“Okay, Mr. Haller, Ms. Freeman is objecting because my guess is that this is the first she’s heard about the Secret Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office and a federal target letter and what it all may or may not have to do with this case. I’m objecting myself because it’s the first I remember any mention of the federal government and I’m not going to allow you to go on a federal fishing trip in front of the jury. Now if you have something, I want an offer of proof on it right now, and then I want to know why Ms. Freeman doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Thank you, Judge,” Freeman said indignantly, hands on her hips.
I tried to defuse the situation a bit by casually stepping away from our tight grouping and moving toward the window with the view that rolled up the side of the Santa Monica Mountains. I could see the cantilevered homes along the crest. They looked like matchboxes ready to drop with the next earthquake. I knew what that was like, clinging to the edge.
“Your Honor, my office received an anonymously sent envelope in the mail that contained a copy of a federal target letter addressed to Louis Opparizio and ALOFT. It informed him that he and his company were the target of an investigation into fraudulent foreclosure practices undertaken on behalf of his client banks.”
I held up the document and envelope.
“I have the letter right here. It is dated two weeks before the murder and just eight days after the letter of complaint Bondurant sent to Opparizio.”
“When did you receive this supposedly anonymous envelope?” Freeman asked, her voice dripping with skepticism.
“It turned up yesterday in my P.O. box but wasn’t opened until last night. If counsel does not believe me I will have my office manager come over and you can ask her any question you like. She’s the one who went to the box.”
“Let me see it,” the judge demanded.
I handed Perry the letter and envelope. Freeman moved in close to him to read it as well. It was a short letter and he soon gave it back to me without asking Freeman if she was finished reading.
“You should’ve brought this up this morning,” the judge said. “At the very least you should have provided a copy to opposing counsel and told her you planned to introduce it.”
“Judge, I would have but it’s obviously a photocopy and it came in the mail. I’ve been sandbagged before. We probably all have. I needed to verify the document and make sure it was legitimate before I told anyone. I didn’t get that confirmation until less than an hour ago during the afternoon break.”
“What was the source of the confirmation?” Freeman asked before the judge could.
“I don’t know the exact details. My investigator simply told me that the letter was confirmed by the feds as legitimate. If you want further detail, I can also call in my investigator.”
“That won’t be necessary because I am sure Ms. Freeman will want to do her own due diligence. But bringing it up in cross-examination was far out of line, Mr. Haller. You should have informed the court this morning that you had received something in the mail that you were in the process of checking out and planned to introduce in court. You blindsided the state and the court.”
“I apologize, Your Honor. My intention was to handle it properly. I guess it was a learned behavior, seeing how the state has blindsided me at least twice so far with surprise evidence and questions about timing and chain of custody.”
Perry gave me a hard look but I knew he got the point. Ultimately, I believed he was a fair judge and would act accordingly. He knew the letter was legitimate and vital to the defense’s case. Basic fairness held that I be allowed to pursue it. Freeman read the same thing I did and tried to head the judge off.
“Your Honor, it’s four fifteen. I request that court be adjourned for the day so that the prosecution can digest this new material and be adequately prepared to proceed in the morning.”
Perry shook his head.
“I don’t like losing court time,” he said.
“I don’t either, Judge,” Freeman responded. “But no doubt, as you just said, I’ve been blindsided here. Counsel should have brought this information forward this morning. You cannot allow him to just proceed with it without the prosecution being prepared and conducting its own confirmation and due diligence as to the context of this information. I am asking for forty-five minutes, Judge. Surely, the state is entitled to that.”
The judge looked at me for opposing argument. I held my hands wide.
“Doesn’t matter to me, Judge. She can take all the time in the world but it doesn’t change the fact that Opparizio was and is under federal investigation for his dealings with WestLand among other banks. That would make the victim in this case a potential witness against him—the letter we introduced earlier makes that clear. The police and prosecution completely missed this aspect of the case and now Ms. Freeman wants to blame the messenger for their shallow invest—”
“Okay, Mr. Haller, we’re not in front of the jury here,” Perry said, cutting me off. “I understand your point. I’m going to adjourn early today but we’ll start at nine sharp tomorrow and I expect all parties to be prepared and for there to be no further delays.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” Freeman said.
“Let’s go back,” Perry said.
And we did.
* * *
My client was clinging to me as we left the courthouse. She wanted to know what other details I had about the federal investigation. Herb Dahl trailed behind us like the tail on a kite. I was uncomfortable speaking to both of them.
“Look, I don’t know what it means, Lisa. That’s one reason why the judge broke early today. So both the defense and the prosecution can do some work on it. You have to just back off for a bit and let me and my staff handle it.”
“But this could be it, right, Mickey?”
“What do you mean, ‘it’?”
“The evidence that shows it wasn’t me—that proves it!”
I stopped and turned to her. Her eyes were searching my face for any sign of affirmation. Something about her desperation made me think for the first time that she may have truly been framed for Bondurant’s murder.
But that wasn’t like me, to believe in innocence.
“Look, Lisa, I am hoping that it will very clearly demonstrate to the jury that there is a strong alternate possibility, complete with motive and opportunity. But you need to calm down and recognize that it might not be evidence of anything. I expect that the prosecution is going to come in tomorrow with an argument to keep it away from the jury. We have to be prepared to fend that off as well as to proceed without it. So I have a lot—”
“They can’t just do that! This is evidence!”
“Lisa, they can argue anything they want. And the judge will decide. The good thing is he owes us one. In fact, he owes us two for the hammer and the DNA dropping out of the sky. So I hope he’ll do the right thing here and we’ll get it in. That’s why you have to let me go now. I need to get back to the office and get to work on this.”
She reached up and patted down my tie and adjusted the collar on my suit coat.
“Okay, I get it. You do what you have to do, but call me tonight, okay? I want to know where things stand at the end of the day.”
“If there’s time, Lisa. If I’m not too tired, I will call.”
I looked over her shoulder at Dahl, who stood two feet behind her. I actually needed the guy at the moment.
“Herb, take care of her. Get her home so I can go back to work.”
“I’ve got her,” he said. “No worries.”
Right, no worries. I had the whole case to worry about and I couldn’t help but worry about my client going off with the man I just sent her with. Was Dahl for real or was he just protecting his investment? I watched them head off across the plaza toward the parking garage. I then walked past the library and north toward my office. I was probably more excited about the possibilities that had dropped into my lap than Lisa was. I just wasn’t showing it. You never sho
w your cards unless your opponent has called the final bet.
When I got back to the office I was still floating on adrenaline. The pure, high-octane form that comes with the unexpected twist in your favor. Cisco and Bullocks were waiting for me when I entered. They both started talking at once and I had to raise my hands to cut them both off.
“Hold on, hold on,” I said. “One at a time and I go first. Perry adjourned early so the state could jump on the target letter. We need to be ready for their best shot in the morning because I want to get it before the jury. Cisco, now you, what’ve you got? Tell me about the letter.”
My momentum, carried all the way from the courthouse, took us into my office and I went behind the desk. The seat was warm and I could tell someone had been working there all afternoon.
“Okay,” Cisco said. “We confirmed the letter was legit. The U.S. Attorney’s Office wouldn’t talk to us, but I found out that the Secret Service agent who’s named in the letter, Charles Vasquez, is assigned to a joint task force with the FBI that is looking into all angles of mortgage fraud in the Southern California district. Remember last year when all the big banks temporarily halted foreclosures and everybody in Congress said they would investigate?”
“Yeah, I thought I was going out of business. Until the banks started foreclosing again.”
“Yeah, well, one of the investigations that did get going was right here. Lattimore put together this task force.”
Reggie Lattimore was the U.S. attorney assigned to the district. I knew him years ago when he was a public defender. He later switched sides and became a federal prosecutor and we moved in different orbits. I tried to stay away from the federal courthouse. I saw him from time to time at lunch counters downtown.
“Okay, he won’t talk to us. What about Vasquez?”
“I tried him, too. I got him on the line, but as soon as he knew what it was about he had no comment. I called back a second time and he just hung up on me. I think if we want to talk to him we’re going to have to paper him.”
I knew from experience that trying to serve a subpoena on a federal agent could be like fishing without a hook on the end of your line. If they don’t want to be papered they’ll be able to avoid it.
“We might not have to,” I said. “The judge adjourned early so the prosecution could run the letter down. My guess is she’ll bring either Lattimore or Vasquez in and put him on before we can do it. Then she can try to spin it her way.”
“She won’t want this to blow up in her face during the defense phase,” Aronson added, like the seasoned trial veteran she was not. “And the best way to guard against that is to bring Vasquez in as a witness herself.”
“What do we know about this task force?” I asked.
“I don’t have anybody inside,” Cisco said. “But I’ve got someone close enough to know what is going on. The task force is obviously very political. The thinking was that there is so much fraud out there, it would be like shooting fish and they could grab headlines and look like they were doing something on their end about the whole mess. Opparizio is a perfect target: rich, arrogant and Republican. Whatever they are working in regard to him, it’s just starting and hasn’t gone very deep.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I said. “The target letter is all we need. It will make Bondurant’s letter look like a legitimate threat.”
“Do you really think this is what happened or are we just using this coincidence to deflect the jury’s attention?” Aronson asked.
She was still standing even though Cisco and I had sat down. There was something symbolic about it. As if by not sitting down with us as we schemed this out, she was not buying in or selling her soul.
“It doesn’t matter, Bullocks,” I said. “We have one job here and that’s to put a not guilty on the scoreboard. How we get there…”
I didn’t need to finish. I could see in her face that she was continuing to have difficulty with the lessons taught outside the classroom. I turned back to Cisco.
“So who leaked the letter to us?”
“That I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of doubt it was Vasquez. He acted too surprised and edgy on the phone. I’m thinking somebody in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”
I agreed.
“Maybe Lattimore himself. If we’re lucky enough to get Opparizio on the stand, it might actually help the feds to have him locked into some sworn testimony.”
Cisco nodded. It was as good a possibility as anything else. I moved on.
“Cisco,” I said, “the text you sent me in the courtroom said you had something unrelated to this to tell me.”
“To show you. We need to take a ride when we’re finished here.”
“Where?”
“I’d rather just show you.”
I could tell by the way his face froze that he wasn’t going to talk in front of Bullocks. It didn’t matter that she was a trusted part of the team. I got the message and turned back to her.
“Bullocks, you wanted to say something when I first came in?”
“Uh, no, I just wanted to talk about my testimony. But we have a few days before we need to touch base. I guess we should just stay in the moment.”
“You sure? I can talk.”
“No, go with Cisco. Maybe we’ll get some time tomorrow.”
I could tell that something in the initial conversation was bothering her. I let it go and got up from my desk. I felt sympathy for her but not too much. Idealism dies hard with everybody.
Thirty
I drove the Lincoln because Cisco had ridden his motorcycle to work. He directed me north on Van Nuys Boulevard.
“Is this about Lisa’s husband?” I asked. “You found him?”
“Uh, no, not about that. It’s about the two guys in the garage, Boss.”
“The guys who attacked me? You connected them to Opparizio?”
“Yes and no. It’s about them, but it’s not connected to Opparizio.”
“Then who the hell sent them after me?”
“Herb Dahl.”
“What? You gotta be shitting me.”
“I wish.”
I looked over at my investigator. I completely trusted him but wasn’t seeing the logic in Dahl’s putting the two goons on me. We’d had the dispute over movie control and money, but how would busting my ribs and twisting my nuts help him in that regard? At the time of the attack, I had just found out he had made the deal with McReynolds. I got mugged before I could even register a protest.
“You better run this down for me, Cisco.”
“I can’t really do that yet. That’s why we’re in the car.”
“Then talk to me. What’s going on? I’m in the middle of trial here.”
“Okay, you told me you didn’t trust Dahl and that I should check him out. I did. I also had a couple of my guys start to keep an eye on him.”
“By your guys you mean Saints?”
“That’s right.”
Once upon a time, long before he married Lorna, Cisco was with the Road Saints, a motorcycle club that was somewhere on the spectrum between the Hell’s Angels and the Shriners’ clowns on wheels. He managed to retire from membership without a criminal record and now maintained an association with the club. For a long time I did, too, serving as house counsel and handling various traffic, brawling and drug offenses that distracted the membership. That was how I had first met Cisco. He was running security investigations for the club and I started using him on the criminal cases that came up. The rest was history.
On more than one occasion over the years Cisco had enlisted the Saints on my behalf. I even credit them with saving my family from potential harm when I was involved in the Louis Roulet case. So it was not a surprise to me that he had called on them again, except that he hadn’t bothered to clue me in.
“Why didn’t you tell me this?”
“I didn’t want to complicate things for you. You had the case to worry about. I was handling the two dirtbags who messed you up.”
By
messed up he meant more than physically. He was keeping me out of things because he knew that sometimes the psychological beating you take is worse than the physical. He didn’t want me distracted or looking over my shoulder.
“Okay, I get it,” I said.
Cisco reached inside his black-leather riding vest and pulled out a folded photograph. He handed it to me and I waited until I stopped at the light at Roscoe before I looked. I unfolded it and saw a picture of Herb Dahl getting into a car with the two black-gloved assailants who had so expertly put me down on the floor of the parking garage by the Victory Building.
“Recognize them?” Cisco asked.
“Yeah, it’s them,” I said, anger rising in my throat. “Fucking Dahl, I’m going to kick his fucking ass.”
“Maybe. Turn left here. We’re going to the compound.”
I looked over my shoulder and squeezed the car into the turning lane just as the light changed and I got the signal. We headed west and I had to flip down the visor against the dropping sun. By compound I knew he meant the Saints’ clubhouse, which was near the brewery on the other side of the 405 Freeway. It had been a while since I had been there.
“When was that photo taken?” I asked.
“While you were in the hospital. They didn’t—”
“You’ve been sitting on this since then?”
“Relax. I wasn’t checking with my guys every day, okay? They also didn’t know about your ass getting kicked. So they saw Dahl with these guys, took a couple of pictures and never showed them to me because they didn’t print them out for more than a month. It was a fuckup, I know, but these guys aren’t pros. They’re lazy. I take responsibility for it. So if you need to blame someone, blame me. I saw the photo for the first time last night. The other thing is my guys told me they didn’t get it with the camera but they also saw Dahl give both of these assholes a roll of cash. So I think it’s pretty clear. He hired them to kick your ass, Mick.”
The Fifth Witness: A Novel Page 25