I nodded to Maggie.
“We have a video,” I said. “It’s got your killer on it. The man who killed Opparizio and snuck his body out of the hotel in Scottsdale. We’ll get it to you. Maybe it will help.”
“Don’t bother,” Aiello said. “We don’t want your help.”
“No,” Ruth said. “We’ll take it. Thank you.”
She looked at me and nodded. I could tell her words were sincere and that at least one person in the room did not believe they were setting free a murderer.
52
An hour later I was in my suit and stood in the courtroom before Judge Warfield. She had dismissed the jury but said they could stay if they wanted to and they all did. Dana Berg had, in a reluctant but carefully worded statement, reported to the court that new evidence of a confidential nature had come to light that exonerated me of the charges. She said the District Attorney’s Office was withdrawing the charge with prejudice and would expunge my arrest record.
Maggie McPherson stood next to me while my daughter and the members of my team stood behind me. Despite an admonishment from the judge to contain emotions, people in the courtroom clapped as the prosecutor finished her announcement. I looked over to the jury box and saw that the Hollywood Bowl chef was one of them. I nodded. I’d had her down correctly on my scorecard.
Now it was the judge’s turn.
“Mr. Haller,” Judge Warfield said. “A grave injustice has been committed against you and it is the court’s sincere hope that you can recover from this and continue your career as an officer of the court and defender of the rights of those who stand accused. Now that you have had this experience yourself, perhaps you will be better suited to serve in this capacity. I wish you all the best, sir. You are free to go.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said.
My voice cracked as I said it. The magnitude of what had happened in the last two hours had left me shaking in my suit.
I turned and put my arms around Maggie, then reached back to my daughter. Soon the three of us were in a single embrace with the courtroom railing awkwardly between daughter and parents. I followed this with handshakes and smiles with Cisco and Bosch. I said nothing, because words were hard. I knew that would all come later.
53
Friday, February 28
We waited a day before hosting a celebration at the Redwood. By then the word had gotten out through press conferences and the media that I had been cleared of all charges and exonerated. It seemed appropriate to gather in the place where all the upheaval in my life had started. There were no invitations and no guest list. It was an open invitation to the courthouse set—with Lorna’s company credit card held at the bar for the tab.
It got crowded quickly but I had made sure that the defense team got the big round table in the back reserved just for us. I sat there like a godfather in a mob flick, surrounded by my capos and receiving the well-wishes and handshakes of those who had come to the party to celebrate a rare win for the defense.
The drinks were flowing, though I maintained my sobriety, drinking orange juice on the rocks with a few maraschino cherries thrown in for style. Moira, the bartender, relieved at not having had to testify, was calling the concoction the Sticky Mickey, and it caught on, though most of the others in the bar were taking theirs with a couple shots of vodka in the mix.
I sat between my two ex-wives, Maggie McFierce to my left and our daughter next to her, Lorna on my right followed by Cisco. Harry Bosch was directly across the table from me. For the most part I was quiet, just taking it all in and occasionally holding my drink up to clink glasses with a friend leaning over Bosch’s shoulder to say well done.
“You okay?” Maggie whispered to me at one point.
“Yeah, I’m great,” I said. “Just getting used to it being over, you know?”
“You should go away. Go somewhere and clear your mind of all of this.”
“Yeah. I was thinking of going out to Catalina for a few days. They just reopened the Zane Grey and it’s really nice.”
“You’ve been there already?”
“Uh, online.”
“I wonder if they still have that room with the fireplace we used to get.”
I thought about that—the memory of when we were together and we’d go to Catalina for weekend getaways. There was a good chance that our daughter had been conceived there. Had I ruined the memory by taking Kendall there?
“You could come with me, you know,” I said.
Maggie smiled and I saw the shine I remembered so well in her dark eyes.
“Maybe,” she said.
That was good enough for me. I smiled as I looked out at the crowd. They were all there for the free booze. But also for me. I realized I had forgotten about Bishop. I should have invited him.
I then noticed that Cisco and Bosch had their heads together and were talking in serious tones.
“Hey,” I said. “What?”
“Just talking about Opparizio,” Cisco said.
“What about him?” I asked.
“You know, why they hit him,” Cisco said. “Harry says they had to.”
I looked at Bosch and tilted my head back. I wanted to hear his take. I had told no one about my conversation with Agent Ruth in the back of Deputy Pressley’s cruiser.
Bosch leaned as much as he could across the table. It was loud in the bar and not the proper setting for yelling murder theories out loud.
“He let personal business get in the way of the real business,” Bosch said. “He should have taken care of Scales cleanly. Whacked him, buried him, put him in an oil barrel and dropped it in the channel. Anything but what he did. He used the situation—whatever it was—to try to settle an old score with you. That was his mistake and it made him vulnerable. He had to go, and the thing is, he knew it. I don’t think he was out in Arizona hiding from you and a subpoena. He was hiding from a bullet.”
I nodded. The former homicide detective was very close.
“You think they found him through us?” I asked. “Followed us out there to him?”
“You mean followed me,” Cisco said.
“Don’t feel bad,” I said. “I sent you out there.”
“About Opparizio?” Cisco said. “I don’t feel a thing about that guy.”
“It could’ve been the way,” Bosch said. “He could have made a slip himself. Told his girlfriend or somebody. Made a call.”
I shook my head.
“That room-service trick,” I said. “That tells me the hitter knew we were there watching him. I think they used us to get to him.”
I thought of the video the Indians had taken and that I had turned over to Agent Ruth. The room-service hit man was white, maybe forty years old, with thinning red hair. He didn’t look menacing. He looked nondescript. He looked like he belonged in the red room-service jacket he had used to bluff his way into Opparizio’s room.
“Well, too bad,” Maggie said. “He tried to pin a murder rap on you, Mickey. Just like Cisco, I have a hard time coming up with any sympathy for Louis Opparizio.”
The conversation shifted to speculation about who the federal target was and most agreed it was probably a corporate mobster, someone from the Las Vegas casino world who had been backing the biofuel play. But all of that was above our pay grade. I could only hope that one day Agent Ruth would call me and say, “We got him.” Then I would know the identity of the man ultimately responsible for almost destroying my life.
Soon I was back to just enjoying the moment and watching the people in the bar. Eventually my eyes fell on a woman standing at the bar and I excused myself from the table to join her.
“Have you tried the Sticky Mickey?” I asked.
Jennifer Aronson turned and saw it was me. A broad smile broke across her face. She pulled me into a hug and held me.
“Congratulations!”
“Thank you! When did you get back?”
“Today. As soon as I heard, I knew I had to get back here for this.”
“Thank you, Mickey.”
“How did everything go afterward?”
“It was all right. I ended up being nursemaid to my sister, who got sick.”
“But you’re okay?”
“I feel fine. But enough about me. Cisco told me that Maggie is a natural-born defense lawyer. That true?”
“Yeah, she was great. But it’s not going to stick. She’s going back to the D.A.”
“She’s a lifer, I guess.”
“And you know, you did all the groundwork, Bullocks. I wouldn’t be standing here free if you hadn’t been there for me.”
“That’s nice to hear.”
“It’s true. Come sit at the table with us. The team’s all there.”
“I will, I will. I just want to move around a little bit, say some hellos. So many people are here from the courts.”
I watched her push through the crowd and start giving friends hugs and high fives. I stepped back toward the bar so I could lean my back against it and take in the whole scene. I looked across the room and realized that few of those in front of me were truly celebrating that I was innocent and had defeated the forces against me. Most of them simply believed I had beaten the case, that I was not guilty by the legal standard, which didn’t at all mean I was innocent.
It was a moment that seared me. I knew then how I would always be looked at in the courtroom, in the courthouse, in the city.
I turned toward the bar and saw Moira.
“Can I get you something, Mick?” she asked.
I hesitated. I looked at all the bottles lined against the mirror at the back of the bar.
“No,” I finally said. “I think I’m fine.”
Epilogue
Monday, March 9
There were no paper towels or toilet paper. No bottled water, and not a single carton of eggs. I was giving a running commentary to Maggie over my cell, holding the handwritten list she had prepared with contributions from Hayley. So many items on the list were already gone. Long gone. I had started just grabbing what I could.
“What about pinto beans?” I asked. “I just got four cans.”
We were speaking via my Bluetooth earpiece, leaving both my hands free to grab things from the shelves.
“Haller, what are we going to do with pinto beans?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nachos? There’s nothing here. I just need to get whatever’s left and then we’ll have to make do with it. And I still have a lot of stuff at the house. Have you checked the pantry against this list?”
I spotted a lone jar of Newman’s Own spaghetti sauce on the pasta shelf but another shopper swooped in and grabbed it first.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Maggie asked.
“Nothing. I missed out on some Newman’s Own.”
“Just go to produce, see what’s left. Get stuff for salads. Then come back. This is too crazy.”
Crazy was an understatement. Chaos had descended. But in the midst of it, there was at least a calm center for me. My family was together for the first time in too many years to count. We had decided that the three of us would shelter together until the threat of the virus passed. Even with my home office converted into a bedroom for my daughter, my house had the most space and the biggest buffer zone around it compared with Hayley’s apartment or Maggie’s condo. The nuclear family would ride out the plague together and now it was down to the prep work. It was my second supermarket stop, the first having been equally disappointing. Still, I had earthquake supplies at the house and a mostly stocked pantry. It was just the wish list my girls had put together that I was missing. Red wine, good cheeses, and a few of the ingredients for Maggie’s recipes.
I managed to fill the cart with things I was sure we would never use and none of the things that we would. Maggie stayed on with me the whole time. She had gone home with me at the end of the celebration at the Redwood and we traded sleepovers at each other’s place until we settled on staying at my place. The relationship felt new and good and I often told myself that if the trade-off was four months of fear and turmoil to have Maggie back in my life, then that was a deal I’d make any day of the week.
“Okay, that’s it,” I said. “I’m getting in line now.”
“Wait, did you get orange juice?” she asked.
“Yes, they actually had orange juice. I got two cartons.”
“No pulp?”
I looked into the cart at what I had grabbed.
“Beggars can’t be choosers,” I said.
“Great,” Maggie said. “We’ll make do with pulp. Hurry back.”
“I’m going to hit the ATM and then I’ll head home.”
“Why? You won’t need money. Everything’s shutting down.”
“Yeah, well, cash will be king if the financial institutions go down and plastic no longer works.”
“Mr. Optimistic. You really think that could happen?”
“This year proves that anything can happen.”
“True. Get cash.”
And so it went. I waited nearly an hour to get through the checkout line. Near-hysteria was no doubt upon us now. I was glad to have my family close, though I feared what would happen to us if things got truly desperate.
It was so crowded in the parking lot that a car pulled up while I was unloading the cart and waited for my space.
“This place is a mess,” I said to Maggie. “It’s going to get out of hand.”
The guy waiting was holding up the cars behind him. Somebody honked but he didn’t move. So I tried to go faster, putting the bags into the trunk of the Lincoln.
“What was that?” Maggie asked.
“Some guy wants my space—he’s holding everybody up,” I said.
I turned my head at the sound of another honk and noticed a man with dark hair and slumped shoulders pushing a cart in my direction. A black mask covered the lower half of his face. He had only a single brown bag sitting in the cart’s child seat. I did a double take because the bag said Vons and this was a Gelson’s. I looked at the man again and thought he looked familiar. The way his hands were spread on the cart’s push bar, the forward hunch, the droop of his shoulders.
In that moment I recognized him. The man in the video who was pushing the room-service cart into Louis Opparizio’s hotel room in Scottsdale. His hair was different now, but the shoulders were the same.
It was him.
I stepped back from the trunk and looked around for an escape route. I had to run.
I shoved my cart forward to crash into his, then ran down the length of my car and into the next driving lane. I glanced back over my shoulder as I cut to my right. I saw that he was coming, pulling a gun from the Vons bag as he ran after me.
I kept going and cut sharply between two more cars and into the next driving lane over. Two quick gunshots sounded and I ducked low and kept my feet moving. I heard glass shatter and the impact of the bullet on metal but I felt no impact to my body.
Maggie’s voice came sharply in my ear.
“Mickey, what’s happening? What is going on?”
Then there were shouts behind me punctuated by another car horn.
“FBI! Freeze!”
I didn’t know who was yelling at whom. But I didn’t freeze. I lowered my head even more and kept running. And then more shots came—this time a loud and fearsome volley of overlapping shots from powerful weapons. I looked back again and saw no sign of the man from the video. I changed angles and saw him on the ground as four armed men and a woman moved in on him. I recognized the woman as Special Agent Dawn Ruth.
I stopped running and tried to catch my breath. Only then did I register Maggie’s voice in my ear.
“Mickey!”
“I’m okay, I’m okay.”
“What happened? I heard shots!”
“Everything’s all right. The guy from the video, the one who killed Opparizio, he was here.”
�
�Oh my god.”
“But so was the FBI. I see Agent Ruth over there. They got him. He’s down on the ground. It’s over.”
“The FBI? Were they following you?”
“Uh, either me or him.”
“Did you know, Mick?”
“No, of course not.”
“You better not have.”
“I just told you—I didn’t. Look, everything’s fine but I have to go. They’re signaling me over. I probably have to give a statement or something.”
“Just get home soon, please. I can’t believe this.”
I needed to go but didn’t want to hang up without comforting her.
“Look, this means it’s over. Everything. It’s over.”
“Just come home.”
“As soon as I can.”
I disconnected the call and walked back to where the group was gathering around the man on the ground. He wasn’t moving and nobody was bothering with CPR. Agent Ruth saw me and moved away from the pack, meeting me halfway.
“Is he dead?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Thank god.”
I looked over at the body. The gun I had seen was on the ground next to it. The scene of the shooting was being cordoned off.
“How did you know?” I said. “You told me it was over. You said they wouldn’t come after me.”
“We were just taking precautions,” she said. “Sometimes these people don’t like to leave loose ends.”
“And I’m a loose end?”
“Well…let’s just say you know things. And you did things. Maybe he didn’t like that.”
“So, it was just him? He did this on his own?”
“We don’t know that for a fact.”
“What do you know? Am I still in danger? Is my family in danger?”
“Your family is fine, you’re fine. He probably waited until you were away from the house because your family’s there. Just calm down. Give me a day or two to assess and I’ll call you.”
“What about now? Do I give a statement or something?”
“You should just go. Get away from here before people start to recognize you. We don’t want that.”
The Law of Innocence Page 36