The Brass Verdict

credibility and testimony but I couldn’t imagine he had much. If he had something, he wouldn’t have asked for the break. He would have gotten up and charged right after her.
    After the jury and the judge had vacated the courtroom and the observers were pushing out into the hallway, I sauntered over to the prosecutor’s table. Golantz was writing out questions on a legal pad. He didn’t look up at me.
    “What?” he said.
    “The answer’s no.”
    “To what question?”
    “The one you were going to ask about my client taking a plea agreement. We’re not interested.”
    Golantz smirked.
    “You’re funny, Haller. So what, you’ve got an impressive witness. The trial’s a long way from over.”
    “And I’ve got a French police captain who’s going to testify tomorrow that Rilz ratted out seven of the most dangerous, vindictive men he’s ever investigated. Two of them happened to get out of prison last year and they disappeared. Nobody knows where they are. Maybe they were in Malibu last spring.”
    Golantz put his pen down and finally looked up at me.
    “Yeah, I talked to your Inspector Clouseau yesterday. It’s pretty clear he’s saying whatever you want him to say, as long as you fly him first class. At the end of the depo, he pulled out one of those star maps and asked me if I could show him where Angelina Jolie lives. He’s one serious witness you came up with.”
    I had told Captain Pepin to cool it with the star map stuff. He apparently hadn’t listened. I needed to change the subject.
    “So, where are the Germans?” I asked.
    Golantz checked behind him as if to make sure Johan Rilz’s family members weren’t there.
    “I told them that they had to be prepared for your strategy of building a defense by shitting all over the memory of their son and brother,” he said. “I told them you were going to take Johan’s problems in France five years ago and use them to try to get his killer off. I told them that you were going to depict him as a German gigolo who seduced rich clients, men and women, all over Malibu and the west side. You know what the father said to me?”
    “No, but you’ll tell me.”
    “He said that they’d had enough of American justice and were going back home.”
    I tried to retort with a clever and cynical comeback line. But I came up empty.
    “Don’t worry,” Golantz said. “Up or down, I’ll call them and tell them the verdict.”
    “Good.”
    I left him there and went out into the hallway to look for my client. I saw him in the center of a ring of reporters. Feeling cocky after the success of Dr. Arslanian’s testimony, he was now working the big jury – public opinion.
    “All this time they’ve concentrated on coming after me, the real killer’s been out there running around free!”
    A nice concise sound bite. He was good. I was about to push through the crowd to grab him, when Dennis Wojciechowski intercepted me first.
    “Come with me,” he said.
    We walked down the hallway away from the crowd.
    “What’s up, Cisco? I was wondering where you’ve been.”
    “I’ve been busy. I got the report from Florida. Do you want to hear it?”
    I had told him what Elliot had told me about fronting for the so-called organization. Elliot’s story had seemed sincere enough but in the light of day I reminded myself of a simple truism – everybody lies – and told Cisco to see what he could do about confirming it.
    “Give it to me,” I said.
    “I used a PI in Fort Lauderdale who I’ve worked with before. Tampa’s on the other side of the state but I wanted to go with a guy I knew and trusted.”
    “I understand. What did he come up with?”
    “Elliot’s grandfather founded a phosphate-shipping operation seventy-eight years ago. He worked it, then Elliot’s father worked it and then Elliot himself worked it. Only he didn’t like getting his hands dirty in the phosphate business and he sold it a year after his father died of a heart attack. It was a privately owned company, so the record of the sale is not public. Newspaper articles at the time put the sale at about thirty-two million.”
    “What about organized crime?”
    “My guy couldn’t find a whiff of it. Looked to him like it was a good, clean operation – legally, that is. Elliot told you he was a front and he was sent out here to invest their money. He didn’t say anything about him selling his own company and bringing the money out here. The man’s lying to you.”
    I