“Your judgment and your ability to cut through the obstacles in front of you are, at best, clouded by an outside agenda.”
“You’re talking about my kid? My having to live with knowing my kid wants nothing to do with me? I wouldn’t call that an agenda.”
“I’m not talking about that per se. I am talking about the root of that. I’m talking about the guilt you carry over all of it. It is impacting you as a lawyer. Your performance as a lawyer, as a defender of the accused. And in this case, most likely, the wrongly accused.”
He was talking about Sandy and Katie Patterson and the accident that took their lives. I leaned down and grabbed the iron railing at the foot of his bed with both hands. Legal Siegel was my mentor. He could tell me anything. He could dress me down lower than even my ex-wife and I would accept it.
“Listen to me,” he said. “There is no more noble a cause on this planet than to stand for the wrongly accused. You can’t fuck this up, kid.”
I nodded and kept my head bowed.
“Guilt,” he said. “You have to get by it. Let the ghosts go or they’ll take you under and you’ll never be the lawyer you are supposed to be. You will never see the big picture.”
I threw up my hands.
“Please, enough with the big picture crap! What are you talking about, Legal? What am I missing?”
“To see what you’re missing, you have to step back and widen the angle. Then you see the bigger picture.”
I looked at him, trying to understand.
“When was the habeas filed?” he asked quietly.
“November.”
“When was Gloria Dayton murdered?”
“November.”
I said it impatiently. We both knew the answers to these questions.
“And when were you papered by the lawyer?”
“Just now—yesterday.”
“And this federal agent you talked about, when was he served?”
“I don’t know if he was served. But Valenzuela had the paper yesterday.”
“And then there’s the phony subpoena Fulgoni cooked up for the other girl from back then.”
“Kendall Roberts, right.”
“Any idea why he would dummy up paper for her and not you?”
I shrugged.
“I don’t know. I guess he knew I’d know if it was legit or not. She’s not a lawyer, so she wouldn’t. He’d save the costs of filing with the court. I’ve heard of lawyers who roll that way.”
“Seems thin to me.”
“Well, that’s all I got off the top of—”
“So six months after the habeas was filed with the court they put out their first subpoenas? I tell you, if I ran a shop like that I’d a been out of business and on the street. It’s not the timely exercise of the law, that’s for sure.”
“This kid Fulgoni doesn’t know his ass from—”
I stopped in midsentence. I had suddenly caught a glimpse of the elusive big picture. I looked at Legal.
“Maybe these weren’t the first subpoenas.”
He nodded.
“Now I think you’re getting it,” Legal said.
21
I told Earl to drop down to Olympic and take me out to Century City and Sly Fulgoni Jr.’s office. I then settled in with a fresh legal pad and started charting timelines on the Gloria Dayton murder case and the Hector Moya habeas petition. Pretty soon I saw how the cases were entwined like a double helix. I saw the big picture.
“You sure you got the right address, boss?”
I looked up from my chart and out the window. Earl had slowed the Lincoln in front of a row of French provincial–style town house offices. We were still on Olympic but on the eastern edge of Century City. I was sure the address carried the correct zip code and all the cachet that came with it, but it was a far cry from the gleaming towers on the Avenue of the Stars that people think of when they imagine a Century City legal firm. I had to think there would be buyer’s remorse for any client who arrived here for the first time and found these digs. Then again, who was I to talk? Many was the time I dealt with buyer’s remorse when my clients learned I worked out of the backseat of my car.
“Yeah,” I said. “This is it.”
I jumped out and headed toward the door. I entered a small reception room with a well-worn carpet leading from the front of the reception desk in twin paths to doors to the right and left. The door on the left had a name on it I didn’t recognize. The door on the right had the name Sylvester Fulgoni. I got the feeling that Sly Jr. was splitting the space with another attorney. Probably the secretary, too, but at the moment there was no secretary to share. The reception desk was empty.
“Hello?” I said.
Nobody replied. I looked down at the paperwork and mail piled on the desk and saw that on top was a photocopy of Sly Jr.’s court calendar. Only I saw very few court dates recorded on it for the month. Sly didn’t have much work—at least work that took him inside a courthouse. I did see that he had me down for a deposition scheduled for the following Tuesday, but there were no notations about James Marco or Kendall Roberts.
“Hello?” I called out again.
This time I was louder but still got no response. I stepped over to the Fulgoni door and leaned my ear to the jamb. I heard nothing. I knocked and tried the knob. It was unlocked and I pushed the door open, revealing a young man seated behind a large ornate desk that bespoke better times than the rest of the office presented.
“Excuse me, can I help you?” the man said, seemingly annoyed by the intrusion.
He closed a laptop computer that was on the desk in front of him, but didn’t get up. I stepped two feet into the office. I saw no one else in the room.
“I’m looking for Sly Jr.,” I said. “Is that you?”
“I’m sorry but my practice is by appointment only. You’ll have to set up an appointment and come back.”
“There’s no receptionist.”
“My secretary is at lunch and I’m very busy at the—wait, you’re Haller, aren’t you?”
He pointed a finger at me and put his other hand on the arm of his chair like he was bracing himself in case he had to cut and run. I raised my hands to show I was unarmed.
“I come in peace.”
He looked like he was no more than twenty-five. He was struggling to produce a reasonable goatee and was wearing a Dodgers game jersey. It was obvious he didn’t have court today, or maybe any day.
“What do you want?” he asked.
I took a few more steps toward the desk. It was gigantic and way too big for the space—obviously a leftover from his father’s practice in a better, bigger office. I pulled back one of the chairs positioned in front of the desk and sat down.
“Don’t sit. You can’t—”
I was seated.
“All right, go ahead.”
I nodded my thanks and smiled. I pointed at the desk.
“Nice,” I said. “A hand-me-down from the old man?”
“Look, what do you want?”
“I told you. I come in peace. What are you so jumpy about?”
He blew out his breath in exasperation.
“I don’t like people barging in on me. This is a law office. You wouldn’t want people just—oh, that’s right, you don’t even have an office. I saw the movie.”
“I didn’t just barge in. There was no secretary. I called out and then tried the door.”
“I told you, she’s at lunch. It’s the lunch hour. Look, can we get this over with? What do you want? State your business and then leave.”
He dramatically chopped the air with his hand.
“Look,” I said, “I’m here because we got off on the wrong foot and I apologize. It was my fault. I was treating you—and your father—like we were foes on this case. But I don’t think it’s got to be that way. So I’m here to make peace and to see if we might be able to help each other out. You know, I show you mine if you show me yours.”
He shook his head.
“No, we’re not doing this. I have a case and you have whatever the fuck you have, but we’re not working together.”
I leaned forward and tried to hold eye contact but the kid was all over the place.
“We have similar causes of action, Sly. Your client Hector Moya and my client Andre La Cosse stand to benefit by our working together and sharing information.”
He shook his head dismissively.
“I don’t think so.”