Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

This morning Gross is wearing a pair of dark blue cuffed slacks with a sharp crease to them, a maroon polo shirt, and a watch that looks like a Rolex, probably a knockoff from Taiwan out of the police property room. The tasseled loafers are a nice touch. No doubt Gross’s feet haven’t seen the inside of anything that wasn’t steel-toed, flapped, and hooked for lacing and that weighed less than ten pounds since he came out of the womb.

Looking at him on the stand, you might swear that you saw him playing the back nine at the village country club yesterday afternoon.

When the feds spring their trap and his pals go looking for Gross to shoot him because he was the idiot who recruited and sponsored the FBI agent, there will be no need to put him in witness protection. Tuchio’s transformation of the man is so complete the Posse will never recognize him. I’m almost wishing that Conan and his friends had gotten in. By now they’d be sitting out in the audience and asking, “Where the hell is Charlie, and who the fuck is that?”

Since he looks like your average accountant on his day off, when they asked him to raise his right hand to be sworn and Gross lifted the left by mistake and then the right, I took a good look at both palms. I wanted to see if he was still keeping books. Unfortunately, it appears as if the scrubbing must have started with the hands.

Unless I can get Gross to take off his shirt, raise his arms, and turn a pirouette, displaying the story of his life ingrained in the graffiti on his body, it’s hard to imagine how the jury is going to get the full flavor of the man.

Tuchio uses a good deal of finesse here. He moves carefully through the witness’s background, covering everything except his three felony convictions and the fact that he has spent almost thirteen years of his life in prison. This is out of bounds under the deal we cut in chambers. Tuchio knows I can’t get at it on cross-examination, so he’s free to ignore it.

But he does not try to hide the fact of Gross’s long association with the Aryan Posse. He explores this in detail, because he knows if he doesn’t, I will expose it on cross, making it look as if they were hiding it.

He takes more than twenty minutes, hitting all the possible low points in Gross’s life, including two divorces, problems with drugs, and the fact that he’s had difficulty holding jobs.

Then Tuchio makes clear his tactic with the witness: The world loves a reformed sinner.

“Let me ask you,” says Tuchio, “are you still a member of the Aryan Posse?”

“No. I’m no longer involved with that group. I want nothing to do with them.”

“Can you tell the jury when you quit this organization?”

“It was after I saw the news,” he says.

“What news?”

“The news. The man killed here,” he says.

“You mean the victim in this case, Terrance Scarborough?”

“Yeah. That’s the one.”

“Why did that make you quit your membership in the Aryan Posse?”

“Because of things I saw and heard. I was ashamed,” he says. Gross looks right at the jury as he says this. “The people in that group did some bad things,” he says, “and I wanted to change my life. I didn’t want to be involved anymore.”

If you listen closely, you can hear the violin music in the background. This is not something Tuchio pulled out of the bag yesterday or the day he lost the agent’s testimony in chambers. This has all the signs of careful stage direction and choreography.

“And why were you ashamed?”

“Because it was a bad life,” he says. “All that hate against other people because of the color of their skin. It was wrong, and I didn’t want to be part of it anymore.”

One woman, an African American in the jury box, is nodding as she hears this. Tuchio will be handing out prayer books and hymnals any minute.

“Was there anything in particular that brought you to this decision, to change your life?”

“Yeah, it was a conversation with him.” Gross sticks his arm out and points. The “him” he’s talking about is Carl.

“Let the record reflect,” says the judge, “that the witness has identified the defendant.”

If I could cut off the prosecutor right here, at this moment, I could pick up the theme and explain how my client led this man from a life of sin to redemption, and we could all march out to the strains of “The Old Rugged Cross.” But somehow I’m guessing that this is not where Tuchio is going.

“And can you tell the jury, what was it in particular that the defendant said that brought you to this point, to take your life in another direction?”

“I was drunk,” says Gross. “And he said some things…terrible things, some awful things about this man who was murdered, this Mr. Scarborough, and I was ashamed. Not right then,” he says, “but later, after he was murdered, because I had laughed when Mr. Arnsberg said this stuff. That memory stayed with me for a long time.”

“I see.” Tuchio makes all this sound as if he’s hearing it for the first time. Gross’s delivery is fervent. There’s just enough scent of the old malefactor lingering about him so that even a cynic like me-on a bad day, if someone blinded me, jammed cotton in my ears, and stuck garlic up my nose-might find myself believing him.

Tuchio carefully takes the witness through his association with Carl, the fact that the two of them had met only a total of eight or ten times, and often in bars. Gross admits that he had a problem with alcohol, but, like everything else that was bad in his life, this, too, is now behind him.

Then Tuchio draws him up and gets specific. He gives the witness the date and then asks him whether he remembers meeting with Carl at a bar off Interstate 8 out near El Centro.

“Yes, I remember that meeting. It was at the Del Rio Tavern,” says Gross.

“Can you tell the jury why you happened to meet at that particular location?”

“Because we were goin’ to a meeting at a range,” he says.

“What kind of range?”

“It was a shooting range. They called it ‘the reserve.’”

“Who called it…?”

“The Aryan Posse.” Gross makes it sound as if the term, the very name of the organization of which he was a charter member, is alien to him.

“But before you went to this shooting range, you and Mr. Arnsberg were together at the Del Rio Tavern, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“How long were you there, at the tavern?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe an hour. Maybe a little more.”

“Now, when you were at the tavern, was the defendant drinking, having any alcoholic beverages at the time?”

“Not much,” he says. “He mighta had a beer or two, but that’s all.”

“Did it appear to you that he was drunk or under the influence of alcohol or drugs at that time?”

“No. He was sober,” says Gross.

“And during this time, at the tavern, how many beers did you have?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe four or five.”

“Were you drunk at the time?”

“Well, a little,” he says. “I mighta had a little buzz on. But I remember very clearly what was said.”

This, of course, is the whole point.

“Let’s get to that, what it was exactly that was said. At some time during your meeting with the defendant at the Del Rio Tavern, did the subject of Terry Scarborough come up?”

“Yeah, it did.”

“And how did the subject come up, do you remember?”

“As I remember, this guy’s picture, Scarborough, came up on the television behind the bar, on the news when we were sittin’ there. And Carl there got real upset. He was talkin’ out loud about how the guy was causing all kinds of problems. That he saw him on the news and how Scarborough wanted whites to pay money to the blacks because of slavery. He was sayin’ how this guy, Scarborough, wanted to turn the country over to ’em.”