Eleven

Cisco and Lorna were still at work in Jerry Vincent’s office when I got back. I handed the court order for the bank over to Lorna and told her about the two early appointments I had set for the next day.

“I thought you put Patrick Henson into the dog pile,” Lorna said.

“I did. But now I moved him back.”

She put her eyebrows together the way she did whenever I confounded her — which was a lot. I didn’t want to explain things. Moving on, I asked if anything new had developed while I had gone to court.

“A couple things,” Lorna said. “First of all, the check from Walter Elliot cleared. If he heard about Jerry it’s too late to stop payment.”

“Good.”

“It gets better. I found the contracts file and took a look at Jerry’s deal with Elliot. That hundred thousand deposited Friday for trial was only a partial payment.”

She was right. It was getting better.

“How much?” I asked.

“According to the deal,” she said, “Vincent took two fifty up front. That was five months ago and it looks like that is all gone. But he was going to get another two fifty for the trial. Nonrefundable. The hundred was only the first part of that. The rest is due on the first day of testimony.”

I nodded with satisfaction. Vincent had made a great deal. I had never had a case with that kind of money involved. But I wondered how he had blown through the first $250,000 so quickly. Lorna would have to study the ins and outs of the accounts to get that answer.

“Okay, all of that’s real good — if we get Elliot. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter. What else do we have?”

Lorna looked disappointed that I didn’t want to linger over the money and celebrate her discovery. She had lost sight of the fact that I still had to nail Elliot down. Technically, he was a free agent. I would get the first shot at him but I still had to secure him as a client before I could consider what it would be like to get a $250,000 trial fee.

Lorna answered my question in a monotone.

“We had a series of visitors while you were in court.”

“Who?”

“First, one of the investigators Jerry used came by after hearing the news. He took one look at Cisco and almost got into it with him. Then he got smart and backed down.”

“Who was it?”

“Bruce Carlin. Jerry hired him to work the Elliot case.”

I nodded. Bruce Carlin was a former LAPD bull who had crossed to the dark side and did defense work now. A lot of attorneys used him because of his insider’s knowledge of how things worked in the cop shop. I had used him on a case once and thought he was living off an undeserved reputation. I never hired him again.

“Call him back,” I said. “Set up a time for him to come back in.”