“But I want to talk to you, too,” he said.
“About what?”
“About everything. How do you think I did up there?”
“You did good and everything is going good. I think we’re in good shape.”
I then nodded my head toward the prosecution table where Minton had returned and dropped my voice to a whisper.
“He knows it, too. He’s about to make another offer.”
“Should I stick around to hear what it is?”
I shook my head.
“No, it doesn’t matter what it is. There’s only one verdict, right?”
“That’s right.”
He patted my shoulder when he got up and I had to steady myself not to shrink away from the touch.
“Don’t touch me, Louis,” I said. “You want to do something for me, then give me my fucking gun back.”
He didn’t reply. He just smiled and moved toward the gate. After he was gone I turned to look at Minton. He now had the gleam of desperation in his eye. He needed a conviction-any conviction-on this case.
“What’s up?”
“I have another offer.”
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll drop it down further. Take it down to simple assault. Six months in county. The way they empty that place out at the end of every month, he probably won’t do sixty days actual.”
I nodded. He was talking about the federal mandate to stop overcrowding in the county jail system. It didn’t matter what was handed down in a courtroom; out of necessity, sentences were often drastically cut. It was a good offer but I didn’t show anything. I knew the offer had to have come from the second floor. Minton wouldn’t have had the authority to go so low.
“He takes that and she’ll rob him blind in civil,” I said. “I doubt he’ll go for it.”
“That’s a damn good offer,” Minton said.
There was a hint of outrage in his voice. My guess was that the observer’s report card on Minton was not good and he was under orders to close the case out with a guilty plea. Trash the trial and the judge’s and jury’s time, just get that plea. The Van Nuys office didn’t like losing cases and we were only two months removed from the Robert Blake fiasco. It pleaded them out when the going got rough. Minton could go as low as he needed to go, just as long as he got something. Roulet had to go down-even if it was only for sixty days actual.
“Maybe from your side of things it’s a damn good offer. But it still means I have to convince a client to plead to something he says he didn’t do. Then on top of that, the dispo still opens the door to civil liability. So while he’s sitting up there in county trying to protect his asshole for sixty days, Reggie Campo and her lawyer are down here taking him to the cleaners. You see? It’s not so good when you look at it from his angle. If it was left to me, I’d ride the trial out. I think we’re winning. I know we’ve got the Bible guy, so we’ve got a hanger at minimum. But who knows, maybe we’ve got all twelve.”
Minton slapped his hand down on his table.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You know he did this thing, Haller. And six months-let alone sixty days- for what he did to that woman is a joke. It’s a fucking travesty that I’ll lose sleep over, but they’ve been watching and think you’ve got the jury, so I have to do it.”
I closed my briefcase with an authoritative snap and stood up.
“Then I hope you got something good for rebuttal, Ted. Because you’re going to get your wish for a jury verdict. And I have to tell you, man, you’re looking more and more like a guy who came naked to a razor fight. Better get your hands off your nuts and fight back.”
I headed through the gate. Halfway to the doors at the back of the courtroom I stopped and looked back at him.
“Hey, you know something? If you lose sleep over this or any other case, then you gotta quit the job and go do something else. Because you’re not going to make it, Ted.”
Minton sat at his table, staring straight ahead at the empty bench. He didn’t acknowledge what I had said. I left him there thinking about it. I thought I had played it right. I’d find out in the morning.
I went back over to Four Green Fields to work on my closing. I wouldn’t need the two hours the judge had given us. I ordered a Guinness at the bar and took it over to one of the tables to sit by myself. Table service didn’t start again until six. I sketched out some basic notes but I instinctively knew I would largely be reacting to the state’s presentation. In pretrial motions, Minton had already asked and received permission from Judge Fullbright to use a PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the case to the jury. It had become all the rage with young prosecutors to put up the screen and flash computer graphics on it, as if the jurors couldn’t be trusted to think and make connections on their own. It now had to be fed to them like TV.
My clients rarely had the money to pay my fees, let alone for PowerPoint presentations. Roulet was an exception. Through his mother he could afford to hire Francis Ford Coppola to put together a PowerPoint for him if he wanted it. But I never even brought it up. I was strictly old school. I liked going into the ring on my own. Minton could throw whatever he wanted up on the big blue screen. When it was my turn I wanted the jury looking only at me. If I couldn’t convince them, nothing from a computer could, either.
At 5:30 I called Maggie McPherson at her office.
“It’s quitting time,” I said.
“Maybe for big-shot defense pros. Us public servants have to work till after dark.”
“Why don’t you take a break and come meet me for a Guinness and some shepherd’s pie, then you can go back to work and finish up.”
“No, Haller. I can’t do that. Besides, I know what you want.”
I laughed. There was never a time that she didn’t think she knew what I wanted. Most of the time she was right but not this time.
“Yeah? What do I want?”
“You’re going to try to corrupt me again and find out what Minton is up to.”
“Not a chance, Mags. Minton is an open book. Smithson’s observer is giving him bad marks. So Smithson’s told him to fold the tent, get something and get out. But Minton’s been working on his little PowerPoint closing and wants to gamble, take it all the way to the house. Besides that, he’s got genuine outrage in his blood, so he doesn’t like the idea of folding up.”
“Neither do I. Smithson’s always afraid of losing-especially since Blake. He always wants to sell short. You can’t be that way.”
“I always said they lost the Blake case the minute they passed you over. You tell ’em, Maggie.”
“If I ever get the chance.”
“Someday.”
She didn’t like dwelling on her own stalled career. She moved on.
“So you sound chipper,” she said. “Yesterday you were a murder suspect. Today you’ve got the DA by the short hairs. What changed?”
“Nothing. It’s just the calm before the storm, I guess. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever put a rush on ballistics?”
“What kind of ballistics?”
“Matching casing to casing and slug to slug.”
“Depends on who is doing it-which department, I mean. But if they put a real rush on it, they could have something in twenty-four hours.”
I felt the dull thud of dread drop into my stomach. I knew I could be on borrowed time.
“Most of the time, though, that doesn’t happen,” she continued. “Two or three days is what it will usually take on a rush. And if you want the whole package-casing and slug comparisons-it could take longer because the slug could be damaged and tough to read. They have to work with it.”
I nodded. I didn’t think any of that could help me. I knew they had recovered a bullet casing at the crime scene. If Lankford and Sobel got a match on that to the casing of a bullet fired fifty years ago from Mickey Cohen’s gun, they would come for me and worry about the slug comparison later.
“You still there?” Maggie asked.
