The Lincoln lawyer - By Michael Connelly Page 0,81

Maybe we could have lunch first.”

“We?”

“Would that bother you?”

“No, Maggie, not at all. How about I come by at noon?”

“Great.”

“See you then.”

I hung the phone up before she could say good-bye. I owned a gun but it was a collector piece that hadn’t been fired in my lifetime and was stored in a box in my bedroom closet at the rear of the house. So I quietly opened a kitchen drawer and took out a short but sharp steak knife. I then walked through the living room toward the hallway that led to the rear of the house. There were three doorways in the hall. They led to my bedroom, a bathroom and another bedroom I had turned into a home office, the only real office I had.

The desk light was on in the office. It was not visible from the angle I had in the hallway but I could tell it was on. I had not been home in two days but I did not remember leaving it on. I approached the open door to the room slowly, aware that this is what I may have been meant to do. Focus on the light in one room while the intruder is waiting in the darkness of the bedroom or bathroom.

“Come on back, Mick. It’s just me.”

I knew the voice but it didn’t make me feel at ease. Louis Roulet was waiting in the room. I stepped to the threshold and stopped. He was sitting in the black leather desk seat. He swiveled it around so that he was facing me and crossed his legs. His pants rode up on his left leg and I could see the tracking bracelet that Fernando Valenzuela had made him wear. I knew that if Roulet had come to kill me, at least he would leave a trail. It wasn’t all that comforting, though. I leaned against the door frame so that I could hold the knife behind my hip without being too obvious about it.

“So this is where you do your great legal work?” Roulet asked.

“Some of it. What are you doing here, Louis?”

“I came to see you. You didn’t return my call and so I wanted to make sure we were still a team, you know?”

“I was out of town. I just got back.”

“What about dinner with Raul? Isn’t that what you said to your caller?”

“He’s a friend. I had dinner on my way in from Burbank Airport. How did you find out where I live, Louis?”

He cleared his throat and smiled.

“I work in real estate, Mick. I can find out where anybody lives. In fact, I used to be a source for the National Enquirer. Did you know that? I could tell them where any celebrity lived, no matter what fronts and corporations they hid their purchases behind. But I gave it up after a while. The money was good but it was so . . . tawdry. You know what I mean, Mick? Anyway, I stopped. But I can still find out where anyone lives. I can also find out whether they’ve maxed the mortgage value out and even if they’re making their payments on time.”

He looked at me with a knowing smile. He was telling me he knew the house was a financial shell, that I had nothing in the place and usually ran a month behind on the two mortgages. Fernando Valenzuela probably wouldn’t even accept the place as collateral on a five-thousand-dollar bond.

“How’d you get in?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the funny thing about this. It turns out I had a key. Back when this place was for sale—what was that, about eighteen months ago? Anyway, I wanted to see it because I thought I had a client who might be interested because of the view. So I came and got the key out of the realtor’s combo box. I came in and looked around and knew immediately it wasn’t right for my client—he wanted something nicer—so I left. And I forgot to put the key back. I have a bad habit of doing that. Isn’t that strange that all this time later my lawyer would be living in this house? And by the way, I see you haven’t done a thing with it. You have the view, of course, but you really need to do some updating.”

I knew then that he had been keeping tabs on me since the Menendez case. And that he probably knew I had just been up to San Quentin visiting him. I