The Brass Verdict

Haller and Associates, then her place was it. But there weren’t any associates and when I worked, my office was the backseat of my car. This left few occasions for Lorna to meet face-to-face with any of the people I represented or associated with.
    “He came to our wedding, don’t you remember?”
    “That’s right. I forgot.”
    “I can’t believe this. What happened?”
    “I don’t know. Holder said he was shot in the garage at his office. Maybe I’ll find out something when I get there.”
    “Did he have a family?”
    “I think he was divorced but I don’t know if there were kids or what. I don’t think so.”
    Lorna didn’t say anything. We both had our own thoughts occupying us.
    “Let me go so I can call Cisco,” I finally said. “Do you know what he’s doing today?”
    “No, he didn’t say.”
    “All right, I’ll see.”
    “What kind of sandwich do you want?”
    “Which way you coming?”
    “Sunset.”
    “Stop at Dusty’s and get me one of those turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce. It’s been almost a year since I’ve had one of those.”
    “You got it.”
    “And get something for Cisco in case he’s hungry.”
    “All right.”
    I hung up and looked up the number for Dennis Wojciechowski in the address book I keep in the center console compartment. I had his cell phone. When he answered I heard a mixture of wind and exhaust blast in the phone. He was on his bike and even though I knew his helmet was set up with an earpiece and mike attached to his cell, I had to yell.
    “It’s Mickey Haller. Pull over.”
    I waited and heard him cut the engine on his ’sixty-three panhead.
    “What’s up, Mick?” he asked when it finally got quiet. “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”
    “You gotta put the baffles back in your pipes, man. Or you’ll be deaf before you’re forty and then you won’t be hearing from anybody.”
    “I’m already past forty and I hear you just fine. What’s going on?”
    Wojciechowski was a freelance defense investigator I had used on a few cases. That was how he had met Lorna, collecting his pay. But I had known him for more than ten years before that because of his association with the Road Saints Motorcycle Club, a group for which I served as a de facto house counsel for several years. Dennis never flew RSMC colors but was considered an associate member. The group even bestowed a nickname on him, largely because there was already a Dennis in the membership – known, of course, as Dennis the Menace – and his last name, Wojciechowski, was intolerably difficult to pronounce. Riffing off his dark looks and mustache, they christened him the Cisco Kid. It didn’t matter that he was one hundred percent Polish out of the south side of Milwaukee.
    Cisco was a big, imposing man but he kept his nose clean while riding with the Saints. He never caught an arrest record and that paid off when he later applied to the state for his private investigator’s license. Now, many years later, the long hair was gone and the mustache was trimmed and going gray. But the name Cisco and the penchant for riding classic Harleys built in his hometown had stuck for life.
    Cisco was a thorough and thoughtful investigator. And he had another value as well. He was big and strong and could be physically intimidating when necessary. That attribute could be highly useful when tracking down and dealing with people who fluttered around the edges of a criminal case.
    “First of all, where are you?” I asked.
    “Burbank.”
    “You on a case?”
    “No, just a ride. Why, you got something for me? You taking on a case finally?”
    “A lot of cases. And I’m going to need an investigator.”
    I gave him the address of Vincent’s office and told him to meet me there as soon as he could. I knew that Vincent would have used either a stable of investigators or just one in particular, and that there might be a loss of time as Cisco got up to speed on the cases, but all of that was okay with me. I wanted an investigator I could trust and already had a working relationship with. I was also going to need Cisco to immediately start work by running down the locations of my new clients. My experience with criminal defendants is that they are not always found at the addresses they put down on the client info sheet when they first sign up for legal representation.
    After closing the phone I realized I had driven right by the building where Vincent’s office was located. It was on