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

NINETEEN

I got out of the huge new rent-a-car facility at San Francisco International by one o’clock and headed north to the city. The Lincoln they gave me smelled like it had last been used by a smoker, maybe the renter or maybe just the guy who cleaned it up for me.

I don’t know how to get anywhere in San Francisco. I just know how to drive through it. Three or four times a year I need to go to the prison by the bay, San Quentin, to talk to clients or witnesses. I could tell you how to get there, no sweat. But ask me how to get to Coit Tower or Fisherman’s Wharf and we have a problem.

By the time I got through the city and over the Golden Gate it was almost two. I was in good shape. I knew from past experience that attorney visiting hours ended at four.

San Quentin is over a century old and looks as though the soul of every prisoner who lived or died there is etched on its dark walls. It was as foreboding a prison as I had ever visited, and at one time or another I had been to every one in California.

They searched my briefcase and made me go through a metal detector. After that they still passed a wand over me to make extra sure. Even then I wasn’t allowed direct contact with Menendez because I had not formally scheduled the interview the required five days in advance. So I was put in a no-contact room-a Plexiglas wall between us with dime-size holes to speak through. I showed the guard the six-pack of photos I wanted to give Menendez and he told me I would have to show him the pictures through the Plexiglas. I sat down, put the photos away and didn’t have to wait long until they brought Menendez in on the other side of the glass.

Two years ago, when he was shipped off to prison, Jesus Menendez had been a young man. Now he looked like he was already the forty years old I told him he could beat if he pleaded guilty. He looked at me with eyes as dead as the gravel stones out in the parking lot. He saw me and sat down reluctantly. He didn’t have much use for me anymore.

We didn’t bother with hellos and I got right into it.

“Look, Jesus, I don’t have to ask you how you’ve been. I know. But something’s come up and it could affect your case. I need to ask you a few questions. You understand me?”

“Why questions now, man? You had no questions before.”

I nodded.

“You’re right. I should’ve asked you more questions back then and I didn’t. I didn’t know then what I know now. Or at least what I think I know now. I am trying to make things right.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to tell me about that night at The Cobra Room.”

He shrugged.

“The girl was there and I talked. She tol’ me to follow her home.”

He shrugged again.

“I went to her place, man, but I didn’t kill her like that.”

“Go back to the club. You told me that you had to impress the girl, that you had to show her the money and you spent more than you wanted to. You remember?”

“Is right.”

“You said there was another guy trying to get with her. You remember that?”

“Si, he was there talking. She went to him but she came back to me.”

“You had to pay her more, right?”

“Like that.”

“Okay, do you remember that guy? If you saw a picture of him, would you remember him?”

“The guy who talked big? I think I ’member.”

“Okay.”

I opened my briefcase and took out the spread of mug shots. There were six photos and they included the booking photo of Louis Ross Roulet and five other men whose mug shots I had culled out of my archive boxes. I stood up and one by one started holding them up on the glass. I thought that by spreading my fingers I would be able to hold all six against the glass. Menendez stood up to look closely at the photos.

Almost immediately a voice boomed from an overhead speaker.

“Step back from the glass. Both of you step back from the glass and remain seated or the interview will be terminated.”

I shook my head and cursed. I gathered the photos together and sat down. Menendez sat back down as well.

“Guard!” I said loudly.

I looked at Menendez and waited. The guard didn’t enter the room.

“Guard!” I called again, louder.

Finally, the door opened and the guard stepped into my side of the interview room.

“You done?”

“No. I need him to look at these photos.”

I held up the stack.

“Show him through the glass. He’s not allowed to receive anything from you.”

“But I’m going to take them right back.”

“Doesn’t matter. You can’t give him anything.”

“But if you don’t let him come to the glass, how is he going to see them?”

“It’s not my problem.”

I waved in surrender.

“All right, okay. Then can you stay here for a minute?”

“What for?”

“I want you to watch this. I’m going to show him the photos and if he makes an ID, I want you to witness it.”

“Don’t drag me into your bullshit.”

He walked to the door and left.

“Goddamn it,” I said.

I looked at Menendez.

“All right, Jesus, I’m going to show you, anyway. See if you recognize any of them from where you are sitting.”

One by one I held the photos up about a foot from the glass. Menendez leaned forward. As I showed each of the first five he looked, thought about it and then shook his head no. But on the sixth photo I saw his eyes flare. It seemed as though there was some life in them after all.

“That one,” he said. “Is him.”

I turned the photo toward me to be sure. It was Roulet.

“I ’member,” Menendez said. “He’s the one.”

“And you’re sure?”

Menendez nodded.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because I know. In here I think on that night all of my time.”

I nodded.

“Who is the man?” he asked.

“I can’t tell you right now. Just know that I am trying to get you out of here.”

“What do I do?”

“What you have been doing. Sit tight, be careful and stay safe.”

“Safe?”

“I know. But as soon as I have something, you will know about it. I’m trying to get you out of here, Jesus, but it might take a little while.”

“You were the one who tol’ me to come here.”

“At the time I didn’t think there was a choice.”

“How come you never ask me, did you murder this girl? You my lawyer, man. You din’t care. You din’t listen.”

I stood up and loudly called for the guard. Then I answered his question.

“To legally defend you I didn’t need to know the answer to that question. If I asked my clients if they were guilty of the crimes they were charged with, very few would tell me the truth. And if they did, I might not be able to defend them to the best of my ability.”

The guard opened the door and looked in at me.

“I’m ready to go,” I said.

I checked my watch and figured that if I was lucky in traffic I might be able to catch the five o’clock shuttle back to Burbank. The six o’clock at the latest. I dropped the photos into my briefcase and closed it. I looked back at Menendez, who was still in his chair on the other side of the glass.

“Can I just put my hand on the glass?” I asked the guard.

“Hurry up.”

I leaned across the counter and put my hand on the glass, fingers spread. I waited for Menendez to do the same, creating a jailhouse handshake.

Menendez stood, leaned forward and spit on the glass where my hand was.

“You never shake my hand,” he said. “I don’t shake yours.”

I nodded. I thought I understood just where he was coming from.

The guard smirked and told me to step through the door. In ten minutes I was out of the prison and crunching across the gravel to my rental car.

I had come four hundred miles for five minutes but those minutes were devastating. I think the lowest point of my life and professional career came an hour later when I was on the rent-a-car train being delivered back to the United terminal. No longer concentrating on the driving and making it back in time, I had only the case to think about. Cases, actually.

I leaned down, elbows on my knees and my face in my hands. My greatest fear had been realized, realized for two years but I hadn’t known it. Not until now. I had been presented with innocence but I had not seen it or grasped it. Instead, I had thrown it into the maw of the machine like everything else. Now it was a cold, gray innocence, as dead as gravel and hidden in a fortress of stone and steel. And I had to live with it.

There was no solace to be found in the alternative, the knowledge that had we rolled the dice and gone to trial, Jesus would likely be on death row right now. There could be no comfort in knowing that fate was avoided, because I knew as sure as I knew anything else in the world that Jesus Menendez had been innocent. Something as rare as a true miracle-an innocent man-had come to me and I hadn’t recognized it. I had turned away.

“Bad day?”

I looked up. There was a man across from me and a little bit further down the train car. We were the only ones on this link. He looked to be a decade older and had receding hair that made him look wise. Maybe he was even a lawyer, but I wasn’t interested.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just tired.”

And I held up a hand, palm out, a signal that I did not want conversation. I usually travel with a set of earbuds like Earl uses. I put them in and run the wire into a jacket pocket. It connects with nothing but it keeps people from talking to me. I had been in too much of a hurry this morning to think about them. Too much of a hurry to reach this point of desolation.

The man across the train got the message and said nothing else. I went back to my dark thoughts about Jesus Menendez. The bottom line was that I believed that I had one client who was guilty of the murder another client was serving a life sentence for. I could not help one without hurting the other. I needed an answer. I needed a plan. I needed proof. But for the moment on the train, I could only think of Jesus Menendez’s dead eyes, because I knew I was the one who had killed the light in them.