I slowly read the PC statement twice more but my anger did not subside. I tossed the warrant onto the seat next to me.
“In some ways it’s really too bad I am not the killer,” I said.
“Yeah, why is that?” Lankford said.
“Because this warrant is a piece of shit and you both know it. It won’t stand up to challenge. I told you that message came in when I was already on the phone and that can be checked and proven, only you were too lazy or you didn’t want to check it because it would have made it a little difficult to get your warrant. Even with your pocket judge in Glendale. You lied by omission and commission. It’s a bad-faith warrant.”
Because I was sitting behind Lankford I had a better angle on Sobel. I watched her for signs of doubt as I spoke.
“And the suggestion that Raul was extorting business from me and that I wouldn’t pay is a complete joke. Extorted me with what? And what didn’t I pay him for? I paid him every time I got a bill. Man, I tell you, if this is how you work all your cases, I gotta open up an office in Glendale. I’m going to shove this warrant right up your police chief’s ass.”
“You lied about the gun,” Lankford said. “And you owed Levin money. It’s right there in his accounts book. Four grand.”
“I didn’t lie about anything. You never asked if I owned a gun.”
“Lied by omission. Right back at ya.”
“Bullshit.”
“Four grand.”
“Oh yeah, the four grand—I killed him because I didn’t want to pay him four grand,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. “You got me there, Detective. Motivation. But I guess it never occurred to you to see if he had even billed me for the four grand yet, or to see if I hadn’t just paid an invoice from him for six thousand dollars a week before he was murdered.”
Lankford was undaunted. But I saw the doubt start to creep into Sobel’s face.
“Doesn’t matter how much or when you paid him,” Lankford said. “A blackmailer is never satisfied. You never stop paying until you reach the point of no return. That’s what this is about. The point of no return.”
I shook my head.
“And what exactly was it that he had on me that made me give him jobs and pay him until I reached the point of no return?”
Lankford and Sobel exchanged a look and Lankford nodded. Sobel reached down to a briefcase on the floor and took out a file. She handed it over the seat to me.
“Take a look,” Lankford said. “You missed it when you were ransacking his place. He’d hidden it in a dresser drawer.”
I opened the file and saw that it contained several 8 × 10 color photos. They were taken from afar and I was in each one of them.The photographer had trailed my Lincoln over several days and several miles. Each image a frozen moment in time, the photos showed me with various individuals whom I easily recognized as clients. They were prostitutes, street dealers and Road Saints. The photos could be interpreted as suspicious because they showed one split second of time. A male prostitute in mini-shorts alighting from the backseat of the Lincoln. Teddy Vogel handing me a thick roll of cash through the back window. I closed the file and tossed it back over the seat.
“You’re kidding me, right? You’re saying Raul came to me with that? He extorted me with that? Those are my clients. Is this a joke or am I just missing something?”
“The California bar might not think it’s a joke,” Lankford said. “We hear you’re on thin ice with the bar. Levin knew it. He worked it.”
I shook my head.
“Incredible,” I said.
I knew I had to stop talking. I was doing everything wrong with these people. I knew I should just shut up and ride it out. But I felt an almost overpowering need to convince them. I began to understand why so many cases were made in the interview rooms of police stations. People just can’t shut up.
I tried to place the photographs that were in the file. Vogel giving me the roll of cash was in the parking lot outside the Saints’ strip club on Sepulveda. That happened after Harold Casey’s trial and Vogel was paying me for filing the appeal. The prostitute was named Terry Jones and I handled a soliciting charge for him the first week of April. I’d had to find him on the Santa Monica Boulevard stroll the night before a hearing to make sure he was going to show up.
It became clear that the photos had all been taken between the morning I had caught the Roulet case and the day Raul Levin was murdered. They were then planted at the crime scene by the killer—all part of Roulet’s plan to set me up so that he could control me. The police would have everything they needed to put theLevin murder on me—except the murder weapon. As long as Roulet had the gun, he had me.
I had to admire the plan and the ingenuity at the same time that it made me feel the dread of desperation. I tried to put the window down but the button wouldn’t work. I asked Sobel to open a window and she did. Fresh air started blowing into the car.
After a while Lankford looked at me in the rearview and tried to jump-start the conversation.
“We ran the history on that Woodsman,” he said. “You know who owned it once, don’t you?”
“Mickey Cohen,” I answered matter-of-factly, staring out the window at the steep hillsides of Laurel Canyon.
