Resurrection Walk

“I don’t know where she is,” Muriel said. “I don’t want to know. Puta!”

“Well, I think we’ll leave it at that, then,” I said. “Thank you for your time, Muriel, and for allowing us to talk to Eric. He seems like a bright kid. You must be a good teacher.”

“It’s my job to make him a good man,” she said. “But it is hard. The gangs want him.”

“I understand,” I said.

I considered suggesting that she limit his exposure to Uncle Carlos and Cousin Cesar but decided against it.

“You must get her out so she can take him away from here,” Muriel said.

“We’re going to try.”

“Thank you.”

Muriel’s eyes revealed her hope that her daughter would come home soon. Bosch and I thanked her again and headed to the door.

After Muriel closed the front door behind us, I saw one of the men from the welcoming committee sitting in a blanket-covered chair on the porch. He stood up. He was the talker from before, Lucinda’s little brother, Carlos.

“Lincoln Lawyer,” he said. “I seen you on the billboard. You look like a clown up there in your pinche pendejo car.”

“Probably not my best shot,” I said. “But I guess it’s a matter of opinion.”

He walked up close to me, holding his hands together to better flex his heavily inked biceps. In my peripheral vision I could tell Bosch had tensed. I smiled, hoping to defuse the situation.

“I take it you’re Eric’s uncle Carlos?” I said.

“Don’t fuck this up, Lincoln Lawyer,” he said.

“I don’t intend to.”

“Promise it.”

“I don’t make promises. Too many vari—”

“There will be consequences if you fuck up.”

“Then how ’bout I quit right now and you explain that to your sister.”

“You can’t quit now, Lincoln Lawyer. You are in.”

He stepped aside to let me go down the steps.

“Remember: consequences,” he said to my back. “Make it right, or I’m gonna make it right.”

I waved without looking back.

13

Bosch took the reins of the Navigator and we pulled out of Mott Street. He said something about being prepared to take evasive action should any other White Fence gangsters want an audience with the Lincoln Lawyer. I told him to take Cesar Chavez Avenue over to Eastern, where we made an unscheduled stop at Home of Peace Memorial Park. I directed him to the main chapel and told him to pull off to the side of the access road.

“I won’t be long.”

I got out and walked into the chapel and down one of the hallways lined with the names of the dead. I had not been here in almost a year and it took me a few minutes to locate the etched brass plaque I had paid for. But there it was, between someone named Neufeld and someone named Katz.

DAVID “LEGAL” SIEGEL

ATTORNEY-AT-LAW

1932–2022

“ALL GOOD THINGS COME TO AN END”

It was as he had wanted it, as he had written it out in his last requests. I just stood there for a quiet moment, the light coming through the colored glass on the wall behind me.

I missed him a lot. In and out of the courtroom, I had learned more from Legal Siegel than from any parent, professor, judge, or attorney I’d ever known. He was the one who’d taken me under his wing and showed me how to be a lawyer and a man. I wished he’d been with me to see Jorge Ochoa walk out of prison a free man, no legal strings attached. There were not-guilty verdicts to cherish, cross-examinations to savor, and the adrenaline-charged moments when you just know the jury’s eating out of the palm of your hand. I’d had all of those over the years. In spades. But nothing could ever beat the resurrection walk — when the manacles come off and the last metal doors slide open like the gates of heaven, and a man or woman declared innocent walks into the waiting arms of family, resurrected in life and the law. There is no better feeling in the world than being with that family and knowing you were the one who made it so.

Frank Silver was wrong about what he thought I was doing. Sure, there was long-shot money at the end of the rainbow. But that wasn’t what I was looking for. With Jorge Ochoa, I had felt the adrenaline charge of the resurrection walk and I was now addicted to it. It might happen only once or twice in a lawyer’s career, but I didn’t care. I wanted that moment again and I’d do anything to get it. I wanted to stand outside the prison gates and welcome my client back to the land of the living. I didn’t know if Lucinda Sanz would be that client. But the Lincoln Lawyer had a full tank and was ready to drive down Resurrection Road again.

I heard the chapel door open and soon Bosch was standing next to me. He followed my sightline to the plaque on the wall.

“Legal Siegel,” he said. “What’s he doing out here in Boyle Heights?”

“He was born here,” I said.

“I had him as a Westside guy.”

“Back in the thirties and forties, there were more Jews than Latinos in Boyle Heights. Did you know that? Instead of East Los it was called the Lower East Side. And Cesar Chavez Avenue? That was Brooklyn Avenue.”

“You know your history.”