Майкл Коннелли - The Law of Innocence

“Damn.”

“I know, but it was a long shot.”

The good feelings that we had started the meeting with were dissipating.

“Okay, where are we on the suspects list?” I asked.

“Lorna is still working on it,” Jennifer said. “You’ve had a ton of cases in the past ten years. There’s still a lot to go through. I told her I’d work with her this weekend, and with any luck you’ll be out of this place and able to be there too.”

I nodded.

“Speaking of which, you should probably go if you’re going to file something today,” I said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Jennifer said. “Anything else?”

I leaned across the table to talk in a low voice to Jennifer — in case the overhead camera had grown ears.

“I’m going to call you when I can get to a phone in the module,” I said. “I want to talk about Baja and I want you to record it. Can you do that?”

“Not a problem. I’ve got an app.”

“Good. Then we’ll talk later.”

It was almost an hour before they moved me back to the module. I found Bishop at one of the tables playing Mexican dominoes with a custody named Filbin. He gave me his customary greeting.

“Counselor,” he said.

“Bishop, I thought you had court today,” I said.

“Thought I did too until my lawyer put it over. Motherfucker mus’ think I’m stayin’ at the Ritz over here.”

I sat down, put my documents on the table, and looked around. A lot of guys were out of their cells and moving around the dayroom. The module had two phones mounted on the wall below the mirrored windows of the hack tower. You could either make a collect call on them or use a phone card purchased from the jail canteen. At the moment, both phones were being used and each one had a line of three men waiting. The calls cut off after fifteen minutes. That meant if I got in line now I would get a phone in roughly an hour.

I didn’t see Quesada on my survey of the dayroom. Then I saw that the door to his cell was closed. Every man in the module was on keep-away status, but being locked up in a cell in a keep-away module was reserved for those inmates who were either in imminent danger or highly valuable to a prosecution.

“Quesada’s on lockdown?” I said.

“Happened this morning,” Bishop said.

“Snitch,” Filbin said.

I almost smiled. Calling someone in the keep-away module a snitch was a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. The most common reason for segregating people in the module in the first place was that they were informants. For all I knew, Filbin was one. I didn’t make it a practice of asking fellow inmates what they were being held for or why they were on keep-away status. I had no idea why Bishop was in the module and would never ask him. Sticking your nose in other people’s business could have consequences in a place like Twin Towers.

I watched them play until Bishop won the game and Filbin got up and walked off toward the stairs leading to the second tier of cells.

“You want to play, Counselor?” Bishop asked. “A dime a point?”

“No, thanks,” I said. “I don’t gamble.”

“Now, that’s some bullshit right there. You gambling with your own life right now bein’ in here with us criminals.”

“Speaking of that, I might be getting out soon.”

“Yeah? You sure you want to leave this wonderful place?”

“I need to. Gotta prep my case, and in here it’s not going to happen. Anyway, I’m only telling you because I want you to know that I’ll make good on our deal. I’ll pay till the end of my trial.”

“That’s mighty white of you.”

“I mean it. You’ve made me feel safe, Bishop, and I appreciate it. When you get out, you should look me up. I might have something for you. Something legitimate.”

“Like what?”

“Like driving. You have a driver’s license?”

“I could get one.”

“A real one?”

“As real as they get, Counselor. Driving what? Who?”

“Me. I work out of my car and I need a driver. It’s a Lincoln.”

My previous driver had been working off her son’s debt for my representation and was a week away from completing that when I was arrested. If I got out, I would need a new driver, and I wasn’t blind to what Bishop could bring in terms of intimidation and security in addition to the driving chores.

I checked the phone bank again. The line was down to two each. I knew I should get over there before it built up to three again. I leaned in close to Bishop and violated my own rule about getting into other people’s business.

“Bishop, say you were going to break into a garage at somebody’s house. How would you do it?”

“Whose house?”

“It’s a hypothetical. Any house. How would you do it?”

“What makes you think I would break into a house?”

“I don’t think that. It’s a hypothetical and I’m picking your brain. And it’s breaking into a garage, not the house.”

“Any windows or a side door?”

“No, just a double-wide garage door.”

“It got one of those pop-out handles in case of emergency?”

“Yeah, but you need a key.”

“No, you don’t. Those handles you can pop with a flathead.”

“A screwdriver? You sure?”

“I’m sure. I knew a guy, that was his specialty. He’d drive around and hit g’rages all day long. Got cars, tools, lawn mowers... all kinds of good shit to sell.”

I nodded and checked the phone bank. One phone had only one man waiting. I stood up.

“I have to hit the phone line, Bishop,” I said. “Thanks for the intel.”

“I got you, man.”

I walked over to the phones and got behind the single just as the man on the phone in front of him hung up angrily and said, “Fuck you, bitch!”

He walked away and the next man stepped up to the phone. My wait ended up being less than two minutes, as the man in front of me called collect and the call either went unanswered or the recipient declined to accept the charges. He walked away and I stepped up and put my paperwork down on top of the phone box. I entered Jennifer’s cell phone number for a collect call. While I waited for the electronic voice to tell her that she was receiving a collect call from the county jail, I studied the sign on the wall: all calls monitored.

Jennifer accepted.

“Mickey,” she said.

“Jennifer,” I said. “Hold on while I make this announcement. This is Michael Haller, pro se defendant, talking to his co-counsel, Jennifer Aronson, under privilege. This call should not be monitored.”

I waited a beat, presumably for the monitor to move on to another inmate’s call.

“Okay,” I said. “Just checking in. Did you file?”

“I did. Notifications went out. Hopefully we get a hearing tomorrow.”

“Did you and Cisco get that Baja thing set up?”

“Uh, yes... we did.”

“The whole package? Travel, everything?”

“Yep, everything.”

“Good. And the money is ready?”

“Yes.”

“What about the guy, you trust him?”

There was a pause. I assumed Jennifer was realizing what I was doing with the call.

“Absolutely,” she finally said. “He has it down to a science.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll only get one shot at this.”

“What if they make you wear a bracelet?”

Jennifer had caught on fast. Her mention of the bracelet was pure gold.

“Won’t be a problem,” I said. “We can use that guy Cisco used on that other thing that time. He’ll know what to do.”

“Right,” Jennifer said. “I forgot about him.”

There was another pause while I thought about how to wrap it up.

“So, you’ll have to come down, go fishing with me,” I said.