The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,58

Estates and Louis Roulet on Thursday afternoon.

By the time I got there, Raul Levin was already waiting—and I mean waiting. He had been kept in the showroom with a fresh bottle of water while Louis worked the phone in his private office. The receptionist, an overly tanned blonde with a haircut that hung down one side of her face like a scythe, told me it would be just a few minutes more and then we both could go in. I nodded and stepped away from her desk.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Levin asked.

“Yeah, when we get in there with him.”

The showroom was lined on both sides with steel wires that ran from ceiling to floor and on which were attached 8 ¥ 10 frames containing the photos and pedigrees of the estates offered for sale. Acting like I was studying the rows of houses I couldn’t hope to afford in a hundred years, I moved toward the back hallway that led to the offices. When I got there I noticed an open door and heard Louis Roulet’s voice. It sounded like he was setting up a showing of a Mulholland Drive mansion for a client he told the realtor on the other end of the phone wanted his name kept confidential. I looked back at Levin, who was still near the front of the showroom.

“This is bullshit,” I said and signaled him back.

I walked down the hallway and into Roulet’s plush office. There was the requisite desk stacked with paperwork and thick multiple-listing catalogs. But Roulet wasn’t there. He was in a sitting area to the right of the desk, slouched on a sofa with a cigarette in one hand and the phone in the other. He looked shocked to see me and I thought maybe the receptionist hadn’t even told him he had visitors.

Levin came into the office behind me, followed by the receptionist, the hair scythe swinging back and forth as she hurried to catch up. I was worried that the blade might cut off her nose.

“Mr. Roulet, I’m sorry, these men just came back here.”

“Lisa, I have to go,” Roulet said into the phone. “I’ll call you back.”

He put the phone down in its cradle on the glass coffee table.

“It’s okay, Robin,” he said. “You can go now.”

He made a dismissive gesture with the back of his hand. Robin looked at me like I was wheat she wanted to cut down with that blond blade and then left the room. I closed the door and looked back at Roulet.

“What happened?” he said. “Is it over?”

“Not by a long shot,” I said.

I was carrying the state’s discovery file. The weapon report was front and center. I stepped over and dropped it onto the coffee table.

“I only succeeded in embarrassing myself in the DA’s office. The case against you still stands and we’ll probably be going to trial.”

Roulet’s face dropped.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “You said you were going to tear that guy a new asshole.”

“Turns out the only asshole in there was me. Because once again you didn’t level with me.”

Then, turning to look at Levin, I said, “And because you got us set up.”

Roulet opened the file. On the top page was a color photograph of a knife with blood on its black handle and the tip of its blade. It was not the same knife that was photocopied in the records Levin got from his police sources and that he had showed us in the meeting in Dobbs’s office the first day of the case.

“What the hell is that?” said Levin, looking down at the photo.

“That is a knife. The real one, the one Roulet had with him when he went to Reggie Campo’s apartment. The one with her blood and his initials on it.”

Levin sat down on the couch on the opposite side from Roulet. I stayed standing and they both looked up at me. I started with Levin.

“I went in to see the DA to kick his ass today and he ended up kicking mine with that. Who was your source, Raul? Because he gave you a marked deck.”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute. That’s not —”

“No, you wait a minute. The report you had on the knife being untraceable was bogus. It was put in there to fuck us up. To trick us and it worked perfectly, because I waltzed in there thinking I couldn’t lose today and just gave him the Morgan’s bar video. Just trotted it out like