The Gods of Guilt (Mickey Haller 5) (32 page)

Finally, at four fifteen, it was over. Fulgoni was excused and he left the witness stand like a man who never wanted to set foot in a courtroom again, despite being a lawyer. I stepped back to the rail and whispered to Cisco in the first row, telling him to make sure young Sly didn’t leave. I still needed to talk to him.

The judge sent the jury home and adjourned court for the day. She invited Forsythe and me back to her chambers to work on the order to appear that would hopefully bring James Marco to court. I told Lorna that drawing up the order would not take too long and she should go down and get her car out of the underground parking garage where she left it every morning.

I caught up to Forsythe in the hallway behind the courtroom that led to the judge’s chambers.

“Nice job on Fulgoni,” I said. “At least now he has some courtroom experience.”

Forsythe turned and waited for me.

“Me? You were the one who started it—and he was your witness.”

“A sacrifice to the gods. It had to be done.”

“I don’t know what you’re hoping to get out of this Moya angle but it’s not going to fly, Mick.”

“We’ll see.”

“And what’s with all the names on the new list? I’ve got kids I’d like to spend time with tonight.”

“Give it to Lankford. He has the time. I think he ate his kids.”

Forsythe was laughing as we entered the chambers. The judge was already at her desk, turned to the computer terminal on the side.

“Gentlemen, let’s get this done so we can beat some traffic.”

Fifteen minutes later I left through the courtroom. The judge had issued the order to appear. The sheriff’s department would be charged with delivering it to the DEA’s office the next morning. It ordered the DEA to show cause as to why Agent James Marco should not appear in court by ten a.m. Wednesday. That meant either Marco or a lawyer for the DEA would need to show up. If that didn’t work, then Judge Leggoe would issue a bench warrant for Marco’s arrest and things would really get interesting.

I found Cisco and young Sly sharing a bench in the hallway. One of Moya’s men was on his own bench across the hall. The other had trailed Lorna as she went down to get the car.

I walked over to Cisco and Fulgoni and told young Sly that I knew it had been a rough day but that I greatly appreciated the help he had given my client’s case. I told him I was still looking forward to working with him on the habeas case in federal court.

“I was right about you, Haller,” he said.

“Yeah, when was that?” I asked.

“When I said you were an asshole.”

He stood up to leave.

“I nailed it.”

Cisco and I watched him stride to the elevator bank. The good thing about working late into the day in the courthouse was that the elevator crowds thinned out and the wait wasn’t so bad. Fulgoni caught a ride quickly and was gone.

“Nice guy,” Cisco said.

“You should meet his father,” I said. “Even nicer.”

“I shouldn’t speak ill, though. A guy like that, I’ll probably end up working for him someday,” Cisco said.

“You’re probably right.”

I handed him my copy of the judge’s order. Cisco unfolded the document and looked it over.

“Somebody up there at Roybal will probably use this to wipe his ass with.”

“Probably, but it’s all part of the game. Just in case, we need to be ready for Marco on Wednesday.”

“Right.”

We stood up and started heading toward the elevators. Moya’s man followed.

“You going to the loft?” I asked Cisco.

Team Haller had been meeting regularly at the loft after court each afternoon. We recounted the occurrences of the day as well as talked and brainstormed about the next one. It was a way of sharing successes and failures. Today I thought we had been more successful than not. It would be a good meeting.

“I’ll be there,” Cisco said. “I just have one stop to make first.”

“Okay, then.”

Outside the courthouse, I walked over to Spring Street and saw Lorna’s Lexus parked at the curb in front of two Lincoln Town Cars that were also waiting for lawyers from the courthouse. I walked down the sidewalk and past the Lincolns and almost opened the back door of Lorna’s car but decided not to embarrass her. I got in the front.

“I guess this makes me the Lexus Lawyer now,” I said. “Maybe the movie guys will make a sequel.”

She didn’t smile.

“Are we going to the loft?” she asked.

“If you don’t mind. I want to make sure we’re all set for tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

She abruptly pulled away from the curb without checking the traffic lane and got blasted by a motorist she’d cut off. I waited a few moments, deciding whether I should wade in. I had been married to her once briefly. I knew her moods and that the quiet, clipped dialogue version could boil over if left simmering on the stove too long.

“So what’s up? You’re upset.”

“No I’m not.”

“Yes you are. Tell me.”

“Why did you make Sylvester Jr. wait for you after court today?”

I squinted, trying to see the connection between making Junior wait and her being upset.

“I don’t know, I guess because I wanted to thank him for testifying. It was a rough day for him.”

“And whose fault was that?”

Now I realized why she was flatlining me. She felt sorry for young Sly.

“Look, Lorna, that kid is a complete incompetent. I had to expose that because if I didn’t, I was going to look just as incompetent when Forsythe mopped the floor with him. Besides, someday he’s going to thank me for that. It’s better he get his shit together now than somewhere down the line.”

“Whatever.”

“Yeah, whatever. You know something, Earl never gave me any shit about how I run my cases.”

“And look what happened to him.”

That hit me like an arrow in the back.

“What? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Lorna, don’t lay that shit on me. Don’t you think I already carry enough guilt about it?”

I was actually surprised it had taken her two months to get to this.

“You knew you were being followed. They put a tracker on the car.”

“Yeah, a
tracker
. So they would know where I was going. Not so they could
kill
us. That was never on our radar. They put a tracker on the car, not an IED, for chrissake.”

“You should’ve known when you went up to see Moya they would know you figured everything out and were a danger.”

“That’s crazy, Lorna. Because I didn’t figure everything out. Not then and not now. I’m still flying by the seat of my pants on this case. Besides that, the day before, Cisco said they weren’t seeing anything, and I’d made an executive decision to pull the Indians back because they were costing us a lot and you were on my back all the time about the money.”

“So you’re blaming me?”

“No, I’m not blaming you. I’m not blaming anybody, but obviously somebody missed something because we were not in the clear.”

“And Earl got killed.”

“Yeah, Earl got killed and so far they’ve gotten away with it. And I have to live with making the call to pull back on the surveillance, not that it would have changed anything.”

I raised my hands in an I-give-up gesture.

“Look, I don’t know why this all comes to the surface right now, but can we stop talking about it? I’m in the middle of a trial and I’m juggling chain saws. All of this doesn’t really help. I see Earl’s face every night when I try to go to sleep. If it helps you to know he haunts me, well, he does.”

We rode in silence for the next twenty-five minutes until finally we pulled into the parking lot behind the loft on Santa Monica. I could tell by the number of cars in the lot, including three beat-up panel vans, that our staff meeting would have musical accompaniment. Under the house rules, bands were allowed to practice in their lofts after four p.m.

Lorna and I said nothing as we rode the freight elevator up. Our shoes made angry sounds on the wood floor. They echoed across the empty loft as we headed to the boardroom.

Only Jennifer Aronson was already there. I remembered that Cisco had said that he had something to do first.

“So how did it go?” Aronson asked.

I nodded as I pulled out a seat and sat down.

“Pretty good. Things are in play. I was even able to suggest to Forsythe that he let Lankford vet the new witness list.”

“I meant the trial. How was Fulgoni?”

I glanced at Lorna, aware of her sympathies for Sly Jr.

“He served his purpose.”

“Is he off yet?”

“Yeah, we’re finished with him for now.”

“And so you gave the new list, and what happened?”

Jennifer had prepared the new witness list, making sure that every new name had some connection to the case so that we could argue its place on it. That is, every name but one.

“Forsythe objected all over the place and the judge gave him till tomorrow morning to respond. So I want you there, since you know the names better than me. Are you clear in the morning?”

Jennifer nodded.

“Yes. Will I be making the response or just whispering to you?”

“You respond.”

She brightened at the thought of going up against Forsythe in court.

“What about if he brings up Stratton Sterghos?”

I thought for a moment before responding. I heard someone riffing on an electric guitar somewhere in the building.

“First of all, there is no if about that. Sterghos is going to come up. When he does, you start to answer and then you sort of look at me as if to ask if you’re saying too much. I’ll step in then and take it from there.”

The new witness list I had submitted was a carefully constructed part of our defense strategy. Every person we had added had at least a tangential connection to the Gloria Dayton case. We could easily argue for his or her inclusion and testimony. However, the truth was, we would actually call few of them to testify. Most of them had been added to the list in an effort to cloak a single name: Stratton Sterghos.

Sterghos was the depth charge. He was not directly or indirectly connected to Dayton. He did, however, live for the past twenty years across the street from a house in Glendale where two drug dealers were assassinated in 2003. It was in the investigation of those murders that I believed an unholy alliance was somehow struck between then–Detective Lee Lankford and DEA agent James Marco. I needed to root that alliance out and find a way to tie it in with Gloria. It was called relevance. I had to make the Glendale case relevant to the Dayton case or I would never get it to the jury.

“So you’re hoping Lankford does the vetting and comes up with Stratton Sterghos’s connection,” Jennifer said.

I nodded.

“If we get lucky.”

“And then he makes a mistake.”

I nodded again.

“If we get luckier.”

As if on cue, Cisco entered the boardroom. I realized that the big man hadn’t made a sound as he had crossed the loft. He went to the coffeepot and started pouring a cup.

“Cisco, that’s old,” Lorna warned. “From this morning. It’s not even hot.”

“It will have to do,” Cisco said.

He put the glass pot down on the cold burner and swallowed a gulp from the cup. We all made faces. He smiled.

“What?” he said. “I need the caffeine. We’re setting up on the house and I could be up all night.”

“So everything is set?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I just checked it out. We’re ready.”

“Then let’s hope Lankford does his job.”

“And then some.”

He started pouring more of the dead coffee into his cup.

“Let me just make a fresh pot,” Lorna said.

She got up and came around the table to her husband.

“No, it’s fine,” Cisco said. “I can’t stay long anyway. Have to get up there with the crew.”

Lorna stopped. There was a pained expression on her face.

“What?” Cisco asked.

“What is this you’re doing?” she asked. “How dangerous?”

Cisco shrugged and looked at me.

“We’ve taken precautions,” I said. “But . . . they are men with guns.”

“We’re always careful,” Cisco added.

I now realized where the heated discussion between Lorna and me in the car had come from. She was worried about her husband, worried that the fate that had befallen Earl Briggs would come to her house next.

C
isco called me at midnight. I was in bed with Kendall, having snuck out my back door and once again taken a cab over the hill to meet her. The protection of Moya’s men was twenty-four/seven, but I left them behind whenever I met Kendall because she objected to them and didn’t want them near her. As had become our routine during the trial, we’d eaten a late dinner at the sushi bar after she closed her studio and then returned to her place. I was deeply asleep and dreaming of car crashes when Cisco called. It took me a moment to adjust to where I was and what the call meant.

“We’ve got them on tape,” Cisco said.

“Who exactly?”

“Both of them. Lankford and Marco.”

“Together, same frame?”

“Same frame.”

“Good. Did they do anything?”

“Oh, yeah. They went inside.”

“You mean they broke in?”

“Yep.”

“Holy shit. And you’ve got it?”

“We’ve got it all and then some. Marco planted drugs in the house. Heroin.”

I was almost speechless. This couldn’t be any better.

“And you got that on tape, too?”

“Got it. We got it all. Do you want us to break it all down now? Pull out the cameras?”

I thought for a moment before answering.

“No,” I finally said. “I want it to stay. We paid Sterghos for two weeks. Let’s keep it all there. You never know.”

“You sure? Do we have the money for that?”

“Yes, I’m sure. No, we don’t have the money.”

“Well, you don’t want to stiff these guys.”

I almost made a joke about how we had been stiffing the Indians since Columbus got here, but decided it was not the time for an attempt at humor.

“I’ll figure something out.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Will there be something I can see?”