“That guy’s not even typing,” Jennifer said. “He’s just staring at his phone.”
“He’s looking at Gloria,” I said. “Not the phone.”
It was impossible to tell for sure because of the hat, but it seemed clear that Gloria had a follower. Finished at the front desk, she turned and once more headed toward the front doors of the lobby. She pulled a cell phone out of her handbag and hit a speed dial. Before she got to the doors, she said something quickly into the phone and then dropped it into her bag. She then exited the hotel.
Before she was gone, the man in the hat was up and crossing the lobby behind her. He picked up his step once she was through the doors, and this seemed to confirm that Gloria’s impromptu turn to the front desk had exposed a tail.
After the man in the hat left the lobby, the camera angle jumped to the outside curb, where a black Town Car like my own had pulled up in front of Gloria at the valet stand. She opened the back door, threw the Saks bag in, and then got in after it. The car pulled away and out of the frame. The man in the hat crossed the valet lanes and left the picture as well, never once raising his head enough for even his nose to be seen.
The playback ended and everyone was silent for a long moment while they reviewed it in their heads.
“So?” Cisco finally asked.
“So she was followed,” I said. “I take it you asked about the guy at the hotel?”
“I did and he doesn’t work there. They had nobody working undercover security that night. That guy—whoever he is—was an outsider.”
I nodded and thought some more about what I had seen.
“He didn’t follow her in,” I said. “Does that mean he was already there?”
“I’ve got a loop on him, too,” Cisco said.
He turned the computer back to him and punched in more commands, bringing up a second video. He turned the screen back to us and hit play. Cisco provided narration.
“All right, this is him sitting in the lobby at nine thirty. He was there before her. He stays like that until she gets there. I have a side-by-side of that.”
He spun the computer back and then set up the side-by-side videos before turning it to us again. The images from separate cameras were synced on the time stamps and we were able to watch Gloria cross the lobby and the man in the hat track her, his hat turning as she passed on the other side of the room. He then waited for her to come back down from the eighth floor and followed her out, after her sudden stop at the front desk.
Show over, Cisco closed his computer.
“Okay, so who is he?” I asked.
Cisco spread his hands, a wing span of nearly seven feet.
“All I can tell you is that he doesn’t work for the hotel,” he said.
I stood up and started pacing behind the table. I was feeling jazzed. The man in the hat was a mystery, and mysteries always played to the defense’s side. Mysteries were question marks, which led to reasonable doubt.
“Do you know if the police have been over to the hotel yet?” I asked.
“As of last night, no,” Cisco said. “They’ve already made their case to the DA. They probably don’t care what she was doing in the hours before the murder.”
I shook my head. It was foolish to underestimate the state.
“Don’t worry, they will.”
“Could he have been working for Gloria?” Jennifer asked. “You know, like her security or something?”
I nodded.
“Good question. I’ll ask the client when I see him before first appearance. I’ll also ask about the Town Car that picked her up. See if she had a regular driver. But there’s something about this . . . this video that is off. It doesn’t fit with this guy working for her. It’s like he knew there were cameras and he kept his hat on and his head down. He didn’t want to be seen on camera.”
“And him being there before she arrived,” Cisco added. “He was waiting for her.”
“He acted like he knew she’d be going up and coming right back down,” Lorna seconded. “He knew that there was nobody in that room up there.”
I stopped pacing and pointed at Cisco’s closed laptop.
“He’s gotta be the guy,” I said. “He’s Daniel Price. We have to find out who he is.”
“Um, can I butt in here for a moment?” Jennifer asked.
I nodded, giving her the floor.
“Before we get all hot and bothered about this mystery man in the hat, we have to remember that our client admitted to the police that he was in the victim’s apartment with her after this guy was or was not following her, and that he argued with her and put his hand around her throat. So rather than worrying about what was going on before he was in her apartment, shouldn’t we be worried about what La Cosse did or didn’t do when he was actually in the place?”
“It’s all important,” I answered quickly. “But it all needs to be vetted. We need to find this guy and see what he was doing. Cisco, can you widen the search a bit? That hotel sits right at the end of Rodeo Drive. There’s got to be more cameras out there. Maybe we can track this guy to a car and get a plate. His trail has not gone totally cold.”
Cisco nodded.
“I’m on it.”
I checked my watch. I needed to get moving toward downtown and arraignment court.
“Okay, what else?”
No one said anything, then Lorna timidly raised her hand.
“Lorna, what?”
“Just a reminder, today at two you have the pretrial conference in Department Thirty on Ramsey.”
I groaned. Another of my stellar clients, Deirdre Ramsey was charged with aiding and abetting and a variety of crimes in one of the more bizarre cases to come my or any lawyer’s way in years. She first gained public attention the year before as the unnamed victim of a horrible assault that occurred during a takeover robbery of a convenience store. The first reports were that the twenty-six-year-old had been one of four customers and two employees in the store when two heavily armed and masked men entered to rob the place. The customers and employees were herded into a storage room and locked in while the gunmen used a crowbar to open the store’s cash deposit slot.
But then the gunmen reentered the storage room and told all the captives to turn over their wallets and jewelry and take off all their clothes. While one of the men stood guard over the others, the second man raped Ramsey in front of the whole group. The men then fled the store, taking a total of $280 dollars and two boxes of candy besides the personal belongings of the victims. For months the crime remained unsolved. The city council offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrests of suspects, and Ramsey filed a negligence lawsuit against the corporation that owned the store, alleging that the business did not provide adequate protection of its customers. Knowing that the last thing they wanted to see was Ramsey testifying about her ordeal in front of a jury, the corporation’s board of directors in Dallas voted to settle the case, paying Ramsey $250,000 for her troubles.
Money is the great destroyer of relationships. Two weeks after Ramsey walked away with the money, investigators on the case took a call from a woman inquiring whether the city council award was still available. When informed that it was, she told a surprising story. She said that the $250K settlement was the true goal of the robbery and that the rapist-robber was actually Ramsey’s boyfriend, Tariq Underwood. The rape was part of an elaborate and consensual scam, according to the snitch, a get-rich scheme concocted by Ramsey herself.
As it turned out, the caller was Ramsey’s former best friend—that is, until she felt she was unfairly left out of the riches bestowed on Ramsey. Court-ordered wiretaps ensued, and soon enough Ramsey, her boyfriend, and his partner in the robbery were arrested. The Office of the Public Defender took on Underwood’s defense, which put it in conflict with Ramsey’s, and so her file was shuttled to me. It was a low-cost, low-probability case, but Ramsey refused to plead it out. She wanted to go to trial, and I had no choice but to take her there. It wasn’t goi
ng to end pretty.
Being reminded of the hearing shot holes in the engine block of my day’s momentum. My groan did not go unnoticed by Lorna.
“You want me to try to postpone it?” she offered.
I thought about it. I was tempted.
“You want me to take it?” Jennifer offered.
Of course she wanted it. She’d take any criminal case I’d give her.
“No, it’s a dog,” I said. “I can’t do that to you. Lorna, see what you can do. I want to run with La Cosse today if I can.”
“I’ll let you know.”
Everyone was either grabbing a final doughnut or heading to the door.
“Okay, then, everybody’s got their assignments and knows what they’re doing on this,” I said. “Stay in touch and let me know what you know.”
I made another cup of coffee and was the last one out. Earl was waiting with the car in the back parking lot. I told him to head downtown to the courthouse and to stay off the freeway. I wanted to get there in time to talk to Andre La Cosse before they hauled him before the judge.
7
I had fifteen minutes with my client before he would be herded into the courtroom with several other custodies for first appearances before a judge. He was in a crowded holding cell off the arraignment court and I had to lean close to the bars and whisper so the other men in the cell wouldn’t hear.
“Andre, we don’t have a lot of time here,” I said. “In a few minutes you’ll be taken into the courtroom to see the judge. It will be short and sweet, the charges will be read and they’ll set a date for your arraignment.”
“Don’t I plead not guilty?”
“No, not yet. This is just a formality. After you get arrested they have forty-eight hours to put you before a judge to get the ball rolling. This will be very brief.”
“What about bail?”
“You won’t make bail unless that gold brick you sent us is just one of many. You’re charged with murder. They will set bail, but on the low end it will probably be two million, maybe two and a half. That’s a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bond. You have that much gold? You don’t get it back, you know.”
He slumped and pressed his forehead against the bars that separated us.
“I can’t stand this place.”
“I know, but you’ve got no choice right now.”
“You said you could get me into another module?”
“Sure, I can do that. Give me the word and I’ll get you on keep-away status.”
“Do it. I don’t want to go back there.”
I leaned in closer and whispered lower.
“Did something happen to you last night in there?”
“No, but there are animals in there. I don’t want to be there.”
I didn’t tell him that no matter where he was placed in the jail complex, he wasn’t going to like it. The animals were everywhere.
“I’ll bring it up with the judge,” I said instead. “Now I want to ask you a couple things about the case before we go in there, okay?”
“Go ahead. You got the gold?”
“Yes, I got the gold. More than we asked for but it will all go toward your defense, and if it doesn’t get used, the remainder goes back to you. I have a receipt for you if you want it, but I don’t think you want to carry around a piece of paper in Men’s Central that shows you’ve got money.”
“No, you’re right. Keep it for now.”
“Okay. Now the questions. Did Giselle have any kind of security that you know about?”
He shook his head like he wasn’t sure but then answered.
“She had a burglar alarm but I don’t know if she ever used it and I—”
“No, I mean people. Did she have like a bodyguard or somebody that ran security for her when she went out on calls or dates or whatever you call them?”
“Oh, no, none that she ever told me about. She had a driver and she could call him if there was a problem but he usually just stayed in the car.”
“My next question was about the driver. Who was he and how do I reach him?”
“His name is Max and he was a friend of hers. He had a different job during the day and drove her at night. She basically just worked at nights.”
“Max what?”
“I don’t know his last name. I never even met him. She just mentioned him from time to time. She said he was her muscle.”
“But he didn’t go in with her.”
“Not that I know of.”
I noticed another prisoner was hovering behind my client’s left shoulder. He was trying to listen in on our conversation.
“Let’s move down,” I said.
We moved down the bars to the other side of the holding cell. The eavesdropper stayed behind.
“Okay,” I said. “Tell me about the phone call you made to the hotel to check out the Julia Roberts client. How did that whole thing go down?”
I checked my watch.
“Quickly,” I added.
“Well, he made contact through the website. I told him the prices and—”
“Was this by e-mail?”
“No, he called. From the hotel. I saw it on the caller ID.”
“Okay, go on. He called from the hotel, then what?”
“I told him her price and he said that was fine, and so we set it up for nine thirty that night. He gave me the room number and I told him I needed to call back to confirm. He said fine, so I did.”
“You called the hotel and asked for room eight thirty-seven?”
“That’s right. They connected me and it was the same guy. I told him she’d be there at nine thirty.”
“Okay, and you never dealt with this guy before?”
“No, never.”
“How did he pay?”
“He didn’t. That’s why I got in the fight with Giz. She said he didn’t pay because there was nobody in that room. She said they told her at the desk the guy checked out that day, and I knew that was bullshit because I talked to him in that room.”
“Right, right, but did you discuss payment with him? You know, cash or credit?”
“Yes, he said he was going to pay cash. And that’s why I went to Giz’s place, to collect my share. If the guy had just paid with a credit card, I would have handled the transaction and taken my share. It was paying with cash that made me want to go collect before she had a chance to spend it all or lose it.”
La Cosse’s business practices were becoming clearer to me now.
“And this is how you always did it?”
“Yes.”
“It was routine.”
“Yes, always the same.”
“And this guy’s voice, you didn’t recognize it as a previous customer?”
“No, I didn’t recognize it and he also said he was a new customer. What does this have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing but maybe everything. How often were you in contact with Giselle?”
La Cosse shrugged.
“Every day by text. We did a lot of it by text, but when I needed a quick answer I would call her on the cell. Maybe a couple times a week we’d talk.”
“And did you see her very often?”
“Maybe once or twice a week when we had a cash customer. I’d come by to collect after. Sometimes we’d meet for coffee or breakfast and I’d collect then.”
“And she never held back on you?”
“We’d had issues before.”
“How so?”
“I pretty much learned with Giz that money was for spending. The longer I left my money with her, the greater the chance it would get spent. I never waited long to collect.”
I saw the lineup of custodies who had just had first appearances being shuttled from the courtroom back into another holding cell. La Cosse was about to go out.
“Okay, hold on a second.”
I stooped down and opened my briefcase on the tile floor. I took out the document I needed signed and a pen and then stood back up.
“Andre, th
is is a conflict-of-interest waiver. I need you to sign it if you want me to represent you. It acknowledges that you understand that the victim you are charged with killing was a former client of mine. You are waiving any future claim that I had a conflict of interest while representing you. You are saying right now that you are okay with it. Hurry up and sign it before they see you with the pen.”
I passed the document and pen through and he signed it. He did a quick scan of the page as he passed it back.
“Who is Gloria Dayton?”
“That’s Giselle. That was her real name.”
I bent down to return the document to my briefcase.
“Couple more things,” I said as I stood back up. “You told me yesterday that you would make contact with the client who vouched for Giselle when she came to you. Did you do that yet? I need to talk to her.”
“Yes, she said fine. You can call her. Her name’s Stacey Campbell. Like the soup.”
He gave me the number and I wrote it down on my palm.
“You have her number memorized? Most people don’t remember numbers anymore because they’re on speed dial on their cell.”
“If I put everybody’s number in my phone, the police would have all of that right now. We change phones and numbers often, and I commit them all to memory. It’s the only safe way to do it.”
I nodded. I was impressed.
“Okay, we’re good, then. Let’s go out and see the judge.”
“You said a couple more things.”
“Oh, yeah.”
I reached into my coat pocket and pulled out a short stack of cards. I handed them to him through the bars.
“Put these on the bench over there,” I said.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“No, people are always looking for good representation. Especially when they get out there and meet the deputy PD who’s handling their case along with about three hundred others’. Spread them out a little bit on the bench and I’ll see you in the courtroom.”