“Just at basketball practice. But she usually sits there with her nose in a file. We used to go out after with the girls to Hamburger Hamlet but Maggie’s been too busy.”
I nodded. She and Maggie had been foxhole buddies since day one, coming up through the ranks of the prosecutor’s office. Competitors but not competitive with each other. But time goes by and distances work their way into any relationship.
“Well, I’ll take this and look it all over,” I said. “The hearing’s with Friedman at two, right?”
“Yeah, two. I’ll see you then.”
“Thanks for doing this, Joanne.”
“No problem.”
I left the DA’s Office and waited ten minutes to get on an elevator with the lunch crowd. The last one on, I rode down with my face two inches from the door. I hated the elevators more than anything else in the entire Criminal Courts Building.
“Hey, Haller.”
It was a voice from behind me. I didn’t recognize it but it was too crowded for me to turn around to see who it was.
“What?”
“Heard you scored all of Vincent’s cases.”
I wasn’t going to discuss my business in a crowded elevator. I didn’t respond. We finally hit bottom, and the doors spread open. I stepped out and looked back for the person who had spoken.
It was Dan Daly, another defense attorney who was part of a coterie of lawyers who took in Dodgers games occasionally and martinis routinely at Four Green Fields. I had missed the last season of booze and baseball.
“How ya doin’, Dan?”
We shook hands, an indication of how long it had been since we’d seen each other.
“So, who’d you grease?”
He said it with a smile but I could tell there was something behind it. Maybe a dose of jealousy over my scoring the Elliot case. Every lawyer in town knew it was a franchise case. It could pay top dollar for years – first the trial and then the appeals that would come after a conviction.
“Nobody,” I said. “Jerry put me in his will.”
We started walking toward the exit doors. Daly’s ponytail was longer and grayer. But what was most notable was that it was intricately braided. I hadn’t seen that before.
“Then, lucky you,” Daly said. “Let me know if you need a second chair on Elliot.”
“He wants only one lawyer at the table, Dan. He said no dream team.”
“Well, then keep me in mind as a writer in regard to the rest.”
This meant he was available to write appeals on any convictions my new set of clients might incur. Daly had forged a solid reputation as an expert appeals man with a good batting average.
“I’ll do that,” I said. “I’m still reviewing everything.”
“Good enough.”
We came through the doors and I could see the Lincoln at the curb, waiting. Daly was going the other way. I told him I’d keep in touch.
“We miss you at the bar, Mick,” he said over his shoulder.
“I’ll drop by,” I called back.
But I knew I wouldn’t drop by, that I had to stay away from places like that.
I got in the back of the Lincoln – I tell my drivers never to get out and open the door for me – and told Patrick to take me over to Chinese Friends on Broadway. I told him to drop me and go get lunch on his own. I needed to sit and read and didn’t want any conversation.
I got to the restaurant between the first and second waves of patrons and waited no more than five minutes for a table. Wanting to get to work immediately, I ordered a plate of the fried pork chops right away. I knew they would be perfect. They were paper-thin and delicious and I’d be able to eat them with my fingers without taking my eyes off the Wyms documents.
I opened the file Joanne Giorgetti had given me. It contained copies only of what the prosecutor had turned over to Jerry Vincent under the rules of discovery – primarily sheriff’s documents relating to the incident, arrest and follow-up investigation. Any notes, strategies or defense documents that Vincent had generated were lost with the original file.
The natural starting point was the arrest report, which included the initial and most basic summary of what had transpired. As is often the case, it started with 911 calls to the county communications-and-dispatch center. Multiple reports of gunfire came in from a neighborhood next to a park in Calabasas. The calls fell under Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction because Calabasas was in an unincorporated area north of Malibu and near the western limits of the county.
The first deputy to respond was listed on the report as Todd Stallworth. He worked the night shift out of the Malibu substation and had been dispatched at 10:21 p.m. to the neighborhood off Las Virgenes Road. From there he was directed into the nearby Malibu Creek State Park, where the shots were being fired. Now hearing shots himself, Stallworth called for backup and drove into the park to investigate.
