The Gods of Guilt

by Michael Connelly

  “No.”

  I checked my watch again. I was running out of time. I decided to end the case questions there. Most of the information I would get in discovery if I took on the case. Besides that, it’s a good idea to limit the information you get directly from a client. I would be stuck with whatever La Cosse told me and it might color the moves I made later in the case or at trial. For example, if La Cosse told me he had indeed killed Giselle, then I would not be able to put him on the stand to deny it. That would make me guilty of suborning perjury.

  “Okay, enough on that for now. If I take this case, how are you going to pay me?”

  “In gold.”

  “I was told that, but I mean how? Where does this gold come from?”

  “I have it in a safe place. All my money is in gold. If you take the case, I will have it delivered to you before the end of the day. Your manager said you needed twenty-five thousand dollars to start. We’ll use the New York Mercantile Exchange quote on valuation and it will simply be delivered. I haven’t really been able to check the market in here but I’m guessing a one-pound bar will cover it.”

  “You realize that will only cover my start-up costs, right? If this case goes forward to preliminary hearing and trial, then you’re going to need more gold. You can get cheaper than me but you’re not going to get better.”

  “Yes, I understand. I will have to pay to prove my innocence. I have the gold.”

  “All right, then, have your delivery person bring the gold to my case manager. I’m going to need it in hand before your first appearance in court tomorrow. Then I’ll know you’re serious about this.”

  I knew time was fleeting but I silently studied La Cosse for a long moment, trying to get a read on him. His story of innocence sounded plausible but I didn’t know what the police knew. I only had Andre’s tale and I suspected that as the evidence in the case was revealed, I would learn that he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be. It’s always that way.

  “Okay, last thing, Andre. You told my case manager that I came recommended to you by Giselle herself, is that right?”

  “Yes, she said you were the best lawyer in town.”

  “How did she know that?”

  La Cosse looked surprised, as if the whole conversation so far had been based on a given—that I knew Giselle Dallinger.

  “She said she knew you, that you’d handled cases for her. She said you got her a really good deal once.”

  “And you’re sure it was me she was talking about.”

  “Yes, it was you. She said you hit a home run for her. She called you Mickey Mantle.”

  That stopped my breath short. I’d had a client once—a prostitute, too—who would call me that. But I had not seen her in a long time. Not since I put her on a plane with enough money to start over and never come back.

  “Giselle Dallinger was not her real name, was it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all I knew her by.”

  There was a hard rap on the steel door behind me. My time was up. Some other lawyer needed the room to talk to some other client. I looked across the table at La Cosse. I was no longer second-guessing whether to take him on as my client.

  Without a doubt, I was taking the case.

  4

  Earl drove me over to the Starbucks on Central Avenue and pulled to the curb out front. I stayed in the car while he went in to get us coffee. I opened my laptop on the worktable and used the coffee shop’s signal to get online. I tried three different variations before typing in www.Giselle4u.com and bringing up the website for the woman Andre La Cosse was accused of killing. The photos were airbrushed, the hair was different, and a plastic surgeon had gone to work since I had last seen her, but I had no doubt that Giselle Dallinger was my former client Gloria Dayton.

  This changed things. Aside from the issue of legal conflict regarding my representing a client accused of killing another client, there were my feelings about Gloria Dayton and the sudden realization that I’d been used by her in a way that was not too different from the way she was used by men nearly all her life.

  Gloria had been a project, a client I cared about beyond the usual boundaries of the attorney-client relationship. I cannot say why this came to be, only that she had a damaged smile, a sardonic wit, and a pessimistic self-knowledge that drew me in. I had handled at least six cases involving her over the years. All of them involved prostitution, drugs, solicitation of prostitution, and the like. She was deeply embedded in the life but always seemed to me to deserve a shot at rising above it and escaping. I was no hero but I did what I could for her. I got her into pretrial intervention programs, halfway houses, therapies, and even once enrolled her in Los Angeles City College after she had expressed an interest in writing. None of it worked for long. A year or so would go by and I’d get the call—she was in jail again and needed a lawyer. Lorna started telling me I needed to cut her loose or pass her off to another attorney, that she was a lost cause. But I couldn’t do that. The truth was I liked knowing Gloria Dayton, or Glory Days as she was known in the profession back then. She had a lopsided view of the world that matched her lopsided smile. She was a feral cat and she let no one but me pet her.

  This is not to say there was anything romantic or sexual about our relationship. There was not. In fact, I’m not even sure we could have properly called us friends. We encountered each other too infrequently for that. But I cared about her and that’s why it hurt now to know she was dead. For the past seven years I thought she had gotten away and that I had helped. She had taken the money I gave her and flown off to Hawaii, where she claimed there was a longtime client who wanted to take her in and help her start over. I got postcards every now and then, a Christmas card or two. They all reported that she was doing well and had stayed clean. And they made me feel as though I had accomplished something rarely achieved in the courtrooms and corridors of law. I had changed the direction of a life.

  When Earl got back with the coffee I closed the laptop and told him to take me home. I then called Lorna and told her to organize a complete staff meeting for eight the next morning. Andre La Cosse was due in arraignment court on second call, meaning he would make his first appearance sometime between ten a.m. and noon. I wanted to meet with my team and get things going before then. I told her to pull all our files on Gloria Dayton and bring them as well.

  “Why do you want Gloria’s files?” she asked.

  “Because she’s the victim,” I said.

  “Oh my god, are you sure? That’s not the name Cisco gave me.”

  “I’m sure. The cops don’t realize it yet, but it was her.”

  “I’m sorry, Mickey. I know you . . . you liked her.”

  “Yeah, I did. I was just thinking about her the other day and considering going to Hawaii when the courts are dark over Christmas. I was going to call her if I got there.”

  Lorna didn’t respond. The Hawaii trip was an idea I had for getting through the holidays without seeing my kid. But I’d dismissed it out of hope that things would change. That maybe on Christmas Day I’d get a call and an invitation to come over for dinner. If I went to Hawaii, I’d miss the opportunity.

  “Listen,” I said, breaking off the thought. “Is Cisco around?”

  “No, I think he went over to where the victim—I mean, Gloria—lived, to see what he could find out.”

  “Okay, I’ll call him. See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Mickey, wait. Do you want Jennifer at the meeting, too? I think she has a couple of appearances in county court.”

  “Yes, definitely. If she has a conflict, see if she can get one of the Jedi Knights to cover her.”

  I had hired Jennifer a few years ago directly out of Southwestern Law School and she carried what was then our burgeoning foreclosure defense practice. That had slowed down in the past year, while criminal defense had picked back up, but Jennifer still carried a big caseload. There was a group of regular lawyers on the foreclosure circuit and they had taken to monthly lunches or dinne
rs to swap stories and strategies. They called themselves the Jedi Knights, which was short for JEDTI, meaning Jurists Engaged in Defending Title Integrity, and the fellowship extended to covering each other’s court appearances when there were time conflicts.

  I knew Jennifer wouldn’t mind being pulled away from the foreclosure work to visit the criminal side for a bit. When I hired her, she told me first thing that she wanted a career in criminal defense. And lately she had been suggesting repeatedly in e-mails and our weekly staff meetings that it was time to hire another associate to take over the foreclosure business while she immersed herself more fully in the criminal side. I had been resistant because hiring another associate pushed me closer toward needing the traditional setup with an office, a secretary, a copy machine, and all of that. I didn’t like the idea of the overhead or the brick-and-mortar anchor. I liked working out of the backseat and flying by the seat of my pants.

  After ending the call with Lorna I put the window down and let the air blow into my face. It was a reminder of what I liked about the way I did things.

  Soon enough I put the window back up so I would be able to hear Cisco on the cell phone. I called him and he reported that he was indeed working a door-to-door canvass of the building where Giselle Dallinger had lived and died.

  “Getting anything good?”

  “Bits and pieces. She kept to herself mostly. Not a lot of visitors. She must’ve handled her business outside the apartment.”

  “How about getting into that place?”

  “There’s a security door downstairs. She had to buzz you in.”

  Which didn’t look good for La Cosse. The police probably assumed that Dallinger knew her killer and had let him in.

  “Any record of activity on the door?” I asked.

  “No, it’s not a recorded system,” Cisco said.

  “Cameras?”

  “Nope.”

  That could cut either way for La Cosse.

  “Okay, when you’re finished there, I’ve got some stuff for you.”

  “I can come back to this. The building manager’s being cooperative.”

  “Okay, then. We’re all going to meet tomorrow at eight. Before that, if you can, I want you to run down a name. Gloria Dayton. You can get a DOB from the files Lorna has. I want to know where she’s been for the past few years.”

  “You got it. Who is she?”

  “She’s our victim, only the police don’t know it.”

  “La Cosse tell you this?”

  “No, I figured it out on my own. She’s a former client.”

  “You know, I could use this as currency. I checked with the morgue and they had not confirmed the ID because the body and the apartment were burned. No usable fingerprints from either. They were hoping her DNA would be in the system or that they could find a dentist.”

  “Yeah, well, you can use it if it gets you something. I just looked at the pictures on the Giselle-for-you website. It’s Gloria Dayton, an old client I thought moved to Hawaii about seven years ago. Andre told me he’d been working with her here for the past two years. I want the full picture.”

  “Got it. Seven years ago, why’d she go?”

  I paused before answering, thinking about the last case I handled for Gloria Dayton.

  “I had a case that paid me well and she played a part. I gave her twenty-five grand if she promised to quit the life and start over. There was also a guy. She snitched him off to get a deal. I was the broker. It was just time for her to get out of town.”

  “Could that have anything to do with this?”

  “I don’t know. It was a long time ago and that guy went away for life.”

  Hector Arrande Moya. I still remembered his name, the way it rolled off the tongue. The feds had wanted him bad and Gloria knew where to find him.

  “I’m going to put Bullocks on that tomorrow,” I said, referring to Jennifer Aronson by her nickname. “If nothing else, we might be able use the guy as a straw man.”

  “Can you still take the case with the victim being a former client? Isn’t that some sort of conflict of interest or something?”

  “It can be worked out. It’s the legal system, Cisco. It’s malleable.”

  “Understood.”

  “One last thing. Sunday night she had a trick at the Beverly Wilshire that didn’t come through. Supposedly the guy wasn’t there. Go poke around over there and see what you can come up with.”

  “Did you get a room number?”

  “Yeah, eight thirty-seven. Guy’s name was Daniel Price. This all comes from La Cosse. He said Gloria claimed the room wasn’t even rented.”

  “I’m on it.”

  After I finished the call with Cisco, I put the phone away and just looked out the window until we reached my house on Fareholm. Earl gave me the keys and headed to his own car parked against the curb. I reminded him about the early start the next day and went up the stairs to the front door.

  I put my stuff down on the dining room table and went into the kitchen for a bottle of beer. When I closed the refrigerator, I checked through all the photos and cards held on the door by magnets until I found a postcard showing Diamond Head Crater on Oahu. It was the last card I had received from Gloria Dayton. I took it off the magnetic clip and read the back of it.

  Happy New Year Mickey Mantle!

  Hope you are doing fine. All is well here in the sun. I hit the beach every day. You are the only thing about L.A. I miss. Come see me one day.

  Gloria

  My eyes drifted from the words to the postmark. The date was Dec. 15, 2011, almost a year ago. The postmark, which I’d had no reason to ever look at before, said Van Nuys, California.

  I’d had a clue to Gloria’s subterfuge on my refrigerator for nearly a year but I didn’t know it. Now it confirmed the charade and my unwitting part in it. I couldn’t help but wonder why she’d bothered. I was just her lawyer. There was no need to lead me on. If I’d never heard from her, I would not have been suspicious or come looking for her. It seemed oddly unnecessary to me and even a bit cruel. Especially the last line about coming to see her. What if I had come over at Christmas to escape the disaster of my personal life? What would’ve happened when I landed and she wasn’t there?

  I walked over to the trash can, stepped on the pedal to raise the lid, and dropped the card in. Gloria Dayton was dead. Glory Days was over.

  I took a shower, holding my head under the hard spray for a long time. More than a few of my clients had come to a bad end over the years. It came with the territory, and in previous cases I always looked at the loss in terms of business. Repeat clients were my bread and butter, and knowing I had lost a customer never left me with a good feeling. But with Gloria Dayton it was different. It wasn’t business. It was personal. Her death conjured a raft of feelings, from disappointment and emptiness to upset and anger. I was mad at her not only for the lie she had perpetrated with me but for staying in the world that ultimately got her killed.

  By the time the hot water ran out and I cut off the spray, I had come to realize my anger was misplaced. I understood that there had been a reason and purpose to Gloria’s actions. Perhaps she had not so much cut me out of her life as protected me from something. What that was I didn’t know, but it would now be my job to find out.

  After getting dressed I walked through my empty house and paused at the door of my daughter’s bedroom. She had not stayed there in a year and the room was unchanged since the day she had left. Viewing it reminded me of parents who have lost children and leave their rooms frozen in time. Only I had not lost my child in such a tragedy. I had driven her away.

  I went to the kitchen for another beer and faced the nightly ritual of deciding whether to go out or stay in. With the early start coming in the morning, I went with the latter and pulled a couple to-go cartons out of the refrigerator. I had half a steak and some Green Goddess salad left over from my Sunday night visit to Craig’s, a Melrose Avenue restaurant where I often ate at the bar alone. I put the
salad on a plate and the steak into a pan on the stove to warm it up.

  When I opened the trash can to dump the cartons, I saw the postcard from Gloria. I thought better of what I had done earlier and rescued it from the debris. I studied both sides of the card once more, wondering again about her purpose in sending it. Did she want me to notice the postmark and come looking for her? Was the card some sort of a clue I had missed?

  I didn’t have any answers yet but I intended to find them. Taking the card back to the fridge, I clipped it to a magnet and moved it to eye level on the door so I would be sure to see it every day.

  5

  Earl Briggs got to the house late Wednesday morning, so I was the last to arrive at the eight o’clock staff meeting. We were on the third floor of a loft building on Santa Monica Boulevard near the 101 Freeway ramp. It was a half-empty building we had access to whenever needed it, because Jennifer was handling the landlord’s foreclosure defense on a quid pro quo fee schedule. He had bought and renovated the place six years earlier when rents were high and there were seemingly more independent production companies in town than camera crews available to film their projects. But soon the bottom dropped out of the economy and investors in independent films grew as scarce as street parking outside the Ivy. Many companies folded and the landlord was lucky to be running at half capacity in the building. He eventually went upside down and that’s when he came to Michael Haller & Associates, responding to one of our direct-mail advertisements to properties that come up on the foreclosure rolls.

  Like most of the mortgages issued before the crash, this one had been bundled with others and resold. That gave us an opening. Jennifer challenged the foreclosing bank’s standing and managed to stall the process for ten months while our client tried to turn things around. But there was not a lot of call for three-thousand-square-foot lofts in East Hollywood anymore. He couldn’t get out from under and was on a slippery slope, renting month to month to rock bands that needed rehearsal space. The foreclosure was definitely coming. It was just a matter of how many months Jennifer could hold it off.