“Anything else?” I asked.

“Yeah, one other thing I should probably tell you,” Valenzuela said. “I was double-checking with the court on when his first appearance was going to be and I found out the case was assigned to Maggie McFierce. I don’t know if that’s going to be a problem for you or not.”

Maggie McFierce as in Margaret McPherson, who happened to be one of the toughest and, yes, fiercest deputy district attorneys assigned to the Van Nuys courthouse. She also happened to be my first ex-wife.

“It won’t be a problem for me,” I said without hesitation. “She’s the one who’ll have the problem.”

The defendant has the right to his choice of counsel. If there is a conflict of interest between the defense lawyer and the prosecutor, then it is the prosecutor who must bow out. I knew Maggie would hold me personally responsible for her losing the reins on what might be a big case but I couldn’t help that. It had happened before. In my laptop I still had a motion to disqualify from the last case in which we had crossed paths. If necessary, I would just have to change the name of the defendant and print it out. I’d be good to go and she’d be as good as gone.

The two motorcycles had now moved in front of us. I turned and looked out the back window. There were three more Harleys behind us.

“You know what that means, though,” I said.

“No, what?”

“She’ll go for no bail. She always does with crimes against women.”

“Shit, can she get it? I’m looking at a nice chunk of change on this, man.”

“I don’t know. You said the guy’s got family and C. C. Dobbs. I can make something out of that. We’ll see.”

“Shit.”

Valenzuela was seeing his major payday disappear.

“I’ll see you there, Val.”

I closed the phone and looked over the seat at Earl.

“How long have we had the escort?” I asked.

“Just came up on us,” Earl said. “You want me to do something?”