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dumpsters, an alley, and the rear of Bob’s Hot Dog Palace, a one-man operation that was as much like a palace as my office was like a suite. That’s probably why I liked to eat regularly at Bob’s. We both knew what it was like to operate out of a shoebox.
    Once inside, I closed the door and stepped over the boxes and files on the floor. I had developed a sophisticated filing system by this time, one that involved random placement and luck. It usually took me half a day to find something crucial, which didn’t matter much at this point because very little on the floor was crucial.
    I threw my briefcase on the desk and opened it.
    I told myself regularly that I didn’t have a drinking problem. I could control it. However, I didn’t have any files in my briefcase. I had a pint of bourbon instead.
    I opened the bottle and poured some in my coffee, then put the bottle in a drawer.
    A quick knock on my door. “Come in,” I said.
    Gil Lee entered. He was wearing another of his seriously loud ties, this one a mishmash of so many bright colors I was tempted to squint. “Sheesh, this place is a mess,” he said.
    “I know where everything is, so don’t say anything.”
    “If you know, you know. I only lease the joint. But I hope you don’t see clients in here.”
    “Matter of fact,” I said, “I have a couple coming in today. I was just about to clean up a little.”
    “A little?”
    “You wanted to see me?”
    Gil stepped around a box and sat in one of my formerly plush chairs. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to get into a big thing, Jake. You know me. I like you.”
    “What’s not to like?”
    “I’ve got bills to pay.”
    “You need a nice, juicy medical malpractice claim, Gil, or maybe a police brutality so you can sue the city.”
    Gil didn’t smile, which indicated that my attempts at charming him off the subject weren’t working. “Jake, I need the rent.”
    I knew that wasn’t easy for Gil to say. He liked to look on his tenants not only as lessees but as his charges. He had a tradition of taking each new tenant for a fatherly lunch at Subway where he would informally pass on his wisdom, like Yoda. Gil actually resembled Yoda with his round face, peeper eyes, and gray hair. At our lunch he told me he knew all about my problems and wanted to help me get back on my feet.
    That he knew was no surprise. Everyone in the Los Angeles legal community knew about my “problems.” They had been splashed all over the front page of the Los Angeles Daily Journal, our legal newspaper. How could they avoid the juicy headline, “Lawyer for Drunk Driver Shows Up Drunk in Court”?
    I was a deputy public defender at the time working in the San Fernando office. Without false modesty, I can say I was a rising star. My first year I’d gotten three straight acquittals, which is no small feat. In 95 percent of cases, defendants are convicted, either in trial or by plea. For a public defender to get even one acquittal was noteworthy.
    My drinking was steady, but I picked my spots. I’d been doing that since I was nine. I thought I could always pick my spots, but soon after I was married, the spots started picking me.
    Drinking started to affect my work. I had to be taken off a few cases. The head deputy had me in his office a couple of times to express his concern. I was put on a mild probation.
    Then I got handed the case of Mr. Rudy Noble.
    A real piece of work, Mr. Noble. He was an electrician who liked to drink and hit women. He had pleaded to one battery a couple of years before but was not above admitting to me, with a smile yet, that they hadn’t caught him on several others.
    But that was not why Mr. Rudy Noble was my client.
    He was my client because he got drunk one night with his buddies, then drove his Chevy pickup through a red light at the intersection of Rinaldi and Sepulveda, and plowed into a Ford Tempo. The Tempo was driven by a man named Julio Sanchez who had his three-year-old daughter, Ines,