To Save a Son

by Brian Freemantle

  “Sets out the debate concerning the casino installation,” echoed Tripodi for emphasis. “Is there not a remark of yours there attesting that in the Bahamas there was a market for a casino …” Tripodi looked toward the jury. “And here I quote,” he said, “‘above the common denominator.’”

  “Yes,” said Franks.

  “Did you make that remark, at that meeting?”

  “I don’t remember specifically, but if it’s written there I must have done. I signed them as a true record of the meeting.”

  “Indeed you did, Mr. Franks. And I’m obliged to you for having made that clear to the jury. We are considering a true and accurate record of a meeting at which a discussion was held about a casino, the very first discussion in which my client was involved.”

  “That’s not true!” rejected Franks. “He was at the previous meeting.”

  “Of which there is no record and of which no one, with the exception of yourself, has any recollection.”

  “It happened!” said Franks, knowing his desperation was showing.

  “According to you,” sneered Tripodi. “Read to the jury what is recorded on the tenth line of page twenty-two.”

  Franks strained down, trying to find the place. “It quotes Flamini saying that each would destroy the other.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Franks saw the chance of recovery and snatched at it. “He was actually quoting me; reiterating my objection to the idea of a casino at all.”

  “Was he!” said Tripodi, equally as quick. “The early part of the report of that meeting specifies you as saying that the idea of Las Vegas-type casinos would be destructive; it was not an argument against a casino as such.”

  “It was!” insisted Franks.

  “From Mr. Flamini,” said Tripodi. “Not from you.” He turned to the jury, repeated the page and line number, and said, “I would invite you, members of the jury, to consider the evidence that Mr. Franks agrees to be an accurate record and decide for yourselves—which is, after all, your function—whom to believe on this matter.” Coming back to Franks, Tripodi said, “Don’t the records that you’re holding, on that very page, show Mr. Flamini referring to the idea of a casino as being a risk?”

  “Yes,” said Franks.

  “And isn’t it from Mr. Flamini that the idea comes—and I quote again, ‘even if we decide to proceed’—to establish a company separate from the hotels, to minimize any risk?”

  “Yes,” said Franks.

  “Turn the page, Mr. Franks,” invited the lawyer. “Read for the benefit of the jury the first three lines that begin that page.”

  Franks turned the page, sighing down at what was written. He looked up forlornly toward Ronan.

  Tripodi said, his voice loud and hectoring, “Read the section, Mr. Franks.”

  Franks went back to the page and read, “‘So you’re in favor of a specialized, exclusive casino operation? Your attitude is important, don’t forget. You’ve got the controlling stock-holding.’”

  “This comes from a document you attest to be a true record?” repeated Tripodi.

  “I’ve already said that,” reminded Franks.

  “Who made that remark?”

  “Flamini.”

  “To whom?”

  “Me.”

  “Read your response from the document in front of you,” ordered Tripodi.

  “‘I am in favor but I think the argument for holding the gambling operation under a separate company is a good one. I’d like the ease of severance, if it becomes necessary.”

  “You said that?” insisted Tripodi.

  “This is ridiculous,” Franks tried to fight back. “Everything is being taken and twisted, out of every context and out of every truth. I went to Las Vegas and I went to Bermuda and the Bahamas as the result of a board discussion. I was discharging my proper duty, as chairman, fully to investigate a situation before committing my board to it. Having made that examination, I was responding to a board meeting as honestly and truthfully as I felt able.”

  “I don’t believe you know the meaning of honesty and truth,” said Tripodi.

  “Objection!” came in the waiting Ronan at once. “That is not a question but a comment and a highly improper one at that.”

  “I agree,” said the judge. “It will be taken from the record and the jury will discount it. I invite you to behave yourself with more propriety, Mr. Tripodi.”

  “I apologize,” said the lawyer, but Franks decided there was no contrition because the man had achieved precisely what he intended. Tripodi waved the copy of the company minutes toward Franks, like a matador enticing a bull to overcommit itself, and said, “‘If, at the end of all the inquiries and negotiations, we decide to go on, then I’d be very pleased to act as chairman’…” He looked up. “You said that, didn’t you, Mr. Franks?”

  “Yes,” Franks admitted.

  “Because you wanted to go on controlling everything. The hotels that you created, the capital you received from my client, a respectable and honest financier, and then the casino, which you wanted to establish for its illegal potential.”

  “No!” said Franks. “I did not want to retain control for anything illegal. I wanted to retain control because that’s the way I’ve always worked.”

  “I’m interested in the way you’ve always worked,” said Tripodi. As Samuelson had before him, the young lawyer made much of crossing the room to his table and notes and taking up his yellow legal pad, searching for a reminder. He smiled up and then recrossed the courtroom. “Who are Peter Armitrage and Winston Graham and Richard Blackstaff and Herbert Wilkinson and James Partridge and Eric de Falco?”

  Franks swallowed. “Officials with whom I dealt in the establishment of the hotels in Bermuda and the Bahamas.”

  “You’re an honest man, Mr. Franks?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who would not consider anything illegal or questionable in his business dealings?”

  “It’s a recognized practice,” said Franks, too anxious to defend himself.

  “What is, Mr. Franks?”

  “Paying commissions, for assistance.”

  “These people were employees of their island governments?”

  “Yes.”

  “Salaried employees?”

  “I presume so.”

  “Yet you paid them commissions!”

  “Like I said, it’s a recognized practice.”

  “Recognized by whom, Mr. Franks?”

  “Businessmen. Officials,” groped Franks helplessly.

  “You know, don’t you, that the men I’ve identified are currently facing trial in their own countries? And that the charge is accepting bribes?”

  “Yes,” said Franks. “I understand that.”

  “Bribes supplied by you: an honest, truthful businessman who would never consider anything illegal.”

  “Properly recorded in the company accounts!”

  “Improperly recorded in the company accounts, as commissions to people who had no right to receive them and who are facing legal proceedings as a result of being seduced into criminality by you,” said the lawyer.

  “That isn’t the way it was,” protested Franks. It was appalling, Franks knew. Absolutely and utterly appalling. Whatever impression he’d managed to create with the jury was being completely destroyed by these men twisting and juggling the facts. Why couldn’t Ronan or the judge intervene, to stop it happening!

  “You entrapped Mr. Flamini, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “Persuaded him into an investment and then used that investment to establish a pattern of gross illegality?”

  “No.”

  “And then turned state’s evidence to save your own neck?”

  “No!”

  “You’re a crook, aren’t you, Mr. Franks? A crook who thinks he’s found the way out of a prosecution?”

  “I’m not a crook. I’m telling the truth,” protested Franks.

  Tripodi turned triumphantly to
the jury. “Your function, members of the jury, is to decide who is telling the truth in this matter!”

  There was another conference but no meal that night, and Ronan didn’t bother with any false reassurances. Franks apologized again and the district attorney repeated that some telling points were made in favor of the prosecution case but that some damage had been done to it as well. There would still be an opportunity to reestablish the facts in the jury’s mind when the time came for reexamination. Neither Waldo nor Schultz took a very active part in the discussion, but toward the end Waldo said, “The bastards can’t get away; they just can’t!”

  Franks looked toward the fat man and remembered what Schultz had told him in the London hotel room.

  Ronan said, “I still don’t think they are going to get away.”

  “I’m not sure, not anymore,” said Waldo.

  “What could we have done that we haven’t?” asked the district attorney. “Nothing’s been overlooked in the evidence we’ve got. And it’s still a good case. We anticipated what happened today; let’s not talk ourselves into believing that it’s worse than it is.”

  Franks felt physically sick after the prosecutor and the FBI men left the room, certainly with no wish to eat. He drank, instead. He called Maria, who had already seen a report on television, and agreed with her that it was as bad as the accounts were making it. She tried to talk him out of his depression and Franks became annoyed at some of the things she said, at her ignorance, at not really knowing or understanding what was happening. He snapped dismissively at her efforts and Maria stopped talking, not arguing back. Franks became irritated at the whole conversation and so he cut it short, but having done so stared around the empty suite and wondered what to do. Impulsively he called Rosenberg at home. The lawyer had also seen the newscasts. He said criminal prosecutions went that way, for and against, and that Franks shouldn’t imagine everything was lost simply on the basis of one seemingly bad day.

  “Ronan should have done more to protect me,” said Franks petulantly.

  “There are court limits to what he’s able to do,” said Rosenberg. “You’re up against some very clever defense counsel who know precisely what those limits are and can remain just safely inside them.”

  “I need you there,” said Franks, petulant still.

  “To do what?” asked the lawyer, “I can’t intervene; take any part. Not publicly at least. I certainly couldn’t leap up and down in court, making protests.”

  “I feel utterly alone out there,” complained Franks. “Like I’m naked.”

  “Then you’d better stop,” advised Rosenberg. “That’s how they want you to feel. How they intend to get you to make mistakes.”

  “Can I call, to talk things through?”

  “Any time,” said Rosenberg. “You know that.”

  “Anything to talk about from England?”

  “No,” said Rosenberg. “I’d have mentioned it if there was.”

  Franks made himself another drink after he finished the conversation with Rosenberg and was in the process of mixing still another one, actually thinking of Tina, when she called him, the telephone ring making him jump.

  “It wasn’t easy getting through to you,” said Tina. “They intercept everything. Did you know that?”

  “I guess they would,” said Franks. “I’m glad you did.”

  “I saw the television news. It sounded terrible.”

  “It was.”

  “They’re not going to get off, are they?”

  “They could.”

  “But that’s—” Tina broke off, searching for the words. “It’ll mean it’s all been for nothing,” she said. “Wasted.”

  “I haven’t worked out what it’ll mean,” said Franks wearily.

  “After our talk I thought you might have called,” she said.

  “I was going to,” said Franks. He didn’t want to get into this sort of conversation, not tonight.

  “Have you thought about it? What I said, I mean.”

  “Of course I have,” he said. “Let’s get the hearing over first. Please.”

  “I warned you I was going to push.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “You sound pretty low.”

  “I am.”

  “I could come down. I guess it wouldn’t be easy, but I could get Tomkiss or somebody to fix it.”

  He’d enjoyed the evenings with her in the suite, Franks remembered. But it wouldn’t just be an evening if she came down, would it? There would be the night as well. He said, “No. It would be too difficult to arrange and I don’t think it would be a good idea anyway.”

  “You sure?”

  “Quite sure.” To move the conversation on, he said, “How are the children?”

  “Okay,” said Tina. “I didn’t let them watch the newscasts. Gabby hasn’t wet the bed for a week.”

  “That’s good,” said Franks. He’d wanted to talk to her, just like he’d wanted to talk to Maria, earlier, but now that they were speaking Franks was anxious for the conversation to end. Lying, he said, “I’ve got a conference, with Ronan. Preparation for tomorrow.”

  “Of course,” she said at once. “You will call?”

  “When I get the chance.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Maybe tomorrow will be better,” she said.

  It was, but only marginally. Collington was as overeager as Waldo had predicted, but he still succeeded with the inferences and innuendo. Dukes’ lawyer concentrated upon the Las Vegas visit, and without any documentary evidence the impression again was that Franks initiated the approach to Greenberg, using Dukes as the intermediary.

  “You asked Mr. Dukes to arrange meetings for you in Las Vegas, knowing of his existing business involvement in a casino there?”

  “It was Dukes’ suggestion, not mine.”

  “It is my intention to call Mr. Greenberg to the stand at some time,” disclosed the urgent Collington. “Mr. Greenberg will tell this court that he agreed to meet you when Mr. Dukes asked him as a personal favor. And that personal favor was to provide some advice for someone who wanted to set up an offshore gambling operation.”

  “The casino idea was Dukes’,” insisted Franks.

  “Greenberg will testify that it was clear, from all the conversations he had with you, that it was your proposal.”

  “It was the proposal of the company I was representing.”

  “The company of which you have already told this court you insisted upon maintaining rigid and personal control,” seized Collington. “If it was the proposal of the company, then it had to be your proposal, didn’t it?”

  “I was acting for the others.”

  “All the inquiries were made to Mr. Greenberg and other casino operators by yourself. Never Mr. Dukes, who was with you. Or Mr. Flamini or Mr. Pascara.”

  “Of course that was the way it was!” said Franks. “They were setting me up as the front man, weren’t they!”

  “I suggest that you were setting them up, Mr. Franks,” said Collington. “Eager for their finance and, in Mr. Dukes’ case, some peripheral contacts, you tricked my client into a criminal enterprise.”

  “You know—everyone in this court knows—that that wasn’t the case,” said Franks. He felt tired. Weary and disinterested in the whole thing.

  “No, they don’t,” said Collington. “There’s a great deal that people in this court don’t yet know,” said the lawyer aggressively. “Didn’t Snarsbrook make it clear to you in the discussions about a casino—discussions which you and nobody else initiated—that any approval from the island government would reflect their confidence in you personally?”

  How he’d responded to and been sucked up by the flattery, Franks remembered bitterly. “He was bribed, too, wasn’t he!” he demanded. “The whole thing was a charade, from the beginning to end. Snarsbrook had been approached about a casino before I ever got there.”

  “Oh, Mr. Franks!” said Collington, stretching th
e words to heighten his supposed incredulity. “There has to be a limit to the number of different ways in which you try to distort the truth. You approached Snarsbrook, nobody else. Every record of every discussion, which has been obtained from the Bahamian government and which will be introduced into this court when the time comes, shows that Snarsbrook was acting very much on your behalf, the behalf of his paymaster.”

  “I did not bribe William Snarsbrook.”

  Collington took up a slip of paper from his desk, appeared to study it, and then quoted, “‘Thanks for all your help and assistance, Eddie.’”

  “That is not me.”

  “Who is it, then, Mr. Franks? What other person called Eddie wanted a casino in the Bahamas badly enough to pay a three-hundred-thousand-dollar bribe?”

  “Dukes and Flamini and Pascara!” shouted Franks carelessly, his control slipping.

  “Are you aware that the given name of my client, Mr. Dukes, is David? And that of Mr. Flamini is Roland? And that of Mr. Pascara is Roberto?”

  Collington had run too fast, and Franks saw the opportunity. “I am further aware that Mr. Dukes is also known by the aliases Tony Alberi and Georgio Alcante, and that Flamini is also Frederick Dialcano and Emanuel Calvo, and that Pascara also uses the aliases of Arno Pellacio and Roberto Longurno and Luigi del Angelo. All appear very adept, in fact, at creating names just like that created to make it appear that I bribed Snarsbrook,” he said.

  Collington’s face tightened angrily at the aliases and his awareness of the effect they would have on the jury. Beyond the defense lawyer Franks saw Ronan nodding his head in satisfaction and actually smiling in Waldo’s direction.

  Collington was still questioning at the recess and occupied most of the afternoon trying to make Franks appear the perpetrator of any crime, but Franks didn’t think the man succeeded. Ronan confirmed the failure during their evening conference. Franks spoke to both Maria and Tina but again cut the conversations short, feeling he had nothing to say to either and using the already completed meeting with the district attorney as the reason for hanging up.

  Franks remained in the witness box for another full three days, recovering sufficiently during Ronan’s reexamination for them to have a restrained celebratory dinner toward the end of the week, but then becoming doubtful again at some renewed questioning from Tripodi. After the completion of his testimony, Franks remained, protected by Waldo and Schultz, in the well of the court, intent upon the evidence. Knap and the other Internal Revenue Investigators were the most impressive, their evidence of bank accounts and credit transfers seemingly dull and pendantic but in reality difficult for any of the defense counsel to contest.