Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

“The objection is overruled. The witness may answer the question.”

Mrs. Foster looks at Nelson, not sure what the question is anymore.

Nelson is smiling. Acosta has driven one more spike into me and flashed him a big green light.

“Mrs. Foster, is it possible that if a gunshot was fired in the Potter residence, you might not have been able to hear it?”

She looks at me, wondering if trees and forests will be next.

“I don’t know,” she says.

With just three words she destroys this bone we’ve been fighting over.

“There,” I say. “She doesn’t know.”

Acosta gives me a look that could kill.

We break for lunch. When we return, Acosta has Eli Walker up from the little celebrity room at the jail and back in chambers.

Walker hasn’t shaved in three days. He has stains on the front of his suit pants that look remarkably like the man is now incontinent. There’s a palsy to his hands and a wild look in his eyes. In all it is a pathetic sight. I feel more sympathy here than I would have imagined, particularly given Walker’s part in all of this.

Nelson and Meeks are poised like vultures on a limb, standing in the corner waiting for Walker to hand over his source. Meeks has his note pad out as if to take the name of some unknown and distant subaltern, some buried bureaucrat who he thinks was Walker’s fountain of knowledge for the column that identified me as Talia’s lover.

“Have you had anything to eat, Mr. Walker?”

Acosta seems genuinely concerned by the condition of his prisoner. It would not do to have a member of the press corps die in his custody. Those who appoint and elevate judges might be asking some probing questions.

“I’m not hungry,” says Walker. His eyes seem to be scanning, looking for anything that might remotely resemble a decanter and glasses. But in chambers at least, the Coconut shows all the appearances of a teetotaler.

Walker’s lawyer makes a pitch to have a physician examine his client before he goes back to jail.

“Back to jail?” Walker says this like “fat chance.” There are a few obscenities, all directed at Walker’s lawyer. “You go back to jail,” he says. “You try it for a while and tell me how you like it.” With each word Eli’s spitting on his attorney, a veritable bath of saliva.

Walker looks at the judge. “Can I have a piece of paper and a pen?” he says.

Acosta obliges.

Walker’s hand is shaking so badly he has to steady the pen with both hands, a little chicken scratch on the blank note paper Acosta has given him.

“You won’t tell anybody where you got this?” says Walker.

Acosta smiles. “Mum’s the word,” he says.

Eli’s lawyer is upset, concerned that his client doesn’t understand the implications of what he’s doing.

“Mr. Walker, there’s the potential for liability here,” he says. “If you gave assurances of confidentiality to your source, and if you now reveal that source, and the person suffers some penalty, demotion, or loss of employment, you could be held liable for civil damages.”

This is an uncertain point of law, but a possibility, something on the cutting edge of appellate decisions in this state.

Walker gives him a look, as if to say “If the source wanted confidentiality, he should have brought me a drink in the can.” He folds the little scrap of paper in two and pushes it across the desk toward the Coconut.

Acosta looks at it, then passes it to Nelson. Meeks looks, but doesn’t take a note. It is clear that Harry and I are not to know who Walker’s source is.

“Mr. Walker, I’m very concerned about you.” Acosta is falling all over him now, not anxious to have him go back to his colleagues out in the hall looking like this. He calls his bailiff and gives firm instructions that the marshal is to take Walker to the nearest restaurant and buy him anything he wants, to eat or drink, and put it on the court’s tab. He hands the bailiff the county blue card, a plastic credit card accepted by merchants and innkeepers within throwing distance of the courthouse.

Acosta points the two of them toward the back door. “Then take him home so he can clean up,” he says. “And don’t let him come back until he does.” This last is whispered to the marshal, as if Eli could even care. The county’s about to get a bar tab to rival the S amp;L bail-out.

Acosta turns to Nelson.

“What about that?” The judge is pointing to the note in Meeks’s hand.

“I’ll take care of it,” says Meeks. Walker’s source, it seems, is about to become toast.

In the afternoon Nelson calls his final witness, Tony Skarpellos. We’ve done battle over this during our motions in limine, before the trial began. Harry and I moved the court to bar Skarpellos from testifying, on grounds that his original association with Talia’s defense, the employment of Cheetam and his hand in hiring me, now taints him with a conflict of interest.

Even before my present legal leprosy, Acosta rejected this argument. He bought Nelson’s contention that the Greek was never of counsel in the case, and that while he may have acted as a middleman in financing the early phases of her defense, Tony was not privy to any confidences with Talia, and therefore not barred by the attorney-client privilege. This may provide a little food for appeal if we lose.

I have done one other thing to blind Tony in this case. Among the shills on my list of witnesses I have placed the name of Ron Brown, Tony’s gofer in the firm. This has kept Brown out of the courtroom, sequestered like the other witnesses. He is unable to sit here and listen, as the eyes and ears of the Greek, and shuttle accounts of witness testimony to Skarpellos, to allow the Greek to conform his testimony accordingly. The other young lawyers in the firm are not likely to humor Tony with such duty; their tickets to practice are too dear.

Today the Greek is full of bluster and vinegar, a cock on the walk in a thousand-dollar gray pinstripe. He doesn’t do well in court, but Tony could always dress the part. He swaggers down the center aisle and to the stand, where he is sworn. Skarpellos doesn’t fix me with a stare until he’s in the box, seated. Then he nods to Nelson, a little greeting, like he’s ready to bury us.

Tony’s broad features seem magnified in this setting, a bearing and demeanor to match his ego.

Nelson waltzes him through his early days with the firm, how he came to meet Ben, and how they formed a fast friendship and prospering partnership. To listen to Tony, it was all amity and good cheer, two legal giants taking the high road to success. He mentions Potter’s imminent appointment to the high court. The Greek is working up a little fame-by-association before the jury, the theme being that Ben couldn’t have done it without him.

Against this background Nelson is laying the silver lining of his pitch with the Greek, that here is a man immanently trusted by the victim, a man to whom Benjamin Potter confided his most private thoughts and actions.

He wastes no time getting to the heart of it.

“You were interviewed by the police twice during this investigation, is that correct?”

“Right,” says Tony.

“Once about a week after the murder and the second time more recently, when you called the police and told them some things you had forgotten about?”

“That’s correct.”

Nelson unfortunately has benefited from Tony’s statement in my office, a necessary price I pay for the big dividend, the fact that Skarpellos can’t testify with certainty that Talia was aware of the stated plans for divorce by Ben. A hole in their motive.

Nelson is shoring up some of the weak spots. Tony’s convenient memory until just before trial, when he called the police to lay on them this revelation, Ben’s impending divorce, is now just an innocent oversight.