The Brass Verdict

Vincent?”
    I was immediately thrown by her use of the past tense.
    “Jerry? Yes, I know Jerry. What about him?”
    “He’s dead.”
    “Dead?”
    “Murdered, actually.”
    “When?”
    “Last night. I’m sorry.”
    My eyes dropped and I looked at the nameplate on her desk.
Honorable M. T. Holder
was carved in script into a two-dimensional wooden display that held a ceremonial gavel and a fountain pen and inkwell.
    “How close were you?” she asked.
    It was a good question and I didn’t really know the answer. I kept my eyes down as I spoke.
    “We had cases against each other when he was with the DA and I was at the PD. We both left for private practice around the same time and both of us had one-man shops. Over the years we worked some cases together, a couple of drug trials, and we sort of covered for each other when it was needed. He threw me a case occasionally when it was something he didn’t want to handle.”
    I had had a professional relationship with Jerry Vincent. Every now and then we clicked glasses at Four Green Fields or saw each other at a ball game at Dodger Stadium. But for me to say we were close would have been an exaggeration. I knew little about him outside of the world of law. I had heard about a divorce a while back on the courthouse gossip line but had never even asked him about it. That was personal information and I didn’t need to know it.
    “You seem to forget, Mr. Haller, but I was with the DA back when Mr. Vincent was a young up-and-comer. But then he lost a big case and his star faded. That was when he left for private practice.”
    I looked at the judge but said nothing.
    “And I seem to recall that you were the defense attorney on that case,” she added.
    I nodded.
    “Barnett Woodson. I got an acquittal on a double murder. He walked out of the courtroom and sarcastically apologized to the media for getting away with murder. He had to rub the DA’s face in it and that pretty much ended Jerry’s career as a prosecutor.”
    “Then, why would he ever work with you or throw you cases?”
    “Because, Judge, by ending his career as a prosecutor, I started his career as a defense attorney.”
    I left it at that but it wasn’t enough for her.
    “And?”
    “And a couple of years later he was making about five times what he had made with the DA. He called me up one day and thanked me for showing him the light.”
    The judge nodded knowingly.
    “It came down to money. He wanted the money.”
    I shrugged like I was uncomfortable answering for a dead man and didn’t respond.
    “What happened to your client?” the judge asked. “What became of the man who got away with murder?”
    “He would’ve been better off taking a conviction. Woodson got killed in a drive-by about two months after the acquittal.”
    The judge nodded again, this time as if to say end of story, justice served. I tried to put the focus back on Jerry Vincent.
    “I can’t believe this about Jerry. Do you know what happened?”
    “That’s not clear. He was apparently found late last night in his car in the garage at his office. He had been shot to death. I am told that the police are still there at the crime scene and there have been no arrests. All of this comes from a
Times
reporter who called my chambers to make an inquiry about what will happen now with Mr. Vincent’s clients – especially Walter Elliot.”
    I nodded. For the last twelve months I had been in a vacuum but it wasn’t so airtight that I hadn’t heard about the movie mogul murder case. It was just one in a string of big-time cases Vincent had scored over the years. Despite the Woodson fiasco, his pedigree as a high profile prosecutor had set him up from the start as an upper-echelon criminal defense attorney. He didn’t have to go looking for clients; they came looking for him. And usually they were clients who could pay or had something to say, meaning they had at least one of three attributes: They could pay top dollar for legal representation, they were demonstrably innocent of the charges lodged against them, or they were clearly guilty but had public opinion and sentiment on their side. These were clients he could get behind and forthrightly defend no matter what they were accused of. Clients who didn’t make him feel greasy at the end of the day.
    And Walter Elliot qualified for at least one of those attributes. He was the chairman/owner of Archway Pictures and a very powerful man in Hollywood. He had been charged with