The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel (6 page)

“Yeah, I know, but it happens. And the longer he stays in there, the wider the window of opportunity is for one of these guys.”

Valenzuela joined us at the railing. He didn’t say anything.

“I will suggest we go with the bond,” Dobbs said. “I already called and she was in a meeting. As soon as she calls me back
we will move on this.”

His words prompted something that had bothered me during the hearing.

“She couldn’t come out of a meeting to talk about her son in jail? I was wondering why she wasn’t in court today if this boy,
as you call him, is so clean and upstanding.”

Dobbs looked at me like I hadn’t used mouthwash in a month.

“Mrs. Windsor is a very busy and powerful woman. I am sure that if I had stated it was an emergency concerning her son, she
would have been on the phone immediately.”

“Mrs. Windsor?”

“She remarried after she and Louis’s father divorced. That was a long time ago.”

I nodded, then realized that there was more to talk about with Dobbs but nothing I wanted to discuss in front of Valenzuela.

“Val, why don’t you go check on when Louis will be back at Van Nuys jail so you can get him out.”

“That’s easy,” Valenzuela said. “He’ll go on the first bus back after lunch.”

“Yeah, well, go double-check that while I finish with Mr. Dobbs.”

Valenzuela was about to protest that he didn’t need to double-check it when he realized what I was telling him.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go do it.”

After he was gone I studied Dobbs for a moment before speaking. Dobbs looked to be in his late fifties. He had a deferential
presence that probably came from thirty years of taking care of rich people. My guess was that he had become rich in the process
himself but it hadn’t changed his public demeanor.

“If we’re going to be working together, I guess I should ask what you want to be called. Cecil? C.C.? Mr. Dobbs?”

“Cecil will be fine.”

“Well, my first question, Cecil, is whether we are going to be working together. Do I have the job?”

“Mr. Roulet made it clear to me he wanted you on the case. To be honest, you would not have been my first choice. You might
not have been any choice, because frankly I had never heard of you. But you are Mr. Roulet’s first choice, and that is acceptable
to me. In fact, I thought you acquitted yourself quite well in the courtroom, especially considering how hostile that prosecutor
was toward Mr. Roulet.”

I noticed that the boy had become “Mr. Roulet” now. I wondered what had happened to advance him in Dobbs’s view.

“Yeah, well, they call her Maggie McFierce. She’s pretty dedicated.”

“I thought she was a bit overboard. Do you think there is any way to get her removed from the case, maybe get someone a little
more… grounded?”

“I don’t know. Trying to shop prosecutors can be dangerous. But if you think she needs to go, I can get it done.”

“That’s good to hear. Maybe I should have known about you before today.”

“Maybe. Do you want to talk about fees now and get it out of the way?”

“If you would like.”

I looked around the hallway to make sure there were no other lawyers hanging around in earshot. I was going to go schedule
A all the way on this.

“I get twenty-five hundred for today and Louis already
approved that. If you want to go hourly from here, I get three hundred an hour and that gets bumped to five in trial because
I can’t do anything else. If you’d rather go with a flat rate, I’ll want sixty thousand to take it from here through a preliminary
hearing. If we end it with a plea, I’ll take twelve more on top of that. If we go to trial instead, I need another sixty on
the day we decide that and twenty-five more when we start picking a jury. This case doesn’t look like more than a week, including
jury selection, but if it goes past a week, I get twenty-five-a-week extra. We can talk about an appeal if and when it becomes
necessary.”

I hesitated a moment to see how Dobbs was reacting. He showed nothing so I pressed on.

“I’ll need thirty thousand for a retainer and another ten for an investigator by the end of the day. I don’t want to waste
time on this. I want to get an investigator out and about on this thing before it hits the media and maybe before the cops
talk to some of the people involved.”

Dobbs slowly nodded.

“Are those your standard fees?”

“When I can get them. I’m worth it. What are you charging the family, Cecil?”

I was sure he wouldn’t walk away from this little episode hungry.

“That’s between me and my client. But don’t worry. I will include your fees in my discussion with Mrs. Windsor.”

“I appreciate it. And remember, I need that investigator to start today.”

I gave him a business card I pulled from the right pocket of my suit coat. The cards in the right pocket had my cell number.
The cards in my left pocket had the number that went to Lorna Taylor.

“I have another hearing downtown,” I said. “When you get him out call me and we’ll set up a meeting. Let’s make it as soon
as possible. I should be available later today and tonight.”

“Perfect,” Dobbs said, pocketing the card without looking at it. “Should we come to you?”

“No, I’ll come to you. I’d like to see how the other half lives in those high-rises in Century City.”

Dobbs smiled glibly.

“It is obvious by your suit that you know and practice the adage that a trial lawyer should never dress too well. You want
the jury to like you, not to be jealous of you. Well, Michael, a Century City lawyer can’t have an office that is nicer than
the offices his clients come from. And so I can assure you that our offices are very modest.”

I nodded in agreement. But I was insulted just the same. I was wearing my best suit. I always did on Mondays.

“That’s good to know,” I said.

The courtroom door opened and the videographer walked out, lugging his camera and folded tripod with him. Dobbs saw him and
immediately tensed.

“The media,” he said. “How can we control this? Mrs. Windsor won’t—”

“Hold on a sec.”

I called to the cameraman and he walked over. I immediately put my hand out. He had to put his tripod down to take it.

“I’m Michael Haller. I saw you in there filming my client’s appearance.”

Using my formal name was a code.

“Robert Gillen,” the cameraman said. “People call me Sticks.”

He gestured to his tripod in explanation. His use of his formal name was a return code. He was letting me know he understood
that I had a play working here.

“Are you freelancing or on assignment?” I asked.

“Just freelancing today.”

“How’d you hear about this thing?”

He shrugged as though he was reluctant to answer.

“A source. A cop.”

I nodded. Gillen was locked in and playing along.

“What do you get for that if you sell it to a news station?”

“Depends. I take seven-fifty for an exclusive and five for a nonexclusive.”

Nonexclusive
meant that any news director who bought the tape from him knew that he might sell the footage to a competing news station.
Gillen had doubled the fees he actually got. It was a good move. He must have been listening to what had been said in the
courtroom while he shot it.

“Tell you what,” I said. “How about we take it off your hands right now for an exclusive?”

Gillen was perfect. He hesitated like he was unsure of the ethics involved in the proposition.

“In fact, make it a grand,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. “You got a deal.”

While Gillen put the camera on the floor and took the tape out of it, I pulled a wad of cash from my pocket. I had kept twelve
hundred from the Saints cash Teddy Vogel had given me on the way down. I turned to Dobbs.

“I can expense this, right?”

“Absolutely,” he said. He was beaming.

I exchanged the cash for the tape and thanked Gillen. He pocketed the money and moved toward the elevators a happy man.

“That was brilliant,” Dobbs said. “We have to contain this. It could literally destroy the family’s business if this—in fact,
I think that is one reason Mrs. Windsor was not here today. She didn’t want to be recognized.”

“Well, we’ll have to talk about that if this thing goes the distance. Meantime, I’ll do my best to keep it off the radar.”

“Thank you.”

A cell phone began to play a classical number by Bach or Beethoven or some other dead guy with no copyright and Dobbs reached
inside his jacket, retrieved the device and checked the small screen on it.

“This is she,” he said.

“Then I’ll leave you to it.”

As I walked off I heard Dobbs saying, “Mary, everything is under control. We need now to concentrate on getting him out. We
are going to need some money…”

While the elevator made its way up to me, I was thinking that I was pretty sure that I was dealing with a client and family
for which “some money” meant more than I had ever seen. My mind moved back to the sartorial comment Dobbs had made about me.
It still stung. The truth was, I didn’t have a suit in my closet that cost less than
six hundred dollars and I always felt good and confident in any one of them. I wondered if he had intended to insult me or
he had intended something else, maybe trying at this early stage of the game to imprint his control over me and the case.
I decided I would need to watch my back with Dobbs. I would keep him close but not that close.

T
raffic heading downtown bottlenecked in the Cahuenga Pass. I spent the time in the car working the phone and trying not to
think about the conversation I’d had with Maggie McPherson about my parenting skills. My ex-wife had been right about me,
and that’s what hurt. For a long time I had put my law practice ahead of my parenting practice. It was something I promised
myself to change. I just needed the time and the money to slow down. I thought that maybe Louis Roulet would provide both.

In the back of the Lincoln I first called Raul Levin, my investigator, to put him on alert about the potential meeting with
Roulet. I asked him to do a preliminary run on the case to see what he could find out. Levin had retired early from the LAPD
and still had contacts and friends who did him favors from time to time. He probably had his own Christmas list. I told him
not to spend a lot of time on it until I was sure I had Roulet locked down as a paying client. It didn’t matter what C. C.
Dobbs had said to me face-to-face in the courthouse hallway. I wouldn’t believe I had the case until I got the first payment.

Next I checked on the status of a few cases and then called Lorna Taylor again. I knew the mail was delivered at her place
most days right before noon. But she told me nothing of importance had come in. No checks and no correspondence I had to pay
immediate attention to from the courts.

“Did you check on Gloria Dayton’s arraignment?” I asked her.

“Yes. It looks like they might hold her over until tomorrow on a medical.”

I groaned. The state has forty-eight hours to charge an individual after arrest and bring them before a judge. Holding Gloria
Dayton’s first appearance over until the next day because of medical reasons meant that she was probably drug sick. This would
help explain why she had been holding cocaine when she was arrested. I had not seen or spoken to her in at least seven months.
Her slide must have been quick and steep. The thin line between controlling the drugs and the drugs controlling her had been
crossed.

“Did you find out who filed it?” I asked.

“Leslie Faire,” she said.

I groaned again.

“That’s just great. Okay, well, I’m going to go down and see what I can do. I’ve got nothing going until I hear about Roulet.”

Leslie Faire was a misnamed prosecutor whose idea of giving a defendant a break or the benefit of the doubt was to offer extended
parole supervision on top of prison time.

“Mick, when are you going to learn with this woman?” Lorna said about Gloria Dayton.

“Learn what?” I asked, although I knew exactly what Lorna would say.

“She drags you down every time you have to deal with her. She’s never going to get out of the life, and now you can bet she’s
never going to be anything less than a twofer every time she calls. That would be fine, except you never charge her.”

What she meant by
twofer
was that Gloria Dayton’s cases would from now on be more complicated and time-consuming because it was likely that drug charges
would always accompany solicitation or prostitution charges. What bothered Lorna was that this meant more work for me but
no more income in the process.

“Well, the bar requires that all lawyers practice some pro bono work, Lorna. You know—”

“You don’t listen to me, Mick,” she said dismissively. “That’s exactly why we couldn’t stay married.”

I closed my eyes. What a day. I had managed to get both my ex-wives angry with me.

“What does this woman have on you?” she asked. “Why don’t you charge even a basic fee with her?”

“Look, she doesn’t have anything on me, okay?” I said. “Can we sort of change the subject now?”

I didn’t tell her that years earlier when I had looked through the dusty old account books from my father’s law practice,
I had found that he’d had a soft spot for the so-called women of the night. He defended many and charged few. Maybe I was
just continuing a family tradition.

“Fine,” Lorna said. “How did it go with Roulet?”

“You mean, did I get the job? I think so. Val’s probably getting him out right now. We’ll set up a meeting after that. I already
asked Raul to sniff around on it.”

“Did you get a check?”

“Not yet.”

“Get the check, Mick.”

“I’m working on it.”

“How’s the case look?”

“I’ve only seen the pictures but it looks bad. I’ll know more after I see what Raul comes up with.”

“And what about Roulet?”

I knew what she was asking. How was he as a client? Would a jury, if it came to a jury, like him or despise him? Cases could
be won or lost based on jurors’ impressions of the defendant.