The Gods of Guilt(8)

I looked down at my legal pad. So far I had written down only the names, nothing else.

“Okay, whose case is it?”

“LAPD West Bureau Homicide.”

“Do we know anything else about it? What else did this guy say?”

“He said he is supposed to have his first appearance tomorrow morning and he wanted you there. He said he was set up and didn’t kill her.”

“Was she a wife, girlfriend, business associate, or what?”

“He said she worked for him but that’s all. I know you don’t like your clients talking on jailhouse phones, so I didn’t ask him anything about the case.”

“That’s good, Lorna.”

“Where are you, anyway?”

“I went out to see Legal. I’m heading back downtown now. I’ll see if I can get in to see this guy and feel it out. Can you get a hold of Cisco and have him do some preliminaries?”

“He’s already on it. I can hear him on the phone with somebody now.”

Cisco Wojciechowski was my investigator. He was also Lorna’s husband, and they worked out of her condo in West Hollywood. Lorna also happened to be my ex-wife. She was wife number two, coming after the wife who bore me my only child—a child who was now sixteen years old and wanted nothing to do with me. Sometimes I thought I needed a flowchart on a whiteboard to keep track of everybody and their relationships, but at least there were no jealousies between me and Lorna and Cisco, just a solid working relationship.

“Okay, have him call me. Or I’ll call him after I get out of jail.”

“Okay, good luck.”

“One last thing. Is La Cosse a paying customer?”

“Oh, yeah. He said he didn’t have cash but he had gold and other ‘commodities’ he could trade.”

“Did you give him a number?”

“I told him you would need twenty-five just to get started, more later. He didn’t freak out or anything.”

The number of defendants in the system at any given time who could not only afford a $25,000 retainer but were willing to part with it were few and far between. I knew nothing about this case but it was sounding better to me all the time.

“Okay, I’ll check back when I know something.”

“Cheers.”

Some of the air came out of the balloon before I even laid eyes on my new client. I had filed an engagement letter with the jail office and was waiting for the detention deputies to find La Cosse and move him into an interview room, when Cisco called with the preliminary information he had been able to glean from human and digital sources in the hour or so since we had gotten the case.

“Okay, a couple things. The LAPD put out a press release on the murder yesterday but so far nothing on the arrest. Giselle Dallinger, thirty-six years old, was found early Monday morning in her apartment on Franklin west of La Brea. She was found by firefighters who were called because the apartment had been set on fire. The body was burned but it is suspected that the fire was set in an attempt to cover up the murder and make it look accidental. Autopsy is still pending but the release says there were indications she had been strangled. The press release labeled her a businesswoman but the Times ran a short on it on their website that quotes law enforcement sources as saying she was a hooker.”

“Great. Who is my guy then, a john?”

“Actually, the Times report says the coppers were questioning a business associate. Whether that was La Cosse it doesn’t say but you put two and two together—”

“And you get pimp.”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“Great. Seems like a swell guy.”

“Look at the bright side, Lorna says he’s a paying client.”

“I’ll believe it when the cash is in my pocket.”

I suddenly thought of my daughter, Hayley, and one of the last things she had said to me before she cut off contact. She called the people on my client list the dregs of society, people who are takers and users and even killers. Right now I couldn’t argue with her. My roster included the carjacker who targeted old ladies, an accused date rapist, an embezzler who took money from a student trip fund, and various other societal miscreants. Now I would presumably add an accused murderer to the list—make that an accused murderer in the business of selling sex.

I was beginning to feel that I deserved them as much as they deserved me. We were all hard-luck cases and losers, the kind of people the gods of guilt never smiled upon.

My daughter had known the two people my client Sean Gallagher killed. Katie Patterson was in her class. Her mom was their homeroom mother. Hayley had to switch schools to avoid the scorn directed at her when it was revealed by the media—and I mean all the media—that J. Michael Haller Jr., candidate for Los Angeles County District Attorney, had sprung Gallagher from his last DUI pop on a technicality.