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.”
Acosta’s now up out of his chair, towering over the Greek, hammering on the railing around the witness box, inches from Tony’s ear. He is bellowing at the Greek, at the top of his voice. “Mr. Skarpellos, another word and I’ll hold you in contempt,” he says. Skarpellos is one sentence, one angry burst from a mistrial, and Acosta knows it. Ambition, judicial elevation flash before his eyes. If he had a gag, even a garrote, he would use it now.
Skarpellos splits an infinitive, stops in mid-sentence, looks at the angry judge, and reins in his wrath.
“I will have no more of this,” says Acosta. He points his gavel like a blunted sword at the Greek. Their eyes meet and the Coconut makes plain who is in charge here. Halting, never giving up eye contact, like he’s warding off some mongrel dog searching for an opening, the judge finally takes his seat.
“Counsel.” He looks at me. “Are you finished?”
“Not quite, Your Honor.”
“Then get on with it.”
I have the certified copy of the Greek’s check marked for identification and move it into evidence. There’s no objection from Nelson. Meeks is making notes. I can tell by the way he is eyeing the Greek that these are little mental ticklers to take a hard look at the statutes on embezzlement.
I look at Skarpellos. “As I recall, you told police the morning after the murder that you couldn’t think of anyone who might kill Ben Potter. Is that correct?”
He looks at me. He’s breathing heavily now, a lot of adrenaline pumping inside that barrel chest.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Skarpellos, that you yourself had a heated argument with the victim, Ben Potter, only a few days before he was killed?”
He looks back up at Acosta. “This is bullshit,” he says. “I don’t have to put up with this.”
“The witness will answer the question,” says Acosta. “And he will watch his language while he’s in my courtroom.”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I apologize. But this is not true. I never had an argument with Ben Potter. We were good partners.”
“Then you should so testify,” says Acosta. “But watch your tongue.” Acosta nods toward me to continue.
“Isn’t it true, Mr. Skarpellos, that in fact Mr. Potter had discovered that you had taken sizable sums from the firm’s client trust account, diverting those moneys to your own personal use, and that he gave you an ultimatum, that unless you paid that money back, restored it to the trust account, he would report you to the state bar?”
“This is garbage. I don’t have to answer that.”
“Isn’t it true that Ben Potter discovered you stealing money from the trust account and threatened to report you to the bar, to have you disbarred from the practice of law?”
“That’s garbage,” he says. “I don’t know where you’re hearing this crap.”
“I’ve warned you once, Mr. Skarpellos. I won’t do it again. I don’t accept that kind of language in my courtroom.” There are a lot of indignant looks flashing from the judge to the jury, like maybe the judiciary and the courts are some offshoot of the temperance league. “That question can be answered with a simple yes or no,” says Acosta.
“No,” says Skarpellos.
“Are you telling us that you never took any money from the trust account?”
“I’m taking the Fifth,” he says.
I retreat to the counsel table and retrieve the final document. “Besides the check,” I say, “that you wrote to Susan Hawley, isn’t it true that you failed to pay over funds owing to another client, one Melvin Plotkin, for whom your firm had taken possession of a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar settlement in a personal injury case?”
“Where did you hear that?” he says. “A lotta gossip.”
I hand him a copy of the formal letter of complaint filed by Plotkin with the bar. Mr. Plotkin had made five demands on the firm for payment over a period of seven months. The attorneys in the case had gone to the Greek, imploring him to release the funds to the client, but Skarpellos had ignored them. Tod had given me the inside dealings on this, anxious to implicate his boss. We have searched for the letter dictated by Ben to Jo Ann and addressed to the bar. So far we have been unable to find this smoking gun. But the Plotkin letter is the next best thing.
“I ask you to examine this letter, Mr. Skarpellos, and tell me whether you’ve ever seen a copy of it before.”
Again he looks at it, but his eyes are not following the words. He’s stalling for time.
“Where did you get this?” he says. “There’s been no disciplinary finding in this case, no action taken by the bar. State bar investigations are supposed to be confidential.”
“Not from a criminal courts subpoena,” I tell him.
“Your Honor, this is a terrible breach of confidentiality, an invasion of privacy,” he says.
He gets no sympathy from the judge.
“I would ask you again, have you ever seen a copy of this letter, Mr. Skarpellos? You will notice that you are copied on the ‘cc’s’ at the bottom,” I tell him.
“Yes I got a copy of it,” he says. “And the entire matter has been resolved.”
“Yes, you settled it privately, isn’t that true?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “We take care of our clients. This was a simple misunderstanding.”
“I see, you took Mr. Plotkin’s money and used it for eighteen months and he somehow misunderstood how you could do that. Is that it?”
Tony doesn’t answer this, but his head is constantly shaking, like he wants to say “no” but doesn’t know how.
“The state bar didn’t quite understand it either, did they?”
I get no response to this.
“Isn’t it true that you settled this complaint, that you paid Mr. Plotkin his money only after the bar began its investigation, and then you only paid him on condition that he would withdraw this complaint, to get the bar off your back? Isn’t that true?”
“No,” he says.
“I can bring Mr. Plotkin in here to tell us what happened.”
The Greek is looking at me, his eyes darting.
“Isn’t it true that to settle this case you took other moneys from trust, that you operated a little shell game, stealing from one client to pay another, and that this is what Ben Potter discovered?”