I pulled the last sheet from the file and put it down.

"This is a photocopy of a page from Rilz's pa.s.sport. I got it from the state's own discovery. It shows that Rilz left France for the United States in March, two thousand three. One month after this story was published. Plus, you've got the age. The article has his age right and it says he was making drug buys for the cops out of his business as an interior decorator. It obviously is him, Your Honor. He betrayed a lot of people over there and put them in jail, then he comes here and starts over."

Golantz started shaking his head in a desperate sort of way.

"It's still no good," he said. "This is a violation of the rules of discovery and is inadmissible. You can't sit on this and then sucker punch the state with it."

The judge swiveled his view to me and this time gave me the squint as well.

"Your Honor, if anybody sat on anything, it was the state. This is stuff the prosecution should've come up with and given to me. In fact, I think the witness did know about this and he he sat on it." sat on it."

"That is a serious accusation, Mr. Haller," the judge intoned. "Do you have evidence of that?"

"Judge, the reason I know about this at all is by accident. On Sunday I was reviewing my investigator's prep work and noticed that he had run all the names a.s.sociated with this case through the Lexis-Nexis search engine. He had used the computer and account I inherited with Jerry Vincent's law practice. I checked the account and noticed that the default setting was for English-language search only. Having looked at the photocopy of Rilz's pa.s.sport in the discovery file and knowing of his background in Europe, I did the search again, this time including French and German languages. I came up with this French newspaper article in about two minutes, and I find it hard to believe that I found something that easily that the entire Sheriff's Department, the prosecution, and Interpol didn't know about. So Judge, I don't know if that is evidence of anything but the defense is certainly feeling like the party that's been damaged here."

I couldn't believe it. The judge swiveled to Golantz and gave him the squint. The first time ever. I shifted to my right so that a good part of the jury had an angle on it.

"What about that, Mr. Golantz?" the judge asked.

"It's absurd, Your Honor. We have sat on nothing, and anything that we have found has gone into the discovery file. And I would like to ask why Mr. Haller didn't alert us to this yesterday when he just admitted that he made this discovery Sunday and the printout is dated then as well."

I stared deadpan at Golantz when I answered.

"If I had known you were fluent in French I would have given it to you, Jeff, and maybe you could've helped out. But I'm not fluent and I didn't know what it said and I had to get it translated. I was handed that translation about ten minutes before I started my cross."

"All right," the judge said, breaking up the stare-down. "This is still a printout of a newspaper article. What are you going to do about verifying the information it contains, Mr. Haller?"

"Well, as soon as we break, I'm going to put my investigator on it and see if we can contact somebody in the Police Judiciaire. We're going to be doing the job the Sheriff's Department should have done six months ago."

"We're obviously going to verify it as well," Golantz added.

"Rilz's father and two brothers are sitting in the gallery. Maybe you can start with them."

The judge held up a hand in a calming gesture like he was a parent quelling an argument between two brothers.

"Okay," he said. "I am going to stop this line of cross-examination. Mr. Haller, I will allow you to lay the foundation for it during the presentation of the defense. You can call the witness back then, and if you can verify the report and the ident.i.ty, then I will give you wide lat.i.tude in pursuing it."

"Your Honor, that puts the defense at a disadvantage," I protested.

"How so?"

"Because now that the state's been made aware of this information, it can take steps to hinder my verification of it."

"That's absurd," Golantz said.

But the judge nodded.

"I understand your concern and I am putting Mr. Golantz on notice that if I find any indication of that, then I will become... shall we say, very agitated. I think we are done here, gentlemen."

The judge rolled back into position and the lawyers returned to theirs. On my way back, I checked the clock on the back wall of the courtroom. It was ten minutes until five. I figured if I could stall for a few more minutes, the judge would recess for the day and the jurors would have the French connection to mull over for the night.

I stood at the lectern and asked the judge for a few moments. I then acted like I was studying my notepad, trying to decide if there was anything else I wanted to ask Kinder about.

"Mr. Haller, how are we doing?" the judge finally prompted.

"We're doing fine, Judge. And I look forward to exploring Mr. Rilz's activities in France more thoroughly during the defense phase of the trial. Until then, I have no further questions for Detective Kinder."

I returned to the defense table and sat down. The judge then announced that court was recessed for the day.

I watched the jury file out of the courtroom and picked up no read from any of them. I then glanced behind Golantz to the gallery. All three of the Rilz men were staring at me with hardened, dead eyes.

Forty-six

Cisco called me at home at ten o'clock. He said he was nearby in Hollywood and that he could come right over. He said he already had some news about juror number seven.

After hanging up I told Patrick that I was going out on the deck to meet privately with Cisco. I put on a sweater because there was a chill in the air outside, grabbed the file I'd used in court earlier, and went out to wait for my investigator.

The Sunset Strip glowed like a blast furnace fire over the shoulder of the hills. I'd bought the house in a flush year because of the deck and the view it offered of the city. It never ceased to entrance me, day or night. It never ceased to charge me and tell me the truth. That truth being that anything was possible, that anything could happen, good or bad.

"Hey, boss."

I jumped and turned. Cisco had climbed the stairs and come up behind me without my even hearing him. He must've come up the hill on Fair-fax and then killed the engine and freewheeled down to my house. He knew I'd be upset if his pipes woke up everybody in the neighborhood.

"Don't scare me like that, man."

"What are you so jumpy about?"

"I just don't like people sneaking up on me. Sit down out here."

I pointed him to the small table and chairs positioned under the roof's eave and in front of the living room window. It was uncomfortable outdoor furniture I almost never used. I liked to contemplate the city from the deck and draw the charge. The only way to do that was standing.

The file I'd brought out was on the table. Cisco pulled out a chair and was about to sit down when he stopped and used a hand to sweep the smog dust and crud off the seat.

"Man, don't you ever spray this stuff off?"

"You're wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Cisco. Just sit down."

He did and I did and I saw him look through the translucent window shade into the living room. The television was on and Patrick was in there watching the extreme-sports channel on cable. People were doing flips on snowmobiles.

"Is that a sport?" Cisco asked.

"To Patrick, I guess."

"How's it working out with him?"

"It's working. He's only staying a couple weeks. Tell me about number seven?"

"Down to business. Okay."

He reached behind him and pulled a small journal out of his back pocket.

"You got any light out here?"

I got up, went to the front door, and reached in to turn on the deck light. I glanced at the TV and saw the medical staff attending to a snowmobile driver who apparently had failed to complete his flip and had three hundred pounds of sled land on him.

I closed the door and sat back down across from Cisco. He was studying something in his journal.

"Okay," he said. "Juror number seven. I haven't had much time on this but I've got a few things I wanted to get right to you. His name is David McSweeney and I think almost everything he put on his J-sheet is false."

The J-sheet was the single-page form each juror fills out as part of the voir dire process. The sheets carry the prospective juror's name, profession, and area of residence by zip code as well as a checklist of basic questions designed to help attorneys form opinions about whether they want the individual on their jury. In this case the name would've been excised but all the other information was on the sheet I had given Cisco to start with.

"Give me some examples."

"Well, according to the zip on the sheet, he lives down in Palos Verdes. Not true. I followed him from the courthouse directly to an apartment off of Beverly over there behind CBS."

Cisco pointed south in the general direction of Beverly Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue, where the CBS television studio was located.

"I had a friend run the plate on the pickup he drove home from court and it came back to David McSweeney on Beverly, same address I saw him go into. I then had my guy run his DL and shoot me over the photo. I looked at it on my phone and McSweeney is our guy."

The information was intriguing but I was more concerned with how Cisco was conducting his investigation of juror number seven. We had already blown up one source on the Vincent investigation.

"Cisco, man, your prints are going to be all over this. I told you I can't have any blowback on this."

"Chill, man. There's no fingerprints. My guy isn't going to go volunteering that he did a search for me. It's illegal for a cop to do an outside search. He'd lose his job. And if somebody comes looking, we still don't need to worry, because he doesn't use his terminal or user ID when he does these for me. He cadged an old lieutenant's pa.s.sword. So there are no prints, okay? No trails. We're safe on this."

I reluctantly nodded. Cops stealing from cops. Why didn't that surprise me?

"All right," I said. "What else?"

"Well, for one thing, he's got an arrest record and he checked the box on the sheet that said he'd never been popped before."

"What was the arrest for?"

"Two arrests. ADW in ' ninety-seven and conspiracy to commit fraud in ' ninety-nine. No convictions but that is all I know for right now. When the court opens I can get more if you want."

I wanted to know more, especially about how arrests for fraud and a.s.sault with a deadly weapon could result in no convictions, but if Cisco pulled records on the case, then he'd have to show ID and that would leave a trail.

"Not if you have to sign out the files. Let it go for now. You got anything else?"

"Yeah, I'm telling you, I think it's all phony. On the sheet he says he's an engineer with Lockheed. As far as I can tell, that's not true. I called Lockheed and they don't have a David McSweeney in the phone directory. So unless the guy's got a job with no phone, then..."

He raised his hands palm up, as if to say there was no explanation but deception.

"I've only had t'night on this, but everything's coming up phony and that probably includes the guy's name."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, we don't officially know his name, do we? It was blacked out on the J-sheet."

"Right."

"So I followed juror number seven and IDed him as David McSweeney, but who's to say that's the same name that was blacked out on the sheet. Know what I mean?"

I thought for a moment and then nodded.

"You're saying that McSweeney could've hijacked a legitimate juror's name and maybe even his jury summons and is masquerading as that person in the courthouse."

"Exactly. When you get a summons and show up at the juror check-in window, all they do is check your DL against the list. These are minimum-wage court clerks, Mick. It would not be difficult to get a dummy DL by one of them, and we both know how easy it is to get a dummy."

I nodded. Most people want to get out of jury duty. This was a scheme to get into it. Civic duty taken to extreme.

Cisco said, "If you can somehow get me the name the court has for number seven, I would check it, and I'm betting I find out there is is a guy at Lockheed with that name." a guy at Lockheed with that name."

I shook my head.

"There's no way I can get it without leaving a trail."

Cisco shrugged.

"So what's going on with this, Mick? Don't tell me that f.u.c.king prosecutor put a sleeper on the jury."

I thought a moment about telling him but decided against it.

"At the moment it's better if I don't tell you."

"Down periscope."

It meant that we were taking the submarine-compartmentalizing so if one of us sprang a leak it wouldn't sink the whole sub.

"It's best this way. Did you see this guy with anybody? Any KAs of interest?"

"I followed him over to the Grove tonight and he met somebody for a coffee in Marmalade, one of the restaurants they've got over there. It was a woman. It looked like a casual thing, like they sort of ran into each other unplanned and sat down together to catch up. Other than that, I've got no known a.s.sociates so far. I've really only been with the guy since five, when the judge cut the jury loose."

I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I'd antic.i.p.ated.

"How close did you get to him and the woman?"

"Not close. You told me to take all precautions."

"So you can't describe her?"