Michael Connelly: The Lincoln Lawyer

I quickly glanced out into the gallery, where Dobbs was sitting next to Fernando Valenzuela. Dobbs was a thin man who shaved his head to hide male-pattern balding. His thinness was exaggerated by Valenzuela’s girth. I waited for a signal as to whether I should take the judge’s bail order or try to argue for a lower amount. Sometimes, when a judge thinks he is giving you a gift, it can backfire to press for more-or in this case less.

Dobbs was sitting in the first seat in the first row. He simply got up and started to walk out of the courtroom, leaving Valenzuela behind. I took that to mean that I should leave well enough alone, that the Roulet family could handle the million. I turned back to the bench.

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I said.

The clerk immediately called the next case. I glanced at Maggie as she was closing the file on the case she would no longer prosecute. She then stood up and walked out through the bar and down the center aisle of the courtroom. She spoke to no one and she did not look back at me.

“Mr. Haller?”

I turned to my client. Behind him I saw a deputy coming to take him back into holding. He’d be bused the half block back to jail and then, depending on how fast Dobbs and Valenzuela worked, released later in the day.

“I’ll work with Mr. Dobbs and get you out,” I said. “Then we’ll sit down and talk about the case.”

“Thank you,” Roulet said as he was led away. “Thank you for being here.”

“Remember what I said. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t talk to anybody.”

“Yes, sir.”

After he was gone I walked to the bar. Valenzuela was waiting at the gate for me with a big smile on his face. Roulet’s bail was likely the highest he had ever secured. That meant his cut would be the highest he’d ever received. He clapped me on the arm as I came through the gate.

“What’d I tell you?” he said. “We got ourselves a franchise here, boss.”

“We’ll see, Val,” I said. “We’ll see.”

Every attorney who works the machine has two fee schedules. There is schedule A, which lists the fees the attorney would like to get for certain services rendered. And there is schedule B, the fees he is willing to take because that is all the client can afford. A franchise client is a defendant who wants to go to trial and has the money to pay his lawyer’s schedule A rates. From first appearance to arraignment to preliminary hearing and on to trial and then appeal, the franchise client demands hundreds if not thousands of billable hours. He can keep gas in the tank for two to three years. From where I hunt, they are the rarest and most highly sought beast in the jungle.

And it was beginning to look like Valenzuela had been on the money. Louis Roulet was looking more and more like a franchise client. It had been a dry spell for me. It had been almost two years since I’d had anything even approaching a franchise case or client. I’m talking about a case earning six figures. There were many that started out looking like they might reach that rare plateau but they never went the distance.

C. C. Dobbs was waiting in the hallway outside the arraignment court when I got out. He was standing next to the wall of glass windows that looked down upon the civic center plaza below. I walked up to him quickly. I had a few seconds’ lead on Valenzuela coming out of the court and I wanted some private time with Dobbs.

“Sorry,” Dobbs said before I could speak. “I didn’t want to stay in there another minute. It was so depressing to see the boy caught up in that cattle call.”

“The boy?”

“Louis. I’ve represented the family for twenty-five years. I guess I still think of him as a boy.”

“Are you going to be able to get him out?”

“It won’t be a problem. I have a call in to Louis’s mother to see how she wants to handle it, whether to put up property or go with a bond.”

To put up property to cover a million-dollar bail would mean that at least a million dollars in the property’s value could not be encumbered by a mortgage. Additionally, the court might require a current appraisal of the property, which could take days and keep Roulet waiting in jail. Conversely, a bond could be purchased through Valenzuela for a ten percent premium. The difference was that the ten percent was never returned. That stayed with Valenzuela for his risks and trouble and was the reason for his broad smile in the courtroom. After paying his insurance premium on the million-dollar bail, he’d end up clearing close to ninety grand. And he was worried about me taking care of him .

“Can I make a suggestion?” I asked.

“Please do.”

“Louis looked a little frail when I saw him back in the lockup. If I were you I would get him out of there as soon as possible. To do that you should have Valenzuela write a bond. It will cost you a hundred grand but the boy will be out and safe, you know what I mean?”

Dobbs turned to the window and leaned on the railing that ran along the glass. I looked down and saw that the plaza was filling up with people from the government buildings on lunch break. I could see many people with the red-and-white name tags I knew were given to jurors.

“I know what you mean.”

“The other thing is that cases like this tend to bring the rats out of the walls.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean other inmates who will say they heard somebody say something. Especially a case that gets on the news or into the newspapers. They’ll take that info off the tube and make it sound like our guy was talking.”

“That’s criminal,” Dobbs said indignantly. “That shouldn’t be allowed.”

“Yeah, I know, but it happens. And the longer he stays in there, the wider the window of opportunity is for one of these guys.”

Valenzuela joined us at the railing. He didn’t say anything.

“I will suggest we go with the bond,” Dobbs said. “I already called and she was in a meeting. As soon as she calls me back we will move on this.”

His words prompted something that had bothered me during the hearing.

“She couldn’t come out of a meeting to talk about her son in jail? I was wondering why she wasn’t in court today if this boy, as you call him, is so clean and upstanding.”

Dobbs looked at me like I hadn’t used mouthwash in a month.

“Mrs. Windsor is a very busy and powerful woman. I am sure that if I had stated it was an emergency concerning her son, she would have been on the phone immediately.”

“Mrs. Windsor?”

“She remarried after she and Louis’s father divorced. That was a long time ago.”

I nodded, then realized that there was more to talk about with Dobbs but nothing I wanted to discuss in front of Valenzuela.

“Val, why don’t you go check on when Louis will be back at Van Nuys jail so you can get him out.”

“That’s easy,” Valenzuela said. “He’ll go on the first bus back after lunch.”

“Yeah, well, go double-check that while I finish with Mr. Dobbs.”

Valenzuela was about to protest that he didn’t need to double-check it when he realized what I was telling him.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll go do it.”

After he was gone I studied Dobbs for a moment before speaking. Dobbs looked to be in his late fifties. He had a deferential presence that probably came from thirty years of taking care of rich people. My guess was that he had become rich in the process himself but it hadn’t changed his public demeanor.

“If we’re going to be working together, I guess I should ask what you want to be called. Cecil? C.C.? Mr. Dobbs?”

“Cecil will be fine.”

“Well, my first question, Cecil, is whether we are going to be working together. Do I have the job?”