The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,16

was in a meeting. As soon as she calls me back we will move on this.”

His words prompted something that had bothered me during the hearing.

“She couldn’t come out of a meeting to talk about her son in jail? I was wondering why she wasn’t in court today if this boy, as you call him, is so clean and upstanding.”

Dobbs looked at me like I hadn’t used mouthwash in a month.

“Mrs. Windsor is a very busy and powerful woman. I am sure that if I had stated it was an emergency concerning her son, she would have been on the phone immediately.”

“Mrs. Windsor?”

“She remarried after she and Louis’s father divorced. That was a long time ago.”

I nodded, then realized that there was more to talk about with Dobbs but nothing I wanted to discuss in front of Valenzuela.

“Val, why don’t you go check on when Louis will be back at Van Nuys jail so you can get him out.”

“That’s easy,” Valenzuela said. “He’ll go on the first bus back after lunch.”

“Yeah, well, go double-check that while I finish with Mr. Dobbs.”

Valenzuela was about to protest that he didn’t need to double-check it when he realized what I was telling him.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go do it.”

After he was gone I studied Dobbs for a moment before speaking. Dobbs looked to be in his late fifties. He had a deferential presence that probably came from thirty years of taking care of rich people. My guess was that he had become rich in the process himself but it hadn’t changed his public demeanor.

“If we’re going to be working together, I guess I should ask what you want to be called. Cecil? C.C.? Mr. Dobbs?”

“Cecil will be fine.”

“Well, my first question, Cecil, is whether we are going to be working together. Do I have the job?”

“Mr. Roulet made it clear to me he wanted you on the case. To be honest, you would not have been my first choice. You may not have been any choice, because frankly I had never heard of you. But you are Mr. Roulet’s first choice, and that is acceptable to me. In fact, I thought you acquitted yourself quite well in the courtroom, especially considering how hostile that prosecutor was toward Mr. Roulet.”

I noticed that the boy had become “Mr. Roulet” now. I wondered what had happened to advance him in Dobbs’s view.

“Yeah, well, they call her Maggie McFierce. She’s pretty dedicated.”

“I thought she was a bit overboard. Do you think there is any way to get her removed from the case, maybe get someone a little more . . . grounded?”

“I don’t know. Trying to shop prosecutors can be dangerous. But if you think she needs to go, I can get it done.”

“That’s good to hear. Maybe I should have known about you before today.”

“Maybe. Do you want to talk about fees now and get it out of the way?”

“If you would like.”

I looked around the hallway to make sure there were no other lawyers hanging around in earshot. I was going to go schedule A all the way on this.

“I get twenty-five hundred for today and Louis already approved that. If you want to go hourly from here, I get three hundred an hour and that gets bumped to five in trial because I can’t do anything else. If you’d rather go with a flat rate, I’ll want sixty thousand to take it from here through a preliminary hearing. If we end it with a plea, I’ll take twelve more on top of that. If we go to trial instead, I need another sixty on the day we decide that and twenty-five more when we start picking a jury. This case doesn’t look like more than a week, including jury selection, but if it goes past a week, I get twenty-five-a-week extra. We can talk about an appeal if and when it becomes necessary.”

I hesitated a moment to see how Dobbs was reacting. He showed nothing so I pressed on.

“I’ll need thirty thousand for a retainer and another ten for an investigator by the end of the day. I don’t want to waste time on this. I want to get an investigator out and about on this thing before it hits the media and maybe before the cops talk to some of the people involved.”

Dobbs slowly nodded.

“Are those your standard fees?”

“When I can get them. I’m worth it. What are you charging the family, Cecil?”

I was sure he wouldn’t walk away from this little episode