Page 55 of Resurrection Walk

“Me?” Silver exclaimed. “What are you talking about? Found out what?”

“That you sold Lucinda Sanz down the river. That you took a dive.”

“Bullshit.”

“No bullshit. You could’ve beaten this case easy. But you folded, and that woman’s been sitting in Chino for five years.”

“Are you nuts? None of that is true. I got her a great fucking deal. But even if it was a bad deal, I didn’t take it. She did. It was her call.”

“You talked her into it.”

“I didn’t have to. She knew they had her. And she knew it was a good deal. I just had to lay it out for her and she did the rest. You ask her, she’ll say the same.”

“I did ask her. She did say it was her call, but she didn’t know at the time that a few months earlier, you’d represented a client named Angel Acosta.”

Silver failed to keep the surprise out of his eyes.

“That’s right,” I said. “Angel Acosta, the guy your new client’s ex-husband shot during a firefight at a hamburger stand.”

“It’s not a conflict of interest,” Silver said. “It’s a coincidence. Definitely not ineffect —”

“Acosta told you that was no ambush. It was some kind of meeting between the gang and a corrupt cop. I don’t know the details yet, but you do. Whatever it was, it went bad fast and the shooting started. Sanz was no hero and you knew it. That was the ace up your sleeve with Acosta. Your leverage. That’s how you got him the sweet deal. You threatened to put it all out there, put the sheriff’s department on trial.”

“You really don’t know what you’re talking about, Haller.”

“I think I do. You then saw the opportunity to double dip with Lucinda. Get the case from the public defender, then use the same intel from Acosta to get a deal. But the reality was you had an innocent client. And you had everything you needed to go to trial and win. But, no, you’re Second-Place Silver. You took a dive.”

Silver shoved the food container to the side of his desk but he pushed too hard and it fell off and showered the floor and wall with fried rice.

“Goddamn it!” he said.

He started to bend down to clean it up but then sat back up straight and looked at me.

“It was a judgment call,” he said. “We make them every single day and no judge will grant you a habeas on a judgment call. You file this and you’ll be laughed out of federal court.”

The document I had prepared that morning was simply a prop. Silver was right about one thing: Going for a habeas in federal court with just ineffective assistance of counsel was a nonstarter. It would go nowhere and I wasn’t planning to file it. It was just a tool to help me get to Silver and get him talking.

“I might be laughed out of court,” I said. “Or the public might learn that you took a dive on an innocent client’s case.”

“As I said, you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Silver said.

“Then here’s your chance to school me, Frank. Tell me what I don’t know.”

“I was fucking threatened, you dumbass. I had no choice.”

There. I had broken through. Now I pulled out the chair in front of his desk and sat down.

“Threatened by who?” I said.

“I can’t get into it,” he said. “The threat is still out there and it’s real. You need to be careful or it will be your ass in a sling next.”

“Wrong answer. You need to get into it right now or I’ll file that in the morning and put a press release out to every newsroom in the city.”

“You can’t do this to me.”

I pointed to the document on the desk in front of him.

“It’s already done. You want to stop it, tell me what went down with Sanz. Who threatened you and why?”

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