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. Still, if I could get to the client and make a fee agreement based on the announced charges, I could look good when the DA later knocked them down.

“You got any of the details?” I asked.

“He was booked last night. It sounds like a bar pickup gone bad. The family lawyer said the woman’s in it for the money. You know, the civil suit to follow the criminal case. But I’m not so sure. She got beat up pretty good from what I heard.”

“What’s the family lawyer’s name?”

“Hold on a sec. I’ve got his card here somewhere.”

I looked out the window while waiting for Valenzuela to find the business card. I was two minutes from the Lancaster courthouse and twelve minutes from calendar call. I needed at least three of those minutes in between to confer with my client and give him the bad news.

“Okay, here it is,” Valenzuela said. “Guy’s name is Cecil C. Dobbs, Esquire. Out of Century City. See, I told you. Money.”

Valenzuela was right. But it wasn’t the lawyer’s Century City address that said money. It was the name. I knew of C. C. Dobbs by reputation and guessed that there wouldn’t be more than one or two names on his entire client list that didn’t have a Bel-Air or Holmby Hills address. His kind of client went home to the places where the stars seemed to reach down at night to touch the anointed.

“Give me the client’s name,” I said.

“That would be Louis Ross Roulet.”

He spelled it and I wrote it down on a legal pad.