I made a decision.

"Okay, you know where Jerry Vincent's office is? You ever been there?"

"Yeah, I delivered the boards there. And my fish."

"Your fish?"

"He took a sixty-pound tarpon I caught when I was a kid back in Florida. Said he was going to put it on the wall and pretend like he caught it or something."

"Yeah, well, your fish is still there. Anyway, be at the office at nine sharp tomorrow morning and I'll interview you for a job. If it goes right, then you'll start right away."

"Doing what?"

"Driving me. I'll pay you fifteen bucks an hour to drive and another fifteen toward your fees. How's that?"

There was a moment of silence before Henson responded in an accommodating voice.

"That's good, man. I can be there for that."

"Good. See you then. Just remember something, Patrick. You gotta stay clean. If you're not, I'll know. Believe me, I'll know."

"Don't worry, man. I will never go back to that s.h.i.t. That s.h.i.t f.u.c.ked my life up for good."

"Okay, Patrick, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Hey, man, why are you doing this?"

I hesitated before answering.

"You know, I don't really know."

I closed the phone and made sure to turn it off. I went back into the courtroom wondering if I was doing something good or making the kind of mistake that would catch up and bite me on the a.s.s.

It was perfect timing. The judge finished with the last motion as I came back in. I saw that a deputy district attorney named Don Pierce was sitting at the prosecution table, ready to go with the sentencing. He was an ex-navy guy who kept the crew cut going and was one of the regulars at c.o.c.ktail hour at Four Green Fields. I quickly packed all the files back into my bag and wheeled it through the gate to the defense table.

"Well," the judge said, "I see the Lone Ranger rides again."

She said it with a smile and I smiled back at her.

"Yes, Your Honor. Nice to see you."

"I haven't seen you in quite a while, Mr. Haller."

Open court was not the place to tell her where I had been. I kept my responses short. I spread my hands as if presenting the new me.

"All I can say is, I'm back now, Judge."

"I'm glad to see that. Now, you are here in place of Mr. Vincent, is that correct?"

It was said in a routine tone. I could tell she did not know about Vincent's demise. I knew I could keep the secret and get through the sentencing with it. But then she would hear the story and wonder why I hadn't brought it up and told her. It was not a good way to keep a judge on your side.

"Unfortunately, Your Honor," I said, "Mr. Vincent pa.s.sed away last night."

The judge's eyebrows arched in shock. She had been a longtime prosecutor before being a long-time judge. She was wired into the legal community and most likely knew Jerry Vincent well. I had just hit her with a major jolt.

"Oh, my, he was so young!" she exclaimed. "What happened?"

I shook my head like I didn't know.

"It wasn't a natural death, Your Honor. The police are investigating it and I don't really know a lot about it other than that he was found in his car last night at his office. Judge Holder called me in today and appointed me replacement counsel. That's why I am here for Mr. Reese."

The judge looked down and took a moment to get over her shock. I felt bad about being the messenger. I bent down and pulled the Edgar Reese file out of my bag.

"I'm very sorry to hear this," the judge finally said.

I nodded in agreement and waited.

"Very well," the judge said after another long moment. "Let's bring the defendant out."

Jerry Vincent garnered no further delay. Whether the judge had suspicions about Jerry or the life he led, she didn't say. But life would move on in the Criminal Courts Building. The wheels of justice would grind without him.

Ten

The message from Lorna Taylor was short and to the point. I got it the moment I turned my phone on after leaving the courtroom and seeing Edgar Reese get his five years. She told me she had just been in touch with Judge Holder's clerk about obtaining the court order the bank was requiring before putting Lorna's and my names on the Vincent bank accounts. The judge had agreed to draw up the order and I could just walk down the hallway to her chambers to pick it up.

The courtroom was once again dark but the judge's clerk was in her pod next to the bench. She still reminded me of my third-grade teacher.

"Mrs. Gill?" I said. "I'm supposed to pick up an order from the judge."

"Yes, I think she still has it with her in chambers. I'll go check."

"Any chance I could get in there and talk to her for a few minutes, too?"

"Well, she has someone with her at the moment but I will check."

She got up and went down the hallway located behind the clerk's station. At the end was the door to the judge's chambers and I watched her knock once before being summoned to enter. When she opened the door, I could see a man sitting in the same chair I had sat in a few hours earlier. I recognized him as Judge Holder's husband, a personal-injury attorney named Mitch Lester. I recognized him from the photograph on his ad. Back when he was doing criminal defense we had once shared the back of the Yellow Pages, my ad taking the top half and his the bottom. He hadn't worked criminal cases in a long time.

A few minutes later Mrs. Gill came out carrying the court order I needed. I thought this meant I wasn't going to get in to see the judge but Mrs. Gill told me I would be allowed back as soon as the judge finished up with her visitor.

It wasn't enough time to continue my review of the files in my roller bag, so I wandered the courtroom, looking around and thinking about what I was going to say to the judge. At the empty bailiff's desk, I looked down and scanned a calendar sheet from the week before. I knew the names of several of the attorneys who were listed and had been scheduled for emergency hearings and motions. One of them was Jerry Vincent on behalf of Walter Elliot. It had probably been one of Jerry's last appearances in court.

After three minutes I heard a bell tone at the clerk's station and Mrs. Gill said I was free to go back to the judge's chambers.

When I knocked on the door it was Mitch Lester who opened it. He smiled and bid me entrance. We shook hands and he remarked that he had just heard about Jerry Vincent.

"It's a scary world out there," he said.

"It can be," I said.

"If you need any help with anything, let me know."

He left the office and I took his seat in front of the judge's desk.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Haller? You got the order for the bank?"

"Yes, I got the order, Your Honor. Thank you for that. I wanted to update you a little bit and ask a question about something."

She took off a pair of reading gla.s.ses and put them down on her blotter.

"Please go ahead, then."

"Well, on the update. Things are going a bit slowly because we started without a calendar. Both Jerry Vincent's laptop computer and his hard-copy calendar were stolen after he was killed. We had to build a new calendar after pulling the active files. We think we have that under control and, in fact, I just came from a sentencing in Judge Champagne's in regard to one of the cases. So we haven't missed anything."

The judge seemed unimpressed by the efforts made by my staff and me.

"How many active cases are we talking about?" she asked.

"Uh, it looks like there are thirty-one active cases-well, thirty now that I handled that sentencing. That case is done."

"Then, I would say you inherited quite a thriving practice. What is the problem?"

"I'm not sure there is a problem, Judge. So far I've had a conversation with only one of the active clients and it looks like I will be continuing as his lawyer."

"Was that Walter Elliot?"

"Uh, no, I have not talked to him yet. I plan to try to do that later today. The person I talked to was involved in something a little less serious. A felony theft, actually."

"Okay."

She was growing impatient so I moved to the point of the meeting.

"What I wanted to ask about was the police. You were right this morning when you warned me about guarding against police intrusion. When I got over to the office after leaving here, I found a couple of detectives going through the files. Jerry's receptionist was there but she hadn't tried to stop them."

The judge's face grew hard.

"Well, I hope you did. Those officers should have known better than to start going through files w.i.l.l.y-nilly."

"Yes, Your Honor, they backed off once I got there and objected. In fact, I threatened to make a complaint to you. That's when they backed off."

She nodded, her face showing pride in the power the mention of her name had.

"Then, why are you here?"

"Well, I'm wondering now whether I should let them back in."

"I don't understand you, Mr. Haller. Let the police back in?"

"The detective in charge of the investigation made a good point. He said the evidence suggests that Jerry Vincent knew his killer and probably even allowed him to get close enough to, you know, shoot him. He said that makes it a good bet that it was one of his own clients. So they were going through the files looking for potential suspects when I walked in on them."

The judge waved one of her hands in a gesture of dismissal.

"Of course they were. And they were trampling on those clients' rights as they were doing it."

"They were in the file room and were looking through old cases. Closed cases."

"Doesn't matter. Open or closed, it still const.i.tutes a violation of the attorney-client privilege."

"I understand that, Judge. But after they were gone, I saw they had left behind a stack of files on the table. These were the files they were either going to take or wanted to look more closely at. I looked them over and there were threats in those files."

"Threats against Mr. Vincent?"

"Yes. They were cases in which his clients weren't happy about the outcome, whether it was the verdict or the disposition or the terms of imprisonment. There were threats, and in each of the cases, he took the threats seriously enough to make a detailed record of exactly what was said and who said it. That was what the detectives were pulling together."

The judge leaned back and clasped her hands, her elbows on the arms of her leather chair. She thought about the situation I had described and then brought her eyes to mine.

"You believe we are inhibiting the investigation by not allowing the police to do their job."

I nodded.

"I was wondering if there was a way to sort of serve both sides," I said. "Limit the harm to the clients but let the police follow the investigation wherever it goes."

The judge considered this in silence again, then sighed.

"I wish my husband had stayed," she finally said. "I value his opinion greatly."

"Well, I had an idea."

"Of course you did. What is it?"

"I was thinking that I could vet the files myself and draw up a list of the people who threatened Jerry. Then I could pa.s.s it on to Detective Bosch and give him some of the details of the threats as well. This way, he would have what he needs but he wouldn't have the files themselves. He's happy, I'm happy."

"Bosch is the lead detective?"

"Yes, Harry Bosch. He's with Robbery-Homicide. I can't remember his partner's name."

"You have to understand, Mr. Haller, that even if you just give this man Bosch the names, you are still breaching client confidentiality. You could be disbarred for this."

"Well, I was thinking about that and I believe there's a way out. One of the mechanisms of relief from the client confidentiality bond is in the case of threat to safety. If Jerry Vincent knew a client was coming to kill him last night, he could have called the police and given that client's name to them. There would've been no breach in that."

"Yes, but what you are considering here is completely different."