“But how would you know what Williams is up to?” he asked. “You’re an outsider. They could’ve brought you in, wound you up and pointed you in the right direction and then sat back to watch you go.”

“He’s right,” Maggie added. “Jessup doesn’t even have a defense attorney. As soon as he does he’ll start talking deal.”

I raised my hands in a calming gesture.

“Look, at the press conference today. I threw out that we were going for the death penalty. I just did that to see how Williams would react. He didn’t expect it and afterward he pressed me in the hallway. He told me that it wasn’t a decision I got to make. I told him it was just strategy, that I wanted Jessup to start thinking about a deal. And it gave Williams pause. He didn’t see it. If he was thinking of a deal just to blow up the civil action, I would have been able to read it. I’m good at reading people.”

I could tell I still hadn’t quite won Bosch over.

“Remember last year, with the two men from Hong Kong who wanted your ass on the next plane to China? I read them right and I played them right.”

In his eyes I saw Bosch relent. That China story was a reminder that he owed me one and I was collecting.

“Okay,” he said. “So what do we do?”

“We assume Jessup’s going to go to trial. As soon as he lawyers up, we’ll know for sure. But we start preparing for it now, because if I was going to represent him, I would refuse to waive speedy trial. I would try to jam the prosecution on time to prepare and make the people put up or shut up.”

I checked the date on my watch.

“If I’m right, that gives us forty-eight days till trial. We’ve got a lot of work to do between now and then.”

We looked at one another and sat in silence for a few moments before I threw the lead to Maggie.

“Maggie has spent the better part of the last week with the prosecution file on this. Harry, I know what you just brought in will have a lot of overlap. But why don’t we start here by having Mags go through the case as presented at trial in ’eighty-six? I think that will give us a good starting point of looking at what we need to do this time out.”