I walked across the room, pulling the subpoena out of my windbreaker. Driscoll was tall but slightly built and vampire white, which was strange for a guy living a block from the beach. I dropped the folded document in his lap.
“What is this?” he said, slapping it onto the floor without even unfolding it.
“It’s a subpoena and you can throw it on the floor and choose not to read it but that doesn’t matter. You’ve been served, Donald. I have a witness and I am an officer of the court. You don’t show up tomorrow at nine to testify and you’ll be in jail on a charge of contempt by lunchtime.”
Driscoll reached down and grabbed the subpoena.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You’re going to get me killed.”
I glanced over at Cisco. We were definitely on to something.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about that I can’t testify! If I come anywhere near that courthouse they’ll kill me. They’re probably watching this place right fucking now!”
I looked again at Cisco and then back down at the man on the couch.
“Who is going to kill you, Donald?”
“I’m not saying. Who the fuck do you think?”
He threw the subpoena at me and it bounced off my chest and fluttered to the ground. He jumped from the couch and started to break for the open door. The blanket fell and I saw he was wearing only gym shorts and a T-shirt. Before he made it three strides Cisco hit him with his body like an outside linebacker. Driscoll caromed into the wall and fell to the floor. A framed poster of a girl on a surfboard slid down the wall and the frame broke on the floor next to him.
Cisco calmly bent down, pulled Driscoll up and walked him right back to the couch. I stepped over to the door and closed it, just in case the wall banging brought out a curious neighbor. I then came back to the living room.
“You can’t run from this, Donald,” I said. “You tell us what you know and what you did and we can help you.”
“Help me get killed, you assholes. And I think you fucking broke my shoulder.”
He started working his arm and shoulder like he was warming up to pitch nine innings. He grimaced.
“How’s it feel?” I said.
“I told you, it feels broken. I felt something give.”
“You wouldn’t be able to move it,” Cisco said.
Cisco’s voice had a threatening tone to it, as if there would be further consequences if the shoulder actually was broken. When I spoke, my voice was calm and welcoming.
“What do you know, Donald? What would make you a danger to Opparizio?”
“I don’t know anything and I didn’t say that name-you did.”
“You have to understand something. You have been served with a valid subpoena. You show up and you testify or you stay in jail until you do. But think about this, Donald. If you testify about what you know about ALOFT and what you did, then you’re protected. Nobody will make a move against you because it would be obvious where it came from. It’s your only move here.”
He shook his head.
“Yeah, obvious if they did it now. What about in ten years when nobody remembers your stupid-ass trial and they can still hide behind all the money in the world?”
I didn’t really have an answer to that one.
“Look, I’ve got a client on trial for what amounts to her life. She’s got a little boy and they’re trying to take everything away from her. I’m not going to-”
“Fuck off, man, she probably did it. We’re talking about two different things here. I can’t help her. I have no evidence. I’ve got nothing. Just leave me the hell alone, would you? What about my life? I want to have a life, too.”
I looked at him and sadly shook my head.
“I can’t leave you alone. I’m putting you on the stand tomorrow. You can refuse to answer questions. You can even take the Fifth if you’ve committed crimes. But you’ll be there and they’ll be there. They’ll know they’ve got a continuing problem with you. Your best bet is to spill it all, Donald. Put it out there and be protected. Five years, ten years, they’ll never be able to do a damn thing to you because there will be a record.”
Driscoll was staring at an ashtray full of coins on the coffee table, but he was seeing something else.
“Maybe I should get an attorney,” he said.
I gave Cisco a look. This was exactly what I didn’t want to have happen. A witness with his own attorney was never a good thing.
“Sure, fine, if you’ve got a lawyer, bring him. But a lawyer is not going to stop the forward progress of this trial. That subpoena is bulletproof, Donald. A lawyer will charge you a grand to try to knock it down but it won’t work. It will only make the judge mad at you for making him take time out of the trial.”
My phone started to buzz in my pocket. It was early enough on a Sunday to be unusual. I pulled it out to check the display. Maggie McPherson.
“Think about what I said, Donald. I have to take this but I’ll be quick.”
As I answered I walked into the kitchen.
“Maggie? Everything all right?”
“Sure, why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of early for a Sunday. Is Hayley still asleep?”
Sunday was always my daughter’s catch-up day. She could easily sleep past noon if not roused.
“Of course. I’m just calling because we didn’t hear from you yesterday so I guess that makes today movie day.”
“Uh…”
I vaguely remembered promising a movie outing when I had been in Maggie’s office Friday afternoon.
“You’re busy.”
The Tone had entered her voice. The judgmental you-are-full-of-shit Tone.
“I am at the moment. I’m down in Long Beach talking to a wit.”
“So, no movie? Is that what I should tell her?”
I could hear both Cisco’s and Driscoll’s voices from the living room but was too distracted to hear what was said.
“No, Maggie, don’t tell her that. I’m just not sure when I’m going to be out of here. Let me finish here and I’ll call you back. Before she even wakes up, okay?”
“Fine, we’ll wait on you.”
Before I could respond she disconnected. I put the phone away and then looked around. It appeared that the kitchen was the least used room in the apartment.
I went back to the living room. Driscoll was still on the couch and Cisco was still standing close enough to prevent another escape attempt.
“Donald was just telling me how he wanted to testify,” Cisco said.
“Is that right? How come you changed your mind, Donald?”
I moved past Cisco so that I stood right in front of Driscoll. He looked up at me and shrugged, then nodded in Cisco’s direction.
“He said you’ve never lost a witness and that if it comes down to it he knows people who can handle their people without breaking a sweat. I kind of believe him.”
I nodded and momentarily had a vision from the dark room at the Saints’ clubhouse. I quickly shut it out.
“Yeah, well, he’s right,” I said. “So you are saying you want to cooperate?”
“Yeah. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“Good. Then why don’t we start right now?”
Forty-five
At the start of the trial Andrea Freeman had successfully kept my associate, Jennifer Aronson, off the defense table as my second chair by challenging her listing as a defense witness as well. On Monday morning, when it was time for Aronson to testify, the prosecutor sought to prevent her testimony, challenging it as irrelevant to the charges. I couldn’t prevent the first challenge from succeeding but felt I had the legal gods on my side for the second. I also had a judge who still owed me after toeing the prosecution’s line on two critical decisions earlier in the trial.
“Your Honor,” I said, “this can’t really be a sincere objection by counsel. The state has set before the jury a motive for the defendant’s supposedly having committed this crime. The victim was engaged in taking her house away. She was angry and frustrated, and she killed. That’s their case in its entirety. So now to object to a witness who will provide the details of that inciting action, the foreclosure, on grounds of relevance is specious at best and at worst pure hypocrisy.”