Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  Talia calms herself finally and takes me on a mental tour, her trip to Vacaville the day Ben died. What I hear is the same rendition of no alibi, a journey that began and ended alone. She tells me about the realtor’s lockbox key she used to let herself into what she describes as a mansion out in the country. Talia says she spent more man two hours going through the house, examining not only the rooms, but the glitzy furnishings. It seems the former owner had had a taste for modern decor. The owner had died without heirs. The house and its contents were being sold by the county administrator. It was one of those properties usually bought by the forty thieves, real estate speculators who traffic in good buys from the probate courts and public administrators, a circle in which Talia does not usually travel. How she was clued into this one I do not know. She returned to the city without making further stops for meals or gas. She claims she saw and spoke to no one.

  “Great,” I say.

  “Talia, listen to me.” Tod’s trying to reason with her. “Can we have a minute alone?”

  I’m not anxious to allow Tod to talk to her alone, but from the signs of intimacy here, whatever damage may be done has probably already occurred—long before my arrival.

  “Sure,” I say. “Talk.”

  I get up, leaving my briefcase and note pad on the chair, and exit the room. I wander across the entry and through the open door to Ben’s old study. I turn on the desk lamp so that I’m not in the dark.

  I can hear a lot of naysaying from Talia in the other room. Tod is not having much success at persuasion.

  The study is like a living museum. There are pages on the desk written in Ben’s hand. A book is open under the lamp, as if he’s about to return at any moment to pick up his place in the text. I look at the cover. It’s a volume of West’s Digest, the firm’s name stamped across the ends of the pages, library style. There is probably some sorry associate running around the office wondering what has happened to it, I think.

  There is a loud and final “No” from Talia in the other room, followed by much silence. My cue to return.

  I leave the light on in the study and walk slowly toward the living room. As I enter the room Tod has his back to me, and looks out the window across an acre of closely clipped lawn toward the pool house.

  “Paul,” she says. “Your professional opinion What are my chances?” Talia is now all business.

  “A lot can happen between now and trial. A lot can happen during the trial. We’ll know more after we see their witnesses in the prelim,” I say. “But if I had to guess, right now, no better than fifty-fifty.” I am myself now putting a little gloss on it.

  She thinks for a moment, then speaks. ‘There won’t be any deals. If I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.” Talia’s showing more sand than I would have expected.

  She rises from the couch and leaves the room. It seems that our meeting is over.

  I stand near the door with Tod. Talia’s not seeing me out. Before he can open it, I turn and look at him.

  ‘Tell me something,” I say. “You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to.”

  “If I can,” he says.

  “Where were you the day Ben was killed?”

  This brings a flush to his cheeks, like I’ve caught him flatfooted.

  “We are getting direct, aren’t we?” he says.

  “I don’t have much choice. I’m running out of time. You do understand the perilous position you’re in?” I say.

  “Me?” He says this in a tone almost incredulous.

  “Yes. You’re here in this house. The cops are looking for an accomplice. Someone strong enough to have helped Talia with the body To get it from wherever Ben was killed to the office. Right now you look real convenient. You could use a little more discretion,” I say.

  “Perhaps,” he says. “But I’m a friend. I was raised with the notion that friends don’t cut and run.” I think that this is a little shot at me, the fact that I have been at best distant from Talia during these, her days of need. Our relationship is now pure business.

  “Noble,” I say.

  “No,” he says. “Just trying to do the right thing”

  “But it doesn’t answer my question. Where were you the day Ben was killed?”

  “At the club. Playing tennis All afternoon.” He doesn’t flinch or bat an eye as he says this. “I had dinner there, with friends. Didn’t leave until after nine o’clock.” He looks over his shoulder to see whether Talia is within earshot. “You can check it out.”

  “How lucky for you.”

  “Yes,” he says, as he reaches for the door. “Good night.”

  CHAPTER

  16

  WE are now four days to the preliminary hearing and I am counting the hours as if they slip away on a doomsday clock. I’ve tracked Cheetam like a shadow, trying to prep him on the evidence. Between phone calls I tell him about the theory of the monster pellet—the second shot. He waves me off. Cheetam, it seems, does not have the time.

  He lives with a telephone receiver growing out of his ear. He spends his days hustling information on other cases from the far-flung reaches of the state and beyond, talking to his office in Los Angeles, his stockbroker in New York, faxing interrogatories to a half-dozen other states where minions labor under him like some multinational franchise. For Gilbert Cheetam, it seems, if it isn’t reported on a telephone, it hasn’t happened. I’ve tried reducing my thoughts to writing in hopes that our situation with Talia’s case would come home to him. But my unread memos languish with piles of other correspondence yellowing in a basket on the desk mat he is using at P&S.

  It is zero hour minus three days when I finally corner him for lunch. I lead him to a back table of this place, a dreary little restaurant away from the downtown crowd. No one of note has darkened the door in this place in a decade. I have picked it for that reason—a place where we cannot be found or interrupted.

  “How’s the veal?” he asks.

  “Everything’s excellent,” I lie.

  “Good, I’ll have the veal.”

  We order, and I begin to talk. Seconds in, there is a high-pitched electronic tone, barely audible. It emanates from under the table.

  “Excuse me for a moment,” he says.

  He pops the lid on his briefcase and produces a small telephone receiver. I should have expected—Cheetam’s cellular fix.

  I gnaw on celery sticks and nibble around the edges of my salad as he carries on a conference call that ranges across the northern hemisphere.

  We are into the entree. He’s picking at his veal with a fork, the phone still to his ear, when suddenly he’s on hold with L.A. His dream, he tells me, is a portable fax for his car, to go with his cellular phone. I smile politely. The man’s an electronics junkie.

  Over coffee he pulls the receiver away from his ear long enough to tell the waitress, “I’ll take the check.” Then we are off in his car, the phone still glued to his ear.

  At an intersection he finishes business and puts the receiver beside him on the seat.

  I seize the moment. “We should start preparing for trial,” I say. “How do you want to handle it?” Circling the wagons for a defense in the prelim, I tell him, is a waste of time.

  “You give up too easily,” he says. “Why don’t we wait until after the preliminary hearing before we start talking trial.”

  “Do me a favor,” I say. “If you’ve got a magic bullet, something that’s gonna end this thing in the prelim, let me in on it now. But don’t give me the mushroom treatment.”

  He looks at me wide-eyed, questioning.

  ‘Turn on the lights and end with the bullshit,” I say. “Don’t waste my time. This isn’t Talia. I’m not your client. I’ve seen the evidence. And from everything I’ve seen, we are going to eat it in the preliminary hearing.” I bite off my words, precise and clipped, as if to emphasize the certainty of this matter.

  “Really.” He looks over at me. And for a fleeting instant I think he is shining me on. I d
on’t know whether to argue with him or take the lead that his demeanor is part of a well-meaning inside joke, that in fact he has mastered the realities of our case long before this moment.

  From his inside vest pocket he pulls a leather container and slides the cover off, exposing five long panatelas in shiny cellophane wrappers. He offers me one.

  “No, thanks.”

  “You don’t mind if I do?”

  “It’s your car,” I say.

  “You’re entirely too pessimistic,” he says. “But I agree, it’s a tough case. Still, I think we have a chance here.”

  The man’s a dreamer.

  He chews through the wrapper and slips one of the long slender things into his mouth. He uses a wooden match and the car begins to fill with a thick blue haze. I open my window a few inches.

  “Tough case.” I say it like this is the understatement of the year. “As judicial process goes, the preliminary hearing is a prosecutorial exhibition bout.”

  It’s true. The only purpose is to weed out groundless felony complaints, to spare wrongly accused defendants the embarrassment and cost of a full trial in the superior court.

  “For starters,” I say, “the state faces a minimal burden. It’s not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Not here. We’re not even talking a preponderance. All they have to show is probable cause. You know what that is in this state?”

  From the look on his face, through a fog of smoke, I can tell he does not.

  “It means a suspicion—a bare suspicion.” I say it as if these words summon up something sinister, a vestige from some howling star chamber.

  “All the judge needs to send our client to the superior court on a charge of first-degree murder,” I tell him, “is a reasonable suspicion that Potter was murdered, and that Talia did it.”

  He nods and smiles, blowing smoke rings toward the ceiling. “I agree,” he says. “But we’ve got a few things going for us.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like how a woman overpowers a much larger, stronger man, even an older man of Potter’s age. Why she would use a shotgun—you’ve got to admit this is not a woman’s weapon.” He’s back to this now.

  “You’re not listening,” I say. “The cops are operating on the theory that she was helped.”

  His phone rings beside him. My hand reaches it before he can pick it up. I slide it onto the floor in the well by my feet, where it rings itself to death.

  He looks at me, somewhat offended, then smiles. “OK,” he says. “Go on.”

  “For starters, the DA’s got suspicion in spades, and it all points toward Talia.” I tell him about our theory of a second shot, that one witness will place Ben’s car at the house near the time of death, and that Talia has not even the hint of an alibi.

  When I am finished he pauses thoughtfully for a moment before speaking.

  “So what am I hearing?” he says. “You want to open negotiations for a plea bargain?”

  I arch an eyebrow. “It beats backing into a trial we’re not prepared for.”

  He takes this as it is intended, a rebuke for his lack of interest and time spent on the case. There follow several thick billows of smoke as he chugs on the cigar. There’s some heavy eye-watering here. My only consolation is that these are not the Greek’s shit sticks.

  “You’re telling me I’m not doing my job. Is that it?”

  “In a word, yes.”

  “I was trying cases when you were doing preschool,” he says. “Who the hell are you to chastise me?”

  “I’m the man who knows you’ve stepped in it,” I say.

  He says nothing, but I get the evil eye, narrow slits cast to the side as he chomps on his cigar, leaning forward, gripping the wheel with both hands.

  “You wanna talk to the DA,” he says. “Fine, do it. As they say, everything in life’s negotiable.”

  “Good try,” I say. “But it’s your case, remember. I’m just Keenan counsel. I get to pick up the pieces if she’s convicted.”

  I can see where he’s going. Unprepared for the prelim, he would hang the albatross of a last-minute deal around my neck—tell Talia that he was ready to go to trial, but that more timid minds prevailed. He would disappear into the shadows as I tried to sell her on a guilty plea for some reduced charge.

  “Then you don’t want to settle?” he says.

  “I’m not ready to cut and run if that’s what you mean.”

  He cracks a smile, regaining a little composure now that he’s on the offensive. “I know what your problem is,” he says. “You’re beginning to think that maybe the lady did it?”

  Cheetam’s living on another planet.

  I laugh.

  “Oh, don’t laugh,” he says. “I can tell when a lawyer begins to have doubts. I can read young lawyers like tea leaves.”

  “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t give up your ticket to practice for a deck of tarot cards, at least not yet,” I say. “And for your information—no. I don’t think she did it. But from the evidence, it looks like others might believe it, depending how it’s presented.”

  “Then why not cop a plea? Save ourselves a lot of trouble and her a considerable degree of risk. Why, as you say, should we circle the wagons if it’s a loser?”

  “What are you suggesting, murder two?” I ask.

  “Maybe we try manslaughter first,” he says. “You know, man and wife, a crime of passion. It would wash.”

  But I can tell by the tone that with Cheetam, everything is negotiable.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Call me sentimental,” I say. “But when I take a retainer from a client I feel an obligation to give it my best effort. Besides, Talia will never go for it. Believe me.”

  He looks over at me, a sardonic grin on his face. It’s Cheetam the soothsayer again.

  “You know her pretty well?”

  I nod.

  “You know,” he says, “mere is a saying: “A lawyer who sleeps with a client ends up screwing himself.’ Have you heard it before?”

  I look at him speechless.

  There are furrows on his forehead, as if to say, “Oh yes, I know about you.”

  “It doesn’t take a mental giant,” he says. “One day you’re with the firm, the next day you’re gone. The lady’s married to a man with a hundred partners and associates, but she asks for you out of the blue when she’s charged.” He rolls his eyes toward the roof of the car as if to show the obviousness of it all.

  Still, I think, this is a wild guess, nothing behind his words but a lot of bravado. The smile begins to fade from his face. He leaves me with just a grain of doubt, the grit of uncertainty. I am left to wonder if Talia has come clean with him in one of their heart-to-hearts, client to lawyer, baring her soul.

  I gesture toward his cigar, which is sending up a stream of smoke from between his fingers on the wheel “What do they stuff those things with,” I say, “peyote?”

  He laughs. “If that’s the way you want it.”

  “That’s the way it is.” I lie and try to turn the conversation back toward business.

  “If we have to cut a deal, we do it after the prelim. I think we should see what they’ve got, and how their witnesses hold up under cross-examination.”

  He’s looking over at me again, now between intersections. Cheetam is smiling like the cat who got the canary. He knows I’m lying. He has a hard time keeping a straight face when discussing business.

  “We might get a better deal now,” he says.

  “If their case collapses, we might not want a deal.”

  “Hmm.” He considers this for a moment, chomping a little on his cigar. I am thankful for the smoke and the distraction.

  “Your decision,” I say.

  “Yes, it is,” he says. There’s a cockiness in his tone.

  “But if you want my advice …”

  He says nothing to stop me.

  “I think we should cover ourselves. Treat the prelim as more discovery. An opportunity to depos
e their witnesses,” I say. “Don’t let Talia take the stand, give ’em as little as possible, look for weaknesses in their case, and prepare for the long haul. Prepare for trial.”

  There’s a moment of dead silence. The kind that usually precedes some difficult revelation

  “I thought Tony would have talked to you by now,” he says.

  “About what?”

  “About who’s gonna try the case.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m afraid I’m no longer available.”

  I look at him more in amusement than in surprise. For some reason, nothing Gilbert Cheetam says or does surprises me. The man is too whimsical. He is stone-faced, looking out at traffic as he crosses through an intersection.

  “I have a conflict,” he says. “A calendaring conflict A major products case in the East. Asbestos. I thought Tony would have told you.”

  ‘Tony and I don’t talk that much.”

  I can feel ice in my veins. The Greek has bought Talia a stalking horse in the person of Gilbert Cheetam. I wonder how long he’s been aware of this conflict, and who they hold in the wings to try Talia’s case.

  “It’s likely to go at least five months, this product liability case back east,” he says. “So …”

  He looks over at me with a coy smile. “I figured we’d just better nip it here in the preliminary hearing.” He says this with all the verve of someone ordering shrimp, as if it’s something imminently within his power.

  I sit looking across at Gilbert Cheetam, amused to the point of laughter, and suddenly my head is filled with only one thing, the book contract that he has already signed.

  “You often contract for books on cases you’re not gonna try?” I say.

  “Oh, that. Not a problem. The contract’s assignable. If it goes to trial, I’ll just sell the rights to whoever tries the case. The publisher already has a ghostwriter,” he says. “I just take a percentage.” He smiles a broad, toothy grin as he holds the saliva-soaked panatela in his mouth. “As I say, ‘Everything in life’s negotiable.’ ”

  “Swell.”

  As he pulls away from the curb, leaving me in front of the Emerald Tower to perform more spadework on the case that he is not going to try, there is a sinking feeling in my stomach. It comes with the knowledge that Talia and I, each in our own way, have been had.