"That's why I want you to check him out," I said. "He's got three books he said were all bestsellers."
"You got the titles?" Cisco asked.
"I just remember the last one. Fair Warning. That's also the name of his—"
"Oh, I know this guy. Lorna loves his stuff."
Lorna was my office manager. She was also Cisco's wife and my ex-wife. But somehow it worked.
"There you go," I said. "I just want to know if I can trust him enough to bring him inside the wire. We're drowning in technical discovery. It would help to have another pair of eyes, especially if he truly knows his shit."
"I'm on it," Cisco said. "Where are you headed now?"
"The CCB to see if I can get in to see Maggie."
"You got the black box with you?"
"I have it."
"A homecoming in criminal court. Good luck with that."
"I'm probably going to need it."
I disconnected and headed across Temple to the main entrance of the Criminal Courts Building. There were a lot of things I missed about the place, but the elevators were not one of them. They were just as slow and crowded as I remembered from the years I had toiled in this building's hallways and courtrooms. Once I was through the security checkpoint and metal detector—during which I had to explain what the black box in my briefcase was—it took me almost half an hour to get up to the sixteenth floor and the office of the Los Angeles County district attorney. I went to the reception counter, identified myself, and explained that I had no appointment but wished to see the district attorney. I said I wanted to talk to her about her daughter because I knew that would get me in.
The seats in the waiting area were plastic on chrome legs, a style that had gone out of fashion a couple of decades earlier. But they had endured, like most of the furnishings of the building, and did the job. I was in one of those chairs for twenty minutes before I was invited back by the receptionist. This moved me to another waiting room outside the DA's actual office. This time, the chair was a little more comfortable and even had a cushion, threadbare though it was. And this time the wait was only ten minutes.