Page 85 of The Lincoln Lawyer

“Was this guy a Texas Longhorns fan or what?” Lankford asked.

Nobody laughed.

“What do you think?” Sobel said to me.

I stared down at my friend’s last gesture and just shook my head.

“Oh, I got it,” Lankford said. “It’s like a signal. A code. He’s telling us that the devil did it.”

I thought of Raul calling Roulet the devil, of having the proof that he was evil. And I knew what my friend’s last message to me meant. As he died on the floor of his office, he tried to tell me. Tried to warn me.

Twenty-four

Iwent to Four Green Fields and ordered a Guinness but quickly escalated to vodka over ice. I didn’t think there was any sense in delaying things. The Dodgers game was finishing up on the TV over the bar. The boys in blue were rallying, down now by just two with the bases loaded in the ninth. The bartender had his eyes glued to the screen but I didn’t care anymore about the start of new seasons. I didn’t care about ninth-inning rallies.

After the second vodka assault, I brought the cell phone up onto the bar and started making calls. First I called the four other lawyers from the game. We had all left when I had gotten the word but they went home only knowing that Levin was dead, none of the details. Then I called Lorna and she cried on the phone. I talked her through it for a little while and then she asked the question I was hoping to avoid.

“Is this because of your case? Because of Roulet?”

“I don’t know,” I lied. “I told the cops about it but they seemed more interested in him being gay than anything else.”

“He was gay?”

I knew it would work as a deflection.

“He didn’t advertise it.”

“And you knew and didn’t tell me?”

“There was nothing to tell. It was his life. If he wanted to tell people, he would have told people, I guess.”

“The detectives said that’s what happened?”

“What?”

“You know, that his being gay is how he got murdered.”

“I don’t know. They kept asking about it. I don’t know what they think. They’ll look at everything and hopefully it will lead to something.”

There was silence. I looked up at the TV just as the winning run crossed the plate for the Dodgers and the stadium erupted in bedlam and joy. The bartender whooped and used a remote to turn up the broadcast. I looked away and put a hand over my free ear.

“Makes you think, doesn’t it?” Lorna said.

“About what?”

“About what we do. Mickey, when they catch the bastard who did this, he might call me to hire you.”

I got the bartender’s attention by shaking the ice in my empty glass. I wanted a refill. What I didn’t want was to tell Lorna that I believed I was already working for the bastard who had killed Raul.

“Lorna, take it easy. You’re getting—”

“It could happen!”

“Look, Raul was my colleague and he was also my friend. But I’m not going to change what I do or what I believe in because—”

“Maybe you should. Maybe we all should. That’s all I’m saying.”

She started crying again. The bartender brought my fresh drink and I took a third of it down in one gulp.