Mrs. Pena looked across the seat at me and held her hands up in a beseeching manner. She spoke in a heavy accent, choosing English to make her final pitch directly to me.
“Please, you help me, Mr. Mickey?”
I looked at Rojas, who was turned around in the front seat even though I didn’t need him to translate. I then looked past Mrs. Pena, over her shoulder and through the car window, to the home she desperately wanted to hold on to. It was a bleached pink, two-bedroom house with a hardscrabble yard behind a wire fence. The concrete step to the front stoop had graffiti sprayed across it, indecipherable except for the number 13. It wasn’t the address. It was a pledge of allegiance.
My eyes finally came back to her. She was forty-four years old and attractive in a worn sort of way. She was the single mother of three teenage boys and had not paid her mortgage in nine months. Now the bank had foreclosed and was moving in to sell the house out from under her.
The auction would take place in three days. It didn’t matter that the house was worth little or that it sat in a gang-infested neighborhood in South L.A. Somebody would buy it, and Mrs. Pena would become a renter instead of an owner-that is, if the new owner didn’t evict her. For years she had relied on the protection of the Florencia 13. But times were different. No gang allegiance could help her now. She needed a lawyer. She needed me.
“Tell her I will try my best,” I said. “Tell her I am pretty certain I will be able to stop the auction and challenge the validity of the foreclosure. It will at least slow things down. It will give us time to work up a long-range plan. Maybe get her back on her feet.”
I nodded and waited while Rojas translated. I had been using Rojas as my driver and interpreter ever since I had bought the advertising package on the Spanish radio stations.
I felt the cell phone in my pocket vibrate. My upper thigh read this as a text message as opposed to an actual phone call, which had a longer vibration. Either way I ignored it. When Rojas completed the translation, I jumped in before Mrs. Pena could respond.
“Tell her that she has to understand that this isn’t a solution to her problems. I can delay things and we can negotiate with her bank. But I am not promising that she won’t lose the house. In fact, she’s already lost the house. I’m going to get it back but then she’ll still have to face the bank.”
Rojas translated, making hand gestures where I had not. The truth was that Mrs. Pena would have to leave eventually. It was just a question of how far she wanted me to take it. Personal bankruptcy would tack another year onto foreclosure defense. But she didn’t have to decide that now.
“Now tell her that I also need to be paid for my work. Give her the schedule. A thousand up front and the monthly payment plan.”
“How much on the monthly and how long?”
I looked out at the house again. Mrs. Pena had invited me inside but I preferred meeting in the car. This was drive-by territory and I was in my Lincoln Town Car BPS. That stood for Ballistic Protection Series. I bought it used from the widow of a murdered enforcer with the Sinaloa cartel. There was armored plating in the doors, and the windows were constructed of three layers of laminated glass. They were bulletproof. The windows in Mrs. Pena’s pink house were not. The lesson learned from the Sinaloa man was that you don’t leave the car unless you have to.
Mrs. Pena had explained earlier that the mortgage payments she had stopped making nine months ago had been seven hundred a month. She would continue to withhold any payments to the bank while I worked the case. She would have a free ride for as long as I kept the bank at bay, so there was money to be made here.
“Make it two-fifty a month. I’ll give her the cut-rate plan. Make sure she knows she’s getting a deal and that she can never be late with the payments. We can take a credit card if she has one with any juice on it. Just make sure it doesn’t expire until at least twenty twelve.”
Rojas translated, with more gestures and many more words than I had used, while I pulled my phone. The text had come from Lorna Taylor.
CALL ME ASAP.
I’d have to get back to her after the client conference. A typical law practice would have an office manager and receptionist. But I didn’t have an office other than the backseat of my Lincoln, so Lorna ran the business end of things and answered the phones at the West Hollywood condo she shared with my chief investigator.
My mother was Mexican born and I understood her native language better than I ever let on. When Mrs. Pena responded, I knew what she said-the gist of it, at least. But I let Rojas translate it all back to me anyway. She promised to go inside the house to get the thousand-dollar cash retainer and to dutifully make the monthly payments. To me, not the bank. I figured that if I could extend her stay in the house to a year my take would be four grand total. Not bad for what was entailed. I would probably never see Mrs. Pena again. I would file a suit challenging the foreclosure and stretch things out. The chances were I wouldn’t even make a court appearance. My young associate would do the courthouse legwork. Mrs. Pena would be happy and so would I. Eventually, though, the hammer would come down. It always does.
I thought I had a workable case even though Mrs. Pena would not be a sympathetic client. Most of my clients stop making payments to the bank after losing a job or experiencing a medical catastrophe. Mrs. Pena stopped when her three sons went to jail for selling drugs and their weekly financial support abruptly ended. Not a lot of goodwill to be had with that story. But the bank had played dirty. I had looked up her file on my laptop. It was all there: a record of her being served with notices involving demands for payment and then foreclosure. Only Mrs. Pena said she had never received these notices. And I believed her. It wasn’t the kind of neighborhood where process servers were known to roam freely. I suspected that the notifications had ended up in the trash and the server had simply lied about it. If I could make that case, then I could back the bank off Mrs. Pena with the leverage it would give me.
That would be my defense. That the poor woman was never given proper notice of the peril she was in. The bank took advantage of her, foreclosed on her without allowing her the opportunity to make up the arrears, and should be rebuked by the court for doing so.
“Okay, we have a deal,” I said. “Tell her to go in and get her money while I print out a contract and receipt. We’ll get going on this today.”
I smiled and nodded at Mrs. Pena. Rojas translated and then jumped out of the car to go around and open her door.
Once Mrs. Pena left the car I opened the Spanish contract template on my laptop and typed in the necessary names and numbers. I sent it to the printer that sat on an electronics platform on the front passenger seat. I then went to work on the receipt for funds to be deposited into my client trust account. Everything was aboveboard. Always. It was the best way to keep the California Bar off my ass. I might have a bulletproof car but it was the bar I most often checked for over my shoulder.
It had been a rough year for Michael Haller and Associates, Attorneys-at-Law. Criminal defense had virtually dried up in the down economy. Of course crime wasn’t down. In Los Angeles, crime marched on through any economy. But the paying customers were few and far between. It seemed as though nobody had money to pay a lawyer. Consequently, the public defender’s office was busting at the seams with cases and clients while guys like me were left starving.
I had expenses and a fourteen-year-old kid in private school who talked about USC whenever the subject of colleges came up. I had to do something and so I did what I had once held as unthinkable. I went civil. The only growth industry in the law business was foreclosure defense. I attended a few bar seminars, got up to speed on it and started running new ads in two languages. I built a few websites and started buying the lists of foreclosure filings from the county clerk’s office. That’s how I got Mrs. Pena as a client. Direct mail. Her name was on the list and I had sent her a letter-in Spanish-offering my services. She told me that my letter happened to be the first indication she had ever received that she was in foreclosure.
The saying goes that if you build it, they will come. It was true. I was getting more work than I could handle-six more appointments after Mrs. Pena today-and had even hired an actual associate to Michael Haller and Associates for the first time ever. The national epidemic of real estate foreclosure was slowing but by no means abating. In Los Angeles County I could be feeding at the trough for years to come.
The cases went for only four or five grand a pop but this was a quantity-over-quality period in my professional life. I currently had more than ninety foreclosure clients on my docket. No doubt my kid could start planning on USC. Hell, she could start thinking about staying for a master’s degree.
There were those who believed I was part of the problem, that I was merely helping the deadbeats game the system while delaying the economic recovery of the whole. That description fit some of my clients for sure. But I viewed most of them as repeat victims. Initially scammed with the American dream of home ownership when lured into mortgages they had no business even qualifying for. And then victimized again when the bubble burst and unscrupulous lenders ran roughshod over them in the subsequent foreclosure frenzy. Most of these once-proud home owners didn’t stand a chance under California’s streamlined foreclosure regulations. A bank didn’t even need a judge’s approval to take away someone’s house. The great financial minds thought this was the way to go. Just keep it moving. The sooner the crisis hit bottom, the sooner the recovery would begin. I say, Tell that to Mrs. Pena.
There was a theory out there that this was all part of a conspiracy among the top banks in the country to undermine property laws, sabotage the judicial system and create a perpetually cycling foreclosure industry that had them profiting from both ends of the process. Me, I wasn’t exactly buying into that. But during my short time in this area of the law, I had seen enough predatory and unethical acts by so-called legitimate businessmen to make me miss good old-fashioned criminal law.
Rojas was waiting outside the car for Mrs. Pena to return with the money. I checked my watch and noted we were running late on my next appointment-a commercial foreclosure over in Compton. I tried to bunch my new client consultations geographically to save time and gas and mileage on the car. Today I worked the south end. Tomorrow I would hit East L.A. Two days a week I was in the car, signing up new clients. The rest of the time I worked the cases.
“Let’s go, Mrs. Pena,” I said. “We gotta roll.”
I decided to use the waiting time to call Lorna. Three months earlier I had started blocking the ID on my phone. I never did that when I practiced criminal, but in my brave new world of foreclosure defense, I usually didn’t want people having my direct number. And that included the lender attorneys as well as my own clients.
“Law offices of Michael Haller and Associates,” Lorna said when she picked up. “How can I-”
“It’s me. What’s up?”
“Mickey, you have to get over to Van Nuys Division right away.”
There was a strong urgency in her voice. Van Nuys Division was the LAPD’s central command for operations in the sprawling San Fernando Valley, on the north side of the city.
“I’m working the south end today. What’s going on?”
“They have Lisa Trammel there. She called.”
Lisa Trammel was a client. In fact, my very first foreclosure client. I had kept her in her home for going on eight months and was confident I could take it at least another year further before we dropped the bankruptcy bomb. But she was consumed by the frustrations and inequities of her life and could not be calmed or controlled. She’d taken to marching in front of the bank with a placard decrying its fraudulent practices and heartless actions. That is, until the bank got a temporary restraining order against her.
“Did she violate the TRO? Are they holding her?”
“Mickey, they’re holding her for murder.”
That wasn’t what I was expecting to hear.
“Murder? Who’s the victim?”
“She said they’re charging her with killing Mitchell Bondurant.”
That gave me another great big pause. I looked out the window and saw Mrs. Pena coming out through her front door. She held a wad of cash in her hand.
“All right, get on the phone and reschedule the rest of today’s appointments. And tell Cisco to head up to Van Nuys. I’ll meet him there.”
“You got it. Do you want Bullocks to take the afternoon appointments?”
“Bullocks” was what we called Jennifer Aronson, the associate I had hired out of Southwestern, a law school housed in the old Bullocks department store building on Wilshire.
“No, I don’t want her doing intake. Just reschedule them. And listen, I think I have the Trammel file with me, but you have the call list. Track down her sister. Lisa’s got a kid. He’s probably in school and somebody’s going to have to take him if Lisa can’t.”
We made every client fill out an extensive contact list because sometimes it was hard to find them for court hearings-and to get them to pay for my work.
“I’ll start on that,” Lorna said. “Good luck, Mickey.”
“Same to you.”
I closed the phone and thought about Lisa Trammel. Somehow I wasn’t surprised that she had been arrested for killing the man who was trying to take her home away from her. It’s not that I had thought it would come to this. Not even close. But deep down, I had known it was going to come to something.
I quickly took Mrs. Pena’s cash and gave her a receipt. We both signed the contract and she got a copy for her own records. I took a credit card number from her and she promised it would withstand a $250-a-month hit while I was working for her. I then thanked her, shook her hand and had Rojas walk her back to her front door.
While he did that I popped the trunk with the remote I carried, and got out. The Lincoln’s trunk was spacious enough to hold three cardboard file boxes as well as all my office supplies. I found the Trammel file in the third box and pulled it. I also grabbed the fancy briefcase I used for police station visits. When I closed the trunk I saw the stylized 13 spray-painted in silver on the lid’s black paint.
“Son of a bitch.”
I looked around. Three front yards down, a couple of kids were playing in the dirt but they looked too young to be graffiti artists. The rest of the street was deserted. I was baffled. Not only had I not heard or noticed the assault on my car that had taken place while I was having a client conference inside it, but it was barely past one and I knew most gangbangers didn’t get up and embrace the day and all its possibilities until late afternoon. They were night creatures.
I headed back to my open door with the file. I noticed Rojas was standing at the front stoop, chatting with Mrs. Pena. I whistled and signaled him back to the car. We had to get going.
I got in. Message received, Rojas trotted back to the car and jumped in himself.
“Compton?” he asked.
“No, change of plans. We’ve got to get up to Van Nuys. Fast.”
“Okay, Boss.”
He pulled away from the curb and started making his way back to the 110 Freeway. There was no direct freeway route to Van Nuys. We would have to take the 110 into downtown where we’d pick up the 101 north. We couldn’t have been starting off from a worse position in the city.
“What was she saying at the front door?” I asked Rojas.
“She was asking about you.”
“What do you mean?”
“She said you looked like you shouldn’t need a translator, you know?”
I nodded. I got that a lot. My mother’s genes made me look more south of the border than north.
“She also wanted to know if you were married, Boss. I told her you were. But if you want to circle back and tap that, it’ll be there. She’d probably want a discount on the fees, though.”
“Thanks, Rojas,” I said dryly. “She already got a discount but I’ll keep it in mind.”
Before opening the file I scrolled through the contacts list on my phone. I was looking for the name of someone in the Van Nuys detective squad who might share some information with me. But there was nobody. I was going in blind on a murder case. Not a good starting point either.
I closed the phone and put it into its charger, then opened the file. Lisa Trammel had become my client after responding to the generic letter I sent to the owners of all homes in foreclosure. I assumed I wasn’t the only lawyer in Los Angeles who did this. But for some reason Lisa answered my letter and not theirs.
As an attorney in private practice you get to choose your own clients most of the time. Sometimes you choose wrong. Lisa was one of those times with me. I was eager to start the new line of work. I was looking for clients who were in jams or who had been taken advantage of. People who were too naive to know their rights or options. I was looking for underdogs and thought I had found one in Lisa. No doubt she fit the bill. She was losing her house because of a set of circumstances that had fallen like dominoes out of her control. And her lender had turned her case over to a foreclosure mill that had cut corners and even violated the rules. I signed Lisa up, put her on a payment plan and started to fight her fight. It was a good case and I was excited. It was only after this that Lisa became a nuisance client.
Lisa Trammel was thirty-five years old. She was the married mother of a nine-year-old boy named Tyler and their house was on Melba in Woodland Hills. At the time she and her husband, Jeffrey, bought the house in 2005, Lisa taught social studies at Grant High while Jeffrey sold BMWs at the dealership in Calabasas.
Their three-bedroom house carried a $750,000 mortgage against an appraised value of $900,000. The market was strong then and mortgages were plentiful and easy to get. They used an independent mortgage broker who shopped their file around and got them into a low-interest loan that carried a balloon payment at the five-year mark. The loan was then folded into an investment block of mortgages and reassigned twice before finding its permanent home at WestLand Financial, a subsidiary of WestLand National, the Los Angeles-based bank headquartered in Sherman Oaks.
All was well and good for the family of three until Jeff Trammel decided he didn’t want to be a husband and father anymore. A few months before the $750,000 note on the house was due, Jeff took off, leaving his BMW M3 demo in the parking lot at Union Station and Lisa holding the balloon.
Down to a single income and a child to care for, Lisa looked at the reality of her situation and made choices. By now the economy had stalled out like a plane lumbering into the sky without enough airspeed. Given her teacher’s income, no institution was going to refinance the balloon. She stopped making payments on the loan and ignored all communications from the bank. When the note came due, the property went into foreclosure and that was when I came onto the scene. I sent Jeff and Lisa a letter, not realizing Jeff was no longer in the picture.
Lisa answered it.
I define a nuisance client as one who does not understand the bounds of our relationship, even after I clearly and sometimes repeatedly delineate them. Lisa came to me with her first notice of foreclosure. I took the case and told her to sit back and wait while I went to work. But Lisa couldn’t sit back. She couldn’t wait. She called me every day. After I filed a lawsuit putting the foreclosure before a judge, she showed up at court for routine filings and continuances. She had to be there and she had to know every move I made, see every letter I sent and be summarized on every call I received. She often called me and yelled when she perceived that I was not giving her case my fullest attention. I began to understand why her husband had hightailed it. He had to get away from her.
I began to wonder about Lisa’s mental health and suspected a bipolar affliction. The incessant calls and activities were cyclical. There were weeks when I heard nothing, alternating with weeks where she would call daily and repeatedly until she got me on the line.
Three months into the case she told me she had lost her job with the L.A. County School District because of unexcused absences. It was then that she talked about seeking damages from the bank that was foreclosing on her home. A sense of entitlement moved into the discourse. The bank was responsible for everything: the abandonment by her husband, the loss of her job, the taking of her home.
I made a mistake in revealing to her some of my case intelligence and strategy. I did it to appease her, to get her off the line. Our examination of the loan record had turned up inconsistencies and issues in the mortgage’s repeated reassignment to various holding companies. There were indications of fraud that I thought I could use to swing leverage to Lisa’s side when it came time to negotiate an out.
But the information only galvanized Lisa’s belief in her victimization at the hands of the bank. Never did she acknowledge the fact that she had signed for a loan and was obliged to repay it. She saw the bank only as the source of her woes.
The first thing she did was register a website. She used www.californiaforeclosurefighters.com to launch an organization called Foreclosure Litigants Against Greed. It worked better as an acronym-FLAG-and she effectively made use of the American flag on her protest signs. The message being that fighting foreclosure was as American as apple pie.
She then took to marching in front of WestLand’s corporate headquarters on Ventura Boulevard. Sometimes by herself, sometimes with her young son, and sometimes with people she had attracted to the cause. She carried signs that decried the bank’s involvement in illegal foreclosures and in putting families out of their homes and onto the streets.
Lisa was quick to alert local media outlets to her activities. She got on TV repeatedly and was always ready with a sound bite that gave voice to people in her situation, casting them as victims of the foreclosure epidemic, not garden-variety deadbeats. I had noticed that on Channel 5 she had even become part of the stock footage thrown up on the screen whenever there was an update on nationwide foreclosure issues or statistics. California was the third leading state in the country for foreclosures and Los Angeles was the hotbed. As these facts were reported, there would be Lisa and her group on the screen carrying their signs-DON’T TAKE MY HOME! STOP ILLEGAL FORECLOSURE NOW!
Alleging that her protests were illegal gatherings that impeded traffic and endangered pedestrians, WestLand sought and received a restraining order that kept Lisa one hundred yards from any bank facility and its employees. Undaunted, she took her signs and her fellow protestors to the county courthouse, where foreclosures were fought every day.
Mitchell Bondurant was a senior vice president at WestLand. He headed up the mortgage loan division. His name was on the loan documents relating to Lisa Trammel’s house. As such his name was on all of my filings. I had also written him a letter, outlining what I described as indications of fraudulent practices by the foreclosure mill WestLand had contracted with to carry out the dirty work of taking the homes and other properties of their default customers.
Lisa was entitled to see all documents arising from her case. She was copied on the letter and everything else. Despite being the human face of the effort to take her home away, Bondurant remained above the fray, hiding behind the bank’s legal team. He never responded to my letter and I never met him. I had no knowledge that Lisa Trammel had ever met or spoken with him either. But now he was dead and the police had Lisa in custody.
We exited the 101 at Van Nuys Boulevard and headed north. The civic center was a plaza surrounded by two courthouses, a library, City Hall North and the Valley Bureau police complex, which included the Van Nuys Division. Various other government agencies and buildings were clustered around the main grouping. Parking was always a problem but it wasn’t my worry. I pulled my phone and called my investigator, Dennis Wojciechowski.
“Cisco, it’s me. You close?”
In his early years Wojciechowski was associated with the Road Saints motorcycle club but there was already a member named Dennis. Nobody could pronounce Wojciechowski so they called him the Cisco Kid because of his dark looks and mustache. The mustache was now gone but the name had stuck.
“Already here. I’ll meet you on the bench by the front stairs to the PD.”
“I’ll be there in five. Have you talked to anyone yet? I’ve got nothing.”
“Yeah, your old pal Kurlen’s running lead on this. The victim, Mitchell Bondurant, was found in the parking garage at WestLand’s headquarters on Ventura about nine this morning. He was on the ground between two cars. Not clear how long he was down but he was dead on scene.”
“Do we know the cause yet?”
“There it gets a little hinky. At first they put out that he’d been shot because an employee who was on another level of the garage told responding police she had heard two popping sounds, like shots. But when they examined the body on the scene it looked like he had been beaten to death. Hit with something.”
“Was Lisa Trammel arrested there?”
“No, from what I understand, she was picked up at her home in Woodland Hills. I still have some calls out but that’s about the extent of what I’ve got so far. Sorry, Mick.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll know everything soon enough. Is Kurlen at the scene or with the suspect?”
“I was told he and his partner picked up Trammel and took her in. The partner’s a female named Cynthia Longstreth. She’s a D-one. I’ve never heard of her.”
I had never heard of her either but since she was a detective one, my guess was that she was new to the homicide beat and paired with the veteran Kurlen, a D-3, to get some seasoning. I looked out the window. We were passing a BMW dealership and it made me think of the missing husband who had sold Beemers before pulling the plug on the marriage and disappearing. I wondered if Jeff Trammel would show up now that his wife was arrested for murder. Would he take custody of the son he had abandoned?
“You want me to get Valenzuela over here?” Cisco asked. “He’s only a block away.”
Fernando Valenzuela was a bail bondsman I used on Valley cases. But I knew he wouldn’t be needed this time.
“I’d wait on that. If they’ve tagged her with murder she isn’t going to make bail.”
“Right, yeah.”
“Do you know if a DA’s been assigned yet?”
I was thinking about my ex-wife who worked for the district attorney’s office in Van Nuys. She might be a useful source of back-channel information-unless she had been put on the case. Then there would be a conflict of interest. It had happened before. Maggie McPherson wouldn’t like that.
“I’ve got nothing on that.”
I considered what little we knew and what might be the best way to proceed. My feeling was that once the police understood what they had in this case-a murder that could draw wide attention to one of the great financial catastrophes of the time-they would quickly go to lockdown, putting a lid on all sources of information. The time to make moves was now.
“Cisco, I changed my mind. Don’t wait for me. Go over to the scene and see what you can find out. Talk to people before they get locked down.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’ll handle the PD and I’ll call if I need anything.”
“Got it. Good luck.”
“You too.”
I closed the phone and looked at the back of my driver’s head.
“Rojas, turn right at Delano and take me up Sylmar.”
“No problem.”
“I don’t know how long I’ll be. I want you to drop me and then go back up Van Nuys Boulevard and find a body shop. See if they can get the paint off the back of the car.”
Rojas looked at me in the rearview mirror.
“What paint?”
The Van Nuys police building is a four-story structure serving many purposes. It houses the Van Nuys police division as well as the Valley Bureau command offices and the main jail facility serving the northern part of the city. I had been here before on cases and knew that as with most LAPD stations large or small, there would be multiple obstacles standing between my client and me.
I have always had the suspicion that officers assigned to front desk duty were chosen by cunning supervisors because of their skills in obfuscation and disinformation. If you doubt this, walk into any police station in the city and tell the desk officer who greets you that you wish to make a complaint against a police officer. See how long it takes him to find the proper form. Desk cops are usually young and dumb and unintentionally ignorant, or old and obdurate and completely deliberate in their actions.
At the front desk at Van Nuys station I was met by an officer with the name CRIMMINS printed on his crisp uniform. He was a silver-haired veteran and therefore highly accomplished when it came to the dead-eyed stare. He showed this to me when I identified myself as a defense attorney with a client waiting to see me in the detective squad. His response consisted of pursing his lips and pointing to a row of plastic chairs where I was supposed to meekly go to wait until he deemed it time to call upstairs.
Guys like Crimmins are used to a cowering public: people who do exactly as he says because they are too intimidated to do anything else. I wasn’t part of that public.
“No, that’s not how this works,” I said.
Crimmins squinted. He hadn’t been challenged by anybody all day, let alone a criminal defense attorney-emphasis on criminal. His first move was to fire up the sarcasm responders.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, that’s right. So pick up the phone and call upstairs to Detective Kurlen. Tell him Mickey Haller is on the way up and that if I don’t see my client in the next ten minutes I’ll just walk across the plaza to the courthouse and go see Judge Mills.”
I paused to let the name register.
“I’m sure you know of Judge Roger Mills. Lucky for me, he used to be a criminal defense attorney before he got elected to the bench. He didn’t like being jacked around by the police back then and doesn’t like it much when he hears about it now. He’ll drag both you and Kurlen into court and make you explain why you were playing this same old game of stopping a citizen from exercising her constitutional rights to consult an attorney. Last time it went down like that Judge Mills didn’t like the answers he got and fined the guy who was sitting where you are five hundred bucks.”
Crimmins looked like he’d had a hard time following my words. He was a short-sentence man, I guessed. He blinked twice and reached for the phone. I heard him confer directly with Kurlen. He then hung up.
“You know the way, smart guy?”
“I know the way. Thank you for your help, Officer Crimmins.”
“Catch you later.”
He pointed his finger at me like it was a gun, getting the last shot in so he could tell himself that he had handled that son-of-a-bitch lawyer. I left the desk and headed into the nearby alcove where I knew the elevator was located.
On the third floor Detective Howard Kurlen was waiting for me with a smile on his face. It wasn’t a friendly smile. He looked like the cat who just ate the canary.
“Have fun down there, Counselor?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Well, you’re too late up here.”
“How’s that? You booked her?”
He spread his hands in a phony Sorry about that gesture.
“It’s funny. My partner took her out of here just before I got the call from downstairs.”
“Wow, what a coincidence. I still want to talk to her.”
“You’ll have to go through the jail.”
This would probably take me an extra hour of waiting. And this was why Kurlen was smiling.
“You sure you can’t have your partner turn around and bring her down? I won’t be long with her.”
I said it even though I thought I was spitting into the wind. But Kurlen surprised me and pulled his phone off his belt. He hit a speed-dial button. It was either an elaborate hoax or he was actually doing what I asked. Kurlen and I had a history. We had squared off against each other on prior cases. I had attempted on more than one occasion to destroy his credibility on the witness stand. I was never very successful at it but the experience still made it hard to be cordial afterward. But now he was doing me a good turn and I wasn’t sure why.
“It’s me,” Kurlen said into the phone. “Bring her back here.”
He listened for a moment.
“Because I told you to. Now bring her back.”
He closed the phone without another word to his partner and looked at me.
“You owe me one, Haller. I could’ve hung you up for a couple hours. In the old days, I would’ve.”
“I know. I appreciate it.”
He headed back toward the squad room and signaled me to follow. He spoke casually as he walked.
“So, when she told us to call you she said you were handling her foreclosure.”
“That’s right.”
“My sister got divorced and now she’s in a mess like that.”
There it was. The quid pro quo.
“You want me to talk to her?”
“No, I just want to know if it’s best to fight these things or just get it over with.”
The squad room looked like it was in a time warp. It was vintage 1970s, with a linoleum floor, two-tone yellow walls and gray government-issue desks with rubber stripping around the edges. Kurlen remained standing while waiting for his partner to come back with my client.
I pulled a card out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“You’re talking to a fighter, so that’s my answer. I couldn’t handle her case because of conflict of interest between you and me. But have her call the office and we’ll get her hooked up with somebody good. Make sure she mentions your name.”
Kurlen nodded and picked a DVD case off his desk and handed it to me.
“Might as well give you this now.”
I looked at the disc.
“What’s this?”
“Our interview with your client. You will clearly see that we stopped talking to her as soon as she said the magic words: I want a lawyer.”
“I’ll be sure to check that out, Detective. You want to tell me why she’s your suspect?”
“Sure. She’s our suspect and we’re charging her because she did it and she made admissions about it before asking to call her lawyer. Sorry about that, Counselor, but we played by the rules.”
I held the disc up as if it were my client.
“You’re telling me she admitted killing Bondurant?”
“Not in so many words. But she made admissions and contradictions. I’ll leave it at that.”
“Did she by any chance say in so many words why she did it?”
“She didn’t have to. The victim was in the process of taking away her house. That’s plenty enough motive right there. We’re as good as gold on motive.”
I could’ve told him that he had that wrong, that I was in the process of stopping the foreclosure. But I kept my mouth shut about that. My job was to gather information here, not give it away.
“What else you got, Detective?”
“Nothing that I care to share with you at the moment. You’ll have to wait to get the rest through discovery.”
“I’ll do that. Has a DA been assigned yet?”
“Not that I heard.”
Kurlen nodded toward the back of the room and I turned to see Lisa Trammel being walked toward the door of an interrogation room. She had the classic deer-in-the-headlights look in her eyes.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes,” Kurlen said. “And that’s only because I’m being nice. I figure there’s no need to start a war.”
Not yet, at least, I thought as I headed toward the interrogation room.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Kurlen called to my back. “I have to check the briefcase. Rules, you know.”
He was referring to the leather-over-aluminum attaché I was carrying. I could’ve made an argument about the search infringing on attorney-client privilege but I wanted to talk to my client. I stepped back toward him and swung the case up onto a counter, then popped it open. All it contained was the Lisa Trammel file, a fresh legal pad and the new contracts and power-of-attorney form I had printed out while driving up. I figured I needed Lisa to re-sign since my representation was crossing from civil to criminal.
Kurlen gave it a quick once-over and signaled me to close it.
“Hand-tooled Italian leather,” he said. “Looks like a fancy drug dealer’s case. You haven’t been associating with the wrong people, have you, Haller?”
He put on that canary smile again. Cop humor was truly unique in all the world.
“As a matter of fact, it did belong to a courier,” I said. “A client. But where he was going he wasn’t going to need it anymore so I took it in trade. You want to see the secret compartment? It’s kind of a pain to open.”
“I think I’ll pass. You’re good.”
I closed the case and headed back to the interrogation room.
“And it’s Colombian leather,” I said.
Kurlen’s partner was waiting at the room’s door. I didn’t know her but didn’t bother to introduce myself. We were never going to be friendly and I guessed she would be the type to stiff me on the handshake in order to impress Kurlen.
She held the door open and I stopped at the threshold.
“All listening and recording devices in this room are off, correct?”
“You got it.”
“If they’re not that would be a violation of my client’s-”
“We know the drill.”
“Yeah, but sometimes you conveniently forget it, don’t you?”
“You’ve got fourteen minutes now, sir. You want to talk to her or keep talking to me?”
“Right.”
I went in and the door was closed behind me. It was a nine-by-six room. I looked at Lisa and put a finger to my lips.
“What?” she asked.
“That means don’t say a word, Lisa, until I tell you to.”
Her response was to break down in a cascade of tears and a loud and long wail that tailed off into a sentence that was completely unintelligible. She was sitting at a square table with a chair opposite her. I quickly took the open chair and put my case up on the table. I knew she would be positioned to face the room’s hidden camera, so I didn’t bother to look around for it. I snapped open the case and pulled it close to my body, hoping that my back would act as a blind to the camera. I had to assume that Kurlen and his partner were listening and watching. One more reason for his being “nice.”
While one by one I took out the legal pad and documents with my right hand, I used the left to open the case’s secret compartment. I hit the engage button on the Paquin 2000 acoustic jammer. The device emitted a low-frequency RF signal that clogged any listening device within twenty-five feet with electronic disinformation. If Kurlen and his partner were illegally listening in, they were now hearing white noise.
The case and its hidden device were almost ten years old and as far as I knew, the original owner was still in federal prison. I’d taken it in trade at least seven years ago, back when drug cases were my bread and butter. I knew law enforcement was always trying to build a better mousetrap, and in ten years the electronic eavesdropping business must have undergone at least two revolutions. So I was not completely put at ease. I would still need to exercise caution in what I said and hoped my client would as well.
“Lisa, we’re not going to talk a whole lot here because we don’t know who may be listening. You understand?”
“I think so. But what is happening here? I don’t understand what’s happening!”
Her voice had risen progressively through the sentence until she was screaming the last word. This was an emotional speaking pattern she had used several times on the phone with me when I was handling only her foreclosure. Now the stakes were higher and I had to draw the line.
“None of that, Lisa,” I said firmly. “You do not scream at me. You understand? If I’m going to represent you on this you do not scream at me.”
“Okay, sorry, but they’re saying I did something I didn’t do.”
“I know and we’re going to fight it. But no screaming.”
Because they had pulled her back before the booking process had begun, Lisa was still in her own clothes. She was wearing a white T-shirt with a flower pattern on the front. I saw no blood on it or anywhere else. Her face was streaked with tears and her brown curly hair was unkempt. She was a small woman and seemed even more so in the harsh light of the room.
“I need to ask you some questions,” I said. “Where were you when the police found you?”
“I was home. Why are they doing this to me?”
“Lisa, listen to me. You have to calm down and let me ask the questions. This is very important.”
“But what’s going on? No one tells me anything. They said I was under arrest for murdering Mitchell Bondurant. When? How? I didn’t go near that man. I didn’t break the TRO.”
I realized that it would have been better if I had viewed Kurlen’s DVD before speaking with her. But it was par for the course to come into a case at a disadvantage.
“Lisa, you are indeed under arrest for the murder of Mitchell Bondurant. Detective Kurlen-he’s the older one-told me that you made admissions to them in re-”
She shrieked and brought her hands to her face. I saw that she was cuffed at the wrists. A new round of tears started.
“I didn’t admit anything! I didn’t do anything!”
“Calm down, Lisa. That’s why I’m here. To defend you. But we don’t have a lot of time right now. They’re giving me ten minutes and then they’re going to book you. I need to-”
“I’m going to jail?”
I nodded reluctantly.
“Well, what about bail?”
“It is very hard to get bail on a murder charge. And even if I could get something set, you don’t have the-”
Another piercing wail filled the tiny room. I lost my patience.
“Lisa! Stop doing that! Now listen, your life is at stake here, okay? You have to calm down and listen to me. I am your attorney and I will do my best to get you out of here but it’s going to take some time. Now listen to my questions and answer them without all the-”
“What about my son? What about Tyler?”
“Someone from my office is making contact with your sister and we will arrange for him to be with her until we can get you out.”
I was very careful not to introduce a hard time line for her release. Until we can get you out. As far as I was concerned, that might be days, weeks or even years. It might never happen. But I did not need to get specific.
Lisa nodded as if there was some relief in knowing her son would be with her sister.
“What about your husband? You have a contact number for him?”
“No, I don’t know where he is and I don’t want you contacting him anyway.”
“Not even for your son?”
“Especially not for my son. My sister will take care of him.”
I nodded and let it go. Now was not the time to ask about her failed marriage.
“Okay, calmly now, let’s talk about this morning. I have the disc from the detectives but I want to go over this myself. You said you were home when Detective Kurlen and his partner arrived. What were you doing?”
“I was… I was on the computer. I was sending e-mails.”
“Okay, to who?”
“To my friends. To people in FLAG. I was telling them that we were going to meet tomorrow at the courthouse at ten and to bring the placards.”
“Okay, and when the detectives showed up, what exactly did they say?”
“The man did all the talking. He-”
“Kurlen.”
“Yes. They came in and he asked me some things. Then he asked if I wouldn’t mind coming to the station to answer questions. I said about what and he said Mitch Bondurant. He didn’t say anything about him being dead or killed. So I said yes. I thought maybe they were finally investigating him. I didn’t know they were investigating me.”
“Well, did he tell you that you had certain rights not to speak to him and to contact a lawyer?”
“Yes, like on TV. He told me my rights.”
“When exactly?”
“When we were already here, when he said I was under arrest.”
“Did you ride with him here?”
“Yes.”
“And did you speak in the car?”
“No, he was on his cell phone almost the whole time. I heard him say things like ‘I have her with me’ and like that.”
“Were you handcuffed?”
“In the car? No.”
Smart Kurlen. He risked riding in the car with an uncuffed murder suspect in order to keep her suspicions down and to lull her into agreeing to speak with him. You can’t build a better mousetrap than that. It would also allow the prosecution to argue that Lisa was not under arrest yet and therefore her statements were voluntary.
“So you were brought here and you agreed to talk to him?”
“Yes. I had no idea they were going to arrest me. I thought I was helping them with a case.”
“But Kurlen didn’t say what the case was.”
“No, never. Not until he said I was under arrest and that I could make a call. And that’s when they handcuffed me, too.”
Kurlen had used some of the oldest tricks in the book but they were still in the book because they worked. I had to watch the DVD to know exactly what Lisa had admitted to, if anything. Asking her about it while she was upset was not the best use of my limited time. As if to underscore this, there was a sudden and sharp knock on the door followed by a muffled voice saying I had two minutes.
“Okay, I am going to go to work on this, Lisa. I need you to sign a couple of documents first, though. This first one is a new contract that covers criminal defense.”
I slid the one-page document over to her and put a pen on top of it. She started to scan it.
“All these fees,” she said. “A hundred fifty thousand dollars for a trial? I can’t pay you this. I don’t have it.”
“That’s a standard fee and that’s only if we go to trial. And as far as what you can pay, that’s what these other documents are for. This one gives me your power of attorney, allowing me to solicit book and movie deals, things like that, coming from the case. I have an agent I work with on this stuff. If there’s a deal out there he’ll get it. The last document puts a lien on any of those funds so that the defense gets paid first.”
I knew this case was going to draw attention. The foreclosure epidemic was the country’s biggest ongoing financial catastrophe. There could be a book in this, maybe even a film, and I could end up getting paid.
She picked up the pen and signed the documents without reading further. I took them back and put them away.
“Okay, Lisa, what I am about to tell you now is the most important piece of advice in the world. So I want you to listen and then tell me you understand.”
“Okay.”
“Do not talk about this case with anyone other than me. Do not talk to detectives, jailers, other jail inmates, don’t even talk to your sister or son about it. Whenever anyone asks-and believe me, they will-you simply tell them that you cannot talk about your case.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong. I’m innocent! It’s people who are guilty who don’t talk.”
I held my finger up to admonish her.
“No, you’re wrong, and it sounds to me like you are not taking what I say seriously, Lisa.”
“No, I am, I am.”
“Then do what I am telling you. Talk to no one. And that includes the phone in the jail. All calls are recorded, Lisa. Don’t talk on the phone about your case, even to me.”
“Okay, okay. I got it.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you can answer all questions by saying ‘I am innocent of the charges but on the advice of my attorney I am not going to talk about the case.’ Okay, how’s that?”
“Good, I guess.”
The door opened and Kurlen was standing there. He was giving me the squint of suspicion, which told me it was a good thing I had brought the Paquin jammer with me. I looked back at Lisa.
“Okay, Lisa, it gets bad before it gets good. Hang in there and remember the golden rule. Talk to no one.”
I stood up.
“The next time you’ll see me will be at first appearance and we’ll be able to talk then. Now go with Detective Kurlen.”
The following morning Lisa Trammel made her first appearance in Los Angeles Superior Court on charges of first-degree murder. A special circumstances count of lying in wait was added by the district attorney’s office, which made her eligible for a sentence of life without parole and even for the death penalty. It was a bargaining chip for the prosecution. I could see the DA wanting this case to go away with a plea agreement before public sympathy swung behind the defendant. What better way to get that result than to hold LWOP or the death penalty over the defendant’s head?
The courtroom was crowded to standing room only with members of the media as well as FLAG recruits and sympathizers. Overnight the story had grown exponentially as word spread about the police and prosecution’s theory that a home foreclosure may have spawned the murder of a banker. It put a blood-and-guts twist on the nationwide financial plague and that, in turn, packed the house.
Lisa had calmed considerably after almost twenty-four hours in jail. She stood zombie-like in the custody pen awaiting her two-minute hearing. I assured her first that her son was safe in the loving hands of her sister and second that Haller and Associates would do all that was possible to provide her with the best and most rigorous defense. Her immediate concern was in getting out of jail to take care of her son and to assist her legal team.
Though the first-appearance hearing was primarily just an official acknowledgment of the charges and the starting point of the judicial process, there would also be an opportunity to request and argue for bail. I was planning to do just that as my general philosophy was to leave no stone unturned and no issue un-argued. But I was pessimistic about the outcome. By law, bail would be set. But in reality, bail in murder cases was usually set in the millions, thereby making it unattainable for the common man. My client was an unemployed single mother with a house in foreclosure. A seven-figure bail meant Lisa wouldn’t be getting out of jail.
Judge Stephen Fluharty pushed the Trammel case to the top of the docket in an effort to accommodate the media. Andrea Freeman, the prosecutor assigned to the case, read the charges and the judge scheduled the arraignment for the following week. Trammel would not enter a plea until then. These routine procedures were dispensed with quickly. Fluharty was about to call a short recess so the media could pack up equipment and leave en masse when I interrupted and made a motion requesting him to set bail for my client. The second reason for doing this was to see how the prosecution responded. Every now and then I got lucky and the prosecutor revealed evidence or strategy while arguing for a high bail amount.
But Freeman was too cagey to make such a slip. She argued that Lisa Trammel was a danger to the community and should continue to be held without bail until further into the proceedings of the case. She noted that the victim of the crime was not the only individual involved in foreclosing on Lisa’s place of residence, but only one link in a chain. Other people and institutions in that chain could be endangered if Trammel was set free.
There was no big reveal there. It seemed obvious from the start that the prosecution would use the foreclosure as the motive for the murder of Mitchell Bondurant. Freeman had said just enough to make a convincing argument against bail, but had mentioned little about the murder case she was building. She was good and we had faced each other on cases before. As far as I remembered, I had lost them all.
When it was my turn, I argued that there was no indication, let alone evidence, that Trammel was either a danger to the community or a flight risk. Barring such evidence, the judge could not deny the defendant bail.
Fluharty split his decision right down the middle, giving the defense a victory by ruling that bail should be set, and giving the prosecution a win by setting it at two million dollars. The upshot was that Lisa wasn’t going anywhere. She would need two million in collateral or a bail bondsman. A ten percent bond would cost her $200,000 in cash and that was out of the question. She was staying in jail.
The judge finally called for the recess and that gave me a few more minutes with Lisa before she was removed by the courtroom deputies. As the media filed out I quickly admonished her one more time to keep her mouth shut.
“It’s even more important now, Lisa, with all of the media on this case. They may try to get to you in the jail-either directly or through other inmates or visitors you think you can trust. So, remember-”
“Talk to no one. I get it.”
“Good. Now, I also want you to know that my entire staff is meeting this afternoon to review the case and set some strategies. Can you think of anything you want brought up or discussed? Anything that can help us?”
“I just have a question and it’s for you.”
“What is it?”
“How come you haven’t asked me if I did it?”
I saw one of the courtroom deputies enter the pen and come up behind Lisa, ready to take her back.
“I don’t need to ask you, Lisa,” I said. “I don’t need to know the answer to do my job.”
“Then ours is a pitiful system. I am not sure I can have a lawyer defending me who doesn’t believe in me.”
“Well, it’s certainly your choice and I’m sure there would be a line of lawyers out the door of the courthouse who would love to have this case. But nobody knows the circumstances of this case or the foreclosure like I do, and just because somebody says they believe you, it doesn’t mean they really do. With me, you don’t get that bullshit, Lisa. With me, it’s don’t ask, don’t tell. And that goes both ways. Don’t ask me if I believe you, and I won’t tell you.”
I paused to see if she wanted to respond. She didn’t.
“So are we good? I don’t want to be spinning my wheels on this if you’re going to be looking for a believer to take my place.”
“We’re good, I guess.”
“All right, then I’ll be by to see you tomorrow to discuss the case and what direction we are going to be moving in. I am hoping that my investigator will have a preliminary take on what the evidence is showing by then. He’s-”
“Can I ask you a question, Mickey?”
“Of course you can.”
“Could you lend me the money for the bail?”
I was not taken aback. I long ago lost track of how many clients hit me up for bail money. This might have been the highest amount so far, but I doubted it would be the last time I was asked.
“I can’t do that, Lisa. Number one, I don’t have that kind of money, and number two, it’s a conflict of interest for an attorney to provide bail for his own client. So I can’t help you there. What I think you need to do is get used to the idea that you are going to be incarcerated at least through your trial. The bail is set at two million and that means you would need at least two hundred thousand just to get a bond. It’s a lot of money, Lisa, and if you had it, I’d want half of it to pay for the defense. So either way you’d still be in jail.”
I smiled but she didn’t see any humor in what I was telling her.
“When you put up a bond like that, do you get it back after the trial?” she asked.
“No, that goes to the bail bondsman to cover his risk because he’d be the one on the hook for the whole two million if you were to flee.”
Lisa looked incensed.
“I’m not going to flee! I am going to stay right here and fight this thing. I just want to be with my son. He needs his mother.”
“Lisa, I was not referring to you specifically. I was just telling you how bail and bonds work. Anyway, the deputy behind you has been very patient. You need to go with him and I need to get back to work on your defense. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I nodded to the deputy and he moved in to take Lisa back to the courthouse lockup. As they went through the steel door off the side of the custody pen Lisa looked back at me with scared eyes. There was no way she could know what lay ahead, that this was only the start of what would be the most harrowing ordeal of her life.
Andrea Freeman had stopped to talk with a fellow prosecutor and that allowed me to catch up with her as she was leaving the courtroom.
“Do you want to grab a cup of coffee and talk?” I asked as I came up beside her.
“Don’t you need to talk to your people?”
“My people?”
“All the people with cameras. They’ll be lined up outside the door.”
“I’d rather talk to you and we could even discuss media guidelines if you would like.”
“I think I can spare a few minutes. You want to go down to the basement or come back with me to the office for some DA coffee?”
“Let’s hit the basement. I’d be looking over my shoulder too much in your office.”
“Your ex-wife?”
“Her and others, though my ex and I are in a good phase right now.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“You know Maggie?”
There were at least eighty deputy DAs working out of Van Nuys.
“In passing.”
We left the courtroom and stood side by side in front of the assembled media to announce that we would not be commenting on the case at this early stage. As we headed to the elevators at least six reporters, most of them from out of town, shoved business cards into my hand-New York Times, CNN, Dateline, Salon, and the holy grail of them all, 60 Minutes. In less than twenty-four hours I had gone from scrounging $250-a-month foreclosure cases in South L.A. to being lead defense attorney on a case that threatened to be the signature story of this financial epoch.
And I liked it.
“They’re gone,” Freeman said once we were on the elevator. “You can wipe the shit-eating grin off your face.”
I looked at her and really smiled.
“That obvious, huh?”
“Oh, yeah. All I can say is, enjoy it while you can.”
That was a not-so-subtle reminder of what I was facing with this case. Freeman was an up-and-comer in the DA’s office and some said she would someday run for the top job herself. The conventional wisdom was to attribute her rise and rep in the prosecutor’s office to her skin color and to internal politics. To suggest she got the good cases because she was a minority who was the protégée of another minority. But I knew this was a deadly mistake. Andrea Freeman was damn good at what she did and I had the winless record against her to prove it. When I got the word the night before that she had been assigned the Trammel case, I had felt it like a poke in the ribs. It hurt but there was nothing I could do about it.
In the basement cafeteria we poured cups of coffee from the urns and found a table in a quiet corner. She took the seat that allowed her to see the entrance. It was a law enforcement thing that extended from patrol officers to detectives to prosecutors. Never turn your back on a potential point of attack.
“So…,” I said. “Here we are. You’re in the position of having to prosecute a potential American hero.”
Freeman laughed like I was insane.
“Yeah, right. Last I heard, we don’t make heroes out of murderers.”
I could think of an infamous case prosecuted locally that might challenge that statement but I let it go.
“Maybe that is overreaching a bit,” I said. “Let’s just say that I think public sympathy is going to be running high on the defendant’s side of the aisle on this one. I think fanning the media flames will only heighten it.”
“For now, sure. But as the evidence gets out there and the details become known, I don’t think public sympathy is going to be an issue. At least not from my standpoint. But what are you saying, Haller? You want to talk about a plea before the case is even a day old?”
I shook my head.
“No, not at all. I don’t want to talk about anything like that. My client says she is innocent. I brought up the sympathy angle because of the attention the case is already getting. I just picked up a card from a producer at Sixty Minutes. So I’d like to set up some guidelines and agreements on how we proceed with the media. You just mentioned the evidence and how it gets out there into the public domain. I hope you are talking about evidence presented in court and not selectively fed to the L.A. Times or anybody else in the fourth estate.”
“Hey, I’d be happy to call it a no-fly zone right now. Nobody talks to the media under any circumstances.”
I frowned.
“I’m not ready to go that far yet.”
She gave me the knowing nod.
“I didn’t think so. So all I’ll say then is be careful. Both of us. I for one won’t hesitate to go to the judge if I think you’re trying to taint the jury pool.”
“Then same here.”
“Good. Then that’s settled for now. What else?”
“When am I going to start seeing some discovery?”
She took a long draw on her coffee before answering.
“You know from prior cases how I work. I’m not into I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. That’s always a one-way street because the defense doesn’t show dick. So I like to keep it nice and tight.”
“I think we need to come to an accommodation, Counselor.”
“Well, when we get a judge you can talk to the judge. But I’m not playing nice with a murderer, no matter who her lawyer is. And just so you know, I already came down hard on your buddy Kurlen for giving you that disc yesterday. That should not have happened and he’s lucky I didn’t have him removed from the case. Consider it a gift from the prosecution. But it’s the only one you’ll be getting… Counselor.”
It was the answer I was expecting. Freeman was a damn good prosecutor but in my view she didn’t play fair. A trial was supposed to be a spirited contesting of facts and evidence. Both sides with equal footing in the law and the rules of the game. But using the rules to hide or withhold facts and evidence was the routine with Freeman. She liked a tilted game. She didn’t carry the light. She didn’t even see the light.
“Andrea, come on. The cops took my client’s computer and all her paperwork. It’s her stuff and I need it to even start to build the defense. You can’t treat that like discovery.”
Freeman scrunched her mouth to the side and posed as though she was actually considering a compromise. I should’ve seen it for the act it was.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “As soon as we are assigned to a judge, you go in and ask about that. If a judge tells me to turn it over, I’ll turn it all over. Otherwise, it’s mine and I ain’t sharing.”
“Thanks a lot.”
She smiled.
“You’re welcome.”
Her response to my request for cooperation and her smiling way of delivering it only served to underline a thought I had growing in the back of my mind since I had gotten word she was on the case. I had to find a way to make Freeman see the light.
Michael Haller and Associates had a full staff meeting that afternoon in the living room of Lorna Taylor’s condo in West Hollywood. Attending were Lorna, of course, as well as my investigator, Cisco Wojciechowski-it was his living room, too-and the junior associate of the firm, Jennifer Aronson. I noticed that Aronson looked uncomfortable in the surroundings and I had to admit it was unprofessional. I had rented a temporary office the year before when I was engaged in the Jason Jessup case and it had worked out well. I knew that it would be best to have a real office, instead of two staff members’ living room, for the Trammel case. The only problem was it would add another expense I would have to eat until I manufactured fees out of the movie and book rights of the case-if I managed to make that happen. This had made me reluctant to pull the trigger, but seeing Aronson’s disappointment made the decision for me.
“Okay, let’s start,” I said after Lorna had served everybody soda or iced tea. “I know this is not the most professional way to run a law firm and we’ll be looking into getting some office space as soon as we can. In the mean-”
“Really?” Lorna said, clearly surprised by this information.
“Yes, I just sort of decided that.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad you like my place so much.”
“It’s not that, Lorna. I’ve just been thinking lately, you know, with taking on Bullocks here, it’s like we’ve got a real firm now and maybe we should have a legit address. You know, so clients can come in instead of us always going to them.”
“Fine with me. As long as I don’t have to open shop till ten and I can wear my bedroom slippers to work. I’m kind of used to that.”
I could tell I had insulted her. We had been married once for a short time and I knew the signs. But I would have to deal with it later. It was time to put the focus on the Lisa Trammel defense.
“So anyway, let’s talk about Lisa Trammel. I had my first sit-down with the prosecutor after first appearance this morning and it didn’t go so well. I’ve done the dance with Andrea Freeman before and she’s a give-no-quarter kind of prosecutor. If it’s something that can be argued then she’s going to argue it. If it’s discoverable material that she can sit on until the judge orders her to give it up, then she’ll do that, too. In a way, I admire her but not when we’re on the same case. The bottom line is that getting discovery out of her is going to be like pulling teeth.”
“Well, is there even going to be a trial?” Lorna asked.
“We have to assume so,” I answered. “In my brief discussions with our client she has expressed only a desire to fight this thing. She says she didn’t do it. So for now that means no plea agreement. We plan on a trial but remain open to other possibilities.”
“Wait a minute,” Aronson said. “You e-mailed me last night saying you wanted me to look at the video you got of the interrogation. That’s discovery. Didn’t that come from the prosecution?”
Aronson was a petite twenty-five-year-old with short hair that was carefully made to look stylishly unkempt. She wore retro-style glasses that partially hid brilliant green eyes. She came from a law school that didn’t turn any heads in the silk-stocking firms downtown but when I interviewed her I sensed that she had a drive that was fueled by negative motivation. She was out to prove those silk-stocking assholes wrong. I hired her on the spot.
“The video disc came from the lead detective, and the prosecutor wasn’t happy about it at all. So don’t be expecting anything else. We want something, we go to the judge or we go out and get it ourselves. Which brings us to Cisco. Tell us what you’ve got so far, Big Man.”
All eyes turned to my investigator, who sat on a leather swivel chair next to a fireplace that was filled with potted plants. He was dressed up today, meaning he had sleeves on his T-shirt. Still, the shirt did little to hide the tats and the gun show. His bulging biceps made him look more like a strip club bouncer than a seasoned investigator with a lot of finesse in his kit.
It had taken me a long time to get over the idea of this giant beef dish being my replacement with Lorna. But I had worked through it and, besides, I knew of no better defense investigator. Early in his life, when he was cruising with the Road Saints, the cops had tried to set him up twice on drug raps. It built a lasting distrust of the police in him. Most people give the police the benefit of the doubt. Cisco didn’t and that made him very good at what he did.
“Okay, I am going to break this into two reports,” he said. “The crime scene and the client’s house, which was searched by police for several hours yesterday. First the crime scene.”
Without using any notes, he proceeded to detail all of his findings from WestLand National’s headquarters. Mitchell Bondurant had been surprised by his attacker while getting out of his car to report for work. He was struck at least twice on the head with an unknown object. Most likely attacked from behind. There were no defensive wounds on his hands or arms, indicating he was incapacitated almost immediately. A spilled cup of Joe’s Joe coffee was found on the ground next to him along with his briefcase, which was open, beside the back tire of his car.
“So what about the gunshots somebody said they heard?” I asked.
Cisco shrugged.
“I think they’re looking at that as car backfire.”
“Two backfires?”
“Or one and an echo. Either way, there was no gunplay involved.”
He went back to his report. The autopsy results were not yet in but Cisco was betting on blunt-force trauma being the cause of death. At the moment, time of death was listed as between 8:30 and 8:50 A.M. There was a receipt in Bondurant’s pocket from a Joe’s Joe four blocks away. It was time-stamped 8:21 A.M. and investigators figured the fastest he could have gotten from the coffee shop to his parking space in the bank garage was nine minutes. The 911 call from the bank employee who found his body was logged at 8:52 A.M.
So estimated time of death had an approximate twenty-minute swing. It wasn’t a lot of time but when it came to things like documenting a defendant’s movements for the purpose of alibi, it was an eternity.
Police interviewed everyone who was parking on the same level as well as all of those who worked in Bondurant’s department at the bank. Lisa Trammel’s name came up early and often during these interviews. She was named as an individual Bondurant had reportedly felt threatened by. His department kept a threat-assessment file and she was number one on the list. As we all knew, she had been served with a restraining order keeping her away from the bank.
The police hit the jackpot when one bank employee reported seeing Lisa Trammel walking away from the bank on Ventura Boulevard within minutes of the murder.
“Who is this witness?” I asked, zeroing in on the most damaging part of his report.
“Her name is Margo Schafer. She’s a bank teller. According to my sources she’s never had contact with Trammel. She works in the bank, not the loan operation. But Trammel’s photo was circulated to staff after they got the TRO against her. Everybody was told to be aware of her and to report it if she was seen. So she recognized her.”
“And was this on bank property?”
“No, it was on the sidewalk a half block away. She was supposedly walking east on Ventura, away from the bank.”
“Do we know anything about this Margo Schafer?”
“Not now, but we will. I’m on it.”
I nodded. It usually wasn’t necessary for me to tell Cisco what to investigate. He moved on to the second part of his report, the search of Lisa Trammel’s house. This time he referred to a document he pulled from a file.
“Lisa Trammel volunteered-their word-to accompany detectives to Van Nuys Division about two hours after the murder. They’re claiming she was not placed under arrest until the conclusion of an interview at the station. Using statements made during that interview as well as the eyewitness account of Margo Schafer, the detectives obtained a search warrant for Trammel’s home. They spent about six hours there looking for evidence, including a possible murder weapon as well as digital and hard-copy documentation of a plan to kill Bondurant.”
Search warrants designate a specific window of time during which the search must take place. Afterward, police must in a timely manner file a document with the court called a search-warrant return that lists exactly what was seized. It is then the judge’s responsibility to review the seizure to make sure that the police acted within the parameters of the warrant. Cisco said the detectives Kurlen and Longstreth had filed the return that morning and he had obtained a copy through the clerk’s office. It was a key part of the case at this point because the police and prosecution weren’t sharing information with the defense. Andrea Freeman had shut that down. But the search-warrant request and return were public records. Freeman could not stop their release. And they gave me the best look at how the state was building its case.
“Give us the highlights,” I said. “But then I want a copy of the whole thing.”
“This is your copy here,” Cisco said. “As far as-”
“May I please get a copy, too?” Aronson asked.
Cisco looked at me for permission. It was awkward. He was silently asking if she was truly a member of the team and not just a client hand-holder I had brought in from the department-store law school.
“Absolutely,” I said.
“You got it,” Cisco said. “Now, the highlights. As far as the weapon goes, it looks like the detectives went into the garage and took every handheld tool they could find off the workbench.”
“So they don’t know what the murder weapon was,” I said.
“No autopsy yet,” Cisco said. “They’ll have to make wound comparisons. That will take time but I’ve got the medical examiner’s office wired. When they know it, I’ll know it.”
“Okay, what else?”
“They took her laptop, a three-year-old MacBook Pro, and various and sundry documents relating to the foreclosure of the home on Melba. This is where they might piss the judge off. They do not specifically list the documents, probably because there were too many. They mention just three files. They are marked FLAG, FORECLOSURE ONE and FORECLOSURE TWO.”
I assumed that any foreclosure documents Lisa had at home were documents I had given her. The FLAG file as well as the computer could hold names of the members of Lisa’s group, an indication that the police were possibly looking for co-conspirators.
“Okay, what else?”
“They took her cell phone, one pair of shoes from the garage and here’s the kicker. They seized a personal journal. They don’t describe it beyond that or say what was in it. But I’m thinking that if it’s got her ranting against the bank or the victim in particular, then we’ll have a problem.”
“I’ll ask her about it when I visit her tomorrow,” I said. “Back up for a second. The cell phone. Was it specifically stated in the warrant application that they wanted her phone? Are they suggesting a conspiracy, that she had help killing Bondurant?”
“No, nothing about co-conspirators in the application. They’re probably just making sure they cover all possibilities.”
I nodded. Seeing the moves the investigators were making against my client was very helpful.
“They’ve probably filed a separate search warrant seeking call records from her service provider,” I said.
“I’ll check into it,” Cisco said.
“Okay, anything else on the warrant?”
“The shoes. The return lists one pair of shoes taken from the garage. Doesn’t say why, just says that they were gardening shoes. They were a woman’s shoes.”
“No other shoes taken?”
“Not that they’re taking credit for. Just these.”
“You’ve got nothing about shoe prints at the crime scene, right?”
“I’ve got nothing on that.”
“Okay.”
I was sure the reason for the seizure of the shoes would become apparent soon enough. On a search warrant police throw as wide a net as the court allows. It’s better to seize as much as possible than leave anything behind. Sometimes that means seizing items that ultimately have nothing to do with the case.
“By the way,” Cisco said, “if you get the chance, the application makes interesting reading if you can get past the misspellings and grammar issues. They used her interview extensively but we already saw all of that on the disc Kurlen gave you.”
“Yes, her so-called admissions and his exaggerations.”
I stood up and started pacing in the middle of the room. Lorna also got up and took the search warrant from Cisco so she could make a copy. She disappeared into a nearby den where she had her office and where there was a copier.
I waited for her to come back and hand a copy of the documents to Aronson before I began.
“Okay, this is how we are going to do this. First thing is we need to get moving on getting a real office. Some place close to the Van Nuys courthouse where we can set up our command post.”
“You want me on that, Mick?” Lorna asked.
“Yes, I do.”
“I’ll make sure there’s parking and good food nearby.”
“It would be nice to be able to just walk to court.”
“You got it. Short-term lease?”
I paused. I liked working out of the backseat of the Lincoln. It had a freedom to it that was conducive to my thought processes.
“We’ll take it for a year. See what happens.”
I looked at Aronson next. She had her head down and was writing notes on a legal pad.
“Bullocks, I need you to hand-hold our current clients and respond with the basics to new callers. The radio ads run through the month so we can expect no downturn in business. I also need you to help out on Trammel.”
She looked up at me and her eyes brightened at the prospect of being on a murder case less than a year after being admitted to the bar.
“Don’t get too excited,” I said. “I’m not giving you second chair just yet. You’ll be doing a lot of the grunt work. How were you on probable cause back at the department-store school?”
“I was the best in my class.”
“Of course you were. Well, you see that document in your hand? I want you to take that search warrant and break it down and tear it apart. We’re looking for omissions and misrepresentations, anything that can be used in a motion to suppress. I want all evidence taken from Lisa Trammel’s house thrown out.”
Aronson visibly gulped. This was because I was issuing a tall order. And it was more than grunt work because the task would probably mean a lot of effort for little return. It was rare that evidence was kicked wholesale from a case. I was simply covering all the bases and using Aronson on one of them. She was smart enough to see that and it was one reason I had hired her.
“Remember, you’re working on a murder case,” I said. “How many of your classmates can say they’ve done that yet?”
“Probably none.”
“Damn right. So next I want you to take the disc of Lisa’s police interview and do the same thing. Look for any false move by the cops, anything we can use to get that knocked out as well. I think there might be something here in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling last year. Are you familiar with it?”
“Uh… this is my first criminal case.”
“Then get familiar with it. Kurlen went out of his way to make it look like she came in for a voluntary interview. But if we can show he had her in his control, cuffs or not, we can make a case for her being under arrest from the start. We do that and everything she said before Miranda goes bye-bye.”
“Okay.”
Aronson didn’t look up from her writing.
“Do you understand your assignments?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then go to it, but don’t forget about the rest of the clients. They’re paying the bills around here. For now.”
I turned back to Lorna.
“Which reminds me, Lorna, I need you to make contact with Joel Gotler and get something rolling on this story. This whole thing might go away if there’s a plea agreement, so let’s try to get a deal now. Tell him we’re willing to go low on the back end for some decent up-front cash. We need to fund the defense.”
Gotler was the Hollywood agent who represented me. I used him whenever Hollywood came calling. This time we were going to go calling on Hollywood and proactively try to get a deal.
“Sell him on it,” I told Lorna. “I’ve got a business card in the car from a producer at Sixty Minutes. That’s how big this is getting.”
“I’ll call Joel,” she said. “I know what to say.”
I stopped pacing to consider what was left and what my role was going to be. I looked at Cisco.
“You want me on the witness?” he asked.
“That’s right. And the victim, too. I want the full picture on both of them.”
My order was punctuated by a sharp buzzing sound from an intercom speaker on the wall next to the kitchen door.
“Sorry, that’s the front gate,” Lorna said.
She made no move to go to the intercom.
“You want to answer it?” I asked.
“No, I’m not expecting anyone and all the delivery guys know the combination. It’s probably a solicitor. They walk this neighborhood like zombies.”
“Okay,” I said, “then let’s move on. The next thing we need to be thinking about is the alternate killer.”
That drew everyone’s undivided attention.
“We need a setup man,” I said. “If we take this thing to trial it’s not going to be good enough to just potshot the state’s case. We are going to need an aggressive defense. We have to point the jury in a direction away from Lisa. To do that, we need an alternate theory.”
I was aware of Aronson watching me as I spoke. I felt like a teacher in law school.
“What we need is a hypothesis of innocence. If we build that, we win the case.”
The gate buzzer went off again. It was then followed by two more long and insistent buzzes.
“What the hell?” Lorna said.
Annoyed, she got up and walked to the intercom. She pushed the communication button.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Is this the law offices of Mickey Haller?”
It was a woman’s voice and it sounded familiar but I couldn’t immediately place it. The speaker was tinny and the volume turned low. Lorna looked back at us and shook her head as though she was confused. Her address was not on any of our advertising. How did this person get to the front gate?
“Yes, but it is by appointment only,” Lorna responded. “I can give you the number to call if you want to set up a consultation with Mr. Haller.”
“Please! I need to speak to him now. This is Lisa Trammel and I’m already a client. I need to speak with him as soon as possible.”
I stared at the intercom speaker as though I believed it to be a direct pipeline to the Van Nuys women’s jail-where Lisa was supposed to be. Then I looked at Lorna.
“I guess you’d better open the gate.”
Lisa Trammel was not alone. When Lorna answered her front door my client walked through in the company of a man I recognized as having been in court during Lisa’s first appearance. He had been in the front row of the gallery and stood out to me because he didn’t look like a lawyer or journalist. He looked Hollywood. And not the glitzy, confident Hollywood. The other one. The Hollywood on the make. Either a toupee or amateur dye job on the hair, requisite matching fringe on the chin, wattled throat… he looked like a sixty-year-old trying without a lot of success to pass for forty. He wore a black leather sport coat over a maroon turtleneck. A gold chain with a peace sign on it hung from his neck. Whoever he was, I had to suspect he was the reason Lisa was walking free.
“Well, you either escaped from Van Nuys jail or you made bail,” I said. “I’m thinking that somehow, someway, it’s the latter.”
“Smart man,” Lisa said. “Everyone, this is Herbert Dahl, my friend and benefactor.”
“That’s D-A-H-L,” said the smiling benefactor.
“Benefactor?” I asked. “Does that mean you put up Lisa’s bail?”
“A bond, actually,” Dahl said.
“Who did you use?”
“A guy named Valenzuela. His place is right by the jail. Very convenient and he said he knew you.”
“Right.”
I paused for a moment, wondering how to proceed, and Lisa filled in the space.
“Herb is a true hero, rescuing me from that horrible place,” she said. “Now I’m out and free to help our team fight these false charges.”
Lisa had worked previously with Aronson but not directly with Lorna or Cisco. She stepped over and put her hand out to them, introducing herself and shaking hands as if this was all part of a routine day and it was time to get down to business. Cisco glanced over at me and gave me a look that said What the hell is this? I shrugged. I didn’t know.
Lisa had never mentioned Herb Dahl to me, a dear enough friend and “benefactor” that he was willing to drop 200K on a bond. This, and the fact that she hadn’t tapped his largesse to pay for her defense, did not surprise me. Her barging in all bluster and business, ready to be part of the team, didn’t either. I believed that with strangers Lisa was very skilled at keeping her personal and emotional issues beneath the surface. She could charm the stripes off a tiger and I wondered if Herb Dahl knew what he was getting into. I assumed he was working an angle, but he might not understand that he was being worked as well.
“Lisa,” I said, “can we step back here into Lorna’s office and speak privately for a moment?”
“I think Herb should hear whatever it is you have to say. He’s going to be documenting the case.”
“Well, he’s not going to document our conversations because communications between you and your attorney are private and privileged. He can be compelled to testify in court about anything he hears or sees.”
“Oh… well, isn’t there a way of deputizing him or something to make him part of the legal team?”
“Lisa, just come back here for a few minutes.”
I pointed toward the den and Lisa finally started moving in that direction.
“Lorna, why don’t you get Mr. Dahl something to drink?”
I followed Lisa into the den and closed the door. There were two desks. One for Lorna and one for Cisco. I pulled a side chair over in front of Lorna’s and told Lisa to sit down. I then went behind the desk and sat down to face her.
“This is a strange law office,” she said. “It feels like somebody’s home or something.”
“It’s temporary. Let’s talk about your hero out there, Lisa. How long have you known him?”
“Just a couple months or so.”
“How did you meet him?”
“On the courthouse steps. He came to one of the FLAG protests. He said he was interested in us from a filmmaker’s perspective.”
“Really? So he’s a filmmaker? Where’s his camera?”
“Well, he actually puts things together. He’s very successful. He does, like, book deals and movies. He’s going to handle all of that. This case is going to get massive attention, Mickey. At the jail they told me I had interview requests from thirty-six reporters. Of course they didn’t let me speak to them, only Herb.”
“Herb got to you in the jail, did he? He must be relentless.”
“He said that when he sees a story he stops at nothing. Remember that little girl who lived for a week on the side of the mountain with her dead father after he crashed off the road? He got her a TV movie.”
“That’s impressive.”
“I know. He’s very successful.”
“Yes, you said that. So did you make some sort of agreement with him?”
“Yes. He’ll put all the deals together and we split everything fifty-fifty after his expenses and he gets the bail money back. I mean, that’s only fair. But he’s talking about a lot of money. I might be able to save my house, Mickey!”
“Did you sign something? A contract or any sort of agreement?”
“Oh, yes, it’s all legal and binding. He has to give me my share.”
“You know that because you showed it to your lawyer?”
“Uh… no, but Herb said it was standard boilerplate. You know, legal mumbo-jumbo. But I read it.”
Sure she did. Just like when she signed the contracts with me.
“Can I see the contract, Lisa?”
“Herb kept it. You can ask him.”
“I will. Now did you happen to tell him about our agreements?”
“Our agreements?”
“Yes, you signed contracts with me yesterday at the police station, remember? One was for me to represent you criminally and the others granted me power of attorney to represent you and negotiate any sale of story rights so that we can fund your defense. You remember that you signed a lien?”
She didn’t answer.
“Did you see I have three people out there, Lisa? We’re all working on your case. And you haven’t paid us a penny so far. So that means I have to come up with all their salaries, all their expenses. Every week. That’s why in the agreements you signed yesterday you were giving me the authority to make book and film deals.”
“Oh… I didn’t read that part.”
“Let me ask you something. Which is more important to you, Lisa, that you have the best defense possible and try to defy the odds and win this case, or that you have a book or movie deal?”
Lisa put a pouting look on her face, and then promptly deflected the question.
“But you don’t understand. I’m innocent. I didn’t-”
“No, you don’t understand. Whether you’re innocent or not has nothing to do with this equation. It’s what we can prove or disprove in court. And when I say ‘we’ I really mean ‘me,’ Lisa. Me. I’m your hero, not Herb Dahl out there in the leather jacket and Hollywood piece sign. And I mean that as in piece of the pie.”
She paused for a long moment before responding.
“I can’t, Mickey. He just bailed me out. It cost him two hundred thousand dollars. He has to make that back.”
“While your defense team goes hungry.”
“No, you’re going to get paid, Mickey. I promise. I get half of everything. I’ll pay you.”
“After he gets his two hundred grand back, plus expenses. Expenses that could be anything, it sounds like.”
“He said he got a half a million for one of Michael Jackson’s doctors. And that was just for a tabloid story. We might get a movie!”
I was on the verge of losing it with her. Lorna had a stress-release squeeze toy on the desk. It was a small judge’s gavel, a sample of a giveaway she was considering for marketing and promotional purposes. The name and number of the firm could be printed on the side. I grabbed it and squeezed hard on the barrel, thinking of it as Herb Dahl’s windpipe. After a few moments the anger eased. The thing actually worked. I made a mental note to tell Lorna to go ahead with the purchase. We’d give them out at bail bond offices and street fairs.
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll talk about this later. We’re going to go back out there now. You are still going to send Herb home because we are going to talk about your case and we do not do that in front of people who are not in the circle of privilege. Later, you are going to call him and tell him he is not to make any deal or move without my approval. Do you understand, Lisa?”
“Yes.”
She sounded chastised and meek.
“Do you want me to tell him to leave or do you want to handle it?”
“Can you handle it, Mickey?”
“No problem. I think we’re done here.”
We stepped back into the living room and caught Dahl as he was finishing a story.
“… and that was before he made Titanic!”
He laughed at the kicker but the others in the room failed to show the same sense of Hollywood humor.
“Okay, Herb, we’re going to get back to work on the case and we need to talk with Lisa,” I said. “I’m going to walk you out now.”
“But how will she get home?”
“I have a driver. We can handle that.”
He hesitated and looked to Lisa to save him.
“It’s okay, Herb,” she said. “We need to talk about the case. I’ll call you as soon as I get home.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Mick, I can walk him out,” Lorna offered.
“No, that’s okay. I have to go to the car anyway.”
Everyone said goodbye to the man with the peace sign, and Dahl and I left the condo. Each unit in the building had an exterior exit. We walked down a pathway to the front gate on Kings Road. I saw a delivery of phone books underneath the mailbox and used one stack to prop the gate open so I could get back in.
We walked out to my car, which was parked against a red curb in front. Rojas was leaning on the front fender, smoking a cigarette. I had left my remote in the cup holder, so I called to him.
“Rojas, the trunk.”
He pulled his keys and popped the rear lid. I told Dahl there was something I wanted to give him and he followed me over.
“You’re not going to stuff me in there, are you?”
“Not quite, Herb. I just want to give you something.”
We went behind the car and I pushed the trunk all the way open.
“Jeez, you got it all set up back here,” he said when he saw the file boxes.
I didn’t respond. I grabbed the contracts file and pulled out the agreements Lisa had signed the day before. I moved around the car and copied it on the multipurpose machine on the front seat. I handed the copies to Dahl and kept the originals.
“There, read that stuff when you have a few minutes.”
“What is it?”
“It is my representation contract with Lisa. Standard boilerplate. There’s also a power of attorney and a lien on any and all income derived from her case. You’ll notice that she signed and dated them all yesterday. That means they supersede your contract, Herb. Check the small print. It gives me control of all story rights-books, movies, TV, everything.”
I saw his eyes harden.
“Wait just a-”
“No, Herb, you wait a minute. I know you just shelled out two hundred big ones on the bond, plus whatever you paid to get to her in the jail. I get it, you’ve got a huge investment riding on this. I’ll see that you get it back. Eventually. But you’re in second position here, buddy. Accept it and step the fuck back. You make no moves or deals without talking to me first.”
I tapped the contract he was staring at.
“You don’t listen to me and you’re going to need a lawyer. A good one. I’ll tie you up for two years and you won’t ever see a dime of that two hundred back.”
I slammed the car door to punctuate the point.
“Have a nice day.”
I left him there and went to the trunk to return the originals to the file. When I closed the lid I noticed that I could still see the shadow of the graffiti. The spray paint had been removed but it had permanently marred the gloss of the car’s finish. The Florencia 13 still had its mark on me. I looked down at the license plate on the bumper.
IWALKEM
That was going to be easier said than done this time. I passed by Dahl, who was still standing on the sidewalk looking at the contracts. Back at the condo gate, I picked a phone book off the stack that was propping it open. I thumbed the corner back on a random page. My ad was there. My smiling face on the corner.
SAVE YOUR HOME!
DON’T LET THEM FORECLOSE WITHOUT A FIGHT
Michael Haller & Associates, Attorneys-at-Law
CALL:
323-988-0761
OR VISIT:
www.stopfinancialruin.com
Se Habla Español
I checked a few other pages to make sure the ad was on every page, which I had paid for, and then dropped the book back onto the stack. I wasn’t even sure who still used phone books, but my message was there just in case.
The others were waiting silently for me when I got back to the condo. Lisa’s arrival with her benefactor had put an awkward spin on things. I tried to get the meeting restarted in a way that would promote team unity.
“Okay, so everybody’s met everybody. Lisa, we were in the middle of discussions about how we are going to proceed and what we need to know as we go forward. We didn’t have the advantage of having you here because, frankly, I was pretty sure you weren’t going to be getting out of jail until we got the not-guilty verdict at the end. But now you’re here and I certainly want to include you in our strategies. Do you have anything you want to say to the group?”
I felt like I was leading a group therapy session at The Oaks. But Lisa lit up at the chance to hold the floor.
.“Yes, I first wanted to say that I am very grateful for all of your efforts on my behalf. I know that in the law things like guilt and innocence don’t really matter. It’s what you can prove. I understand that but I thought it might be good for you to hear it, even if it is only this one time. I am innocent of these charges. I did not kill Mr. Bondurant. I hope that you believe me and that at trial we prove it. I have a little boy and he badly needs to be with his mother.”
No one spoke but everybody nodded somberly.
“Okay,” I said, “before your arrival we were going through the division of labor. Who is in charge of what, who needs to do what, that sort of thing. I’d like to include you in the assignments as well.”
“Whatever I can do.”
She was sitting bolt upright on the edge of her chair.
“The police spent several hours in your house after your arrest. They searched it top to bottom and, subject to the authority the search warrant gave them, they took several items that might be evidence in the case. We have a list, which you are welcome to look at. Included are your laptop and three files marked FLAG and FORECLOSURE ONE and TWO. This is where you come in. The minute we are assigned a courtroom and a judge, we will file a motion asking to be immediately allowed to examine the laptop and the files, but until then I need you to list as best you can what was in the files and on the computer. In other words, Lisa, what is in these documents that would make the cops seize them? Do you understand?”
“Of course, and yes, I can do this. I’ll start on it tonight.”
“Thank you. There is one other thing I want to ask you about. You see, if this thing goes to trial, then I don’t want any loose ends. I don’t want anybody showing up out of the woodwork or-”
“Why do you say if?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said if. If this thing goes to trial. There are no ifs.”
“Sorry. Slip of the tongue. But just so you know, a good attorney will always listen to an offer from the prosecution. Because many times these negotiations allow you a sneak peek into the state’s case. So if I tell you that I am talking to the prosecution about a deal, remember that I have an ulterior motive, okay?”
“Okay, but I am telling you now, I won’t plead guilty to anything I haven’t done. There’s a killer out there walking free while they try to do this to me. Last night I couldn’t sleep in that terrible place. I kept thinking about my son… I could never face him if I pleaded guilty to something I’m not guilty of.”
I thought she was about to turn on the faucet but she held back.
“I understand,” I said softly. “Now, Lisa, this other thing I want to talk about is your husband.”
“Why?”
I immediately saw the warning flags go up. We were crossing into difficult terrain.
“He’s a loose end. When was the last time you heard from him? Is he going to show up and cause us a problem? Could he testify about you, about any prior acts of retribution or revenge? We need to know what is out there, Lisa. Whether it ever materializes doesn’t matter. If there is a threat, I need to know about it.”
“I thought a spouse could not testify against a partner.”
“There is a privilege that you get to invoke but it can be a gray area, especially with you two no longer living together. So I want to tie up the loose end. Do you have any idea where your husband is at this time?”
I wasn’t being fully accurate on the law but I needed to get to the husband to further understand the dynamic of their marriage and how it might or might not play into the defense. Estranged spouses were wild cards. You might be able to prevent them from testifying against your client but that didn’t mean you could keep them from cooperating with the state outside the courtroom.
“No, none,” she answered. “But I assume he will show up sooner or later.”
“Why?”
Lisa turned her palms up as if to show the answer was easy.
“There’s money to be made. If he is anywhere near a TV or a newspaper and he gets wind of what’s going on, he’ll show up. You can count on it.”
It seemed like an odd answer, as though there was a history of her husband being a money grubber, when I knew that wherever he was, he was spending very little of it.
“You told me he maxed out your credit card in Mexico.”
“That’s right. Rosarito Beach. He put forty-four hundred on the Visa and exceeded the limit. I had to cancel it and that was the only card we had left. But I didn’t realize that by canceling it I would lose the ability to track him. So the answer is, I don’t know where he is now.”
Cisco cleared his throat and entered the interview.
“What about contact? Any phone calls, e-mails, texts?”
“There were a few e-mails at first. Then nothing until he called on our son’s birthday. That was six weeks ago.”
“Did your son ask him where he was?”
Lisa hesitated and then said no. She wasn’t a good liar. I could tell there was something more there.
“What is it, Lisa?” I asked.
She paused and then relented.
“You’ll all think I’m a terrible mother but I didn’t let him talk to Tyler. We got into an argument and I just… hung up on him. Later I felt bad but I couldn’t call back because the number had been blocked.”
“But he does have a cell phone?” I asked.
“No. He did but that number’s been out of service for a while. He didn’t call on his phone. He either borrowed a phone or got a new number, which he hasn’t given me.”
“Could’ve been a throwaway,” Cisco said. “They sell them in every convenience store.”
I nodded. The story of marital disintegration left everyone somber. Finally, I spoke up.
“Lisa, if he makes new contact, you let me know right away.”
“I will.”
I looked from her to my investigator. We locked eyes and in the silent transmission I told him to check out everything he could about Lisa’s wandering husband. I didn’t want him popping up in the middle of trial.
Cisco gave me the nod. He was on it.
“A couple other things, Lisa, and we’ll have enough to get started.”
“Okay.”
“When the police searched your house yesterday they took some other things we haven’t talked about. One was described as a journal. Do you know what this was?”
“Yes, I was writing a book. A book about my journey.”
“Your journey?”
“Yes, the journey to finding myself in this cause. The movement. Helping people fight to save their homes.”
“Okay, so it was like a diary of the protests and things like that?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you remember if you ever put Mitchell Bondurant’s name in the journal?”
She looked down as she searched her memory.
“I don’t think so. But I may have mentioned him. You know, said that he was the man behind everything.”
“Nothing about hurting him?”
“No, nothing like that. And I didn’t hurt him! I didn’t do this!”
“I’m not asking you that, Lisa. I am trying to figure out what evidence they have against you. So you’re saying that this journal is not going to be a problem for us, correct?”
“That’s right. It will be no problem. There’s nothing bad in there.”
“Okay, good.”
I looked at the other members of my staff. The verbal sparring with Lisa had made me forget the next question. Cisco prompted me.
“The witness?”
“Right. Lisa, yesterday morning at the time of the murder, were you anywhere near the WestLand National building in Sherman Oaks?”
She didn’t answer right away, which told me we had a problem.
“Lisa?”
“My son goes to school in Sherman Oaks. I take him in the mornings and I drive right by that building.”
“That’s okay. So you drove by yesterday. What time would that have been?”
“Um, about seven forty-five.”
“That was taking him to school, right?”
“Right.”
“What about after you drop him off? Do you go back the same way?”
“Yes, most days.”
“What about yesterday? We’re talking about yesterday. Did you drive back by?”
“I think so, yes.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No, I did. I take Ventura to Van Nuys and then up to the freeway.”
“So did you go back by after dropping off Tyler or did you do something else?”
“I stopped to get coffee and then I went home. I drove by then.”
“What time?”
“I’m not sure. I wasn’t watching the clock. I think it was around eight thirty.”
“Did you ever get out of your car in the vicinity of WestLand National?”
“No, of course not.”
“You are sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I would remember that, don’t you think?”
“Okay. Where did you stop to get your coffee?”
“At the Joe’s Joe on Ventura by Woodman. I always go there.”
I paused. I looked at Cisco and then at Aronson. Cisco had previously reported that Mitchell Bondurant had been carrying a cup of Joe’s Joe when attacked. I decided not to ask the obvious question yet about whether Lisa had seen or interacted with Bondurant at the coffee shop. As Lisa’s defense attorney I would be bound by what I knew. I could never assist in perjury. If Lisa was to tell me that she had seen Bondurant and even exchanged words with him then I would not be allowed to have her spin a different story at trial if she was to testify.
I had to be careful about soliciting information that would constrain me this early in the case. I knew this was a contradiction. My mission was to know all I could and yet there were things I didn’t want to know right now. Sometimes knowing things limits you. Not knowing them gives you more latitude in crafting a defense.
Aronson was staring at me, obviously wondering why I wasn’t asking the follow-up question. I just gave her a quick head shake. I would explain my reasons to her later-one more lesson they didn’t teach her in law school.
I stood up.
“Lisa, I think that’s enough for today. You’ve given us a lot of information and we’ll go to work on it. I’ll have my driver take you home now.”
She was fourteen years old and still liked to eat pancakes for dinner. My daughter and I had a booth at the Du-par’s in Studio City. Our Wednesday night ritual. I picked her up from her mother’s and we stopped for pancakes on the way back to my place. She did her homework and I did my casework. It was my most treasured routine.
The official custody arrangement was that I had Hayley every Wednesday night and then every other weekend. We alternated Christmases and Thanksgivings and I also had her for two weeks in the summer. But that was just the official arrangement. Things had been going well over the past year and often the three of us did things together. On Christmas we had dinner as a family. Sometimes my ex-wife even joined us for pancakes. And that was worth treasuring, too.
But on this night it was just Hayley and me. My casework involved my review of the protocol from the autopsy of Mitchell Bondurant. It included photos of the procedure as well as the body where it was found in the bank’s garage. So I was leaning back in the booth and trying to make sure neither Hayley nor anybody else in the restaurant saw the gruesome images. They wouldn’t go well with pancakes.
Meantime, Hayley was doing her science homework, studying changes in matter and the elements of combustion.
Cisco had been right. The autopsy concluded that Bondurant had died from brain hemorrhaging caused by multiple points of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Three points exactly. The protocol contained a line drawing of the top of the victim’s head. Three points of impact were delineated on the crown in a grouping so tight that all three could have been covered with a teacup.
Seeing this drawing got me excited. I flipped to the front page of the protocol where the body being examined was described. Mitchell Bondurant was described as six foot one and 180 pounds. I did not have Lisa Trammel’s dimensions handy so I called the number of the cell phone Cisco had dropped off to her that morning-since her own phone had been seized by the police. It was always a priority to make sure a client could be contacted at any time.
“Lisa, it’s Mickey. Real quick, how tall are you?”
“What? Mickey, I’m in the middle of dinner with-”
“Just tell me how tall you are and I’ll let you go. Don’t lie. What’s it say on your driver’s license?”
“Um, five three, I think.”
“Is that accurate?”
“Yes. What is-”
“Okay, that’s all I needed. You can go back to dinner. Have a good night.”
“What-”
I hung up and wrote her height on the legal pad I had on the table. Next to it I wrote Bondurant’s height. The exciting point was that he had ten inches on his suspected killer and yet the impacts that punctured his skull and killed him were delivered to the crown of his head. This raised what I called a question of physics. The kind of question a jury can puzzle over and decide for themselves. The kind of question a good defense attorney can make something with. This was if-the-glove-doesn’t-fit-you-must-acquit stuff. The question here was, how did diminutive Lisa Trammel hit six-foot-one Mitchell Bondurant on the top of the head?
Of course, the answer depended on the dimensions of the weapon as well as a few other things, such as the victim’s position. If he was on the ground when attacked then none of this would matter. But it was something to grab on to at the moment. I quickly went to one of the files on the table and pulled out the search-warrant return.
“Who was that you called?” Hayley asked.
“My client. I had to find out how tall she was.”
“How come?”
“Because it might have something to do with whether she could do what they’re saying she did.”
I checked the list of items seized. As Cisco had reported, only one pair of shoes was on it and they were described as gardening shoes taken from the garage. No high heels, no platform sandals or any other footwear. Of course, the detectives conducted the search prior to the autopsy and before they knew its findings. I considered all of this and concluded that gardening shoes probably didn’t have much of a heel on them. If they were suggesting the shoes were worn during the killing then Bondurant still probably had ten inches on my client-if he was standing when attacked.
This was good. I underlined the notes on heights three times on my legal pad. But then I also started thinking about the seizure of only one pair of shoes. The search-warrant return did not say why the gardening shoes were taken but the warrant gave the police authority to seize anything that could have been used in the commission of the crime. They had zeroed in on the gardening shoes and I was at a loss to explain why.
“Mom said you have a really big case now.”
I looked at my daughter. She rarely talked to me about my work. I believed that this was because at her young age she still saw things as black and white and without any gray areas. People were either good or bad, and I represented the bad ones for a living. So there was nothing to talk about.
“Did she? Yeah, well, it’s getting a lot of attention.”
“It’s the lady who killed the man taking away her house, right? Was that her you just talked to?”
“She’s accused of killing the man. She hasn’t been convicted of anything. But, yes, that was her.”
“How come you need to know how tall she is?”
“You really want to know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, they’re saying she killed a man who was a lot taller than her by hitting him on the top of the head with some kind of a tool or something. So I’m just wondering if she’s tall enough to have done it.”
“So Andy will have to prove that she was, right?”
“Andy?”
“Mom’s friend. She’s the prosecutor on your case, Mom said.”
“You mean Andrea Freeman? Tall black lady with real short hair?”
“Yeah.”
So it was “Andy” now, I thought. Andy who said she knew my ex-wife only in passing.
“So she and Mom are pretty good friends? I didn’t know that.”
“They do yoga and sometimes Andy comes by when I have Gina and they go out. She lives in Sherman Oaks, too.”
Gina was the sitter my ex used when I wasn’t available or when she didn’t want me to know about her social activities. Or when we went out together.
“Well, do me a favor, Hay. Don’t tell anybody what we are talking about or what you heard me saying on the phone. It’s sort of private stuff and I don’t want it getting back to Andy. I probably shouldn’t have made that call in front of you.”
“Okay, I won’t.”
“Thanks, sweetie.”
I waited to see if she would say more about the case but she went back to the science workbook.
I turned back to the autopsy protocol and the photos of the fatal wounds on Bondurant’s head. The medical examiner had shaved the victim’s head in the vicinity of the wounds. A ruler had been placed in the photo to give dimension. On the skin the impacts were pinkish and circular. The skin was broken but the blood had been washed away to show the wounds. Two overlapped and the third was only an inch away.
The circular shape of the weapon’s impact surface led me to think that Bondurant had been attacked with a hammer. I’m not much of a home fix-it man but I know my way around a toolbox and I knew that the striking surface of many hammers was circular, sometimes ovoid. I was sure this would be confirmed by the coroner’s tool-mark expert, but it was always good to be a step ahead and anticipate their moves. I noticed that there was a small V-shaped notch in each of the impact marks and wasn’t sure what it meant.
I checked the search-warrant return again and saw that the police had not listed a hammer among the tools seized from Lisa Trammel’s garage. This was curious because so many other, less common, tools were seized. Again, it may have been because the search was carried out before the autopsy was conducted and such facts were known. The police took all tools rather than a specific tool. It still left the question, though.
Where was the hammer?
Was there a hammer?
This, of course, was the case’s first double-edged sword. The prosecution would hold that the lack of a hammer in a fully stocked workbench was an indication of culpability. The defendant used the hammer to strike and kill the victim, then discarded it to hide her involvement in the crime.
The defense’s side of that argument was that the missing hammer was exculpatory. You have no murder weapon, you have no connection to the defendant, you have no case.
On paper, it should be a wash. But not always. Jurors typically leaned toward the prosecution in such questions. Call it the home-field advantage. The prosecution is always the home team.
Still, I made a note to tell Cisco to chase down the hammer as best he could. Talk to Lisa Trammel, see what she knew. Track down her husband, if only to ask if there ever was a hammer and what had happened to it.
The next photos from the autopsy were of the shattered skull itself after the scalp had been pulled back over the cranium. The damage was extensive, the skull having been punctured by all three of the blows and fractured in almost wavelike patterns emanating from the impact areas. The wounds were described as unsurvivable and the photos completely backed this conclusion.
The autopsy listed several other lacerations and abrasions on the body and even a fracture as well as three broken teeth, but the examiner interpreted all of these as injuries sustained when Bondurant fell face forward to the ground during the attack. He was unconscious if not already dead before he hit the garage floor. There were no defensive wounds listed.
Part of the autopsy protocol contained color photocopies of the crime scene photos provided to the examiner by the LAPD. It was not a complete set but just six shots that showed the body’s orientation in situ-meaning situated as it had been found. I would’ve rather had a full set of prints of the actual photographs, but I wouldn’t get those until I got a judge to ease the discovery embargo placed on the case by Andy Freeman.
The crime scene photos showed Bondurant’s body from numerous angles. It was sprawled between two cars in the garage. The driver’s side door of a Lexus SUV was open. There was a Joe’s Joe coffee cup on the ground and a pool of spilled coffee. Nearby was an open briefcase.
Bondurant was facedown on the ground, the back and top of his head matted with blood. His eyes were open and appeared to be staring at concrete.
In the photos there were evidence markers next to blood drips on the concrete. There was no analysis to determine if this was blood spatter from the attack itself or drippings from the murder weapon.
I found the briefcase to be a curious thing. Why was it open? Had anything been taken? Had the murderer taken the time to rifle through the case after killing Bondurant? If so, this would seem to be a cold and calculated move. The garage was filling with employees coming to work at the bank. To take the time to go through a briefcase while the body of your victim lies nearby seemed like an extreme risk but not the sort of move a killer fueled by emotion and vengeance would make. It was not the move of an amateur.
I wrote a few more notes in regard to these questions and then a final reminder. I would have Cisco find out if there was assigned parking in the garage. Did Bondurant have his name on the wall at the front of the stall? The lying-in-wait tag added to the murder charge indicated the prosecution believed Trammel knew where Bondurant would be, and when. They would have to prove that at trial.
I closed the Trammel files and wrapped a rubber band around them and the legal pad.
“You doing okay?” I asked Hayley.
“Sure.”
“Are you almost finished?”
“My food or my homework?”
“Both.”
“I’m finished eating but I still have social studies and English. But we can go if you want.”
“I still have a few other files to look at. I have court tomorrow.”
“For the murder case?”
“No, other cases.”
“Like where you’re trying to let people stay in their houses?”
“That’s right.”
“How come there are so many cases like that?”
Out of the mouths of babes.
“Greed, honey. It all comes down to greed on everybody’s part.”
I looked at her to see if that would suffice but she didn’t go back to her homework. She looked at me expecting more, a fourteen-year-old who was interested in what most of the country was not.
“Well, what happens is that it takes a lot of money to buy a house or a condo most of the time. That’s why so many people rent their homes instead. Most people who buy a home put down a big chunk of money, but they almost never have enough to buy the whole house, so they go to the bank for a loan. The bank decides if they have enough money and make enough money to pay back the loan, which is called a mortgage. So if everything looks good, they buy the home they want and pay back the mortgage with monthly payments for many years. Does this make sense?”
“You mean like they pay rent to the bank.”
“Sort of. But when you rent from a landlord you don’t get any ownership. There is supposed to be ownership involved when you have a mortgage. It is your home and they say the American dream is to own your own home.”
“Do you own yours?”
“I do. And your mom owns hers.”
She nodded but I wasn’t so sure we were talking at a level understandable to a fourteen-year-old. She didn’t see much of the American dream in her parents having separate mortgages to go with their separate addresses.
“Okay, so a while back they started making it easier to buy a home. And soon practically anybody who walked into a bank or went to see a mortgage broker was being given a loan on a home. There was a lot of fraud and corruption and there were a lot of loans given to people who shouldn’t have been given them. Some people lied to get loans and sometimes it was the loan makers who lied. We’re talking about millions of loans, Hay, and when you have that much going on, there are not enough people or rules to control it all.”
“Was it like nobody made anybody pay?”
“There was some of that but it was mostly that people were taking on more than they could handle. And these loans had interest rates that changed. These rates dictated how much the home owner had to pay each month and they could go up by a lot. Sometimes they had what’s called a balloon payment where you have to pay it all back at the end of five years. To make a long and complicated story short, the country’s economy went down and the values of the homes went down with it. It became a crisis because millions of people in the country couldn’t pay for the houses they bought and they couldn’t sell them because they were worth less than what was owed on them. But the banks and other lenders and these investment syndicates that held all the mortgages didn’t really care about that. They just wanted their money back. So when people couldn’t pay they started taking their houses.”
“So those people hire you.”
“Some of them do. But there are millions of foreclosures going on. These lenders all want their money back and so some of them do bad things and some of them hire people to do bad things. They lie and cheat and they take away people’s houses without doing it fairly or under the law. And that’s where I come in.”
I looked at her. I had probably lost her already. I pulled over the second stack of files I had on the table and opened the top one. I spoke as I read.
“Okay, now here’s one. This family bought a house six years ago and the monthly payment was nine hundred dollars. Two years later when the shit started to hit the-”
“Dad!”
“Sorry. Two years later when things started going wrong in this country their interest rate went up and so did their payment. At the same time, the husband lost his job as a school bus driver because he had an accident. So the husband and wife went to the bank and said, ‘Hey, we have a problem. Can we change or restructure our loan so we can still pay for our house?’ This is called loan modification and it’s pretty much a joke. These people did the right thing, going in like that, but the bank led them on and said, ‘Yes, we’ll work with you. You keep paying what you can while we go to work on this.’ So they paid what they could but it wasn’t enough. They waited and waited but they never heard anything from the bank. That is, until they got the notice in the mail that they were being foreclosed on. So it’s this kind of stuff that is wrong and I try to do something about it. It’s David and Goliath stuff, Hay. The giant financial institutions are running roughshod over people and they don’t have too many guys like me standing up for them.”
It was during my explanation to my young daughter that I finally realized why I had been drawn to this particular practice of law. Yes, some of my clients were just gaming the system. They were charlatans no better than the banks they were taking on. But some of my clients were the downtrodden and disadvantaged. They were the true underdogs in society and I wanted to stand for them and keep them in their homes for as long as I possibly could.
Hayley had raised her pencil and was itching to go back to work as soon as I dismissed her. She was polite that way and must have gotten it from her mother.
“Anyway, that’s what it’s all about. You can go back to work now. You want something else to drink or a dessert?”
“Dad, pancakes are like dessert.”
She had braces and had chosen lime green bands. When she spoke my attention was constantly drawn to her teeth.
“Oh, right, yeah. Then what about something else to drink? More milk?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Okay.”
I went back to work too and separated the three foreclosure files in front of me. I had been getting so much business off the radio ads that we had been bundling court appearances. That is, trying to schedule together hearings and appearances on all cases that I had before a particular judge. In the morning I had three hearings before Judge Alfred Byrne in the downtown county courthouse. All three were defenses based on claims of wrongful foreclosure and fraud perpetrated by the lender or the loan-servicing agent employed by the lender.
In each of the cases I had stayed foreclosure with my court filings. My clients were in their homes and not required to make their monthly payments. The other side viewed this as a scam equal in size to the foreclosure epidemic. I was despised by opposing counsel for perpetuating fraud myself and only delaying an inevitable outcome.
That was okay by me. When you come from the criminal defense bar, you are used to being despised.
“Am I too late for pancakes?”
I looked up to see my ex-wife slide into the booth next to our daughter. She landed a kiss on Hayley’s cheek before the girl could go on the defensive. She was at that age. I wished Maggie had slid into my side of the booth and planted one on me. But I could wait.
I smiled at her as I started pulling all the files off the table to make room.
“It’s never too late for pancakes,” I said.
Lisa Trammel was formally arraigned in Van Nuys the following Tuesday. It was a routine hearing intended to put her plea on record and to start the clock in order to meet the state’s speedy-trial requirement. However, because my client was free on bail, we would likely be waiving speedy trial. There was no reason to hurry as long as she was breathing free air. The case would slowly build momentum like a summer storm and begin when the defense was fully prepared.
But the arraignment did serve the purpose of putting Lisa’s forthright and emphatic “not guilty” on the court record as well as on video for the gathered media. Though attendance was lower than it was at her first appearance (the national media tends to retreat from the ongoing mundane processes of a case as it passes through the justice system), the local media still showed in force and the fifteen-minute hearing was well documented.
The case had been assigned to Superior Court Judge Dario Morales for arraignment and preliminary hearing. The latter would be a perfunctory rubber-stamping of the charges. Lisa would undoubtedly be held to answer and the case would then be assigned to another judge for the main event, the trial.
Though I had talked to her on the phone almost daily since her arrest, I had not seen Lisa in more than a week. She had declined my invitations to meet in person and now I knew why. She looked like a different woman when she showed up in court. Her hair had been cut into a stylish wave and her face looked both excessively pink and smooth. Whispers in the courtroom hinted that Lisa had had a Botox facial treatment in order to become more visually appealing.
I believed these physical changes, as well as the smart new suit Lisa was wearing, were the work of Herb Dahl. He and Lisa seemed inseparable and Dahl’s involvement was becoming more and more troubling. He had begun incessantly referring producers and screenwriters to my office number. This left Lorna constantly deflecting their attempts to secure a piece of the Lisa Trammel story. Quick checks of the Internet Movie Database usually revealed these Herb Dahl referrals to be Hollywood hacks and bottom-feeders of the lowest caliber. It wasn’t that we couldn’t use a nice big infusion of Hollywood cash to defray our mounting costs, but these were all deal-now-pay-later people and that wouldn’t do. Meantime, my own agent was out there trying to sew up a deal with an up-front fee that would cover a few salaries and the rent on an office and still leave enough to pay back Dahl and make him go away.
With almost any court hearing, the most important information and actions are not what ends up on the record. So, too, with Lisa’s arraignment. After her plea was routinely put on record and Morales scheduled a status hearing for two weeks later, I told the judge that the defense had a number of motions to submit to the court for consideration. He welcomed them and I stepped forward and handed his clerk five separate motions. I gave Andrea Freeman copies as well.
The first three motions had been prepared by Aronson after her in-depth review of the LAPD’s search-warrant application, the video of Detective Kurlen interviewing Lisa Trammel, and the questions regarding Miranda and when Lisa was actually placed under arrest. Aronson had found inconsistencies, procedural errors and exaggerations of fact. She drew up motions to suppress, asking that the taped interview be disallowed in the case and that all evidence gathered from the search of the defendant’s home be excluded as well.
The motions were well thought out and cogently written. I was proud of Aronson and pleased with myself for seeing her as a diamond in the rough when her résumé had crossed my desk. But the truth was I knew her motions didn’t stand much of a chance. No judge elected to the bench wants to throw out the evidence in a murder case. Not if he wants the voting public to keep him on the bench. So the jurist will look for ways to maintain status quo and get the decisions on evidence before a jury.
Nevertheless, Aronson’s motions played an important role in the defense strategy. Because accompanying them were two other motions. One sought to jump-start the discovery process by requesting defense access to all records and internal memoranda pertaining to Lisa Trammel and Mitchell Bondurant held by WestLand Financial. The other was a motion compelling the prosecution to allow the defense to examine Trammel’s laptop computer, cell phone and all personal documents seized in the search of her home.
Since Morales would want to act equitably toward both defense and prosecution, my strategy was to push the judge toward a Solomonic solution. Split the baby. Dismiss the motions to suppress but give the defense the access requested in the other two motions.
Of course, both Morales and Freeman had been around the block a few times and would see this strategy coming from a mile away. Still, just because they knew what I was doing didn’t mean they could stop it. Besides that, I had a sixth motion in my pocket that I had not yet filed with the court and it was going to be my ace in the hole.
Morales gave Freeman ten days to respond to the motions and adjourned the hearing, quickly moving on to his next case. A good judge always keeps the cases moving. I turned to Lisa and told her to wait for me in the hallway because I was going to speak to the prosecutor. I noticed Dahl waiting for her at the gate. He would be more than happy to escort her out. I decided to deal with him later and went over to the prosecution table. Freeman had her head down and was writing a note on a legal pad.
“Hey, Andy?”
She looked up at me. She had just begun to smile, expecting to see some friend who typically called her Andy. When she saw it was me the smile disappeared in an instant. I placed the sixth motion down on the table in front of her.
“Take a look at that when you have a minute. I’m going to file it tomorrow morning. Didn’t want to inundate the court with a blizzard of paper today, you know? Tomorrow morning should be fine but I thought I’d give you a heads-up since it involves you.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
I didn’t answer. I left her there and made my way through the gate and out of the courtroom. As I stepped through the double doors I saw my client and Herb Dahl already holding court in front of a deep semicircle of reporters and cameras. I quickly walked up behind Lisa, took her by the arm and pulled her away while she was in midsentence.
“Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!” I said in my best Porky Pig.
Lisa struggled against my pull but I still managed to get her away from the pack and start walking her down the hallway.
“What are you doing?” she protested. “You are embarrassing me!”
“Embarrassing you? Lisa, you are embarrassing yourself with that guy. I told you to drop him. Now, look at you, all done up like you’re some kind of movie star. This is a trial, Lisa, not Entertainment Tonight.”
“I was telling them my story.”
I stopped walking when we were far enough away from the crowd not to be overheard.
“Lisa, you can’t talk openly to the media like that. It can come back to bite you on the ass.”
“What are you talking about? It was a perfect opportunity to give my side of this. I’m being railroaded here and it’s time to speak out. I told you, it’s guilty people who don’t speak.”
“The problem is the DA has a media unit and they copy and record every story about you that is printed and aired. Everything you say, they have a copy of it. And if you ever change your story even slightly from one statement to the next then they’ve got you. They’ll crucify you with it in front of a jury. What I’m trying to say is it’s not worth the risk, Lisa. You should let me do the talking for you. But if you can’t do that and really want to put out your story yourself then we’ll prepare and rehearse you and plan it with strategic hits in the media.”
“But that’s where Herb comes in. He was making sure I didn’t-”
“Let me explain it again to you, Lisa. Herb Dahl is not your attorney and does not have your best interests as his priority. He has Herb Dahl’s. Okay? I can’t seem to get the message through to you. You have to cut him loose. He-”
“No! I can’t! I won’t! He’s the only one who truly cares.”
“Oh, that’s really breaking my heart, Lisa. If he’s the only one who cares about you what’s he doing still talking to those people?”
I pointed to the knot of reporters and photographers. Sure enough, Dahl was still holding forth, feeding them whatever they needed.
“What is he saying to them, Lisa? Do you know? Because I sure as shit don’t and that’s sort of funny because you’re the defendant and I’m the defense attorney. Who’s he?”
“He can speak for me,” Lisa said.
As we watched Dahl pointing his finger to call on reporters, I saw the door to the courtroom we had just left swing open. Andrea Freeman strode out, holding my sixth motion in her hand, her eyes scanning the hallway. At first she zeroed in on the media knot but then she saw it was not me at the center of it. When her radar picked me up, she corrected her course and made a beeline right toward me. A few of the reporters called to her but she sharply waved them off with the document.
“Lisa, go over to one of those benches and sit down and wait for me. And don’t talk to any reporters.”
“What about-”
“Just do it.”
As Lisa walked away Freeman came up on me. She was mad and I could see the fire in her eyes.
“What is this shit, Haller?”
She held up the paper. I maintained a calm demeanor even as she stepped right into my personal space.
“Well,” I said, “I think it’s pretty obvious what it is. It’s a motion to have you dismissed from the case because you have a conflict of interest.”
“I have a conflict of interest? What conflict?”
“Look, Andy-I can call you Andy, right? I mean my daughter does so I should, too, don’t you think?”
“Cut the shit, Haller.”
“Sure, I can do that. The conflict that I am objecting to is that you’ve been discussing this case with my ex-wife and-”
“Who happens to be a prosecutor working in the same office as me.”
“That’s true but these discussions haven’t taken place in the office exclusively. In fact, they’ve taken place at yoga and in front of my daughter and probably all over the Valley, as far as I know.”
“Oh, come on. This is such bullshit.”
“Really? Then why did you lie to me?”
“I’ve never lied. What are you-”
“I asked you if you knew my ex-wife and you said in passing. That’s not really the truth, is it?”
“I just didn’t want to get into it with you.”
“So you lied. I didn’t mention that in the motion but I could add it before I file it. The judge could decide if it is important.”
She blew out her breath in agitated surrender.
“What do you want?”
I looked around. No one could hear us.
“What do I want? I want to show you that I can play it your way, too. You want to be a hard-ass with me, I can be one with you.”
“Meaning what, Haller? What’s the quid pro quo?”
I nodded. We were getting down to the deal now.
“You know if I file this tomorrow you are history. The judge will err on the side of the defense. He’ll avoid anything that might have any chance of getting him reversed. Besides, he knows there are three hundred able-bodied prosecutors in the DA’s office. They can just send in a replacement.”
I pointed to the gaggle of reporters assembled in the hall, most of them still surrounding Herb Dahl.
“You see all of those reporters and all that attention? All of that will go away. Probably the biggest case of your career and it all goes away. No press conferences, no headlines, no spotlight. It all goes to whoever they send in to take your place.”
“First of all I will fight this thing and it is not a given that Judge Morales will fall for your bullshit. I will tell him exactly what you are doing. Trying to DA-shop. Trying to get rid of a prosecutor you are flat-out scared of.”
“You can tell him all you like but you’ll still have to tell the judge-in open court-how it is that my fourteen-year-old daughter was reciting facts of this case back to me at dinner last week.”
“That is bullshit. You should be ashamed of using your-”
“What, are you saying that I’m the liar or my daughter is the liar? Because we can bring her into court, too. I’m not so sure your bosses are going to like the spectacle this will cause-or the headlines. You know, DA grills fourteen-year-old, calls the kid a liar. Kind of tawdry, don’t you think?”
Freeman turned her back and took a step to walk away from me but then stopped. I knew I had her. She should walk away from me and the case, but she couldn’t. She wanted the case and all that it could bring her.
She turned back to me. She looked at me as though I were not even there, as if I were dead.
“Again, what do you want?”
“I’d rather not file this tomorrow. I’d rather just withdraw the motions I had to make to get my client’s property back and to see the WestLand documents. All I want is cooperation. A friendly give-and-take on discovery. I want it to start flowing now, not later. I don’t want to go to the judge every time I want something I’m entitled to.”
“I could complain to the bar about you.”
“Good, we can make cross-complaints. They’ll investigate both of us and find that only you acted inappropriately by discussing the case with defense counsel’s ex-wife and daughter.”
“I didn’t discuss it with your daughter. She was just there.”
“I’m sure the bar will make that distinction.”
I let her twist for a moment. It was her move but she needed one final push.
“Oh, and by the way, if I file the motion tomorrow I’ll be sure to drop a dime to the Times. Who’s their court reporter? Salters? I think she’d find this to be an interesting little side story. A nice exclusive.”
She nodded as though her predicament had just become crystal clear in front of her.
“Withdraw your motions,” she said. “You will have everything you asked for by the end of the day Friday.”
“Tomorrow.”
“That’s not enough time. I have to pull it together and get it copied. The copy shop is always backed up.”
“Then Thursday by noon or I file the motion.”
“Fine, asshole.”
“Good. Once I go through it all, maybe we can start talking about a plea. Thank you, Andy.”
“Fuck you, Haller. And there isn’t going to be a plea. We’ve got her nailed and I’m going to be looking at you, not her, when the verdict comes in.”
She pivoted and started to walk away, but then turned right back to me.
“And don’t call me Andy. You don’t get to call me that.”
She marched away then, moving in long, angry strides toward the elevator lobby, totally ignoring a reporter who trotted up to her and tried to get a quote.
I knew there would be no plea agreement. My client wouldn’t allow it. But I gave Freeman the opening so she could throw it back in my face. I wanted her to go away angry but not that angry. I wanted her to think she had salvaged something. It would make her easier to deal with.
I looked around and saw Lisa waiting dutifully on the bench I had earlier pointed her to. I signaled her to get up.
“Okay, Lisa, let’s get out of here.”
“But what about Herb? I drove in with him.”
“Your car or his?”
“His.”
“Then he’s fine. My guy will drive you home.”
We walked into the elevator alcove. Thankfully, Andrea Freeman had already caught a ride down to the DA’s office on the second floor. I pushed the button but the elevator didn’t come soon enough. We were joined by Dahl.
“What, were you leaving without me?”
I didn’t respond to his question and quickly dispensed with any guise of civility.
“You know, you’re fucking me up by talking to the media like that. You think you’re helping the cause but you’re not-unless Herbert Dahl is the cause.”
“Whoa, what’s with the language? We’re in a courthouse.”
“I don’t care where we are. Do not speak for my client. Do you understand? If you do it again I’m going to call a press conference and you’re not going to like what I have to say about you.”
“Fine. That was it. My last press conference. But now I got a question. What’s goin’ on with all these people I’ve been sending your way? Some of them called me back and said they were treated pretty rudely by your staff.”
“Yeah, you keep sending them and we’ll keep treating them that way.”
“Hey, I know the business and these are legitimate people.”
“The Grind Side.”
Dahl looked confused. He looked at Lisa and then back at me.
“What’s that mean?”
“The Grind Side. Come on, you mean you haven’t heard of The Grind Side?”
“You mean The Blind Side? The movie about the lady who adopts the football player?”
“No, I mean The Grind Side. The movie made by one of the producers you sent over to us. It’s about this lady who adopts a football player and then has sex with him three or four times a day. Then when that gets boring she invites the whole football team over. I don’t think it made as much money as The Blind Side.”
Lisa was turning pale. I got the feeling that what I was saying about Dahl’s Hollywood connections wasn’t matching up with what Dahl had been putting in her ears for weeks.
“Yeah, this is what he’s doing for you, Lisa. These are the kind of people he wants to put you with.”
“Look,” Dahl said, “do you have any idea how hard it is to get something going in this town? A project? There are those who can and those who can’t. I don’t care what the guy made before as long as he can get something going now. You understand? These are legitimate people and I have a lot of money on the line here, Haller.”
An elevator finally arrived. I directed Lisa onto it but then put my hand on Dahl’s chest and slowly pushed him away from the door.
“Just back off, Dahl. You’ll get your money and then some. But you just back off.”
I stepped into the elevator and turned to make sure Dahl didn’t attempt to jump on at the last moment. He didn’t try it, but he didn’t move either. I held his hateful stare until the doors closed on it.
We moved into our new offices on Saturday morning. It was a three-room suite in a building at Victory and Van Nuys Boulevards. The place was even called the Victory Building, which I liked. It was also fully furnished and only two blocks from the courthouse where Lisa Trammel would face trial.
All hands were on deck to help with the move. Including Rojas, who wore a T-shirt and baggies, showing off the tattoos that completely covered his arms and legs. I didn’t know which was more shocking, seeing the tattoos or seeing Rojas in anything other than the suit he always wore while driving me.
The setup in the new place was that I got my own office while Cisco and Aronson shared the other, larger office and Lorna anchored the reception area in between. Going from the backseat of a Lincoln to an office with ten-foot ceilings, a full desk and a nap couch was a big change. The first thing I did upon settling in was to use the open space and polished wood floor to spread out the eight-hundred-plus pages of discovery documents I had received from Andrea Freeman.
Most of it was from WestLand and a lot of it was filler. It was Freeman’s passive-aggressive response to being maneuvered by the defense. There were dozens of pages and packets on bank policy and procedures and other forms I didn’t need. These all went into one pile. There were also copies of all communications that went directly to Lisa Trammel, most of which I already had and was familiar with. These went into a second pile. And finally, there were copies of internal bank communications as well as communications between the victim, Mitchell Bondurant, and the outside company the bank used to carry out its foreclosures.
This company was called ALOFT and I was already quite familiar with it because it was my adversary on at least a third of my foreclosure cases. ALOFT was a mill, a company that filed and tracked all documents required in the lengthy foreclosure process. It was a go-between that allowed bankers and other lenders to keep their hands clean in the dirty business of taking people’s homes away from them. Companies like ALOFT got the job done without the bank’s so much as having to send a letter to the customer faced with foreclosure.
It was this stack of correspondence that I was most interested in, and it was here that I found the document that would change the course of the case.
I moved behind my desk, sat down and studied the phone. There were more buttons on it than I would ever have use for. I finally found the intercom button for the other office and pushed it.
“Hello?”
Nothing. I pushed it again.
“Cisco? Bullocks? Are you there?”
Nothing. I got up and started toward the door, intent on communicating with my staff the old-fashioned way, when a response finally came over the phone’s speaker.
“Mickey, is that you?”
It was Cisco’s voice. I hurried back to the desk and pushed the button.
“Yeah, it’s me. Can you come in here? And bring Bullocks.”
“Roger and out.”
A few minutes later my investigator and associate counsel entered.
“Hey, Boss?” Cisco asked, looking at the stacks of documents on the floor. “The point of the office is to put stuff in drawers and file cabinets and up on shelves.”
“I’ll get around to it,” I said. “Shut the door and have a seat.”
Once we were all in place, I looked at them across my big rented desk and laughed.
“This is weird,” I said.
“I could get used to it, having an office,” Cisco said. “But Bullocks doesn’t know from nothing.”
“Yes, I do,” Aronson protested. “Last summer I interned at Shandler, Massey and Ortiz and I had my own office.”
“Well, maybe next time you get your own with us,” I said. “So now, down to business. Cisco, did you get the laptop to your guy?”
“Yeah, dropped it off yesterday morning. I told him it was a rush job.”
We were talking about Lisa’s laptop, which had been returned by the DA’s office along with her cell phone and the four boxes of documents.
“And he’s going to be able to tell us what the DA was looking at?”
“He said he’ll be able to provide a list of the files they opened and how long they were opened. From that we should be able to get an idea of what they paid attention to. But don’t get your hopes up.”
“Why?”
“Because Freeman gave in on this way too easily. I don’t think she would’ve given us back the computer if it was that important to her.”
“Maybe.”
Neither he nor Aronson was aware of the deal I made with Freeman or the leverage I had used. I turned my attention to Aronson. After she completed the motions to suppress earlier in the week I had put her on backgrounding the victim. This came after Cisco had picked up some preliminary indications in his investigations that all was not well in Mitchell Bondurant’s personal world.
“Bullocks, what’ve you got on our victim?”
“Well, there’s still a lot I need to check out, but there’s no doubt that he was heading over the falls. Financially, that is.”
“How so?”
“Well, when the going was good and the financing came easy, he was a definite player in the real estate market. Between oh-two and oh-seven he bought and flipped twenty-one properties, mostly residential real estate. Made good money and plowed it back into bigger deals. Then the economy tanked and he was caught holding the bag.”
“He was upside-down?”
“Exactly. At the time of his death he owned five large properties that suddenly weren’t worth what he paid for them. It looks like he had been trying to sell them for more than a year. No takers. And three of them had balloons that were going to pop this year. It added up to over two million dollars he would owe.”
I stood up and came around the desk. I started pacing. Aronson’s report was exciting. I didn’t know exactly how it fit in but I was confident I could make it fit. We just had to talk it out.
“Okay, so Bondurant, the senior vice president in charge of the home loan side of WestLand, was falling victim to the same sort of situation as many of the people he was foreclosing on. When the money was flowing he took mortgages with five-year balloon notes, thinking like everybody else that he’d turn the properties over or remortgage long before the five years were up.”
“Except the economy goes into the toilet,” Aronson said. “He can’t sell them and he can’t remortgage them because they aren’t worth what he paid for them. No bank would touch his paper, not even his own.”
Aronson had a glum look on her face.
“This is all good work, Bullocks. What’s wrong?”
“Well, I’m just wondering what all this has to do with the murder?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.”
I went back to the desk and sat down. I handed her the three-page document I had found in the volumes the prosecution had provided. She took it and held it so she and Cisco could both look at it.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“I think it’s our smoking gun.”
“I forgot my glasses in the other office,” Cisco said.
“Read it, Bullocks.”
“It’s a copy of a certified letter from Bondurant to Louis Opparizio at A. Louis Opparizio Financial Technologies, or ALOFT, for short. It says, ‘Dear Louis, Attached you will find correspondence from an attorney named Michael Haller who is representing the home owner in one of the foreclosure cases you are handling for WestLand.’ It gives Lisa’s name, loan number and the address of the house. Then it goes, ‘In his letter Mr. Haller makes allegations that the file is replete with fraudulent actions perpetrated in the case. You will note that he gives specific instances, all of which were carried out by ALOFT. As you know and we have discussed, there have been other complaints. These new allegations against ALOFT, if true, have put WestLand in a vulnerable position, especially considering the government’s recent interest in this aspect of the mortgage business. Unless we come to some sort of arrangement and understanding in regard to this I will be recommending to the board that WestLand withdraw from its contract with your company for cause and any ongoing business be terminated. This action would also require the bank to file an SAR with appropriate authorities. Please contact me at your earliest convenience to further discuss these matters.’ That’s it. A copy of your original letter is attached and a copy of the return card from the post office. The letter was signed for by someone named Natalie and I can’t read the last name. Begins with an L.”
I leaned back in my leather executive chair and smiled at them while rolling a paper clip over my fingers like a magician. Aronson, eager to impress, jumped in first.
“So, Bondurant was covering his ass. He had to have known what ALOFT was doing. The banks have a wink-wink relationship with all these foreclosure mills. They don’t care how it’s done, they just want it done. But by sending this letter he was distancing himself from ALOFT and the underhanded practices.”
I shrugged as if to say maybe.
“ ‘Arrangement and understanding,’ ” I said.
They both looked at me blankly.
“That’s what he said in the letter. ‘Unless we come to some sort of arrangement and understanding…’ ”
“Okay, what’s it mean?” Aronson asked.
“Read between the lines. I don’t think he was distancing himself. I think the letter was a threat. I think it means he wanted a piece of ALOFT’s action. He wanted in and he was covering his ass, yes, by sending the letter, but I think there was another message. He wanted some of the action or he was going to take it away from Opparizio. He was even threatening to file an SAR.”
“What exactly is an SAR?” Aronson asked.
“Suspicious activity report,” Cisco said. “A routine form. The banks file them over anything.”
“With who?”
“Federal trade, FBI, Secret Service, whoever they want to, really.”
I could tell I had not sold them on anything yet.
“Do you have any idea what sort of money ALOFT is raking in?” I asked. “It’s easily involved in a third of our cases. I know it’s unscientific but if you take that out across the board and ALOFT’s got a third of the cases in L.A. County then you are talking about millions and millions in fees from this one county. They say that in California alone there will be three million foreclosures before this plays out over the next few years.
“Plus, there’s the acquisition.”
“What acquisition?” Aronson asked.
“You gotta read the papers. Opparizio is in the process of selling ALOFT to a big investment fund, a company called LeMure. It’s publicly traded and any sort of controversy regarding one of its satellite acquisitions could affect the deal as well as the stock price. So don’t kid yourself. If Bondurant was desperate enough, he could make some waves. He may have made more than he was counting on.”
Cisco nodded, the first to tumble to my theory.
“Okay, so we have Bondurant facing personal financial disaster,” he said. “Three balloons about to pop. So he turns around and tries to muscle in on Opparizio, the LeMure deal and the whole foreclosure gravy train. And it gets him killed?”
“That’s right.”
Cisco was sold. I now swiveled in my chair so that I was looking directly at Aronson.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s a big jump. And it’s going to be hard to prove.”
“Who says we have to prove it? We just have to figure out how to get it before the jury.”
The reality was we didn’t need to prove a damn thing. We only had to suggest it and let a jury do the rest. I just had to plant the seeds of reasonable doubt. To build the hypothesis of innocence. I leaned forward across my big wooden desk and looked at my team.
“This is our defense theory. Opparizio is our straw man. He’s the guy we paint as guilty. The jury points the finger at him and our client walks.”
I looked at both their faces and got no reaction. I kept going.
“Cisco, I want you to focus on Louis Opparizio and his company. Get me everything that’s out there. History, known associates, everything. All the details of the merger. I want to know more about that deal and this guy than even he knows. By the end of next week I want to subpoena records from ALOFT. They’ll fight it but it ought to stir things up a bit.”
Aronson shook her head.
“But wait a minute,” she said. “Are you saying this is all bullshit? Just a defense gambit and this guy Opparizio didn’t really do it? What if we’re right about Opparizio and they’re wrong about Lisa Trammel? What if she’s innocent?”
She looked at me with eyes full of naive hope. I smiled and looked at Cisco.
“Tell her.”
My investigator turned to face my young associate.
“Kid, you’re new at this so you get a pass. But we never ask that question. It doesn’t matter if our clients are guilty or innocent. They all get the same bang for the buck.”
“Yes, but…”
“There are no buts,” I said. “We are talking about avenues of defense here. Ways to provide our client with the best defense possible. These are strategies we will follow regardless of guilt or innocence. You want to do criminal defense, this is what you have to understand. You never ask your client if he did it. Yes or no, the answer is only a distraction. So you don’t need to know.”
She tightened her lips into a thin, straight line.
“How are you on Tennyson?” I asked. “ ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’?”
“What does-”
“ ‘Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die.’ We’re the Light Brigade, Bullocks. We go up against an army that has more people, more weapons, more everything. Most of the time it amounts to little more than a suicide run. No chance of survival. No chance of winning. But sometimes you get a case where you have a shot. It might be a long shot, but it’s a shot nonetheless. So you take it. You charge… and you don’t ask questions like that.”
“Actually, I think it’s ‘do and die.’ That was the point of the poem. They didn’t have the choice to do or die. They had to do and die.”
“So you know your Tennyson. I like ‘do or die’ better. The point is, did Lisa Trammel kill Mitchell Bondurant? I really don’t know. She says she didn’t and that’s good enough for me. If it’s not good enough for you, then I’ll take you off this one and put you back on foreclosures full-time.”
“No,” Aronson said quickly. “I want to stay. I’m in.”
“That’s good. Not many lawyers get to sit second chair on a murder case ten months out of law school.”
She looked at me, eyes wide.
“Second chair?”
I nodded.
“You deserve it. You’ve done some really good work on this.”
But the light quickly faded.
“What?”
“I just don’t know why you can’t have it both ways. You know, give unbridled effort in your defense but be conscientious about your work. Try for the best outcome.”
“The best outcome for who? Your client? Society? Or for yourself? Your responsibility is to your client and the law, Bullocks. That’s it.”
I gave her a long stare before continuing.
“Don’t go growing a conscience on me,” I said. “I’ve been down that road. It doesn’t lead you to anything good.”
After spending most of the day setting up the office I didn’t get home till almost eight. I found my ex-wife sitting on the steps leading up to the front deck. Our daughter wasn’t with her. In the past year there had been several encounters between us that did not include Hayley and I was thrilled by the prospect of another. I was dog-tired from the day’s mental and physical work but I could easily rally for Maggie McFierce.
“Hey, Mags. You forget the key?”
She got up, and just from her stiff posture and the way she dusted off the backside of her jeans all businesslike I knew something wasn’t right. When I got to the top step I moved in for a kiss-just on the cheek. But she immediately made an evasive maneuver and my suspicion was confirmed.
“That’s where Hayley gets it,” I said. “The old duck and roll when I give her a kiss.”
“Well, I’m not here for that, Haller. I didn’t use my key because I thought you might consider it some sort of conflict of interest if you found a prosecutor in your house.”
Now I got it.
“Yoga today? You saw Andrea Freeman?”
“That’s right.”
Suddenly, I didn’t feel the strength to rally anymore. I unlocked the door like a prisoner punished with the indignity of letting himself into the room where they give you the needle.
“Come on in. I guess we’ll get this over with.”
She came in quickly, my last comment throwing another log on her fire.
“What you did was despicable. Using our daughter in such an underhanded way.”
I wheeled around on her.
“Using our daughter? I did no such thing. Our daughter was put in the middle of this thing and I learned of it only by accident.”
“It doesn’t matter. You’re disgusting.”
“No, I’m a defense lawyer. And your good pal Andy was discussing me and my case with my ex-wife in front of my daughter. And then she outright lied to me.”
“What are you talking about? She doesn’t lie.”
“I’m not talking about Hayley. I’m talking about Andy. I asked her on the first day she was on the case if she knew you and she said she knew you only in passing. I think we can agree that that is not the case. And I don’t know for sure but I would guess that if we described this situation to ten different judges that maybe ten would consider it a conflict.”
“Look, we weren’t discussing you or the case. It came up when we were having lunch. Hayley happened to be there. What am I supposed to do, disavow my friends because of you? It doesn’t work that way.”
“If it was no big deal, why did she lie to me?”
“It wasn’t a direct lie. It’s not like we’re best friends or anything. Besides, she probably didn’t want you to get into it like you have anyway.”
“So now we’re qualifying lies on a sliding scale. Some are indirect and no big deal. Don’t worry about those lies.”
“Haller, don’t be an asshole.”
“Look, you want something to drink?”
“I don’t want anything. I came to tell you that you not only embarrassed me and your daughter, but yourself. It was low, Haller. You used something innocent from your own daughter to get an edge. It was really low.”
I was still holding my briefcase. I put it down on the table in the dining alcove. I put my hands on the top of one of the chairs and leaned down on it as I thought out my comeback.
“Come on,” Maggie said, baiting me. “You always have a quick answer for everything. The great defender. Let’s hear it this time.”
I laughed and shook my head. She was so damn beautiful when she was mad. It was disarming. And the bad part was I think she knew it.
“Oh, so this is funny. You threaten to ruin someone’s career and then can laugh about it.”
“I didn’t threaten to ruin her career. I threatened to kick her off the case. And no, it’s not funny. It’s just that…”
“What, Haller? It’s just that what? I’ve been sitting out there for two hours wondering if you were going to show up because I want to know how you could do this.”
I stepped away from the table and went on the offensive, moving toward her as I spoke. Making her step back and then crowding her into a corner, ending my words with my finger pointing inches from her chest.
“I did it because I’m a defense attorney and as a defense attorney I have taken an oath to defend my clients to the best of my ability. So, yes, I saw an advantage here. Your good pal Andy-and you-clearly crossed a line. Sure, no harm was done-as far as I know. But that doesn’t mean the line wasn’t crossed. If you jump a fence with a sign on it that says NO TRESPASSING then you are still trespassing even if you jump right back across. So I became aware of this trespass and I used it to my advantage to get something I need to defend my client. Something I should’ve been given as a matter of course but which your friend was holding back simply because she could.
“Was she within the rules? Yes. Was it fair? No. And one reason you are all hot and bothered about it is that you know it wasn’t fair and that I made the right move. It was something you would have done yourself.”
“Never in a million years. I would never stoop so low.”
“Bullshit.”
I turned away from her. She stayed in the corner.
“What are you doing here, Maggie?”
“What do you mean? I just told you why I’m here.”
“Yeah, but you could’ve picked up a phone or sent me an e-mail. Why did you come here?”
“I wanted to see your face when you gave an explanation.”
I turned back to her. This whole thing was a sideshow. I moved in on her and put my hand on the wall right next to her head.
“It was bullshit arguments like this that wrecked our marriage,” I said.
“I know.”
“You know it’s been eight years? We’ve been divorced as long as we were married.”
Eight years and I still couldn’t shake her.
“Eight years and here we are.”
“Yes, here we are.”
“You know, you’re the trespasser, Haller. You jump over everybody’s fences. Come in and out of our lives whenever you want. And we just let you.”
I slowly leaned in closer until we were breathing the same air. I kissed her lightly and then harder when she tried to say something. I didn’t want to hear any more words. I was finished with words.