The Lincoln Lawyer

paper to the outside cover. He held it out to me and I saw the document was an invoice for almost six thousand dollars for eight days of investigative services and expenses. Based on what I had heard during the last half hour, the price was a bargain.
    “That file has everything we just talked about, plus a copy of the video from Morgan’s on disc,” Levin said.
    I hesitantly took the file. By taking it I was moving it into the realm of discovery. Not accepting it and keeping everything with Levin would have given me a buffer, wiggle room if I got into a discovery scrap with the prosecutor.
    I tapped the invoice with my finger.
    “I’ll call this in to Lorna and we’ll send out a check,” I said.
    “How is Lorna? I miss seeing her.”
    When we were married, Lorna used to ride with me a lot and go into court with me to watch. Sometimes when I was short a driver she would take the wheel. Levin saw her more often back then.
    “She’s doing great. She’s still Lorna.”
    Levin cracked his door open but didn’t get out.
    “You want me to stay on Reggie?”
    That was the question. If I approved I would lose all deniability if something went wrong. Because now I would know what he was doing. I hesitated but then I nodded.
    “Very loose. And don’t farm it out. I only trust you on it.”
    “Don’t worry. I’ll handle it myself. What else?”
    “The left-handed man. We have to figure out who Mr. X is and whether he was part of this thing or just another customer.”
    Levin nodded and pumped his left-handed fist again.
    “I’m on it.”
    He put on his sunglasses, opened the door and slid out. He reached back in for his briefcase and his unopened bottle of water, then said good-bye and closed the door. I watched him start walking through the lot in search of his car. I should have been ecstatic about all I had just learned. It tilted everything steeply toward my client. But I still felt uneasy about something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
    Earl had turned his music off and was awaiting direction.
    “Take me downtown, Earl,” I said.
    “You got it,” he replied. “The CCB?”
    “Yeah and, hey, who was that you were listening to on the ’Pod? I could sort of hear it.”
    “That was Snoop. Gotta play him up loud.”
    I nodded. L.A. ’s own. And a former defendant who faced down the machine on a murder charge and walked away. There was no better story of inspiration on the street.
    “Earl?” I said. “Take the seven-ten. We’re running late.”

TWELVE
    S am Scales was a Hollywood con man. He specialized in Internet schemes designed to gather credit card numbers and verification data that he would then turn and sell in the financial underworld. The first time we had worked together he had been arrested for selling six hundred card numbers and their attendant verification information-expiration dates and the addresses, social security numbers and passwords of the rightful owners of the cards-to an undercover sheriff’s deputy.
    Scales had gotten the numbers and information by sending out an e-mail to five thousand people who were on the customer list of a Delaware-based company that sold a weight-loss product called TrimSlim6 over the Internet. The list had been stolen from the company’s computer by a hacker who did freelance work for Scales. Using a rent-by-the-hour computer in a Kinko’s and a temporary e-mail address, Scales then sent out a mass mailing to all those on the list. He identified himself as counsel for the federal Food and Drug Administration and told the recipients that their credit cards would be refunded the full amount of their purchases of TrimSlim6 following an FDA recall of the product. He said FDA testing of the product proved it to be ineffective in promoting weight loss. He said the makers of the product had agreed to refund all purchases in an effort to avoid fraud charges. He concluded the e-mail with instructions for confirming the refund. These included providing the credit card number, expiration date and all other pertinent verification data.
    Of the five thousand recipients of the message, there were six hundred who bit. Scales then made an Internet contact in the underworld and set up a hand-to-hand sale, six hundred credit card numbers and vitals for ten thousand in cash. It meant that within days the numbers would be stamped on plastic blanks and then put to use. It was a fraud that would reach into the millions of dollars in losses.
    But it was stunted