The Brass Verdict (45 page)

“Where are we going? What is—?”

I was shoved again.

“Who are you? Why are you—?”

“You ask too many questions, lawyer.”

He grabbed the back of my collar and shoved me toward the precipice. I knew it was almost a sheer drop-off at the edge. I was going to end up in somebody’s backyard hot tub — after a three-hundred-foot high dive.

I tried to dig my heels in and slow my forward momentum but that resulted in an even harder shove. I had velocity now and the man in the mask was going to run me off the edge into the blackness of the abyss.

“You can’t—”

Suddenly there was a shot. Not from behind me. But from the right and from a distance. Almost simultaneously, there was a metal snapping sound from behind me and the man in the mask yelped and fell into the brush to the left.

Then came voices and shouting.

“Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!”

“Get on the ground! Get down on the ground!”

I dove facedown to the dirt at the edge of the precipice and put my hands over my head for protection. I heard more yelling and the sound of running. I heard engines roaring and vehicles crunching across the gravel. When I opened my eyes, I saw blue lights flashing in repeated patterns off the dirt and brush. Blue lights meant cops. It meant I was safe.

“Counselor,” a voice said from above me. “You can get up now.”

I craned my neck to look up. It was Bosch, his shadowed face silhouetted by the stars above him.

“You cut that one pretty close,” he said.

Fifty-two

T
he man in the black mask groaned in pain as they cuffed his hands behind his back.

“My hand! Jesus, you assholes, my hand is broken!”

I climbed to my feet and saw several men in black windbreakers moving about like ants on a hill. Some of the plastic raid jackets said
LAPD
on them but most had
FBI
printed across the back. Soon a helicopter came overhead and lit the entire parking clearing with a spotlight.

Bosch stepped over to the FBI agents huddling over the man in the mask.

“Was he hit?” he asked.

“There is no wound,” an agent said. “The round must have hit the gun, but that still hurts like a son of a bitch.”

“Where is the gun?”

“We’re still looking,” the agent said.

“It may have gone over the side,” another agent said.

“If we don’t find it tonight, we find it in daylight,” said a third.

They pulled the man up into a standing position. Two of the FBI agents stood on either side of him, holding him at the elbows.

“Let’s see who we’ve got,” Bosch said.

The ski mask was unceremoniously yanked off and a flashlight was aimed point-blank at the man’s face. Bosch turned and looked back at me.

“Juror number seven,” I said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Juror number seven from the trial. He didn’t show up today and the Sheriff’s Department was looking for him.”

Bosch turned back to the man I knew was named David McSweeney.

“Hold him right there.”

He then turned and signaled to me to follow him. He walked out of the circle of activity and into the parking clearing near my car. He stopped and turned back to me. But I got my question in first.

“What just happened?”

“What just happened was we just saved your life. He was going to push you over the side.”

“I know that, but what
happened?
Where did you and everybody else come from? You said you would let people go at night after I was tucked in. Where did all of these cops come from? And what’s the FBI doing here?”

“Things were different tonight. Things happened.”

“What things happened? What changed?”

“We can go over that later. Let’s talk about what we’ve got here first.”

“I don’t know what we’ve got here.”

“Tell me about juror number seven. Why didn’t he show up today?”

“Well, you should probably ask him that. All I can tell you is that this morning the judge called us into chambers and said he got an anonymous letter saying number seven was a phony and he lied about having a record. The judge planned to question him but he didn’t show up. The sheriffs were sent to his house and his job and they brought back a guy who wasn’t juror number seven.”

Bosch raised his hand like a traffic cop.

“Hold on, hold on. You’re not making sense. I know you just had a scare but—”

He stopped when one of the men in an LAPD jacket came over to address him.

“You want us to call paramedics? He says he thinks his hand is broken.”

“No, just hold him there. We’ll have him checked after we book him.”

“You sure?”

“Fuck him.”

The man nodded and went back to the spot where they were holding McSweeney.

“Yeah, fuck him,” I said.

“Why did he want to kill you?” Bosch asked.

I raised my empty hands.

“I don’t know. Maybe because of the story we planted. Wasn’t that the plan, to draw him out?”

“I think you’re holding out on me, Haller.”

“Look, I’ve told you what I could tell you all along. You’re the one holding out and playing games. What’s the FBI doing here?”

“They’ve been in it from the start.”

“Right, and you just forgot to tell me.”

“I told you what you needed to know.”

“Well, I need to know it all now or my cooperation with you ends now. That includes being any sort of witness against that man over there.”

I waited a moment and he said nothing. I turned to walk toward my car and Bosch put his hand on my arm. He smiled in frustration and shook his head.

“Come on, man, cool your jets. Don’t be throwing empty threats around.”

“You think it’s an empty threat? Why don’t we see how empty it is when I start stringing out the federal grand jury subpoena I know is going to come out of this. I can argue client confidentiality all the way to the Supreme Court — I bet that will only take about two years — and your newfound pals over in the bureau are going to wish you had just come clean with me when you had the chance.”

Bosch thought a moment and pulled me by the arm.

“All right, tough guy, come over here.”

We walked to a spot in the parking area even further from the law enforcement ant hill. Bosch started to talk.

“The bureau contacted me a few days after the Vincent murder and said that he had been a person of interest to them. That’s all. A person of interest. He was one of the lawyers whose names came up in their look at the state courts. Nothing specific, just based on rumors, things he had supposedly told clients he could get done, connections he claimed to have, that sort of thing. They’d drawn up a list of lawyers they heard might be bent and Vincent was on it. They invited him in as a cooperating witness and he declined. They were increasing the pressure on him when he got hit.”

“So they tell you all of this and you join forces. Isn’t that wonderful? Thanks for telling me.”

“Like I said, you didn’t need to know.”

A man in an FBI jacket crossed the parking area behind Bosch, and his face was momentarily lit from above. He looked familiar to me but I couldn’t place him. But then I imagined a mustache on him.

“Hey, there’s the asshole you sent after me the other night,” I said loud enough for the passing agent to hear. “He’s lucky I didn’t put a bullet in his face at the door.”

Bosch put his hands on my chest and pushed me back a few steps.

“Calm down, Counselor. If it weren’t for the bureau, I wouldn’t have had the manpower to keep the watch on you. And right now you could be lying down there at the bottom of the mountain.”

I pushed his hands off me but settled down. My anger dissipated as I accepted the reality of what Bosch had just said. And the reality that I had been used as a pawn from the beginning. By my client and now by Bosch and the FBI. Bosch took the moment to signal over another agent, who was standing nearby watching.

“This is Agent Armstead. He’s been running the bureau’s side of things and he’s got some questions for you.”

“Why not?” I said. “Nobody answers mine. I might as well answer yours.”

Armstead was a young, clean-cut agent with a precision military haircut.

“Mr. Haller, we’ll get to your questions as soon as we can,” he said. “Right now we have a fluid situation here and your cooperation will be greatly appreciated. Is juror number seven the man Vincent paid the bribe to?”

I looked at Bosch with a “who is this guy?” expression.

“Man, how would I know that? I wasn’t part of this thing. You want an answer to that, go ask him.”

“Don’t worry. We will be asking him a lot of questions. What were you doing up here, Mr. Haller?”

“I told you people. I told Bosch. I got a call from somebody who said he was a cop. He said he had a woman I know personally up here and she was under the influence and that I could come up and drive her home and save her the trouble of getting booked on a deuce.”

“We checked that name you gave me on the phone,” Bosch said. “There is one Randall Morris in the department. He’s on gang detail in South Bureau.”

I nodded.

“Yeah, well, I think it’s pretty clear now that it was a fake call. But he knew my friend’s name and he had my cell. It seemed convincing at the time, all right?”

“How did he get the woman’s name?” Armstead asked.

“Good question. I had a relationship with her — a platonic relationship — but I haven’t talked to her in almost a month.”

“Then, how would he know about her?”

“Man, you’re asking me shit I don’t know. Go ask McSweeney.”

I immediately realized I had slipped up. I wouldn’t know that name unless I had been investigating juror number seven.

Bosch looked at me curiously. I didn’t know if he realized the jury was supposed to be anonymous, even to the lawyers on the case. Before he could come up with a question, I was saved by someone yelling from the brush where I had almost been pushed over the side.

“I’ve got the gun!”

Bosch pointed a finger at my chest.

“Stay right here.”

I watched Bosch and Armstead trot over and join a few of the others as they studied the found weapon under a flashlight beam. Bosch didn’t touch the weapon but bent down into the light to examine it closely.

The
William Tell
Overture started to play behind me. I turned around and saw my phone lying on the gravel, its tiny square screen glowing like a beacon. I went over and picked it up. It was Cisco and I took the call.

“Cisco, I gotta call you back.”

“Make it quick. I’ve got some good shit for you. You’re going to want to know this.”

I closed the phone and watched as Bosch finished his study of the weapon and then stepped over to McSweeney. He leaned close to him and whispered something into his ear. He didn’t wait for a response. He just turned and walked back toward me. I could tell even in the dim moonlight that he was excited. Armstead was following behind him.

“The gun’s a Beretta Bobcat, like we were looking for on Vincent,” he said. “If the ballistics match, then we’ve got that guy locked in a box. I’ll make sure you get a commendation from City Hall.”

“Good. I’ll frame it.”

“Put this together for me, Haller, and you can start with him being the one who killed Vincent. Why did he want to kill you, too?”

“I don’t know.”

“The bribe,” Armstead asked. “Is he the one who got the money?”

“Same answer I gave you five minutes ago. I don’t know. But it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

“How did he know your friend’s name on the phone?”

“I don’t know that either.”

“Then, what good are you?” Bosch asked.

It was a good question and the immediate answer didn’t sit well with me.

“Look, Detective, I—”

“Don’t bother, man. Why don’t you just get in your car and get the fuck out of here? We’ll take it from here.”

He turned and started walking away and Armstead followed. I hesitated and then called out to Bosch. I waved him back. He said something to the FBI agent and came back to me alone.

“No bullshit,” he said impatiently. “I don’t have the time.”

“Okay, this is the thing,” I said. “I think he was going to make it look like I jumped.”

Bosch considered this and then shook his head.

“Suicide? Who would believe that? You’ve got the case of the decade, man. You’re hot. You’re on TV. And you’ve got a kid to worry about. Suicide wouldn’t sell.”

I nodded.

“Yes, it would.”

He looked at me and said nothing, waiting for me to explain.

“I’m a recovering addict, Bosch. You know anything about that?”

“Why don’t you tell me?”

“The story would go that I couldn’t take the pressure of the big case and all the attention, and I either had or was about to relapse. So I jumped instead of going back to that. It’s not an uncommon thing, Bosch. They call it the fast out. And it makes me think that…”

“What?”

I pointed across the clearing toward juror number seven.

“That he and whoever he was doing this for knew a lot about me. They did a deep background. They came up with my addiction and rehab and Lanie’s name. Then they came up with a solid plan for getting rid of me because they couldn’t just shoot down another lawyer without bringing down massive scrutiny on what it is they’ve got going. If I went down as a suicide, there’d be a lot less pressure.”

“Yeah, but why did they need to get rid of you?”

“I guess they think I know too much.”

“Do you?”

Before I could answer, McSweeney started yelling from the other side of the clearing.

“Hey! Over there with the lawyer. I want to make a deal. I can give you some big people, man! I want to make a deal!”

Bosch waited to see if there was more but that was it.

“My tip?” I said. “Go over there and strike while the iron’s hot. Before he remembers he’s entitled to a lawyer.”

Bosch nodded.

“Thanks, Coach,” he said. “But I think I know what I’m doing.”

He started to head across the clearing.

“Hey, Bosch, wait,” I called. “You owe me something before you go over there.”