Steve Martini - Shadow of Power

We are seated at a table scarfing sandwiches, watching election numbers on Fox News on the television over the bar. We are eating fast, trying to clue Herman in on Jennifer’s testimony and Tuchio’s insinuation that for some reason we were keeping Herman out of court because he knew something about the envelope under the door.

“They’re saying I did it. Put it under the door?”

“They can’t be that stupid,” says Harry. “By now the cops have to know that you were in Curaçao with us.”

“Tuchio’s trying to throw up smoke,” I tell him.

“There is breaking news… A report from San Diego and the Scarborough murder trial in just a moment. Are…are we ready? Okay, Howard, are you there?”

I ask the bartender to turn up the sound so we can hear it.

“I am here.”

“Can you tell us what’s happening?”

“All we know at this point is that Jennifer Sanchez, a twenty-two-year-old, alluring, dark-haired paralegal, took the stand this morning. She told the jury how she found a mysterious envelope on the floor in the law office where she works last Thursday morning.”

“This is the defense lawyer, the man representing Carl Arnsberg, the defendant?”

“That’s right.”

“So I imagine the prosecution and the police are pretty suspicious at this point?”

“Suspicious is an understatement. According to sources close to the investigation, the police are so angry that there is talk that the D.A.’s office may ask for an investigation by the state bar. According to Ms. Sanchez, the envelope with whatever was inside of it was shoved under the office door sometime after eleven o’clock last Wednesday night.”

“Do we know what’s in the envelope?”

“So far there’s no solid word from investigators on any of that. But according to the testimony, and what was shown in court today, apart from the envelope itself, the one that supposedly came under the door, there was a folded piece of paper, maybe several pages-we couldn’t tell, because our producers weren’t that close. The prosecutor kept referring to this as the ‘bloody letter.’”

“The bloody letter!”

“That’s what he said. Now, this could be important, because if you remember, two weeks ago this same defense lawyer, Paul Madriani, was able to get one of the prosecution’s main witnesses, a forensics expert, to admit that there was evidence of something missing from the crime scene.”

“I remember that, a leather briefcase or a binder. Something like that.”

“No, actually, it was what the lawyer called a shadow left on the surface of a light leather portfolio by blood, what they call spatter evidence. It’s a long, complicated story, but the bottom line is that the expert witness from the police crime lab was forced to admit that this blood shadow on the leather surface of the case meant that something was taken from the scene before the police got there. Then you have to step back about a week-”

“Make it quick, ’cuz we’re comin’ up on a hard break.”

“As fast as I can. You remember the stories last week on the AP wire reporting that Scarborough was supposed to have had an important letter or some historic correspondence with him at the time he was murdered, and there was talk of a Supreme Court justice, Arthur Ginnis, being the possible source for this item?”

“And you think that’s what this is all about?”

“We don’t know, but it’s certainly a possibility. We’re checking it out.”

“Listen, I gotta go.”

“Catch you later.”

“Keep us posted.”

Harry gives me a sideways glance. “If we could just take out the part about the state bar investigation, maybe we get a copy of that and see if Quinn will let us put it in front of the jury. I mean, it doesn’t have Ginnis’s face in it, and it only mentions his name once.”

Considering that the jurors are corralled in the courtroom in the daytime and locked up in a hotel all night with the television unplugged, the cable disconnected, and an armed guard outside their door, I’d take bets they aren’t watching cable news.

It’s the problem we’re having. Before we’re finished, everybody in the world is going to know about the Jefferson Letter and the Ginnis connection, except for the people who count-Carl’s jury.

In the afternoon Harry and I bring Herman to the stand.

In rapid order I have Herman verify and corroborate Jennifer’s earlier recollections, her testimony regarding the opening of the manila envelope in my office, and the processing of its contents.

Because we have not prepared Herman, there are a few discrepancies based on his memory of events. His testimony is a little ragged around the edges. But if anything this seems to work to our advantage. It sounds believable, unrehearsed, because it is. Herman uses different words than Jennifer did to describe things. He talks about “forceps” instead of “large tweezers.”

Best of all, Herman does not try to fill in what he doesn’t know: how it came to pass that I saw the letter inside the envelope and therefore avoided touching it with my hand. When I ask him this, he says he doesn’t remember.

But he does remember seeing the look on my face. “At that moment,” says Herman, “I thought there might be something dangerous in the envelope, because of the way you looked at it and the way you moved.”

“So what were you thinking at that moment?”

“If you wanna know the truth, I was thinking it might be a letter bomb,” says Herman. “It does happen. Happened to a lawyer in Atlanta last year,” he tells the jury.

If we had warned Herman about Tuchio’s pitch to the jury, that I avoided touching the letter because I already knew it was there, you get into problems. You could end up inspiring a witness to “remember” trivial details of things that never happened. Some people just want to help. But when it comes to details and the magnetic ability of the human mind to remember, there are limits to what a jury will believe. Anxiety over a possible bomb in a letter is not a problem.

Then I take him to the point, the reason he’s here. “Before this morning did I or Mr. Hinds or anyone else in our office ever ask you to testify in these regards?”

“No. Not until Mr. Hinds contacted me this morning.”

“Is there any reason why you might not want to testify regarding the manila envelope and the contents and how it was opened in my office?”

“No.”

“So if someone were to tell the jury that you had been asked previously by Mr. Hinds or myself to testify in these regards, and they told the jury that you declined to do so, for some secret or unstated reason or for any reason, what would you say to that?”

“I would say they either didn’t know what they were talking about or they were lying,” says Herman. He looks at the jury. “It’s not true.”

Then I nail the lid on this coffin, asking Herman if he has any information or knowledge as to who might have slipped the evidence, the manila envelope, under our office door.

He shakes his head. “Not a clue,” he says.

“Do you have any knowledge as to why they might have done it?”

“No.”

I move to the evidence cart and lift the plastic sealed envelope, the folded letter, and the small bag so that Herman and the jury can see them. Quinn has them identified for the record.

“And to make clear to the jury, have you ever seen any of these items, or any of the evidence contained in them, before last Monday morning when I opened the contents of this envelope on the desk in my office?”

“No, sir. First time I saw any of that was after you opened that envelope.”

“Your witness.”

Tuchio tries to take Herman for the ride he took with Jennifer earlier in the day, over the same falls. That Herman knows only what he has seen and heard from Harry and me, and then the question: How can he be sure that he is not being badly used here in court today?