Compelling Evidence

by Steve Martini

  “Anyway,” she says, “the bottom line was getting the clients. And Tony was petrified that with Ben gone the clients would slowly drift away. Everybody knew it was Ben who kept the traffic coming through the door. Skarpellos had taken a free ride for years. It was about to come to an end.” She’s lighting up.

  I know that this was true. Though Tony did his share of milking money from corporate clients, it was Ben who kept the cash cow in alfalfa.

  “When Ben got back from Washington, his last trip, they had a lulu,” she says.

  Between words she emits a stream of forced smoke from one side of her mouth toward the ceiling. A little hardness.

  “It was a humdinger,” this argument between Skarpellos and Potter, she says. “You could hear ’em yelling all the way out to reception.”

  I’m all ears.

  “Funny thing,” she says. “While Tony had his nose in a snit”—smoke followed by little bits of tobacco stripped from her tongue punctuate this monologue—“Ben leaving and all, it was Ben who started the whole thing, the argument.”

  “Over what?”

  “Money. Seems the trust account was a little light.” She smiles and looks toward the ceiling, like “What else.”

  “Let me guess,” I tell her. “Ben caught Tony taking a loan?”

  She nods. “Bingo,” she says. “And Ben was spitting fire.”

  I am not surprised. There had been little skirmishes over the Greek’s indiscretions with the client trust account on previous occasions, before I left the firm. He used it like a private slush fund, always just a half jump ahead of complaints by clients to the state bar. On two occasions that I know of, Ben had to smooth ruffled feathers over dinner and fine wine with clients who’d caught the Greek with his fingers in the till, borrowing their retainers.

  “This time,” she tells me, “it had gone too far. Skarpellos had taken more than petty cash. And a client had in fact filed a complaint with the bar. It ended with Skarpellos storming out of Ben’s office, after Ben had delivered an ultimatum.”

  According to Jo Ann, Potter gave Tony forty-eight hours to restore the money to the trust account, two or three hundred thousand dollars, she can’t remember the exact amount, “borrowed” by the Greek for one of his “business deals,” to cover his interest in some glitzy real estate development. It seems that Skarpellos had one of his perennial cashflow problems.

  With the state bar already nosing around, Ben had Jo Ann take two letters, a succinct one-pager to the Greek confirming Ben’s demand that he repay the money, in forty-eight hours, and another to the disciplinary authorities at the bar, so that there would be no question as to who was responsible for this trust imbalance. The first letter was delivered to Tony in a sealed envelope. The second was postdated, to be mailed two days later from Washington, if Skarpellos did not correct the problem.

  Whether Ben would have actually followed through on this threat to send the second letter neither of us can say. But if I know Skarpellos, he was sweating bullets. In a hand of high-stakes poker, Potter could always buffalo the Greek.

  “Ben was mad as hell,” she says. “He took it very personal, that Tony would act this way just at a time that federal agents were crawling all over the office getting background information on the Supreme Court appointment.”

  I now realize that Potter, on his return from Washington, had more on his mind than my fling with Talia. He had a thieving partner who was threatening to damage his reputation. Stories of embezzled trust funds are not conducive to high court nominations. Senate confirmation would take months and would turn over every rock in Potter’s life. Politicos in Washington were not likely to spend the time to consider which of the partners were culpable and which were the innocent victims in such a scam. The mud would spatter far enough to hit Ben.

  “Surely Ben must have discussed this with the other partners.”

  She shakes her head between gulps of coffee. “There was nobody else he could confide in.” Nobody but her is what she’s saying. “None of the partners wanted to take sides. They figured Ben was leaving, and they’d be left to face Tony—alone. Not a happy prospect,” she says.

  An understatement. In any balls-to-the-wall office showdown the Greek would have eaten any one of them for lunch. He had proven on a dozen different occasions that he could cow them, collectively and individually—except for Ben.

  “What’s more to the point”—she takes a long drag on her cigarette—“the letter of complaint to the bar, the one I prepared for Ben to sign, it disappeared. The file copies, the original, every trace of that letter is gone. Even the backup on the drive in my computer,” she says, “all gone.”

  This interests me, and she can read it in my face.

  “The day after Ben died,” she says, “I looked for it in the directory. I tried to pull it up and read it back using Ben’s confidential code. But it was gone. Somebody had erased it. And there’s no hard copy,” she adds. “Ben didn’t want it floating around the office.”

  The significance of this correspondence has not been lost on Jo Ann, and I wonder aloud why she hasn’t gone to the cops.

  “And tell ’em what? I have no proof,” she says. “But it gets worse. I went to Mr. Edwards. Told him about Ben’s concerns regarding the trust account. He said he’d check into it. The next day he came back, very friendly.” Jo Ann smiles like some innocent. “Told me that the account was solid, that there was no trust imbalance. No imbalance.” She repeats this to herself, nodding with purpose as if to show how inane she’d been to ask. “I got the axe an hour later.”

  I could have told her, like O’Mally owns the Dodgers, Tony owns Tom Edwards. They are partners in name only. But there is little point in rubbing this salt into the wounds now.

  “Why didn’t the police interview you?”

  She shakes her head. “I was in England for four months, visiting relatives. Been wanting to do it for years. Getting canned gave me the opportunity.”

  This explains it. The cops weren’t breaking their backs chasing leads or sources. Succumbing to a little convenient myopia, they started with one suspect and back-filled their case against Talia. In no time she found herself buried up to her shoulders, relying on Skarpellos to help her out. Suddenly it all makes sense, the inept Mr. Cheetam, Tony waiting in the wings to inherit Ben’s estate, leading Talia to the precipice. Like fingers in a glove it all fits.

  “Would you testify?” I ask her.

  “Sing like the little old wine maker,” she says. “What have I got to lose?” Then she pauses. “There’s just one problem. Without something more than my word, the tune may sound a lot like sour grapes.”

  CHAPTER

  24

  “BAD news—and surprises,” says Harry. He waltzes through the door, a thin leather briefcase under his arm.

  “Skarpellos has an alibi,” he says. “It gets worse.” His expression is somber. This is a serious blow. “Tod Hamilton does not.”

  This is not something I want to hear.

  He sits to fill me in on the details.

  Harry’s been off doing a little gumshoe. Primed by the information from Jo Ann, he’s backtracked over Tony’s statement to the police, something we hadn’t paid much attention to during the prelim, the Greek’s whereabouts the night of the killing.

  “Says he went to a basketball game in Oakland,” Harry tells me, “with a friend.”

  “The friend?” I ask.

  “You’re gonna love this,” he says. “Your client, Susan Hawley.”

  “Sonofabitch,” I say. I snap the pencil I am holding in two.

  “Can you beat it?” he says. “No wonder he was so anxious to pay for her defense. Guess who would have shown up prominently in the ‘boink book’ if Lama ever got his hands on it?”

  The Greek has been using me to keep Hawley quiet. Tony had lied to me that day in his office. The firm never had a client. There was no prominent politician they were running cover for. The Greek was trying to save his own ass.
I wonder how often he had used Hawley to chum the political waters for votes on zoning matters or other “business.”

  “Did the cops get a statement from Hawley?” I ask him.

  “You bet,” says Harry.

  “Does she confirm the facts, his alibi?” I ask.

  “Like somebody wrote a script for her,” he says.

  I fix on him across the desk. “What do you think?”

  “I think Skarpellos had a burning need to put a muzzle in Ben Potter’s mouth, and the opportunity to do it.” He smiles. “I think the lady’s lying. Now ask me how we prove it.”

  I keep my own counsel on this, but I tend to agree with Harry. If Hawley had been hired by the Greek to service political patrons before the scandal began to break, she would have been the perfect alibi on the night of the murder.

  “For the right price Susan Hawley would willingly allow words to be put in her mouth,” I tell him.

  “Among other things,” says Harry.

  “What about Hamilton?”

  “No such luck,” he says. He looks at me perplexed, but not entirely surprised.

  “No alibi?”

  Harry nods. “The only thing going for him is that cops never questioned him, so he didn’t have the opportunity to lie for the record.”

  It’s what I was afraid of. I’ve had Harry check Hamilton’s alibi, the story he gave me the night of our meeting at Talia’s, when he told me he had dinner with friends at the club the night Ben was killed.

  “The club records show he had dinner there, all right,” says Harry, “three nights before the murder, and then again a week later. They have no record of him at the bar or the restaurant that night.”

  “Maybe somebody else picked up the tab?” I say.

  “No, they have a roster in the main hall, everybody registers on arrival and leaving, members and guests. I checked it. He never signed in that day.”

  If Harry can find this, so can the cops. I’m becoming increasingly concerned by Tod’s indiscretions. The fact that he posted a king’s ransom in bail for Talia’s release now lights him up like neon for Nelson. With no alibi for the night of the murder, he is becoming too convenient.

  “You think she’s lying to you?” Harry’s concerned about Talia, her relationship with Tod. He’s wondering if the cops may not be right.

  “Wouldn’t be the first time that a client lied to me.” Harry’s sitting there looking at me, like maybe, just maybe we’re on the side of the devil in this one. It’s not an unusual position for Harry, or one that bothers him much. But, I tell him, she didn’t kill Ben, with Hamilton or anybody else. Whether she’s lying … I make a face, like “Who knows?”

  “Tell me you’re not thinkin’ with your pecker,” he says.

  I give Harry an exasperated look.

  He takes umbrage at this. “Save it for the jury.” Harry’s irked. “You want me to keep you honest,” he says. “So humor me.”

  I wave him on, like go ahead, play your best mind game with me.

  “Think about it,” he says. “You go over to her house and this guy Tod is living there. He bails her outta jail. Sure, maybe it’s just that his dick’s run away with his head. That’s one possibility. The other is, maybe he considers this a good investment.” Harry gives me a severe look, like this is not so far-fetched. “If you popped the old man, and Talia knew about it, how secure would you feel knowing she’s in the can, locked up with a case of the screaming meemies? Mmm? How long before she says something to somebody? Wouldn’t you want to get her out of there, like now?”

  I’m looking at him soberly, listening to this line.

  “And the little handgun,” he says. “You did everything but carve instructions on his forehead, telling him not to handle the thing if they found it. And what does Tod do?” Harry brings one index finger to his temple to show the calculating thought process that went into Tod’s fingering this gun and smudging all the prints.

  “Now we find out he has no alibi. What is worse, he lied to you about it.”

  “What are you saying—they killed Ben together?”

  “It’s a possibility,” he says. But there’s another theory that Harry thinks may be closer to the mark. “Maybe the boyfriend gets infatuated. He wants Talia to leave the old man. Suppose she won’t do it. Maybe she can’t give up the good life—the prenuptial thing and all. So Tod fixes it for her. Suppose, just suppose, she doesn’t know this until after it’s all over, until after Hamilton has killed Potter.”

  I think about this while Harry watches me. I have my doubts about Tod. But for Talia, I have a hard time believing she would keep this from me. With the travail she has been through, I don’t buy it.

  “She would have talked,” I tell him. “I know her. She would have broken. She would have told me by now.” Talia, with all of her whimsy, would never come this far, staring death or a long prison term in the face without telling me if this were so.

  “Maybe,” he says. “But think about it. Now she’s in a box. What good does it do to tell you? So you know the truth. Is it likely to help her?”

  I follow him on this. Harry’s right. This is not a story we could lay on a jury with much success. The fact that Talia, a married woman, had a serious love interest that could motivate murder would be enough to hang her. The best we could hope for is that they would view her as an accessory after the fact. Even this would be a long shot of sizable proportions.

  “So what are you saying?” I ask him.

  “That maybe the lady knows more than she says. Maybe she can meet Nelson’s terms for a plea bargain after all.”

  Harry’s suggesting that we might have Talia roll over on Tod, offer him up to the prosecution as her shadowy accomplice.

  “It’s too convenient,” I tell him. “There’s not a shred of evidence linking him to the crime. The fact that he paid her bail money? That’s not evidence of murder. The fact that he has no alibi? Where were you that night?” I ask him.

  Harry shrugs, like “Take your best guess.”

  “Like half the rest of the city,” I say. “No, it won’t wash. Unless there was hard evidence. Unless Talia could testify that Tod made admissions to her, Nelson would never bite.” This leaves me with the thought of how I would ever approach her on this, to ask Talia about Tod.

  “For now,” I say, “let’s concentrate on the Greek.” It’s only a feeling, but something in my bones tells me that Skarpellos is the key.

  “So what do you want me to do, subpoena the bank records for the firm’s trust account?”

  “No, we’ll wait. We get ’em with enough time to study them and confirm our defense, to see if we can prove somebody was dipping into the trust. But as soon as we go after the bank records, Skarpellos will know what we’re up to. He’ll start squeezing witnesses. Subtly,” I say. “No overt tampering.” The Greek is a master of intimidation.

  Harry nods, as if this is his inclination as well. He sees where I’m going, the old SODDI defense—“Some Other Dude Did It.”

  Five days after Harry’s mission to the club I am again in Talia’s living room confronting her with the facts on Tod, his lack of an alibi, his generosity concerning her bail.

  “You’re doing yourself a disservice,” I tell her. “I can’t defend you without the truth.”

  Talia sits in one corner of the couch, looking at me as if I’ve whacked her with a two-by-four brandishing a nail in the business end. Her legs are curled under her, arms folded over her chest, the classic female defensive posture.

  She doesn’t answer my questions, but instead looks at me forlorn, accusing, that I too should whip her at a time like this.

  “Tomorrow,” I say, “we go to see Nelson. You can be sure he’ll offer us some kind of a deal. I’ve got to know whether we should take it. If you’re hiding things from me, critical facts that may come out during the trial, then you’re hobbling me—crucifying yourself,” I tell her.

  She’s in a daze. It is often said that you can key the loss
of mental faculties to a singular traumatic event, a fall, an accident, a change of habitat. With Talia, since her incarceration, there has been a conspicuous loss in the powers of concentration, a restless anxiety that is not characteristic. She is slowly unraveling.

  I move to the couch and shake her a little, not with my hands, but with the tone of my voice, up close in her ear.

  “Do you hear me?” I say. “It becomes more difficult the farther we go. If there’s something you haven’t told me, now is the time.” I can’t afford to coddle her.

  Suddenly she turns on me, coils, and strikes. “You think I did it,” she says.

  “Did you?” To this point I have never asked her this question. Not overtly. We have done little probing cotillions around it, Harry and I, but never head-on, squarely presenting the question to Talia.

  “How can you believe I could do a thing like that, that I could kill Ben?” she says.

  “What’s Tod’s part in all of this?” I say.

  “He’s a friend.” There’s derision in her tone, as if to say “Unlike you.”

  “Good friend.” I say. “A million-dollar bond. I could use a few like that myself.”

  She gives me the once-over, up and down, scrambling with her eyes, surprised that I have discovered her little secret, the deep pocket behind her release.

  I tell her that Nelson too will know this by now, and that at some point we are likely to be confronted with Tod’s lack of an alibi and the fact of their relationship.

  From the look on her face I can tell that the significance of these facts has suddenly dawned on her.

  “It looks bad,” I explain to her. “You’re living together, he pays for your bail, he has no alibi for the night of the murder, the cops are looking for an accomplice. Some might think that his contribution to your bail is a little investment to ensure your silence, to keep you from fingering him as your helper.”

  I can see in her eyes, like those of a startled fawn, that this scenario has never entered her mind, not until now.

  “Still,” I tell her, “it could be a persuasive argument to a jury.”