Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  “You must have guessed by now why I’ve called you. You know that Gil Cheetam is unable to try the case if Talia is bound over.”

  Thank God for little favors, I think. I nod.

  “This financial arrangement that we have can’t go on forever,” he says.

  Skarpellos has seen the inevitable. He’s drawing a line in the sand, unwilling to spring for the costs of a criminal trial that could strain the resources of the firm.

  “I thought you had an arrangement with Talia.”

  He makes a face. “Of a sort,” he says. “Nothing ironclad. She has to sell Ben’s interest in the firm. I’m an interested buyer.” The Greek is shopping for a deal.

  “The lady needs a good lawyer,” he says. “Are you interested?”

  “You missed your calling, Tony. You should have been a matchmaker.”

  At this he smiles a bit, a little mercantile grin.

  “I would think that the question of who Talia wants as her lawyer is a matter for Talia,” I tell him.

  “Not as long as I’m paying the freight.”

  “A secured loan,” I remind him.

  “Not if she’s convicted. The law will not allow her to share in the assets of the deceased if she murdered him.”

  “Do you believe she did it?”

  “Oh, I’m not judging her,” he says. “This is business. I do have to look after the security for our loan.”

  “You forget that part of Ben’s interest in the firm is Talia’s community property. That’s hers no matter what happens.”

  He makes a face, like “This is piddling, peanuts not to be worried about”

  “She’ll have a tough time spending it if she’s convicted. But why should we argue,” he says. “We have a mutual interest. I want to help the lady. I assume you want to do the same.” His arms are spread in a broad gesture of brotherly love—and now there is the beaming grin. “If we, all three, benefit from the experience, so much the better.” He reaches for one of his crooked cigars from a gold-plated box on the desk, then leans back, reclining in his chair.

  I pray silently that he will not light it.

  “Let’s get to it, Tony. What is it you want?”

  “I want to make you an offer,” he says. “First, I think you should talk to Talia about taking the case.”

  “Why? Why me?”

  “You’re familiar with it. You’ve worked with Cheetam closely”

  “Don’t saddle me with that,” I say.

  He laughs. “Well, the man’s busy.”

  “No, the pope is busy. Gilbert Cheetam is the bar’s answer to Typhoid Mary. You show him evidence and he says the hell with it. You give him leads that, if he followed them up, might blunt part of the prosecution’s case, he drops them. If it isn’t an ambulance, he won’t pursue it.”

  “Well, it’s all water under the bridge now,” he says. “I think we agree Talia’s fate in the preliminary hearing is pretty well sealed. The lady’s going to trial.”

  Ron Brown’s been carrying reports from the courtroom. These plus the blistering news accounts have led the Greek to this breathtaking conclusion.

  “Besides,” he says, “she was probably doomed from the beginning. I really don’t think Gil’s performance was a factor.”

  “Gil’s performance was an embarrassment,” I say. “He owes her the favor of taking her case if for no other reason than to provide her with the ironclad appeal of incompetent counsel. It would be a dead-bang winner.”

  He laughs a little at Cheetam’s expense. “Well, that’s not going to happen,” he says. “Gil’s out of the picture. And I think we agree you’re much better able to handle the defense.”

  “Maybe she wants somebody else,” I say. “After all, I’ve been part of this circus.”

  “I don’t think so.” He says this with confidence, like he’s been talking to an oracle.

  “You must know more than I do.”

  “Talk to her. She’ll listen to you.”

  “Assuming I do. How do I get paid, if you’re no longer going to extend her any credit?”

  He smiles now, toothy and knavish, reaching for a match. “You’re learning,” he says.

  “Don’t light that,” I tell him. It’s been a long day and I am tired of suffering fools.

  He makes a gesture of polite concession, dropping the match. He continues to suck on the cold cigar.

  “I was getting to the money,” he says. “I’m prepared to offer Talia $200,000, up front, cash for a relinquishment of any interest she might have in the firm. That’ll carry the defense a long way. Well into appeals, if she needs them.”

  “Talking appeals already—you must have a lot of confidence in me.”

  He laughs, just a little. “Well, just seeing the downside.”

  “Not a very generous offer, considering the fact that Ben’s interest in the firm is worth ten times that much,” I tell him.

  “Only if she can get it. And she may have to wait for years. This is cash on the barrel, today.”

  The conversation degenerates into a debate over figures. We sound like two Arabs in the bazaar, the Greek holding up his hands in protest, me trying to barter him higher, feigning an effort to sell something I have no authority to sell. I am interested in finding his bottom line. Talia may need to know.

  In three minutes I have dragged him pissing and moaning to $300,000. I think he will go farther, but I am growing tired of this game.

  “I’ll communicate your offer to my client, Tony. But I can’t recommend it.”

  To this I get little slits of a look over pudgy cheeks from Skarpellos.

  “Why not?”

  “What’s the interest worth, Tony? Two million? Hmm-more? You know. I don’t. Only an auditor can tell us. She’d be a fool to sell under these circumstances. You know that as well as I do.”

  “She’d be a bigger fool to go indigent. Does she really want the public defender representing her?”

  “There are other alternatives,” I say.

  “Like what?”

  “Like a motion to the court to unfreeze Ben’s assets for purposes of Talia’s defense.” This is a bluff, a legal shot of long odds, but one that Skarpellos has not considered. It takes the confidence out of his eyes.

  “Besides, assuming she invites me, and I do decide to take over the case, I might finance the action myself. I might take a little contingency in the firm for my efforts.”

  I can tell that the thought of me sitting at Ben’s desk, a partner he hadn’t counted on, is not one that rests well with the Greek.

  He laughs. Like steam from a dying boiler, it is forced.

  “How would you finance it?” he asks. “You’re on a shoe string.”

  “A second on the house. No big thing,” I tell him.

  “You’d gamble that much?”

  “Who knows. Maybe we’ll find out.”

  “I thought you were learning,” he says. “But I can tell. You have a lot to learn.” His face is stern now. All the evil he can muster is focused in his eyes. “That would not be a smart move.”

  “Is that a threat, Tony? I can’t tell.”

  He makes a face, like “Take it any way you want.” Then says: “Just a little advice.”

  “Ah. Well, then, I’ll take it in the spirit in which it’s offered.” I give him a broad, shit-eating grin. “I’ll let you know Talia’s decision when she’s made it.”

  I get up and head for the door.

  “By the way,” he says. “What made you so curious about the beneficiaries under Ben’s will?”

  I turn and give him a soulful look.

  “A little shot at me?” he says. He’s miffed at my questions to Hazeltine.

  “You’re assuming I knew the answer to the question when I asked it.”

  “I know you. You wouldn’t ask if you didn’t know.”

  “Maybe you don’t know me well enough,” I say.

  He nods. There is no warmth in this expression. The eyes are dead, cold, a
nd there is a meanness in this face I have not seen before.

  CHAPTER

  19

  I am anticipating a disaster, a rout on the magnitude of Napoleon at Waterloo. Cheetam sits at the counsel table between Talia and me. We are waiting for the result of a week of preliminary hearing. The judge is in chambers putting the final touches on her order.

  “What do you think?” says Cheetam

  I give him a blank stare. If he can’t see it for himself, I’m not going to tell him.

  At the end of the prosecution’s case he’d asked for an outright dismissal of all charges. Only because legal protocol required it did the court humor him, taking this motion under submission.

  That he could make such a motion under the circumstances tells me not only that Gilbert Cheetam lacks judgment, but that on a more basic plane, he is out of touch with reality. The submission to the court lasted three minutes, enough time for Nelson to make a brief argument; then O’Shaunasy gave the motion the back of her hand.

  Cheetam reaches over and touches Talia on the arm. “It’ll just be a few minutes longer now,” he says. Talia smiles politely, then looks past him to me, searching for a little sanity.

  The last day of hearing was the capper. Cheetam tried to build on a foundation of sand—Blumberg’s earlier testimony. He produced a janitor from the Emerald Tower, Reginald Townsend, who remembered cutting his hand, the day Ben was killed, on a jagged piece of broken glass. The man testified that he used the service elevator shortly after this and stated that he believed he may have dripped blood in the elevator. Lo and behold, the man’s blood type—the same as Potter’s—B-negative.

  There was a satisfied grin in Cheetam’s voice as he said: “That’s all, Your Honor. Your witness.”

  Nelson zeroed in on the man. He asked whether Townsend had a doctor attend to the wound after his ride in the elevator.

  “It weren’t that bad.”

  “Well, how much blood did you lose?”

  “Oh, it were just a nick. A little thing.” He says this bravely, holding up two fingers to show the length of the wound, half an inch, as if he classifies anything less than a dozen stitches as a nick.

  “I see, and you remember this nick, this little thing, nearly eight months later, and you can sit here and tell this court with certainty mat this wound, from which you apparently lost a single drop of blood in the elevator, occurred on the day mat Benjamin Potter was murdered?”

  “Uh-huh. But I lost more blood than that. I held my hand in a towel,” said Townsend.

  “Have you always had this gift?”

  The man looked at Nelson with a vacant stare.

  ‘This ability to recall minute details and precise dates months after the event?”

  “Oh, well, that’ll be a day none of us is likely to forget.” He was shaking his head as if to emphasize the momentous gravity of the events of that day.

  “I see. You equate this nick, as you call it, on your hand with the day mat Mr. Potter was murdered?”

  “That’s it,” he said, happy for some help. “Ah remember cuz you remember things when somethin’ like that happen. Like when President Kennedy got himself killed, I remember I was with my mama ….”

  ‘Tell me, Mr. Townsend, how did Mr. Cheetam come to discover this injury that you suffered? Did you come to him and tell him about it, or did he come to you and ask about it?”

  “Well, it weren’t him.” Townsend was now pointing, his arm out straight like an arrow, at Cheetam. “No sir, Mr. Chitan, he didn’t come to me.”

  Cheetam was reclining in his chair, nibbling on the eraser end of a pencil, smiling glibly at the dead end Nelson had just raced up.

  “It were the other fellah, that one back there.” Like a weathervane in a shifting wind, Townsend’s arm had swung out toward the audience, taking a bead on Ron Brown, who tried to huddle behind a heavy-set woman seated in the row in front of him. “The one with the fancy pen,” said Townsend.

  Nelson’s eyes followed the pointing finger like a guided missile. Brown was caught in the act, spear-chucker in hand, gold nib to the yellow pad propped on his lap.

  “Your Honor, may we ask Mr. Brown, Mr. Cheetam’s associate, to stand for a moment.”

  O’Shaunasy did not have to speak. Brown was up, shifting his feet, his shoulders sagging, his features lost in shadows as his head hung low, away from the beams of the overhead canister lights.

  “That’s him.”

  “Mr. Brown approached you?”

  “Yes sir. He the one that talked to me He talk to all of us.”

  “Objection, Your Honor, hearsay.”

  “Were you present when Mr. Brown talked to the others, did you hear what he said to them?”

  “I object, Your Honor.”

  “Let’s hear what the witness has to say.” O’Shaunasy waits to see if Townsend will overcome the inference of secondhand information.

  “Oh sure, he talk to all of us at once. The building manager get us together. He say one of the lawyers in the building want to talk to us.” Townsend was all smiles now, trying to be as helpful as possible.

  “Overruled.”

  Cheetam was fuming, angry not so much with the court and its ruling as with Brown and his lack of finesse in dealing with the hired help.

  “What did he say when he talked to all of you?”

  “He ask us if any of us see anything the day Mr. Porter was shot.”

  “Did any of you see anything?”

  “No, except for Willie He seed a lot.”

  “Willie?”

  “Yeah, he seed Mr. Porter after the shot.”

  “Ah.” Nelson nods. “Willie’s the janitor who discovered the body?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Nelson was becoming more charitable, his manner more easy, now that he was making headway with the witness.

  “What else did Mr. Brown ask you?”

  “He asked us if anybody ever got hurt, cut or like that, who used the service elevator.”

  “He asked this question of all of you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And you said yes?”

  “Yeah, me and Bill and Rosie and Manual.”

  “There were four of you?” Nelson’s question rose an octave from beginning to end.

  Cheetam’s pencil lay on the table, the eraser end chewed off.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “He took us up to his office.”

  “You and Bill and Rosie and Manual?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “They had a lady there, a nurse, she took our blood.”

  “She took your blood?”

  “Uh-huh. With a big needle. And they say they would get back to us.”

  “And did they?”

  “Just me,” said Townsend. “That gentleman”—he nodded toward Brown—“he get back to me.”

  Cheetam and Brown must have thought they’d hit the mother lode when Townsend’s blood type came back.

  “Did Mr. Brown say why he only wanted to talk to you?”

  “No sir.”

  “And what did he say when he finally got back to you?”

  “He ask me when I hurt myself and how I done it.”

  “And did you tell him?”

  “Uh-huh. Just like I tell you today.”

  “You mean to say that you cut your hand the day that Benjamin Potter was killed?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “I remind you, Mr. Townsend, you are under oath. To tell a he now is to commit perjury. That is a serious crime.”

  Townsend did a lot of swallowing here. His Adam’s apple made the trip up and down his throat several times.

  “I don’t lie,” he said

  “Are you certain you did not injure your hand on another day, perhaps after Mr. Potter was killed, or long before the murder?”

  Nelson, unable to shake the man, was offering him one last honorable way out of a lie.


  “No, it were that day, or the day before, but I think it were that day. I’m sure of it.”

  So much of his testimony had been compromising to Brown and Cheetam, that it was difficult to believe that he would lie on this point. Townsend’s words had the soulful ring of truth, and Nelson backed away. I wondered whether with all of his foibles Cheetam, and Talia by his proxy, would now-after all of this-finally profit from some happy coincidence. I would not wonder for long.

  “Thank you, nothing more of this witness.”

  Cheetam beamed like the Cheshire cat.

  O’Shaunasy looked at him. “Redirect?”

  “Nothing, Your Honor.”

  “Very well, your next witness.”

  “The defense rests, Your Honor.”

  “Mr. Nelson, do you have any rebuttal witnesses?”

  “Just one, Your Honor. The state would like to recall Dr. George Cooper.”

  “Any objection?”

  Cheetam looked mystified but at a loss to raise any grounds for objection.

  He smiled. “None, Your Honor.”

  Coop was called from the hall outside, where witnesses were assembled or held for further testimony. He took the stand and was reminded that he was still under oath.

  “Dr. Cooper, you took blood samples from the body of the victim, Benjamin Potter, following death, did you not?”

  “I did.”

  “And the single drop of blood that was found in the service elevator-did you gather and process this evidence from the scene?”

  “I did.”

  “And finally, were you able to obtain a blood sample from one Reginald Townsend, a janitor in the building, a witness for the defense?”

  “I did so, yes.”

  “Doctor, can you briefly describe for the court that system of blood-type classification commonly known as A-B-O and explain in layman’s terms how it works?”

  “As you know, there’s two types of blood cells, red cells and white cells. The A-B-O system keys on red cells only. It identifies chemical structures present on the surface of these cells called antigens. Under the A-B-O system, a type A blood donor would have A antigens on the surface of his red cells, a type B, B antigens, a type AB would have both A and B antigens and a type O would have neither. In addition, there is one other common factor in this blood-typing system. It’s the so-called D antigen or Rh factor of the blood. Those with the D antigen are said to be Rh-positive; those without it are Rh-negative.”