The Lincoln Lawyer

getting -”
    “It could happen!”
    “Look, Raul was my colleague and he was also my friend. But I’m not going to change what I do or what I believe in because -”
    “Maybe you should. Maybe we all should. That’s all I’m saying.”
    She started crying again. The bartender brought my fresh drink and I took a third of it down in one gulp.
    “Lorna, do you want me to come over there?”
    “No, I don’t want anything. I don’t know what I want. This is just so awful.”
    “Can I tell you something?”
    “What? Of course you can.”
    “You remember Jesus Menendez? My client?”
    “Yes, but what’s he have -”
    “He was innocent. And Raul was working on it. We were working on it. We’re going to get him out.”
    “Why are you telling me this?”
    “I’m telling you because we can’t take what happened to Raul and just stop in our tracks. What we do is important. It’s necessary.”
    The words sounded hollow as I said them. She didn’t respond. I had probably confused her because I had confused myself.
    “Okay?” I asked.
    “Okay.”
    “Good. I have to make some more calls, Lorna.”
    “Will you tell me when you find out about the services?”
    “I will.”
    After closing my phone I decided to take a break before making another call. I thought about Lorna’s last question and realized I might be the one organizing the services she asked about. Unless an old woman in Detroit who had disowned Raul Levin twenty-five years ago stepped up to the plate.
    I pushed my glass to the edge of the bar gutter and said to the bartender, “Gimme a Guinness and give yourself one, too.”
    I decided it was time to slow down and one way was to drink Guinness, since it took so long to fill a glass out of the tap. When the bartender finally brought it to me I saw that he had etched a harp in the foam with the tap nozzle. An angel’s harp. I hoisted the glass before drinking from it.
    “God bless the dead,” I said.
    “God bless the dead,” the bartender said.
    I drank heavily from the glass and the thick ale was like mortar I was sending down to hold the bricks together inside. All at once I felt like crying. But then my phone rang. I grabbed it up without looking at the screen and said hello. The alcohol had bent my voice into an unrecognizable shape.
    “Is this Mick?” a voice asked.
    “Yeah, who’s this?”
    “It’s Louis. I just heard the news about Raul. I’m so sorry, man.”
    I pulled the phone away from my ear as if it were a snake about to bite me. I pulled my arm back, ready to throw it at the mirror behind the bar, where I saw my own reflection. Then I stopped and brought it back.
    “Yeah, motherfucker, how did you -”
    I broke off and started laughing as I realized what I had just called him and what Raul Levin’s theory about Roulet had been.
    “Excuse me,” Roulet said. “Are you drinking?”
    “You’re damn right I’m drinking,” I said. “How the fuck do you already know what happened to Mish?”
    “If by Mish you mean Mr. Levin, I just got a call from the Glendale police. A detective said she wanted to speak to me about him.”
    That answer squeezed at least two of the vodkas right out of my liver. I straightened up on my stool.
    “Sobel? Is that who called?”
    “Yeah, I think so. She said she got my name from you. She said it would be routine questions. She’s coming here.”
    “Where?”
    “The office.”
    I thought about it for a moment but didn’t think Sobel was in any kind of danger, even if she came without Lankford. Roulet wouldn’t try anything with a cop, especially in his own office. My greater concern was that somehow Sobel and Lankford were already onto Roulet and I would be robbed of my chance to personally avenge Raul Levin and Jesus Menendez. Had Roulet left a fingerprint behind? Had a neighbor seen him go into Levin’s house?
    “That’s all she said?”
    “Yes. She said they were talking to all of his recent clients and I was the most recent.”
    “Don’t talk to them.”
    “You sure?”
    “Not without your lawyer present.”
    “Won’t they get suspicious if I don’t talk to them, like give them an alibi or something?”
    “It doesn’t matter. They don’t talk to you unless I give my permission. And I’m not giving it.”
    I gripped my free hand into a fist. I couldn’t stand the idea of giving legal advice to the man I was sure had killed my friend that very morning.
    “Okay,” Roulet said. “I’ll send her on her