The Brass Verdict Read online

  The judge nodded sympathetically. I guessed I had been right to leave out the part about my addiction to pain pills and the stint in rehab.

  “Money wasn’t an issue,” I said. “I had some savings and I also got a settlement from the insurance company. So I took my time coming back. But I’m ready. I was just about to take the back cover of the Yellow Pages.”

  “Then, I guess inheriting an entire practice is quite convenient, isn’t it?” she said.

  I didn’t know what to say to her question or the smarmy tone in which she said it.

  “All I can tell you, Judge, is that I would take good care of Jerry Vincent’s clients.”

  The judge nodded but she didn’t look at me as she did so. I knew the tell. She knew something. And it bothered her. Maybe she knew about the rehab.

  “According to bar records, you’ve been disciplined several times,” she said.

  Here we were again. She was back to throwing the cases to another lawyer. Probably some campaign contributor from Century City who couldn’t find his way around a criminal proceeding if his Riviera membership depended on it.

  “All of it ancient history, Judge. All of it technicalities. I’m in good standing with the bar. If you called them today, then I’m sure you were told that.”

  She stared at me for a long moment before dropping her eyes to the document in front of her on the desk.

  “Very well, then,” she said.

  She scribbled a signature on the last page of the document. I felt the flutter of excitement begin to build in my chest.

  “Here is an order transferring the practice to you,” the judge said. “You might need it when you go to his office. And let me tell you this. I am going to be monitoring you. I want an updated inventory of cases by the beginning of next week. The status of every case on the client list. I want to know which clients will work with you and which will find other representation. After that, I want biweekly status updates on all cases in which you remain counsel. Am I being clear?”

  “Perfectly clear, Judge. For how long?”

  “What?”

  “For how long do you want me to give you biweekly updates?”

  She stared at me and her face hardened.

  “Until I tell you to stop.”

  She handed me the order.

  “You can go now, Mr. Haller, and if I were you, I would get over there and protect my new clients from any unlawful search and seizure of their files by the police. If you have any problem, you can always call on me. I have put my after-hours number on the order.”

  “Yes, Your Honor. Thank you.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Haller.”

  I stood up and headed out of the room. When I got to the doorway of her chambers I glanced back at her. She had her head down and was working on the next court order.

  Out in the courthouse hallway, I read the two-page document the judge had given me, confirming that what had just happened was real.

  It was. The document I held appointed me substitute counsel, at least temporarily, on all of Jerry Vincent’s cases. It granted me immediate access to the fallen attorney’s office, files, and bank accounts into which client advances had been deposited.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called Lorna Taylor. I asked her to look up the address of Jerry Vincent’s office. She gave it to me and I told her to meet me there and to pick up two sandwiches on her way.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I haven’t had lunch.”

  “No, why are we going to Jerry Vincent’s office?”

  “Because we’re back in business.”

  Six

  I was in my Lincoln driving toward Jerry Vincent’s office, when I thought of something and called Lorna Taylor back. When she didn’t answer I called her cell and caught her in her car.

  “I’m going to need an investigator. How would you feel if I called Cisco?”

  There was a hesitation before she answered. Cisco was Dennis Wojciechowski, her significant other as of the past year. I was the one who had introduced them when I used him on a case. Last I heard, they were now living together.

  “Well, I have no problem working with Cisco. But I wish you would tell me what this is all about.”

  Lorna knew Jerry Vincent as a voice on the phone. It was she who would take his calls when he was checking to see if I could stand in on a sentence or babysit a client through an arraignment. I couldn’t remember if they had ever met in person. I had wanted to tell her the news in person but things were moving too quickly for that.

  “Jerry Vincent is dead.”

  “What?”

  “He was murdered last night and I’m getting first shot at all of his cases. Including Walter Elliot.”

  She was silent for a long moment before responding.

  “My God.… How? He was such a nice man.”

  “I couldn’t remember if you had ever met him.”

  Lorna worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. All my calls and billing went through her. If there was a brick-and-mortar office for the law firm of Michael Haller and Associates, then her place was it. But there weren’t any associates and when I worked, my office was the backseat of my car. This left few occasions for Lorna to meet face-to-face with any of the people I represented or associated with.

  “He came to our wedding, don’t you remember?”

  “That’s right. I forgot.”

  “I can’t believe this. What happened?”

  “I don’t know. Holder said he was shot in the garage at his office. Maybe I’ll find out something when I get there.”

  “Did he have a family?”

  “I think he was divorced but I don’t know if there were kids or what. I don’t think so.”

  Lorna didn’t say anything. We both had our own thoughts occupying us.

  “Let me go so I can call Cisco,” I finally said. “Do you know what he’s doing today?”

  “No, he didn’t say.”

  “All right, I’ll see.”

  “What kind of sandwich do you want?”

  “Which way you coming?”

  “Sunset.”

  “Stop at Dusty’s and get me one of those turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce. It’s been almost a year since I’ve had one of those.”

  “You got it.”

  “And get something for Cisco in case he’s hungry.”

  “All right.”

  I hung up and looked up the number for Dennis Wojciechowski in the address book I keep in the center console compartment. I had his cell phone. When he answered I heard a mixture of wind and exhaust blast in the phone. He was on his bike and even though I knew his helmet was set up with an earpiece and mike attached to his cell, I had to yell.

  “It’s Mickey Haller. Pull over.”

  I waited and heard him cut the engine on his ’sixty-three panhead.

  “What’s up, Mick?” he asked when it finally got quiet. “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”

  “You gotta put the baffles back in your pipes, man. Or you’ll be deaf before you’re forty and then you won’t be hearing from anybody.”

  “I’m already past forty and I hear you just fine. What’s going on?”

  Wojciechowski was a freelance defense investigator I had used on a few cases. That was how he had met Lorna, collecting his pay. But I had known him for more than ten years before that because of his association with the Road Saints Motorcycle Club, a group for which I served as a de facto house counsel for several years. Dennis never flew RSMC colors but was considered an associate member. The group even bestowed a nickname on him, largely because there was already a Dennis in the membership—known, of course, as Dennis the Menace—and his last name, Wojciechowski, was intolerably difficult to pronounce. Riffing off his dark looks and mustache, they christened him the Cisco Kid. It didn’t matter that he was one hundred percent Polish out of the south side of Milwaukee.

  Cisco was a big, imposing man but he kept his nose clean while riding with the Saints
. He never caught an arrest record and that paid off when he later applied to the state for his private investigator’s license. Now, many years later, the long hair was gone and the mustache was trimmed and going gray. But the name Cisco and the penchant for riding classic Harleys built in his hometown had stuck for life.

  Cisco was a thorough and thoughtful investigator. And he had another value as well. He was big and strong and could be physically intimidating when necessary. That attribute could be highly useful when tracking down and dealing with people who fluttered around the edges of a criminal case.

  “First of all, where are you?” I asked.

  “Burbank.”

  “You on a case?”

  “No, just a ride. Why, you got something for me? You taking on a case finally?”

  “A lot of cases. And I’m going to need an investigator.”

  I gave him the address of Vincent’s office and told him to meet me there as soon as he could. I knew that Vincent would have used either a stable of investigators or just one in particular, and that there might be a loss of time as Cisco got up to speed on the cases, but all of that was okay with me. I wanted an investigator I could trust and already had a working relationship with. I was also going to need Cisco to immediately start work by running down the locations of my new clients. My experience with criminal defendants is that they are not always found at the addresses they put down on the client info sheet when they first sign up for legal representation.

  After closing the phone I realized I had driven right by the building where Vincent’s office was located. It was on Broadway near Third Street and there was too much traffic with cars and pedestrians for me to attempt a U-turn. I wasted ten minutes working my way back to it, catching red lights at every corner. By the time I got to the right place, I was so frustrated that I resolved to hire a driver again as soon as possible so that I could concentrate on cases instead of addresses.

  Vincent’s office was in a six-story structure called simply the Legal Center. Being so close to the main downtown courthouses—both criminal and civil—meant it was a building full of trial lawyers. Just the kind of place most cops and doctors—lawyer haters—probably wished would implode every time there was an earthquake. I saw the opening for the parking garage next door and pulled in.

  As I was taking the ticket out of the machine, a uniformed police officer approached my car. He was carrying a clipboard.

  “Sir? Do you have business in the building here?”

  “That’s why I’m parking here.”

  “Sir, could you state your business?”

  “What business is it of yours, Officer?”

  “Sir, we are conducting a crime scene investigation in the garage and I need to know your business before I can allow you in.”

  “My office is in the building,” I said. “Will that do?”

  It wasn’t exactly a lie. I had Judge Holder’s court order in my coat pocket. That gave me an office in the building.

  The answer seemed to work. The cop asked to see my ID and I could’ve argued that he had no right to request my identification but decided that there was no need to make a federal case out of it. I pulled my wallet and gave him the ID and he wrote my name and driver’s license number down on his clipboard. Then he let me through.

  “At the moment there’s no parking on the second level,” he said. “They haven’t cleared the scene.”

  I waved and headed up the ramp. When I reached the second floor, I saw that it was empty of vehicles except for two patrol cars and a black BMW coupe that was being hauled onto the bed of a truck from the police garage. Jerry Vincent’s car, I assumed. Two other uniformed cops were just beginning to pull down the yellow crime scene tape that had been used to cordon off the parking level. One of them signaled for me to keep going. I saw no detectives around but the police weren’t giving up the murder scene just yet.

  I kept going up and didn’t find a space I could fit the Lincoln into until I got to the fifth floor. One more reason I needed to get a driver again.

  The office I was looking for was on the second floor at the front of the building. The opaque glass door was closed but not locked. I entered a reception room with an empty sitting area and a nearby counter behind which sat a woman whose eyes were red from crying. She was on the phone but when she saw me, she put it down on the counter without so much as a “hold on” to whomever she was talking to.

  “Are you with the police?” she asked.

  “No, I’m not,” I replied.

  “Then, I’m sorry, the office is closed today.”

  I approached the counter, pulling the court order from Judge Holder out of the inside pocket of my suit coat.

  “Not for me,” I said as I handed it to her.

  She unfolded the document and stared at it but didn’t seem to be reading it. I noticed that in one of her hands she clutched a wad of tissues.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “That’s a court order,” I said. “My name is Michael Haller and Judge Holder has appointed me replacement counsel in regard to Jerry Vincent’s clients. That means we’ll be working together. You can call me Mickey.”

  She shook her head as if warding off some invisible threat. My name usually didn’t carry that sort of power.

  “You can’t do this. Mr. Vincent wouldn’t want this.”

  I took the court papers out of her hand and re-folded them. I started putting the document back into my pocket.

  “Actually, I can. The chief judge of Los Angeles Superior Court has directed me to do this. And if you look closely at the contracts of representation that Mr. Vincent had his clients sign, you will find my name already on them, listed as associate counsel. So, what you think Mr. Vincent would have wanted is immaterial at this point because he did in fact file the papers that named me his replacement should he become incapacitated or… dead.”

  The woman had a dazed look on her face. Her mascara was heavy and running beneath one eye. It gave her an uneven, almost comical look. For some reason a vision of Liza Minnelli jumped to my mind.

  “If you want, you can call Judge Holder’s clerk and talk about it with her,” I said. “Meantime, I really need to get started here. I know this has been a very difficult day for you. It’s been difficult for me—I knew Jerry going back to his days at the DA. So you have my sympathy.”

  I nodded and looked at her and waited for a response but I still wasn’t getting one. I pressed on.

  “I’m going to need some things to get started here. First of all, his calendar. I want to put together a list of all the active cases Jerry was handling. Then, I’m going to need you to pull the files for those—”

  “It’s gone,” she said abruptly.

  “What’s gone?”

  “His laptop. The police told me whoever did this took his briefcase out of the car. He kept everything on his laptop.”

  “You mean his calendar? He didn’t keep a hard copy?”

  “That’s gone, too. They took his portfolio. That was in the briefcase.”

  Her eyes were staring blankly ahead. I tapped the top of the computer screen on her desk.

  “What about this computer?” I asked. “Didn’t he back up his calendar anywhere?”

  She didn’t say anything, so I asked again.

  “Did Jerry back up his calendar anywhere else? Is there any way to access it?”

  She finally looked up at me and seemed to take pleasure in responding.

  “I didn’t keep the calendar. He did. He kept it all on his laptop and he kept a hard copy in the old portfolio he carried. But they’re both gone. The police made me look everywhere in here but they’re gone.”

  I nodded. The missing calendar was going to be a problem but it wasn’t insurmountable.

  “What about files? Did he have any in the briefcase?”

  “I don’t think so. He kept all the files here.”

  “Okay, good. What we’re going to have to do is pull all the active cases and rebuil
d the calendar from the files. I’ll also need to see any ledgers or checkbooks pertaining to the trust and operating accounts.”

  She looked up at me sharply.

  “You’re not going to take his money.”

  “It’s not—”

  I stopped, took a deep breath, and then started again in a calm but direct tone.

  “First of all, I apologize. I did this backwards. I don’t even know your name. Let’s start over. What is your name?”

  “Wren.”

  “Wren? Wren what?”

  “Wren Williams.”

  “Okay, Wren, let me explain something. It’s not his money. It’s his clients’ money and until they say otherwise, his clients are now my clients. Do you understand? Now, I have told you that I am aware of the emotional upheaval of the day and the shock you are experiencing. I’m experiencing some of it myself. But you need to decide right now if you are with me or against me, Wren. Because if you are with me, I need you to get me the things I asked for. And I’m going to need you to work with my case manager when she gets here. If you are against me, then I need you just to go home right now.”

  She slowly shook her head.

  “The detectives told me I had to stay until they were finished.”

  “What detectives? There were only a couple uniforms left out there when I drove in.”

  “The detectives in Mr. Vincent’s office.”

  “You let—”

  I didn’t finish. I stepped around the counter and headed toward two separate doors on the back wall. I picked the one on the left and opened it.

  I walked into Jerry Vincent’s office. It was large and opulent and empty. I turned in a full circle until I found myself staring into the bugged eyes of a large fish mounted on the wall over a dark wood credenza next to the door I had come through. The fish was a beautiful green with a white under-belly. Its body was arched as if it had frozen solid just at the moment it had jumped out of the water. Its mouth was open so wide I could have put my fist in it.

  Mounted on the wall beneath the fish was a brass plate. It said:

  IF I’D KEPT MY MOUTH SHUT