Special Circumstances (25 page)

“You can sit in my office, you know,” I say.
“I like it better out here. Your office smells like chow mein.”
I’m sure it does.
“Find anything we can use?” I ask.
“Nothing yet. Bob’s life insurance policies named Beth and the kids asbeneficiaries.”
“We knew that. Keep looking.”
“I will.” She takes off her glasses. She’s very pretty when she wantsto be.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I guess so.”
“Andy?”
“Yeah. We have a custody hearing a week from Tuesday. Will you comewith me?”
I put my hand on her shoulder.
“Sure.”
She pulls back.
“Thanks, Mike.”
A moment later, I sit down in my office and dial a familiar number.
“Pete,” I say, “do you have any plans for the weekend?”
“You got Warriors tickets?” he asks hopefully.
“The Lakers are in town.”
“Nah. I’ve got something better. I need your help. How would youfeel about doing a little pro bono work?”
Silence.
“For whom?” he asks cautiously.
“Wendy.”
Long pause.
“Sure,” he says reluctantly.
“Thanks.”
CHAPTER 29
WE’RE MISSING SOMETHING. I’M SURE OF IT
“Pretrial motions are set for Monday, March 9. Except for MortGoldberg, it seems the entire defense team is sound asleep.”
—news center 4 LEGAL ANALYST morgan henderson. tuesday, march 3.
We’re having an all-hands meeting of the Dream Team in Rosie’s officeat nine the next morning. We have a pretrial hearing on Monday andit’s time to add things up. We sit around the small conference table.Rosie drinks a Diet Coke and looks at our preliminary witness list.Wendy nurses a cup of coffee and studies her notes. Pete is goingthrough an inventory of the evidence. Mort plays with an unlitcigar.
“Mort,” I begin, “did you finish our motions to keep the Silveradovideotapes out?”
“Yeah. We filed our papers on Thursday.” He drums his fingers on thetabletop.
“It’s going to be a close call. The tapes have been heavily edited. Wehave a decent argument the potential inflammatory effect outweighs theprobative value. I wouldn’t bet a box of cigars we’ll win.”
Rosie agrees.
“Even if she doesn’t let them use the tapes, they can always call BrentHutchinson to testify that he saw Diana and Joel kissing in the hottub.”
“There’s nothing we can do about that,” Mort replies.
I turn to Wendy.
“Did you find out anything more about Bob’s finances?”
“Not much,” she says.
“He and Art Patton owned a restaurant in Palo Alto called Le BonVivant. It’s been open for about four years. There are no financialrecords available to the public.”
“According to Art,” I say, “it’s losing money.”
“You may be right,” she says.
“We haven’t found any suspicious liens.”
“Keep looking.” I turn to Rosie.
“Any surprises on their witness list?” I ask.
“Not really,” she says.
“They’re loading up their list just the way we are.
They’ve put you and Wendy down as witnesses just to tweak us.”
“We’ll be able to get around that,” I say.
“We included Skipper and McNulty on ours, right?”
“Of course. Turnabout is fair play. Judge Chen will never let themtestify.”
“I know. But it’ll give us an opportunity to show the judge thatSkipper was there that night.”
Mort is pleased.
“That discussion should be a lot of fun,” he says.
“Who else is on their list?” I ask.
“The people you’d expect. Roosevelt. Marcus Banks. Rod Beckert.Sandra Wilson.
Art Patton and Charles Stern.” Rosie flips through her notes.
“Brent Hutchinson. Beth Holmes.”
“Not surprising,” I say.
“A little testimony from the grieving widow to soften up the jury.”
Rosie nods.
“Clan Morris, Jack Frazier, Rick Cinelli and Homer Kim.”
“Any surprises?”
“Your good friend Dr. Kathy Chandler is on their list, too.”
Wendy asks, “Why are they calling her?”
“She was Bob’s therapist,” I reply.
“She’ll probably testify that Bob wasn’t suicidal.”
“Is she a real doctor?” she asks.
“Depends on your definition of the word ‘real,”
” I reply sarcastically.
“She has an honorary doctorate from a mail-order college in Texas.”
I turn back to Rosie.
“Did you include all the S and G partners on our witness list?”
“Yeah. Just like you asked.”
“Good. And did you send out subpoenas to each of them?”
“Oh, yes,” she says, smiling.
“We served them yesterday.”
“Let me guess. They were not particularly well received by some of myformer partners?”
Her eyes gleam.
“You could say that, Mike. I let Wendy have the pleasure of servingArt Patton, Charles Stern and Brent Hutchinson.”
Wendy is triumphant.
“Makes you want to become a litigator,” she says.
“Great,” I say.
“I bet Skipper is getting a few friendly phone calls from his formerpartners.” Lawyers hate to get subpoenas. And we really hate totestify.
“Mike,” Wendy says, “I took the liberty of asking Rita Roberts and theNews Center 4 team to come with me to the S and G office when I servedthe subpoenas.” She bats her eyes innocently.
“I hope that was okay.”
“Absolutely,” I say.
“The public has a right to know. By the way,” I ask, “did you find outanything more about the International Charitable Trust?”
“Trevor Smith is still in Kuwait.” She grins at me.
“I talked to his secretary.
I’ve done a lot of work with them over the years, so I’ve gotten toknow her very well. Her name is Felicity Smoot.”
“You’re kidding,” Mort says.
“No, I’m not. I told her I was following up on the trust so we couldclose the file.”
“What did she say?” I ask.
“Not much. Chuckles asked them to prepare a final inventory of trustassets, so they can begin liquidation. For now, the trust assets arefrozen.”
“I see. Have you been able to pin down how much his fee is?”
“Not yet. His deal isn’t stated in the trust instrument. He has aseparate administration contract that I haven’t seen. I asked Felicityto send me a copy. We’ll see if she does.”
Not bad.
“Did you have any luck figuring out who the income beneficiaries andthe remainder men of the trust are?”
“Nope. Felicity didn’t know. I didn’t want to push her too hard. Ithought it might make her nervous.”
“That was smart,” I say.
“You never want to make a banker nervous.” I tap my pencil on my legalpad.
“I’m surprised she talked to you. I’ll bet Chuckles told her not totalk to anybody who doesn’t work for S and G.”
She gives me a conspiratorial grin.
“Maybe I didn’t exactly tell her I’d left the firm.”
Wendy may have the makings of a fine criminal defense attorney.
“When do you think you’ll hear back from her?”
“Probably not until Smith gets back.”
Swell. We’ll be halfway through the trial by then.
“See if you can find out when he’s coming back. I want you and Pete tobe there.”
“An all-expenses-paid trip to the Bahamas? Cool.”
“Think of it as a working vacation.” I turn to Pete.
“What have you found, Mr.
Gumshoe?” Pete doesn’t like being called Mr. Gumshoe. He doesn’tjoke around when it comes to business. Actually, he doesn’t jokearound about much of anything.
“I ran an asset search on the company custodian, Homer Kim. Seems hisbank account recently became twenty thousand dollars fatter. Nicechunk of change for a man who makes only twenty-six thousand dollars ayear.”
That’s a surprise.
“You think somebody paid him off to testify?” Mort asks.
“I can’t tell for sure,” Pete says.
“On the other hand, he doesn’t look like the kind of guy who getstwenty-thousand-dollar checks in the mail from Publisher’s ClearingHouse. When we ran the search on his bank accounts, we saw one bigdeposit come in. It went out the next day. We don’t know where themoney came from or where it went. He’s had some gambling problems.”
“Stay with him, Pete,” I say.
“There’s something else,” he says.
“You remember Beth Holmes said her private eye caught Bob with anotherwoman at the Fairmont in December?”
We remember. The infamous mystery woman.
“Well,” he continues, “I talked to her private eye. You know she hiredNick Hanson?”
I do. Mort and Rosie don’t. They burst into laughter.
“Nick the Dick!” Mort shouts.
“She hired Nick the Dick?”
Wendy’s bewildered.
“I give up,” she says.
“Who the hell is “Nick the Dick’?”
Mort, Rosie and I glance at one another. Mort grins at Wendy.
“Honey,” he says, “Nick Hanson is a legend. Maybe you’re too young. Hewas the lead investigator for a defense lawyer named Nunzio DellaVentura, Nunzio wasn’t the best lawyer in town, but he was one of themost flamboyant. He had a storefront office on Columbus Avenue inNorth Beach for fifty years. The prosecutors hated him. Nunzio wasquite a character. So’s Nick.”
“You have to see him to believe him,” Pete says.
“That’s right,” says Mort.
“He may be all of five feet tall. Always dresses impeccably. Quitethe man about town. Always has a fresh flower in his lapel.
You’d look at him and you’d be inclined to underestimate him. Andyou’d be making the biggest mistake of your life. He’s the mosttenacious private eye I’ve ever met. He’s in his eighties. Still apistol. Still lives in North Beach. Still working every day.”
“He’s written several mystery novels based on cases he’s worked on,” Iadd.
“One was made into a movie. I think Danny DeVi to played him.”
“I’ll look for him next time I’m at the bookstore,” Wendy says.
“So, what did Nick the Dick find out about Bob?” she asks.
“Just what you would have thought. Nick saw Bob with a woman in a roomat the Fairmont in late December. He couldn’t ID her. He was in thebuilding across the street. The drapes were partially closed and thelights were dim. By the time Nick got to the hotel, she was gone. Hetook some pictures. He promised to let me see them.”
“Will he testify?” I ask.
“Of course. This is a highprofile case.”
Rosie looks puzzled.
“How does that help us?”
“If it wasn’t Diana, it undercuts Skipper’s argument that Joel acted ina jealous rage,” I reply.
“On the other hand,” she points out, “if it wasn’t Diana, it mayundercut our suicide argument. If Bob already had another girlfriend,he couldn’t have been too distraught about his breakup with Diana. Inthat case, it doesn’t seem logical that he would have killed himself.”As always, Rosie sees the situation with great clarity.
“Unless,” I say, “the mystery woman was just a rebound for Bob and sheblew him off, too. Who knows? Maybe she was a hooker.”
Rosie is skeptical.
“Seems like a stretch to me,” she says.
It begs the obvious question.
“Pete, can you talk to the staff at the Fairmont to see if you can getan ID on the woman?”
“I’m already working on it,” he says.
“Good.” I look at my notes.
“We’re missing something. I’m sure of it.” I turn to Pete.
“Any leads on Vince Russo?”
He winks.
“Maybe. You remember his car was found at the Vista Point at the northend of the Golden Gate Bridge? His overcoat washed up at Fort Bakeryesterday. He wasn’t wearing it.”
“Do you think he might still be alive?”
“It’s possible,” he says.
“I talked to the cab companies in Marin County. Marin Taxi had apickup at the Vista Point at about three a.m. on December thirty-first.The dispatcher and the driver both confirmed the fare was taken to theinternational terminal at San Francisco International. The driver saidthe passenger was a heavyset male in his thirties or forties, who paidcash.”
“Did you show the driver a picture of Russo?”
“Yeah. He wasn’t sure.”
“You think it was Vince?”
“You bet your ass I do.”
Pete usually has very good instincts about these issues. Rosie hitsthe nail on the head when she says, “Sounds like we may have to bring akey witness back from the dead.”
CHAPTER 30
YOU CAN’T CROSSEXAMINE A VIDEOTAPE
“Judge Shirley Chen will hold a pretrial conference at ten o’clocktoday to discuss scheduling and evidentiary issues. The trial willstart in one week.”
—news center 4 daybreak. monday, march 9.
March 9 is a day for the lawyers to argue about evidentiary issues,legal motions and scheduling. We’ll also get our first taste of JudgeShirley Chen.
The tenor of the trial will be set by the decisions she makes today.Rosie, Mort and I park in the pay lot next to the Hall and lug ourheavy trial briefcases through the daily El Nirio downpour. Skipper’sLincoln is parked illegally in front of the main entrance to the Hall.The minicams are out in force. Rita Roberts stands under a largeumbrella with the News Center 4 logo.
The wind is howling at thirty-five miles per hour, but her hair doesn’tmove. I shrug when she asks for a comment. We push our way into thebuilding, shake our umbrellas and walk through the metal detectors. Itwould be bad form to be late.
Judge Shirley Chen is in her mid-forties, although she looks younger.She began her career at S&G twenty years ago. It seems as if everyjudge in California started at S&G. She moved to the San FranciscoDistrict Attorney’s Office three years later. I tried two casesagainst her when I was a PD. I won one and I lost one. She was anambitious prosecutor. She’ll bring the same tenacity to the bench.
Her chambers are sterile. Her lawschool diploma hangs on the wall,but her books and files are still in boxes. I’m reminded she’s singleas I notice there are no pictures of a spouse or children. There’s aplaque on her wall from the San Francisco Women’s Bar Association.There’s a gavel from her alma mater, the Hastings College of Law in SanFrancisco, which indicates that she was named distinguished alumnathree years ago. There’s a small picture of her with the Californiaattorney general.
Skipper and McNulty arrive a few minutes after we do. Everybody isdecked out in their Sunday best. Skipper’s navy blue pinstripe looksas if it was delivered earlier this morning from Wilkes Bashford.McNulty is wearing charcoal gray. We can’t compete on clothing.Besides, the rain has taken the starch out of our best goingto-courtclothes. Skipper plays with his Mont Blanc pen. McNulty sitsquietly.
“Let’s get started,” Judge Chen says.
“You’re not the only people on my schedule today.”
We nod in unison. No chitchat.
“First,” she says, “let’s talk about scheduling.” She looks at me.
“May I assume, Mr. Daley, that your client hasn’t reconsidered hisposition concerning the timing of his trial?”
“That’s correct, Your Honor. My client doesn’t intend to waive time.We’re ready.” Or as ready as we’re going to be.
She isn’t happy.
“Very well,” she says.
“We’re scheduled to start one week from today, on March sixteenth.” Shelooks at Skipper.
“Mr. Gates, how many trial days would you estimate for theprosecution’s case?”
He turns to McNulty.
“One moment. Your Honor,” he says. He and McNulty whisper to eachother. Skipper turns back to the judge.
“I don’t think it will take us very long, Your Honor. If Mr. Daley isreasonable, we won’t need a lot of time qualifying our witnesses asexperts.”