They’ll know, he’d said.
There was something there. I knew it.
My cell phone rang. I fumbled with it, revealing some nerves. I might actually be onto something big here.
The caller ID said the call was coming from home.
“My water broke,” said Talia.
5
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Moody, lead prosecutor in United States v. Almundo, stood at the prosecution table, leafing through some papers. He had about five years on me-roughly forty-and his tightly cropped reddish blond hair and boyish features struggled against the sober demeanor required of any federal prosecutor. He had the look of someone who had just finished a stressful assignment.
In fact, the government was all but done with their case now. They’d put on more than thirty witnesses. Eleven members of the Columbus Street Cannibals, each of whom had pleaded guilty, had testified to shaking down local businessmen. Nine intermediaries, “straw” contributors who pocketed the extorted cash and then wrote a check in the same amount (minus a small fee for their troubles) to Citizens for Almundo, all had taken pleas and testified as well. There was no doubt about the extortion; the defense, in fact, had agreed to stipulate to it, but the federal government, in its typical flair for overkill, had scorched every last plot of earth, calling many of the shopkeepers as well and providing all kinds of colorful, fancy charts and PowerPoint presentations matching up the extortion payments to contributions to Hector’s campaign fund.
As for the Wozniak murder, the government showed that Wozniak refused to pay the street tax and introduced plenty of forensic evidence linking the fine young Cannibal, Eddie Vargas, to his murder.
But the government had a problem. For all this evidence, none of the witnesses could point the finger at Senator Almundo himself. None of those witnesses would testify that they ever spoke to Hector. And it wasn’t a crime to accept a contribution that was the product of extortion unless you knew the source of the money was illegal. If we could detach Hector from this criminal enterprise, he would walk free.
Enter Hector’s chief of staff, Joey Espinoza, the sole witness who could tie Hector to all of this, and who wore a wire to help the government do so. A polished, well-groomed man in his early forties, Joey Espinoza had just spent the last three days testifying that the entire neighborhood shakedown was orchestrated by his boss, the senator, from the comfort of his district office.
Finally, after conferring with his fellow assistants-other white Irishmen-Christopher Moody unbuttoned his blue suit jacket, signaling he was about to take his seat. I felt the familiar adrenaline spike.
“Thank you, Mr. Espinoza,” Moody said. “The United States has no further questions, Your Honor.”
“Cross-examination?” asked the judge, looking at Paul Riley, not me.
I felt the courtroom brim with fresh energy as the prosecution passed the witness to the defense. Espinoza had been on the stand for the government for three full days, so the buzz had subsided. But now the defense was going to get its shot, and expectations were high. We had to be aware of that from the outset. After Espinoza’s testimony, the jury would be expecting us to put a big hole in his testimony, or Hector Almundo would be convicted.
Paul Riley gave a very curt nod in my direction, a vote of confidence. I rose from my seat and felt a hushed surprise behind me. I assumed almost every spectator had anticipated that Paul, a celebrated lawyer, would handle the cross-examination of this witness. I’d been surprised myself when Paul tapped me. It certainly wasn’t charity on his part. There was no way that Paul would let me cut my teeth in a situation where the stakes were so high. Something had told him that I was the better choice. I think he wanted to stay “clean,” so to speak, for the closing argument. He wanted to remain the good guy, the earnest advocate, and not the one who tore a hole in the prosecution’s chief witness.
In any event, all that mattered now was that I took this witness down.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Espinoza. My name is Jason Kolarich.”
“Good afternoon,” said Espinoza.
The witness was inherently unlikeable: dressed too immaculately, bountiful dark hair styled just so, overly impressed with his careful enunciation-slick was my preferred term.
“If Senator Almundo had been elected attorney general, he would’ve had to resign his state senate seat mid-term, isn’t that true? He’d have two years left on his four-year term.”
“Yes, of course,” said the witness.
“And you wanted to be appointed to fill that vacancy.”
The witness angled his head ever so slightly.
My eyes moved to Chris Moody, who was scribbling a note. This would be a surprise to Moody, I assumed. Espinoza had said nothing of this in the direct examination, and he probably hadn’t volunteered this information to the feds. Espinoza had cast himself as the faithful aide, the loyal servant acting at the behest of his master. The obvious point I wanted to make was that Espinoza had an independent motivation to engage in the extortion plot; Hector’s move up the ladder would leave a rung open for Joey. And given that Espinoza probably hadn’t shared this information with the prosecutors, they hadn’t had the chance to prepare him for this line of inquiry.
“I don’t know about that,” said the witness.
“Well-” I looked at my client, Senator Hector Almundo, then back at Espinoza. “Didn’t you tell Senator Almundo that you’d want to be appointed to his seat? That you wanted to be the next senator from the thirteenth district?”
Espinoza restrained himself from looking in the senator’s direction. He took the whole thing like it was amusing. “I might have expected to serve as his chief of staff at the attorney general’s office, but senator? I don’t know about that.”
“That’s not what I asked you, sir.” Always a favorite line of a defense attorney-pointing out a witness’s evasion. It puts a small dent in his credibility and also highlights the importance of the question. “Did you not tell Senator Almundo that this is exactly what you wanted? To take his place in the senate?”
The witness, I thought, was calculating. Would Senator Almundo take the stand and testify to such a conversation? Had anyone else heard him utter this desire?
“Mr. Kolarich, the senator and I spent a great deal of time together. Often sixteen-hour days. Many things came up from time to time. If you are asking, did we ever discuss my future, the answer is probably yes.”
This was going well. The witness was giving a political answer, but this wasn’t a press conference. A chance for another indentation in his facade of credibility. If a witness is a brand-new car on direct examination, you want him to look he was in a head-on collision by the time you’re done crossing him.
“No, that’s not what I’m asking. Let me ask it a third time, Mr. Espinoza. Did you not tell Senator Almundo that you wanted to take his seat in the senate if he were elected attorney general?”
The witness smiled at me, and at the jury. “Mr. Kolarich,” he said, as if exhausted, “I cannot sit here with certainty and say yes or no to that question. It is possible that I said that, and it is possible I did not. I don’t recall with any certainty.”
“A conversation concerning whether you would be the next senator from the thirteenth district-you aren’t sure whether you had that conversation or not? You’re telling this jury you wouldn’t remember that?”
It sounded ridiculous. Espinoza had ambition written all over him. There was no way that he would have discussed this topic with the senator and not recalled it. Best of all, it was clear that the jury was not buying it.
Appearing to recognize as much, Espinoza tried to recover. “Let me say it this way, Mr. Kolarich. It is possible that I said such a thing but only in jest. I’ve been accused of having a dry sense of humor. I may have made the comment but not been serious.”