with Minton and worse yet had tipped him early to my hole card. He had the video from Morgan’s and had all the time he would need to prepare for it in court.
Finally, I slapped the folder closed and pulled out my cell phone. Levin answered after two rings.
“How’d it go?” he asked. “Bonuses for everybody?”
“Not quite. Do you know where Roulet’s office is?”
“Yeah, on Canon in Beverly Hills. I’ve got the exact address in the file.”
“Meet me there.”
“Now?”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
I punched the button, ending the call without further discussion, and then called Earl on speed dial. He must have had his iPod plugs in his ears because he didn’t answer until the seventh ring.
“Come get me,” I said. “We’re going over the hill.”
I closed the phone and got off the bench. Walking toward the opening between the two courthouses and the place where Earl would pick me up, I felt angry. At Roulet, at Levin, and most of all at myself. But I also was aware of the positive side of this. The one thing that was certain now was that the franchise-and the big payday that came with it-was back in play. The case was going to go the distance to trial unless Roulet took the state’s offer. And I thought the chances of that were about the same as the chances for snow in L.A. It could happen but I wouldn’t believe it until I saw it.
FIFTEEN
When the rich in Beverly Hills want to drop small fortunes on clothes and jewelry, they go to Rodeo Drive. When they want to drop larger fortunes on houses and condominiums, they walk a few blocks over to Canon Drive, where the high-line real estate companies roost, photographs of their multimillion-dollar offerings presented in showroom windows on ornate gold easels like Picassos and Van Goghs. This is where I found Windsor Residential Estates and Louis Roulet on Thursday afternoon.
By the time I got there, Raul Levin was already waiting-and I mean waiting. He had been kept in the showroom with a fresh bottle of water while Louis worked the phone in his private office. The receptionist, an overly tanned blonde with a haircut that hung down one side of her face like a scythe, told me it would be just a few minutes more and then we both could go in. I nodded and stepped away from her desk.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Levin asked.
“Yeah, when we get in there with him.”
The showroom was lined on both sides with steel wires that ran from ceiling to floor and on which were attached 8 ? 10 frames containing the photos and pedigrees of the estates offered for sale. Acting like I was studying the rows of houses I couldn’t hope to afford in a hundred years, I moved toward the back hallway that led to the offices. When I got there I noticed an open door and heard Louis Roulet’s voice. It sounded like he was setting up a showing of a Mulholland Drive mansion for a client he told the realtor on the other end of the phone wanted his name kept confidential. I looked back at Levin, who was still near the front of the showroom.
“This is bullshit,” I said and signaled him back.
I walked down the hallway and into Roulet’s plush office. There was the requisite desk stacked with paperwork and thick multiple-listing catalogs. But Roulet wasn’t there. He was in a sitting area to the right of the desk, slouched on a sofa with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other. He looked shocked to see me and I thought maybe the receptionist hadn’t even told him he had visitors.
Levin came into the office behind me, followed by the receptionist, the hair scythe swinging back and forth as she hurried to catch up. I was worried that the blade might cut off her nose.
“Mr. Roulet, I’m sorry, these men just came back here.”
“Lisa, I have to go,” Roulet said into the phone. “I’ll call you back.”
He put the phone down in its cradle on the glass coffee table.
“It’s okay, Robin,” he said. “You can go now.”
He made a dismissive gesture with the back of his hand. Robin looked at me like I was wheat she wanted to cut down with that blond blade and then left the room. I closed the door and looked back at Roulet.
“What happened?” he said. “Is it over?”
“Not by a long shot,” I said.
I was carrying the state’s discovery file. The weapon report was front and center. I stepped over and dropped it onto the coffee table.
“I only succeeded in embarrassing myself in the DA’s office. The case against you still stands and we’ll probably be going to trial.”
Roulet’s face dropped.
“I don’t understand,” he said. “You said you were going to tear that guy a new asshole.”
“Turns out the only asshole in there was me. Because once again you didn’t level with me.”
Then, turning to look at Levin, I said, “And because you got us set up.”
Roulet opened the file. On the top page was a color photograph of a knife with blood on its black handle and the tip of its blade. It was not the same knife that was photocopied in the records Levin got from his police sources and that he had showed us in the meeting in Dobbs’s office the first day of the case.
“What the hell is that?” said Levin, looking down at the photo.
“That is a knife. The real one, the one Roulet had with him when he went to Reggie Campo’s apartment. The one with her blood and his
Levin sat down on the couch on the opposite side from Roulet. I stayed standing and they both looked up at me. I started with Levin.
“I went in to see the DA to kick his ass today and he ended up kicking mine with that. Who was your source, Raul? Because he gave you a marked deck.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute. That’s not -”
“No, you wait a minute. The report you had on the knife being untraceable was bogus. It was put in there to fuck us up. To trick us and it worked perfectly, because I waltzed in there thinking I couldn’t lose today and just gave him the Morgan’s bar video. Just trotted it out like it was the hammer. Only it wasn’t, goddamn it.”
“It was the runner,” Levin said.
“What?”
“The runner. The guy who runs the reports between the police station and the DA’s office. I tell him which cases I’m interested in and he makes extra copies for me.”
“Well, they’re onto his ass and they worked it perfectly. You better call him and tell him if he needs a good criminal defense attorney I’m not available.”
I realized I was pacing in front of them on the couch but I didn’t stop.
“And you,” I said to Roulet. “I now get the real weapon report and find out not only is the knife a custom-made job but it is traceable right back to you because it has your fucking initials on it! You lied to me again!”
“I didn’t lie,” Roulet yelled back. “I tried to tell you. I said it wasn’t my knife. I said it twice but nobody listened to me.”
“Then you should have clarified what you meant. Just saying it wasn’t your knife was like saying you didn’t do it. You should have said, ‘Hey, Mick, there might be a problem with the knife because I did have a knife but this picture isn’t it.’ What did you think, that it was just going to go away?”
“Please, can you keep it down,” Roulet protested. “There might be customers out there.”
“I don’t care! Fuck your customers. You’re not going to need customers anymore where you’re going. Don’t you see that this knife trumps everything we’ve got? You took a murder weapon to a meeting with a prostitute. The knife was no plant. It was yours. And that means we no longer have the setup. How can we claim she set you up when the prosecutor can prove you had that knife with you when you walked through the door?”
