As I thought about Louis Ross Roulet and the case and the possible riches and dangers that waited for me, I put the window back down so I could enjoy the morning’s last minute of clean, fresh air. It still carried the taste of promise.
The first-person narration of the novel opens with criminal defense attorney Michael Haller—familiarly known as Mick—driving through Los Angeles and interpreting the morning wind blowing in from the Mojave Desert as carrying the taste of promise. This short introductory chapter ends with a repetition of the idea that a promising opportunity has come into life. Louis Roulet is the kind of client that most lawyers cannot turn down. No, not unquestionably innocent. Such concerns are beyond the point when a client hits all the right notes on what is truly important within the judicial system: he has moved beyond affluence into the realm of the pure wealthy.
The police usually overbooked the charges. What mattered was what the prosecutors finally filed and took to court. I always say cases go in like a lion and come out like a lamb. A case going in as attempted rape and aggravated assault with great bodily injury could easily come out as simple battery. It wouldn’t surprise me and it wouldn’t make for much of a franchise case.
Lest one think the preceding focus on money as the prime attraction for most defense lawyers is baselessly cynical, take good notice of the terminology. A man originally charged with the most vile and degrading crime against a woman short of murder who eventually is indicted merely for beating the living crap out of her isn’t good for establishing the attorney’s franchise. In other words, a lawyer is like the owner of a nationwide chain of chicken restaurant where a definitive spicy breast sandwich is the equivalent of rape but aggravated assault is only comparable to a halfway decent wing recipe. But don’t worry; it’s only fiction and surely any resemblance to a judicial system American or otherwise is purely incidental.
I didn’t deal in guilt and innocence, because everybody was guilty. Of something. But it didn’t matter, because every case I took on was a house built on a foundation poured by overworked and underpaid laborers. They cut corners. They made mistakes. And then they painted over the mistakes with lies. My job was to peel away the paint and find the cracks.
On July 7, 2011 in the wake of the highly controversial jury verdict that acquitted Casey Anthony of any direct culpability in the murder of her young child, Caylee, Alan Dershowitz wrote an op-ed (because, of course he would) in which he infamously asserted that the criminal court system in America has nothing to do with justice. Putting aside for the moment that obvious irony that the U.S. Cabinet agency in charge of that very system is officially known as the Department of Justice, the really sad thing here is that for one of the few times in his career Dershowitz actually appeared to be speaking for the majority of the representatives of the judicial system. While those working within the legal system from the cop on the beat up all the way up to members of the Supreme Court love to talk the talk about how it is all about seeking justice, the walk that most walk seems to fall right in line with both Dershowitz’s real life account and Haller’s fictional explanation of how the system really works at ground level. Little wonder that the word “justice” pops up in the narrative with roughly the same frequency as the word “devil.”
