Michael Connelly - The Fifth Witness

“I thought we were still talking about Opparizio,” Aronson protested.

I saw Cisco surreptitiously touch her arm in a not now signal. I appreciated that.

“You know what?” I said. “It’s been a long day. Sometimes not thinking about something is the best way to prepare for it. I’ll be in the office early tomorrow before going to court. If you want to come by. Otherwise, I’ll see you in court at nine.”

We said our goodbyes and I walked out with my ex-wife.

“You want to leave a car here or what?” I asked.

“No, too dangerous to come back here after dinner and being in bed with you. I’ll want to go in for one last drink and then it might not be the last. I have the sitter to relieve and work tomorrow, too.”

“Is that how you view it? Just dinner and sex and getting home by midnight?”

She could’ve really hurt me then, said I was whining like a woman complaining about men. But she didn’t.

“No,” she said. “I actually view it as the best night of the week.”

I raised my hand and clasped the back of her neck as we walked to our cars. She always liked that. Even if it was a public display of affection.

You could feel the tension rise with each step as Louis Opparizio made his way to the witness stand on Tuesday morning. He wore a light tan suit with a blue shirt and maroon tie. He looked dignified in a way that bespoke money and power. And it was clear that he looked at me through contemptuous eyes. He was my witness but obviously there was no love lost here. Since the start of the trial I had pointed the finger of guilt at someone other than my client. I had pointed at Opparizio and now he sat before me. This was the main event and as such it had drawn the biggest crowd-both media and onlookers-of the trial.

I started things out cordially but wasn’t planning to continue that way. I had one goal here and the verdict was riding on whether I achieved it. I had to push the man in the witness box to the limit. He was there only because he had been cornered by his own avarice and vanity. He had ignored legal counsel, declined to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and accepted the challenge of going one-on-one with me in front of a packed house. My job was to make him regret those decisions. My job was to make him take the Fifth in front of the jury. If he did that, then Lisa Trammel would walk. There could be no stronger reasonable doubt than to have the straw man you’ve been pointing at all trial long hide behind the Fifth, to refuse to answer questions on the grounds that he would incriminate himself. How could any honest juror vote guilty beyond a reasonable doubt after that?

“Good morning, Mr. Opparizio. How are you?”

“I’d rather be somewhere else. How are you?”

I smiled. He was feisty from the start.

“I’ll tell you that in a few hours,” I answered. “Thank you for being here today. I noticed a bit of a northeastern accent. Are you not from Los Angeles?”

“I was born in Brooklyn fifty-one years ago. I moved out here for law school and never left.”

“You and your company have been mentioned here during the trial more than a few times. It seems to hold the lion’s share of foreclosure work in at least this county. I was-”

“Your Honor?” Freeman interrupted from her seat. “Is there going to be a question here?”

Perry looked down at her for a moment.

“Is that an objection, Ms. Freeman?”

She realized she had not stood. The judge had instructed us in pretrial meetings that we must stand to make an objection. She quickly stood up.

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Ask a question, Mr. Haller.”

“I was about to, Your Honor. Mr. Opparizio, could you tell us in your words what it is that ALOFT does?”

Opparizio cleared his throat and turned directly toward the jurors when he answered. He was a polished and proficient witness. I had my work cut out for me.

“I’d be happy to. Essentially, ALOFT is a processing firm. Large loan servicers such as WestLand National pay my company to handle property foreclosures from start to finish. We handle everything from drawing up the paperwork to serving notices to appearing in court as necessary. All for one all-inclusive fee. Nobody likes to hear about foreclosures. We all struggle on some level to pay our bills and try to keep our homes. But sometimes it doesn’t work out and foreclosure is required. That’s where we come in.”

“You say ‘but sometimes it doesn’t work out.’ Over the past few years it has been working out pretty good for you, though, hasn’t it?”

“Our business has seen tremendous growth in the past four years and it has only now finally started to level off.”

“You mentioned WestLand National as a client. WestLand was a significant client, correct?”

“It was and still is.”

“About how many foreclosures do you handle for WestLand in a year?”

“I wouldn’t know off the top of my head. But I think it’s safe to say that with all of their locations in the western United States, we get close to ten thousand files from them in a year.”

“Would you believe that over the past four years you have averaged over sixteen thousand cases a year referred by WestLand? It’s in the bank’s annual report.”

I held it up for all to see.

“Yes, I would believe that. Annual reports don’t lie.”

“What is the fee that ALOFT charges per foreclosure?”

“On residential we charge twenty-five hundred dollars and that’s for everything, even if we have to go to court on the matter.”

“So doing the math, your company takes in forty million dollars a year from WestLand alone, correct?”

“If the figures you used are correct, that sounds right.”

“I take it, then, that the WestLand account was very big at ALOFT.”

“Yes, but all our clients are important.”

“So you must have known Mitchell Bondurant, the victim in this case, pretty well, correct?”

“Of course I knew him well and I think it’s a terrible shame about what happened to him. He was a good man, trying to do a good job.”

“I am sure we all appreciate your sympathy. But at the time of his death, you weren’t very happy with Mr. Bondurant, were you?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. We were business associates. We had minor disputes from time to time but that always happens in the natural course of business.”

“Well, I’m not talking about minor disputes or the natural course of business. I’m asking you about a letter Mr. Bondurant sent to you shortly before his murder that threatened to expose fraudulent practices within your company. The certified letter was signed for by your personal secretary. Did you read it?”

“I skimmed it. It indicated to me that one of my hundred eighty-five employees had taken a shortcut. This was a minor dispute and nothing about it was threatening, as you say. I told the person who had that particular file to fix it. That’s all, Mr. Haller.”

But that wasn’t all I had to say about the letter. I made Opparizio read it to the jury and for the next half hour I asked increasingly specific and uncomfortable questions about its allegations. I then moved on to the federal target letter and made the witness read that as well. But again Opparizio was unflappable, dismissing the federal letter as a shot in the dark.

“I welcomed them with open arms,” he said. “But you know what? Nobody’s come in. All this time later and not a word from Mr. Lattimore or Agent Vasquez or any other federal agent. Because their letter didn’t pay off. I didn’t run, I didn’t sweat, I didn’t cry foul or hide behind a lawyer. I said I know you’ve got a job to do, come on in and check us out. Our doors are open and we’ve got absolutely nothing to hide.”