MD01 - Special Circumstances

by Sheldon Siegel

  "Overruled."

  Skipper is sorry he said anything. "Mr. Hanson," I continue, "are you sure he was having a sexual relationship with this woman?"

  He reaches into his pocket. "I can show you some pictures, if you'd like."

  Skipper leaps up. "Your Honor," he shouts.

  Judge Chen turns to Nick. "That won't be necessary, Mr. Hanson."

  He pouts. "I understand, Your Honor."

  "Mr. Hanson," I continue, "were you able to identify the woman?"

  He juts out his lower lip and nods at the jury. "Oh yes. It was Diana Kennedy."

  "So, on December first, you saw Mr. Holmes and Ms. Kennedy engaging in sex at Ms. Kennedy's apartment?"

  "Yeah." He shrugs. I don't expect him to blush.

  "And you reported this to Mrs. Holmes?"

  "Indeed I did."

  "And what did she do?"

  "She paid me."

  Judge Chen beats back a smile.

  "Didn't she also confront her husband with pictures you provided?" I ask.

  "Yeah." He frowns. "I think she laid it on him pretty thick."

  I'll bet she did. "And did Mrs. Holmes ask you to do anything else?"

  "Yeah. She wanted to be sure he stayed on the wagon, if you know what I mean." He winks.

  "I take it you mean that she wanted you to keep Mr. Holmes under surveillance to be sure that he didn't continue his relationship with Ms. Kennedy?"

  "Yeah. Or anybody else, for that matter." He grins. "Except for Mrs. Holmes, of course."

  "Of course. Mr. Hanson, did you continue to observe Mr. Holmes?"

  "Yeah."

  "Did he ‘stay on the wagon,’ as you've so eloquently put it?"

  "Your Honor," Skipper says.

  "Sit down, Mr. Gates," she replies.

  Nick shakes his head. "No, Mr. Daley," he says. "Sadly, Mr. Holmes fell off the wagon."

  More grins in the gallery. I can see how this guy writes mysteries in his spare time. "Oh, dear," I deadpan. "When exactly did he fall off the wagon, Mr. Hanson?"

  "On December twenty-eighth."

  "Would you mind telling us what happened?"

  "Sure." He clears his throat. "Mrs. Holmes told me Mr. Holmes was going to attend a dinner at the Fairmont. On a couple of occasions, he'd met Ms. Kennedy there. He had a favorite room in the tower where they used to go for, uh, recreational purposes." He glances at the judge. "When I heard he was going to be at the Fairmont, I got a room across the street at the Mark Hopkins. It had a direct view into the room where Mr. Holmes liked to hang out. I ordered room service, set up my telescope and telephoto camera, and waited. At eleven-forty-five, he came back to the room with a woman. It was hard to tell what was going on because it was dark."

  "But you could see that Mr. Holmes was in the room with a woman."

  "Oh yeah."

  "And you're sure the woman was not Mrs. Holmes?"

  "I'm sure about that. I was talking to Mrs. Holmes on my cellular phone the entire time. She wasn't very happy about it."

  "What were Mr. Holmes and the woman doing in the hotel room?"

  He looks at the judge. "Am I allowed to say this in court, Your Honor?" he asks innocently.

  "Please be discreet," she says. "But you must be truthful, of course."

  "Of course, Your Honor." He shrugs and looks at me. "For lack of a better term, Mr. Daley, Mr. Holmes and the woman were engaging in oral sex."

  I stand at the lectern. I try not to move a muscle until the roar dies down. Judge Chen pounds her gavel. Skipper shouts his objections. I look at the jurors. They're all smiling.

  Judge Chen points her gavel at me and says, "Mr. Daley, you've made your point. Can we move along, please?"

  "Yes, Your Honor." I turn back to Nick. "Mr. Hanson, were you able to identify the woman in the room with Mr. Holmes?"

  "No. Like I said, it was pretty dark. She left quickly. I ran across the street to try to identify her, but by the time I got up the elevators, she had already left."

  Somehow, I have trouble imagining Nick running anywhere. "Can you describe the woman?"

  "Yes. Young. Slender. Long hair."

  "Long hair?"

  "Yes. I'm sure."

  "Mr. Hanson, you're aware that Diana Kennedy had short hair, aren't you?"

  "Indeed I am."

  "So, what did you conclude?"

  "I concluded the woman in the room was not Diana Kennedy."

  I glance at Rosie. "Mr. Hanson, did Mrs. Holmes ask you to follow Mr. Holmes during the entire month of December last year?"

  "Yeah. I was on him like a glove."

  "And from December first through December twenty-eighth, did you ever see Mr. Holmes and Ms. Kennedy together, other than at work?"

  "No."

  "Did you take any nights off during that period?"

  "No. For what Mrs. Holmes was paying me, I would have stayed up for six months straight."

  "And you never saw Mr. Holmes and Ms. Kennedy together?"

  "Objection, Your Honor," Skipper says wearily. "Asked and answered."

  "Sustained."

  "No further questions."

  Skipper's cross-examination ends quickly. First, he questions Nick's eyesight. It's twenty-fifteen. He questions how Nick could have been able to determine that Bob and the woman were having oral sex in a dark room. Nick replies that he has a very powerful telephoto lens and offers to describe their every move in intimate detail. Skipper decides not to pursue it. He questions Nick's stamina. He suggests that an eighty-two-year-old man may not be able to stay up all night watching Bob Holmes for an entire month. This irritates the retired bus driver on the jury. Nick explains that he and his three sons and four grandsons work in shifts. Unbeknownst to Bob Holmes, there was a set of Hanson eyes on him virtually every waking moment in the month of December. Another set of Hanson eyes chased Diana Kennedy. Skipper sits down. He knows the jury is entranced with this diminutive PI. After five minutes, Nick marches triumphantly down the center aisle and out of the courtroom. As soon as he's out the door, Judge Chen turns to me and says, "This might be a good time for a short break."

  Rosie and Joel are all smiles in the consultation room. "Cherish the moment," Rosie says. "You may never get a chance to examine him again."

  Joel shakes his head. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes."

  "We've got some good momentum now," I say. "Let's keep pushing."

  48

  "TOEING THE PARTY LINE"

  "Defense attorney Michael Daley is expected to call several witnesses who were at the Simpson and Gates offices on the night two attorneys died."

  —NEWSCENTER 4 LEGAL ANALYST MORTON GOLDBERG. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8.

  Jeff Tucker slithers to the stand after lunch. I stand right in front of him. "You used to work at the Simpson and Gates firm, didn't you, Mr. Tucker?"

  "Yes. Currently, I am general counsel of First Bank."

  "I see. And was your bank involved in the sale of Russo International that was supposed to close on December thirty-first?"

  "Yes. We were one of Mr. Russo's lenders."

  "Were you going to have a continuing relationship with Mr. Russo's company?"

  "No. Our loans were being paid off. We were delighted with the result."

  "Mr. Tucker, you visited with Mr. Russo at Simpson and Gates in the early evening of December thirtieth, didn't you?"

  "Yes. My superiors asked me to check on the deal. I had no reason to believe it wasn't going to close."

  "Did Mr. Russo appear upset to you?"

  This prompts a grin. "Mr. Russo always appeared upset to me. He was particularly nervous that night."

  "Was he happy about the deal?"

  "No. He wanted to keep his company. He thought he could manage it back to profitability."

  "So, Mr. Russo didn't really want to close the deal."

  "I didn't say that."

  "Let's not argue about semantics, Mr. Tucker. Isn't it fair to say that Mr. Russo
was unhappy about selling his father's company and that you had doubts as to whether the deal would close?"

  "That's fair."

  That pretty much covers it. "Mr. Tucker, did you talk to Mr. Holmes about the deal that night?"

  "Briefly. He was very agitated. He said he couldn't predict what Vince Russo would do."

  "It's possible that Russo pulled the plug before he disappeared, isn't it?"

  "Yes."

  "And it's even possible Russo killed Bob Holmes and Diana Kennedy, isn't it?"

  "Objection. Speculative. No foundation."

  "Sustained."

  "No further questions." I've made my point.

  The parade continues throughout the afternoon. Ed Ehrlich swears that the deal was going to close. He assures us the city was 100 percent behind the deal.

  Dan Morris is even more reassuring than Ehrlich. And far more polished. Morris tells us he was certain that the deal was going to close. "The only way it wouldn't have closed," he says, "was if Vince Russo changed his mind."

  "Is it possible that he did so?"

  "Anything's possible, Mr. Daley."

  That's as far as I get before Judge Chen sustains Skipper's objection.

  The afternoon concludes with testimony from Jack Frazier, who agrees with everyone who preceded him that Russo was going to close the deal, come hell or high water.

  "Mr. Frazier," I say, "isn't it true that you negotiated a forty-million-dollar reduction in the purchase price at the last minute?"

  "Yes."

  "And wasn't Mr. Russo quite upset about it?"

  Frazier looks at his attorney, Martin Glass, who is sitting in the gallery. "Yes," he replies. "He was quite upset. At one point, he stormed out of the conference room. He made quite a scene. He interrupted a cocktail party for Mr. Gates." He nods sheepishly at Skipper, whose face is impassive.

  "So it's possible Mr. Russo may have been so upset he decided to terminate the deal?"

  He shakes his head. "I'm not sure. I mean, I guess so. But the fact is, I really don't know. He seemed ready to close the last time I saw him."

  "And when was that?"

  "Around one o'clock."

  "And what time did you leave?"

  "Around one-thirty-five. Mr. Morris and I left together. We were talking about business."

  "Where did you and Mr. Morris go?"

  "We went home."

  There's nothing more that I can do. "No further questions, Your Honor."

  Joel is beside himself in the consultation room at the end of the day. The trial is nearing its conclusion and he is wearing down. "I thought the idea was to make them believe it was a suicide," he says. "If that doesn't work, I thought we were going to blame Russo. Why are you fucking around?"

  I'm exhausted. My patience is short. "All we can do with these witnesses is to ask them to speculate about what happened that night. The other side has the right to object. We have to do everything indirectly. We can't just ask them if they think Bob committed suicide. We have to give them a bunch of reasons why Bob would have been suicidal. I think we've shown the jury that Bob had a lot on his mind: a divorce, a deal that was going to implode, a girlfriend who was leaving him and a bonus that he wasn't going to get. That's as far as we can go."

  Rosie interjects in a calmer tone, "We have the same problem with Russo. Nobody saw him do anything. His fingerprints weren't on the gun. There's no evidence connecting him to the scene. All we can do is show he had opportunity and perhaps a lot of motive. That may be enough to get us to reasonable doubt and get an acquittal."

  Joel slumps back into his chair. He stares at the gray steel table. He chews on his lower lip. "That's really all we're trying to do at this point, isn't it? We're trying to punch holes in their case to generate enough doubt in enough members of the jury to get me off."

  He's hit the nail right on the head.

  "I want to testify," he says emphatically. "I want to set the record straight once and for all."

  Rosie and I look at each other. "Let's see how things go in the next few days," I say gently. "We don't have to make a decision until we've finished with the other witnesses."

  Rosie and I sit in her office at eight o'clock the same evening. She's finishing her cashew chicken. I'm drinking a Diet Dr Pepper. I'm just not hungry these days.

  "You think Joel is starting to crack?" she asks.

  "Maybe. Yeah. Probably." Time for a reality check. "You think we've got enough for reasonable doubt?"

  She ponders for a moment. "Hard to say. If you're on the jury, you're looking at a guy who's an admitted adulterer who's lied about his relationship with the victim. They've heard enough to conclude she dumped him. They know he was really pissed off at Bob. They may even decide that Bob stole his girlfriend. His fingerprints were all over the murder weapon and the keyboard. He left a threatening voice mail for Bob and he made a threatening phone call to Diana. He had a fight with her at Harrington's. He may have even lured her in. All we've shown so far is that they couldn't positively identify his fingerprint on the trigger. And that his keyboard somehow walked from his office to Bob's."

  "But our experts were good," I say. "They made a decent case for the suicide theory."

  "Our experts were expensive hired guns who were paid to say what we wanted them to say. The jury knows that. They'll discount their testimony."

  She's right, of course.

  The phone rings. Rosie puts Wendy on the speaker. "It's pouring in Nassau," she says.

  "Have you been able to talk to Trevor Smith yet?"

  "Not yet. Delayed again. He won't be back until Sunday. We'll be waiting for him." She pauses. "Have you put Chuckles on the stand yet?"

  "Not yet. Why?"

  "I was looking through the correspondence I got from Smith's secretary. And I went down to the office of public records. I'm going to fax some stuff to you."

  We talk for a few minutes and I hang up. I stand and put on my jacket.

  "You going home?" Rosie asks. "Not yet."

  "Where are you going?" "To play a hunch."

  49

  "IT JUST GOES TO SHOW WHAT A LITTLE PLANNING CAN DO"

  "The Guilford Insurance Agency. Life. Health. Peace of Mind."

  —Brochure for the Guilford Insurance Agency.

  My hunch pays off. At nine o'clock the same evening, I'm paying a visit to the darkened offices of Perry Guilford, S&G's insurance agent. His office is in a high-rise building on Market near Van Ness, a few blocks from City Hall. Most of the tenants in this building are state and local government agencies. The Guilford Insurance Agency occupies half of the third floor. The walk from the Civic Center underground parking garage through the homeless encampment on the Civic Center Plaza was treacherous. The streets are mean in this part of town, especially after dark. Guilford's reception area has lots of brochures on variable annuities. They promise life, health and peace of mind.

  "Mr. Guilford, I'm Mike Daley."

  Guilford and I are the only people here. "Please, Mr. Daley," he rasps, "it's Perry." Incandescent smile. His age and waistline are right around fifty-five years and inches, respectively. His jowls measure right up there with Art Pattern's, who is, coincidentally, his former brother-in-law from Guilford's first marriage about twenty years ago. His toupee is flattering in a pathetic sort of way.

  "Fair enough, Perry. It's Mike." His cufflinks are in the shape of gold cigars. His jowls jiggle. His red suspenders shake. "I appreciate your taking the time to see me. I know it's late."

  He laughs. "I'm sorry I've been hard to get hold of. I have a lot of evening appointments. Make yourself at home. Brent Hutchinson said you'd be calling. Anything I can do to help a member of the firm. Anything." He pats his ample gut and takes a gulp of Coke Classic. My arteries are beginning to harden just looking at this guy.

  "Actually, Perry, I left the firm at the end of last year. I've started my own shop. I was hoping you could help me get my insurance situation squared away."

  He's pl
eased. Fresh meat. "Great, Mike. That's just great. Anything I can do to help you. You know I handle all the insurance for S and G. It's my biggest account. I handle a couple of the other big law firms in town, too. I'm sure I can take care of you."

  "That's great, Perry. Let me tell you what I have in mind." We spend forty-five minutes discussing my insurance needs. I tell him I've purchased malpractice insurance through the state bar and ask him if he can get a better deal. I tell him about Grace and he describes various whole life policies. I haven't a clue what he's talking about. I figure if I let him talk, he may wear himself out.

  At the one-hour mark, he's starting to slow down. We're already on our third diagram. Insurance agents can't sell anything without drawing pictures. The last one looks like a basketball court, with a half-court line and two free-throw lines. I'm lost when we start on variable annuities.

  An hour and fifteen minutes into this torture, I ask him to prepare a written estimate of everything we've talked about. After he reminds me for the sixth time that he isn't in insurance just for the money, I decide it's time to see if I can get any useful information. "Helluva thing over at the Simpson firm, eh, Perry?"

  "Unbelievable, Mike. Helluva thing. Were you there that night?"

  "Yeah. Helluva thing."

  "You know, they'd really be in the soup if they hadn't planned ahead." He shuffles his papers. "It's a good thing they had life insurance on Bob Holmes."

  "It just goes to show what a little planning can do, right Perry?"

  "You bet. That's why you need to plan now, Mike. You want to take good care of little Mary if anything ever happens to you."

  "Actually, my daughter's name is Grace."

  He doesn't miss a beat. "That's right. Grace. Five years old."

  Close enough. "Did you handle all of Bob's life insurance?"

  "Yeah. And between us girls, it's a damn good thing I did. I talked him into buying some extra coverage. Didn't cost much. Got his wife a five-million term policy, and each of the kids got a million. They're set for life." He frowns melodramatically. "I was talking to Art about it. Helluva thing."

  "Yeah. And it was a damn good thing you got the firm to take down those key-man life insurance policies. Hell, without those, they'd really be in the soup."