Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

shrugged.
    “I want to try again. I still love you, Mags. You know that.”
    “I also know that it didn’t work before. We are the kind of people who bring home what we do. It wasn’t good.”
    “I’m beginning to think my client is innocent and that she was set up and that even with all of that I still might not be able to get her off. How would you like to bring that home with you?”
    “If it bothers you so much then maybe you should run for DA. The job’s open, you know.”
    “Yeah, maybe I just will.”
    “Haller for the People.”
    “Yeah.”
    I hung around for a few minutes after that but could tell I wasn’t making any headway with Maggie. She had a skill for freezing you out and making you feel it.
    I told her I was going and to tell Hayley I said good night. There was no rush to bar the door before I could exit. But Maggie did call one thing after me that made me feel good.
    “Just give it time, Michael.”
    I turned back to her.
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Not what, who. Hayley… and me.”
    I nodded and said I would.
    Driving back to my place I let the accomplishments of the court day boost my spirits. I started thinking about the next witness I planned to put on the stand after Lisa. The task ahead was still formidable but it didn’t help to think that far in advance. You start with a day’s momentum and go from there.
    I took Beverly Glen up to the top, then drove Mulholland east toward Laurel Canyon. I got glimpses of the city lights both to the north and the south. Los Angeles spread out like a shimmering ocean. I kept the music off and the windows down. I let the chill air work like loneliness into my bones.

Forty-one
    All that had been won the day before was lost in a span of twenty minutes Friday morning when Andrea Freeman continued her cross-examination of Lisa Trammel. Being sandbagged by the prosecution in the midst of trial is certainly never a good thing, but in many ways it is acceptable as part of the game. It’s one of the unknown unknowns. But being sandbagged by your own client is the worst thing that can happen. One of the unknown unknowns should never be the person you are defending.
    With Trammel in place on the witness stand, Freeman went to the lectern carrying a thick document with crisp edges and one pink Post-it sticking out of the pages. I thought it was a prop, designed to distract me, and paid it no mind. She started things off with what I call setup questions. These were designed to get a witness’s answers on the record before they were proven false. I could see the trap forming but wasn’t sure where the net was going to fall.
    “Now, you testified yesterday that you did not know Mitchell Bondurant, is that correct?”
    “Yes, correct.”
    “You never met him?”
    “Never.”
    “Never spoke to him?”
    “Never.”
    “But you tried to meet him and speak to him, right?”
    “Yes, I went to the bank twice to try to meet him to talk about my home, but he wouldn’t see me.”
    “Do you remember when you made those efforts?”
    “They were last year. But I don’t remember the exact dates.”
    Freeman then seemed to shift directions, but I knew it was all part of a careful plan.
    She asked Trammel a series of seemingly innocuous questions about her FLAG organization and its purpose. Much of this had already been touched on during my direct examination. I still couldn’t see the play. I glanced over at the document with the bright pink Post-it and started to believe it was no prop. Maggie had told me yesterday that Freeman was working the night shift. Now I knew why. She had obviously found something. I leaned across the defense table in the direction of the witness stand, as if being closer to the source would speed the arrival of understanding.
    “And you have a website that you use to support the efforts of FLAG, don’t you?” Freeman asked.
    “Yes,” Trammel replied. “California Foreclosure Fighters dot com.”
    “And you are also on Facebook, aren’t you?”
    “Yes.”
    I could tell by the timid, cautious way in which my client said that one word that this was where the trap was set. It was the first I’d heard of Lisa on Facebook.
    “For those on the jury who might not know, what exactly is Facebook, Ms. Trammel?”
    I leaned back in my chair and surreptitiously pulled my phone. I quickly tapped out a text to Bullocks telling her to drop whatever she was doing and see what she could find out about Lisa’s Facebook page.