“I mean it, Detective. I’ve been through all of the active cases. There is nothing in any of them that constitutes a threat or reason for Vincent to feel threatened. There is nothing in any of them that connects to the FBI. There is nothing in any of them that indicates Jerry Vincent stumbled onto something that put him in harm’s way. Besides, when you find out bad things about your clients, they’re protected. So there’s nothing there. I mean, he wasn’t representing mobsters. He wasn’t representing drug dealers. There wasn’t anything in-”
“He represents murderers.”
“Accused murderers. And at the time of his death he had only one murder case – Walter Elliot – and there isn’t anything there. Believe me, I’ve looked.”
I wasn’t so sure I believed it as I said it but Bosch didn’t seem to notice. He finally sat down on the edge of the chair in front of the desk, and his face seemed to change. There was an almost desperate look to it.
“Jerry was divorced,” I offered. “Did you check out the ex-wife?”
“They got divorced nine years ago. She’s happily remarried and about to have her second kid. I don’t think a woman seven months pregnant is going to come gunning for an ex-husband she hasn’t talked to in nine years.”
“Any other relatives?”
“A mother in Pittsburgh. The family angle is dry.”
“Girlfriend?”
“He was banging his secretary but there was nothing serious there. And her alibi checks out. She was also banging his investigator. And they were together that night.”
I felt my face turning red. That sordid scenario wasn’t too far from my own current situation. At least Lorna, Cisco and I had been entangled at different times. I rubbed my face as if I were tired and hoped it would account for my new coloration.
“That’s convenient,” I said. “That they alibi each other.”
Bosch shook his head.
“It checks out through witnesses. They were with friends at a screening at Archway. That big-shot client of yours got them the invitation.”
I nodded and took an educated guess at something, then threw a zinger at Bosch.
“The guy you sweated in a room that first night was the investigator, Bruce Carlin.”
“Who told you that?”
“You just did. You had a classic love triangle. It would’ve been the place to start.”
“Smart lawyer. But like I said, it didn’t pan out. We spent a night on it and in the morning we were still at square one. Tell me about the money.”
He’d thrown a zinger right back at me.
“What money?”
“The money in the business accounts. I suppose you’re going to tell me they are protected territory, too.”
“Actually, I’d probably need to talk to the judge for an opinion on that, but I don’t need to bother. My case manager is one of the best accounts people I’ve ever run across. She’s been working with the books and she tells me they’re clean. Every penny Jerry took in is accounted for.”
Bosch didn’t respond, so I continued.
“Let me tell you something, Detective. When lawyers get into trouble, most of the time it’s because of the money. The books. It’s the one place where there are no gray areas. It’s the one place where the California bar loves to stick its nose in. I keep the cleanest books in the business because I don’t ever want to give them a reason to come after me. So I would know and Lorna, my case manager, would know if there was something in these books that didn’t add up. But there isn’t. I think Jerry probably paid himself a little too quickly but there is nothing technically wrong with that.”
I saw Bosch’s eyes light on something I had said.
“What?”
“What’s that mean, he ‘paid himself too quickly’?”
“It means – let me just start at the start. The way it works is you take on a client and you receive an advance. That money goes into the client trust account. It’s their money but you are holding it because you want to make sure you can get it when you earn it. You follow?”
“Yeah, you can’t trust your clients because they’re criminals. So you get the money up front and put it in a trust account. Then you pay yourself from it as you do the work.”
“More or less. Anyway, it’s in the trust and as you do the work, make appearances, prepare the case and so forth, you take your fees from the trust account. You move it into the operating account. Then, from the operating account you pay your own bills and salaries. Rent, secretary, investigator, car costs and so on and so forth. You also pay yourself.”
“Okay, so how did Vincent pay himself too quickly?”
“Well, I am not exactly saying he did. It’s a matter of custom and practice. But it looks from the books that he liked to keep a low balance in operating. He happened to have had a franchise client who paid a large advance up front and that money went through the trust and operating accounts pretty quickly. After costs, the rest went to Jerry Vincent in salary.”
Bosch’s body language indicated I was hitting on something that jibed with something else and was important to him. He had leaned slightly toward me and seemed to have tightened his shoulders and neck.
“Walter Elliot,” he said. “Was he the franchise?”
