Until Proven Innocent

by Gene Grossman

  As I pull out of the Federal Building’s parking lot, I hear a car horn tooting. In my rear view mirror I see that it’s Stuart. I pick up my cell phone and call him, letting him know that I’m going to the Charthouse for an early dinner, and now that he’s a completely free man above suspicion, he will be allowed to pick up my dinner check.

  Stuart is all ears and won’t be satisfied until he hears a complete report of the conversation I had with Snell, after he left the room. I can appreciate his anxiety, especially after he sat in his car for a half hour, waiting for me to leave the Federal Building. I don’t want to go into details about the piracy operation, so I politely tell Stuart that the only way to get him off of the hook on the gambling thing was to give Snell some information on another federal crime that was accidentally uncovered during our investigation of Tony’s murder case.

  All that Stuart is really interested in is my assurance that he has absolutely nothing to worry about concerning his now-defunct gambling operation. The thing that was most surprising was how that scam had grown. Now that it’s all over, Stuart confides in me that his interests also included football and basketball games in which competing bookmakers would offer different point spreads and make it easier to place bets, or ‘get down’ locally, without worrying about money traveling from coast to coast.

  I tell Stuart that if he really wants to leave the gambling business with a clean slate, he should calculate exactly how much he won over the entire period of time he was gambling, and be sure to declare the extra income on his next tax report. I think he finally realizes that the only way to get out clean with no future liability is to do it my way. I tell him that all he has to do is claim that he won it in one weekend trip to Las Vegas. The IRS won’t argue with him. They’ll be glad to accept his tax money.

  *****

  After dinner I take a leisurely walk back to the boat, mentally calculating how many hours I can bill Stuart for. Let’s see… he called me before one in the afternoon, and it’s now a little after five. I guess that four hours at one-fifty each would be fair. The thing I really like about this six hundred that’ll be coming in is that the kid has no way of glomming onto it and turning it into a ‘firm’ fee.

  Back at the boat, I see that there are a couple of garbage bags waiting to be taken out. There are one or two chores that have been assigned to me, so in addition to lugging huge bags of dog food from her electric cart onto the boat, taking out the garbage is the other. There are a couple of attractive Rubbermaid trash containers that are placed near each one of the boat docks. Unfortunately, they open from the top, and the kid can’t reach high enough to open them. She’s already got the dog trained to stand on his rear legs, use a paw to pull open a mailbox door, and drop mail from his mouth down into the mailbox. If she can get him to do that, I don’t see why she can’t get him to take out the garbage too.

  While dumping the ‘recyclable’ bag, I notice some empty envelopes from the IRS, several major movie studios, and the Motion Picture Association. As usual, I have absolutely no idea of what’s going on, but I hope it has something to do with us finding the real killer because at this point, I still have no defense for Tony’s murder case that can be supported by any evidence. It’s still all just a theory

  A popular television courtroom drama utilized what the actors called their ‘plan B,’ which consisted of directing guilt away from their own client and trying to get the jury to believe that another person may have committed the crime their client was charged with. It would be nice if we could bring up all the film piracy stuff at Tony’s trial and get the jury to think that someone in Renaldo’s gang killed Joe for stumbling onto the criminal enterprise. Unfortunately, in real life, you can’t get away with that. In order to bring in evidence of completely unrelated crimes and start finger pointing in other directions, you must have some shred of evidence that the direction you’re going in is actually true, and not just a theory. Now all I’ve got is my theory that Renaldo had Joe killed to get him out of the way and stop him from going to the authorities.

  Whenever I think about blaming someone for a crime I always like to see what possible defense they could come up with, and in this case I’m afraid that Renaldo would walk away with an acquittal, because he was at work when the murder was committed, and there’s nothing we have to connect him with anyone who’s a likely shooter.

  In addition to our problems with Tony’s case, the kid is in an especially bad mood because not only has her good friend Myra subpoenaed her as a witness, but Suzi was told that she couldn’t bring the dog to court with her. I don’t know what bothers her most - being subpoenaed or not being able to bring the dog.

  On a previous case we worked on, the kid managed to bring her dog into the courtroom by using a devious deception, and only got away with it because officially, the court wasn’t in session at the time. I hope she doesn’t try another trick like that this time.

  *****

  Tony’s investigation teams are still covering the Venice Soundstage from dusk to dawn, and a new report has come in about another truck delivery. The alley surveillance guys counted two cartons being unloaded from the truck. They then followed the truck back to its garage in Chatsworth, where it pulled into a large warehouse.

  Following up on the warehouse information, we’ve learned that the place is a major distributor of blank DVD stock to duplicators, and that their main product is a 4.7 gigabyte DVD that gets packed one hundred to a box, and ten boxes to a case. If the truck left two cases, that means Renaldo ordered two thousand pieces. Further investigation of the distributor revealed that they make at least two deliveries there every month.

  This is looking bigger than I thought, because if Renaldo is running off four thousand copies a month, it means the gang may be taking in as much as three quarters of a million dollars each month, and that’s enough to be a good motive for murder.

  Tony says that when he got the phone call to meet Joe that evening, it was just as he was stepping aboard his boat. This means that his answering machine answered the call, and Tony shut it off when he started talking to the caller. Fortunately, the portion of the tape that had that call on it hasn’t been taped over yet, so we play it back. All it contains is a voice that says “Tony? If you’re there, please pick up. I’m calling for Joe, at the soundstage…” At that point, Tony had reached the phone, picked up the handset, and the answering machine automatically stopped recording.

  Suzi takes the answering machine tape, hooks it up to her computer’s audio input, and digitizes the few words that the caller said before Tony picked up the phone. Using some of the sophisticated software bought from Mister Necktie, she now has a voiceprint of the caller.

  Being professional investigators, each one of Tony’s crew recorded their interviews with the film company employees, including everyone on the set, from production assistants up to Will Sargent, the guy who took over Joe’s job. Suzi takes all of the cassettes and digitizes them, hoping to get a voiceprint comparison, because during the interviews, no one admitted to having made the call summoning Tony to that evening meeting with Joe.

  This job will take the kid a day or so to complete, so at this point we’ve still got nothing other than the knowledge that Renaldo’s operation is much bigger than I thought it was.

  The phone rings. It’s Snell calling. He doesn’t waste any time with small talk.

  “Our investigation has reached a point where we’re ready to make some arrests. We followed through on your leads, and the distribution company sold thousands of blank DVD’s to the gang, but that wasn’t all: they also provided them with a DVD duplication system, complete with a deck for playing the DVCAM master, three distribution amps, all the necessary cables, switchers, monitors, and forty-five high quality DVD burners, all equipped with automatic loading devices and disc printing software. All one has to do is load the master, put blank DVD’s in the autoloaders, press a button, and leave the equipment alone. The system’s burners are capable of turning out
90 DVD’s every hour. If he let them go all night long, the next morning there could be almost a thousand copies waiting for him. All he then has to do is slip them into the black cases, and they’re ready to be packaged and mailed out.

  “If you want to us to hold off with our arrests, then we’d like you to make our job easier by assuring us that per your promise, all the players will be in court on the same day.”

  I was curious about who else was involved, particularly Evelyn. If she wasn’t getting any money, then I’ll know that it was her daughter that was doing the evening mailings. I press Snell for whatever I could get out of him.

  “What about the money? Did you get any bank info? You must have gotten something, or you wouldn’t be ready to make the arrests.”

  Snell is the ultimate professional FBI guy. Even when you’re on his side, you can’t get him to talk.

  “I can’t tell you most of the details, but suffice it to say that the distribution company’s bills were paid by direct bank transfer from an offshore account. The same foreign bank makes pay-online transfers each month to pay off the credit card bills of the gang’s three main players. A lady named Evelyn, her daughter, and that Renaldo fellow. Other than that, no one else gets any money… now. However, in the past six months that they were operating, the largest share went to your murder victim.

  “Now, can we trust that you’ll have all the players in court for us?”

  I’m crushed. Not only is the new love of my life a criminal, my entire theory has also just collapsed. I felt sure that Joe Caulfield was an innocent guy who just happened to stumble onto a film piracy scheme. Now it looks like I was wrong about him. He was a major player. Thinking back, it all seems to fit. Not only was he running the piracy operation of the few films that Renaldo could bring home from the theater, he was planning the creation of a film courier service that would give him access to all of the big studio releases.

  Trying hard enough, it still might be possible for unhappiness with Joe’s getting a majority share of the profits to be a motive for his murder, but it wouldn’t make any sense for them to kill off the guy who was trying to help them get their hands on blockbuster releases from the big studios.

  This also means that we’re back to square one, with no motive for Joe’s murder, and no suspects. If things keep going like this, I’ll have no defense at Tony’s trial other than trying to implicate Renaldo’s gang, and it’s not likely that the D.A. will allow me to get that into evidence. I’m starting to feel that sinking feeling that I only get when I have a losing case, no defense, but a client that I feel is innocent.

  Our only hope now is that the kid can come up with a voiceprint match. That might lead us to the killer.

  The phone rings and I see that it’s Evelyn calling. This is terrible. Not only do I now know that she’s a crook, but I have to also look at her as a possible murder suspect. Reluctantly, I pick up the phone.

  “Hi, sailor, it’s your long lost friend Evelyn.”

  “Hello, beautiful, I was just thinking about you.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. As a matter of fact, I was going to call you.”

  “Does this mean I’m going to get to see you again?”

  “In a way, yes. I’ve been pretty busy with this murder case, but I think we’ve finally got it solved.”

  “Really. Who did it? I’m dying to know.”

  “Well, that’s privileged information as of now, but I can tell you that the cops working on the case have someone, and I’ve been informed that an arrest may be made soon. I just hope it’s before the trial, because if it isn’t, I’ll be going to court without any decent defense.”

  “Well, I sure hope you have better luck getting your man than I’ve had.”

  “Hey, I’ve got a great idea. Tony is inviting some of the film crew to watch the last day of the trial, when I do my brilliant summation. Why don’t you and your daughter join them? You know that I’ve got some connections with the D.A.’s office. If you want to come, I can arrange for you to have front row seats. Tony will be inviting Renaldo there too, so there’ll be plenty of familiar faces there for your daughter to have a reunion with.”

  I feel terrible doing this, knowing that Snell and his gang will be arresting her that day. Maybe I can talk him into waiting until I’ve left the courtroom before he makes the bust. In a way, I hope she declines my invitation.

  “Oh Peter, that would be great. Are you sure you can get us seats?”

  * * * * * *

  Chapter 14

  I must be the biggest louse in town. I know that Evelyn and her daughter will be arrested, and I’ve just invited her right into Snell’s trap. Tony will be calling Renaldo to invite him to be there too, so now it’s up to me to arrange for the seating.

  From what I’ve seen and heard, the press will be there in full force. It’s not very often that you see a twenty-year police veteran with several valor awards go to trial on a murder charge. I’ve got a pretty good reputation for pulling things out of the hat at the last minute of a trial, but my trick bag is empty this time. If the kid doesn’t come up with a voiceprint match I’ve got no defense at all, other than a weak contention that there’s no way the prosecution can tell when that empty bullet shell became empty.

  I dial Myra’s private line. She’s in the office.

  “Hello Peter, are you calling to talk about a plea? My offer of Man One won’t be on the table after they swear in the jury.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you my dear, but this is not a plea bargain call. I need a little favor that has nothing to do with the case, directly.”

  “What could you possibly want?”

  “I need three front row seats in the peanut gallery.”

  “Okay, Petey, let’s have it. I know something’s going on, and I want to know what it is.”

  “There’s nothing going on. I want to invite some people to the last day of the trial, and because the press is having a feeding frenzy, I thought you might help me out here.”

  “No sale, Pete. I’ve already received a similar call from Special Agent Snell’s office. The FBI has also requested several seats. It’s just too coincidental that both you and Snell want extra seats to the same show. We all hate coincidences, so let’s have it. What are you cooking up? Another one of your famous courtroom spectaculars? I have a right to know about it.”

  “I’ll make you a promise. You get those extra seats for me, and let Snell and his boys come in too, and whatever happens, I’ll make sure that you wind up being a hero. You know I’ve done it in the past, and that’s why you’re sitting in that office up there. I’m not running for office, so I don’t need any free publicity. Snell’s going to get his, and if you talk nice to him, I’m sure he’ll share the spotlight with you - especially when you call him back after we hang up, and make it a condition of his getting seats inside the courtroom, instead of out in the hall.”

  She hesitates for a while.

  “Are you sure this extravaganza you’re planning won’t upset my applecart?”

  “Myra, I give you my word that the sideshow Snell and I are planning have absolutely nothing to do with your murder case. And, in the event that we also happen to get lucky and nail the actual shooter, causing your case to tank, then I’ll see to it that you also get credit for nailing the new perp too.”

  She sounds afraid of what we’ve got planned.

  “Is this going to be like the last time? When the whole courtroom was a madhouse? I don’t want to see that happen again.”

  “Not exactly. We won’t be riding to court in a limo this time.”

  “You know what I mean, Peter. Will it be another circus?”

  “I hope not, but if it does happen, it’ll be your fault.”

  “My fault? How can you say that? What did I do?”

  “Two bad things. First, you arrested and charged an innocent man. But that’s not the big mistake you made.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s the big one, smart guy?”<
br />
  “You subpoenaed the kid to testify, and told her she can’t bring her dog to court.”

  “C’mon Pete, you know I can’t allow a dog in the courtroom. And we’ve already discussed why she had to be subpoenaed. It’s because of her fingerprints on that shell casing.”

  “Yes I know, but that doesn’t make any difference. The deed has been done, and I wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of anyone who that kid is mad at, no matter how legitimate your reasons were.”

  Myra tells me that she has a feeling of what I mean. She and the kid share a mutual love and admiration for each other, but Myra did a bad thing and the kid is going to see that Myra gets spanked for it. I can’t wait to see what the kid has planned. Myra probably can’t either, because she says she’ll be sitting in the back row watching.

  Tony left a message for me that Renaldo has been invited to the trial, and he’ll be there in the front row. The cast of characters is almost complete. Now all that remains is for me to figure out some legal defense for Tony - one that has a chance of actually working.

  *****

  It may be starting. I just saw an email come into the office in answer to our request to have an independent ballistic expert examine the empty shell casing. This is particularly interesting, because I’m the attorney of record on Tony’s case, and I never made any request like this.

  Every once in a while the kid takes over the controls, and I’m made to feel like I’m just along for the ride, with her doing the driving. For some strange reason I’m starting to get that feeling again. I’m tempted to ask her about it, but she’s not on the boat. I see her electric cart parked near the boats, but there’s no sign of her on the boat. The dog’s gone too. No surprise there.

  On my way to the Marina Liquor Store I pass by Tony’s sailboat and see the dog sleeping guard on his aft deck. This means the kid is in there. Tony’s not here, and looking in the boat, I can’t see the kid, but that’s no surprise because she’s not tall enough to be seen from outside the boat. There’s plenty of activity going on, because the Asian Boys are loading supplies onto the boat. I hope that Tony isn’t planning to skip out on us.