Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

But there it was, hanging in midair, just waiting for the jurors to fill in the final syllable for themselves. No openbook exam, with the answers typed in bold at the end of each chapter, could ever have been easier.

Burke sat down, barely able to suppress a triumphant smirk. Jaywalker had labored hard and long to prepare the jury for just this testimony. He'd brought up the life insurance business as early as jury selection and hammered away at it repeatedly. He'd talked about it again in his opening state ment. He'd even tried to defuse it in his cross-examination of the previous witness, the accountant, Mr. Smythe. But none of those efforts had come close to preparing the jury for just how devastating the evidence would prove to Samara. Talk about motive? Here she'd bet twenty-seven thousand dollars of her own money, hoping to rake in a pot of twenty-five million on the possibility that within six months' time her husband would be dead. Not from cancer or heart disease, the things he was known to have had, and the things that just about everybody died from. What did that leave? Drag racing? Lightning? Snakebite? Spontaneous human combustion?

What it left was murder.

Still, Jaywalker couldn't very well leave Miranda Thomas alone. She'd hurt Samara far too much for that. He rose slowly from his seat, gathered his notes and worked his way over to the lectern, all the while giving the witness his most dangerous gunfighter squint, as though he knew he had something on her.

Though Lord knew he didn't.

MR. JAYWALKER: Ms. Thomas, you'd have us believe that policies such as this, where the payout is huge but so are the premiums, make no sense except for risk takers. Yet that's not quite true, is it?

MS. THOMAS: Excuse me?

MR. JAYWALKER: Isn't it true that there's an en tirely separate category of individuals who take out precisely this sort of life insurance with very little re gard to risky endeavors?

MS. THOMAS: I'm not sure what you're getting at.

MR. JAYWALKER: By any chance, does the term "estate taxes" help you re member?

MS. THOMAS: I don't know.

MR. JAYWALKER: You do know what estate taxes are, don't you?

MS. THOMAS: Yes.

MR. JAYWALKER: What are they?

MS. THOMAS: They're the percentage the government takes out of an es tate before it gets distributed.

MR. JAYWALKER: Do all estates get taxed?

MS. THOMAS: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: Only those up in the millions, right?

MS. THOMAS: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: Only those of the rich?

MS. THOMAS: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: Was Barry Tannenbaum rich?

MS. THOMAS: I wouldn't know.

MR. JAYWALKER: Really?

MS. THOMAS: Really.

MR. JAYWALKER: Had you ever heard of him? Before his death, I mean.

MS. THOMAS: Yes.

MR. JAYWALKER: What had you heard about him?

MS. THOMAS: I don't know.

MR. JAYWALKER: Let me help you. Had you

MS. THOMAS: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: One of the tallest?

MS. THOMAS: No. heard that he was one of the oldest men in the world?

MR. JAYWALKER: One of the best looking?

MS. THOMAS: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: What had you heard?

MS. THOMAS: That he was rich.

MR. JAYWALKER: One of the richest in the en tire world?

MS. THOMAS: Supposedly.

MR. JAYWALKER: Ms. Thomas, isn't it a fact, a dirty little fact, that policies of this sort are frequently used by the very, very rich as a strategy to avoid pay ing estate taxes?

MS. THOMAS: I suppose that's possible.

MR. JAYWALKER: They can afford the huge pre miums, after all. And the payouts, when they're made, aren't counted as part of their estates. So they're distributed tax-free. Right?

MS. THOMAS: I guess.

MR. JAYWALKER: You guess? Or am I right?

MS. THOMAS: You're right.

MR. JAYWALKER: So really, companies like yours engage in this game. They collect these huge premiums, which are calculated by actuaries to more than cover the huge payouts. Everybody wins, don't they?

MS. THOMAS: You could say so.

MR. JAYWALKER: Except the government, which gets cheated out of its revenue. And who do you think gets taxed in order to make up that lost reve nue?

MS. THOMAS: I wouldn't know.

MR. JAYWALKER: Of course you would. You get taxed, and I get taxed, and Mr. Burke gets taxed. And Stanley Merkel here, and Leona Sturdivant, and Vito

MR. BURKE: Objection!

THE COURT: Sustained.

MR. JAYWALKER: — Todesco, and Shirley John son, and

MR. BURKE: Objection! Objection!

THE COURT: The objection is sustained. Sit down, Mr. Jaywalker. (Mr. Jaywalker sits) Thank you. The jury is instructed to disregard the refer ences made to individual jurors. Mr. Jaywalker, do you have any further questions of the witness?

MR. JAYWALKER: No.

Burke did, though. He had Ms. Thomas insist that by writing such policies, her company was acting perfectly legally. The insurance industry was highly regulated, she explained, and couldn't get away with breaking the law. Furthermore, even with its tax advantages, the six-month premium continued to make the Tannenbaum policy highly unusual as an investment strategy, because of the exclu sion clause.

On recross, Jaywalker tried to get her to say that the six month term of the policy might represent nothing more sinister than a simple shortage of funds on the part of the premium payer. When she hedged, Jaywalker abruptly changed course, something he'd earned a well-deserved reputation for doing over the years.

MR. JAYWALKER: Personally, you don't see this as a tax-avoidance strategy at all, do you, Ms. Thomas?

MS. THOMAS: No, I don't.

MR. JAYWALKER: You see it as a transparent, high-stakes bet that Mr. Tannenbaum was going to be dead within six months, don't you?

MS. THOMAS: Exactly.

MR. JAYWALKER: And not dead from cancer or heart disease, right?

MS. THOMAS: Right.

MR. JAYWALKER: As you tried to say earlier, before I so rudely interrupted you, the whole thing looks pretty damn fishy to you, doesn't it?

MS. THOMAS: (To the Court) Am I allowed to answer that?

THE COURT: Yes.

MS. THOMAS: I'd say it looks more than fishy.

MR. JAYWALKER: What does it look like to you?

MS. THOMAS: (Looks at the Court)

THE COURT: Go ahead.

MS. THOMAS: You're not going to like this, but it looks to me like your client took out the pol icy because she planned on killing her husband.

There are courtrooms, and there are quiet courtrooms. Right then, that one was as quiet as any that Jaywalker had ever been in. It was as though the judge, the staff, the jurors and the spectators were witnessing the complete and utter self-destruction of a lawyer and his client, right before their very eyes. Talk about spontaneous human combustion. It was as though it wouldn't have surprised anyone if, at that very moment, Jaywalker had burst into flames, or vaporized. Instead, he plunged right on, as though totally oblivious.

MR. JAYWALKER: Now, you're not a detective, are you, Ms. Thomas?

MS. THOMAS: No, of course not.

MR. JAYWALKER: Or a federal agent?

MS. THOMAS: No.

MR. JAYWALKER: If you don't mind my asking, how far did you go in school?

MS. THOMAS: I have a high school equivalency diploma.

MR. JAYWALKER: And yet you can see clear through this little scheme of Samara's, can't you?

MS. THOMAS: Yes, I can.

MR. JAYWALKER: It's that obvious, isn't it?

MS. THOMAS: I sure think so.

MR. JAYWALKER: Tell me, Ms. Thomas. Has it ever occurred to you that's it's a little bit too obvious?

MS. THOMAS: What do you mean by that?

MR. JAYWALKER: What I mean is that it's so Goddamned obvious that it's got to be a frame! That no one in their right mind could possibly believe they could get away with

His speech was drowned out by Tom Burke's shouts of objection, and by the repeated banging of the judge's gavel. When finally some semblance of quiet was restored, which took a minute, Jaywalker took advantage of it to say, "No more questions." And Burke, red-faced and livid, an nounced that The People's case had concluded.