The Proving Ground, page 2
“Do you think the judge will rule in our favor?”
“She should.”
The Masons left their table and went through the gate. They said nothing to me as they passed.
“You guys have a good weekend,” I called out.
I got no response.
2
OUTSIDE THE COURTROOM door, a man waited for me in the hallway. I had seen him inside during the hearing, sitting by himself in the back row of the gallery. If he was a journalist, he was unfamiliar to me. I knew most of the court reporters in town by sight, if not by name and acquaintance. But the lawsuit had garnered a fair amount of national attention and I had heard from and seen some members of the national media tribe for the first time. This man carried a backpack over his shoulder and wore a sport jacket but no tie. That told me he probably wasn’t a lawyer — at least not one with business in the building. He stood back while I whispered a goodbye to my client and told her I would be in touch the minute I received a ruling from the judge on the motions just argued. As soon as we separated, the stranger approached. He looked to be in his early fifties and had a full head of brown-going-gray hair. He looked like an aging surfer. It took one to know one.
“Mr. Haller, I was hoping to buy you a cup of coffee,” he said.
“I don’t need coffee,” I said. “I’m jacked from that hearing. Do I know you? Are you a journalist?”
“Uh, a writer, yes. I wanted to talk to you about something that could be mutually beneficial.”
“What kind of writer?”
“I write books about technology. And how it can be turned against us. I also write a Substack column. Same subject.”
I looked at him for a long moment.
“And you want to write about this case?”
“I do.”
“And what’s the part that would be beneficial to me?”
“Well, if we could sit down for a few minutes, I could lay it out for you.”
“Where? I’ve got a meeting across the street in” — I raised my wrist to check my watch — “twenty minutes.”
It was a lie. I just wanted to put a time limit on this conversation in case it wasn’t to my liking. I was planning to go across the street to the district attorney’s office, but I had no appointment. I intended to talk my way in.
“Give me ten minutes,” the writer said.
“Do you need coffee?” I asked.
“Not if you don’t.”
“Okay, let’s go into one of the attorney rooms down the hall here. That would be quickest and quietest.”
“Lead the way.”
I started down the hall, then stopped.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Jack McEvoy,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
He held out his hand and I shook it. He had a strong grip and met my eye without hesitation. My impression at that moment was that this might be the start of a good thing.
3
THE ATTORNEY ROOMS in the federal courthouse were tiny and furnished with only a small table and four chairs. They were designed for lawyers to confer with clients and witnesses before entering court. I found one that was empty and slid the red OCCUPIED placard across the available sign. I opened the door and signaled McEvoy in first. We sat on opposite sides of the table. I took a notebook out of my briefcase and started the meeting by asking him to spell his last name. He did.
“That name and the spelling are familiar,” I said. “Should I know your work?”
“I’ve published three nonfiction books in the past twenty or so years,” McEvoy said. “They hit bestseller lists. Briefly. But they all have L.A. connections.”
“What are the titles?”
“The Poet was my first one. It was about the internet.”
He paused in case I was going to exclaim that I’d loved the book. I said nothing.
“Uh, then a lot of years went by before I did a book called The Scarecrow,” he continued. “That was about data mining. And then my last book was called Fair Warning. That was a few years ago. It was about the unregulated DNA industry.”
I nodded.
“Fair Warning. Yes, I remember that,” I said. “That was the one about the killer who used DNA to find his victims. I know some of the attorneys who were mentioned in that one.”
“All my books deal with technological advances,” McEvoy said. “Advances that were taken advantage of by criminals and other unscrupulous people.”
“And it was like a magazine or something, right? Fair Warning, I mean.”
“It was based on a news site focused on consumer protection, but the owner-editor retired and it shut down. But I bought the brand rights to the name. Now it’s a Substack that I write.”
“Of course you have a Substack. It’s called Fair Warning?”
“That’s right. It’s about the follies of technology. The Substack, I mean.”
I nodded and studied him. I was more than interested but didn’t want to show it yet.
“I’m beginning to see why you want to be involved in this case,” I said.
“I thought you would,” he said.
“So, what is this case to you? A Substack or a book?”
“It could be both,” he replied without hesitation. “And a podcast. And a movie. Your case encapsulates everything I’ve been researching and writing about generative artificial intelligence. There are new lawsuits filed against AI systems every week, but this is the case that is going to trial, it seems. I think it brings everything together, the good and bad of this world-changing technology. It’s a home run, if you ask me.”
“Okay, so you get a home run out of it. What does my client get?”
“My research. My expertise. I have connections that I think can help you. Bring me inside the case and let me work for you. I won’t write a word about it until there’s a verdict.”
I tried to keep a skeptical look on my face, but what McEvoy didn’t know was that I was drowning. I was overwhelmed by discovery and lacked the wherewithal and expertise to deal with it. By that, I mean I lacked time and understanding. Much of the science sailed over my head. It left me scared that I would stumble into trial uninformed and unready.
I already had an investigator, and he was great at finding witnesses and conducting field investigations. But he was not great at wading through terabytes of code and Silicon Valley memos. It had recently dawned on me that I was in over my head with this case. In the courtroom I was a killer, but I needed weapons to kill with. What McEvoy was presenting to me seemed like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man. I was trying not to give anything away but knew that if I let McEvoy spend just fifteen minutes at the warehouse, he would understand my situation and how dire it was.
“Let you work for me — what does that mean?” I asked. “I took this case on a contingency basis. I don’t win, I don’t get paid. Right now, there’s no money for a researcher.”
“I’m not asking to be paid,” McEvoy said. “Just let me inside the wire. Let me be a fly on the wall. I help you and you help me.”
“I have to talk to my client.”
“Of course.”
“How do I reach you?”
McEvoy was ready with a business card. I noticed that the logo for his Substack underlined its focus: The ai in Fair Warning was embossed in red.
Jack McEvoy
Writer
FAIR WARNING
Tidalwaiv did the same thing with their logo, though the ai in Tidalwaiv was in a soothing blue tone. I put the card in my pocket and told McEvoy that I’d think about his proposition and be in touch after discussing it with Brenda Randolph.
4
THE ENTRANCE TO the CCB was across the street and down a half block from the federal courthouse. On my way, I called my investigator, Cisco Wojciechowski, who had stuck with me during the transition from criminal to civil practice even though there was a steep drop-off in the work I required from him. He answered the phone with a question instead of a greeting.
“How’d we do?”
“The judge took both motions under advisement and will issue her rulings Monday.”
“Damn. You want me to call Patel? He was hoping to know today.”
“No, I’ll call him. I want you to run somebody down for me.”
“A witness?”
“No, a writer. Jack McEvoy. He wants to help us.”
“Help us how?”
“He writes about technology. Has a blog or a Substack or whatever you call it these days. He’s also written books. He wants to be a fly on the wall — our wall — and then write a book about the case, with the larger story being about unchecked AI. He says in exchange, he’ll be part of the team and help us weed through the discovery download.”
“Mick, you really want to bring a stranger into this? That’s risky.”
I was at Temple Street, waiting to cross, and I did my usual turnaround to see if anyone was behind me. Tidalwaiv had massive resources in this fight and billions at stake. The company’s founder, Victor Wendt, had promised stockholders at the last board meeting that this case would go away quietly and inexpensively. But here I was, pushing it toward trial. I constantly felt that I was being watched.
There was no one behind me. At least no one that I could see.
“That’s why I want you to check him out,” I said. “He’s got three books he said were all bestsellers.”
“You got the titles?” Cisco asked.
“I just remember the last one. Fair Warning. That’s also the name of his — ”
“Oh, I know this guy. Lorna loves his stuff.”
Lorna was my office manager. She was also Cisco’s wife and my ex-wife. But somehow it worked.
“There you go,” I said. “I just want to know if I can trust him enough to bring him inside the wire. We’re drowning in technical discovery. It would help to have another pair of eyes, especially if he truly knows his shit.”
“I’m on it,” Cisco said. “Where are you headed now?”
“The CCB to see if I can get in to see Maggie.”
“You got the black box with you?”
“I have it.”
“A homecoming in criminal court. Good luck with that.”
“I’m probably going to need it.”
I disconnected and headed across Temple to the main entrance of the Criminal Courts Building. There were a lot of things I missed about the place, but the elevators were not one of them. They were just as slow and crowded as I remembered from the years I had toiled in this building’s hallways and courtrooms. Once I was through the security checkpoint and metal detector — during which I had to explain what the black box in my briefcase was — it took me almost half an hour to get up to the sixteenth floor and the office of the Los Angeles County district attorney. I went to the reception counter, identified myself, and explained that I had no appointment but wished to see the district attorney. I said I wanted to talk to her about her daughter because I knew that would get me in.
The seats in the waiting area were plastic on chrome legs, a style that had gone out of fashion a couple of decades earlier. But they had endured, like most of the furnishings of the building, and did the job. I was in one of those chairs for twenty minutes before I was invited back by the receptionist. This moved me to another waiting room outside the DA’s actual office. This time, the chair was a little more comfortable and even had a cushion, threadbare though it was. And this time the wait was only ten minutes. I was granted entrance to the inner sanctum, where my first ex-wife, Maggie McPherson, fresh from her installment as the duly elected DA, sat at a large desk with a row of flags lining the wall behind her. She had won the office in a special election. The previous DA had resigned abruptly after the Los Angeles Times unearthed and published a series of texts he had written that exposed his racial biases.
I spread my arms, holding up my briefcase.
“Wow,” I said. “Maggie McFierce on top of the world.”
“Well, on top of this world, maybe,” she said. “I was wondering when you would just pop in, although using our daughter to sleaze your way in was a little unexpected.”
“Sleaze my way in? All I said was I wanted to talk to you about her. How is she doing?”
“As far as I know, she’s doing good.”
“Well, I wish she were doing good back here at home.”
“She’s just taking a gap year. She was very helpful during the campaign and earned the break, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Good, then you can pay her bills, since you’re the only one around here with a steady paycheck.”
Our daughter, Hayley, with a very expensive law degree from USC in her back pocket, had decided — after growing up with two lawyers for parents — that she was not sure she actually wanted to practice law. She was trying to find herself while riding waves in Hawaii with the help of a boyfriend who had no discernible income but an impressive tan and an even more impressive collection of surfboards.
“Hey, I’m not the one who taught her how to surf,” Maggie said. “That’s on you. I’m also not the one who decided to give up a lucrative criminal defense practice at the height of my career.”
“Yeah, well, thanks for the reminders,” I said. “Happy new year to you too.”
“And to you. I see you’ve got your briefcase. That tells me this might be more than a social visit.”
Maggie was always perceptive when it came to me. I couldn’t ever see her without lamenting the fact that we hadn’t gone the distance. She was wearing a conservative blue business suit with the blouse buttoned to the neck. Her dark curls had a few touches of gray in them. She had aged beautifully in the thirty years I had known her.
“Never could get anything by you,” I said. “Yes, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Have a seat,” she said. “I make no promises I won’t keep.”
She smiled. That was one of her campaign slogans.
I pulled out one of the chairs in front of her desk and sat down, putting my briefcase on the floor. The flags behind her were lined up so tightly, they looked like one curtain of silken colors.
“That’s a lot of flags,” I said.
“One for every country of origin of our constituency,” she said.
“You might have to get rid of a few of those if Trump deports everybody like he’s saying.” The new president had won the election the same night Maggie had. His campaign was built on a promise to eliminate illegal immigration. As Maggie was elected as a nonpartisan candidate, she did not take the political bait.
“So, what’s your ask, Mickey?”
“Is that all I am now, an ask?”
“Well, like I said, I assume it’s why you’re here.”
“I was also a platinum-level contributor to the campaign.”
“You were, and I very much appreciate that. So, just tell me, what’s going on?”
“I suppose you are reviewing cases and getting up to speed on things.”
“I am, and I haven’t seen any with your name attached as counselor for the defense.”
“And I hope it stays that way. Besides, the conflict of interest with you being DA would certainly cause your office and mine headaches we don’t need. But there is a case being handled by your office in juvie court that cuts across one of my cases in civil.”
She nodded.
“The Aaron Colton case,” she said. “I spent an hour with Will Owensby on it before the holiday break.”
That surprised me. She had taken office immediately after the election, but that was less than two months ago. There had been holiday breaks, staffing decisions to make, and a mountain of other cases to get current on, so I had hoped she wasn’t prepped on the case yet. It would have been easier to point her in the direction I wanted her to go if she hadn’t been knowledgeable about the inner workings of the case, and I realized my path to success was going to be steep.
“Owensby is a good lawyer,” I said. “But he’s a stickler, you know what I mean?”
“You mean he wants to stick to the rules of the game?” Maggie asked.
“What I’m saying is he’s focused on his case, which is fine. But he’s not looking at the bigger picture.”
“Which is … ”
“Let’s call it a fuller justice.”
“I have to say, he came in here and talked about the case for an hour, and your name never came up. I know about your civil case because I saw it on the news. But it has nothing to do with our criminal case.”
“What? No, that’s wrong. It has everything to do with your case. Aaron Colton killed my client’s daughter because of an AI chatbot that went rogue. You’re putting the kid away, but what about the company that made the app with no thought about the consequences of unleashing it on impressionable minds? That’s the bigger crime here, Mags. You have to see that.”
Maggie looked down at her hands folded on her desk. It was a move I had seen many times. She looked as if she were waiting out a storm — that storm being me. When she finally spoke, it was in an even tone that I also recognized from a thousand skirmishes before this one.
“So, what do you want, Mickey?”
“I want you to do the right thing. I want access to the kid’s computer.”
She shook her head emphatically.
“No, that’s not going to happen,” she said. “First, this is a juvenile case, and second, it’s not even close to being adjudicated. We don’t share evidence in open cases whether it involves a juvenile or not.”
“I need to show what happened and why to make my case,” I said.
“Then delay your case, and once my office is finished with Colton, we can talk about what I can share.”
“It’s not that simple. Your case is going to run on for years. You’ve got the ongoing psychological evaluation and then the competency hearing. After that, you’ll have to decide whether to kick it up to adult court, and the case will just go on and on. But time is of the essence here. That company is selling this app to people all around the world. Kids, Maggie. Victor Wendt, the company’s founder, says he sees a time when every kid has an AI companion, like they’re Barbie dolls. This will happen again, Maggie, and my case — not yours — is the best shot at stopping it.”
