“With Roulet? I plan to see him as little as possible. Only when it’s necessary. He left me a message today, has something to tell me. But I’m not calling back.”
“Why did he pick you? I mean, why would he pick the one lawyer who might put this thing together?”
I shook my head.
“I don’t know. I thought about it the whole plane ride down. I think maybe he was worried I might hear about the case and put it together anyway. But if he was my client, then he knew I’d be ethically bound to protect him. At least at first. Plus there’s the money.”
“What money?”
“The money from Mother. The franchise. He knows how big a payday this is for me. My biggest ever. Maybe he thought I’d look the other way to keep the money coming in.”
Levin nodded.
“Maybe I should, huh?” I said.
It was a vodka-spurred attempt at humor, but Levin didn’t smile and then I remembered Jesus Menendez’s face behind the prison Plexiglas and I couldn’t even bring myself to smile.
“Listen, there’s one other thing I need you to do,” I said. “I want you to look at him, too. Roulet. Find out all you can without getting too close. And check out that story about the mother, about her getting raped in a house she was selling in Bel-Air.”
Levin nodded.
“I’m on it.”
“And don’t farm it out.”
This was a running joke between us. Like me, Levin was a one-man shop. He had no one to farm it out to.
“I won’t. I’ll handle it myself.”
It was his usual response but this time it lacked the false sincerity and humor he usually gave it. He’d answered by habit.
The waitress moved by the table and put our check down without a thank you. I dropped a credit card on it without even looking at the damage. I just wanted to leave.
“You want her to wrap up your steak?” I asked.
“That’s okay,” Levin said. “I’ve kind of lost my appetite for right now.”
“What about that attack dog you’ve got at home?”
“That’s an idea. I forgot about Bruno.”
He looked around for the waitress to ask for a box.
“Take mine, too,” I said. “I don’t have a dog.”
Twenty-one
Despite the vodka glaze, I made it through the slalom that was Laurel Canyon without cracking up the Lincoln or getting pulled over by a cop. My house is on Fareholm Drive, which terraces up off the southern mouth of the canyon. All the houses are built to the street line and the only problem I had coming home was when I found that some moron had parked his SUV in front of my garage and I couldn’t get in. Parking on the narrow street is always difficult and the opening in front of my garage door was usually just too inviting, especially on a weekend night, when invariably someone on the street was throwing a party.
I motored by the house and found a space big enough for the Lincoln about a block and a half away. The further I had gotten from my house, the angrier I had gotten with the SUV. The fantasy grew from spitting on the windshield to breaking off the side mirror, flattening the tires and kicking in the side panels. But instead I wrote a sedate little note on a page of yellow legal paper:This is not a parking space! Next time you will be towed. After all, you never know who’s driving an SUV in L.A., and if you threaten someone for parking in front of your garage, then they know where you live.
I walked back and was placing the note under the violator’s windshield wiper when I noticed the SUV was a Range Rover. I put my hand on the hood and it was cool to the touch. I looked up above the garage to the windows of my house that I could see, but they were dark. I slapped the folded note under the windshieldwiper and started up the stairs to the front deck and door. I half expected Louis Roulet to be sitting in one of the tall director chairs, taking in the twinkling view of the city, but he was not there.
Instead, I walked to the corner of the porch and looked out on the city. It was this view that had made me buy the place. Everything about the house once you went through the door was ordinary and outdated. But the front porch and the view right above Hollywood Boulevard could launch a million dreams. I had used money from the last franchise case for a down payment. But once I was in and there wasn’t another franchise, I took the equity out in a second mortgage. The truth was I struggled every month just to pay the nut. I needed to get out from under it but that view off the front deck paralyzed me. I’d probably be staring out at the city when they came to take the key and foreclose on the place.
I know the question my house prompts. Even with my struggles to stay afloat with it, how fair is it that when a prosecutor and defense attorney divorce, the defense attorney gets the house on the hill with a million-dollar view while the prosecutor with the daughter gets the two-bedroom apartment in the Valley. The answer is that Maggie McPherson could buy a house of her choosing and I would help her to my maximum ability. But she had refused to move while she waited to be tapped for a promotion to the downtown office. Buying a house in Sherman Oaks or anywhere else would send the wrong message, one of sedentary contentment. She was not content to be Maggie McFierce of the Van Nuys Division. She was not content to be passed over by John Smithson or any of his young guns. She was ambitious and wanted to get downtown, where supposedly the best and brightest prosecuted the most important crimes. She refused to accept the simple truism that the better you were, the bigger threat you were to those at the top, especially if they are elected. I knew that Maggie would never be invited downtown. She was too damn good.
Every now and then this realization would seep through and she would lash out in unexpected ways. She would make a cutting remark at a press conference or she would refuse to cooperate witha downtown investigation. Or she would drunkenly reveal to a criminal defense attorney and ex-husband something about a case he shouldn’t be told.
