and shirt but not caring at all.
Fifty-one
That night I sent Patrick to the movies because I wanted the house to myself. I wanted no television or conversation. I wanted no interruption and no one watching me. I called Bosch and told him I was in for the night. It was not so that I could prepare for what likely would be the last day of the trial. I was more than ready for that. I had the French police captain primed and ready to deliver another dose of reasonable doubt to the jury.
And it was not because I now knew that my client was guilty. I could count the truly innocent clients I’d had over the years on one hand. Guilty people were my specialty. But I was feeling bruised because I had been used so well. And because I had forgotten the basic rule: Everybody lies.
And I was feeling bruised because I knew that I, too, was guilty. I could not stop thinking about Rilz’s father and brothers, about what they had told Golantz about their decision to go home. They were not waiting to see the verdict if it first meant seeing their dead loved one dragged through the sewers of the American justice system. I had spent the good part of twenty years defending guilty and sometimes evil men. I had always been able to accept that and deal with it. But I didn’t feel very good about myself or the work that I would perform the next day.
It was in these moments that I felt the strongest desire to return to old ways. To find that distance again. To take the pill for the physical pain that I knew would numb me to the internal pain. It was in these moments that I realized that I had my own jury to face and that the coming verdict was guilty, that there would be no more cases after this one.
I went outside to the deck, hoping the city could pull me out of the abyss into which I had fallen. The night was cool and crisp and clear. Los Angeles spread out in front of me in a carpet of lights, each one a verdict on a dream somewhere. Some people lived the dream and some didn’t. Some people cashed in their dreams a dime on the dollar and some kept them close and as sacred as the night. I wasn’t sure if I even had a dream left. I felt like I only had sins to confess.
After a while a memory washed over me and somehow I smiled. It was one of my last clear memories of my father, the greatest lawyer of his time. An antique glass ball – an heirloom from Mexico passed down through my mother’s family – had been found broken beneath the Christmas tree. My mother brought me to the living room to view the damage and to give me the chance to confess my guilt. By then my father was sick and wasn’t going to get better. He had moved his work – what was left of it – home to the study next to the living room. I didn’t see him through the open door but from that room I heard his voice in a sing-song nursery rhyme.
In a pickle, take the nickel…
I knew what it meant. Even at five years old I was my father’s son in blood and the law. I refused to answer my mother’s questions. I refused to incriminate myself.
Now I laughed out loud as I looked at the city of dreams. I leaned down, elbows on the railing, and bowed my head.
“I can’t do this anymore,” I whispered to myself.
The song of the Lone Ranger suddenly burst from the open door behind me. I stepped back inside and looked at the cell phone left on the table with my keys. The screen said PRIVATE NUMBER. I hesitated, knowing exactly how long the song would play before the call went to message.
At the last moment I took the call.
“Is this Michael Haller, the lawyer?”
“Yes, who is this?”
“This is Los Angeles police officer Randall Morris. Do you know an individual named Elaine Ross, sir?”
I felt a fist grip my guts.
“Lanie? Yes. What happened? What’s wrong?”
“Uh, sir, I have Miss Ross up here on Mulholland Drive and she shouldn’t be driving. In fact, she sort of passed out after she handed me your card.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. The call seemed to confirm my fears