“Yeah, don’t mention it,” I said.
I drained a good quarter of my pint, then picked up the phone again. Using speed dial I called Fernando Valenzuela’s cell number. He was at home, having just gotten in from the Dodgers game. That meant that he had left early to beat the traffic. Typical L.A. fan.
“Do you still have a tracking bracelet on Roulet?”
“Yeah, he’s got it.”
“How’s it work? Can you track where he’s been or only where he’s at?”
“It’s global positioning. It sends up a signal. You can track it backwards to tell where somebody’s been.”
“You got it there or is it at the office?”
“It’s on my laptop, man. What’s up?”
“I want to see where he’s been today.”
“Well, let me boot it up. Hold on.”
I held on, finished my Guinness and had the bartender start filling another before Valenzuela had his laptop fired up.
“Where’re you at, Mick?”
“Four Green Fields.”
“Anything wrong?”
“Yeah, something’s wrong. Do you have it up or what?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at it right here. How far back do you want to check?”
“Start at this morning.”
“Okay. He, uh . . . he hasn’t done much today. I track it from his home to his office at eight. Looks like he took a little trip nearby—a couple blocks, probably for lunch—and then back to the office. He’s still there.”
I thought about this for a few moments. The bartender delivered my next pint.
“Val, how do you get that thing off your ankle?”
“You mean if you were him? You don’t. You can’t. It bolts on and the little wrench you use is unique. It’s like a key. I got the only one.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“I’m sure. I got it right here on my key chain, man.”
“No copies—like from the manufacturer?”
“Not supposed to be. Besides, it doesn’t matter. If the ring is broken—like even if he did open it—I get an alarm on the system. It also has what’s called a ‘mass detector.’ Once I put that baby around his ankle, I get an alarm on the computer the moment it reads that there is nothing there. That didn’t happen, Mick. So you are talking about a saw being the only way. Cut off the leg, leave the bracelet on the ankle. That’s the only way.”
I drank the top off my new beer. The bartender hadn’t bothered with any artwork this time.
“What about the battery? What if the battery’s dead, you lose the signal?”
“No, Mick. I got that covered, too. He’s got a charger and a receptacle on the bracelet. Every few days he’s got to plug it in for a couple hours to juice it. You know, while he’s at his desk or something or taking a nap. If the battery goes below twenty percent I get an alarm on my computer and I call him and say plug it in. If he doesn’t do it then, I get another alarm at fifteen percent, and then at ten percent he starts beeping and he’s got no way to take it off or turn it off. Doesn’t make for a good getaway. And that last ten percent still gives me five hours of tracking. I can find him in five hours, no sweat.”
“Okay, okay.”
I was convinced by the science.
“What’s going on?”
I told him about Levin and told him that the police would likely have to check out Roulet, and the ankle bracelet and tracking system would likely be our client’s alibi. Valenzuela was stunned by the news. He might not have been as close to Levin as I had been, but he had known him just as long.
“What do you think happened, Mick?” he asked me.
I knew that he was asking if I thought Roulet was the killer or somehow behind the killing. Valenzuela was not privy to all that I knew or that Levin had found out.
“I don’t know what to think,” I said. “But you should watch yourself with this guy.”
“And you watch yourself.”
“I will.”
I closed the phone, wondering if there was something Valenzuela didn’t know. If Roulet had somehow found a way to take the ankle bracelet off or to subvert the tracking system. I was convinced by the science of it but not the human side of it. There are always human flaws.
The bartender sauntered over to my spot at the bar.
“Hey, buddy, did you lose your car keys?” he said.
I looked around to make sure he was talking to me and then shook my head.
“No,” I said.
“Are you sure? Somebody found keys in the parking lot. You better check.”
I reached into the pocket of my suit jacket, then brought my hand out and extended it, palm up. My key ring was displayed on my hand.
“See, I tol —”
In a quick and unexpected move, the bartender grabbed the keys off my hand and smiled.
“Falling for that should be a sobriety test in and of itself,” he said. “Anyway, pal, you’re not driving—not for a while. When you’re ready to go, I’ll call you a taxi.”
He stepped back from the bar in case I had a violent objection to the ruse. But I just nodded.
“You got me,” I said.
He tossed my keys onto the back counter, where the bottles were lined up. I looked at my watch. It wasn’t even five o’clock. Embarrassment burned through the alcohol padding. I had taken the easy way out. The coward’s way, getting drunk in the face of a terrible occurrence.
“You can take it,” I said, pointing to my glass of Guinness.
I picked up the phone and punched in a speed-dial number. Maggie McPherson answered right away. The courts usually closed by four-thirty. The prosecutors were usually at their desks in that last hour or two before the end of the day.
“Hey, is it quitting time yet?”
“Haller?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s going on? Are you drinking? Your voice is different.”
“I think I might need you to drive me home this time.”
“Where are you?”
“For Greedy Fucks.”
“What?”
“Four Green Fields. I’ve been here awhile.”
“Michael, what is —”
“Raul Levin is dead.”
“Oh my God, what —”
“Murdered. So this time can you drive me home? I’ve had too much.”
“Let me call Stacey and get her to stay late with Hayley, then I’ll be on my way. Do not try to leave there, okay? Just don’t leave.”
“Don’t worry, the bartender isn’t gonna let me.”
TWENTY-FIVE
A fter closing my phone I told the bartender I had changed my mind and I’d have one more pint while waiting for my ride. I took out my wallet and put a credit card on the bar. He ran my tab first, then got me the Guinness. He took so long filling the glass, spooning foam over the side to give me a full pour, that I had barely tasted it by the time Maggie got there.
“That was too quick,” I said. “You want a drink?”
“No, it’s too early. Let’s just get you home.”
“Okay.”
I got off the stool, remembered to collect my credit card and phone, and left the bar with my arm around her shoulders and feeling like I had poured more Guinness and vodka down the drain than my own throat.
“I’m right out front,” Maggie said. “Four Greedy Fucks, how did you come up with that? Do four people own this place?”
“No, for, as in for the people. As in Haller for the defense. Not the number four. Greedy fucks as in lawyers.”
“Thank you.”
“Not you. You’re not a lawyer. You’re a prosecutor.”
“How much did you drink, Haller?”
“Somewhere between too much and a lot.”
“Don’t puke in my car.”
“I promise.”
We got to the car, one of the cheap Jaguar models. It was the first car she had ever bought without me holding her hand and being involved in running down the c
hoices. She’d gotten the Jag because it made her feel classy, but anybody who knew cars knew it was just a dressed-up Ford. I didn’t spoil it for her. Whatever made her happy made me happy—except the time she thought divorcing me would make her life happier. That didn’t do much for me.
She helped me in and then we were off.
“Don’t pass out, either,” she said as she pulled out of the parking lot. “I don’t know the way.”
“Just take Laurel Canyon over the hill. After that, it’s just a left turn at the bottom.”
Even though it was supposed to be a reverse commute, it took almost forty-five minutes in end-of-the-day traffic to get to Fareholm Drive. Along the way I told her about Raul Levin and what had happened. She didn’t react like Lorna had because she had never known Levin. Though I had known him and used him as an investigator for years, he didn’t become a friend until after we had divorced. In fact, it was Raul who had driven me home on more than one night from Four Green Fields as I was getting through the end of my marriage.
My garage opener was in the Lincoln back at the bar so I told her to just park in the opening in front of the garage. I also realized my front door key was on the ring that had the Lincoln’s key and that had been confiscated by the bartender. We had to go down the side of the house to the back deck and get the spare key—the one Roulet had given me—from beneath an ashtray on the picnic table. We went in the back door, which led directly into my office. This was good because even in my inebriated state I was pleased that we avoided climbing the stairs to the front door. Not only would it have worn me out but she would have seen the view and been reminded of the inequities between life as a prosecutor and life as a greedy fuck.
“Ah, that’s nice,” she said. “Our little teacup.”
I followed her eyes and saw she was looking at the photo of our daughter I kept on the desk. I thrilled at the idea I had inadvertently scored a point of some kind with her.
“Yeah,” I said, fumbling any chance of capitalizing.
“Which way to the bedroom?” she asked.
“Well, aren’t you being forward. To the right.”
“Sorry, Haller, I’m not staying long. I only got a couple extra hours out of Stacey, and with that traffic, I’ve got to turn around and head back over the hill soon.”
She walked me into the bedroom and we sat down next to each other on the bed.
“Thank you for doing this,” I said.
“One good turn deserves another, I guess,” she said.
“I thought I got my good turn that night I took you home.”
She put her hand on my cheek and turned my face toward hers. She kissed me. I took this as confirmation that we actually had made love that night. I felt incredibly left out at not remembering.
“Guinness,” she said, tasting her lips as she pulled away.
“And some vodka.”
“Good combination. You’ll be hurting in the morning.”
“It’s so early I’ll be hurting tonight. Tell you what, why don’t we go get dinner at Dan Tana’s? Craig’s on the door now and —”
“No, Mick. I have to go home to Hayley and you have to go to sleep.”
I made a gesture of surrender.
“Okay, okay.”
“Call me in the morning. I want to talk to you when you’re sober.”
“Okay.”
“You want to get undressed and get under the covers?”
“No, I’m all right. I’ll just . . .”
I leaned back on the bed and kicked my shoes off. I then rolled over to the edge and opened a drawer in the night table. I took out a bottle of Tylenol and a CD that had been given to me by a client named Demetrius Folks. He was a banger from Norwalk known on the street as Lil’ Demon. He had told me once that he’d had a vision one night and that he knew he was destined to die young and violently. He gave me the CD and told me to play it when he was dead. And I did. Demetrius’s prophecy came true. He was killed in a drive-by shooting about six months after he had given me the disc. In Magic Marker he had written Wreckrium for Lil’ Demon on it. It was a collection of ballads he had burned off of Tupac CDs.
I loaded the CD into the Bose player on the night table and soon the rhythmic beat of “God Bless the Dead” started to play. The song was a salute to fallen comrades.
“You listen to this stuff?” Maggie asked, her eyes squinting at me in disbelief.
I shrugged as best I could while leaning on an elbow.
“Sometimes. It helps me understand a lot of my clients better.”
“These are the people who should be in jail.”
“Maybe some of them. But a lot of them have something to say. Some are true poets and this guy was the best of them.”
“Was? Who is it, the one that got shot outside the car museum on Wilshire?”
“No, you’re talking about Biggie Smalls. This is the late great Tupac Shakur.”
“I can’t believe you listen to this stuff.”
“I told you. It helps me.”
“Do me a favor. Do not listen to this around Hayley.”
“Don’t worry about it, I won’t.”
“I’ve gotta go.”
“Just stay a little bit.”
She complied but she sat stiffly on the edge of the bed. I could tell she was trying to pick up the lyrics. You needed an ear for it and it took some time. The next song was “Life Goes On,” and I watched her neck and shoulders tighten as she caught some of the words.
“Can I please go now?” she asked.
“Maggie, just stay a few minutes.”
I reached over and turned it down a little.
“Hey, I’ll turn it off if you’ll sing to me like you used to.”
“Not tonight, Haller.”
“Nobody knows the Maggie McFierce I know.”
She smiled a little and I was quiet for a moment while I remembered those times.
“Maggie, why do you stay with me?”
“I told you, I can’t stay.”
“No, I don’t mean tonight. I’m talking about how you stick with me, how you don’t run me down with Hayley and how you’re there when I need you. Like tonight. I don’t know many people who have ex-wives who still like them.”
She thought a little bit before answering.
“I don’t know. I guess because I see a good man and a good father in there waiting to break out one day.”
I nodded and hoped she was right.
“Tell me something. What would you do if you couldn’t be a prosecutor?”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, what would you do?”
“I’ve never really thought about it. Right now I get to do what I’ve always wanted to do. I’m lucky. Why would I want to change?”
I opened the Tylenol bottle and popped two without a chaser. The next song was “So Many Tears,” another ballad for all of those lost. It seemed appropriate.
“I think I’d be a teacher,” she finally said. “Grade school. Little girls like Hayley.”
I smiled.
“Mrs. McFierce, Mrs. McFierce, my dog ate my homework.”
She slugged me on the arm.
“Actually, that’s nice,” I said. “You’d be a good teacher . . . except when you’re sending kids off to detention without bail.”
“Funny. What about you?”
I shook my head.
“I wouldn’t be a good teacher.”
“I mean what would you do if you weren’t a lawyer.”
“I don’t know. But I’ve got three Town Cars. I guess I could start a limo service, take people to the airport.”
Now she smiled at me.
“I’d hire you.”
“Good. There’s one customer. Give me a dollar and I’ll tape it to the wall.”
But the banter wasn’t working. I leaned back, put my palms against my eyes and tried to push away the day, to push out the memory of Raul Levin on the floor of his house, eyes staring at a permanent black sky.
<
br /> “You know what I used to be afraid of?” I asked.
“What?”
“That I wouldn’t recognize innocence. That it would be there right in front of me and I wouldn’t see it. I’m not talking about guilty or not guilty. I mean innocence. Just innocence.”
She didn’t say anything.
“But you know what I should have been afraid of?”
“What, Haller?”
“Evil. Pure evil.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, most of the people I defend aren’t evil, Mags. They’re guilty, yeah, but they aren’t evil. You know what I mean? There’s a difference. You listen to them and you listen to these songs and you know why they make the choices they make. People are just trying to get by, just to live with what they’re given, and some of them aren’t given a damn thing in the first place. But evil is something else. It’s different. It’s like . . . I don’t know. It’s out there and when it shows up . . . I don’t know. I can’t explain it.”
“You’re drunk, that’s why.”
“All I know is I should have been afraid of one thing but I was afraid of the complete opposite.”
She reached over and rubbed my shoulder. The last song was “to live & die in l.a.,” and it was my favorite on the homespun CD. I started to softly hum and then I sang along with the refrain when it came up on the track.
to live & die in l.a.
it’s the place to be
you got to be there to know it
ev’ybody wanna see
Pretty soon I stopped singing and pulled my hands down from my face. I fell asleep with my clothes on. I never heard the woman I had loved more than anyone else in my life leave the house. She would tell me later that the last thing I had mumbled before passing out was, “I can’t do this anymore.”
I wasn’t talking about my singing.
Wednesday, April 13
TWENTY-SIX
I slept almost ten hours but I still woke up in darkness. It said 5:18 on the Bose. I tried to go back to the dream but the door was closed. By 5:30 I rolled out of bed, struggled for equilibrium, and hit the shower. I stayed under the spray until the hot-water tank ran cold. Then I got out and got dressed for another day of fighting the machine.
It was still too early to call Lorna to check on the day’s schedule but I keep a calendar on my desk that is usually up-to-date. I went into the home office to check it and the first thing I noticed was a dollar bill taped to the wall over the desk.
The Lincoln Lawyer Page 23