The Gods of Guilt(57)

I may have disliked facing Leslie Faire on cases but I respected her. And now I thought she should know what had happened to Gloria Dayton. Maybe the news would make her inclined to help me fill in some of the details from eight years before. I wanted to know if she had ever crossed paths with Agent Marco and, if so, when.

I told the receptionist that I had no appointment but was willing to wait. She said to take a seat while she notified Ms. Faire’s secretary of my request for a ten-minute meeting. The fact that Faire had a secretary underscored her lofty position in the Kennedy regime. Most prosecutors I knew had no real administrative help and were lucky if they got to share a pool secretary.

I pulled out my phone and sat down on one of the plastic chairs that had populated the waiting room since before I was a licensed lawyer. I had e-mail to check and texts to write but the first thing I did was call Cisco to see if his Indians had picked up anything on the drive downtown.

“I was just talking to my guy,” Cisco reported. “They didn’t see anything.”

“Okay.”

“Doesn’t mean they’re not there. This was just one drive. We might need to send you out to get a little separation and then we’ll know for sure.”

“Really? I don’t have time to be running all over town, Cisco. I thought you said these guys were good.”

“Yeah, well, the Indians that were up in the cliffs didn’t have to watch the 101 Freeway. I’ll tell them to stick with it. What’s your schedule anyway?”

“I’m at the DA’s Office now and I don’t know how long I’ll be here. After this I’m going out to Fulgoni’s office to meet Junior.”

“Where’s he located?”

“Century City.”

“Well, Century City might work. Nice wide boulevards out there. I’ll tell my guys.”

I disconnected and opened up the e-mail on my phone. There were an assortment of messages from clients who were currently incarcerated. The worst thing to happen to defense attorneys in recent years was the approval from most prisons of e-mail access for inmates. With nothing else to do but worry about their cases, they inundated me and every other lawyer with endless e-mails containing questions, worries, and the occasional threat.

I started weeding through it all, and twenty minutes went by before I looked up to change focus. I decided I’d give it a whole hour before giving up on Leslie Faire. I went back to plowing through my e-mail and was able to clear out a good chunk of the backlog, even answering a few of them in the process. I was forty-five minutes into it, with my head down, when I saw a shadow reflect on my phone screen. I looked up and there was Lankford looking down at me. I almost flinched but think I managed to look unsurprised to see him.

“Investigator Lankford.”

“Haller, what are you doing here?”

He said it like I was some kind of squatter or other nuisance who had previously been warned to move on and not come back.

“I’m waiting to see someone. What are you doing here?”

“I work here, remember? Is this about La Cosse?”

“No, it’s not about La Cosse, but what it is about is none of your business.”

He signaled me to stand up. I stayed seated.

“I told you I’m waiting for somebody.”

“No, you’re not. Leslie Faire sent me out to see what you want. You don’t want to talk to me, then you’re not talking to anybody. Let’s go. Up. You can’t use our waiting room to operate your business. You’ve got a car for that.”

That answer froze me. He’d been sent out to me by Faire. Did that mean Faire had knowledge of what was happening behind the scenes on the Gloria Dayton murder case? I’d come to inform her but she might already know more of what was going on than me.

“I said let’s go,” Lankford said forcefully. “Get up or I’ll get you up.”

A woman who had been sitting two chairs away from me stood to get away from what she determined was about to become a physical extraction. She sat back down on the other side of the room.

“Hold your horses, Lankford,” I said. “I’m going, I’m going.”

I slipped my phone into an inside pocket of my jacket and grabbed my briefcase off the floor as I got up. Lankford didn’t move, choosing to stay close and invade my personal space. I made a move to go around him but he sidestepped and we were face-to-face again.

“Having fun?” I said.

“Ms. Faire doesn’t want you coming back here either,” he said. “She’s not in court anymore and doesn’t need to have anything to do with douche bags like you. Understand?”