The Brass Verdict Page 3

  Vincent looked down blankly at the prosecution table and calmly straightened the case files stacked in front of him. He spoke in a quiet voice.

  “I don’t want you going forward with the cross,” he said.

  “Fine. Then, cut the denials and the bullshit and give me a dispo I can—”

  “I’ll drop the death penalty. Twenty-five to life without.”

  I shook my head without hesitation.

  “That’s not going to do it. The last thing Woodson said before they took him back was that he was willing to roll the dice. To be exact, he said, ‘We can win this motherfucker.’ And I think he could be right.”

  “Then, what do you want, Haller?”

  “I’ll go fifteen max. I think I can sell that to him.”

  Vincent emphatically shook his head.

  “No way. They’ll send me back to filing buy-busts if I give you that for two cold-blooded murders. My best offer is twenty-five with parole. That’s it. Under current guidelines he could be out in sixteen, seventeen years. Not bad for what he did, killing two kids like that.”

  I looked at him, trying to read his face, looking for the tell. I decided I believed it was going to be the best he would do. And he was right, it wasn’t a bad deal for what Barnett Woodson had done.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I think he’ll say roll the dice.”

  Vincent shook his head and looked at me.

  “Then, you’ll have to sell it to him, Haller. Because I can’t go lower and if you continue the cross, then my career in the DA’s office is probably finished.”

  Now I hesitated before responding.

  “Wait a minute, what are you saying, Jerry? That I have to clean your mess up for you? I catch you with your pants around your ankles and it’s my client that has to take it in the ass?”

  “I’m saying it’s a fair offer to a man who is guilty as sin. More than fair. Go talk to him and work your magic, Mick. Convince him. We both know you’re not long for the Public Defender’s Office. You might need a favor from me someday when you’re out there in the big bad world with no steady paycheck coming in.”

  I just stared back at him, registering the quid pro quo of the offer. I help him and somewhere down the line he helps me, and Barnett Woodson does an extra couple of years in stir.

  “He’ll be lucky to last five years in there, let alone twenty,” Vincent said. “What’s the difference to him? But you and I? We’re going places, Mickey. We can help each other here.”

  I nodded slowly. Vincent was only a few years older than me but was trying to act like some kind of wise old sage.

  “The thing is, Jerry, if I did what you suggest, then I’d never be able to look another client in the eye again. I think I’d end up being the dope that got roped.”

  I stood up and gathered my files. My plan was to go back and tell Barnett Woodson to roll the dice and let me see what I could do.

  “I’ll see you after the break,” I said.

  And then I walked away.

  PART TWO

  —Suitcase City

  2007

  Four

  It was a little early in the week for Lorna Taylor to be calling and checking on me. Usually she waited until at least Thursday. Never Tuesday. I picked up the phone, thinking it was more than a check-in call.

  “Lorna?”

  “Mickey, where’ve you been? I’ve been calling all morning.”

  “I went for my run. I just got out of the shower. You okay?”

  “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Sure. What is—?”

  “You got a forthwith from Judge Holder. She wants to see you—like an hour ago.”

  This gave me pause.

  “About what?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is first Michaela called, then the judge herself called. That usually doesn’t happen. She wanted to know why you weren’t responding.”

  I knew that Michaela was Michaela Gill, the judge’s clerk. And Mary Townes Holder was the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court. The fact that she had called personally didn’t make it sound like they were inviting me to the annual justice ball. Mary Townes Holder didn’t call lawyers without a good reason.

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I just said you didn’t have court today and you might be out on the golf course.”

  “I don’t play golf, Lorna.”

  “Look, I couldn’t think of anything.”

  “It’s all right, I’ll call the judge. Give me the number.”

  “Mickey, don’t call. Just go. The judge wants to see you in chambers. She was very clear about that and she wouldn’t tell me why. So just go.”

  “Okay, I’m going. I have to get dressed.”

  “Mickey?”

  “What?”

  “How are you really doing?”

  I knew her code. I knew what she was asking. She didn’t want me appearing in front of a judge if I wasn’t ready for it.

  “You don’t have to worry, Lorna. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Call me and let me know what is going on as soon as you can.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  I hung up the phone, feeling like I was being bossed around by my wife, not my ex-wife.

  Five

  As the chief judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court, Judge Mary Townes Holder did most of her work behind closed doors. Her courtroom was used on occasion for emergency hearings on motions but rarely used for trials. Her work was done out of the view of the public. In chambers. Her job largely pertained to the administration of the justice system in Los Angeles County. More than two hundred fifty judgeships and forty courthouses fell under her purview. Every jury summons that went into the mail had her name on it, and every assigned parking space in a courthouse garage had her approval. She assigned judges by both geography and designation of law—criminal, civil, juvenile and family. When judges were newly elected to the bench, it was Judge Holder who decided whether they sat in Beverly Hills or Compton, and whether they heard high-stakes financial cases in civil court or soul-draining divorce cases in family court.

  I had dressed quickly in what I considered my lucky suit. It was an Italian import from Corneliani that I used to wear on verdict days. Since I hadn’t been in court for a year, or heard a verdict for even longer, I had to take it out of a plastic bag hanging in the back of the closet. After that I sped downtown without delay, thinking that I might be headed toward some sort of verdict on myself. As I drove, my mind raced over the cases and clients I had left behind a year earlier. As far as I knew, nothing had been left open or on the table. But maybe there had been a complaint or the judge had picked up on some courthouse gossip and was running her own inquiry. Regardless, I entered Holder’s courtroom with a lot of trepidation. A summons from any judge was usually not good news; a summons from the chief judge was even worse.

  The courtroom was dark and the clerk’s pod next to the bench was empty. I walked through the gate and was heading toward the door to the back hallway, when it opened and the clerk stepped through it. Michaela Gill was a pleasant-looking woman who reminded me of my third-grade teacher. But she wasn’t expecting to find a man approaching the other side of the door when she opened it. She startled and nearly let out a shriek. I quickly identified myself before she could make a run for the panic button on the judge’s bench. She caught her breath and then ushered me back without delay.

  I walked down the hallway and found the judge alone in her chambers, working at a massive desk made of dark wood. Her black robe was hanging on a hat rack in the corner. She was dressed in a maroon suit with a conservative cut. She was attractive and neat, midfifties with a slim build and brown hair kept in a short, no-nonsense style.

  I had never met Judge Holder before but I knew about her. She had put twenty years in as a prosecutor before being appointed to the bench by a conservative governor. She presided over criminal cases, had a few of the big ones, and was known for handing out
maximum sentences. Consequently, she had been easily retained by the electorate after her first term. She had been elected chief judge four years later and had held the position ever since.

  “Mr. Haller, thank you for coming,” she said. “I’m glad your secretary finally found you.”

  There was an impatient if not imperious tone to her voice.

  “She’s not actually my secretary, Judge. But she found me. Sorry it took so long.”

  “Well, you’re here. I don’t believe we have met before, have we?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, this will betray my age but I actually opposed your father in a trial once. One of his last cases, I believe.”

  I had to readjust my estimate of her age. She would have to be at least sixty if she had ever been in a courtroom with my father.

  “I was actually third chair on a case, just out of USC Law and green as can be. They were trying to give me some trial exposure. It was a murder case and they let me handle one witness. I prepared a week for my examination and your father destroyed the man on cross in ten minutes. We won the case but I never forgot the lesson. Be prepared for anything.”

  I nodded. Over the years I had met several older lawyers who had Mickey Haller Sr. stories to share. I had very few of my own. Before I could ask the judge about the case on which she’d met him, she pressed on.

  “But that’s not why I called you here,” she said.

  “I didn’t think so, Judge. It sounded like you have something… kind of urgent?”

  “I do. Did you know Jerry Vincent?”

  I was immediately thrown by her use of the past tense.

  “Jerry? Yes, I know Jerry. What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Dead?”

  “Murdered, actually.”

  “When?”

  “Last night. I’m sorry.”

  My eyes dropped and I looked at the name-plate on her desk. Honorable M. T. Holder was carved in script into a two-dimensional wooden display that held a ceremonial gavel and a fountain pen and inkwell.

  “How close were you?” she asked.

  It was a good question and I didn’t really know the answer. I kept my eyes down as I spoke.

  “We had cases against each other when he was with the DA and I was at the PD. We both left for private practice around the same time and both of us had one-man shops. Over the years we worked some cases together, a couple of drug trials, and we sort of covered for each other when it was needed. He threw me a case occasionally when it was something he didn’t want to handle.”

  I had had a professional relationship with Jerry Vincent. Every now and then we clicked glasses at Four Green Fields or saw each other at a ball game at Dodger Stadium. But for me to say we were close would have been an exaggeration. I knew little about him outside of the world of law. I had heard about a divorce a while back on the courthouse gossip line but had never even asked him about it. That was personal information and I didn’t need to know it.

  “You seem to forget, Mr. Haller, but I was with the DA back when Mr. Vincent was a young up-and-comer. But then he lost a big case and his star faded. That was when he left for private practice.”

  I looked at the judge but said nothing.

  “And I seem to recall that you were the defense attorney on that case,” she added.

  I nodded.

  “Barnett Woodson. I got an acquittal on a double murder. He walked out of the courtroom and sarcastically apologized to the media for getting away with murder. He had to rub the DA’s face in it and that pretty much ended Jerry’s career as a prosecutor.”

  “Then, why would he ever work with you or throw you cases?”

  “Because, Judge, by ending his career as a prosecutor, I started his career as a defense attorney.”

  I left it at that but it wasn’t enough for her.

  “And?”

  “And a couple of years later he was making about five times what he had made with the DA. He called me up one day and thanked me for showing him the light.”

  The judge nodded knowingly.

  “It came down to money. He wanted the money.”

  I shrugged like I was uncomfortable answering for a dead man and didn’t respond.

  “What happened to your client?” the judge asked. “What became of the man who got away with murder?”

  “He would’ve been better off taking a conviction. Woodson got killed in a drive-by about two months after the acquittal.”

  The judge nodded again, this time as if to say end of story, justice served. I tried to put the focus back on Jerry Vincent.

  “I can’t believe this about Jerry. Do you know what happened?”

  “That’s not clear. He was apparently found late last night in his car in the garage at his office. He had been shot to death. I am told that the police are still there at the crime scene and there have been no arrests. All of this comes from a Times reporter who called my chambers to make an inquiry about what will happen now with Mr. Vincent’s clients—especially Walter Elliot.”

  I nodded. For the last twelve months I had been in a vacuum but it wasn’t so airtight that I hadn’t heard about the movie mogul murder case. It was just one in a string of big-time cases Vincent had scored over the years. Despite the Woodson fiasco, his pedigree as a high-profile prosecutor had set him up from the start as an upper-echelon criminal defense attorney. He didn’t have to go looking for clients; they came looking for him. And usually they were clients who could pay or had something to say, meaning they had at least one of three attributes: They could pay top dollar for legal representation, they were demonstrably innocent of the charges lodged against them, or they were clearly guilty but had public opinion and sentiment on their side. These were clients he could get behind and forthrightly defend no matter what they were accused of. Clients who didn’t make him feel greasy at the end of the day.

  And Walter Elliot qualified for at least one of those attributes. He was the chairman/owner of Archway Pictures and a very powerful man in Hollywood. He had been charged with murdering his wife and her lover in a fit of rage after discovering them together in a Malibu beach house. The case had all sorts of connections to sex and celebrity and was drawing wide media attention. It had been a publicity machine for Vincent and now it would go up for grabs.

  The judge broke through my reverie.

  “Are you familiar with RPC two-three-hundred?” she asked.

  I involuntarily gave myself away by squinting my eyes at the question.

  “Uh… not exactly.”

  “Let me refresh your memory. It is the section of the California bar’s rules of professional conduct referring to the transfer or sale of a law practice. We, of course, are talking about a transfer in this case. Mr. Vincent apparently named you as his second in his standard contract of representation. This allowed you to cover for him when he needed it and included you, if necessary, in the attorney-client relationship. Additionally, I have found that he filed a motion with the court ten years ago that allowed for the transfer of his practice to you should he become incapacitated or deceased. The motion has never been altered or updated, but it’s clear what his intentions were.”

  I just stared at her. I knew about the clause in Vincent’s standard contract. I had the same in mine, naming him. But what I realized was that the judge was telling me that I now had Jerry’s cases. All of them, Walter Elliot included.

  This, of course, did not mean I would keep all of the cases. Each client would be free to move on to another attorney of their choosing once apprised of Vincent’s demise. But it meant that I would have the first shot at them.

  I started thinking about things. I hadn’t had a client in a year and the plan was to start back slow, not with a full caseload like the one I had apparently just inherited.

  “However,” the judge said, “before you get too excited about this proposition, I must tell you that I would be remiss in my role as chief judge if I did not make every e
ffort to ensure that Mr. Vincent’s clients were transferred to a replacement counsel of good standing and competent skill.”

  Now I understood. She had called me in to explain why I would not be appointed to Vincent’s clients. She was going to go against the dead lawyer’s wishes and appoint somebody else, most likely one of the high-dollar contributors to her last reelection campaign. Last I had checked, I’d contributed exactly nothing to her coffers over the years.

  But then the judge surprised me.

  “I’ve checked with some of the judges,” she said, “and I am aware that you have not been practicing law for almost a year. I have found no explanation for this. Before I issue the order appointing you replacement counsel in this matter, I need to be assured that I am not turning Mr. Vincent’s clients over to the wrong man.”

  I nodded in agreement, hoping it would buy me a little time before I had to respond.

  “Judge, you’re right. I sort of took myself out of the game for a while. But I just started taking steps to get back in.”

  “Why did you take yourself out?”

  She asked it bluntly, her eyes holding mine and looking for anything that would indicate evasion of the truth in my answer. I spoke very carefully.

  “Judge, I had a case a couple years ago. The client’s name was Louis Roulet. He was—”

  “I remember the case, Mr. Haller. You got shot. But, as you say, that was a couple years ago. I seem to remember you practicing law for some time after that. I remember the news stories about you coming back to the job.”

  “Well,” I said, “what happened is I came back too soon. I had been gut shot, Judge, and I should’ve taken my time. Instead, I hurried back and the next thing I knew I started having pain and the doctors said I had a hernia. So I had an operation for that and there were complications. They did it wrong. There was even more pain and another operation and, well, to make a long story short, it knocked me down for a while. I decided the second time not to come back until I was sure I was ready.”