by Reason of Sanity

by Gene Grossman

  Last time we were in court on his case, I made a deal to abide with whatever the court-appointed shrinks decide, so now it’s time for me to pay my dues. I’ll appear with Harold at his arraignment and offer a plea of not guilty on his behalf, because he probably won’t want to say that many words. He’s the strong silent type.

  The court is paying me to represent him to the best of my ability but with all the evidence that they have against him there’s not much I can do, so I figure he’s at least entitled to a visit from me. Traffic between the Marina and downtown isn’t too bad this time of the late morning, so I head down to the county’s central jail.

  After the usual identification procedure, I go through the sallyport and into the attorney interview room. I finally get some respect. Harold comes down to see me.

  As usual, there isn’t much of a conversation between us. I tell him that the shrinks have declared him fit to stand trial and that his arraignment will be in a couple of days, at which time I’ll be entering a plea of not guilty on his behalf. He finally says a word to me. “Why?”

  I’m not surp rised until the question sinks in. He wants to know why he should plead not guilty. “Harold, what’s your question? Do you want to know why that’s the plea we’ll offer, or do you want to know why you’re pleading not guilty at all?”

  He answers me. “Why should I plead not guilty? I did it. Let’s get it over with. There’s no need for you to try and get me off.”

  “That’s not the way it works, Harold. In our judicial system, it’s the prosecution’s job to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. What happens if they make a mistake and you’re found not guilty? Would you turn that down and stay here anyway? I think not.

  “Listen Harold, I know that things don’t look too good for you with that videotape evidence, but let’s do it by the book. I’ll make sure that if they want to convict you that they do it fair and square.”As usual, there’s no response from him. He just sits there and glares at me. He finally breaks the silence. “You’re my lawyer, right.”

  “Right. I’m your lawyer.”

  “Then could you do me a favor?”

  “I’ll try, Harold. What is it?”

  “Could you deposit a few bucks into my

  prisoner account? I’d like to buy some candy and stuff.” I nod yes. He gets up and walks out of the room.

  The last time I came up with some money for a prisoner’s account it was given to the Public Defender in court. This time, it’s up to me to make the deposit. I ask one of the jailers how to go about it and I’m told that as I re-enter the lobby from the jail hallway, immediately around the corner to my right is a cashier’s window where I can make a cash or credit card deposit for an inmate.

  Following his instructions, I go down the hallway and stop just before making the right turn. I want to open my wallet here in the hallway instead of out in the lobby. I’ve got a bunch of hundred dollar bills in there and I’d rather not let the general visiting population see them. I pull out a twenty, and just as I’m about to step around the corner, I hear a woman saying “thank you” to someone. When I stick my head around the corner, I see a short woman walking away from what must be the cashier’s window. I hear the cashier calling out from the cage, “You’re welcome Miss Vogel.”

  Hearing the name Vogel causes a reaction. For some reason, I step back into the hallway. That’s one heck of a coincidence. Vogel is the last name of the attorney who’s handling the Mexican restaurant’s case against Vinnie’s dram shop action. Could it possibly be her who just left the cashier’s cage? I stand there for a minute trying to compose my thoughts. I’ll only get one crack at this, so it has to be done right. I wait another minute or so and then step in front of the cage, hold up my ID and speak to the cashier.

  “Hi, I’m attorney Peter Sharp and I was supposed to meet an associate of mine here to deposit some money to a couple of clients’ prisoner accounts. I don’t know if I missed her and I certainly don’t want to make any of your customers rich by making a double deposit. Can you tell me if she’s been here yet?

  He looks at me with that typical cop-face. No emotion. “What’s her name?”

  “Patty Vogel – she’s a short woman, about…” He cuts me off mid-sentence.

  “Yeah, you just missed her. She already made a deposit.”

  “Great, now I’d like to make one too, but not if she already made it. Did she deposit anything for Harold Blitzstien?”

  “Naw, she put the maximum of fifty in for Harry Michaels. Do you want to put some in for Blitzstien? If so, I’ll need his booking number again.”

  I thank him for the information and give him the twenty, and Harold’s booking number. After he gives me the receipt, I thank him and walk away in a daze.

  Harry Michaels gets money from Patty Vogel. Why? What’s the connection between them? I call Jack and ask him if he ordered copies of the court docket sheet on Harry Michaels’ previous drunk driving cases. He tells me that he did and verifies the fact that Patty Vogel was the attorney on both cases.

  I don’t know why I should be so surprised. Here I am depositing money to my client’s account, so why shouldn’t she feel the same way and deposit money to her client’s account? This will require some more looking into. I sense something here that may be more than the casual attorney-client relationship. Harry Michaels copped a plea and took a deal that the public defender made for him. With the jail overcrowding situation that’s going on now, he’ll probably be out in a month or so. So why come and deposit fifty dollars to his account?

  On the way back to the Marina I call Jack Bibberman. The California State Bar has a website that lists all the licensed attorneys in the state. It provides information as to what Law School the attorney graduated from and what year they were sworn in to practice. I tell Jack to check out Patty Vogel. I then call Myra’s office. She knows most of the lawyers in this town who practice criminal law and probably every one of the female ones.

  No special information there. Myra knows Patty from some Women’s Bar Association meetings but to the best of her knowledge, Patty doesn’t do any criminal work. While we’re on the phone, Myra informs me that the court called her office and wants us both to appear tomorrow at two in the afternoon for Harold Blitzstien’s arraignment.

  Back at the boat I have a chance to sit down in silence and think over what I’ve learned today. It’s always nice to have someone to bounce your ideas off of, so I invite the huge Saint Bernard into my area of the boat – he’s an excellent listener. After we kick the idea around for a while, the logical answer we come up with is that after Harry Michaels wrecked the Lexus he stole from the restaurant’s parking lot – the one he drove into Vinnie’s favorite tree – the owner of the car put a claim in to his own insurance company.

  Insurance companies try to recover their losses by going after the people who cause them. In this case, after the insurance company paid off the Lexus owner, it would be logical to assume that they then went after both Harry Michaels and the restaurant, in an effort to recoup some of the claim money they paid out. Harry Michaels obviously doesn’t have any money, so the insurance company is concentrating on the restaurant, using the same dram shop strategy that I’ll be trying. The restaurant is Patty Vogel’s client, so she’s probably defending Harry Michaels too, hoping that by keeping him happy with a fifty-dollar deposit to his inmate account, he won’t say anything nasty about the restaurant that might help the insurance company’s action.

  We both agree that this scenario is the right one and celebrate our logical victory by sharing a biscuit.

  Confidence is a good thing to have, but what if the dog is wrong about this one? Now that I’m a member of the insurance defense clique, I decide to see how far the benefits go. I send off a message to Charles Indovine’s office, asking if he can do me a little favor. I tell him I’m working on another case and would like to know the name of the insurance company that insured the Lexus and how much they paid to their insured for
the damages. I provide him with the date of loss and the license number of the Lexus.

  To my surprise, a day later there’s an answer from Indovine’s office. It gives me the name of the insurance company that insures the car and also says that no claim was put in for damages to that vehicle during the past twelve months.

  I’ve watched countless programs on television where some insurance-funded safety institute buys new cars and crashes them to see how safe they are, and how much it costs to have them repaired. On one of those shows they had a Lexus similar to the one that Harry Michaels wrapped around Vinnie’s tree. In a low speed collision that didn’t cause much visible damage, the repair bill was several thousand dollars. Judging by that, I’d estimate that after knocking over the tree, it would cost about ten thousand to put humpty dumpty back together again. I’ve heard of people who refrain from making claims to their insurance company because they fear cancellation or future rate increases but when the damages exceed five figures, it just doesn’t make sense to hold back and bite the bullet.

  Whenever I come across things that don’t compute it bothers me. It’s time for another meeting. I call the dog back into the room again.

  The only thing we can figure out this time is that the restaurant has decided to cover the Lexus owner’s losses – not out of good will, but because they don’t want a dram shop precedent against them

  – and because they’ll write it off anyway.

  Okay, that answers one question. We now think we know why there was no claim made against the insurance company for damages to the Lexus. But it opens up another problem. If there’s no dram shop suit against the restaurant, then the dog must have been wrong. Why would Patty Vogel be making that deposit to Harry Michael’s account? There’s no need to keep him quiet or stop him from cooperating with the insurance company.

  Indovine’s office will be sending me a printout of the insurance company’s under-writing report on that vehicle. When it comes, I’ll send Jack Bibberman over to interview the owners of the Lexus, to find out exactly what their story is and why they never put in a claim for property damage.

  The bailiff makes his usual announcement and the court is now in session. When Judge Axelrod calls the case, Myra and I both stand and make our statements of representation. Harold looks absolutely terrible. It seems that every time I see him he looks worse.

  The arraignment goes quickly. today. Reports from the shrinks are put into evidence and in accordance with my previous stipulation, a plea of not guilty is entered on Harold’s behalf.

  Because Harold wants to get this matter over with as quickly as possible, we refuse to waive time and ask for the soonest possible preliminary hearing date.

  Real life is a lot different than those criminal legal dramas on television, where after you see a person arrested and plead not guilty to murder, the next scene takes place in a trial court. That’s because they leave out what the California judicial system considers a very important element: a Preliminary Hearing, affectionately called ‘prelim’ by the legal community.

  On misdemeanors that only carry a maximum one-year sentence in the county jail, cases will go directly to trial after a municipal court arraignment, but felonies are much more serious. When a person is charged with a felony but not indicted by a grand jury, they are entitled to a preliminary hearing, at which time the prosecution doesn’t have to prove guilt - but does have to establish beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime charged actually took place and that there is enough probable cause to hold the defendant over for arraignment and trial in the superior court.

  In this case, a grand jury was never convened. The district attorney’s office obviously felt that it wasn’t necessary because of the hospital’s videotape evidence of the crime. I’ve also learned that Harold has a distant cousin who at one time worked for the district attorney’s office, so that’s why they brought an outsider like Myra in to act as an independent prosecutor.

  All this means to me is that I’ll have two chances to get trounced by Myra – at both the prelim and the trial. It also means that she has two chances to screw up, but the possibility of that happening is so remote that I’m not even hoping for it.

  Myra doesn’t object to our insistence on speed. She doesn’t need any more time to prepare her case – Harold did it for her, with his hospital appearance on prosecution-TV, the new network designed to bring the viewing audience timely convictions. I tell Harold to try and get some rest. He thanks me for the deposit I made to his account. The way he doles out words to me is second to only one other person I know.

  On the way back to the Marina, I can’t help but feel that Harold doesn’t seem like a bad guy. I’ll never know why people do things.

  About twenty years ago, when I first started practicing law, I was retained to represent a man who was an executive at a defense contracting company. Here was a guy with a wife and family, a security clearance, and high-paying job. He got arrested in a public park restroom for sodomy. He was the stickee.

  I handled the case and arranged for him to plead to second-degree burglary. This kept a sexrelated offense off of his record, so he was able to keep his security clearance. Several other attorneys and I were having dinner that evening and they all seemed curious about why a guy like my client would risk his family and his job to do something like that? I took out some of my business cards and passed them around the table, saying “okay guys, take a look at my card. You see what it says under my name? It says Attorney at Law, not mind reader, or psychic. All I do is the same thing that you guys do – I represent them, I don’t get into their heads. That’s not included in the fee… and it’s not a place I want to be.”

  Maybe with a sex-related offense, a lot of prior psychological baggage comes into play. But with a cold-blooded murder for hire, there’s just no way I can start to figure out why Harold did what he did. I don’t want to know the deep dark thoughts that can go through someone’s mind. There was an old radio show called The Shadow, in which the main character would say: “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…?”

  Back at the boat there’s a moist envelope waiting for me on the couch – obviously a dog-mail delivery. It’s from Indovine’s office and contains two items: a check for my past week’s efforts on the Drago case, and a one-page computer printout on the Lexus policy. I see that there’s a damage estimate in there for over fourteen thousand dollars, a requirement in any theft report but as Indovine told me, there was no claim put in by the owners, who are listed as Walter E. and Patricia F. Vogel.

  13

  I

  don’t know where to start. I’d like to give Jack Bibberman some instructions, but I can’t figure out what he should check out first. The State Bar’s website confirms that Patty’s real name is the same as the one on the Lexus’ ownership, so unless Patricia F. Vogel is a really common name in this town, that Lexus is her car. Maybe that’s where Jack should start. I tell him to check out Patty Vogel the attorney, just to make sure she’s the owner of the car – and while he’s at it, to try and get a photo of her from one of the many lawyer publications, her law school yearbook, her drivers license portrait, or from wherever he can.

  I don’t think it would be a good idea to talk to her about this yet. I like to know the answers to the questions before I ask them, and in this case there are plenty questions and no answers.

  A knock on the hull jars me out of my deep thought. It’s a delivery guy with a big gift basket that contains wine, cheese, cakes and other goodies that must have set someone back at least fifty bucks. I hand the guy a two-dollar tip and bring the basket into the dining area to see which cop is sending a gift to the little princess. To my surprise, I see that the gift is for me. It’s from Stuart. The note says, Peter, thank you very much for your successful handling of my barratry case. As a result of the publicity, my business has doubled. Please let me know when you’d like to be my guest for dinner at the Chart House.

  That’s very nice of him. He’s bec
ome another hustler making money by working our judicial system like a slot machine. That’s not a nice thought, but I still can’t get it out of my mind, even though he’s a friend of mine and I’m glad to see that he’s doing well. On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t condemn him like that. I’ve had an opportunity to see one of his defendants close up in person and if that’s the type of industry that Stuart’s shaking down, then more power to him.

  At least he has a really good choice in restaurants. The ChartHouse is a really close- by restaurant that’s a walking distance from our dock, and serves a good meal. I wish I could get myself to spend the money to eat there – it’s one of the higherpriced places on the water. I guess you can take a guy out of a Chicago tenement neighborhood, but you can’t take the neighborhood out of the guy. I can’t see spending fifty bucks for a dinner there that I can get around the corner for twelve. I guess the tourists are willing to pay twice the price for a view of the water. If I want that view, all I have to do is look out my window. Nevertheless, I call Stuart and thank him for the basket… and arrange to meet him at the ChartHouse tomorrow evening at seven PM.

  I can’t wait any longer. My curiosity is killing me. Jack Bibberman has confirmed the fact that the Lexus does in fact belong to Patty Vogel and her husband. I have his work number, so I call him, under the guise of working with the insurance company. That’s not too far from the truth because after all, I am an insurance defense lawyer.

  Walter Vogel owns a women’s clothing business in Van Nuys. His secretary puts me through to him.

  “Hello Mister V ogel, we’re following up on your Lexus damages and just want to know how the repairs are going.”

  “Oh yeah, the Lexus. Well it took long enough, but the body shop finally got it back to us. I guess it’s okay.”

  “That’s good, Mister Vogel. By the way, there are a few unanswered questions on your claim form. Would it be okay if one of our people came by to talk to you?”