Steve Martini - Undue Influence

‘Then what the hell was that all about?’

Cassidy gives him arching eyebrows, a look as if she’s not sure what he’s talking about. This is enough to ignite a flame under the judge.

‘You know very well what I’m talking about,’ he snaps. ‘That crap out there about gunshot residue,’ he says. ‘I gave you latitude for one narrow inquiry and you abused it. You want to be joining Mr. Madriani’s client in jail, just keep it up,’ he says.

I can tell by the look that Harry finds this particularly pleasing. If there were rocking loge seats, he would go for popcorn.

‘I keep a little score sheet up on the bench,’ Woodruff tells her. ‘Try me one more time,’ he says, ‘and a little mark goes down by your name. For the first one I’ll fine you. Collect two of them and when this trial is over I’ll want you back here with your toothbrush. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Your honor. The jury has to be allowed to hear the evidence, to form its own-’

‘Do I make myself clear ?’ Woodruff booms in the little hallway. I know it can be heard out into the courtroom.

Harry is veritably itching, hoping, praying, that she will say just one more word.

‘Yes, your honor.’

The wrong ones.

‘Good.’ Woodruff pushes past her and leaves us all standing in the dark, looking at one another, Cassidy rolling her eyes, like what a bastard, but she’s playing to the wrong audience.

Jenny Lang is a problem for us. We thought she was chaff on the state’s witness list, several dozen false targets that the prosecution will always throw out, hoping that you waste your time investigating, chasing a name they have no intention of actually calling.

I look at Harry. He gives me a shrug, like let’s hope it’s nothing.

Lang is a friend of Laurel’s from a past life. A woman who shared her circle six years ago when their children attended the same private school and Laurel was married to Jack. Since then their paths have diverged. Lang works as a bookkeeper for a lobbying group downtown. She and Laurel do lunch on a rare occasion, the last time about eight months ago.

Cassidy has supplied no statement reduced to writing summarizing Lang’s testimony, and when Harry and I grilled Laurel as to why Lang’s name showed up on Morgan’s list of witnesses, Laurel didn’t have a clue. We figured she had to be a loss leader. We were wrong.

Today Lang is dressed in a suit, patterns of black and white with a dark cravat at the neck, and high heels, what the busy businesswoman wears on the job. Lang might stand five-foot-three and tip a hundred pounds on the scale, with salt-and-pepper hair cut short off the shoulders.

As she turns to take the oath, Harry and I are scrambling trying to figure where and how she fits in their case. She swings her purse from the strap off her shoulder, holding it in one hand while she raises the other and swears to tell the truth. If there is a sense of foreboding in all of this, it comes from the obvious manner in which Lang avoids eye contact with Laurel.

‘Please state your name for the record?’

‘Jenny Lang.’

‘Your full legal name?’

‘Jennifer Ann Lang.’ She is a feeble wreck on the stand, not happy to be here. This hangs like a sign about her neck, like an invitation to a mugging.

Morgan has positioned herself in a direct line between the witness and Laurel, feet spread wide, hands on her hips, forming an impenetrable barrier between the two women.

‘Ms. Lang. Do you know the defendant, Laurel Vega?’

‘Yes. We were, we are friends,’ she says.

‘Can you tell the court how long have you’ve known the defendant?’

‘Gee. It’s been — I don’t know.’ She thinks for a moment. ‘At least eight years, on and off,’ she says. ‘Our children went to school together.’

‘When’s the last time you saw each other, before today?’

‘Perhaps six months,’ she says. She tries to see around, to find Laurel for some confirmation of this, but is barred by Cassidy, who is now doing her own rendition of the Great Wall of China.

‘And what was the occasion of that last meeting?’

‘A luncheon date,’ she says.

‘Do you recall the location of that meeting?’ All the little details of her memory so that the jury will take with credence whatever damage it is that Lang is intended to inflict here.

‘It was at Sabrina’s. A restaurant on the Mall. We used to meet there quite often.’

There’s a lot of nervous posturing here by the witness, aimless smiles at the judge, at Cassidy, at no one in particular. Jennifer Lang seems to know where Cassidy is headed, and instinct tells me she is not particularly anxious to get there.

‘Let me take you back to June of last year, Ms. Lang, and ask you if you remember a conversation with another woman, a Ms. Ann Edlin, who worked in your office?’

‘I remember Ann.’

Suddenly Laurel grips my thigh under the table and leans into my ear. ‘Ann Edlin,’ she whispers. ‘She’s on Jack’s staff.’ In hushed tones Laurel tells me that this is trouble. The small world that is the Capitol.

‘And do you remember during a conversation relating certain things to Ms. Edlin, things that had been conveyed to you during your earlier luncheon meeting by the defendant, Laurel Vega?’

Jennifer Lang is looking up at the ceiling, her chin quivering, head starting to sway. I think maybe there are tears beginning to well in her eyes.

‘But you said-’

‘Do you remember…?’

‘Yes. I remember talking to Ann.’

‘Ms. Edlin?’

‘Yes.’

‘And do you remember telling her about matters involving the defendant’s marriage, information given to you by Laurel Vega over lunch?’

Lang bites her lower lip like she could chew it off. ‘I thought we weren’t going to have to get into all of this,’ she whines.

‘Just answer the question,’ says Cassidy. ‘Do you remember-’

‘Yes.’

‘Let me finish the question. Do you remember telling Ann Edlin about matters involving the defendant’s marriage — things related to you by Laurel Vega over lunch?’

‘Yes.’ Lang is upset. It is clear that some deception is being played out by Morgan. She is famous for little agreements, inducements to get a witness to testify, that suddenly go sour when the witness is on the stand. In Cassidy’s book this saves time and money that might ordinarily be spent preparing and serving subpoenas.

‘Can you tell the court what it was that you and Laurel Vega talked about that day over lunch?’

Lang doesn’t have a choice. Cassidy knows what was said, because she has a witness, unless Lang wants to backtrack and claim that she embellished on the earlier conversation when she repeated it to Edlin. The witness, caught in a trap of her own making.

‘We talked a lot about a lot of things,’ she says.

‘Like what?’

‘Like our kids.’

‘What else?’

What is happening is clear. Jennifer Lang has fallen into the pit of shifting loyalties. The Capitol employment market is not unlike the human auction blocks of the antebellum South. The only difference is that careers are bought and sold instead of people. This is a place where allegiances shift faster than most of us change our underwear. In such a setting there is no such thing as a friend, at least not an enduring one. Ann Edlin, it seems, quickly found the currency of advancement under the golden dome, a few closely held confidences whispered into the ear of her new boss, Jack Vega.

‘We talked about the divorce,’ says Lang.

‘That would be Laurel Vega’s divorce from her husband?’

‘Right.’ Lang is seething as she looks at Cassidy, a mix of anger and fear.

‘And what did Laurel Vega tell you about that divorce?’