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and kept going, passing between the thick concrete pillars, through the tall glass doors, and into the granite-tiled lobby.
    From there, I took an elevator up to the seventh floor and exited into the wide corridor lit with overhead fluorescents and banked with rust-colored benches. I quickly found courtroom 7B, Judge Pat Johnson presiding.
    I didn’t know Judge Johnson, but she had a reputation for making quality decisions based on quirky logic. Rick was a quirky guy, and I wasn’t sure if the judge’s style would help Rick or hurt him.
    The sheriff opened the door for me and I entered the courtroom. It was paneled and appointed in blond wood, with six rows of twelve chairs in the gallery behind the bar. All of the chairs were occupied, and there was standing-room only in the rear.
    I squeezed into the crowd at the back and took in the whole room at a glance. Rick was sitting at the defense table, his back to me, his head lowered as if he was looking down at his hands. Rick had been in trouble before and had done four years at Chino, which he considered graduate work in underworld connections.
    Rick’s lawyer, Eric Caine, was Harvard Law, and a former staffer with the CIA. I was lucky he liked Los Angeles and was playing for our team. He was a good friend, and also head of Private’s legal department.
    Caine was standing before the judge’s bench along with the prosecutor, ADA Dexter Lewis, a kid of thirty to Caine’s forty-five. ADA Lewis had been schooled in Detroit, was ambitious, crafty, a member of three state bar associations, and a dynamic speaker. I knew he would go far.
    But not soon enough.
    Right now, Lewis was determined to put Rick Del Rio away for ten years, the maximum the law would allow. Shooting down a decorated war hero would help Lewis land a mid-six-figure job in a top criminal defense law firm.
    That would be good for Dexter Lewis, but Rick would lose everything, including his investigator’s license and life as he knew it. It killed me to think about that.
    I shifted my attention to the bench.
    Judge Johnson wore a big diamond brooch at the neck of her robe, and her hennaed hair was held back with a gold headband. She was shaking her head emphatically.
    She wasn’t buying whatever Eric Caine was selling.
    I heard her say, “Good try, Mr. Caine, but I’m not dismissing the charges. Are you ready to begin? Well, even if you aren’t, I am. So let’s go.”
    Attorneys Caine and Lewis turned, moved toward their respective tables.
    Caine had dialed his expression down to neutral, but I knew he was pissed. Dexter flashed a beautiful set of teeth. I hoped Del Rio would turn around so I could give him a thumbs-up, but his head stayed lowered. He was trying to control his anger.
    I hoped with all my heart that he could do it.

Chapter 12

     
    RICK DEL RIO sat at the defense table next to his lawyer, hardly aware of the muted activity around him: The bailiff talking to the court reporter. People coming into the row of seats behind him. Chitchatting. Giggling. He looked straight ahead, but inside, his mind was ranging around in the past.
    Rick had grown up in Branson Point, New Jersey, an industrial wasteland so hard, even weeds didn’t grow in the cracks of the pavement. He had lived in a small, overcrowded brick house on a single residential block between two factories. And down the street from his house was a used-car lot, chain-link fence around it, topped with razor wire and patrolled at night by a pair of Dobermans: Bambino and Lassie.
    Rick identified with Bambino.
    Both he and the big male dog had hair triggers. The dog, though, was permitted to go bug-fuck. That was his job. But after Rick vented his anger, he usually regretted what he had said or done.
    Along with his quick temper, Rick’s looks had shaped his personality. He knew he was ugly. His flat black eyes were set close together, his lower jaw was undershot, and he was a stocky kid, not very tall. But being stocky and having a