The story was starting to have the ring of truth to it. I thought about the LeMure deal. Opparizio had been in the process of setting up the sale of ALOFT to the publicly traded company. It was prudent business practice to keep tabs on any potential threats to the deal before it was finished in February. That could even include Lisa Trammel. Bad publicity could hinder the sale. Stockholders always want squeaky-clean acquisitions.
“Okay, what else?”
“Not a whole lot else. Just intelligence gathering. I got close to Lisa but then like a month later she got popped for the murder. Danny came back then. I thought he was going to say deal’s off because she was in jail. But he said he wanted me to put up the money and get her out. He gave me the money in a bag-two hundred thou. Then when I got her out I was supposed to do the same thing again, only with you people. Get inside the defense camp, see what was going on and report back.”
I looked over at Cisco. His pensive moves were no longer an act. We both knew that Dahl could be the tip of an iceberg that would tear the bottom out of the prosecution’s case and sink it. We also knew we might have a client in Lisa Trammel who was completely unlikable but innocent.
And if she was innocent…
“Where does Opparizio come into this?” I asked.
“Well, he sort of doesn’t-at least, not directly. But when I call Danny to check in he always wants to know what you’ve got on Opparizio. That’s how he says it, ‘What do they have on Opparizio?’ He asks that every time. So I’m thinking, maybe he’s the guy I’m really doing this work for, you know?”
I didn’t respond at first. I swiveled in my chair, thinking the story over.
“You know what I don’t get and what isn’t in your story, Dahl?” Cisco said.
“What?”
“The part about you hiring those two guys to go after Mick. You left that part out, asshole.”
“What about that?” I added.
Dahl raised his hands in surrender to show his innocence.
“Hey, they told me to do it. They sent me those two guys.”
“Why beat me up? What did that do?”
“It slowed you down, didn’t it? They want Lisa to go down for this and they started thinking you were too good. They wanted to slow you down.”
Dahl avoided eye contact by brushing imaginary lint off his thigh as he spoke. It made me think he might be lying about the reason behind the attack on me. It was the first false note I had picked up during the confession. My guess was that Dahl had been freelancing on the attack, that maybe he was the one who wanted me hurt.
I looked at Bullocks and then at Cisco. My quibble with Dahl’s last answer aside, we had an opportunity here. I knew what Dahl was going to offer next. Himself as a double agent. We’d reach the beach with him feeding Opparizio false intelligence.
I had to think about this. I could easily give Dahl misleading information to take back to Danny Greene. But it would be a risky maneuver, not to mention the ethical considerations.
I stood up and signaled Cisco toward the door.
“Everybody sit tight for a minute. I want to talk to my investigator out here.”
We stepped into the reception area and I closed the door behind me. I walked over to Lorna’s desk.
“You know what this means?” I asked.
“It means we’re going to win this fucking case.”
I opened the middle drawer of Lorna’s desk and took out the stack of delivery menus for local restaurants and fast-food chains.
“No, it means those two guys at the clubhouse? They might’ve been Bondurant’s killers and we fucked things up with that little play in the back room.”
“I don’t know about that, Boss.”
“Yeah, what did your two associates do with them?”
“Exactly what I told them to do, drop them off. They told me later that both of them wanted to be left off at some bottle club in downtown. That was it. I mean it, Mick.”
“It’s still fucked up.”
With the menus in my hand, I headed toward the door to my office. Cisco spoke to my back.
“Do you believe Dahl?”
I looked back at him before opening the door.
“To a point.”
I went into the office and put the menus down in the middle of the desk. I took my seat again and looked at Dahl. He was a weasel always on the make. And I was about to go down the path with him.
“We shouldn’t do it,” Bullocks said.
I looked at her.
“Do what?”
“Use him to feed bad intel back to Opparizio. We should put him on the stand and make him tell the story to the jury.”
Dahl immediately protested.
“I’m not testifying! Who the fuck is she, saying how this-”
I raised my hands in a calming gesture.
“You’re not testifying,” I said. “Even if I wanted you to I couldn’t get you on the stand. You have nothing that directly connects Opparizio to this. Have you ever even met the man?”
“No.”
“Have you ever seen him before?”
“Yeah, in the court.”
“Before that.”
“No, and I had never even heard his name until Danny asked me about him.”
I looked at Bullocks and shook my head.
“They’re too smart to leave a direct link out there. The judge wouldn’t let him anywhere near the stand.”
“Then what about Danny Greene? We put him on the stand.”
“And what do we use to compel him to testify? He’d take the Fifth before we even got to his name. There is only one thing to do here.”
I waited for further protest but Bullocks was finally and sullenly silent. I looked back at Dahl. I disliked the man intensely and trusted him about as much as I trusted that he had his own hair. But that didn’t stop me from taking the next step.
“Dahl, how is contact initiated with Danny Greene?”
“I usually call him about ten.”
“Every night?”
“Yeah, during the trial it’s been that way. He always wants to hear from me. Most nights he answers and if not he calls me back pretty quick.”
“Okay, let’s dig in and order some takeout. Tonight you make the call from here.”
“What am I going to say?”
“We’re going to work that out between now and ten when you make the call. But essentially I think you are going to tell Danny Greene that Louis Opparizio doesn’t have a thing to worry about when he takes the stand. You’re going to tell him that we’ve got nothing, that we’ve been bluffing and that the coast is clear.”
Thirty-seven
Thursday was supposed to be the day when all the orchestral elements came together in a crescendo for the prosecution. Since Monday morning Andrea Freeman had carefully rolled out her case, easily handling the variables and unknowns, like the potshots I had taken and the intrusion of the federal target letter, in a strategic buildup that gathered momentum and led inalterably to this day. Thursday was the science day, the day that all elements of evidence and testimony would be tied together with the unbreakable bindings of scientific fact.
It was a good strategy but this is where I intended to turn her plans upside-down. In the courtroom there are three things for the lawyer to always consider: the knowns, the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. Whether at the prosecution or defense table, it is the lawyer’s job to master the first two and always be prepared for the third. On Thursday I intended to be one of the unknown unknowns. I had seen Andrea Freeman’s strategy from a mile away. She would not see mine until she had stepped into it like quicksand and it silenced her crescendo.
Her first witness was Dr. Joachim Gutierrez, the assistant medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Mitchell Bondurant’s body. Using a morbid slide show that I had halfheartedly and unsuccessfully objected to, the doctor took the jury on a magical mystery tour of the victim’s body, cataloging every bruise, abrasion and broken tooth. Of course, he spent the most time describing and showing on the screens the damage created by the three impacts of the murder weapon. He pointed out which had been the first blow and why it was fatal. He called the second two strikes, delivered when the victim was facedown on the ground, overkill and testified that in his experience overkill was equated with an emotional context. The three brutal strikes revealed that the killer had personal animosity toward the victim. I could have objected to both the question and answer but they played nicely into a question I would later ask.