it down on the bar. He picked up the napkin Reggie Campo had given him, crumpled it in his hand and then dropped it to the floor as he got up. He left the bar, leaving the drink behind.
Levin ejected the DVD and returned it to its plastic sleeve. He then turned off the player and started to put it away.
“That’s it on the visuals that I can show you here.”
I reached forward and tapped Earl on the shoulder. He had his sound buds in. He pulled out one of the ear plugs and looked back at me.
“Let’s head back to the courthouse,” I said. “Keep your plugs in.”
Earl did as instructed.
“What else?” I said to Levin.
“There’s Reggie Campo,” he said. “She’s not Snow White.”
“What did you find out?”
“It’s not necessarily what I found out. It’s what I think. You saw how she was on the tape. One guy leaves and she’s dropping love notes on another guy alone at the bar. Plus, I did some checking. She’s an actress but she’s not currently working as an actress. Except for private auditions, you could say.”
He handed me a professional photo collage that showed Reggie Campo in different poses and characters. It was the kind of photo sheet sent to casting directors all over the city. The largest photo on the sheet was a head shot. It was the first time I had seen her face up close without the ugly bruises and swelling. Reggie Campo was a very attractive woman and something about her face was familiar to me but I could not readily place it. I wondered if I had seen her in a television show or a commercial. I flipped the head shot over and read her credits. They were for shows I never watched and commercials I didn’t remember.
“In the police reports she lists her current employer as Topsail Telemarketing. They’re over in the Marina. They take the calls for a lot of the crap they sell on late-night TV. Workout machines and stuff like that. Anyway, it’s day work. You work when you want. The only thing is, Reggie hasn’t worked a day there for five months.”
“So what are you telling me, she’s been tricking?”
“I’ve been watching her the last three nights and -”
“You what?”
I turned and looked at him. If a private eye working for a criminal defendant was caught tailing the victim of a violent crime, there could be hell to pay and I would be the one to pay it. All the prosecution would have to do is go see a judge and claim harassment and intimidation and I’d be held in contempt faster than the Santa Ana wind through the Sepulveda Pass. As a crime victim Reggie Campo was sacrosanct until she was on the stand. Only then was she mine.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry,” Levin said. “It was a very loose tail. Very loose. And I’m glad I did it. The bruises and the swelling and all of that have either gone away or she’s using a lot of makeup, because this lady has been getting a lot of visitors. All men, all alone, all different times of the night. It looks like she tries to fit at least two into her dance card each night.”
“Is she picking them up in the bars?”
“No, she’s been staying in. These guys must be regulars or something because they know their way to her door. I got some plate numbers. If necessary I can visit them and try to get some answers. I also shot some infrared video but I haven’t transferred it to disc yet.”
“No, let’s hold off on visiting any of these guys for now. Word could get back to her. We have to be very careful around her. I don’t care if she’s tricking or not.”
I drank some more coffee and tried to decide how to move with this.
“You ran a check on her, right? No criminal record?”
“Right, she’s clean. My guess is that she’s new to the game. You know, these women who want to be actresses, it’s a tough gig. It wears you down. She probably started by taking a little help from these guys here and there, then it became a business. She went from amateur to pro.”
“And none of this is in the reports you got before?”
“Nope. Like I told you, there hasn’t been a lot of follow-up by the cops. At least so far.”
“If she graduated from amateur to pro, she could’ve graduated to setting a guy like Roulet up. He drives a nice car, wears nice clothes… have you seen his watch?”
“Yeah, a Rolex. If it’s real, then he’s wearing ten grand right there on his wrist. She could have seen that from across the bar. Maybe that’s why she picked him out of all the rest.”
We were back by the courthouse. I had to start heading toward downtown. I asked Levin where he was parked and he directed Earl to the lot.
“This is all good,” I said. “But it means Louis lied about more than UCLA.”
“Yeah,” Levin agreed. “He knew he was going into a pay-for-play deal with her. He should have told you about it.”
“Yeah, and now I’m going to talk to
We pulled up next to the curb outside a pay lot on Acacia. Levin took a file out of his briefcase. It had a rubber band around it that held a piece of paper to the outside cover. He held it out to me and I saw the document was an invoice for almost six thousand dollars for eight days of investigative services and expenses. Based on what I had heard during the last half hour, the price was a bargain.
“That file has everything we just talked about, plus a copy of the video from Morgan’s on disc,” Levin said.
I hesitantly took the file. By taking it I was moving it into the realm of discovery. Not accepting it and keeping everything with Levin would have given me a buffer, wiggle room if I got into a discovery scrap with the prosecutor.
I tapped the invoice with my finger.
“I’ll call this in to Lorna and we’ll send out a check,” I said.
“How is Lorna? I miss seeing her.”
When we were married, Lorna used to ride with me a lot and go into court with me to watch. Sometimes when I was short a driver she would take the wheel. Levin saw her more often back then.
“She’s doing great. She’s still Lorna.”
Levin cracked his door open but didn’t get out.
“You want me to stay on Reggie?”
That was the question. If I approved I would lose all deniability if something went wrong. Because now I would know what he was doing. I hesitated but then I nodded.
“Very loose. And don’t farm it out. I only trust you on it.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll handle it myself. What else?”
“The left-handed man. We have to figure out who Mr. X is and whether he was part of this thing or just another customer.”
Levin nodded and pumped his left-handed fist again.
“I’m on it.”
He put on his sunglasses, opened the door and slid out. He reached back in for his briefcase and his unopened bottle of water, then said good-bye and closed the door. I watched him start walking through the lot in search of his car. I should have been ecstatic about all I had just learned. It tilted everything steeply toward my client. But I still felt uneasy about something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
Earl had turned his music off and was awaiting direction.
“Take me downtown, Earl,” I said.
“You got it,” he replied. “The CCB?”
“Yeah and, hey, who was that you were listening to on the ’Pod? I could sort of hear it.”
“That was Snoop. Gotta play him up loud.”
I nodded. L.A. ’s own. And a former defendant who faced down the machine on a murder charge and walked away. There was no better story of inspiration on the street.
“Earl?” I said. “Take the seven-ten. We’re running late.”
