The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,54

about you and your kind. You lawyers are all takers from the woodpile.”

“Thanks for the sermon. I’ll keep it in mind next time I’m chopping wood.”

“You don’t like that, then I’ve got a joke for you. What’s the difference between a catfish and a defense attorney?”

“Hmmm, I don’t know, Detective.”

“One’s a bottom-feeding scum sucker and one’s a fish.”

He laughed uproariously. I stood up. It was time to go.

“I hope you brush your teeth after you eat something like that,” I said. “I’d hate to be your partner if you don’t.”

I walked away, thinking about what he had said about the woodpile and what Sam Scales had said about my being a street-legal con. I was getting it from all sides today.

“Thanks for the tip,” Kurlen called after me.

FOURTEEN

Ted Minton had arranged for us to discuss the Roulet case in private by scheduling our conference at a time he knew the deputy district attorney he shared space with had a hearing in court. Minton met me in the waiting area and walked me back. He did not look to me to be older than thirty but he had a self-assured presence. I probably had ten years and a hundred trials on him, yet he showed no sign of deference or respect. He acted as though the meeting was a nuisance he had to put up with. That was fine. That was the usual. And it put more fuel in my tank.

When we got to his small, windowless office, he offered me his office partner’s seat and closed the door. We sat down and looked at each other. I let him go first.

“Okay,” he said. “First off, I wanted to meet you. I’m sort of new up here in the Valley and haven’t met a lot of the members of the defense bar. I know you’re one of those guys that covers the whole county but we haven’t run across each other before.”

“Maybe that’s because you haven’t worked many felony trials before.”

He smiled and nodded like I had scored a point of some kind.

“That might be true,” he said. “Anyway, I gotta tell you, when I was in law school at SC I read a book about your father and his cases. I think it was called Haller for the Defense. Something like that. Interesting guy and interesting times.”

I nodded back.

“He was gone before I really knew him, but there were a few books about him and I read them all more than a few times. It’s probably why I ended up doing this.”

“That must have been hard, getting to know your father through books.”

I shrugged. I didn’t think that Minton and I needed to know each other that well, particularly in light of what I was about to do to him.

“I guess it happens,” he said.

“Yeah.”

He clapped his hands together once, a let’s-get-down-to-business gesture.

“Okay, so we’re here to talk about Louis Roulet, aren’t we?”

“It’s pronounced Roo-lay.”

“Roooo-lay. Got it. So, let’s see, I have some things for you here.”

He swiveled his seat to turn back to his desk. He picked up a thin file and turned back to hand it to me.

“I want to play fair. That’s the up-to-the-minute discovery for you. I know I don’t have to give it to you until after the arraignment but, hell, let’s be cordial.”

My experience is that when prosecutors tell you they are playing fair or better than fair, then you better watch your back. I fanned through the discovery file but didn’t really read anything. The file Levin had gathered for me was at least four times as thick. I wasn’t thrilled because Minton had so little. I was suspicious that he was holding back on me. Most prosecutors made you work for the discovery by having to demand it repeatedly, to the point of going to court to complain to the judge about it. But Minton had just casually handed at least some of it over. Either he had more to learn than I imagined about felony prosecutions or there was some sort of play here.

“This is everything?” I asked.

“Everything I’ve gotten.”

That was always the way. If the prosecutor didn’t have it, then he could stall its release to the defense. I knew for a fact—as in having been married to a prosecutor—that it was not out of the ordinary for a prosecutor to tell the police investigators on a case to take their time getting all the paperwork in. They could then turn around and tell the defense lawyer they wanted to