THIRTY
The document Lankford handed me was a search warrant granting the police the authority to search my home, office and car for a.22 caliber Colt Woodsman Sport Model pistol with the serial number 656300081-52. The authorization said the pistol was believed to have been the murder weapon in the April 12 homicide of Raul A. Levin. Lankford had handed the warrant to me with a proud smirk on his face. I did my best to act like it was business as usual, the kind of thing I handled every other day and twice on Fridays. But the truth was, my knees almost buckled.
“How’d you get this?” I said.
It was a nonsensical response to a nonsensical moment.
“Signed, sealed and delivered,” Lankford said. “So where do you want to start? You have your car here, right? That Lincoln you’re chauffeured around in like a high-class hooker.”
I checked the judge’s signature on the last page and saw it was a Glendale muni-court judge I had never heard of. They had gone to a local who probably knew he’d need the police endorsement come election time. I started to recover from the shock. Maybe the search was a front.
“This is bullshit,” I said. “You don’t have the PC for this. I could have this thing quashed in ten minutes.”
“It looked pretty good to Judge Fullbright,” Lankford said.
“Fullbright? What does she have to do with this?”
“Well, we knew you were in trial, so we figured we ought to ask her if it was okay to drop the warrant on you. Don’t want to get a lady like that mad, you know. She said after court was over was fine by her-and she didn’t say shit about the PC or anything else.”
They must have gone to Fullbright on the lunch break, right after I had seen them in the courtroom. My guess was, it had been Sobel’s idea to check with the judge first. A guy like Lankford would have enjoyed pulling me right out of court and disrupting the trial.
I had to think quickly. I looked at Sobel, the more sympathetic of the two.
“I’m in the middle of a three-day trial,” I said. “Any way we can put this on hold until Thursday?”
“No fucking way,” Lankford answered before his partner could. “We’re not letting you out of our sight until we execute the search. We’re not going to give you the time to dump the gun. Now where’s your car, Lincoln lawyer?”
I checked the authorization of the warrant. It had to be very specific and I was in luck. It called for the search of a Lincoln with the California license plate NT GLTY. I realized that someone must have written the plate down on the day I was called to Raul Levin’s house from the Dodgers game. Because that was the old Lincoln -the one I was driving that day.
“It’s at home. Since I’m in trial I don’t use the driver. I got a ride in with my client this morning and I was just going to ride back with him. He’s probably waiting down there.”
I lied. The Lincoln I had been driving was in the courthouse parking garage. But I couldn’t let the cops search it because there was a gun in a compartment in the backseat armrest. It wasn’t the gun they were looking for but it was a replacement. After Raul Levin was murdered and I’d found my pistol box empty, I asked Earl Briggs to get me a gun for protection. I knew that with Earl there would be no ten-day waiting period. But I didn’t know the gun’s history or registration and I didn’t want to find out through the Glendale Police Department.
But I was in luck because the Lincoln with the gun inside wasn’t the one described in the warrant. That one was in my garage at home, waiting on the buyer from the limo service to come by and take a look at. And that would be the Lincoln that would be searched.
Lankford grabbed the warrant out of my hand and shoved it into an inside coat pocket.
“Don’t worry about your ride,” Lankford said. “We’re your ride. Let’s go.”
On the way down and out of the courthouse, we didn’t run into Roulet or his entourage. And soon I was riding in the back of a Grand Marquis, thinking that I had made the right choice when I had gone with the Lincoln. There was more room in the Lincoln and the ride was smoother.
Lankford did the driving and I sat behind him. The windows were up and I could hear him chewing gum.
“Let me see the warrant again,” I said.
Lankford made no move.
“I’m not letting you inside my house until I’ve had a chance to completely study the warrant. I could do it on the way and save you some time. Or…”
Lankford reached inside his jacket and pulled out the warrant. He handed it over his shoulder to me. I knew why he was hesitant. Cops usually had to lay out their whole investigation in the warrant application in order to convince a judge of probable cause. They didn’t like the target reading it, because it gave away the store.
I glanced out the window as we were passing the car lots on Van Nuys Boulevard. I saw a new model Town Car on a pedestal in front of the Lincoln dealership. I looked back down at the warrant, opened it to the summary section and read.
Lankford and Sobel had started out doing some good work. I had to give them that. One of them had taken a shot-I was guessing Sobel-and put my name into the state’s Automated Firearm System and hit the lotto. The AFS computer said I was the registered owner of a pistol of the same make and model as the murder weapon.
It was a smooth move but it still wasn’t enough to make probable cause. Colt made the Woodsman for more than sixty years. That meant there were probably a million of them out there and a million suspects who owned them.
They had the smoke. They then rubbed other sticks together to make the required fire. The application summary stated that I had hidden from the investigators the fact that I owned the gun in question. It said I had also fabricated an alibi when initially interviewed about Levin’s death, then attempted to throw detectives off the track by giving them a phony lead on the drug dealer Hector Arrande Moya.
Though motivation was not necessarily a subject needed to obtain a search warrant, the PC summary alluded to it anyway, stating that the victim-Raul Levin-had been extorting investigative assignments from me and that I had refused to pay him upon completion of those assignments.
The outrage of such an assertion aside, the alibi fabrication was the key point of probable cause. The statement said that I had told the detectives I was home at the time of the murder, but a message on my home phone was left just before the suspected time of death and this indicated that I was not home, thereby collapsing my alibi and proving me a liar at the same time.
I slowly read the PC statement twice more but my anger did not subside. I tossed the warrant onto the seat next to me.
“In some ways it’s really too bad I am not the killer,” I said.
“Yeah, why is that?” Lankford said.
“Because this warrant is a piece of shit and you both know it. It won’t stand up to challenge. I told you that message came in when I was already on the phone and that can be checked and proven, only you were too lazy or you didn’t want to check it because it would have made it a little difficult to get your warrant. Even with your pocket judge in Glendale. You lied by omission and commission. It’s a bad-faith warrant.”
Because I was sitting behind Lankford I had a better angle on Sobel. I watched her for signs of doubt as I spoke.
“And the suggestion that Raul was extorting business from me and that I wouldn’t pay is a complete joke. Extorted me with what? And what didn’t I pay him for? I paid him every time I got a bill. Man, I tell you, if this is how you work all your cases, I gotta open up an office in Glendale. I’m going to shove this warrant right up your police chief’s ass.”
“You lied about the gun,” Lankford said. “And you owed Levin money. It’s right there in his accounts book. Four grand.”
“I didn’t lie about anything. You never asked if I owned a gun.”
“Lied by omission. Right back at ya.”
