Resurrection Walk

I looked at the cards as I walked down the row. All of them featured the standard scales-of-justice symbol with little variation. Some had a tiny photo of a smiling or seriously staring attorney. No embossing. The quality of all the cards suggested that the lawyers were attempting to keep costs down while also trying to project some semblance of success and dignity in the shared office space.

Six offices down, I saw the first card embossed in silver. It belonged to Frank Silver, of course, and the embossed card was either left over from better times or an effort to stand out from the others in the legal row. The office door was open but I reached in and knocked on it anyway. A man at a faux-wood-veneer desk looked up from a laptop screen.

“Frank Silver?”

“That’s me.”

I saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. He was fifteen years my junior with a thin build and dark curly hair. I guessed that the walk from here to the courthouse kept him in fighting form.

“You. You’re the Lincoln Lawyer.”

I entered the room and extended my hand. We shook.

“Mickey Haller. Were we on a case previously?”

“Frank Silver. No, I recognize you from the billboards. ‘Reasonable doubt for a reasonable fee’ — surprised the bar lets you get away with that one. Have a seat.”

I looked down at the one chair available for a visitor in the cramped office and saw a foot-high stack of files on it.

“Oh, sorry, wait a second,” Silver said. “Let me get that stuff out of the way.”

He came around the desk. I stepped back in the small space so he could get to the chair. He lifted the stack, took it back with him around the desk, and put it down next to his computer.

“Okay, now have a seat. What can I do for you? Need a tune-up?”

Silver laughed.

“What?” I asked as I sat down.

“You know, Lincoln Lawyer,” Silver said. “Need a tune-up.”

He laughed at his joke again. I didn’t. I was distracted by the wall behind him. It was lined with shelves containing lawbooks and penal codes, all beautifully leather bound with embossed titles on the spines. But it was all fake — a fake law library on wallpaper. He noticed my stare and glanced back at it.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Looks real on Zoom.”

I nodded.

“Got it,” I said. “That’s good.”

I pointed to the jumbled stack of files he had just moved to the desk.

“I’m here to help you declutter,” I said.

He cocked his head, unamused and worried that I was serious.

“How so?” he said.

“I need to pick up a file from you. A closed case your former client has asked me to take a look at.”

“Really? What case is that?”

“Lucinda Sanz. You remember her?”

Surprise played across Silver’s face. It wasn’t a name he was expecting.

“Lucinda — of course I remember her. But...”

“Yeah, she pled nolo. But now she wants me to take a look at it. If I could get the files on the case, I’ll get out of your hair and be on my—”

“Whoa, wait a second. What are you talking about? You can’t just come in here and take my case like that.”

“No, what are you talking about? It’s a closed case. She pleaded and has been in Chino for almost five years.”

“But she’s still my client.”

“She was your client. But she reached out to me. She wants me to take a look at her case. If you remember the case, then you remember she never said she did it. And she still doesn’t.”

“Yeah, but I got her that sweet deal. She would be doing life without if it weren’t for the dispo I got her. Manslaughter with a midrange sentence.”

I knew what this was about. Or I thought I did.

“Look, Frank,” I said, “if you’re worried about a five-oh-four, fear not. That’s not what this is about. I’m looking for actual innocence and whether I can prove it. That’s it. This is a habeas case to me or it’s nothing. If it’s a pass, I’ll send the files right back to you.”

One of the more disappointing and frustrating parts of being a criminal defense lawyer is being named in a 504 motion to vacate a conviction based on ineffective assistance of counsel — bad lawyering. No matter how well you think you represented your client or how good you think the result was, if your client sits in prison long enough, you’ll be named in a Hail Mary effort to overturn the conviction. And no lawyer wants that. Not only can it damage a professional reputation, but it takes time to review and defend one’s steps in a case.

“Then why did she go to you?” Silver asked. “If she’s not going to claim ineffective assistance, she should have come to me.”

“I had a case last year,” I said. “It blew up in the news pretty big. I got a guy out of prison on a habeas. I proved actual innocence. She saw the story somehow in Chino and wrote me a letter. A lot of inmates wrote me letters. My investigator did some preliminary checking on the Sanz case and recommended I take it to the next step. To do that, I need the files. Whatever you’ve got. I need to know everything there is to know about the case.”

Silver was quiet for a long moment.

“So?” I said. “Can I get the files? I can have them copied and the originals back to you by the end of the day. I don’t see the big deal here.”