The Gods of Guilt(12)

“Okay, enough on that for now. If I take this case, how are you going to pay me?”

“In gold.”

“I was told that, but I mean how? Where does this gold come from?”

“I have it in a safe place. All my money is in gold. If you take the case, I will have it delivered to you before the end of the day. Your manager said you needed twenty-five thousand dollars to start. We’ll use the New York Mercantile Exchange quote on valuation and it will simply be delivered. I haven’t really been able to check the market in here but I’m guessing a one-pound bar will cover it.”

“You realize that will only cover my start-up costs, right? If this case goes forward to preliminary hearing and trial, then you’re going to need more gold. You can get cheaper than me but you’re not going to get better.”

“Yes, I understand. I will have to pay to prove my innocence. I have the gold.”

“All right, then, have your delivery person bring the gold to my case manager. I’m going to need it in hand before your first appearance in court tomorrow. Then I’ll know you’re serious about this.”

I knew time was fleeting but I silently studied La Cosse for a long moment, trying to get a read on him. His story of innocence sounded plausible but I didn’t know what the police knew. I only had Andre’s tale and I suspected that as the evidence in the case was revealed, I would learn that he wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be. It’s always that way.

“Okay, last thing, Andre. You told my case manager that I came recommended to you by Giselle herself, is that right?”

“Yes, she said you were the best lawyer in town.”

“How did she know that?”

La Cosse looked surprised, as if the whole conversation so far had been based on a given—that I knew Giselle Dallinger.

“She said she knew you, that you’d handled cases for her. She said you got her a really good deal once.”

“And you’re sure it was me she was talking about.”

“Yes, it was you. She said you hit a home run for her. She called you Mickey Mantle.”

That stopped my breath short. I’d had a client once—a prostitute, too—who would call me that. But I had not seen her in a long time. Not since I put her on a plane with enough money to start over and never come back.

“Giselle Dallinger was not her real name, was it?”

“I don’t know. It’s all I knew her by.”

There was a hard rap on the steel door behind me. My time was up. Some other lawyer needed the room to talk to some other client. I looked across the table at La Cosse. I was no longer second-guessing whether to take him on as my client.

Without a doubt, I was taking the case.





4





Earl drove me over to the Starbucks on Central Avenue and pulled to the curb out front. I stayed in the car while he went in to get us coffee. I opened my laptop on the worktable and used the coffee shop’s signal to get online. I tried three different variations before typing in www.Giselle4u.com and bringing up the website for the woman Andre La Cosse was accused of killing. The photos were airbrushed, the hair was different, and a plastic surgeon had gone to work since I had last seen her, but I had no doubt that Giselle Dallinger was my former client Gloria Dayton.

This changed things. Aside from the issue of legal conflict regarding my representing a client accused of killing another client, there were my feelings about Gloria Dayton and the sudden realization that I’d been used by her in a way that was not too different from the way she was used by men nearly all her life.

Gloria had been a project, a client I cared about beyond the usual boundaries of the attorney-client relationship. I cannot say why this came to be, only that she had a damaged smile, a sardonic wit, and a pessimistic self-knowledge that drew me in. I had handled at least six cases involving her over the years. All of them involved prostitution, drugs, solicitation of prostitution, and the like. She was deeply embedded in the life but always seemed to me to deserve a shot at rising above it and escaping. I was no hero but I did what I could for her. I got her into pretrial intervention programs, halfway houses, therapies, and even once enrolled her in Los Angeles City College after she had expressed an interest in writing. None of it worked for long. A year or so would go by and I’d get the call—she was in jail again and needed a lawyer. Lorna started telling me I needed to cut her loose or pass her off to another attorney, that she was a lost cause. But I couldn’t do that. The truth was I liked knowing Gloria Dayton, or Glory Days as she was known in the profession back then. She had a lopsided view of the world that matched her lopsided smile. She was a feral cat and she let no one but me pet her.