“Bullshit.”
“Four grand.”
“Oh yeah, the four grand-I killed him because I didn’t want to pay him four grand,” I said with all the sarcasm I could muster. “You got me there, Detective. Motivation. But I guess it never occurred to you to see if he had even billed me for the four grand yet, or to see if I hadn’t just paid an invoice from him for six thousand dollars a week before he was murdered.”
Lankford was undaunted. But I saw the doubt start to creep into Sobel’s face.
“Doesn’t matter how much or when you paid him,” Lankford said. “A blackmailer is never satisfied. You never stop paying until you reach the point of no return. That’s what this is about. The point of no return.”
I shook my head.
“And what exactly was it that he had on me that made me give him jobs and pay him until I reached the point of no return?”
Lankford and Sobel exchanged a look and Lankford nodded. Sobel reached down to a briefcase on the floor and took out a file. She handed it over the seat to me.
“Take a look,” Lankford said. “You missed it when you were ransacking his place. He’d hidden it in a dresser drawer.”
I opened the file and saw that it contained several 8 ? 10 color photos. They were taken from afar and I was in each one of them. The photographer had trailed my Lincoln over several days and several miles. Each image a frozen moment in time, the photos showed me with various individuals whom I easily recognized as clients. They were prostitutes, street dealers and Road Saints. The photos could be interpreted as suspicious because they showed one split second of time. A male prostitute in mini-shorts alighting from the backseat of the Lincoln. Teddy Vogel handing me a thick roll of cash through the back window. I closed the file and tossed it back over the seat.
“You’re kidding me, right? You’re saying Raul came to me with that? He extorted me with that? Those are my clients. Is this a joke or am I just missing something?”
“The California bar might not think it’s a joke,” Lankford said. “We hear you’re on thin ice with the bar. Levin knew it. He worked it.”
I shook my head.
“Incredible,” I said.
I knew I had to stop talking. I was doing everything wrong with these people. I knew I should just shut up and ride it out. But I felt an almost overpowering need to convince them. I began to understand why so many cases were made in the interview rooms of police stations. People just can’t shut up.
I tried to place the photographs that were in the file. Vogel giving me the roll of cash was in the parking lot outside the Saints’ strip club on Sepulveda. That happened after Harold Casey’s trial and Vogel was paying me for filing the appeal. The prostitute was named Terry Jones and I handled a soliciting charge for him the first week of April. I’d had to find him on the Santa Monica Boulevard stroll the night before a hearing to make sure he was going to show up.
It became clear that the photos had all been taken between the morning I had caught the Roulet case and the day Raul Levin was murdered. They were then planted at the crime scene by the killer-all part of Roulet’s plan to set me up so that he could control me. The police would have everything they needed to put the Levin murder on me-except the murder weapon. As long as Roulet had the gun, he had me.
I had to admire the plan and the ingenuity at the same time that it made me feel the dread of desperation. I tried to put the window down but the button wouldn’t work. I asked Sobel to open a window and she did. Fresh air started blowing into the car.
After a while Lankford looked at me in the rearview and tried to jump-start the conversation.
“We ran the history on that Woodsman,” he said. “You know who owned it once, don’t you?”
“Mickey Cohen,” I answered matter-of-factly, staring out the window at the steep hillsides of Laurel Canyon.
“How’d you end up with Mickey Cohen’s gun?”
I answered without turning from the window.
“My father was a lawyer. Mickey Cohen was his client.”
Lankford whistled. Cohen was one of the most famous gangsters to ever call Los Angeles home. He was from back in the day when the gangsters competed with movie stars for the gossip headlines.
“And what? He just gave your old man a gun?”
“Cohen was charged in a shooting and my father defended him. He claimed self-defense. There was a trial and my father got a not-guilty verdict. When the weapon was returned Mickey gave it to my father. Sort of a keepsake, you could say.”
“Your old man ever wonder how many people the Mick whacked with it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really know my father.”
“What about Cohen? You ever meet him?”
“My father represented him before I was even born. The gun came to me in his will. I don’t know why he picked me to have it. I was only five years old when he died.”
“And you grew up to be a lawyer like dear old dad, and being a good lawyer you registered it.”
“I thought if it was ever stolen or something I would want to be able to get it back. Turn here on Fareholm.”
Lankford did as I instructed and we started climbing up the hill to my home. I then gave them the bad news.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “You guys can search my house and my office and my car for as long as you want, but I have to tell you, you are wasting your time. Not only am I the wrong guy for this, but you aren’t going to find that gun.”
I saw Lankford’s head jog up and he was looking at me in the rearview again.
“And why is that, Counselor? You already dumped it?”
“Because the gun was stolen out of my house and I don’t know where it is.”
Lankford started laughing. I saw the joy in his eyes.
“Uh-huh, stolen. How convenient. When did this happen?”
“Hard to tell. I hadn’t checked on the gun in years.”
“You make a police report on it or file an insurance claim?”
“No.”
“So somebody comes in and steals your Mickey Cohen gun and you don’t report it. Even after you just told us you registered it in case this very thing happened. You being a lawyer and all, doesn’t that sound a little screwy to you?”
“It does, except I knew who stole it. It was a client. He told me he took it and if I were to report it, I would be violating a client trust because my police report would lead to his arrest. Kind of a catch-twenty-two, Detective.”
Sobel turned and looked back at me. I think maybe she thought I was making it up on the spot, which I was.
“That sounds like legal jargon and bullshit, Haller,” Lankford said.
“But it’s the truth. We’re here. Just park in front of the garage.”
Lankford pulled the car into the space in front of my garage and killed the engine. He turned to look back at me before getting out.
“Which client stole the gun?”
“I told you, I can’t tell you.”
“Well, Roulet’s your only client right now, isn’t he?”
“I have a lot of clients. But I told you, I can’t tell you.”
“Think maybe we should run the charts from his ankle bracelet and see if he’s been to your place lately?”
“Do whatever you want. He actually has been here. We had a meeting here once. In my office.”
“Maybe that’s when he took it.”
“I’m not telling you he took it, Detective.”
“Yeah, well, that bracelet gives Roulet a pass on the Levin thing, anyway. We checked the GPS. So I guess that
