Page 21 of Resurrection Walk

“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 areyoutalking 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.”

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