The Lincoln Lawyer

PowerPoint presentation to illustrate the case to the jury. It had become all the rage with young prosecutors to put up the screen and flash computer graphics on it, as if the jurors couldn’t be trusted to think and make connections on their own. It now had to be fed to them like TV.
    My clients rarely had the money to pay my fees, let alone for PowerPoint presentations. Roulet was an exception. Through his mother he could afford to hire Francis Ford Coppola to put together a PowerPoint for him if he wanted it. But I never even brought it up. I was strictly old school. I liked going into the ring on my own. Minton could throw whatever he wanted up on the big blue screen. When it was my turn I wanted the jury looking only at me. If I couldn’t convince them, nothing from a computer could, either.
    At 5:30 I called Maggie McPherson at her office.
    “It’s quitting time,” I said.
    “Maybe for big-shot defense pros. Us public servants have to work till after dark.”
    “Why don’t you take a break and come meet me for a Guinness and some shepherd’s pie, then you can go back to work and finish up.”
    “No, Haller. I can’t do that. Besides, I know what you want.”
    I laughed. There was never a time that she didn’t think she knew what I wanted. Most of the time she was right but not this time.
    “Yeah? What do I want?”
    “You’re going to try to corrupt me again and find out what Minton is up to.”
    “Not a chance, Mags. Minton is an open book. Smithson’s observer is giving him bad marks. So Smithson’s told him to fold the tent, get something and get out. But Minton’s been working on his little PowerPoint closing and wants to gamble, take it all the way to the house. Besides that, he’s got genuine outrage in his blood, so he doesn’t like the idea of folding up.”
    “Neither do I. Smithson’s always afraid of losing-especially since Blake. He always wants to sell short. You can’t be that way.”
    “I always said they lost the Blake case the minute they passed you over. You tell ’em, Maggie.”
    “If I ever get the chance.”
    “Someday.”
    She didn’t like dwelling on her own stalled career. She moved on.
    “So you sound chipper,” she said. “Yesterday you were a murder suspect. Today you’ve got the DA by the short hairs. What changed?”
    “Nothing. It’s just the calm before the storm, I guess. Hey, let me ask you something. Have you ever put a rush on ballistics?”
    “What kind of ballistics?”
    “Matching casing to casing and slug to slug.”
    “Depends on who is doing it-which department, I mean. But if they put a real rush on it, they could have something in twenty-four hours.”
    I felt the dull thud of dread drop into my stomach. I knew I could be on borrowed time.
    “Most of the time, though, that doesn’t happen,” she continued. “Two or three days is what it will usually take on a rush. And if you want the whole package-casing and slug comparisons-it could take longer because the slug could be damaged and tough to read. They have to work with it.”
    I nodded. I didn’t think any of that could help me. I knew they had recovered a bullet casing at the crime scene. If Lankford and Sobel got a match on that to the casing of a bullet fired fifty years ago from Mickey Cohen’s gun, they would come for me and worry about the slug comparison later.
    “You still there?” Maggie asked.
    “Yeah. I was just thinking of something.”
    “You don’t sound so chipper anymore. You want to talk about this, Michael?”
    “No, not right now. But if I end up needing a good lawyer, you know who I’ll call.”
    “That’ll be the day.”
    “You might be surprised.”
    I let some more silence into the conversation. Just having her on the other end of the line was a calming comfort. I liked it.
    “Haller, I should get back to my job now.”
    “Okay, Maggie, put those bad guys away.”
    “I will.”
    “Good night.”
    I closed the phone and thought about things for a few moments, then opened it up again and called the Sheraton Universal to see if they had a room available. I had decided that as a precaution I would not go home this night. There might be two detectives from Glendale waiting for me.

Wednesday, May 25

THIRTY-EIGHT
    A fter a sleepless night in a bad hotel bed I got to the courthouse early on Wednesday morning and found no welcoming party, no Glendale detectives waiting with smiles and a warrant for my arrest. A flash of relief went through me