MD01 - Special Circumstances

by Sheldon Siegel

  Skipper is pleased. "I thought the overdubbing of the theme from LA. Law was a nice touch."

  Mort growls, "Judge Chen will never let that tape in, Skipper. It's been edited a million times. It doesn't prove anything. It's a piece of shit."

  McNulty's jaw tightens as he looks at Mort. "We'll get it in," he says.

  Mort blusters, "The hell you will."

  McNulty turns to me. "By the way," he says, "we got more video footage last night. We haven't had time to get it copied. If we can get Skipper's VCR to work, we'll show it to you."

  Skipper pushes a button behind his desk and the opposite wall opens, revealing a twenty-seven-inch Mitsubishi TV. I bet Skipper is the only DA in California with his own movable wall.

  "Impressive," I say. "What's playing today? Twelve Angry Men?"

  "More film from the firm retreat," Skipper replies. "This one's even better."

  Swell. More highlights from Brent Hutchinson's coveted video library.

  Skipper dims the lights. I bet there aren't many DAs with a dimmer switch, either.

  The annoying music from LA. Law starts. The tape opens with a shot of a swimming pool near the tennis courts at Silverado. Nobody's swimming. The chairs are empty.

  The camera pans to the hot tub next to the pool. There are two people in the hot tub—a man and a woman. The theme from LA. Law continues to play. The video is shot from a distance. The camera zooms in on the hot tub. From the rear, I recognize Diana's stylish haircut. She's wearing a string bikini. As the camera focuses in on her, I see the top of her bikini is unfastened.

  "I didn't realize Hutch was a Peeping Tom," I say to nobody in particular.

  Skipper holds up his hand. He doesn't take his eyes off the screen. McNulty turns my way. I think he's trying to smile at me—an unnatural act for him.

  The cameraman moves to his left, staying focused on Diana. As he circles, the camera catches the side of her face. Then he pans back and I realize she's not only in the hot tub with a man—she's embracing him. The photographer moves farther to his left. He focuses on Diana. Then he focuses on the man she's kissing.

  It's Joel.

  McNulty stops the tape. Skipper turns up the lights. He's triumphant. "You still convinced there was no hanky-panky between Diana and Joel?" he asks.

  I don't answer.

  "There's one other thing, Mike," he says. "We've decided to ask for special circumstances. We're going to make this a death-penalty case."

  Mort's in an expansive mood as we drive toward downtown. He's also happy to get his cigars back. "In every case," he says, "there comes a time when you know whether it's a winner or a loser. Today, I think we came to an important point."

  I'm really not in the mood for this right now. "And what point is that, Mort?"

  "The point where I'm pretty sure we're completely and totally fucked."

  There you have it.

  "He has a videotape of you and Diana kissing in the hot tub at Silverado." I'm talking to Joel at Rabbi Friedman's house the same afternoon. It's time to explain the facts of life. Thankfully, his father is officiating at a funeral and his mother is at the grocery store. I add, as calmly as I can, that they've decided to ask for the death penalty.

  "Shit," he whispers.

  "Did I mention the fact that she'd unfastened her bikini top?"

  "No," he says quietly, "you didn't."

  "It's put-up time, Joel," I say. "We can't have any more surprises. They're going to blow a hole through our defense if you don't start telling me the truth."

  He's not giving. "It was nothing. She got playful in the hot tub. We got a little carried away."

  It rings hollow. "If you want to get something off your chest, now's the time. It won't get easier. They're going to use the tape at trial. Tell me the truth. I need to know what was going on."

  He looks right at me. "What do you want me to say?" he shouts. "We got carried away. That's it. I admit it. Okay? Diana and I were kissing in the hot tub. Are you happy now?"

  "Does Naomi know about this?"

  "No."

  I pause. "You'd better tell her. It's going to come out. And it's better if she hears it from you."

  "I know."

  Something's going on. "What is it, Joel?" I ask.

  "Naomi said she wants to take the kids down to her mother's in L.A. until the trial is over."

  This is not good news. "We need her. It can't look like she's abandoning you." I know how it feels to have a marriage shatter. When Rosie and I split up, the pain in the bottom of my stomach was unbearable for months. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I blamed myself. She blamed herself. We were both a mess. And we didn't help each other through it. And I wasn't on trial for murder when it happened to me. "Can you talk to her?"

  "I'll try," he whispers.

  "Good. Now tell me what was really going on between you and Diana."

  "Nothing," he says. "Honest to God. Nothing."

  He's on the verge of tears. He's begging me to believe him. My gut tells me he's telling the truth. My brain tells me he may be one helluva liar.

  22

  "I NEED YOUR HELP, DORIS"

  "We're delighted with the way the case has progressed so far. We're very confident."

  —Skipper Gates. NewsCenter 4. Monday, February 16.

  "Jesus, Mikey, you haven't spent a lot of time fixing this place up, have you?" Doris smiles. Three weeks later, on Monday, February 16, at ten in the morning, Doris is getting another look at my office. Nothing much has changed since the last time, except for the boxes of files and evidence for Joel's case.

  "I always water your plant."

  "Good thing." She gives me a hug. She's tan and more relaxed than I've seen her in a long time. She scrunches her face. "The daily special next door must be kung pao chicken."

  She's probably right. "How was your trip?" I ask.

  "Great. I love the Bahamas. I've met a lot of people down there over the years. Bob had business with a couple of the bankers. They showed me a good time."

  "How's Jenny?"

  "Okay." She shrugs. "Last semester. A lot of stress." We exchange small talk. She shows me photos from her trip. After a few minutes, she turns serious. "Mikey, why did you ask me to come down here today?"

  I look right at her. "We're getting ready for Joel's trial. Things aren't going so well." I take a deep breath. "I need your help, Doris."

  "I figured. It's going to cost you, though."

  "How much?"

  "At least one, and maybe two, cups of coffee. Maybe even lunch."

  "I'll talk to our executive committee. I'll see what I can do."

  "If you want to understand Bob," Doris says as she takes a drink of coffee, "you have to go back to his early years at the firm. Things were different. The firm was smaller." She winks. "The legal profession was a lot less complicated." She gets a faraway look in her eyes. Ah, the good old days.

  "Anyway," she continues, "they hired Bob right out of Harvard to work with Leland Simpson, as in Simpson and Gates. I was Leland's secretary."

  "What was he like?"

  "A gentleman, although some people thought he was a greedy old son of a you-know-what."

  I never met Leland. According to my sources, he was an elegant man from one of the wealthiest families in the city. Depending on who's telling the story, he may also have been racist, sexist and anti-Semitic.

  She continues. "Leland tried to take Bob under his wing, but he wasn't real receptive. He thought he knew everything. He told me on his first day he was going to be running the place within five years. Leland had him pegged. He said we'd have to take him down a rung or two."

  "Was Bob married?"

  "Yes. His first, to his high-school sweetheart, Sue, who was pregnant with his first son, Robert III. The marriage lasted only a year or two. By the time the baby was born, they were already separated. She left him and went back to Wilkes-Barre. There was a rumor that she ended up in an institution."

  If working with Bob
was hard, I can only imagine what it must have been like living with him. "Did the divorce have any effect on him?" I ask.

  "Not really. He used to say he was going to sleep with every unmarried woman in the Bay Area. There was no such thing as AIDS back then."

  It seems he was developing a pattern of behavior he continued for the rest of his life.

  "Things weren't going so well for him at the firm," she continues. "To be honest, he was lazy. His career limped along for a few years. At one point, they were going to ask him to leave. Then he married Elizabeth Sutro, whose father was the presiding judge of the San Francisco Superior Court. He started getting introductions into some of the city's tonier circles. Leland decided it might be a good idea to keep him around."

  "I guess you don't want to piss off the presiding judge."

  "Something like that, Mike."

  I find it difficult to picture Bob Holmes in black tie at social functions in Pacific Heights.

  She looks at my plant. "Then Bob got involved with Leland's biggest client, Vincent Russo Sr. He was a doctor from Hillsborough who made a lot of money and invested it in real estate. Eventually, he gave up his medical practice altogether to manage his investments full-time. According to Leland, Vince senior predicted every trend in the real-estate business for twenty years. He practically invented the real-estate syndication business. He made a fortune."

  "Which his son pissed away," I reply. She knows more about Russo's business than I thought.

  "Something like that," she replies.

  "So how did Bob get involved with Vince senior?"

  She chuckles. "Right place at the right time. Vince senior had two in-house lawyers. Ron Dawson was a decent attorney, but not the brightest star in the galaxy. Joan Russell was really smart and an absolute workhorse. When she got pregnant, she took six months off. Dawson was overwhelmed, so Vince senior asked Leland if he could borrow an attorney until she got back."

  "So Leland lent him Bob?"

  "That's right. Leland was happy to get Bob out of his hair. Instead of staying for six months, he stayed for three years. He spent his time sucking up to Russo and Dawson. They loved him."

  She explains that shortly after Bob returned to the firm, Leland had a heart attack and died. Bob was the only attorney at the firm who had extensive contact with Russo and Dawson.

  "Sounds like he had pretty good leverage," I say.

  She fingers the small gold chain that holds her glasses. "I'll never forget Leland's funeral. Bob pulled me aside and said he had the firm by the ‘short hairs.’ " She makes little quotation marks in the air with her hands. "He told me he'd take care of me if I stuck with him. I thought it was disgusting." She scowls. "Anyway, he went out and got a couple of offers from other firms. He told Art if they didn't make him a partner, he'd take Russo's business with him to Pettit and Martin. So they rolled over. Made him a partner two years early. Gave him a big office and his own secretary—me. And pretty much everything else he asked for."

  "The monster was born."

  "Something like that."

  It's noon and we have adjourned to the Chinese restaurant. I munch a spring roll. Doris chews a potsticker. "What happened with Bob and the former Elizabeth Sutro?" I ask.

  "Their marriage lasted almost five years. He seemed happy. She was pretty and she had lots of money. They had three kids and bought a big house on Broadway. Servants and everything. The firm was paying him a fortune. They put him on X-Com."

  "So he really was running the firm by the time he was thirty-five."

  "Yes. But in the early years, he was much more businesslike. He instituted financial controls. We opened the overseas offices. Then he started to get on everybody's nerves. The old-timers resented him because he kept insisting they bring in more business. The younger partners resented him, too, because they thought he manipulated the compensation system. Every year, he demanded more money. Every year, they gave in to him. He targeted partners he didn't like. Cut their points. Some got fired."

  I'm vaguely familiar with that scenario.

  She sips her tea. "Things got nasty during his second divorce," she says. "He actually swore off sex for a short period. It was supposed to be a year, but it only lasted about a week." She arches her eyebrows. "Then he found another girlfriend."

  Wife number three was Elizabeth Jorgensen, the weekend anchor on Channel 4. Around the firm, she was known as Elizabeth II. A year later, she dumped Bob and ran off with the weekend weatherman.

  It's almost one. The waiter brings us fortune cookies. We're up to wife number four, Elizabeth Ryan, or Elizabeth III, a tenacious litigator with the Anderson firm. She's always been polite to me, but I wouldn't mess with her. "You know Beth used to be married to Art Patton," Doris says.

  "I wasn't aware of that."

  "Art was not happy when she married Bob."

  I'll bet. "Is that when Art began his search for the perfect trophy wife?"

  She doesn't dignify the question with an answer. "Bob and Beth were married five years ago," she says. "They had three kids. Of course, he was sleeping around the entire time."

  Bob was a busy guy. Give him points for being consistent. Sort of like a dog in perpetual heat, without the charm.

  "About two years ago," she says, "Beth told him she'd had enough. She said she'd divorce him and take every penny." She asks the waiter for water. "He was good for about six months."

  A new record.

  "Then he met Diana. He was infatuated with her."

  After almost three hours, we've finally made it to the good stuff.

  "Mike," she says quietly, "am I going to have to testify at the trial?"

  Damn right you're going to have to testify—if your testimony helps us. "I hope not. If it helps Joel, we may have no other choice. I'll try to keep you out of it if I can, but it may be tough."

  She gives me a knowing look. "I figured you'd say that," she says.

  "I know you and Bob were close. But I'm running out of time and I'm running out of leads. I need you to tell me what you know. I promise to do my best to keep your part in this as small as I can."

  "Okay, Mikey." She takes a deep breath. "Bob and Diana had a torrid affair. He sent her flowers. They met at hotels during the day. They used to sneak off on business trips."

  I keep my eyes on her. "How long was this going on?"

  "From the time she started until the beginning of this past December. They were at it for a little over a year. That's when Beth found out. Actually, it's a miracle she didn't figure it out sooner. Everyone at the firm knew about it."

  Everyone but me, of course.

  "I think she put a private eye on his tail. He caught Bob and Diana in bed. Beth told him she was going to file for divorce. I was there the night she confronted him. He begged her for one last chance. He broke it off with Diana."

  "And?"

  "Obviously, the reconciliation was unsuccessful."

  Duh, Mike. She did, in fact, serve him with divorce papers. I ask the waiter for the check. "Doris," I say, "did you know Diana was pregnant?"

  Her eyes dart away. "Yes, I knew."

  "Do you have any idea who the father might be?"

  "I don't know."

  "Doris," I say slowly, "do you think it could have been Joel?"

  "Come on, Mike. You know Joel. Not a chance."

  At two o'clock, we're back in my office. Doris doesn't seem to be getting tired. "What was young Vince Russo like?" I ask.

  Her expression turns to genuine disgust. "A pig. A sexist. A self-centered jerk."

  "Don't sugarcoat it, Doris. Tell me how you really feel."

  She doesn't smile. "He was a wild animal. He treated everyone like dirt. He cheated on his wives. He cheated his business partners. He's lucky he didn't end up in jail."

  "Was he friends with Bob?"

  "In a manner of speaking. Bob pretended to be friends with any client who paid him a lot of money. Bob hated his guts, but Vince didn't know it."

  "Did t
hey socialize?"

  "Well," she says, "they went on business trips together to the Far East. If chasing thirteen-year-old virgin barmaids in Thailand falls within your definition of socializing, the answer to your question is yes."

  "Do you think he may still be alive?"

  "Wouldn't surprise me."

  I decide it may be time to change the subject. "Do you know anything about Bob's will?"

  She nods uneasily. "I typed it. I'd rather not talk about it. It's private."

  "I understand. But it's going to become a matter of public record. It will save me a lot of time if you can tell me a little bit about it."

  "What do you need to know?"

  "Do you know who the beneficiaries are?"

  She pauses. After more than twenty years of guarding Bob's secrets, she's uncomfortable revealing the terms of his most personal document. "A third to Beth, a third to the kids and a third to charity."

  Sounds pretty straightforward. "Do you know if Bob was going to change his will?"

  She studies me. "Maybe. He asked me to print out a copy of his will the day before he died. If he did make any changes, he didn't ask me to do it."

  "Did he have a lot of money?"

  "I would think so, but I don't know for sure. He kept his finances private."

  No big surprise. "Do you know which charities were named in the will?"

  "Actually, it's a charity down in the Bahamas called the International Charitable Trust. He donated a lot of money to it over the years."

  That name keeps popping up. "Do you know what the International Charitable Trust does?"