Before the callers hit my radar they had to convince Lorna that they could pay for what they wanted. She was sort of like the nurse behind the desk in the emergency room. You have to convince her you have valid insurance before she sends you back to see the doc. Next to Lorna’s phone she keeps a rate schedule that starts with a $5,000 flat fee to handle a DUI and ranges to the hourly fees I charge for felony trials. She makes sure every potential client is a paying client and knows the costs of the crime they have been charged with. There’s that saying, Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time. Lorna likes to say that with me, it’s Don’t do the crime if you can’t pay for my time. She accepts MasterCard and Visa and will get purchase approval before a client ever gets to me.

“Nobody we know?” I asked.

“Gloria Dayton called from Twin Towers.”

I groaned. The Twin Towers was the county’s main lockup in downtown. It housed women in one tower and men in the other. Gloria Dayton was a high-priced prostitute who needed my legal services from time to time. The first time I represented her was at least ten years earlier, when she was young and drug-free and still had life in her eyes. Now she was a pro bono client. I never charged her. I just tried to convince her to quit the life.

“When did she get popped?”

“Last night. Or rather, this morning. Her first appearance is after lunch.”

“I don’t know if I can make that with this Van Nuys thing.”

“There’s also a complication. Cocaine possession as well as the usual.”

I knew that Gloria worked exclusively through contacts made on the Internet, where she billed herself on a variety of websites as Glory Days. She was no streetwalker or barroom troller. When she got popped, it was usually after an undercover vice officer was able to penetrate her check system and set up a date. The fact that she had cocaine on her person when they met sounded like an unusual lapse on her part or a plant from the cop.