"The Lincoln Lawyer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Connelly Michael)

FIFTEEN

When the rich in Beverly Hills want to drop small fortunes on clothes and jewelry, they go to Rodeo Drive. When they want to drop larger fortunes on houses and condominiums, they walk a few blocks over to Canon Drive, where the high-line real estate companies roost, photographs of their multimillion-dollar offerings presented in showroom windows on ornate gold easels like Picassos and Van Goghs. This is where I found Windsor Residential 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 it was the hammer. Only it wasn’t, goddamn it.”

“It was the runner,” Levin said.

“What?”

“The runner. The guy who runs the reports between the police station and the DA’s office. I tell him which cases I’m interested in and he makes extra copies for me.”

“Well, they’re onto his ass and they worked it perfectly. You better call him and tell him if he needs a good criminal defense attorney I’m not available.”

I realized I was pacing in front of them on the couch but I didn’t stop.

“And you,” I said to Roulet. “I now get the real weapon report and find out not only is the knife a custom-made job but it is traceable right back to you because it has your fucking initials on it! You lied to me again!”

“I didn’t lie,” Roulet yelled back. “I tried to tell you. I said it wasn’t my knife. I said it twice but nobody listened to me.”

“Then you should have clarified what you meant. Just saying it wasn’t your knife was like saying you didn’t do it. You should have said, ‘Hey, Mick, there might be a problem with the knife because I did have a knife but this picture isn’t it.’ What did you think, that it was just going to go away?”

“Please, can you keep it down,” Roulet protested. “There might be customers out there.”

“I don’t care! Fuck your customers. You’re not going to need customers anymore where you’re going. Don’t you see that this knife trumps everything we’ve got? You took a murder weapon to a meeting with a prostitute. The knife was no plant. It was yours. And that means we no longer have the setup. How can we claim she set you up when the prosecutor can prove you had that knife with you when you walked through the door?”

He didn’t answer but I didn’t give him a lot of time to.

“You fucking did this thing and they’ve got you,” I said, pointing at him. “No wonder they didn’t bother with any follow-up investigation at the bar. No follow-up needed when they’ve got your knife and your fingerprints in blood on it.”

“I didn’t do it! It’s a setup. I’m TELLING YOU! It was -”

“Who’s yelling now? Look, I don’t care what you’re telling me. I can’t deal with a client who doesn’t level, who doesn’t see the percentage in telling his own attorney what is going on. So the DA has made an offer to you and I think you better take it.”

Roulet sat up straight and grabbed the pack of cigarettes off the table. He took one out and lit it off the one he already had going.

“I’m not pleading guilty to something I didn’t do,” he said, his voice suddenly calm after a deep drag off the fresh smoke.

“Seven years. You’ll be out in four. You have till court time Monday and then it disappears. Think about it, then tell me you want to take it.”

“I won’t take it. I didn’t do this thing and if you won’t take it to trial, then I will find somebody who will.”

Levin was holding the discovery file. I reached down and rudely grabbed it out of his hands so I could read directly from the weapon report.

“You didn’t do it?” I said to Roulet. “Okay, if you didn’t do it, then would you mind telling me why you went to see this prostitute with a custom-made Black Ninja knife with a five-inch blade, complete with your initials engraved not once, but twice on both sides of the blade?”

Finished reading from the report, I threw it back to Levin. It went through his hands and slapped against his chest.

“Because I always carry it!”

The force of Roulet’s response quieted the room. I paced back and forth once, staring at him.

“You always carry it,” I said, not a question.

“That’s right. I’m a realtor. I drive expensive cars. I wear expensive jewelry. And I often meet strangers alone in empty houses.”

Again he gave me pause. As hyped up as I was, I still knew a glimmer when I saw one. Levin leaned forward and looked at Roulet and then at me. He saw it, too.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “You sell homes to rich people.”

“How do you know they are rich when they call you up and say they want to see a place?”

I stretched my hands out in confusion.

“You must have some sort of system for checking them out, right?”

“Sure, we can run a credit report and we can ask for references. But it still comes down to what they give us and these kind of people don’t like to wait. When they want to see a piece of property, they want to see it. There are a lot of realtors out there. If we don’t act quickly, there will be somebody else who will.”

I nodded. The glimmer was getting brighter. There might be something here I could work with.

“There have been murders, you know,” Roulet said. “Over the years. Every realtor knows the danger exists when you go to some of these places alone. For a while there was somebody out there called the Real Estate Rapist. He attacked and robbed women in empty houses. My mother…”

He didn’t finish. I waited. Nothing.

“What about your mother?”

Roulet hesitated before answering.

“She was showing a place in Bel-Air once. She was alone and she thought it was safe because it was Bel-Air. The man raped her. He left her tied up. When she didn’t come back to the office, I went to the house. I found her.”

Roulet’s eyes were staring at the memory.

“How long ago was this?” I asked.

“About four years. She stopped selling after it happened. Just stayed in her office and never showed another property again. I did the selling. And that’s when and why I got the knife. I’ve had it for four years and carry it everywhere but on planes. It was in my pocket when I went to that apartment. I didn’t think anything about it.”

I dropped into the chair across the table from the couch. My mind was working. I was seeing how it could work. It was still a defense that relied on coincidence. Roulet was set up by Campo and the setup was aided coincidentally when she found the knife on him after knocking him out. It could work.

“Did your mother file a police report?” Levin asked. “Was there an investigation?”

Roulet shook his head as he stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“No, she was too embarrassed. She was afraid it would get into the paper.”

“Who else knows about it?” I asked.

“Uh, me… and Cecil I’m sure knows. Probably nobody else. You can’t use this. She would -”

“I won’t use it without her permission,” I said. “But it could be important. I’ll have to talk to her about it.”

“No, I don’t want you -”

“Your life and livelihood are on the line here, Louis. You get sent to prison and you’re not going to make it. Don’t worry about your mother. A mother will do what she has to do to protect her young.”

Roulet looked down and shook his head.

“I don’t know…,” he said.

I exhaled, trying to lose all my tension with the breath. Disaster may have been averted.

“I know one thing,” I said. “I’m going to go back to the DA and say pass on the deal. We’ll go to trial and take our chances.”