Compelling Evidence m-1 Read online

  “Yeah,” says Leo, “before they finish puttin’ type to newsprint on this one, they’ll kill half the trees in North America.”

  “They’re that close?” I say.

  He nods. “If you can believe ’em.”

  Kerns has a secret. He’s like a man with hot embers in his pockets, and it’s killing him.

  “You were pretty close to Potter, weren’t you?” He tries to tilt the burden of conversation to me.

  “We were friends,” I say.

  But he can’t resist.

  “Let me tell you, Duane’s been a busy boy lately. In the office ‘til the wee hours burning the midnight oil with the brain trust three nights runnin’.” He leans over the table a little closer and drops several decibels in volume. “He’s callin’ a press conference for the morning. Seems they have an indictment.” He thumps the table with two fingers as if to make his point.

  At this I am surprised. Grand juries in this state usually issue indictments only in cases involving prominent defendants, where prosecutors want to spread the political accountability for their actions.

  I arch an eyebrow.

  The coals burn hotter. He’s fidgeting in his chair.

  “He’s got this theory, Nelson has. Since he got started it seems to be pointing in one direction, one suspect, like the needle on a compass with a constant north.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “The merry widow-Potter’s wife.” He looks around the room to make sure nobody’s tuned in to our conversation, and then: “Grand jury handed down an indictment against Talia Potter just after two this afternoon, one count, first-degree murder.”

  This statement seems to move me-propel me away from the table and Leo Kerns. I lose eye contact with him for a moment, stunned by what I’m hearing. I make a face-like “Fancy that.” It is all I can do, for if I open my mouth, it will utter only incredulity. I’m speechless, unable to move, even to inquire further. Kerns’s words have frozen me in place.

  “With special circumstances,” he says. This latter means that Talia may be bound over for trial on a charge of murder-and if convicted could face the death penalty.

  My mind is flooded by images of Brian Danley and his last fleeting moments of life in that little green room, my trip to San Quentin and death at the hands of the state.

  “Looks like the lady’s got a lover. More to the point, it looks like she’s got a string of ’em, you know, like the polo set keep ponies, this broad collects hunks,” he says. “Nelson thinks she got bored with the old man early on, and she and one of the boyfriends popped him for the money. The old man was worth a bundle.”

  “There’s easier ways to be rid of a husband than killing him.” With some difficulty, I’ve scrambled mentally out of my hole, enough to throw a little water on this theory, the thought that Talia might kill to rid herself of Ben.

  “Not if there’s a prenuptial agreement,” he says.

  I look at him as if to say, “Is this true?”

  He nods. “Seems the hormones didn’t completely kill the old man’s sense of business.”

  This is Ben, I think, ever the lawyer.

  “Ironclad,” Leo says of this agreement.

  He stops to look at the hooker, who’s now been joined by one of the lobbyists at her table. Kerns says nothing for several seconds. He’s studying the two with an intense scrutiny, as if he’s overheard something. Perhaps the price of commerce. They rise together and walk toward the bar and the three legislators, Trumble, and his contingent.

  “Some more fringe benefits, I think,” says Kerns. He appraises the woman’s long legs with an obvious leer. It’s a special expression, I think, not the open stare of your usual lecher, but the kind reserved by short men for tall women. It has a comic side that saves it from the lascivious.

  “Ironclad.” I remind him where he was.

  “Humm?”

  “The prenuptial agreement.”

  “Oh yeah.” Kerns runs a single hand through thinning hair, then straightens his tie a little, leaving the knot halfway down his chest, as if that part doesn’t matter. He’s primping himself a little for the lady, who doesn’t know he exists.

  “Yeah.” He brings himself back to me for the moment. “This agreement may not ensure marital bliss, but it’d make you think twice about divorce.” Leo stretches himself across the table a little, moving closer to me as if he’s about to impart the whereabouts of the golden fleece. “You see, the only way she takes is if they’re married when he dies. Then she gets it all. Otherwise”-he winks at me-“she’d better open a fruit stand.”

  I’m dazed. Neither Talia nor Ben ever mentioned a word about a prenuptial agreement. But why should they, I think. This is something of marital intimacy, like the frequency of sex and the ways they liked it. Talia, even in her most indiscreet moments, would never discuss such things. As for Ben, it would be a matter of business, a commercial confidence to be treated like the rituals of papal succession.

  “Nelson’s movin’ on the theory that the wife got a little too serious with one of the lovers. One-night stands were no longer enough. So she and the boyfriend popped the victim and tried to make it look like suicide.” Leo waffles one hand a little over the table like this may wash or not, he’ll have to wait and see.

  In this moment of revelation I am struck cold. I tell myself in sobering mental tones, notwithstanding her chronic inattention to the mundane minutiae of life, the harsh reality of such a contract is not one of those obscure details that is likely to escape the Talia I know.

  I remember Coop’s analysis. Whoever did Ben was an amateur. Talia never planned a thing in her life. It was her calling card. These facts begin to play upon me as I listen to the continuing ruminations of Leo Kerns, his words seeming to erupt from some hellish pit beneath the table.

  He laughs, that wicked high-pitched snicker. “We’ll know more when we get the boyfriend,” he says. “Sucker’s either gonna cooperate, or take some real gas.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “So can we entice you?” he asks. Gilbert Cheetam has one of my resumes pilfered from the files of the firm. “Impressive,” he says. “I must say, I agree with Tony-Mr. Skarpellos. You would indeed make excellent Keenan counsel. A strong addition to our team.” From what I can observe at the moment, Talia’s defense team is composed of Cheetam as lead counsel and Ron Brown as his gofer.

  “As for Mrs. Potter, well,” says Cheetam, “you were her choice from the beginning. Need I say more?” He talks of Talia as if she were the queen mother, instead of a defendant indicted on a charge of murder.

  Cheetam is polished, his diction manicured and well clipped like his fingernails. But he has the wary, searching eyes of a debt collector, dark pupils constantly cruising on a pool of white in search of some hidden opportunity. His eyebrows are thick forests of dark hair streaked with threads of silver, like the generous waves of hair on his head.

  He drops my resume on the desk and toys with one of the starch-stiffened French cuffs extending an inch from the sleeve of each arm of his charcoal worsted suit.

  I know him only by reputation. Gilbert Cheetam is a charter member of the silk-stocking set. Two years ago he grabbed national headlines when a jury awarded $125 million against a major automaker for a manufacturing defect-a seat belt that allowed passengers to explore the regions beyond the windshield before restraining them. The headlines were smaller and lost in a sea of newsprint on the inside pages when a few weeks later the trial judge reduced the award to eight million. Such is the ability of Gilbert Cheetam to inflame the passions of a jury and to mesmerize the media.

  His call came late last night. It was after ten when the phone rang at my house. I assume, since I have an unlisted number, that either Talia or Skarpellos had given it to Cheetam. He wanted to see me early this morning, here, at Potter, Skarpellos.

  So we sit in familiar surroundings, Ben’s office, the place of his death, unless we are to believe the scenario of the state. Cheetam is using this offi
ce to assemble the defense.

  He balances himself ceremoniously, his arms folded now, his buttocks against the overhanging lip of Ben’s immense desk. There’s a vacancy behind it. Ben’s leather high-back executive chair is gone. This may be an act of good taste on the part of the janitorial staff. Or I wonder if this chair now sits in the police property warehouse, along with several missing ceiling tiles overhead, pieces of physical evidence in the evolving murder case.

  Cheetam looks down at me from under the heavy, hooded eyebrows. I’m seated in one of the deep client chairs not more than two feet from him. This is a little posturing. Our respective attitudes are intended to demonstrate the working relationship, should I accept his offer to become Keenan counsel, Cheetam’s number two in Talia’s defense.

  It’s absurd, he says, their case against Talia. He assures me that this is a prosecution constructed of smoke and mirrors. He gives a flourish to the air with both hands above the shoulders, a swami showing the magic that the state has employed in fashioning its case. This is, I suspect, for Talia’s benefit. She sits stoically on a couch off to the side, one leg crossed over the other, her arms folded, a defensive pose to match the words of her lawyer.

  Skarpellos is seated at the opposite end of the couch, chewing on one of his Italian shit sticks. At least he has the decency not to light it. Perhaps a little deference to Talia.

  In this state, defendants in capital cases are entitled to two lawyers, one to defend the case in chief, the other-the so-called Keenan counsel, named for the case that laid down the rule-to handle the penalty phase of the trial should a conviction be entered. It would be my job as Keenan counsel to spare Talia from the death chamber if she’s convicted, to show mitigation, or to attack the special circumstances alleged by the state mat would carry the death penalty.

  In this case, the state is charging two special circumstances: murder for financial gain and lying in wait.

  But Cheetam assures me that my role in the case will be purely perfunctory, a necessary formality. He will, he says, demolish the state’s case in the preliminary hearing. Talia will never stand trial.

  She smiles noticeably at this thought.

  The papers are filled with copy of yesterday’s news conference: Duane Nelson telling how he solved Ben’s murder, omitting the details, but stating without much reservation that this was a calculated killing for profit. Only the Times picked up the final aside, a comment made in response to a question hurled at Nelson as he made his way to the door. The investigation continues for an unidentified accomplice.

  Cheetam sits looking at me expectantly. “So,” he says, “will you join us in this little soiree?” He makes it sound like tea and crumpets.

  “I take it you aren’t impressed with the state’s case?”

  He makes a face. “I haven’t seen all of the evidence. But what I’ve seen”-he wrinkles an eyebrow; it moves like a mouse glued to his forehead-“all circumstantial.” He says this shaking his head. “So much smoke.”

  This means that no one claims to have seen Talia pull the trigger with the muzzle in Ben’s mouth.

  I remind him that juries in criminal cases regularly convict on the basis of inferences from circumstantial evidence.

  “Surely you don’t believe she’s guilty.” Cheetam’s testing my loyalty to the client.

  “What I believe is irrelevant.”

  “Not to me.” Talia’s no longer passively sitting back on the couch. She moves her body forward to the edge. “You don’t believe it?” she says. “That I could do something like that?”

  Our eyes make contact, but I ignore her and continue with my thought. “What counts is what a jury concludes from the evidence and how it’s presented. Maybe you’d like to make book?” I ask him.

  “On what?”

  “On the number of people who are in the penitentiaries of this state because a jury was seduced by a single piece of circumstantial evidence.”

  Talia’s suddenly silent. This comment has given her new food for thought.

  “I don’t think you need to lecture Mr. Cheetam on the fine points of the jury system.” Skarpellos has waded in. He’s holding the cigar between the forefinger and thumb of his right hand. One end is well chewed and saturated. A small glob of saliva drips, unnoticed by Tony, onto the arm of the couch. I’m beginning to understand how Talia’s come to know Gilbert Cheetam. I wonder if the Greek is taking another referral fee for brokering this case. To Tony the law is not a profession but a vast commodities market where warm clients are traded like wheat futures and pork bellies. He acts as if he’s never heard of the rule against lawyers’ “fee-splitting.”

  “Besides,” he says, “we can make this whole thing a little package deal. We throw your girl Hawley into the pot; you play a big part in Talia’s defense. Hell, before we know it you’ll be back with the firm.” He laughs a little at this bold suggestion.

  I cringe with the thought.

  “Just thinking out loud, Tony, a little observation,” I say.

  “And a sound one,” says Cheetam. “I like that. You’re right, of course. We agree completely-circumstantial evidence can kill us.”

  I doubt if Talia takes much solace in Cheetam’s use of the plural pronoun.

  “Your first assignment will be to gather all the evidence,” he says. “We hit them with discovery motions built like the Old Testament, chapter and verse. We get every scrap of paper the DA’s got in the case. We’ll blitz them. We make a paper blizzard, a tickertape parade. We keep ’em lookin’, producing paper so they can’t prepare their case. Then you and I go over everything with a fine-tooth comb.”

  This rah-rah session assumes that I’m on board.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But first I’d like to talk to Talia-Mrs. Potter-alone.”

  “What the hell …” Skarpellos is noticeably pissed.

  “No, no, that’s all right.” Cheetam has both hands up, open palms out, extended toward the Greek. “If he wants to talk, let him talk. It’s important that both Mrs. Potter and Paul are comfortable with the arrangement.”

  Cheetam may be a dandy among the civil trial set, but he’s a fool to allow a lawyer who has no privileged relationship with his client to talk with her alone, without his presence. I consider for a moment that perhaps this is an indication of the representation she can expect.

  * * *

  We sit like two lonely beggars in the huge empty office, its windows darkened by the heavy curtains, which I have drawn. Talia will not look at me. Her gaze is cast down at the carpet.

  “How did this happen?” I finally ask.

  She shrugs her shoulders, like some whipped teenager home late from a date.

  “I mean your lawyer. He’s a disaster.”

  Finally she looks up and smiles, a little rueful. “I didn’t pick him,” she says. “Cheetam and Tony go way back.”

  Seems the Greek and Cheetam went to school together. According to Talia, Tony’s been sending cases to him for years. From the bits of information I garner from Talia and my own suppositions, it appears that Skarpellos has been brokering cases and splitting fees with Cheetam. I can guess that he has probably been skimming some of the better cases from the firm and pocketing a percentage of the fee. I wonder if Ben knew about this.

  “The question is how to get rid of him,” I tell her.

  For this she has no answer.

  “That bad?” she says.

  I tell her my suspicion, that Cheetam’s interested in riding the wave of publicity her case will generate. I draw a verbal picture, a knobby-kneed surfer in baggy shorts, with all ten toes hanging over the edge of his briefcase. At this she laughs a little.

  “Tony thinks he’s the best.”

  “Tony would,” I say.

  She smiles a little concession. Talia’s no stranger to the jokes at Tony’s expense that have, over the years, made the rounds at the firm.

  “But I have no money,” she says.

  “What?”

  Well, you kn
ow I’ve sunk everything I have into those partnerships in commercial real estate you helped me with. And now with Ben’s death everything else I own is tied up.”

  “What about the interest in the firm?”

  “Tony’s willing to buy,” she says, “but I can’t make a sale “til probate’s finished.”

  “What about the house?”

  “Community property,” she says. “I can maybe borrow against my half, that’s all. That’s why I had to go to Tony. He was the only one who could help. Ever since Ben died, I’ve barely been making it on the money from my commissions. Now this. I have no money for legal fees.”

  With the widow in a fix, Skarpellos has been busy setting up his table and playing money-changer.

  “Tony’s paying for Cheetam?”

  She nods. “It’s a loan. He says I can pay him back from Ben’s interest in the firm when this is over and …” Her voice trails off as if she’s suddenly considered some other scenario, one without a happy ending.

  We’re wandering in the dark office now, pacing like shadow-boxers in opposite corners.

  “You don’t really believe it?”

  I look at her, my head cocked, like a dog that’s heard a strange sound.

  “That I did it?” she says. “That I could be capable of such a thing?” This is important to her, my belief in her innocence.

  I shake my head, quickly, without hesitation. It’s the truth, I don’t believe it. But even if I did, I wouldn’t say so, not to Talia, not to anyone. To do so would be to suborn perjury in the event it becomes necessary to put Talia on the stand in her own defense. I’ve learned the credo of the good defense lawyer: It’s better not to know.