The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,10

I didn’t deal in guilt and innocence, because everybody was guilty. Of something. But it didn’t matter, because every case I took on was a house built on a foundation poured by overworked and underpaid laborers. They cut corners. They made mistakes. And then they painted over the mistakes with lies. My job was to peel away the paint and find the cracks. To work my fingers and tools into those cracks and widen them. To make them so big that either the house fell down or, failing that, my client slipped through.

Much of society thought of me as the devil but they were wrong. I was a greasy angel. I was the true road saint. I was needed and wanted. By both sides. I was the oil in the machine. I allowed the gears to crank and turn. I helped keep the engine of the system running.

But all of that would change with the Roulet case. For me. For him. And certainly for Jesus Menendez.

FOUR

Louis Ross Roulet was in a holding tank with seven other men who had made the half-block bus ride from the Van Nuys jail to the Van Nuys courthouse. There were only two white men in the cell and they sat next to each other on a bench while the six black men took the other side of the cell. It was a form of Darwinian segregation. They were all strangers but there was strength in numbers.

Since Roulet supposedly came from Beverly Hills money, I looked at the two white men and it was easy to choose between them. One was rail thin with the desperate wet eyes of a hype who was long past fix time. The other looked like the proverbial deer in the headlights. I chose him.

“Mr. Roulet?” I said, pronouncing the name the way Valenzuela had told me to.

The deer nodded. I signaled him over to the bars so I could talk quietly.

“My name is Michael Haller. People call me Mickey. I will be representing you during your first appearance today.”

We were in the holding area behind the arraignment court, where attorneys are routinely allowed access to confer with clients before court begins. There is a blue line painted on the floor outside the cells. The three-foot line. I had to keep that distance from my client.

Roulet grasped the bars in front of me. Like the others in the cage, he had on ankle, wrist and belly chains. They wouldn’t come off until he was taken into the courtroom. He was in his early thirties and, though at least six feet tall and 180 pounds, he seemed slight. Jail will do that to you. His eyes were pale blue and it was rare for me to see the kind of panic that was so clearly set in them. Most of the time my clients have been in lockup before and they have the stone-cold look of the predator. It’s how they get by in jail.

But Roulet was different. He looked like prey. He was scared and he didn’t care who saw it and knew it.

“This is a setup,” he said urgently and loudly. “You have to get me out of here. I made a mistake with that woman, that’s all. She’s trying to set me up and —”

I put my hands up to stop him.

“Be careful what you say in here,” I said in a low voice. “In fact, be careful what you say until we get you out of here and can talk in private.”

He looked around, seemingly not understanding.

“You never know who is listening,” I said. “And you never know who will say he heard you say something, even if you didn’t say anything. Best thing is to not talk about the case at all. You understand? Best thing is not to talk to anyone about anything, period.”

He nodded and I signaled him down to the bench next to the bars. There was a bench against the opposite wall and I sat down.

“I am really here just to meet you and tell you who I am,” I said. “We’ll talk about the case after we get you out. I already spoke to your family lawyer, Mr. Dobbs, out there and we will tell the judge that we are prepared to post bail. Do I have all of that right?”

I opened a leather Mont Blanc folder and prepared to take notes on a legal pad. Roulet nodded. He was learning.

“Good,” I said. “Tell me about yourself. How old you are,