Page 54 of Resurrection Walk

“How can I help you?” he said.

I didn’t answer. I put the stapled document down in front of him. He glanced up and did a double take when he saw who stood in front of his desk.

“Da Lincoln Lawyer,” he said. “What’s up, partner?”

“You ever go to court, Frank?” I asked.

“I always thought a good lawyer tries to avoid court. Bad shit happens in court, right?”

“Not always.”

He picked up the document and leaned back in his chair to read it.

“So what do we have here?” he asked.

“That’s a copy of my habeas petition,” I said. “I’ll file it tomorrow. I thought you should have it in case the media gets wind of it. Lately they seem to be following my cases and my moves pretty closely.”

“That’s because you’re a winner. And winners get the ink.”

“It’s mostly digital now. But I get the point.”

Silver started to read.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he said.

I noticed an open takeout container filled with what looked like fried rice. It was giving the claustrophobic room a sharp odor of fried pork.

As soon as Silver read the case styling — Sanz v. the State of California — he leaned forward and looked up at me.

“You’re going federal with this?” he asked. “I thought you said —”

“I know what I said,” I interrupted. “That was before we took a deep dive into the case and found out a few things.”

“I’ve never worked in federal.”

“I try to avoid it, but there are reasons this time.”

“Such as?”

“Just keep reading. You’ll see.”

Silver nodded and went back to the document. The top sheet was boilerplate, listing the reasons why the U.S. district court should hear the motion. The second page was more case-specific and outlined how my efforts to secure cooperation from the FBI for a habeas motion in state court had been thwarted by a blanket denial of requests from the district’s U.S. Attorney’s Office. Silver nodded as he read as though agreeing to the facts outlined on page two. When he saw the notation about the attached exhibit he flipped to the back of the document and read the short, terse letter from the Central District of California U.S. Attorney’s Office denying my request to speak to FBI agent Tom MacIsaac and warning that any effort to serve him with a state court subpoena would be blocked.

“Perrrrfect,” Silver said, drawing the word out.

He went back to the second page and then moved on to page three. This was what I was waiting for. Page three was the meat of the document. It contained the reasons why the petition should be granted and a habeas hearing scheduled. I watched closely as Silver continued reading and nodding, acting like he was checking off boxes and approving as he went.

But a few seconds later he stopped nodding.

“What the fuck, Haller?” he said. “This says ‘ineffective assistance of counsel’ and you said you weren’t going that way.”

“I told you, things have changed,” I said.

“How the fuck have they changed? You think you’re going to file this and then leak it to the press? That’s a big nonstarter, buddy boy. That isn’t happening.”

I was still standing. I didn’t want to sit down for this. I didn’t want to be in this room and in front of this guy any longer than I had to. I put my hands down on his desk after shoving some of the clutter out of the way. I leaned down but was still above Silver’s level.

“Things changed when I found out about you,” I said.

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