“I just got off a plane,” I said. “I missed it.”
“A plane? Where were you?”
“Up north. What was the message?”
“Just an update on Corliss. If you weren’t calling about that, what were you calling about?”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Just hanging out. I don’t like going out on Fridays and Saturdays. It’s amateur hour. Too many drunks on the road.”
“Well, I want to meet. I’ve got to talk to somebody. Bad things are happening.”
Levin apparently sensed something in my voice because he immediately changed his stay-at-home-on-Friday- night policy and we agreed to meet at the Smoke House over by the Warner Studios. It was not far from where I was and not far from his home.
At the airport valet window I gave my ticket to a man in a red jacket and checked messages while waiting for the Lincoln.
Three messages had come in, all during the hour flight down from San Francisco. The first was from Maggie McPherson.
“Michael, I just wanted to call and say I’m sorry about how I was this morning. To tell you the truth, I was mad at myself for some of the things I said last night and the choices I made. I took it out on you and I should not have done that. Um, if you want to take Hayley out tomorrow or Sunday she would love it and, who knows, maybe I could come, too. Either way, just let me know.”
She didn’t call me Michael too often, even when we were married. She was one of those women who could use your last name and turn it into an endearment. That is, if she wanted to. She had always called me Haller. From the day we met in line to go through a metal detector at the CCB. She was headed to orientation at the DA’s office and I was headed to misdemeanor arraignment court to handle a DUI.
I saved the message to listen to again sometime and went on to the next. I was expecting it to be from Levin but the automated voice reported the call came from a number with a 310 area code. The next voice I heard was Louis Roulet’s.
“It’s me, Louis. I was just checking in. I was just wondering after yesterday where things stood. I also have something I want to tell you.”
I hit the erase button and moved on to the third and last message. This was Levin’s.
“Hey, Bossman, give me a call. I have some stuff on Corliss. Anyway, the name is Dwayne Jeffery Corliss. That’s Dwayne with a
I erased the message and closed the phone.
“Say no more,” I said to myself.
Once I heard that Corliss was a hype, I needed to know nothing else. I understood why Maggie had not trusted the guy. Hypes-needle addicts-were the most desperate and unreliable people you could come across in the machine. Given the opportunity, they would snitch off their own mothers to get the next injection, or into the next methadone program. Every one of them was a liar and every one of them could easily be shown as such in court.
I was, however, puzzled by what the prosecutor was up to. The name Dwayne Corliss was not in the discovery material Minton had given me. Yet the prosecutor was making the moves he would make with a witness. He had stuck Corliss into a ninety-day program for safekeeping. The Roulet trial would come and go in that time. Was he hiding Corliss? Or was he simply putting the snitch on a shelf in the closet so he would know exactly where he was and where he’d been in case the time came in trial that his testimony would be needed? He was obviously operating under the belief that I didn’t know about Corliss. And if it hadn’t been for a slip by Maggie McPherson, I wouldn’t. It was still a dangerous move, nevertheless. Judges do not look kindly on prosecutors who so openly flout the rules of discovery.
It led me to thinking of a possible strategy for the defense. If Minton was foolish enough to try to spring Corliss in trial, I might not even object under the rules of discovery. I might let him put the heroin addict on the stand so I would get the chance to shred him in front of the jury like a credit card receipt. It would all depend on what Levin could come up with. I planned to tell him to continue to dig into Dwayne Jeffery Corliss. To hold nothing back.
I also thought about Corliss being in a lockdown program at County-USC. Levin was wrong and so was Minton if he was thinking I couldn’t reach his witness in lockdown. By coincidence, my client Gloria Dayton had been placed in a lockdown program at County-USC after she snitched off her drug-dealing client. While there were a number of such programs at County, it was likely that she shared group therapy sessions or even mealtime with Corliss. I might not be able to get directly to Corliss but as Dayton ’s attorney I could get to her, and she in turn could get a message to Corliss.
The Lincoln pulled up and I gave the man in the red jacket a couple dollars. I exited the airport and drove south on Hollywood Way toward the center of Burbank, where all the studios were. I got to the Smoke House ahead of Levin and ordered a martini at the bar. On the overhead TV was an update on the start of the college basketball tournament. Florida had defeated Ohio in the first round. The headline on the bottom of the screen said “March Madness” and I toasted my glass to it. I knew what real March Madness was beginning to feel like.
Levin came in and ordered a beer before we sat down to dinner. It was still green, left over from the night before. Must have been a slow night. Maybe everybody had gone to Four Green Fields.
“Nothing like hair of the dog that bit ya, as long as it’s green hair,” he said in that brogue that was getting old.
He sipped the level of the glass down so he could walk with it and we stepped out to the hostess station so we could go to a table. She led us to a red padded booth that was shaped like a U. We sat across from each other and I put my briefcase down next to me. When the waitress came for a cocktail order we ordered the whole shooting match: salads, steaks and potatoes. I also asked for an order of the restaurant’s signature garlic cheese bread.
“Good thing you don’t like going out on weekends,” I said to Levin after she was gone. “You eat the cheese bread and your breath will probably kill anybody you come in contact with after this.”
“I’ll have to take my chances.”
We were quiet for a long moment after that. I could feel the vodka working its way into my guilt. I would be sure to order another when the salads came.
“So?” Levin finally said. “You called the meeting.”
I nodded.
“I want to tell you a story. Not all of the details are set or known. But I’ll tell it to you in the way I think it goes and then you tell me what you think and what I should do. Okay?”
“I like stories. Go ahead.”
“I don’t think you’ll like this one. It starts two years ago with -”
I stopped and waited while the waitress put down our salads and the cheese bread. I asked for another vodka martini even though I was only halfway through the one I had. I wanted to make sure there was no gap.
“So,” I said after she was gone. “This whole thing starts two years ago with Jesus Menendez. You remember him, right?”
“Yeah, we mentioned him the other day. The DNA. He’s the client you always say is in prison because he wiped his prick on a fluffy pink towel.”
He smiled because it was true that I had often reduced Menendez’s case to such an absurdly vulgar basis. I had often used it to get a laugh when trading war stories at Four Green Fields with other lawyers. That was before I knew what I now knew.
I did not return the smile.
“Yeah, well, it turns out Jesus didn’t do it.”
“What do you mean? Somebody else wiped his prick on the towel?”
