The Brass Verdict

and is masquerading as that person in the courthouse.”
    “Exactly. When you get a summons and show up at the juror check-in window, all they do is check your DL against the list. These are minimum-wage court clerks, Mick. It would not be difficult to get a dummy DL by one of them, and we both know how easy it is to get a dummy.”
    I nodded. Most people want to get out of jury duty. This was a scheme to get into it. Civic duty taken to extreme.
    Cisco said, “If you can somehow get me the name the court has for number seven, I would check it, and I’m betting I find out there
is
a guy at Lockheed with that name.”
    I shook my head.
    “There’s no way I can get it without leaving a trail.”
    Cisco shrugged.
    “So what’s going on with this, Mick? Don’t tell me that fucking prosecutor put a sleeper on the jury.”
    I thought a moment about telling him but decided against it.
    “At the moment it’s better if I don’t tell you.”
    “Down periscope.”
    It meant that we were taking the submarine – compartmentalizing so if one of us sprang a leak it wouldn’t sink the whole sub.
    “It’s best this way. Did you see this guy with anybody? Any KAs of interest?”
    “I followed him over to the Grove tonight and he met somebody for a coffee in Marmalade, one of the restaurants they’ve got over there. It was a woman. It looked like a casual thing, like they sort of ran into each other unplanned and sat down together to catch up. Other than that, I’ve got no known associates so far. I’ve really only been with the guy since five, when the judge cut the jury loose.”
    I nodded. He had gotten me a lot in a short amount of time. More than I’d anticipated.
    “How close did you get to him and the woman?”
    “Not close. You told me to take all precautions.”
    “So you can’t describe her?”
    “I just said I didn’t get close, Mick. I can describe her. I even got a picture of her on my camera.”
    He had to stand up to get his big hand into one of the front pockets of his jeans. He pulled out a small, black, non-attention-getting camera and sat back down. He turned it on and looked at the screen on the back. He clicked some buttons on the top and then handed it across the table to me.
    “They start there and you can scroll through till you get to the woman.”
    I manipulated the camera and scrolled through a series of digital photos showing juror number seven at various times during the evening. The last three shots were of him sitting with a woman in Marmalade. She had jet-black hair that hung loose and shadowed her face. The photos also weren’t very crisp because they had been taken from long distance and without a flash.
    I didn’t recognize the woman. I handed the camera back to Cisco.
    “Okay, Cisco, you did good. You can drop it now.”
    “Just drop it?”
    “Yeah, and go back to this.”
    I slid the file across the table to him. He nodded and smiled slyly as he took it.
    “So what did you tell the judge up there at the sidebar?”
    I had forgotten he had been in the courtroom, waiting to start his tail of juror seven.
    “I told him I realized that you had done the original background search on the English-language default so I redid it to include French and German. I even printed the story out again Sunday so I would have a fresh date on it.”
    “Nice. But I look like a fuckup.”
    “I had to come up with something. If I’d told him you came across it a week ago and I’d been sitting on it since, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I’d probably be in lockup for contempt. Besides, the judge thinks Golantz is the fuckup for not finding it before the defense.”
    That seemed to placate Cisco. He held up the file.
    “So then, what do you want me to do with it?” he asked.
    “Where’s the translator you used on the printout?”
    “Probably in her dorm over in Westwood. She’s an exchange student I came up with on the Net.”
    “Well, call her up and pick her up because you’re going to need her tonight.”
    “I have a feeling Lorna isn’t going to like this. Me and a twenty-year-old French girl.”
    “Lorna doesn’t speak French, so she will understand. They’re what, nine hours ahead over there in Paris?”
    “Yeah, nine or ten. I forget.”
    “Okay, then I want you to get with the translator and at midnight start working the phones. Call all the gendarmes, or whatever they call themselves, who worked that drug case and get one of them on a plane over