“If I have no choice.”
I sat down across from him.
“Sam, you always have a choice. But let me explain it again. They’ve got you cold on this, okay? You were caught ripping off people who wanted to help the people caught in one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. They’ve got three co-conspirators who took deals to testify against you. They have the list of card numbers found in your possession. What I am saying is that at the end of the day, you are going to get about as much sympathy from the judge and a jury-if it should come to that-as they would give a child raper. Maybe even less.”
“I know all of that but I am a useful asset to society. I could educate people. Put me in the schools. Put me in the country clubs. Put me on probation and I’ll tell people what to watch out for out there.”
“
So many of my clients are like Sam Scales. They hopelessly believe there is a light behind the door. And I’m the one who has to tell them the door is locked and that the bulb burned out long ago anyway.
“Then I guess I have to do it,” Scales said, looking at me with eyes that blamed me for not finding a way out for him.
“It’s your choice. You want a trial, we’ll go to trial. Your exposure will be ten years plus the one you’ve got left on the probation. You make ’em real mad and they can also ship you over to the FBI so the feds can take a swing at you on interstate wire fraud if they want.”
“Let me ask you something. If we go to trial, could we win?”
I almost laughed but I still had some sympathy left for him.
“No, Sam, we can’t win. Haven’t you been listening to what I’ve been telling you for two months? They got you. You can’t win. But I’m here to do what you want. Like I said, if you want a trial we’ll go to trial. But I gotta tell you that if we go, you’ll have to get your mother to pay me again. I’m only good through today.”
“How much did she pay you already?”
“Eight thousand.”
“Eight grand! That’s her fucking retirement account money!”
“I’m surprised she has anything left in the account with you for a son.”
He looked at me sharply.
“I’m sorry, Sam. I shouldn’t have said that. From what she told me, you’re a good son.”
“Jesus Christ, I should have gone to fucking law school. You’re a con no different from me. You know that, Haller? Only that paper they give you makes you street legal, that’s all.”
They always blame the lawyer for making a living. As if it’s a crime to want to be paid for doing a day’s work. What Scales had just said to me would have brought a near violent reaction back when I was maybe a year or two out of law school. But I’d heard the same insult too many times by now to do anything but roll with it.
“What can I say, Sam? We’ve already had this conversation.”
He nodded and didn’t say anything. I took it to mean he would take the DA’s offer. Four years in the state penal system and a ten-thousand-dollar fine, followed by five years’ parole. He’d be out in two and a half but the parole would be a killer for a natural-born con man to make it through unscathed. After a few minutes I got up and left the room. I knocked on the outer door and Deputy Frey let me back into the courtroom.
“He’s good to go,” I said.
I took my seat at the defense table and soon Frey brought Scales out and sat him next to me. He still had the cuffs on. He said nothing to me. In another few minutes Glenn Bernasconi, the prosecutor who worked 124, came down from his office on the fifteenth floor and I told him we were ready to accept the case disposition.
At 11 A.M. Judge Judith Champagne came out of chambers and onto the bench and Frey called the courtroom to order. The judge was a diminutive, attractive blonde and ex-prosecutor who had been on the bench at least as long as I’d had my ticket. She was old school all the way, fair but tough, running her courtroom as a fiefdom. Sometimes she even brought her dog, a German shepherd named Justice, to work with her. If the judge had had any kind of discretion in the sentence when Sam Scales faced her, he would have gone down hard. That was what I did for Sam Scales, whether he knew it or not. With this deal I had saved him from that.
“Good morning,” the judge said. “I am glad you could make it today, Mr. Haller.”
“I apologize, Your Honor. I got held up in Judge Flynn’s court in Compton.”
That was all I had to say. The judge knew about Flynn. Everybody did.
“And on St. Patrick’s Day, no less,” she said.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“I understand we have a disposition in the Tsunami Svengali matter.”
She immediately looked over at her court reporter.
“Michelle, strike that.”
She looked back at the lawyers.
“I understand we have a disposition in the Scales case. Is that correct?”
“That is correct,” I said. “We’re ready to go on that.”
“Good.”
Bernasconi half read, half repeated from memory the legalese needed to take a plea from the defendant. Scales waived his rights and pleaded guilty to the charges. He said nothing other than the word. The judge accepted the disposition agreement and sentenced him accordingly.
“You’re a lucky man, Mr. Scales,” she said when it was over. “I believe Mr. Bernasconi was quite generous with you. I would not have been.”
“I don’t feel so lucky, Judge,” Scales said.
Deputy Frey tapped him on the shoulder from behind. Scales stood up and turned to me.
“I guess this is it,” he said.
“Good luck, Sam,” I said.
He was led off through the steel door and I watched it close behind them. I had not shaken his hand.
THIRTEEN
The Van Nuys Civic Center is a long concrete plaza enclosed by government buildings. Anchoring one end is the Van Nuys Division of the LAPD. Along one side are two courthouses sitting opposite a public library and a city administration building. At the end of the concrete and glass channel is a federal administration building and post office. I waited for Louis Roulet in the plaza on one of the concrete benches near the library. The plaza was largely deserted despite the great weather. Not like the day before, when the place was overrun with cameras and the media and the gadflies, all crowding around Robert Blake and his lawyers as they tried to spin a not-guilty verdict into innocence.
It was a nice, quiet afternoon and I usually liked being outside. Most of my work is done in windowless courtrooms or the backseat of my Town Car, so I take it outside whenever I can. But I wasn’t feeling the breeze or noticing the fresh air this time. I was annoyed because Louis Roulet was late and because what Sam Scales had said to me about being a street-legal con was festering like cancer in my mind. When finally I saw Roulet crossing the plaza toward me I got up to meet him.
“Where’ve you been?” I said abruptly.
“I told you I’d get here as soon as I could. I was in the middle of a showing when you called.”
“Let’s walk.”
I headed toward the federal building because it would give us the longest stretch before we would have to turn around to cross back. I had my meeting with Minton, the new prosecutor assigned to his case, in twenty-five minutes in the older of the two courthouses. I realized that we didn’t look like a lawyer and his client discussing a
