court and firm up the hearing?”

“I’m on it. But, Mickey, when are you going to tell her this is the last time?”

“I don’t know. Maybe today. What else?”

“Isn’t that enough for one day?”

“It’ll do, I guess.”

We talked a little more about my schedule for the rest of the week and I opened my laptop on the fold-down table so I could
check my calendar against hers. I had a couple hearings set for each morning and a one-day trial on Thursday. It was all South
side drug stuff. My meat and potatoes. At the end of the conversation I
told her that I would call her after the Van Nuys hearing to let her know if and how the Roulet case would impact things.

“One last thing,” I said. “You said the place Roulet works handles pretty exclusive real estate deals, right?”

“Yeah. Every deal his name was attached to in the archives was in seven figures. A couple got up into the eights. Holmby Hills,
Bel-Air, places like that.”

I nodded, thinking that Roulet’s status might make him a person of interest to the media.

“Then why don’t you tip Sticks to it,” I said.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, we might be able to work something there.”

“Will do.”

“Talk to you later.”

By the time I closed the phone, Earl had us back on the Antelope Valley Freeway heading south. We were making good time and
getting to Van Nuys for Roulet’s first appearance wasn’t going to be a problem. I called Fernando Valenzuela to tell him.

“That’s real good,” the bondsman said. “I’ll be waiting.”

As he spoke I watched two motorcycles glide by my window. Each rider wore a black leather vest with the skull and halo patch
sewn on the back.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yeah, one other thing I should probably tell you,” Valenzuela said. “I was double-checking with the court on when his first
appearance was going to be and I found out the case was assigned to Maggie McFierce. I don’t know if that’s going to be a
problem for you or not.”

Maggie McFierce as in Margaret McPherson, who happened to be one of the toughest and, yes, fiercest deputy district attorneys
assigned to the Van Nuys courthouse. She also happened to be my first ex-wife.

“It won’t be a problem for me,” I said without hesitation. “She’s the one who’ll have the problem.”

The defendant has the right to his choice of counsel. If there is
a conflict of interest between the defense lawyer and the prosecutor, then it is the prosecutor who must bow out. I knew Maggie
would hold me personally responsible for her losing the reins on what might be a big case but I couldn’t help that. It had
happened before. In my laptop I still had a motion to disqualify from the last case in which we had crossed paths. If necessary,
I would just have to change the name of the defendant and print it out. I’d be good to go and she’d be as good as gone.

The two motorcycles had now moved in front of us. I turned and looked out the back window. There were three more Harleys behind
us.

“You know what that means, though,” I said.

“No, what?”

“She’ll go for no bail. She always does with crimes against women.”

“Shit, can she get it? I’m looking at a nice chunk of change on this, man.”

“I don’t know. You said the guy’s got family and C. C. Dobbs. I can make something out of that. We’ll see.”

“Shit.”

Valenzuela was seeing his major payday disappear.

“I’ll see you there, Val.”

I closed the phone and looked over the seat at Earl.

“How long have we had the escort?” I asked.

“Just came up on us,” Earl said. “You want me to do something?”

“Let’s see what they—”

I didn’t have to wait until the end of my sentence. One of the riders from the rear came up alongside the Lincoln and signaled
us toward the upcoming exit for the Vasquez Rocks County Park. I recognized him as Teddy Vogel, a former client and the highest-ranked
Road Saint not incarcerated. He might have been the largest Saint as well. He went at least 350 pounds and he gave the impression
of a fat kid riding his little brother’s bike.

“Pull off, Earl,” I said. “Let’s see what he’s got.”

We pulled into the parking lot next to the jagged rock formation
named after an outlaw who had hid in them a century before. I saw two people sitting and having a picnic on the edge of one
of the highest ledges. I didn’t think I would feel comfortable eating a sandwich in such a dangerous spot and position.

I lowered my window as Teddy Vogel approached on foot. The other four Saints had killed their engines but remained on their
bikes. Vogel leaned down to the window and put one of his giant forearms on the sill. I could feel the car tilt down a few
inches.

“Counselor, how’s it hanging?” he said.

“Just fine, Ted,” I said, not wanting to call him by his obvious gang sobriquet of Teddy Bear. “What’s up with you?”

“What happened to the ponytail?”

“Some people objected to it, so I cut it off.”

“A jury, huh? Must’ve been a collection of stiffs from up this way.”

“What’s up, Ted?”

“I got a call from Hard Case over there in the Lancaster pen. He said I might catch you heading south. Said you were stalling
his case till you got some green. That right, Counselor?”

It was said as routine conversation. No threat in his voice or words. And I didn’t feel threatened. Two years ago I got an
abduction and aggravated assault case against Vogel knocked down to a disturbing the peace. He ran a Saints-owned strip club
on Sepulveda in Van Nuys. His arrest came after he learned that one of his most productive dancers had quit and crossed the
street to work at a competing club. Vogel had crossed the street after her, grabbed her off the stage and carried her back
to his club. She was naked. A passing motorist called the police. Knocking the case down was one of my better plays and Vogel
knew this. He had a soft spot for me.

“He’s pretty much got it right,” I said. “I work for a living. If he wants me to work for him he’s gotta pay me.”

“We gave you five grand in December,” Vogel said.

“That’s long gone, Ted. More than half went to the expert who is going to blow the case up. The rest went to me and I already
worked off those hours. If I’m going to take it to trial, then I need to refill the tank.”

“You want another five?”

“No, I need ten and I told Hard Case that last week. It’s a three-day trial and I’ll need to bring my expert in from Kodak
in New York. I’ve got his fee to cover and he wants first class in the air and the Chateau Marmont on the ground. Thinks he’s
going to be drinking at the bar with movie stars or something. That place is four hundred a night just for the cheap rooms.”

“You’re killing me, Counselor. Whatever happened to that slogan you had in the yellow pages? ‘Reasonable doubt for a reasonable
fee.’ You call ten grand reasonable?”

“I liked that slogan. It brought in a lot of clients. But the California bar wasn’t so pleased with it, made me get rid of
it. Ten is the price and it is reasonable, Ted. If you can’t or don’t want to pay it, I’ll file the paperwork today. I’ll
drop out and he can go with a PD. I’ll turn everything I have over. But the PD probably won’t have the budget to fly in the
photo expert.”

Vogel shifted his position on the window sill and the car shuddered under the weight.

“No, no, we want you. Hard Case is important to us, you know what I mean? I want him out and back to work.”

I watched him reach inside his vest with a hand that was so fleshy that the knuckles were indented. It came out with a thick
envelope that he passed into the car to me.

“Is this cash?” I asked.

“That’s right. What’s wrong with cash?”

“Nothing. But I have to give you a receipt. It’s an IRS reporting requirement. This is the whole ten?”

“It’s all there.”

I took the top off of a cardboard file box I keep on the seat next to me. My receipt book was behind the current case files.
I started writing out the receipt. Most lawyers who get disbarred go down because of financial violations. The mishandling
or misappropriation of
client fees. I kept meticulous records and receipts. I would never let the bar get to me that way.