The Lincoln Lawyer
Chapter One
Monday, March 7
The morning air off the Mojave in late winter is as clean and crisp
as you'll ever breathe in Los Angeles County. It carries the taste
of promise on it. When it starts blowing in like that I like to keep
a window open in my office. There are a few people who know this
routine of mine, people like Fernando Valenzuela. The bondsman, not
the baseball pitcher. He called me as I was coming into Lancaster
for a nine o'clock calendar call. He must have heard the wind
whistling in my cell phone.
"Mick," he said, "you up north this morning?"
"At the moment," I said as I put the window up to hear him better.
"You got something?"
"Yeah, I got something. I think I got a franchise player here. But
his first appearance is at eleven. Can you make it back down in
time?"
Valenzuela has a storefront office on Van Nuys Boulevard a block
from the civic center, which includes two courthouses and the Van
Nuys jail. He calls his business Liberty Bail Bonds. His phone
number, in red neon on the roof of his establishment, can be seen
from the high-power wing ... read full excerpt from The Lincoln Lawyer: A Novel ebook
