The Gods of Guilt

by Michael Connelly

  “I’m at the DA’s Office now and I don’t know how long I’ll be here. After this I’m going out to Fulgoni’s office to meet Junior.”

  “Where’s he located?”

  “Century City.”

  “Well, Century City might work. Nice wide boulevards out there. I’ll tell my guys.”

  I disconnected and opened up the e-mail on my phone. There were an assortment of messages from clients who were currently incarcerated. The worst thing to happen to defense attorneys in recent years was the approval from most prisons of e-mail access for inmates. With nothing else to do but worry about their cases, they inundated me and every other lawyer with endless e-mails containing questions, worries, and the occasional threat.

  I started weeding through it all, and twenty minutes went by before I looked up to change focus. I decided I’d give it a whole hour before giving up on Leslie Faire. I went back to plowing through my e-mail and was able to clear out a good chunk of the backlog, even answering a few of them in the process. I was forty-five minutes into it, with my head down, when I saw a shadow reflect on my phone screen. I looked up and there was Lankford looking down at me. I almost flinched but think I managed to look unsurprised to see him.

  “Investigator Lankford.”

  “Haller, what are you doing here?”

  He said it like I was some kind of squatter or other nuisance who had previously been warned to move on and not come back.

  “I’m waiting to see someone. What are you doing here?”

  “I work here, remember? Is this about La Cosse?”

  “No, it’s not about La Cosse, but what it is about is none of your business.”

  He signaled me to stand up. I stayed seated.

  “I told you I’m waiting for somebody.”

  “No, you’re not. Leslie Faire sent me out to see what you want. You don’t want to talk to me, then you’re not talking to anybody. Let’s go. Up. You can’t use our waiting room to operate your business. You’ve got a car for that.”

  That answer froze me. He’d been sent out to me by Faire. Did that mean Faire had knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes on the Gloria Dayton murder case? I’d come to inform her but she might already know more of what was going on than me.

  “I said let’s go,” Lankford said forcefully. “Get up or I’ll get you up.”

  A woman who had been sitting two chairs away from me stood to get away from what she determined was about to become a physical extraction. She sat back down on the other side of the room.

  “Hold your horses, Lankford,” I said. “I’m going, I’m going.”

  I slipped my phone into an inside pocket of my jacket and grabbed my briefcase off the floor as I got up. Lankford didn’t move, choosing to stay close and invade my personal space. I made a move to go around him but he sidestepped and we were face-to-face again.

  “Having fun?” I said.

  “Ms. Faire doesn’t want you coming back here either,” he said. “She’s not in court anymore and doesn’t need to have anything to do with douche bags like you. Understand?”

  His breath was rancid with coffee and cigarettes.

  “Sure,” I said. “I get it.”

  I moved around him and out to the elevator alcove. He followed me and watched silently as I pushed the down button and waited. I looked over my shoulder at him.

  “This may take a while, Lankford.”

  “I’ve got all day.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  I turned back to look at the elevator doors for a moment and then glanced back over my shoulder at him. I couldn’t resist.

  “You look different, Lankford.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  “From last time I saw you. Something’s different. You get hair plugs or something?”

  “Very funny. But, thankfully, I haven’t seen your ass since La Cosse’s first appearance last year.”

  “No, somethin’ more recent. I don’t know.”

  That’s all I said. I turned back to concentrate on the elevator doors. Finally the light went on overhead and the doors opened, revealing a car with only four people on it. I knew it would be packed wall to wall and well over the safety code weight limit by the time it got down to the lobby.

  I stepped on the elevator and turned back to look at Lankford. I doffed an imaginary hat in saying good-bye.

  “It’s your hat,” I said. “You’re not wearing your hat today.”

  The elevator doors closed on his dead-eyed stare.

  20

  The confrontation with Lankford left me agitated. On the ride down I shifted my weight from foot to foot like a boxer in his corner waiting to answer the bell. By the time I reached the ground floor I knew exactly where I had to go. Sly Fulgoni Jr. could wait. I needed to see Legal Siegel.

  Forty minutes later I stepped off another elevator onto the fourth floor at Menorah Manor. As I passed the reception desk, the nurse stopped me and told me I had to open my briefcase before she would allow me to go down the hall to Legal’s room.

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “I’m his lawyer. You can’t tell me to open my briefcase.”

  She responded sternly and without any give.

  “Someone has been bringing food from the outside to Mr. Siegel. Not only is it a violation of the health and religious policies of this facility, it is a risk to the patient because it interferes with a carefully considered and scheduled nutrition plan.”

  I knew where this was headed and I refused to back down myself.

  “You’re calling what you feed him and what he pays for here a nutrition plan?”

  “Whether patients enjoy all aspects of the food here is beside the point. If you want to visit Mr. Siegel, you will be required to open your briefcase.”

  “If you want to see what’s in my briefcase, you show me a warrant.”

  “This is not a public institution, Mr. Haller, and it’s not a courtroom. It is a privately owned and operated medical facility. As head nurse on this ward I have the authority to inspect anyone and anything coming through those elevator doors. We have sick people here and we must safeguard them. Either open your briefcase or I’ll call security and have you removed from the premises.”

  To underline the threat, she put her hand on the phone that was on the counter.

  I shook my head in annoyance and brought my briefcase up onto the counter. I snapped open the twin locks and flipped up the top of the case. I watched her eyes scan its contents for a long moment.

  “Satisfied? There might be a stray Tic Tac in there somewhere. I hope that won’t be a problem.”

  She ignored the crack.

  “You may close it and you may now visit Mr. Siegel. Thank you.”

  “No, thank you.”

  I closed the briefcase and walked down the hallway, pleased with myself but knowing I would now need a plan for the next time I actually did want to get food in to Legal. I had a briefcase in a closet at the house that I had taken in barter from a client once. It had a secret compartment that could hold a kilo of cocaine. I could easily hide a sandwich in there, maybe two.

  Legal Siegel was propped up on his bed watching an Oprah rerun with the sound on too loud. His eyes were open but seemed unseeing. I closed the door and came over to the bed. I waved my hand up and down in front of his face, fearful for a moment that he was dead.

  “Legal?”

  He came out of the reverie, focused on me, and smiled.

  “Mickey Mouse! Hey, what’d you bring me? Let me guess, tuna-avocado from Gus’s in Westlake.”

  I shook my head.

  “Sorry, Legal, I don’t have anything today. It’s too early for lunch anyway.”

  “What? Come on, give. Pork dip from Coles, right?”

  “No, I mean it. I didn’t bring anything. Besides, if I did, Nurse Ratched out there would have confiscated it. She’s onto us and made me open my briefcase.”

  “Oh, that bag of wind—denyi
ng a man the simple pleasures in life!”

  I put my hand on his arm in a calming gesture.

  “Take it easy, Legal. She doesn’t scare me. I got a plan and I’ll hit Gus’s on the way in next time. Okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down next to the bed. I found the remote in the folds of the bedding and muted the television.

  “Thank God,” Legal said. “That was driving me nuts.”

  “Then why didn’t you turn it off?”

  “Because I couldn’t find the damn remote. Anyway, why did you come see me without bringing me any sustenance? You were just here yesterday, right? Pastrami from Art’s in the Valley.”

  “You’re right, Legal, and I’m glad you remember it.”

  “Then why’d you come back so soon?”

  “Because today I need sustenance. Legal sustenance.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “The La Cosse case. Things are happening and it’s getting hard to see the forest for the trees.”

  I ticked off the cast of characters on my fingers.

  “I’ve got a shady DEA agent out there, a crooked DA investigator, a cartel thug, and a disbarred lawyer. Then I’ve got my own client in the clink, and the victim in all of this is the only one I really like—or liked—in the first place. To top it all off, I’m being watched—but I’m not exactly sure by who.”

  “Tell me all about it.”

  I spent the next thirty minutes summarizing the story and answering his questions. I backed up beyond the last update I had given him and then brought the story forward, going into much finer detail than I had previously given. He asked many questions as I told the story but never offered anything back. He was simply gathering data and holding his response. I took him right up to the confrontation I’d just had with Lankford in the DA’s Office waiting room, and the uneasy feeling I had that I was missing something—something right in front of me.

  When I was finished, I waited for a response but he said nothing. He made a gesture with his frail hands, as if to throw the whole thing up into the air and let the wind take it. I noticed that both of his arms were purple from all the needles and the prodding and poking they did to him in this place. Getting old was not for the weak.

  “That’s it?” I said. “Just throw it to the wind like a bunch of flower petals? You’ve got nothing to say?”

  “Oh, I got plenty to say and you’re not going to like hearing it.”

  I motioned with my hand inviting him to hit me with it all.

  “You’re missing the big picture, Mouse.”

  “Really?” I said sarcastically. “What is the big picture?”

  “Now you see, that’s the wrong question,” he lectured. “Your first question should not be what but why. Why am I missing the big picture?”

  I nodded, going along only grudgingly.

  “Then why am I missing the big picture?”

  “Let’s start with the report you just gave on the state of your case. You said it took that rookie shortstop you hired out of the five-and-dime to make you see things the right way at the staff meeting this morning.”

  He was talking about Jennifer Aronson. It was true that I’d hired her out of Southwestern, which was housed in the old Bullocks Department Store building on Wilshire. It engendered her nickname, but referring to the law school as a five-and-dime was a new low.

  “I was only trying to give credit where credit was due,” I said. “Jennifer may still be a rookie but she’s sharper than any three lawyers I could’ve hired out of SC.”

  “Yeah, yeah, that’s all well and good. She’s a good lawyer, I grant you that. The thing is, you always expect yourself to be the better lawyer and deep down you hold yourself to that. So when all of a sudden this morning it’s the team rookie who sees things with clarity, then that gets under your skin. You’re supposed to be the smartest guy in the room.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Legal pressed on.

  “I’m not your shrink. I’m a lawyer. But I think you gotta stop hitting the booze at night and you gotta get your house in order.”

  I stood up and started pacing in front of the bed.

  “Legal, what are you talking about? My house is—”

  “Your judgment and your ability to cut through the obstacles in front of you are, at best, clouded by an outside agenda.”

  “You’re talking about my kid? My having to live with knowing my kid wants nothing to do with me? I wouldn’t call that an agenda.”

  “I’m not talking about that per se. I am talking about the root of that. I’m talking about the guilt you carry over all of it. It is impacting you as a lawyer. Your performance as a lawyer, as a defender of the accused. And in this case, most likely, the wrongly accused.”

  He was talking about Sandy and Katie Patterson and the accident that took their lives. I leaned down and grabbed the iron railing at the foot of his bed with both hands. Legal Siegel was my mentor. He could tell me anything. He could dress me down lower than even my ex-wife and I would accept it.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “There is no more noble a cause on this planet than to stand for the wrongly accused. You can’t fuck this up, kid.”

  I nodded and kept my head bowed.

  “Guilt,” he said. “You have to get by it. Let the ghosts go or they’ll take you under and you’ll never be the lawyer you are supposed to be. You will never see the big picture.”

  I threw up my hands.

  “Please, enough with the big picture crap! What are you talking about, Legal? What am I missing?”

  “To see what you’re missing, you have to step back and widen the angle. Then you see the bigger picture.”

  I looked at him, trying to understand.

  “When was the habeas filed?” he asked quietly.

  “November.”

  “When was Gloria Dayton murdered?”

  “November.”

  I said it impatiently. We both knew the answers to these questions.

  “And when were you papered by the lawyer?”

  “Just now—yesterday.”

  “And this federal agent you talked about, when was he served?”

  “I don’t know if he was served. But Valenzuela had the paper yesterday.”

  “And then there’s the phony subpoena Fulgoni cooked up for the other girl from back then.”

  “Kendall Roberts, right.”

  “Any idea why he would dummy up paper for her and not you?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know. I guess he knew I’d know if it was legit or not. She’s not a lawyer, so she wouldn’t. He’d save the costs of filing with the court. I’ve heard of lawyers who roll that way.”

  “Seems thin to me.”

  “Well, that’s all I got off the top of—”

  “So six months after the habeas was filed with the court they put out their first subpoenas? I tell you, if I ran a shop like that I’d a been out of business and on the street. It’s not the timely exercise of the law, that’s for sure.”

  “This kid Fulgoni doesn’t know his ass from—”

  I stopped in midsentence. I had suddenly caught a glimpse of the elusive big picture. I looked at Legal.

  “Maybe these weren’t the first subpoenas.”

  He nodded.

  “Now I think you’re getting it,” Legal said.

  21

  I told Earl to drop down to Olympic and take me out to Century City and Sly Fulgoni Jr.’s office. I then settled in with a fresh legal pad and started charting timelines on the Gloria Dayton murder case and the Hector Moya habeas petition. Pretty soon I saw how the cases were entwined like a double helix. I saw the big picture.

  “You sure you got the right address, boss?”

  I looked up from my chart and out the window. Earl had slowed the Lincoln in front of a row of French provincial–style town house offices. We were still on Olympic but on the eastern edge of Century City. I wa
s sure the address carried the correct zip code and all the cachet that came with it, but it was a far cry from the gleaming towers on the Avenue of the Stars that people think of when they imagine a Century City legal firm. I had to think there would be buyer’s remorse for any client who arrived here for the first time and found these digs. Then again, who was I to talk? Many was the time I dealt with buyer’s remorse when my clients learned I worked out of the backseat of my car.

  “Yeah,” I said. “This is it.”

  I jumped out and headed toward the door. I entered a small reception room with a well-worn carpet leading from the front of the reception desk in twin paths to doors to the right and left. The door on the left had a name on it I didn’t recognize. The door on the right had the name Sylvester Fulgoni. I got the feeling that Sly Jr. was splitting the space with another attorney. Probably the secretary, too, but at the moment there was no secretary to share. The reception desk was empty.

  “Hello?” I said.

  Nobody replied. I looked down at the paperwork and mail piled on the desk and saw that on top was a photocopy of Sly Jr.’s court calendar. Only I saw very few court dates recorded on it for the month. Sly didn’t have much work—at least work that took him inside a courthouse. I did see that he had me down for a deposition scheduled for the following Tuesday, but there were no notations about James Marco or Kendall Roberts.

  “Hello?” I called out again.

  This time I was louder but still got no response. I stepped over to the Fulgoni door and leaned my ear to the jamb. I heard nothing. I knocked and tried the knob. It was unlocked and I pushed the door open, revealing a young man seated behind a large ornate desk that bespoke better times than the rest of the office presented.

  “Excuse me, can I help you?” the man said, seemingly annoyed by the intrusion.

  He closed a laptop computer that was on the desk in front of him, but didn’t get up. I stepped two feet into the office. I saw no one else in the room.

  “I’m looking for Sly Jr.,” I said. “Is that you?”

  “I’m sorry but my practice is by appointment only. You’ll have to set up an appointment and come back.”

  “There’s no receptionist.”