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:
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 windshield wiper 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 Everything about the house once you went through the door was ordinary and outdated.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 with a downtown investigation. Or she would drunkenly reveal to a criminal defense attorney and ex-husband something about a case he shouldn’t be told.
The phone started to ring from inside the house. I moved to the front door and fumbled with my keys to unlock it and get inside in time. My phone numbers and who has them could form a pyramid chart. The number in the yellow pages everybody has or could have. Next up the pyramid is my cell phone, which has been disseminated to key colleagues, investigators, bondsmen, clients and other cogs in the machine. My home phone-the land line-was the top of the pyramid. Very few had the number. No clients and no other lawyers except for one.
I got in and grabbed the phone off the kitchen wall before it went to message. The caller was that one other lawyer with the number. Maggie McPherson.
“Did you get my messages?”
“I got the one on my cell. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I left one on this number a lot earlier.”
“Oh, I’ve been gone all day. I just got in.”
“Where have you been?”
“Well, I’ve been up to San Francisco and back and I just got in from having dinner with Raul Levin. Is all of that all right with you?”
“I’m just curious. What was in San Francisco?”
“A client.”
“So what you really mean is you were up to San Quentin and back.”
“You were always too smart for me, Maggie. I can never fool you. Is there a reason for this call?”
“I just wanted to see if you got my apology and I also wanted to find out if you were going to do something with Hayley tomorrow.”
“Yes and yes. But Maggie, no apology is necessary and you should know that. I am sorry for the way I acted before I left. And if my daughter wants to be with me tomorrow, then I want to be with her. Tell her we can go down to the pier or to a movie if she wants. Whatever she wants.”
“Well, she actually wants to go to the mall.”
She said it as if she were stepping on glass.
“The mall? The mall is fine. I’ll take her. What’s wrong with the mall? Is there something in particular she wants?”
I suddenly noticed a foreign odor in the house. The smell of smoke. While standing in the middle of the kitchen I checked the oven and the stove. They were off. I was tethered to the kitchen because the phone wasn’t cordless. I stretched it to the door and flicked on the light to the dining room. It was empty and its light was cast into the next room, the living room through which I had passed when I had entered. It looked empty as well.
“They have a place there where you make your own teddy bear and you pick the style and its voice box and you put a little heart in with the stuffing. It’s all very cute.”
I now wanted to get off the line and explore further into my house.
“Fine. I’ll take her. What time is good?”
“I was thinking about noon. Maybe we could have lunch first.”
“We?”
“Would that bother you?”
“No, Maggie, not at all. How about I come by at noon?”
“Great.”
“See you then.”
I hung the phone up before she could say good-bye. I owned a gun but it was a collector piece that hadn’t been fired in my lifetime and was stored in a box in my bedroom closet at the rear of the house. So I quietly opened a kitchen drawer and took out a short but sharp steak knife. I then walked through the living room toward the hallway that led to the rear of the house. There were three doorways in the hall. They led to my bedroom, a bathroom and another bedroom I had turned into a home office, the only real office I had.
The desk light was on in the office. It was not visible from the angle I had in the hallway but I could tell it was on. I had not been home in two days but I did not remember leaving it on. I approached the open door to the room slowly, aware that this is what I may have been meant to do. Focus on the light in one room while the intruder is waiting in the darkness of the bedroom or bathroom.
“Come on back, Mick. It’s just me.”
I knew the voice but it didn’t make me feel at ease. Louis Roulet was waiting in the room. I stepped to the threshold and stopped. He was sitting in the black leather desk seat. He swiveled it around so that he was facing me and crossed his legs. His pants rode up on his left leg and I could see the tracking bracelet that Fernando Valenzuela had made him wear. I knew that if Roulet had come to kill me, at least he would leave a trail. It wasn’t all that comforting, though. I leaned against the door frame so that I could hold the knife behind my hip without being too obvious about it.
“So this is where you do your great legal work?” Roulet asked.
“Some of it. What are you doing here, Louis?”
“I came to see you. You didn’t return my call and so I wanted to make sure we were still a team, you know?”
“I was out of town. I just got back.”
“What about dinner with Raul? Isn’t that what you said to your caller?”
