It became clear that the photos had all been taken between the morning I had caught the Roulet case and the day Raul Levin was murdered. They were then planted at the crime scene by the killer—all part of Roulet’s plan to set me up so that he could control me. The police would have everything they needed to put the Levin murder on me—except the murder weapon. As long as Roulet had the gun, he had me.
I had to admire the plan and the ingenuity at the same time that it made me feel the dread of desperation. I tried to put the window down but the button wouldn’t work. I asked Sobel to open a window and she did. Fresh air started blowing into the car.
After a while Lankford looked at me in the rearview and tried to jump-start the conversation.
“We ran the history on that Woodsman,” he said. “You know who owned it once, don’t you?”
“Mickey Cohen,” I answered matter-of-factly, staring out the window at the steep hillsides of Laurel Canyon.
“How’d you end up with Mickey Cohen’s gun?”
I answered without turning from the window.
“My father was a lawyer. Mickey Cohen was his client.”
Lankford whistled. Cohen was one of the most famous gangsters to ever call Los Angeles home. He was from back in the day when the gangsters competed with movie stars for the gossip headlines.
“And what? He just gave your old man a gun?”
“Cohen was charged in a shooting and my father defended him. He claimed self-defense. There was a trial and my father got a not-guilty verdict. When the weapon was returned Mickey gave it to my father. Sort of a keepsake, you could say.”
“Your old man ever wonder how many people the Mick whacked with it?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t really know my father.”
“What about Cohen? You ever meet him?”
“My father represented him before I was even born. The gun came to me in his will. I don’t know why he picked me to have it. I was only five years old when he died.”
“And you grew up to be a lawyer like dear old dad, and being a good lawyer you registered it.”
“I thought if it was ever stolen or something I would want to be able to get it back. Turn here on Fareholm.”
Lankford did as I instructed and we started climbing up the hill to my home. I then gave them the bad news.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “You guys can search my house and my office and my car for as long as you want, but I have to tell you, you are wasting your time. Not only am I the wrong guy for this, but you aren’t going to find that gun.”
I saw Lankford’s head jog up and he was looking at me in the rearview again.
“And why is that, Counselor? You already dumped it?”
“Because the gun was stolen out of my house and I don’t know where it is.”
Lankford started laughing. I saw the joy in his eyes.
“Uh-huh, stolen. How convenient. When did this happen?”
“Hard to tell. I hadn’t checked on the gun in years.”
“You make a police report on it or file an insurance claim?”
“No.”
“So somebody comes in and steals your Mickey Cohen gun and you don’t report it. Even after you just told us you registered it in case this very thing happened. You being a lawyer and all, doesn’t that sound a little screwy to you?”
“It does, except I knew who stole it. It was a client. He told me he took it and if I were to report it, I would be violating a client trust because my police report would lead to his arrest. Kind of a catch-twenty-two, Detective.”
Sobel turned and looked back at me. I think maybe she thought I was making it up on the spot, which I was.
“That sounds like legal jargon and bullshit, Haller,” Lankford said.
“But it’s the truth. We’re here. Just park in front of the garage.”
Lankford pulled the car into the space in front of my garage and killed the engine. He turned to look back at me before getting out.
“Which client stole the gun?”
“I told you, I can’t tell you.”
“Well, Roulet’s your only client right now, isn’t he?”
“I have a lot of clients. But I told you, I can’t tell you.”
“Think maybe we should run the charts from his ankle bracelet and see if he’s been to your place lately?”
“Do whatever you want. He actually has been here. We had a meeting here once. In my office.”
“Maybe that’s when he took it.”
“I’m not telling you he took it, Detective.”
“Yeah, well, that bracelet gives Roulet a pass on the Levin thing, anyway. We checked the GPS. So I guess that leaves you, Counselor.”
“And that leaves you wasting your time.”
I suddenly realized something about Roulet’s ankle bracelet but tried not to show it. Maybe a line on the trapdoor to his Houdini act. It was something I would need to check into later.
“Are we just going to sit here?”
Lankford turned and got out. He then opened my door because the inside handle had been disabled for transporting suspects and custodies. I looked at the two detectives.
“You want me to show you the gun box? Maybe when you see it is empty, you can just leave and save us all the time.”
“Not quite, Counselor,” Lankford said. “We’re going through this whole place. I’ll take the car and Detective Sobel will start in the house.”
I shook my head.
“Not quite, Detective. It doesn’t work that way. I don’t trust you. Your warrant is bent, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re bent. You stay together so I can watch you both or we wait until I can get a second observer up here. My case manager could be here in ten minutes. I could bring her up here to watch and you could also ask her about calling me on the morning Raul Levin got killed.”
Lankford’s face grew dark with insult and anger that he looked like he was having trouble controlling. I decided to push it. I took out my cell phone and opened it.
“I’m going to call your judge right now and see if he —”
“Fine,” Lankford said. “We’ll start with the car. Together. We’ll work our way inside the house.”
I closed the phone and put it back in my pocket.
“Fine.”
I walked over to a keypad on the wall outside the garage. I tapped in the combination and the garage door started to rise, revealing the blue-black Lincoln awaiting inspection. Its license plate read NT GLTY. Lankford looked at it and shook his head.
“Yeah, right.”
He stepped into the garage, his face still tight with anger. I decided to ease things a little bit.
“Hey, Detective,” I said. “What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”
He didn’t respond. He stared angrily at the license plate on my Lincoln.
“One’s a bottom-feeding shit sucker,” I said. “And the other one’s a fish.”
For a moment his face remained frozen. Then a smile creased it and he broke into a long and hard laugh. Sobel stepped into the garage, having not heard the joke.
“What?” she said.
“I’ll tell you later,” Lankford said.
THIRTY-ONE
I t took them a half hour to search the Lincoln and then move into the house, where they started with the office. I watched the whole time and only spoke when offering explanation about something that gave them pause in their search. They didn’t talk much to each other and it was becoming increasingly clear that there was a rift between the two partners over the direction Lankford had taken the investigation.
At one point Lankford got a call on his cell phone and he went out the front door onto the porch to talk privately. I had the shades up and if I stood in the hallway I could look one way and see him out there and the other way and see Sobel in my office.
“You’re not too happy about this, are you?” I said to Sobel when I was sure her partner couldn’t hear.
“I
t doesn’t matter how I am. We’re following the case and that’s it.”
“Is your partner always like that, or only with lawyers?”
“He spent fifty thousand dollars on a lawyer last year, trying to get custody of his kids. He didn’t. Before that we lost a big case—a murder—on a legal technicality.”
I nodded.
“And he blamed the lawyer. But who broke the rules?”
She didn’t respond and that as much as confirmed it had been Lankford who had made the technical misstep.
“I get the picture,” I said.
I checked on Lankford on the porch again. He was gesturing impatiently like he was trying to explain something to a moron. Must have been his custody lawyer. I decided to change the subject with Sobel.
“Do you think you are being manipulated at all on this case?”
“What are you talking about?”
“The photos stashed in the bureau, the bullet casing in the floor vent. Pretty convenient, don’t you think?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything. I’m asking questions your partner doesn’t seem interested in.”
I checked on Lankford. He was tapping in numbers on his cell, making a new call. I turned and stepped into the open doorway of the office. Sobel was looking behind the files in a drawer. Finding no gun, she closed the drawer and stepped over to the desk. I spoke in a low voice.
“What about Raul’s message to me?” I said. “About finding Jesus Menendez’s ticket out, what do you think he meant?”
“We haven’t figured that out yet.”
“Too bad. I think it’s important.”
“Everything’s important until it isn’t.”
I nodded, not sure what she meant by that.
“You know, the case I’m trying is pretty interesting. You ought to come back by and watch. You might learn something.”
She looked from the desk to me. Our eyes held for a moment. Then she squinted with suspicion, like she was trying to judge whether a supposed murder suspect was actually coming on to her.
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“Well, for one thing, you might have trouble getting to court if you’re in lockup.”
“Hey, no gun, no case. That’s why you’re here, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Besides, this is your partner’s thing. You’re not riding with him on this. I can tell.”
“Typical lawyer. You think you know all the angles.”
“No, not me. I’m finding out I don’t know any of them.”
She changed the subject.
“Is this your daughter?”
She pointed to the framed photograph on the desk.
“Yeah. Hayley.”
“Nice alliteration. Hayley Haller. Named after the comet?”
“Sort of. Spelled differently. My ex-wife came up with it.”
Lankford came in then, talking to Sobel loudly about the call he had gotten. It had been from a supervisor telling them that they were back in play and would handle the next Glendale homicide whether the Levin case was still active or not. He didn’t say anything about the call he had made.
Sobel told him she had finished searching the office. No gun.
“I’m telling you, it’s not here,” I said. “You are wasting your time. And mine. I have court tomorrow and need to prepare for witnesses.”
“Let’s do the bedroom next,” Lankford said, ignoring my protest.
I backed up into the hallway to give them space to come out of one room and go into the next. They walked down the sides of the bed to where twin night tables waited. Lankford opened the top drawer of his table and lifted out a CD.
“Wreckrium for Lil’ Demon,” he read. “You have to be fucking kidding me.”
I didn’t respond. Sobel quickly opened the two drawers of her table and found them empty except for a strip of condoms. I looked the other way.
“I’ll take the closet,” Lankford said after he had finished with his night table—leaving the drawers open in typical police search fashion. He walked into the closet and soon spoke from inside it.
“Here we go.”
He stepped back out of the closet holding the wooden gun box.
“Bingo,” I said. “You found an empty gun box. You must be a detective.”
Lankford shook the box in his hands before putting it down on the bed. Either he was trying to play with me or the box had a solid heft to it. I felt a little charge go down the back of my neck as I realized that Roulet could have just as easily snuck back into my house to return the gun. It would have been the perfect hiding place for it. The last place I might think to check again once I had determined that the gun was gone. I remembered the odd smile on Roulet’s face when I had told him I wanted my gun back. Was he smiling because I already had the gun back?
Lankford flipped the box’s latch and lifted the top. He pulled back the oilcloth covering. The cork cutout which once held Mickey Cohen’s gun was still empty. I breathed out so heavily it almost came out as a sigh.
“What did I tell you?” I said quickly, trying to cover up.
“Yeah, what did you tell us,” Lankford said. “Heidi, you got a bag? We’re going to take the box.”
I looked at Sobel. She didn’t look like a Heidi to me. I wondered if it was some sort of a squad room nickname. Or maybe it was the reason she didn’t put her first name on her business card. It didn’t sound homicide tough.
“In the car,” she said.
“Go get it,” Lankford said.
“You are going to take an empty gun box?” I asked. “What good does it do you?”
“All part of the chain of evidence, Counselor. You should know that. Besides, it will come in handy, since I have a feeling we’ll never find the gun.”
I shook my head.
“Maybe handy in your dreams. The box is evidence of nothing.”
“It’s evidence that you had Mickey Cohen’s gun. Says it right on this little brass plaque your daddy or somebody had made.”
“So fucking what?”
“Well, I just made a call while I was out on your front porch, Haller. See, we had somebody checking on Mickey Cohen’s self-defense case. Turns out that over there in LAPD’s evidence archive they still have all the ballistic evidence from that case. That’s a lucky break for us, the case being, what, fifty years old?”
I understood immediately. They would take the bullet slugs and casings from the Cohen case and compare them with the same evidence recovered in the Levin case. They would match the Levin murder to Mickey Cohen’s gun which they would then tie to me with the gun box and the state’s AFS computer. I doubted Roulet could have realized how the police would be able to make a case without even having the gun when he thought out his scheme to control me.
I stood there silently. Sobel left the room without a glance at me and Lankford looked up from the box at me with a killer smile.
“What’s the matter, Counselor?” he asked. “Evidence got your tongue?”
I finally was able to speak.
“How long will ballistics take?” I managed to ask.
“Hey, for you, we’re going to put a rush on it. So get out there and enjoy yourself while you can. But don’t leave town.”
He laughed, almost giddy with himself.
“Man, I thought they only said that in movies. But there, I just said it! I wish my partner had been here.”
Sobel came back in with a large brown bag and a roll of red evidence tape. I watched her put the gun box into the bag and then seal it with the tape. I wondered how much time I had and if the wheels had just come off of everything I had put into motion. I started to feel as empty as the wooden box Sobel had just sealed inside the brown paper bag.
THIRTY-TWO
F ernando Valenzuela lived out in Valencia. From my home it was easily an hour’s drive north in the last remnants of rush-hour traffic. Valenzuela had moved out of Van
Nuys a few years earlier because his three daughters were nearing high school age and he feared for their safety and education. He moved into a neighborhood filled with people who had also fled from the city and his commute went from five minutes to forty-five. But he was happy. His house was nicer and his children safer. He lived in a Spanish-style house with a red tile roof in a planned community full of Spanish-style houses with red tile roofs. It was more than a bail bondsman could ever dream of having, but it came with a stiff monthly price tag.
It was almost nine by the time I got there. I pulled up to the garage, which had been left open. One space was taken by a minivan and the other by a pickup. On the floor between the pickup and a fully equipped tool bench was a large cardboard box that said SONY on it. It was long and thin. I looked closer and saw it was a box for a fifty-inch plasma TV. I got out and went to the front door and knocked. Valenzuela answered after a long wait.
“Mick, what are you doing up here?”
“Do you know your garage door is open?”
“Holy shit! I just had a plasma delivered.”
He pushed by me and ran across the yard to look into the garage. I closed his front door and followed him to the garage. When I got there he was standing next to his TV, smiling.
“Oh, man, you know that would’ve never happened in Van Nuys,” he said. “That sucker woulda been long gone. Come on, we’ll go in through here.”
He headed toward a door that would take us from the garage into the house. He hit a switch that made the garage door start to roll down.
“Hey, Val, wait a minute,” I said. “Let’s just talk out here. It’s more private.”
“But Maria probably wants to say hello.”
“Maybe next time.”
He came back over to me, concern in his eyes.
“What’s up, Boss?”
“What’s up is I spent some time today with the cops working on Raul’s murder. They said they cleared Roulet on it because of the ankle bracelet.”
Valenzuela nodded vigorously.
“Yeah, yeah, they came to see me a few days after it happened. I showed them the system and how it works and I pulled up Roulet’s track for that day. They saw he was at work. And I also showed them the other bracelet I got and explained how it couldn’t be tampered with. It’s got a mass detector. Bottom line is you can’t take it off. It would know and then I would know.”