The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel Read Free Page B

between being a criminal attorney and a
criminal
attorney. Sometimes I’m not sure which side of the bars I am on. To me it’s always a dead-bang miracle that I get to walk
     out the way I walked in.

Three
    I n the hallway outside the courtroom I turned my cell phone back on and called my driver to tell him I was coming out. I then
     checked voicemail and found messages from Lorna Taylor and Fernando Valenzuela. I decided to wait until I was in the car to
     make the callbacks.
    Earl Briggs, my driver, had the Lincoln right out front. Earl didn’t get out and open the door or anything. His deal was just
     to drive me while he worked off the fee he owed me for getting him probation on a cocaine sales conviction. I paid him twenty
     bucks an hour to drive me but then held half of it back to go against the fee. It wasn’t quite what he was making dealing
     crack in the projects but it was safer, legal and something that could go on a résumé. Earl said he wanted to go straight
     in life and I believed him.
    I could hear the sound of hip-hop pulsing behind the closed windows of the Town Car as I approached. But Earl killed the music
     as soon as I reached for the door handle. I slid into the back and told him to head toward Van Nuys.
    “Who was that you were listening to?” I asked him.
    “Um, that was Three Six Mafia.”
    “Dirty south?”
    “That’s right.”
    Over the years, I had become knowledgeable in the subtle distinctions, regional and otherwise, in rap and hip-hop. Across
     theboard, most of my clients listened to it, many of them developing their life strategies from it.
    I reached over and picked up the shoebox full of cassette tapes from the Boyleston case and chose one at random. I noted the
     tape number and the time in the little logbook I kept in the shoebox. I handed the tape over the seat to Earl and he slid
     it into the dashboard stereo. I didn’t have to tell him to play it at a volume so low that it would amount to little more
     than background noise. Earl had been with me for three months. He knew what to do.
    Roger Boyleston was one of my few court-appointed clients. He was facing a variety of federal drug-trafficking charges. DEA
     wiretaps on Boyleston’s phones had led to his arrest and the seizure of six kilos of cocaine that he had planned to distribute
     through a network of dealers. There were numerous tapes—more than fifty hours of recorded phone conversations. Boyleston talked
     to many people about what was coming and when to expect it. The case was a slam dunk for the government. Boyleston was going
     to go away for a long time and there was almost nothing I could do but negotiate a deal, trading Boyleston’s cooperation for
     a lower sentence. That didn’t matter, though. What mattered to me were the tapes. I took the case because of the tapes. The
     federal government would pay me to listen to the tapes in preparation for defending my client. That meant I would get a minimum
     of fifty billable hours out of Boyleston and the government before it was all settled. So I made sure the tapes were in heavy
     rotation whenever I was riding in the Lincoln. I wanted to make sure that if I ever had to put my hand on the book and swear
     to tell the truth, I could say in good conscience that I played every one of those tapes I billed Uncle Sugar for.
    I called Lorna Taylor back first. Lorna is my case manager. The phone number that runs on my half-page ad in the yellow pages
     and on thirty-six bus benches scattered through high-crime areas in the south and east county goes directly to the office/second
     bedroom of her Kings Road condo in West Hollywood. The address the California bar and all the clerks of the courts have for
     me is the condo as well.
    Lorna is the first buffer. To get to me you start with her. My cell number is given out to only a few and Lorna is the gatekeeper.
     She is tough, smart, professional and beautiful. Lately, though, I only get to verify this last