The Night Fire (Harry Bosch #22) - Michael Connelly Page 0,111
as well. Most of its waiters were ancient, its martinis were burning cold and came with a sidecar on ice, and its sourdough bread was the best south of San Francisco.
Ballard was already seated in a semicircular booth in the “new room,” which was only seventy-four years old compared with the hundred-year-old “old room.” She had documents from a file spread in front of her and it reminded Bosch of how he had reviewed the Montgomery file. Bosch slid into the booth from her left.
“Hey.”
“Oh, hey. Let me clear some of this stuff out of the way.”
“It’s okay. It’s good to spread a case out, see what you got.”
“I know. I love it. But we’ve got to eat eventually.”
She stacked the reports in a crosshatch pattern so that the distinct piles she had been making wouldn’t get mixed up. She then put it all down next to her on the banquette.
“I thought you wanted to tell me about your case,” Bosch said.
“I do,” Ballard said. “But let’s eat first. I also want to hear about what you’ve been so busy with.”
“Probably not anymore. I think I just blew it.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“I have a guy—a Bunker Hill lawyer. I think there’s a chance he had Montgomery hit. His alibi is just too perfect and there are a couple other things that don’t jibe. So I posed as a client and went in to see him, and they figured it out this morning. His boss did. So that’s the end of that angle.”
“What will you do now?”
“Don’t know yet. But just the fact that they got on to me about it makes me think I’m on the right track. I have to come up with something else.”
A waiter in a red half-jacket came over. He put down plates of bread and butter and asked if they were ready to order. Bosch didn’t need a menu and Ballard had one in front of her.
“I wish it was tomorrow,” Bosch said.
“How come?” Ballard asked.
“Thursday is chicken pot pie day.”
“Ooh.”
“I’ll have the sand dabs and an iced tea.”
The waiter wrote it down and then looked at Ballard.
“Are they good, the sand dabs?” Ballard asked Bosch.
“Not really,” Bosch said. “That’s why I ordered them.”
Ballard laughed and ordered the sand dabs and the waiter walked away.
“What are sand dabs?” Ballard asked.
“Really?” Bosch said. “It’s fish. Little ones that they bread and fry. Squeeze some lemon on them. You’ll like them.”
“What’s the lawyer’s motive—on your case?”
“Pride. Montgomery embarrassed him in open court, banned him from his courtroom for incompetence. The Times picked up on it and it went from there. He hit the judge with a half-assed defamation suit that got thrown out and made more news, which only put his reputation further down the toilet. His name is Manley. People started calling him UnManley.”
“And he’s still at a Bunker Hill law firm?”
“Yeah, his firm stuck with him. I think he’s gotta be related to somebody. He’s probably Michaelson’s son-in-law or something. They have him in a back office down a hallway where the big shots can keep an eye on him.”
“Wait a minute, ‘Michaelson’? Who is that?”
“He’s the one who found out I was working on the Montgomery case. Cofounder of the firm, Michaelson & Mitchell.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, I sort of saw an e-mail where he told my suspect what I was up to.”
“I don’t mean about that. I mean about this.”
She pulled the documents she had been working on back up onto the table and started separating the individual stacks. She leafed through one of the stacks until she found what she was looking for and handed it to Bosch. It was a legal motion with a court date stamp on it. Bosch wasn’t sure what he was looking for until Ballard tapped the top of the page and he saw the law firm letterhead: Michaelson & Mitchell.
“What is this?” he asked.
“It’s my case,” Ballard said. “My crispy critter from the other night. The coroner identified him and it turned out he was worth a small fortune. But he was a homeless drunk and probably didn’t know it. That was a motion filed by Michaelson & Mitchell last year trying to kick him out of the family trust because he had been MIA for like five years. His brother wanted him out of the money and hired Michaelson & Mitchell to get it done.”
Bosch read the front page of the stapled document.
“This is San Diego,” he said. “Why would the brother hire an L.A. firm?”