Thirty-three
Freeman kept Kurlen on the stand for another fifteen minutes of redirect and did her best to resculpt his account of the investigation into a sterling effort of crime fighting. When she was through I passed on another crack at him because I was convinced that I was already ahead on Kurlen. My effort had been to sell the investigation as an exercise in tunnel vision and I believed I had succeeded.
Freeman apparently felt that the need to address the federal target letter was urgent. Her next witness was the Secret Service agent, Charles Vasquez. He had not even been known to her twenty-four hours earlier but had now been interjected into her carefully orchestrated lineup of witnesses and evidence. I could have objected to his testimony on the grounds that I had not had the opportunity to question or prepare for Vasquez but I thought that would be pushing it with Judge Perry. I decided to at least see what the agent had to say on direct before I’d go that far.
Vasquez was about forty, with a dark complexion and hair to match. During the preliminaries he said he had formerly been a DEA agent before shifting to the Secret Service. He went from chasing drug dealers to chasing counterfeiters until the opportunity came to join the foreclosure task force. He said the task force had a supervisor and ten agents coming from the Secret Service, FBI, the Postal Service and the IRS. An assistant U.S. attorney oversaw their work but the agents, assigned to pairs, largely worked autonomously, with freedom to pursue targets of their choice.
“Agent Vasquez, on January eighteenth of this year you authored a so-called target letter to a man named Louis Opparizio and it was signed by U.S. Attorney Reginald Lattimore. Do you recall that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Before we get into that specific letter, can you tell the jury exactly what a target letter is?”
“It’s a tool we use to smoke out suspects and offenders.”
“How so?”
“We basically inform them that we are looking into their affairs, their business practices and actions they have taken. A target letter always invites the recipient to come in to discuss the situation with the agents. A high percentage of the time the recipients do just that. Sometimes it leads to cases, sometimes it leads to other investigations. It’s become a useful tool because investigations cost a lot. We don’t have the budget. If a letter can result in charges being filed or a witness cooperating or a solid investigative lead then it’s a good deal for us.”
“So in regard to the letter to Louis Opparizio, what made you send him a target letter?”
“Well, my partner and I were very familiar with his name because it came up often in other cases we were working. Not necessarily in a bad way, just that Opparizio’s company is what we call a foreclosure mill. It handles all the paperwork and filing on foreclosures for many of the banks operating in Southern California. Thousands of cases. So we kept seeing the company—ALOFT—and sometimes there were complaints about the methods the company was using. My partner and I decided to take a closer look. We sent out the letter to see what sort of response we’d get.”
“Does that mean you were fishing for a reaction?”
“It was more than fishing. As I said, there was quite a lot of smoke from this place. We were looking for fire and sometimes the reaction we get from a target letter dictates what our next moves will be.”
“At the time you authored and sent the target letter, had you gathered any evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Louis Opparizio or his company?”
“Not at that point, no.”
“What happened after you sent the letter?”
“Nothing so far.”
“Has Louis Opparizio responded to the letter?”
“We got a response from an attorney saying that Mr. Opparizio welcomed the investigation because it would give him the opportunity to show he ran a clean business.”
“Have you availed yourself of that welcome and investigated Mr. Opparizio or his company further?”
“No, there hasn’t been time. We have several other ongoing investigations that appear to be more fruitful.”
Freeman checked her notes before finishing.
“Finally, Agent Vasquez, is Louis Opparizio or ALOFT currently under investigation by your task force?”
“Technically, no. But we plan to follow up on the letter.”
“So the answer is no?”
“Correct.”
“Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”
Freeman sat down. She was beaming and obviously pleased with the testimony she had drawn from the agent. I stood up and took my legal pad back to the lectern. I had written down a few questions off the direct examination.
“Agent Vasquez, are you telling the jury that an individual who does not respond to your target letter by immediately coming in and confessing must be innocent of any wrongdoing?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Because Louis Opparizio did not do so, do you consider him to be in the clear now?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you make it a practice to send target letters to individuals you believe are innocent of any criminal activity?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then what is the threshold, Agent Vasquez? What does one need to do to receive a target letter?”
“Basically, if you come across my radar in any sort of suspicious way, then I’ll do some preliminary checking and that may lead to the letter. We’re not sending these out scattershot. We know what we’re doing.”
“Did you or your partner or anyone from the task force speak with Mitchell Bondurant in regard to the practices of ALOFT?”
“No, we didn’t. Nobody did.”
“Would he have been someone you would’ve talked to?”
Freeman objected, calling the question vague. The judge sustained the objection. I decided to leave the question floating out there unanswered in front of the jury.
“Thank you, Agent Vasquez.”
Freeman went back to her scheduled rollout of the case after Vasquez, calling the gardener who found the hammer in the bushes of the home a block and a half from the scene of the murder. His testimony was quick and uneventful, by itself unimportant until it would be tied in later with testimony from the state’s forensic witnesses. I did score a minor point by getting the gardener to acknowledge that he had worked in and around the bushes at least twelve different times before he found the hammer. It was a little seed to plant for the jury, the idea that maybe the hammer itself had been planted long after the murder.
After the gardener, the prosecution followed with a few quick hits of testimony from the home owner and the cops who carried the chain of custody of the hammer to the forensic lab. I didn’t even bother with cross-examination. I was not going to contest chain of custody or the fact that the hammer was the murder weapon. My plan was to agree not only that it was the weapon that killed Mitchell Bondurant but also that it belonged to Lisa Trammel.
It would be an unexpected move, but the only one that worked with the defense theory of a setup. The lead through Jeff Trammel that the hammer might be in the back of the BMW he’d left behind when he disappeared to Mexico didn’t pan out. Cisco was able to locate that car, still in use at the dealership where Jeff Trammel had worked, but there was no hammer in the trunk and the man in charge of fleet management said there never was. I dismissed Jeff Trammel’s story as an effort to get paid off for information that might be helpful to his estranged wife’s case.
The murder weapon sequence brought us to lunch, and the judge, as was beginning to be his custom, broke fifteen minutes early. I turned to my client and invited her to go to lunch with me.
“What about Herb?” she said. “I promised him I would go to lunch with him.”
“Herb can come, too.”
“Really?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Because I thought you didn’t… Never mind, I’ll tell him.”
“Good. I’ll drive.”
I had Rojas pick us up and we went
down Van Nuys to the Hamlet near Ventura. The place had been there for decades and while it had classed itself up since the days it was called Hamburger Hamlet, the food was just the same. Because the judge had gotten us out early, we avoided the noon lineup and were immediately shown to a booth.
“I love this place,” Dahl said. “But I haven’t been here in ages.”
I sat across from Dahl and my client. I didn’t respond to his enthusiasm for the restaurant. I was too busy working out how I was going to play the lunch.
We ordered quickly because even with the early start our time window was small. Our conversation was focused on the case and how Lisa perceived things to be going. She was pleased so far.
“You get something that helps me from every witness,” she said. “It’s quite remarkable.”
“But the question is, do I get enough?” I responded. “And what you have to remember is that the mountain gets steeper with each witness. Do you know the piece Boléro? It’s classical music. I think it was composed by Ravel.”
Lisa gave me a blank stare.
“Bo Derek, in Ten,” Dahl said. “Love it!”
“Right. Anyway, the point is it’s a long piece, maybe fifteen minutes or so, and it starts off slow with just a few quiet instruments and then it gathers momentum and builds and builds into a crescendo, a big finish with all the instruments in the orchestra coming in together. And at the same time, the emotions of the listeners build and come together at the same moment. And that’s what the prosecutor is doing here. She’s building sound and momentum. Her best stuff is still to come because she’s going to bring everything together with drums and strings and horns by the time she’s finished. You understand, Lisa?”
She nodded reluctantly.
“I’m not trying to knock you down. You are excited and hopeful and righteous and I want you to stay that way. Because the jury picks up on it and it helps just as much as anything I do in there. But you have to remember, the mountain is getting steeper. She’s got the science still to come and juries love science because it gives them a way out, a way of deferring. People think they want to be on jury duty. You get out of work, you sit front row on an interesting case, real-life drama in front of you instead of on the tube at home. But eventually they have to go back into that room and look at each other and decide. They have to decide somebody’s life. Believe me, not too many people want to do that. The science makes it easier. ‘Oh, well, if the DNA matches then it can’t be wrong. Guilty as charged.’ You see? This is what we still face, Lisa, and I don’t want there to be any illusions about it.”
Dahl gallantly put his hand on her arm, which leaned on the table. He gave it a comforting squeeze.
“Well, what will we do about their DNA?” Trammel asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “There’s nothing I can do. I told you before trial we had our own people test it and we got the same answers. It’s legit.”
Her eyes were cast down in defeat and I saw the start of tears, which was what I wanted. The waitress chose that moment to show up with our lunch plates. I waited until we were left alone before continuing.
“Cheer up, Lisa. The DNA is just window dressing.”
She looked up at me in confusion.
“I thought you just said it’s legit.”
“It is. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t an explanation for it. I’ll handle the DNA. Like you said when we sat down, my job here is to drop a doubt into each piece of their puzzle. Then we hope when all their pieces are in place and they hold the picture up to the jury that all the little seeds of doubt we have sown have grown into something that changes that picture. If we do that, then we get tan.”
“What’s that mean?”
“We go home. We go to the beach and we get tan.”
I smiled at her and she smiled back. Her tearing up had smeared the intricate makeup work she had performed that morning.
The rest of lunch was punctuated by small talk and uninformed or inane observations of the criminal justice system by my client and her paramour. This was a common thing I had observed in my clients. They don’t know the law but are quick to tell me what is wrong with it. I waited until Trammel forked the last bite of salad into her mouth.
“Lisa, your mascara got a little smeared during the first part of our conversation. It’s very important that you stay strong and look strong. I want you to go into the restroom and make yourself look strong, okay?”
“Can I just do it at the courthouse?”
“No, because we might be going in at the same time as some of the jurors or the reporters. You never know who will see you. I don’t want anyone thinking you’re spending your lunch hour crying, okay? I want you to do it now. And I’ll call Rojas to come pick us up.”
“It might take me a few minutes.”
I checked my watch.
“Okay, take your time. I’ll wait a little bit on Rojas.”
Dahl got up so she could slide out of the booth. Then we were left alone. I had pushed my plate to the side and had my elbows on the table. I had my hands clasped together in front of my mouth, like a poker player holding up his cards to help hide his face. At heart a good lawyer was a negotiator. And now it was time to negotiate Herb Dahl’s exit.
“So Herb… it’s time for you to go.”
He gave me a small smile of misunderstanding.
“What do you mean? We all came together.”
“No, I mean from the case. From Lisa. It’s time for you to disappear.”
He kept the I don’t understand demeanor going.
“I’m not going anywhere. Lisa and me… we’re close. And I have a lot of money tied up in this thing.”
“Well, your money’s gone. And as far as Lisa goes, that’s a charade that is coming to an end right now.”
I reached into the inside pocket of my coat and pulled out the photo of Herb with the brothers Mack that Cisco had given me the night before. I handed it across the table to him. He gave it a quick look and then laughed uneasily.
“Okay, I’ll bite. Who are they?”
“The Mack brothers. The men you hired to work me over.”
He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder at the rear hallway that led to the restrooms. He then turned back to me.
“Sorry, Mickey, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I think you have to remember here that you and I have a deal on the movie. A deal involving circumstances I am sure the California Bar would be interested in reviewing, but other than that…”
“Are you threatening me, Dahl? Because if you are you’re making a mistake.”
“No, no threat. I’m just trying to figure out where you’re coming from.”
“I’m coming from a dark room where I had an interesting conversation with the Mack brothers.”
Dahl refolded the photo and handed it back to me.
“These two? They were asking me for directions, that’s all.”
“Directions, huh? Are you sure it wasn’t money they were asking for? Because we have photos of that, too.”
“I might’ve given them a few bucks. They asked for help and seemed nice enough.”
Now I had to smile.
“You know, you’re good, Herb, but I got their story. So let’s just skip all the bullshit and get down to the play.”
He shrugged.
“Okay, this is your show. What’s the play?”
“The play is what I said at the top. You’re gone, Herb. You kiss Lisa goodbye. You kiss the movie deal goodbye. You kiss your money goodbye.”
“That’s a lot of kissing. What do I get for all that?”
“You get to stay out of prison, that’s what you get.”
He shook his head and glanced over his shoulder again.
“Doesn’t work that way, Mick. You see, that wasn’t my money. It didn’t come from me.”
“Who’d it come from, Jerry Castille?”
His eyes made a quick movement and then settled. The name had hit him like an invisible
punch. He now knew that the Mack brothers had caved and talked.
“Yeah, I know about Jerry and I know about Joey in New York, too. No honor among thugs, Herb. The Mack brothers are ready to start singing like Sonny and Cher. And the song is ‘I’ve Got You, Babe.’ I’ve got you all wrapped up in a nice little package and unless you slink on out of Lisa’s life and my life today, I’m going to drop it off at the DA’s office where I happen to have an ex-wife who’s a prosecutor and who was very distressed by that attack on me.
“I figure she’ll sail this one through the grand jury in a single morning and you, asshole, will go down for aggravated assault with GBH. That means ‘with great bodily harm.’ It’s called a charging enhancement. It will get you an extra three years on the sentence. And as the victim I’m going to insist on that. That’s for my twisted nut. I’d say that all told with gain time you’re looking at four years inside, Herb. And there’s one thing you should know. They don’t let you wear no fucking peace sign in Soledad.”
Dahl put his elbows on the table and leaned forward. For the first time I could see desperation enter his eyes.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“Listen, asshole—can I call you asshole?—I don’t give a rat’s ass who I’m dealing with. I’m looking at you and I want you away from me and this case and—”
“No, no, you don’t get it. I can help you. You think you know what’s going on in this case? You don’t know shit. But I can school you, Haller. I can help you reach the beach and we can all get tan.”
I leaned back away from him, my arm up on the booth’s padded backrest. Now I was puzzled. I flicked a wrist like this was a complete waste of time.
“So school me.”
“You think I just showed up on her picket line and said, ‘Let’s make a movie’? You dumb fuck! I was sent there. Before Bondurant was even put down, I was getting close to Lisa. You think that was happenstance?”
“Sent by who?”
“Who do you think?”
I stared at him and felt the coalescing of all aspects of the case, like streams to the river. The hypothesis of innocence was not a hypothesis. The setup was real.