8
There was only one Lincoln at the curb when I got out of court this time. Everybody else had already split for lunch. I jumped in the back and told Earl to head toward Hollywood. I didn’t know where Stacey Campbell lived but I was guessing it wasn’t in downtown. I pulled my phone, looked at the number on my hand, and punched it in. She answered promptly with a practiced voice that was soft and sexy and everything I assumed was wanted in a prostitute’s voice.
“Hello, this is Starry-Eyed Stacey.”
“Uh, Stacey Campbell?”
The soft and sexy left her voice and was replaced by a harder-edged tone that had a tinge of cigarette to it as well.
“Who is this?”
“My name is Michael Haller. I’m Andre La Cosse’s attorney. He told me he spoke to you and you agreed to talk to me about Giselle Dallinger.”
“The thing is, I don’t want to be dragged into court.”
“That’s not my intention. I just want to talk to someone who knew Giselle and can tell me about her.”
There was a silence.
“Ms. Campbell, is there a chance I could come by to see you or meet you somewhere?”
“I’ll meet you. I don’t want anyone coming here.”
“That’s fine. Is now okay?”
“I need to get changed and put on my hair.”
“What time and where?”
Another silence went by. I was about to tell her she didn’t have to put on her hair for me when she spoke first.
“How about Toast?”
It was ten past noon, but I understood that a woman of her occupation might have just gotten up for the day.
“Uh, yeah, that’s fine, I guess. I’m trying to think of a place where we could get breakfast.”
“What? No, I mean Toast, the place. It’s a café on Third near Crescent Heights.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll meet you there. So about one, then?”
“I’ll be there.”
“I’ll get a table and be waiting.”
I ended the call, told Earl where we were going, and then called Lorna to see if she got my two o’clock status conference postponed.
“No soap,” she said. “Patricia said the judge wants this thing off his calendar. No more delays, Mickey. He wants you in chambers at two.”
Patricia was Judge Companioni’s clerk. She actually ran the courtroom and the calendar, and when she said the judge wanted to move the case on, it really meant Patricia wanted to move it on. She was tired of the constant delays I had asked for while I tried to convince my client to take the deal the DA had put on the table.
I thought for a moment. Even if Stacey Campbell showed up on time—which I knew I couldn’t count on—there was probably no way I could get what I needed from her and get back to the courthouse in downtown by two. I could cancel the meeting at Toast but I didn’t want to. The mysteries and motives surrounding Gloria Dayton had my full attention at the moment. I wanted to know the secrets behind her subterfuge, and diverting to handle another case was not going to happen.
“Okay, I’ll call Bullocks and see if she’s still up for covering for me on it.”
“Why, are you still in first-appearance court?”
“No, heading to West Hollywood on the Dayton case.”
“You mean the La Cosse case, don’t you?”
“Right.”
“And West Hollywood can’t wait?”
“No, it can’t, Lorna.”
“She still has a hold on you, doesn’t she? Even in death.”
“I just want to know what happened. So right now I need to call Bullocks. I’ll talk to you later.”
I clicked off before I got a sermon about getting emotionally involved with the work. Lorna had always had issues with my relationship with Gloria and could not understand that it had nothing to do with sex. That it wasn’t some kind of whore fixation. That it was about finding someone you somehow shared the same view of the world with. Or at least thought you did.
When I called Jennifer Aronson she told me she was working in the law library at Southwestern and going through the Gloria Dayton files I had given her that morning.
“I’m going case to case and just trying to familiarize myself with everything,” she said. “Unless there is something I should be specifically looking for.”
“Not really,” I said. “Did you find any notes on Hector Arrande Moya?”
“No notes. It’s amazing you remembered his name after seven years.”
“I remember names, some cases, but not birthdays or anniversaries. Always gets me in trouble. You need to check on Moya’s status and—”
“I did that first thing. I started with the L.A. Times online archives and found a couple stories about his case. It went federal. You said you made your deal with the DA’s Office, but the feds obviously took over the case.”
I nodded. The more I talked about a case, the more I remembered it.
“Right, there was a federal warrant existing. The DA must’ve gotten big-footed because Moya was papered and that gave the feds first dibs.”
“It also gave them a bigger hammer. There is a gun enhancement with federal drug-trafficking statutes that made Moya eligible for a life sentence, and that’s what he got.”
I remembered that part, too. That this guy was put away for life for having a couple ounces of coke in his hotel room.
“I’m assuming there was an appeal. Did you check PACER?”
PACER was the federal government’s Public Access to Court Electronic Records database. It provided quick access to all documents filed in regard to a case. It would be the starting point.
“Yes, I went on PACER and pulled up the docket. He was convicted in ’06. Then there was the plenary appeal—the usual global attack citing insufficient evidence, court error on motions, and unreasonable sentencing. None made it past Pasadena. PCA right down the line.”
She was referring to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It had a Southern California location on South Grand Avenue in Pasadena. Appeals from Los Angeles–based cases would be filed through the Pasadena courthouse and initially reviewed by a theee-member screening local panel of the appellate court. The local panel weeded out appeals it deemed unworthy and kicked the others for full consideration to a merits panel composed of three judges drawn from the circuit that held jurisdiction over the western region of the country. Aronson’s saying that Moya never made it past Pasadena meant that his conviction was “per curiam affirmed” by the screening panel of judges. Moya had struck out swinging.