The restaurant purchase was allowed to go through and Wunderlich and four other detectives from the trick unit were dispatched to the Farmers Market, a sprawling blend of old and new shops and restaurants that was always crowded and therefore a perfect place for credit card con artists to operate. The investigators would spread out in the complex and wait while Wunderlich continued to monitor the card's use by phone.
Two hours after the first purchase the control number was used again to purchase a six-hundred-dollar leather jacket at the Nordstrom in the market. The credit card approval was delayed but not stopped. The detectives moved in and arrested a young woman as she was completing the purchase of the jacket. The case then became what is known as a "snitch chain," the police following one suspect to the next as they snitched each other off and the arrests moved up the ladder.
Eventually they came to the man sitting at the top of that ladder, Sam Scales. When the story broke in the press Wunderlich referred to him as the Tsunami Svengali because so many victims of the scam turned out to be women who had wanted to help the handsome minister pictured on the website. The nickname angered Scales, and in my discussions with him he took to referring to the detective who had brought him down as Wunder Boy.
I got to Department 124 on the thirteenth floor of the Criminal Courts Building by 10:45 but the courtroom was empty except for Marianne, the judge's clerk. I went through the bar and approached her station.
"You guys still doing the calendar?" I asked.
"Just waiting on you. I'll call everybody and tell the judge."
"She mad at me?"
Marianne shrugged. She wouldn't answer for the judge. Especially to a defense attorney. But in a way, she was telling me that the judge wasn't happy.
"Is Scales still back there?"
"Should be. I don't know where Joe went."
I turned and went over to the defense table and sat down and waited. Eventually, the door to the lockup opened and Joe Frey, the bailiff assigned to 124, stepped out.
"You still got my guy back there?"
"Just barely. We thought you were a no-show again. You want to go back?"
He held the steel door open for me and I stepped into a small room with a stairwell going up to the courthouse jail on the fourteenth floor and two doors leading to the smaller holding rooms for 124. One of the doors had a glass panel. It was for attorney-client meetings and I could see Sam Scales sitting by himself at a table behind the glass. He was wearing an orange jumpsuit and had steel cuffs on his wrists. He was being held without bail because his latest arrest violated his probation on the TrimSlim6 conviction. The sweet deal I had gotten him on that was about to go down the tubes.
"Finally," Scales said as I walked in.
"Like you're going anywhere. You ready to do this?"
"If I have no choice."
I sat down across from him.
"Sam, you always have a choice. But let me explain it again. They've got you cold on this, okay? You were caught ripping off people who wanted to help the people caught in one of the worst natural disasters in recorded history. They've got three co-conspirators who took deals to testify against you. They have the list of card numbers found in your possession. What I am saying is that at the end of the day, you are going to get about as much sympathy from the judge and a jury-if it should come to that-as they would give a child raper. Maybe even less."
"I know all of that but I am a useful asset to society. I could educate people. Put me in the schools. Put me in the country clubs. Put me on probation and I'll tell people what to watch out for out there."
"Youare who they have to watch out for. You blew your chance with the last one and the prosecution said this is the final offer on this one. You don't take it and they're going to go to the wall on this. The one thing I can guarantee you is that there will be no mercy."
So many of my clients are like Sam Scales. They hopelessly believe there is a light behind the door. And I'm the one who has to tell them the door is locked and that the bulb burned out long ago anyway.
"Then I guess I have to do it," Scales said, looking at me with eyes that blamed me for not finding a way out for him.
"It's your choice. You want a trial, we'll go to trial. Your exposure will be ten years plus the one you've got left on the probation. You make 'em real mad and they can also ship you over to the FBI so the feds can take a swing at you on interstate wire fraud if they want."
"Let me ask you something. If we go to trial, could we win?"
I almost laughed but I still had some sympathy left for him.
"No, Sam, we can't win. Haven't you been listening to what I've been telling you for two months? They got you. You can't win. But I'm here to do what you want. Like I said, if you want a trial we'll go to trial. But I gotta tell you that if we go, you'll have to get your mother to pay me again. I'm only good through today."
"How much did she pay you already?"
"Eight thousand."
"Eight grand! That's her fucking retirement account money!"
"I'm surprised she has anything left in the account with you for a son."
He looked at me sharply.
"I'm sorry, Sam. I shouldn't have said that. From what she told me, you're a good son."
"Jesus Christ, I should have gone to fucking law school. You're a con no different from me. You know that, Haller? Only that paper they give you makes you street legal, that's all."
They always blame the lawyer for making a living. As if it's a crime to want to be paid for doing a day's work. What Scales had just said to me would have brought a near violent reaction back when I was maybe a year or two out of law school. But I'd heard the same insult too many times by now to do anything but roll with it.
"What can I say, Sam? We've already had this conversation."
He nodded and didn't say anything. I took it to mean he would take the DA's offer. Four years in the state penal system and a ten-thousand-dollar fine, followed by five years' parole. He'd be out in two and a half but the parole would be a killer for a natural-born con man to make it through unscathed. After a few minutes I got up and left the room. I knocked on the outer door and Deputy Frey let me back into the courtroom.
"He's good to go," I said.
I took my seat at the defense table and soon Frey brought Scales out and sat him next to me. He still had the cuffs on. He said nothing to me. In another few minutes Glenn Bernasconi, the prosecutor who worked 124, came down from his office on the fifteenth floor and I told him we were ready to accept the case disposition.
At 11A.M. Judge Judith Champagne came out of chambers and onto the bench and Frey called the courtroom to order. The judge was a diminutive, attractive blonde and ex-prosecutor who had been on the bench at least as long as I'd had my ticket. She was old school all the way, fair but tough, running her courtroom as a fiefdom. Sometimes she even brought her dog, a German shepherd named Justice, to work with her. If the judge had had any kind of discretion in the sentence when Sam Scales faced her, he would have gone down hard. That was what I did for Sam Scales, whether he knew it or not. With this deal I had saved him from that.
"Good morning," the judge said. "I am glad you could make it today, Mr. Haller."
"I apologize, Your Honor. I got held up in Judge Flynn's court in Compton."
That was all I had to say. The judge knew about Flynn. Everybody did.
"And on St. Patrick's Day, no less," she said.
"Yes, Your Honor."
"I understand we have a disposition in the Tsunami Svengali matter."
She immediately looked over at her court reporter.
"Michelle, strike that."
She looked back at the lawyers.
"I understand we have a disposition in the Scales case. Is that correct?"
"That is correct," I said. "We're ready to go on that."
"Good."
Bernasconi half read, half repeated from memory the legalese needed to take a plea from the defendant. Scales waived his r
ights and pleaded guilty to the charges. He said nothing other than the word. The judge accepted the disposition agreement and sentenced him accordingly.
"You're a lucky man, Mr. Scales," she said when it was over. "I believe Mr. Bernasconi was quite generous with you. I would not have been."
"I don't feel so lucky, Judge," Scales said.
Deputy Frey tapped him on the shoulder from behind. Scales stood up and turned to me.
"I guess this is it," he said.
"Good luck, Sam," I said.
He was led off through the steel door and I watched it close behind them. I had not shaken his hand.
THIRTEEN
The Van Nuys Civic Center is a long concrete plaza enclosed by government buildings. Anchoring one end is the Van Nuys Division of the LAPD. Along one side are two courthouses sitting opposite a public library and a city administration building. At the end of the concrete and glass channel is a federal administration building and post office. I waited for Louis Roulet in the plaza on one of the concrete benches near the library. The plaza was largely deserted despite the great weather. Not like the day before, when the place was overrun with cameras and the media and the gadflies, all crowding around Robert Blake and his lawyers as they tried to spin a not-guilty verdict into innocence.
It was a nice, quiet afternoon and I usually liked being outside. Most of my work is done in windowless courtrooms or the backseat of my Town Car, so I take it outside whenever I can. But I wasn't feeling the breeze or noticing the fresh air this time. I was annoyed because Louis Roulet was late and because what Sam Scales had said to me about being a street-legal con was festering like cancer in my mind. When finally I saw Roulet crossing the plaza toward me I got up to meet him.
"Where've you been?" I said abruptly.
"I told you I'd get here as soon as I could. I was in the middle of a showing when you called."
"Let's walk."
I headed toward the federal building because it would give us the longest stretch before we would have to turn around to cross back. I had my meeting with Minton, the new prosecutor assigned to his case, in twenty-five minutes in the older of the two courthouses. I realized that we didn't look like a lawyer and his client discussing a case. Maybe a lawyer and his realtor discussing a land grab. I was in my Hugo Boss and Roulet was in a tan suit over a green turtleneck. He had on loafers with small silver buckles.
"There won't be any showings up in Pelican Bay," I said to him.
"What's that supposed to mean? Where's that?"
"It's a pretty name for a super max prison where they send violent sex offenders. You're going to fit in there pretty good in your turtleneck and loafers."
"Look, what's the matter? What's this about?"
"It's about a lawyer who can't have a client who lies to him. In twenty minutes I'm about to go up to see the guy who wants to send you to Pelican Bay. I need everything I can get my hands on to try to keep you out of there and it doesn't help when I find out you're lying to me."
Roulet stopped and turned to me. He raised his hands out, palms open.
"I haven't lied to you! I did not do this thing. I don't know what that woman wants but I -"
"Let me ask you something, Louis. You and Dobbs said you took a year of law at UCLA, right? Did they teach you anything at all about the lawyer-client bond of trust?"
"I don't know. I don't remember. I wasn't there long enough."
I took a step toward him, invading his space.
"You see? You are a fucking liar. You didn't go to UCLA law school for a year. You didn't even go for a goddamn day."
He brought his hands down and slapped them against his sides.
"Is that what this is all about, Mickey?"
"Yeah, that's right and from now on, don't call me Mickey. My friends call me that. Not my lying clients."
"What does whether or not I went to law school ten years ago have to do with this case? I don't -"
"Because if you lied to me about that, then you'd lie to me about anything, and I can't have that and be able to defend you."
I said it too loud. I saw a couple of women on a nearby bench watching us. They had juror badges on their blouses.
"Come on. This way."
I started walking back the other way, heading toward the police station.
"Look," Roulet said in a weak voice. "I lied because of my mother, okay?"
"No, not okay. Explain it to me."
"Look, my mother and Cecil think I went to law school for a year. I want them to continue to believe that. He brought it up with you and so I just sort of agreed. But it was ten years ago! What is the harm?"
"The harm is in lying to me," I said. "You can lie to your mother, to Dobbs, to your priest and to the police. But when I ask you something directly, do not lie to me. I need to operate from the standpoint of having facts from you. Incontrovertible facts. So when I ask you a question, tell me the truth. All the rest of the time you can say what you want and whatever makes you feel good."
"Okay, okay."
"If you weren't in law school, where were you?"
Roulet shook his head.
"Nowhere. I just didn't do anything for a year. Most of the time I stayed in my apartment near campus and read and thought about what I really wanted to do with my life. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn't want to be a lawyer. No offense intended."
"None taken. So you sat there for a year and came up with selling real estate to rich people."
"No, that came later."
He laughed in a self-deprecating way.
"I actually decided to become a writer-I had majored in English lit-and I tried to write a novel. It didn't take me long to figure out that I couldn't do it. I eventually went to work for Mother. She wanted me to."
I calmed down. Most of my anger had been a show, anyway. I was trying to soften him up for the more important questioning. I thought he was now ready for it.
"Well, now that you are coming clean and confessing everything, Louis, tell me about Reggie Campo."
"What about her?"
"You were going to pay her for sex, weren't you?"
"What makes you say -"
I shut him up when I stopped again and grabbed him by one of his expensive lapels. He was taller than me and bigger, but I had the power in this conversation. I was pushing him.
"Answer the fucking question."
"All right, yes, I was going to pay. But how did you know that?"
"Because I'm a good goddamn lawyer. Why didn't you tell me this on that first day? Don't you see how that changes the case?"
"My mother. I didn't want my mother to know I . . . you know."
"Louis, let's sit down."
I walked him over to one of the long benches by the police station. There was a lot of space and no one could overhear us. I sat in the middle of the bench and he sat to my right.
"Your mother wasn't even in the room when we were talking about the case. I don't even think she was in there when we talked about law school."
"But Cecil was and he tells her everything."
I nodded and made a mental note to cut Cecil Dobbs completely out of the loop on case matters from now on.
"Okay, I think I understand. But how long were you going to let it go without telling me? Don't you see how this changes everything?"
"I'm not a lawyer."
"Louis, let me tell you a little bit about how this works. You know what I am? I'm a neutralizer. My job is to neutralize the state's case. Take each piece of evidence or proof and find a way to eliminate it from contention. Think of it like one of those street entertainers you see on the Venice boardwalk. You ever gone down there and seen the guy spinning all those plates on those little sticks?"
"I think so. I haven't been down there in a long time."
"Doesn't matter. The guy has these thin little sticks and he puts a plate on each one and starts spinning the plate so it will stay balanced and upright. He gets a lot of them going at once and he move
s from plate to plate and stick to stick making sure everything is spinning and balanced and staying up. You with me?"
"Yes. I understand."