The Lincoln Lawyer

folded sheaf of documents in one hand.
    “There you are,” he said. “We’ve been looking for you.”

THIRTY
    T he document Lankford handed me was a search warrant granting the police the authority to search my home, office and car for a.22 caliber Colt Woodsman Sport Model pistol with the serial number 656300081-52. The authorization said the pistol was believed to have been the murder weapon in the April 12 homicide of Raul A. Levin. Lankford had handed the warrant to me with a proud smirk on his face. I did my best to act like it was business as usual, the kind of thing I handled every other day and twice on Fridays. But the truth was, my knees almost buckled.
    “How’d you get this?” I said.
    It was a nonsensical response to a nonsensical moment.
    “Signed, sealed and delivered,” Lankford said. “So where do you want to start? You have your car here, right? That Lincoln you’re chauffeured around in like a high-class hooker.”
    I checked the judge’s signature on the last page and saw it was a Glendale muni-court judge I had never heard of. They had gone to a local who probably knew he’d need the police endorsement come election time. I started to recover from the shock. Maybe the search was a front.
    “This is bullshit,” I said. “You don’t have the PC for this. I could have this thing quashed in ten minutes.”
    “It looked pretty good to Judge Fullbright,” Lankford said.
    “Fullbright? What does she have to do with this?”
    “Well, we knew you were in trial, so we figured we ought to ask her if it was okay to drop the warrant on you. Don’t want to get a lady like that mad, you know. She said after court was over was fine by her-and she didn’t say shit about the PC or anything else.”
    They must have gone to Fullbright on the lunch break, right after I had seen them in the courtroom. My guess was, it had been Sobel’s idea to check with the judge first. A guy like Lankford would have enjoyed pulling me right out of court and disrupting the trial.
    I had to think quickly. I looked at Sobel, the more sympathetic of the two.
    “I’m in the middle of a three-day trial,” I said. “Any way we can put this on hold until Thursday?”
    “No fucking way,” Lankford answered before his partner could. “We’re not letting you out of our sight until we execute the search. We’re not going to give you the time to dump the gun. Now where’s your car, Lincoln lawyer?”
    I checked the authorization of the warrant. It had to be very specific and I was in luck. It called for the search of a Lincoln with the California license plate NT GLTY. I realized that someone must have written the plate down on the day I was called to Raul Levin’s house from the Dodgers game. Because that was the old Lincoln -the one I was driving that day.
    “It’s at home. Since I’m in trial I don’t use the driver. I got a ride in with my client this morning and I was just going to ride back with him. He’s probably waiting down there.”
    I lied. The Lincoln I had been driving was in the courthouse parking garage. But I couldn’t let the cops search it because there was a gun in a compartment in the backseat armrest. It wasn’t the gun they were looking for but it was a replacement. After Raul Levin was murdered and I’d found my pistol box empty, I asked Earl Briggs to get me a gun for protection. I knew that with Earl there would be no ten-day waiting period. But I didn’t know the gun’s history or registration and I didn’t want to find out through the Glendale Police Department.
    But I was in luck because the Lincoln with the gun inside wasn’t the one described in the warrant. That one was in my garage at home, waiting on the buyer from the limo service to come by and take a look at. And that would be the Lincoln that would be searched.
    Lankford grabbed the warrant out of my hand and shoved it into an inside coat pocket.
    “Don’t worry about your ride,” Lankford said. “We’re your ride. Let’s go.”
    On the way down and out of the courthouse, we didn’t run into Roulet or his entourage. And soon I was riding in the back of a Grand Marquis, thinking that I had made the right choice when I had gone with the Lincoln. There was more room in the Lincoln and the ride was smoother.
    Lankford did the driving and I sat behind him. The windows were up and I could hear him chewing gum.
    “Let me see the warrant again,” I said.
    Lankford made no move.
    “I’m not letting you inside