The Brass Verdict

immediately regretting the move. I quickly handed it to him. It was an awkward exchange, like shaking hands had been the day before.
    “There are eleven names on that list, with a brief summary of the threat each made to Jerry Vincent. We were lucky that Jerry thought it was important to memorialize an account of each threat he received. I’ve never done that.”
    Bosch didn’t respond. He was reading the first page of the legal pad.
    “I prioritized them,” I said.
    Bosch looked at me and I knew he was ready to step on me again for assuming the role of detective. I raised a hand to stop him.
    “Not from the standpoint of your investigation. From the standpoint of being a lawyer. Of putting myself in Jerry Vincent’s shoes and looking at these things and determining which ones would concern me the most. Like the first one on that list. James Demarco. The guy goes away on weapons charges and thinks Jerry fucked up the case. A guy like that can get a gun as soon as he gets out.”
    Bosch nodded and dropped his eyes back to the legal pad. He spoke without looking up from it.
    “What else do you have for me?”
    “What do you mean?”
    He looked at me and waved the pad up and down as if it were as light as a feather and the information on it was equally so.
    “I’ll run these names and see where these guys are at now. Maybe your gunrunner is out and about and looking for revenge. But these are dead cases. Most likely if these threats were legit, they would’ve been carried out long ago. Same with any threats he got when he was a prosecutor. So this is just busywork you’re giving me, Counselor.”
    “Busywork? Some of those guys threatened him when they were being led off to prison. Maybe some of them are out. Maybe one just got out and made good on the threat. Maybe they contracted it out from prison. There are a lot of possibilities and they shouldn’t be dismissed as just busywork. I don’t understand your attitude on this.”
    Bosch smiled and shook his head. I remembered my father doing the same thing when he was about to tell me as a five-year-old that I had misunderstood something.
    “I don’t really care what you think about my attitude,” he said. “We’ll check your leads out. But I’m looking for something a little more current. Something from Vincent’s open cases.”
    “Well, I can’t help you there.”
    “Sure you can. You have all the cases now. I assume you are reviewing them and meeting all your new clients. You’re going to come across something or see something or hear something that doesn’t fit, that doesn’t seem right, that maybe scares you a little bit. That’s when you call me.”
    I stared at him without answering.
    “You never know,” he said. “It might save you from…”
    He shrugged and didn’t finish, but the message was clear. He was trying to scare me into cooperating far more than Judge Holder was allowing, or than I felt comfortable with.
    “It’s one thing sharing threat information from closed cases,” I said. “It’s another thing entirely to do it with active cases. And besides that, I know you are asking for more than just threats. You think Jerry stumbled across something or had some knowledge that got him killed.”
    Bosch kept his eyes on me and slowly nodded. I was the first to look away.
    “What about it being a two-way street, Detective? What do you know that you aren’t telling me? What was in the laptop that was so important? What was in the portfolio?”
    “I can’t talk to you about an active investigation.”
    “You could yesterday when you asked about the FBI.”
    He looked at me and squinted his dark eyes.
    “I didn’t ask you about the FBI.”
    “Come on, Detective. You asked if he had any federal cases. Why would you do that unless you have some sort of federal connection? I’m guessing it was the FBI.”
    Bosch hesitated. I had a feeling I had guessed right and now he was in a corner. My mentioning the bureau would make him think I knew something. Now he would have to give in order to get.
    “This time you go first,” I prompted.
    He nodded.
    “Okay, the killer took Jerry Vincent’s cell phone – either off his body or it was in his briefcase.”
    “Okay.”
    “I got the call records yesterday right before I saw you. On the day he was killed he got three calls from the bureau. Four days before that, there were two. He was talking to somebody over there. Or they were talking to him.”
    “Who?”
    “I can’t