Steve Martini - Compelling Evidence

“Understandable,” I say. “You say ‘ we ’ left early. Did you go to the game with someone else?”

“Why don’t you read the police report, in your hand there,” he says. Skarpellos smiles at the jury, like “What am I, some fool?”

“It says here you went to the game with a woman, Susan Hawley. This Ms. Hawley is a friend?”

“Yeah, she’s a friend.”

“Have you known her long?”

“Your Honor, where is this going?” Nelson up out of his chair.

“Good question, counsel. Does this have a point, Mr. Madriani?”

“If you’ll bear with me, Your Honor.”

“My patience is getting short,” says Acosta.

“Have you known Ms. Hawley long?” I say.

“A couple of years.”

“Would you say she’s a social friend, or commercial. Was this business?”

“Social,” he says. Tony’s all puffed up, the Greek version of machismo, like this woman is somehow his badge of virility.

“So you didn’t hire her for the evening?”

His eyes are two flaming caldrons.

“Your Honor, I object. The witness shouldn’t be subjected to this kind of abuse,” says Nelson. He’s trying to put himself verbally between us. A reprise of his role in my office the day of the Greek’s deposition. Tony is starting to get up out of his chair.

“Mr. Madriani.” Acosta’s got the gavel in his hand, like he too is coming after me.

I prevail on the Coconut for a little more latitude.

“Make it quick,” he says.

Nelson is fuming. There are whispered rantings into Meeks’s ear.

I’m back to the counsel table. Harry has the document waiting for me as I arrive. I slip it between the pages of the police report.

“Mr. Skarpellos, did you ever have any kind of dealings with Ms. Hawley that could in any way be termed commercial? ”

I linger on the last word a little.

“Your Honor, I resent this,” he says. The Greek knows what the jury will think if they see this woman. The police are still looking for Hawley. Bets are, they will tag her very soon.

“Answer the question,” says Acosta.

Skarpellos looks at him, like “What is this, witness-bashing day?”

“Did you ever have any dealings with Ms. Hawley that could in any way be termed commercial? Was she ever a client of the firm?”

I think he knows what I have. He knows we’ve subpoenaed the firm’s trust account records. This, it seems, was a little nugget Harry and I never expected. If nothing else, it reveals the extent to which Tony Skarpellos had treated the firm’s trust account as his personal slush fund.

“She’s a friend,” he says. “Nothing more.”

“Are you sure you want to stick with that?”

He looks at me with no answer, the bushy eyebrows mountains of contempt.

“Mr. Skarpellos, I have a certified copy of a check here.” I pull it from the middle of the police report. “I would ask you to look at it and tell me if that is your signature on the bottom.”

He studies it for several seconds, looking at the name of the payee and back to his own name scrawled in a bold hand on the signature line.

“We can have an expert come in and compare an exemplar of your signature with that on the check if you like.”

“It’s mine,” he says.

“Then can you explain to the jury why it was that on November thirteenth of last year you made this check out, against your law firm’s client trust account, in the amount of twenty-five thousand dollars, payable to Susan Hawley?” I take the copy of the canceled check back from him and wave it a little in the air.

He’s been tracking me, his mind just far enough ahead that I can tell he’s come up with something. He pulls himself up to his full height in the chair, his head cocked arrogantly to the side.

“That was a personal loan,” he declares.

“A personal loan,” I howl. “Do you often make personal loans to friends from your client trust account, Mr. Skarpellos? Under the laws of this state that is a segregated account. The money in it belongs to your clients, not you. You do understand that?”

“Your Honor, the witness should be warned,” says Nelson. He’s on his feet.

Acosta, it seems, is mesmerized by this latest revelation, by the boldness of the Greek, and his apparent utter disregard for matters of client trust. “Absolutely,” he says. He’s come back to reality and the chores at hand.

“Mr. Skarpellos, you don’t have to answer that last question. If you wish, you may assert your Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination,” he says.

Acosta is telling him, in terms that Tony, and the jury, can understand, that for a lawyer to invade a client trust account is, in this state, not only unethical, but a crime.

Skarpellos grunts, like Acosta’s admonition sounds like good advice.

“I take it you don’t wish to answer that question,” says Acosta.

“Right,” he says.

I glance at the jury. Stern, unmoved faces. From the grim expressions I can tell that the Greek now has all the credibility of a junk-bond broker.

“Let’s forget for a moment,” I say, “the source of this money and concentrate instead on the purpose of this payment. You say it was a loan. Why did Ms. Hawley need this loan?”

“I don’t know,” he says.

“You gave her a check for twenty-five thousand dollars and never once asked the purpose of this loan?”

“That’s right,” he says.

“Now earlier, when you were testifying about the loan you made to the defendant for her legal fees, you stated, and I quote”-I read from my yellow pad: “ ‘You don’t give eighty thousand dollars away on good looks.’ But in this case you obviously feel comfortable with giving away twenty-five thousand dollars with only good looks as collateral. What’s the deciding standard, Mr. Skarpellos-the amount of debt or the relative attractiveness of the debtor?”

There’s a little laughter from the front rows of the audience, a few smiles in the jury box. I am getting the evil eye from the Greek. As I look at him there, seated in the box, meanness from the set of his jaw to the ripple of his brow, I think maybe this was the last image Ben Potter saw in this life.

“What were the terms of this loan?” I ask.

“What do you mean?” he says.

“The terms,” I say. “What interest did you charge, was it simple or compound, how long did Ms. Hawley have to repay the loan?”

“We never discussed that,” he says.

“Was there anything in writing other than the trust account check?” I say.

“No.”

“I see. So you just wrote a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, without any promissory note, no statement as to interest to be paid, or the term for repayment, no questions as to what the money is for, and you come here and you expect this jury to believe that this twenty-five-thousand-dollar check was a loan to Ms. Hawley?”

“That’s what it was,” he says.

“No,” I say. “That’s not what it was, and you and I both know it. That twenty-five thousand dollars was to buy an alibi from Ms. Hawley, an alibi for the night of Ben Potter’s murder. Isn’t that true?”

“That’s a lie,” he says.

“Is it really?”

“That’s a damn lie,” he says, hoping this latter will have more impact with the jury. But his body English falls flat, failing to convey either anger or indignation. If demeanor can be said to count for much, the only emotion now apparent from the Greek is fear.

He’s still sputtering from the witness box. “Not true,” he says. “You’ve hated me from the beginning, because I was Ben’s friend …”

Acosta’s on his gavel, hammering away. He senses what’s coming.

“You were his enemy,” he says. “You and her.”