The Lincoln Lawyer

by Michael Connelly

  Levin started loading in a DVD. But before he could play it the car pulled to a stop and I looked up. We were in front of a place called The Central Bean.

  “Let’s get some coffee and then see what you’ve got there,” I said.

  I asked Earl if he wanted anything and he declined the offer. Levin and I got out and went in. There was a short line for coffee. Levin spent the waiting time telling me about the DVD we were about to watch in the car.

  “I’m in Morgan’s and want to talk to this bartender named Janice but she says I have to clear it first with the manager. So I go back to see him in the office and he’s asking me what exactly I want to ask Janice about. There’s something off about this guy. I’m wondering why he wants to know so much, you know? Then it comes clear when he makes an offer. He tells me that last year they had a problem behind the bar. Pilferage from the cash register. They have as many as a dozen bartenders working back there in a given week and he couldn’t figure out who had sticky fingers.”

  “He put in a camera.”

  “You got it. A hidden camera. He caught the thief and fired his ass. But it worked so good he kept the camera in place. The system records on high-density tape from eight till two every night. It’s on a timer. He gets four nights on a tape. If there is ever a problem or a shortage he can go back and check it. Because they do a weekly profit-and-loss check, he rotates two tapes so he always has a week’s worth of film to look at.”

  “He had the night in question on tape?”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And he wanted a thousand dollars for it.”

  “Right again.”

  “The cops don’t know about it?”

  “They haven’t even come to the bar yet. They’re just going with Reggie’s story so far.”

  I nodded. This wasn’t all that unusual. There were too many cases for the cops to investigate thoroughly and completely. They were already loaded for bear, anyway. They had an eyewitness victim, a suspect caught in her apartment, they had the victim’s blood on the suspect and even the weapon. To them, there was no reason to go further.

  “But we’re interested in the bar, not the cash register,” I said.

  “I know that. And the cash register is against the wall behind the bar. The camera is up above it in a smoke detector on the ceiling. And the back wall is a mirror. I looked at what he had and pretty quickly realized that you can see the whole bar in the mirror. It’s just reversed. I had the tape transferred to a disc because we can manipulate the image better. Blow it up and zero in, that sort of thing.”

  It was our turn in line. I ordered a large coffee with cream and sugar and Levin ordered a bottle of water. We took our refreshments back to the car. I told Earl not to drive until after we’d viewed the DVD. I can read while riding in a car but I thought looking at the small screen of Levin’s player while bumping along south county streets might give me a dose of motion sickness.

  Levin started the DVD and gave a running commentary to go with the visuals.

  On the small screen was a downward view of the rectangular-shaped bar at Morgan’s. There were two bartenders on patrol, both women in black jeans and white shirts tied off to show flat stomachs, pierced navels and tattoos creeping up out of their rear belt lines. As Levin had explained, the camera was angled toward the back of the bar area and cash register but the mirror that covered the wall behind the register displayed the line of customers sitting at the bar. I saw Louis Roulet sit down by himself in the dead center of the frame. There was a frame counter in the bottom left corner and a time and date code in the right corner. It said that it was 8:11 P.M. on March 6.

  “There’s Louis showing up,” Levin said. “And over here is Reggie Campo.”

  He manipulated buttons on the player and froze the image. He then shifted it, bringing the right margin into the center. On the short side of the bar to the right a woman and a man sat next to each other. Levin zoomed in on them.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  I had only seen pictures of the woman with her face badly bruised and swollen.

  “Yeah, it’s her. And that’s our Mr. X.”

  “Okay.”

  “Now watch.”

  He started the film moving again and widened the picture back to full frame. He then started moving it in fast-forward mode.

  “Louis drinks his martini, he talks with the bartenders and nothing much happens for almost an hour,” Levin said.

  He checked a notebook page that had notes attributed to specific frame numbers. He slowed the image to normal speed at the right moment and shifted the frame again so that Reggie Campo and Mr. X were in the center of the screen. I noticed that we had advanced to 8:43 on the time code.

  On the screen Mr. X took a pack of cigarettes and a lighter off the bar and slid off his stool. He then walked out of camera range to the right.

  “He’s heading to the front door,” Levin said. “They have a smoking porch in the front.”

  Reggie Campo appeared to watch Mr. X go and then she slid off her stool and started walking along the front of the bar, just behind the patrons on stools. As she passed by Roulet she appeared to drag the fingers of her left hand across his shoulders, almost in a tickling gesture. This made Roulet turn and watch her as she kept going.

  “She just gave him a little flirt there,” Levin said. “She’s heading to the bathroom.”

  “That’s not how Roulet said it went down,” I said. “He claimed she came on to him, gave him her —”

  “Just hold your horses,” Levin said. “She’s got to come back from the can, you know.”

  I waited and watched Roulet at the bar. I checked my watch. I was doing okay for the time being but I couldn’t miss the calendar call at the CCB. I had already pushed the judge’s patience to the max by not showing up the day before.

  “Here she comes,” Levin said.

  Leaning closer to the screen I watched as Reggie Campo came back along the bar line. This time when she got to Roulet she squeezed up to the bar between him and a man on the next stool to the right. She had to move into the space sideways and her breasts were clearly pushed against Roulet’s right arm. It was a come-on if I had ever seen one. She said something and Roulet bent over closer to her lips to hear. After a few moments he nodded and then I saw her put what looked like a crumpled cocktail napkin into his hand. They had one more verbal exchange and then Reggie Campo kissed Louis Roulet on the cheek and pulled backwards away from the bar. She headed back to her stool.

  “You’re beautiful, Mish,” I said, using the name I gave him after he told me of his mishmash of Jewish and Mexican descent.

  “And you say the cops don’t have this?” I added.

  “They didn’t know about it last week when I got it and I still have the tape. So, no, they don’t have it and probably don’t know about it yet.”

  Under the rules of discovery, I would need to turn it over to the prosecution after Roulet was formally arraigned. But there was still some play in that. I didn’t technically have to turn over anything until I was sure I planned to use it in trial. That gave me a lot of leeway and time.

  I knew that what was on the DVD was important and no doubt would be used in trial. All by itself it could be cause for reasonable doubt. It seemed to show a familiarity between victim and alleged attacker that was not included in the state’s case. More important, it also caught the victim in a position in which her behavior could be interpreted as being at least partially responsible for drawing the action that followed. This was not to suggest that what followed was acceptable or not criminal, but juries are always interested in the causal relationships of crime and the individuals involved. What the video did was move a crime that might have been viewed through a black-and-white prism into the gray area. As a defense attorney I lived in the gray areas.

  The flip side of that was that the DVD was so good it might be too good. It directly contradicted the victim’s statement to police about not knowing the man who attack
ed her. It impeached her, showed her in a lie. It only took one lie to knock a case down. The tape was what I called “walking proof.” It would end the case before it even got to trial. My client would simply walk away.

  And with him would go the big franchise payday.

  Levin was fast-forwarding the image again.

  “Now watch this,” he said. “She and Mr. X split at nine. But watch when he gets up.”

  Levin had shifted the frame to focus on Campo and the unknown man. When the time code hit 8:59 he put the playback in slow motion.

  “Okay, they’re getting ready to leave,” he said. “Watch the guy’s hands.”

  I watched. The man took a final draw on his drink, tilting his head far back and emptying the glass. He then slipped off his stool, helped Campo off hers and they walked out of the camera frame to the right.

  “What?” I said. “What did I miss?”

  Levin moved the image backwards until he got to the moment the unknown man was finishing his drink. He then froze the image and pointed to the screen. The man had his left hand down flat on the bar for balance as he reared back to drink.

  “He drinks with his right hand,” he said. “And on his left you can see a watch on his wrist. So it looks like the guy is right-handed, right?”

  “Yeah, so? What does that get us? The injuries to the victim came from blows from the left.”

  “Think about what I’ve told you.”

  I did. And after a few moments I got it.

  “The mirror. Everything’s backwards. He’s left-handed.”

  Levin nodded and made a punching motion with his left fist.

  “This could be the whole case right here,” I said, not sure that was a good thing.

  “Happy Saint Paddy’s Day, lad,” Levin said in his brogue again, not realizing I might be staring at the end of the gravy train.

  I took a long drink of hot coffee and tried to think about a strategy for the video. I didn’t see any way to hold it for trial. The cops would eventually get around to the follow-up investigations and they would find out about it. If I held on to it, it could blow up in my face.

  “I don’t know how I’m going to use it yet,” I said. “But I think it’s safe to say Mr. Roulet and his mother and Cecil Dobbs are going to be very happy with you.”

  “Tell them they can always express their thanks financially.”

  “All right, anything else on the tape?”

  Levin started to fast-forward the playback.

  “Not really. Roulet reads the napkin and memorizes the address. He then hangs around another twenty minutes and splits, leaving a fresh drink on the bar.”

  He slowed the image down at the point Roulet was leaving. Roulet took one sip out of his fresh martini and put it down on the bar. He picked up the napkin Reggie Campo had given him, crumpled it in his hand and then dropped it to the floor as he got up. He left the bar, leaving the drink behind.

  Levin ejected the DVD and returned it to its plastic sleeve. He then turned off the player and started to put it away.

  “That’s it on the visuals that I can show you here.”

  I reached forward and tapped Earl on the shoulder. He had his sound buds in. He pulled out one of the ear plugs and looked back at me.

  “Let’s head back to the courthouse,” I said. “Keep your plugs in.”

  Earl did as instructed.

  “What else?” I said to Levin.

  “There’s Reggie Campo,” he said. “She’s not Snow White.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “It’s not necessarily what I found out. It’s what I think. You saw how she was on the tape. One guy leaves and she’s dropping love notes on another guy alone at the bar. Plus, I did some checking. She’s an actress but she’s not currently working as an actress. Except for private auditions, you could say.”

  He handed me a professional photo collage that showed Reggie Campo in different poses and characters. It was the kind of photo sheet sent to casting directors all over the city. The largest photo on the sheet was a head shot. It was the first time I had seen her face up close without the ugly bruises and swelling. Reggie Campo was a very attractive woman and something about her face was familiar to me but I could not readily place it. I wondered if I had seen her in a television show or a commercial. I flipped the head shot over and read her credits. They were for shows I never watched and commercials I didn’t remember.

  “In the police reports she lists her current employer as Topsail Telemarketing. They’re over in the Marina. They take the calls for a lot of the crap they sell on late-night TV. Workout machines and stuff like that. Anyway, it’s day work. You work when you want. The only thing is, Reggie hasn’t worked a day there for five months.”

  “So what are you telling me, she’s been tricking?”

  “I’ve been watching her the last three nights and —”

  “You what?”

  I turned and looked at him. If a private eye working for a criminal defendant was caught tailing the victim of a violent crime, there could be hell to pay and I would be the one to pay it. All the prosecution would have to do is go see a judge and claim harassment and intimidation and I’d be held in contempt faster than the Santa Ana wind through the Sepulveda Pass. As a crime victim Reggie Campo was sacrosanct until she was on the stand. Only then was she mine.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Levin said. “It was a very loose tail. Very loose. And I’m glad I did it. The bruises and the swelling and all of that have either gone away or she’s using a lot of makeup, because this lady has been getting a lot of visitors. All men, all alone, all different times of the night. It looks like she tries to fit at least two into her dance card each night.”

  “Is she picking them up in the bars?”

  “No, she’s been staying in. These guys must be regulars or something because they know their way to her door. I got some plate numbers. If necessary I can visit them and try to get some answers. I also shot some infrared video but I haven’t transferred it to disc yet.”

  “No, let’s hold off on visiting any of these guys for now. Word could get back to her. We have to be very careful around her. I don’t care if she’s tricking or not.”

  I drank some more coffee and tried to decide how to move with this.

  “You ran a check on her, right? No criminal record?”

  “Right, she’s clean. My guess is that she’s new to the game. You know, these women who want to be actresses, it’s a tough gig. It wears you down. She probably started by taking a little help from these guys here and there, then it became a business. She went from amateur to pro.”

  “And none of this is in the reports you got before?”

  “Nope. Like I told you, there hasn’t been a lot of follow-up by the cops. At least so far.”

  “If she graduated from amateur to pro, she could’ve graduated to setting a guy like Roulet up. He drives a nice car, wears nice clothes . . . have you seen his watch?”

  “Yeah, a Rolex. If it’s real, then he’s wearing ten grand right there on his wrist. She could have seen that from across the bar. Maybe that’s why she picked him out of all the rest.”

  We were back by the courthouse. I had to start heading toward downtown. I asked Levin where he was parked and he directed Earl to the lot.

  “This is all good,” I said. “But it means Louis lied about more than UCLA.”

  “Yeah,” Levin agreed. “He knew he was going into a pay-for-play deal with her. He should have told you about it.”

  “Yeah, and now I’m going to talk to him about it.”

  We pulled up next to the curb outside a pay lot on Acacia. Levin took a file out of his briefcase. It had a rubber band around it that held a piece of paper to the outside cover. He held it out to me and I saw the document was an invoice for almost six thousand dollars for eight days of investigative services and expenses. Based on what I had heard during the last half hour, the price was a bargain.

  “That file ha
s everything we just talked about, plus a copy of the video from Morgan’s on disc,” Levin said.

  I hesitantly took the file. By taking it I was moving it into the realm of discovery. Not accepting it and keeping everything with Levin would have given me a buffer, wiggle room if I got into a discovery scrap with the prosecutor.

  I tapped the invoice with my finger.

  “I’ll call this in to Lorna and we’ll send out a check,” I said.

  “How is Lorna? I miss seeing her.”

  When we were married, Lorna used to ride with me a lot and go into court with me to watch. Sometimes when I was short a driver she would take the wheel. Levin saw her more often back then.

  “She’s doing great. She’s still Lorna.”

  Levin cracked his door open but didn’t get out.

  “You want me to stay on Reggie?”

  That was the question. If I approved I would lose all deniability if something went wrong. Because now I would know what he was doing. I hesitated but then I nodded.

  “Very loose. And don’t farm it out. I only trust you on it.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it myself. What else?”

  “The left-handed man. We have to figure out who Mr. X is and whether he was part of this thing or just another customer.”

  Levin nodded and pumped his left-handed fist again.

  “I’m on it.”

  He put on his sunglasses, opened the door and slid out. He reached back in for his briefcase and his unopened bottle of water, then said good-bye and closed the door. I watched him start walking through the lot in search of his car. I should have been ecstatic about all I had just learned. It tilted everything steeply toward my client. But I still felt uneasy about something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

  Earl had turned his music off and was awaiting direction.

  “Take me downtown, Earl,” I said.

  “You got it,” he replied. “The CCB?”

  “Yeah and, hey, who was that you were listening to on the ’Pod? I could sort of hear it.”

  “That was Snoop. Gotta play him up loud.”