Long Lost - James Scott Bell Page 0,9
the forbidding brown walls, razor wire, and guard towers of Fenton. As far as he knew, he had only one client here. A three-striker named George Clarke who went down for the full term for stealing a CD player. Steve was hoping he wouldn’t see Clarke in the attorney room. Clarke hadn’t been too thankful for the legal representation he got.
Steve completely agreed with Clarke. Steve was on nose candy back then, and it showed. Clarke had a review pending in the appellate court for ineffective assistance of counsel. He was likely to prevail. Then he’d be out for another trial. And Steve’s name would get speckled with some more mud.
The price you pay. His last foster father, Harley Rust, used to say that. No free meals in this life. Well, the meal had been served. Plenty of crow. And Steve was still paying.
How long would it last? Who knew? But you had to start someplace, and maybe this would be it. Maybe Sienna Ciccone was some kind of good-luck charm. She’s in the office and you get a phone call that has some good money on the other end.
Steve pulled up to the gate and gave his name, driver’s license, and bar card to the guard, who checked Steve off a list and told him where to park. He took a spot next to a black SUV, grabbed his briefcase from the backseat. The case had nothing in it but a pad and pen and an apple, but it gave a lawyerly illusion. Steve didn’t want to hand his potential new client an instant reason to say, No thanks, I was actually looking for somebody who seems to know what he’s doing.
Steve was buzzed in and escorted through a heavy steel door, then down a yellow corridor to the attorney room of the prison. It was a rectangular chamber containing four heavy desks with aluminum benches. The beige linoleum floor was well scuffed, testimony to the heavy steps of overworked deputies and midlevel lawyers.
The room was empty as Steve entered, except for a deputy sheriff with arms like rolled up sleeping bags sitting at a special desk with a single, multiline phone. He looked at Steve and made no attempt at conversation. Not that Steve expected any. Here, criminal defense lawyers were considered on the same level as stuff scraped off a farmer’s shoe.
Steve sat at one of the tables, opened his briefcase, and pulled out the pad and pen. He wiped a film of sweat off his forehead. At the top of the page he wrote Johnny LaSalle and the date. The scratching of the pen seemed all the louder for the silence in the room.
For the next five minutes he jotted random notes, so it looked like he was thinking about the situation.
Actually, he was. Johnny LaSalle was finishing a seven-year stretch for armed robbery. According to the research Steve had done the night before, LaSalle had some sort of white supremacist record. Not much more on that, except that he was allegedly a pretty violent guy. Once beat up a Vietnamese busboy in a bar, sending the kid to the hospital. Was charged with a hate crime. Pretty easy to prove when you’re shouting racial slurs as you stomp a guy’s head.
The record didn’t deter Steve in any way. He knew that when you rep criminals you’re not going to get the Vienna Boys’ Choir. The most important thing was the criminal defense lawyer’s number-one rule: Get the fee up front.
A rule he’d forgotten in his representation of Carlos Mendez. But Steve was more than a little desperate at the time. Sort of like now.
Finally the gray interior door opened and a deputy sheriff walked in. Behind him jangled the prisoner.
Johnny LaSalle wore prison whites and was shackled hands and ankles. His hair was reddish, cut short. No skinhead. They didn’t allow that here. His forearms were covered with dark blue prison tats. Blue eyes in deep sockets made him seem older than what he was, mid-thirties. The effects of a hard life were inscribed in lines and crags on a face that, in other circumstances, might have been angelic.
The entire effect, from the very start, was electric. Almost mesmerizing. LaSalle had that rare face that could command—demand—attention just by showing up. A dangerous kind of face to be around for any length of time.
As he slid onto the opposite bench, LaSalle kept his eyes trained on Steve. Disconcerting to say the least. A typical prisoner’s