Mickey Haller 4 - The Fifth Witness

computers to facilitate this business. The employee admitted earning more than one hundred thousand—’ ”
    Driscoll suddenly crushed the document with both hands into a ball and threw it across the courtroom.
    Right at me.
    “You did this!” he yelled at me, following his pitch with a pointed finger. “I was fine in the world till you showed up!”
    Once again Judge Perry could’ve used a gavel. He called for order and for the jury to return to the deliberations room. They quickly filed out of the courtroom as if being chased by Driscoll himself. Once the door was closed the judge took further action, signaling the courtroom deputy forward.
    “Jimmy, take the witness to the holding cell while counsel and I discuss this in chambers.”
    He got up and stepped off the bench and quickly slipped through the door to his chambers before I could mount a protest over how my witness was being treated.
    Freeman followed and I detoured to the witness stand.
    “Just go and I’ll get this over. You’ll be right back out.”
    “You fucking liar,” he said, anger jumping in his eyes. “You said it would be easy and safe and now look at this. The whole world thinks I’m a fucking software thief! You think I’ll ever find work again?”
    “Well, if I had known you were hijacking software I probably wouldn’t have put you on the stand.”
    “Fuck you, Haller. You better hope this is over because if I have to come back here, I’m going to make up some shit about you.”
    The deputy was leading him toward the door that led to the holding cell next to the courtroom. As he went I noticed Aronson standing at the defense table. Her face told the story. All her good work of the morning possibly undone.
    “Mr. Haller?” the court clerk said from her corral. “The judge is waiting.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I’m coming.”
    I headed toward the door.

Forty-seven
    Four Green Fields was always dead on Monday nights. It was a bar that catered to the legal crowd and it usually wasn’t until a few days into the week that lawyers started to need alcohol to dampen the burdens of conscience. We could’ve had our pick of the place but we took to the bar, Aronson sitting between me and Cisco.
    We ordered a beer, a cosmo and a vodka tonic with lime and without the vodka. Still smarting from the Donald Driscoll fiasco, I had called the after-hours meeting to talk about Tuesday. And because I thought my two associates could use a drink.
    There was a basketball game on the TV but I didn’t even bother to check who was playing or what the score was. I didn’t care and couldn’t see much further than the Driscoll disaster. His testimony had ended after the blowup and finger pointing. In chambers the judge had worked out a curative address to the jurors, telling them that both the prosecution and defense had agreed that he would be dismissed from giving further testimony. Driscoll at best had been a wash. His direct testimony certainly set up the defense contention that Louis Opparizio had brought about the demise of Mitchell Bondurant. But his credibility had been undermined during cross-examination and his volatile behavior and enmity toward me didn’t help. Plus, the judge was obviously holding me responsible for the spectacle and that would probably end up hurting the defense.
    “So,” Aronson said after her first sip of cosmo. “What do we do now?”
    “We keep fighting, is what we do. We had one bad witness, one fiasco. Every trial has a moment like this.”
    I pointed up to the TV.
    “You a football fan, Jennifer?”
    I knew she had gone to UC–Santa Barbara for her undergraduate degree, then Southwestern. Not much in the way of collegiate football powers.
    “That’s not football. That’s basketball.”
    “Yeah, I know, but do you like football?”
    “I like the Raiders.”
    “I knew it!” Cisco said gleefully. “A girl after my own heart.”
    “Well,” I said. “When you’re a defense lawyer you have to be like a cornerback. You know you’re going to get burned from time to time. It’s just part of the game. So when it happens you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and forget about it because they’re about to snap the ball again. We gave them a touchdown today—I gave them a touchdown. But the game’s not over, Jennifer. Not by a long shot.”
    “Right, so what do we do?”
    “What we’ve planned to do all along. Go after Opparizio. It comes down to him. I’ve got to push him to the