Death, Taxes, and Hot Pink Leg Warmers (25 page)

Ross squinted at the screen, then turned his head to look at the juror, who’d already begun his daily sneeze fest. The guy must be allergic to oxygen. “Are you sure it’s him?”

“He sneezed all over the girl’s boobs.”

Ross cringed. “That’s disgusting.”

“Tell me about it.”

When the judge entered, Ross asked if he and the other attorneys might discuss a critical matter in chambers.

Trumbull sighed. “It’s going to be one of those days, huh?”

The defense attorneys cast me questioning looks when I followed them through the door to the judge’s chambers. Once Trumbull was seated behind her desk, Ross gestured for me to hand my phone to the judge.

She took one look at the screen and frowned. “Why the Sam Hill are you showing me porn?”

Needham and Vanderhagen stepped around the desk to take a look. Brunwald and Plimpton merely raised their brows.

I squeezed in between the male defense attorneys and pointed to the man in the photo. “See that man? That’s juror number five. He was at a strip club last night.”

Trumbull squinted at the screen. “Are you sure?” Her skepticism was understandable. With the dim light in the club and the distance between us, the photo wasn’t the highest quality.

“I’m positive,” I said. “He sneezed all over that girl. That’s why she’s wiping her chest.”

She leaned to the side and looked up at me. “And you know this how?”

“Official IRS business” was all I said, but the judge had been on the bench long enough to know exactly what I meant. I was working an undercover case.

Trumbull shooed the defense attorneys away from her desk and buzzed her secretary on the intercom, instructing her to have the bailiff bring juror number 5 into chambers.

A minute later, the man walked through the door. He took one look at the orchid on the judge’s desk and launched into a fresh set of nosefire.
A-choo-choo-choo! A-choo-choo-choo!

“Did you leave the hotel last night?” Trumbull asked the man without preamble.

With seven pairs of eyes on him, the man shrank back. His gaze darted among us, as if trying to figure out who might have outed him, whether he might be able to get away with a lie, whether he could survive a jump out the window.

“I asked you a question,” Trumbull demanded, “and I want an answer. Keep in mind that lying to me will only get you in more trouble.”

The man looked down, but finally nodded.

“You went to a titty bar?”

He nodded to his shoes again.

“Do you remember me giving you and the other jurors strict instructions not to leave the courthouse or hotel while this trial was under way?”

One quick nod.

With that, Trumbull opened an airtight, industrial-sized can of whoop ass.

Pop-whoosh.

“Congratulations, Mr. Horny-man. You’ve earned yourself a week in the klink for contempt of court.”

He looked up now, his eyes lit with shock. “Jail?”

“Hope the titties were worth it.”

The look on his face said he thought maybe he should’ve settled for buying a
Hustler
in the hotel gift shop and perusing two-dimensional tatas in his room.

Trumbull pointed out her door. “You march yourself back out there and wait at my bench.”

Head down again, the man shuffled out the door.

“Good thing we’ve got three alternate jurors,” Trumbull said, rising from her desk chair.

We returned to the courtroom and took our seats. Once the judge had settled back at her bench, she pointed a condemning gavel at the wayward juror. “Juror number five here thought it would be fun to ignore my orders and go to a strip club last night. He’s admitted his guilt. Haven’t you?”

When he nodded at his shoes, the judge demanded an audible answer.

“Yes,” he said in a soft, nearly imperceptible voice.

“I hereby order you to a week in jail. Bailiff, get his sorry ass out of my courtroom.” The bailiff took the man to the doors of the courtroom, turning him over to the waiting sheriff’s deputy.

The judge pointed her gavel at the jurors now. “Anybody else got any confessions to make?” When none responded, she said, “Juror number thirteen, I hope you’ve been paying attention. You’re now officially on the panel.”

The can of whoop ass now emptied, the trial resumed. Carter took his place on the stand once again. Ross wrapped up his few remaining questions. Needham attempted to rehabilitate his client, while the other defense attorneys ripped him to shreds. It was a wonder he didn’t suffer another round of angina.

Ross interviewed the straw buyers next, each of whom testified that Carter had approached them regarding the Wingate property, assuring them he had another buyer ready to take the house off their hands for thousands more than their purchase price, guaranteeing them a quick and easy profit.

Ross’s next witness was Jeffrey Pachuco, who today had worn a light blue work shirt, navy pants, and steel-toed boots, no doubt attempting to portray himself as a hardworking blue-collar type whose much more sophisticated friends had unwittingly turned him into a chump. He’d even brought a white hard hat with him. His façade might have been more believable if his boots hadn’t been brand-new, bearing not even the slightest scuff. Clearly they’d never set foot on a construction site. The hard hat was likewise in mint condition. Pachuco never got his hands dirty. His job was to wine and dine potential clients looking to build custom homes, hire other men to build the homes, and collect a tidy share of the profits.

Not bad work if you can get it, huh?

Ross called Pachuco out. “Those boots and hard hat are brand-new, aren’t they?”

Brunwald objected to the question, claiming the matter was irrelevant.

“I’ll allow it,” Trumbull said. She might be a bleeding heart, but she also had zero tolerance for deception, especially when it took place in her courtroom. “I’d like to know myself why he’s parading around here dressed like one of the Village People.”

Pachuco’s cheeks flared red. “I’ve got some yard work to do when I get home.”

As if.

In the jury box, Clip-On openly frowned while Knitter harrumphed. Like McKayla Maroney at the 2012 Summer Olympics, they were not impressed.

Ross pulled a series of eight-by-ten color photos from his file. Each photo depicted a vacant lot. He handed a copy of each photo to the defense attorneys, another to the judge, and another to Pachuco. After moving to admit them to evidence, he provided copies to the jury, handing them to Clip-On, who took a quick look at each photograph and passed them on to his fellow jurors.

Ross resumed his questioning. “As you can see from the photos, there has been no construction whatsoever on these lots. Despite that fact, your company requested progress payments totaling over six million dollars on housing construction purportedly completed on these lots, isn’t that true?”

Pachuco’s face flamed. “Someone else signed my name to the requests for progress payments. I’m as much a victim in all of this as anyone else.”

I snorted. I hoped the court reporter put that in her record.
IRS Special Agent Tara Holloway emitted a well-deserved derisive snort.

Ross showed Pachuco the requests for progress payments, each of which contained Pachuco’s signature and each of which Pachuco claimed was a forgery. Ditto for his purported signature on the back of the checks issued by the banks.

Ross passed the witness. The other defense attorneys continued to tear Pachuco apart, though their tack was slightly different. They asked questions designed to take the blame off their clients and put it on Pachuco. They did a good job of it, too.

Once Pachuco had been ripped to pieces, he left the witness box, not daring a glance at the jury.

Ross called the FBI’s handwriting expert to the stand. The expert had compared the signatures on the checks and requests for progress payments to documents obtained from third parties and known to contain valid signatures. Ackerman and Ross had been strategic in choosing the documents for comparison, using Pachuco’s application for membership at the Lakewood Country Club, the sales agreement for the purchase of his Ferrari, and his signature on a tuition agreement for his three daughters to attend the prestigious Hockaday School. At twenty grand a year per student, the sixty thousand in total annual tuition added up to more than many people earned in an entire year, probably more than any of the jurors earned.

After providing a quick lesson in handwriting-analysis techniques, the expert issued his opinion. “I have no doubt the checks and requests for progress payments were signed by Jeffrey Pachuco.”

The defense attorneys asked no questions, happy to let blame fall on Pachuco’s shoulders. Pachuco sat next to his attorney, staring at his knees. Things had not gone well for him today. The hard hat would be of no help when the hammer came down.

chapter thirty

Diversionary Tactics

Trumbull dismissed the jury for a ten-minute break. I’d worn my leg warmers to court this morning and, as the knitter left the jury box, I noted she wore a pair of newly knitted pink leg warmers, too. I’m sure the people from
What Not to Wear
would have a field day with us, but to heck with them. We might not be fashionable, but at least we weren’t freezing.

Behind us, the courtroom door opened and a woman I recognized as Louis Featherstone’s wife came in, wrangling a brown-haired boy who looked to be about four years old. He yanked his hand, trying to pull it out of her grasp. When she refused to let him go, he pulled her hand to his mouth and bit down as hard as he could.

“Braden!” Mrs. Featherstone cried, jerking her hand out of his teeth.

Braden took advantage of his newfound freedom to kick the end of a nearby bench. Unfortunately, he’d underestimated his own strength and smashed his toes in the process. Sending up a nerve-shattering screech, he now grabbed for the hand he’d only just been taste-testing and reached his other arm up to grab the belt of his mother’s tasteful salmon-colored suit. The screech morphed to an eye-popping wail as Braden attempted to scale his mother.

I leaned back to get a better look at the woman’s ass. Not bad. She’d gotten her money’s worth out of the butt lift run through GSM’s account.

Mrs. Feathersone reached down and pulled her son into her arms, carrying him to a seat in the front row. She pacified the boy with a grape Tootsie Pop pulled from her purse, plugged earbuds into his tiny ears, and pulled up what I assumed was a children’s movie on her phone to keep him occupied.

Back from the break, the bailiff reentered the room, turned the temperature down from frigid to absolutely arctic, and instructed us to rise as Judge Trumbull flounced back through the door.

Once everyone had resumed their places, Ross called the loan officer to the stand.

“Hi, Daddy!” Braden called, standing on the bench and waving his sucker frantically at his father, a purple-toothed smile on the boy’s face.

The jurors, some of whom had witnessed Braden’s earlier outburst, seemed to find the kid’s behavior more disruptive than cute. If Featherstone’s wife or attorney had thought bringing the boy into the courtroom would help portray Featherstone as a family man, they’d overestimated the kid’s appeal.

From the stand, Louis Featherstone smiled at his son, but motioned for him to sit back down. The kid was slightly more obedient for his father than his mother. He dropped down on the bench, but not before sticking his finger up his nose and asking his mother in a loud voice, “Is Daddy in twouble?”

Yes, dear. Daddy’s in big trouble and he’ll be in time-out for the next decade or so. I hope my butt lift holds up until I find a new daddy for you.

Mrs. Featherstone’s attempts to quiet her son only led to him screaming and banging his bratty little fists on the bench. As Featherstone’s wife carried her squirming, shrieking son out of the courtroom, the bailiff swore Featherstone in and Ross launched into his questions.

A mere three questions in I found myself yawning. The one cup of coffee I’d slurped down that morning was not enough to keep me awake today.

When I yawned for the fourth time in a minute, Eddie leaned over to me. “Hit the snack bar and get some java. My treat.” He handed me a couple of dollars.

Did I have the best partner or what?

As quietly as I could, I sneaked out of the courtroom. After downing a twelve-ounce cup in ten seconds flat, I bypassed the elevator and took the stairs back up to the courtroom, hoping the exertion would further help invigorate me.

I slipped back into the courtroom, noting Braden was now asleep on the bench. His mother had probably doped him up with Benadryl. I had to admit I was a little envious. I’d love to curl up and take a nap, too, but duty called.

Ross clasped his hands behind his back as he continued to question Featherstone. “You were fired from your job as a mortgage-loan officer as a result of the questionable loans. Isn’t that correct?”

A dark look passed over Featherstone’s face. “Yes,” he acknowledged. “But I relied on the misrepresentations of the other defendants. I thought the loan applicants were qualified and the houses were correctly priced. I had no way of knowing the paperwork contained false information.”

Ross went off in a different direction now, launching into a line of questions about the untaxed profits diverted into his son’s college fund. Eddie dug the relevant documentation out of the box and handed it to Ross, offering me a smile. I’d been the one to discover this particular piece of financial hanky-panky.

The prosecutor handed a copy of the statements to the witness. “Mr. Featherstone, isn’t it true that the funds for every one of these deposits came directly from the GSM bank account?”

Featherstone squirmed like a sperm under a microscope. Gross, I know, but my high school biology teacher made us watch a film about reproduction and I’d never been able to dislodge the image of those wiggling worms from my mind. For something that had everything to do with sex, those wigglers were very
un
sexy.