The Highway Kind(15)

BURNT MATCHES


by Michael Connelly

THE COURTHOUSE ELEVATOR was a sardine can filled with people and the collective breath of desperation and failure. Nobody ever came out a winner in this place. They all rode down in silence and defeat. Like me. I had just taken an all-counts-guilty verdict in a two-week trial in superior court. All that work, all that planning, and I didn’t turn a single juror on a single count. My client was going off to jail for a long, long time and there was nothing I could do about it. His case and his appeal would go to somebody else now. And it wouldn’t surprise me if they built the appeal around an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel cause. I lost the case. Truly guilty or not, they always blame the lawyer.

I tried to hold my breath in the elevator. I always do and I always fail. It moves so slowly, stopping at almost every floor. Others hoping to escape this place crowd up in the hallway as the doors slide open, the look of one more defeat on their faces when they realize there is no room and they must wait longer.

Finally, we reached the lobby and I pushed my way out through the trudging bodies. I headed to the exit onto Temple and then started looking for the Lincoln.

I turned right onto Spring—that was where most of the drivers waited—and checked the license plates on the lineup of Lincolns at the curb. There was LEGLWIZ followed by LV2RGUE and LNCNLAW, and then, finally, IWALKEM. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but sometimes it gets hard to find my ride. This is what happens when they make a movie out of one of the cases you’ve won. But that victory and the glory of the movie seemed like distant lights on a far-off shore as I walked to my car.

I looked around but Cisco wasn’t standing in his usual place on the sidewalk shooting the breeze with the other drivers. That and his not responding to my text telling him I was on my way down should have alerted me that something was wrong but I missed it, like I seemed to be missing everything else. I was thinking about the verdict—an across-the-board wipeout was as much a statement about the lawyer as it was about the defendant. I had some thinking to do and I had already started by the time I opened the rear passenger door and got in.

As I slipped, briefcase in hand, into my customary spot in the rear passenger seat I saw a man sitting on the other side of the car. He moved the aim of a nickel-plated pistol from the back of my driver’s head to me.

“Get in,” he said. “Close the door.”

I put the briefcase down on the floor and raised my hands in a gesture of compliance. No false moves from me.

“Okay, okay, no problem,” I said in a voice as calm as I could manage.

The images of the courtroom and the jury forewoman’s dead-eyed stare at me while the clerk read the verdict disappeared quickly. Keeping my eyes on the gunman, I reached out behind me to the door and pulled it closed. I realized as I did so that I recognized the man. I couldn’t place him but guessed he was the father or the brother or the husband of one of my violent clients’ victims. A face from a courtroom, somebody who had watched me attempt to turn the villain into the victim at his dead or damaged loved one’s expense. He couldn’t get to the offender because the offender was probably in prison. So he was getting to me.

“Okay,” I said. “Now what? What are we doing here?”

The man turned the gun and banged it once on the headrest behind Cisco to get his attention.

“Drive,” he said.

“Where to?” Cisco said as he reached forward and started the car.

Dennis “Cisco” Wojciechowski was a very capable investigator and bodyguard. He was driving for me only because a recent surgery on his knee kept him off his Harley and limited his mobility. I was between drivers and he needed to justify his paycheck. He had volunteered and had somehow allowed this man with a gun into the backseat.

“Get on the freeway,” the man said. “Go north.”

Cisco dropped the car into drive and pulled away from the curb, almost immediately making a U-turn in front of city hall.

“You want to get you and your boss killed quick?” the gunman barked. “Make another move like that.”

“You said get on the freeway,” Cisco responded. “This way’s the freeway.”

Cisco didn’t have a concealed-carry permit but more often than not he was carrying something. Usually a Kimber .45 or at least a boot gun. But that was when he was working the streets, chasing down witnesses in some of the rougher neighborhoods in the City of Angels. I had no idea whether he was carrying or not now but I found myself hoping he was. Our abductor’s eyes were so intense, they glowed in their sockets. They told me this man was at the end of his line.

The man with the gun turned and looked out the rear window to see if Cisco’s maneuver had drawn notice from police or anyone else. Satisfied, he turned his attention back to me and I was ready for it.

“So what can I do for you?” I asked.

“What can you do for me?” he said. “You’re asking me that? I’ll tell you what—what you can do for me is die. We’re heading out to the desert where I’m going to get your driver here to bury your ass in the sand.”

Cisco had turned on Temple and taken it to Broadway. The entrance to the northbound 101 Freeway was just a block away.

I said, “Look, sir, I don’t know if it was your wife or your daughter who got hurt, but my job is to defend the accused. The system is based on it. Everybody accused of a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. It’s in the Constitution. Your complaint with me is—”