Surprise Witness: A. Stein & Associates Thriller Read online

  Will’s witnesses, having examined the splintered remains, opined that the panel was defective before J&A Builders got their hands on it, a “lemon” due to a manufacturing error. Baylie’s experts thought that the panel’s remnants met specifications. Therefore, a defect must have been created during storage or handling by J&A.

  Those experts would have their day in court. Right now, Baylie was trying to convince the jury that José should have observed the defect—however it came to be—himself and avoided stepping on the panel. Baylie would then argue that José had been a cause of his own accident. In other words, José had been contributorily negligent. In D.C., that would mean a defense verdict.

  Will had anticipated this line of attack and prepared José. Baylie made no headway.

  Will glanced at his watch. Noon. This cross had been going on for an hour. José needed a break. Will stood.

  “Excuse me, Your Honor, but this may be a good time for the lunch break. It’s been a long morning for the jury.”

  “I was thinking the same thing, counselor,” Judge Storer replied. “Mr. Baylie?” she inquired. “Unless you are close to finishing your cross, let’s break for an hour.”

  “Only a few more questions, Your Honor,” Baylie responded, “and I would prefer to wrap this up before we break.”

  “Very well,” the judge said. She turned to her jury. “We very much appreciate your time and your attention, and I promise we won’t abuse either.”

  Will noticed that every one of the jurors smiled. He stifled a chuckle. Will had talked to dozens of jurors after his trials. They commented on what a pleasure it was to be included in the proceedings now and again. Even a simple recognition of their existence, particularly by the judge, counted. Otherwise, the judge talked to counsel, counsel talked to the witnesses, and the jury was ignored. The jurors’ perception was, however, entirely false. Everyone in the well, particularly the lawyers, was focused intensely on the jurors.

  The judge continued, “We’ll take an hour’s break for lunch in a few minutes. Proceed,” she nodded at Baylie.

  Baylie picked up a stack of papers from his table. “May I approach, Your Honor?” he asked. The judge nodded. Baylie walked over to José. “I am handing Mr. Marquez Defendants’ Exhibit AA, and I have a courtesy copy for the clerk and Mr. McCarty.”

  Will and Cassandra huddled over the documents, Exhibit AA, that Baylie handed to Will. Nothing surprising. José’s income tax returns for the ten years preceding the accident. These documents had been requested by the defendants in discovery. The firm would be asking the jury to award José the amount of his past and future loss of earnings due to his injuries. They would accordingly have to prove José’s actual lost income and loss of earnings potential. The income tax returns were, therefore, relevant and had been turned over to defense counsel.

  Mr. Baylie got right to the point.

  Q:These are copies of your income tax returns for the last ten years, correct?

  A:Yes.

  Q:Are they accurate?

  A:I presume so. That is, Mr. McCarty got them from the IRS, as far as I know.

  Q:No reason to question their accuracy, then, is that correct?

  A:None that I know.

  Q:And this is your signature on the forms, correct?

  José shifted in his seat, awkwardly twisting one shoulder, grimacing. He nodded.

  Will leaned forward, studying his client. What was going on? Had José’s pain worsened? Or was José reluctant to answer? What did José not want the jury to know? Will had no idea, which was a disastrous position to be in during the client’s cross-examination. Will’s heart raced.

  Q:Please answer audibly for the record, Mr. Marquez.

  A:Yes, that is my signature.

  Q:What is the social security number on the 2007 return?

  José’s face paled, and his forehead glistened with sudden sweat. He read off the series of numbers in a tight voice.

  Q:What’s the number on the 2016 return?

  In the split second before José answered, Will realized what was coming. He bolted to his feet. “Your Honor, may I approach?” Shouting was forbidden in Judge Storer’s courtroom. Will had almost crossed that line.

  Then, Baylie did. “Objection!” he boomed. “Answer the …”

  “Counsel,” Judge Storer interrupted sternly, “I will not have this kind of conduct. Now …”

  “I instruct my client not to answer,” Will spoke loudly, taking the risk of further angering the judge by cutting her off. She could throw him out of her courtroom. He had to take the chance. Will moved out from around his table and started towards the judge’s dais.

  “This is contemptible …” Baylie began.

  “Enough, both of you,” the judge pounded her gavel to underscore her command. “Approach the bench.”

  Both lawyers scurried forward. Judge Storer turned on the “husher,” a white-noise generator in the ceiling which prevented the jury from hearing that which they should not. “The jury needs their break now,” the judge said. “When we return, I expect counsel to behave themselves. Right now, I am seriously displeased with you both.”

  Chapter 2

  Fake ID

  Cassandra clutched her pen in her right hand, unconsciously clicking it. The phone crushed to her left ear rang for the fourth time. Come on, pick up, Cassandra mumbled under her breath, glancing around at the other attorneys, all on their phones, scattered around the patio outside the side door to the courthouse. She only had an hour.

  “A. Stein & Associates,” finally, their receptionist answered. “How can I help you?”

  “Beebe, it’s Cassandra. Put me through to Aaron, please.”

  Luckily, her call had come during the daily lawyers’ meeting. With the team together, Cassandra would get the best advice for Will. He surely needed it, as Cassandra quickly explained to her colleagues over the speakerphone in Aaron’s office.

  Will realized the trap Baylie had set just as defense counsel was wrapping up his cross-examination of José. Baylie would ask José, point blank, whether he had filed his older tax returns with a fake social security number. Will had no choice but to interrupt because he did not know what José’s answer would be.

  Will did not, at the time, understand how or why José had used a fake social security number. Will did know, however, that doing so was a federal crime. Presumably, José knew as well. Would José deny having done it? Will could not knowingly allow a client to lie under oath. On the other hand, he would not let his client confess to a crime on the stand, either. It was possible that the statute of limitations—the time limit for initiating the prosecution of a crime— had expired, but Will was not sure. He also had to worry about the jury’s reaction if José confessed to the deed. In any event, Will had to stop the questioning. He needed time to find answers.

  After the judge called the break, Will and Cassandra questioned José in the privacy of the witness room. José explained that he bought a counterfeit social security card years ago when he was an undocumented immigrant. So, now they had another problem on their hands. José was now legal because of his marriage to an American. But could he still be deported because of that old infraction if he testified to it today?

  “Will had no idea about this little problem?” Cassandra heard Marlon’s disembodied voice.

  “None,” Cassandra answered.

  “It was clever of him to see what was coming with that line of questioning, then,” Marlon noted, uncharacteristically impressed.

  Marlon White, the most senior associate in the firm, was extremely bright and a talented lawyer. He had fixed any number of potentially disastrous legal err
ors committed by his colleagues. Marlon had their backs, come what may, with no hesitation or complaint. He could also drink like a fish and hosted terrific firm parties, but he could be acerbically critical and always corrected everyone else’s grammar.

  “Yeah,” Cassandra replied, “but Will doesn’t see it that way. He was angry at himself for not discovering the fake card himself and mad at José for not bringing it to his attention. The five-hundred-dollar sanction Judge Storer imposed because Will interrupted the cross didn’t help matters, either. Once we got back to the witness room, Will yelled for five minutes before he calmed down enough to get to work. That’s when he told me to call you guys. So, we now have just over fifty minutes of the lunch break to figure out what to do.”

  “Do about what?” Cassandra heard Betsy ask. Betsy must have arrived late to the meeting, Cassandra thought.

  As Aaron recounted Will’s dilemma, Cassandra pictured her newest colleague, Betsy Thornhill, listening closely to Aaron. Betsy, the only lawyer in the office from an Ivy League school, was almost as good a lawyer as Marlon. At five-foot-ten, with shoulder-length blonde hair caught back in a headband, hazel-eyes in a tanned, oval face, and the wiry muscled arms and legs of a runner, Betsy looked good in her suits. Cassandra, a clothes horse herself, approved.

  Yet, Betsy never joined the rest of the gang at the “Bomb,” as they called their regular watering hole in the Bombay Club across Farragut Park from the office. Betsy did not share stories from the nephew’s birthday party or the disastrous date as the others did. The only tidbit Cassandra knew about Betsy’s personal life was that she had some connection to Jeff Howard, a member of the Virginia State Senate. Cassandra wondered how long Betsy would last at the firm.

  “I’m sorry I asked,” Betsy riposted when Aaron had finished.

  Cassandra smiled as she heard her colleagues chuckling. The tension across her shoulders eased. The familiar scene unfolded in her mind’s eye: Aaron’s fourth-floor office, spanning the entire floor of the building, floor-to-ceiling windows facing downtown D.C. on three sides; Aaron sitting at his mammoth mahogany desk; and Cassandra’s colleagues seated in the deep, padded maroon leather chairs arrayed in a semi-circle in front of Aaron.

  On top of the pile of magazines, articles, motions, and briefs on Aaron’s desk—the usual legal paraphernalia—lay an obstetrical forceps. To the right of his desk towered a human skeleton attached to a pole embedded in a raised platform. The skeleton, leaning on the baseball bat around which its bony fingers were wrapped, sported a red, white, and blue tie around its neck and a Washington Redskins cap on its skull.

  Aaron’s firm specialized in medical malpractice law. And his was one of, if not the best in town.

  “Will should call Marla Tuckman if he hasn’t already,” Aaron’s voice called Cassandra back to the problem at hand. Marla, she knew, was a top-notch immigration attorney. Will had retained her to help him snatch Norma from the maws of Immigration and Custom Enforcement a few months ago.

  “He did,” Cassandra replied. “She’s incommunicado on a two-week vacation, according to her voice message. Will tried her associate, but he’s in trial and unavailable until late this afternoon.”

  “Okay, then, everybody, go make your calls,” Aaron commanded. “Try any other immigration lawyers you know, Assistant United States Attorneys, or Federal Public Defenders. A State Department lawyer would be good, too. Get to work. Get Will some answers.”

  ***

  Late that afternoon, Cassandra stepped off the elevator with Will and Jim behind her. Beebe, at the front reception desk, jumped up to open the glass doors to the office suite for them.

  “Day one, and you already look exhausted,” Beebe exclaimed.

  Cassandra stepped back to let Jim with his load in first. Beebe was right, Cassandra thought. Even tall, broad-shouldered, gym-rat Jim stooped a bit, although he did have a legitimate excuse. He lugged a heavy litigation bag in each hand and three, large poster boards under his right arm.

  “Well, what happened?” Beebe asked. “Did you already lose your jury because of José’s unexpected testimony?”

  Will looked at Beebe. He smiled wanly and stepped past into the office.

  “I think we cleared that hurdle cleanly,” Cassandra answered Beebe, “but we need to revise our strategy going forward. Is Aaron in?”

  Beebe confirmed that the boss was in, as were Marlon and Miranda Patel. Cassandra headed toward her office to drop her briefcase and call an expert witness scheduled to testify the next day. Then, she would join the others for a brainstorming session.

  Chapter 3

  The Artist

  Far to the south and a time zone west of where the Stein lawyers conferenced, Paco hit “send” on the email to his friend, Marlon. Paco closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and stretched. The calendar tacked on the wall caught his eye. Today was the anniversary of the day he met Marlon, a decade ago. For once, on that day, fortune smiled on him.

  ***

  Paco sat outside a café on the town’s central plaza, finishing his morning coffee. Earlier, he watched a handful of merchants arranging their wares in the arcades circling the plaza. Echoes from their idle chatter occasionally broke the silence of Paco’s isolated village, perched high in the mountains, nestled among towering purple peaks.

  This was Wednesday, a day for work. The arcades and the plaza would fill only on the weekend, when local artisans and farmers and their neighbors and friends gathered to gossip and provision for the week to come.

  Two men entered the empty plaza from the southwest portal, directly across from Paco. Of similar build and height—slender and a hands-breadth shorter than Paco’s six feet—both wore khakis and polo shirts. The brunette sported a bright pink polo and the blonde a robin’s egg blue. Dockers and baseball caps completed their ensemble. Tourists, obviously, and Americans most likely, Paco thought.

  Outsiders rarely found their way to this remote, if picturesque, hill town. A few intrepid souls came to see its well-preserved colonial architecture. Paco ordinarily avoided those visitors. An instinct, which he immediately quelled, drew him to these two, however. On second thought, he rose, dropped a coin on the café table, and stepped onto the rough cobbles of the plaza floor.

  Paco advanced no more than a few meters when the tourists stopped and turned back towards the portal. Heads tilted back, they inspected the portal’s carved wooden lintel. Paco hesitated, then continued across the plaza.

  “Excuse me,” Paco said, and the tourists turned to face him. Paco stuck out his hand, smiling. “Welcome to my hometown. I’m Paco.”

  The brunette’s lips crooked, a slight frown on his narrow, high-browed face. Paco understood the man’s disquiet. Paco did not look like the locals who accosted visitors in every tourist destination in Mexico, offering their services as guides. Still, the stranger’s ingrained politeness trumped his hesitation. He returned Paco’s gesture, reaching out to shake.

  “Hi, I’m Marlon. Marlon White. And this is my husband, Allen James.”

  As he and Allen exchanged greetings, Paco stifled a smile. Marlon meant to drive Paco away, leaving the couple in peace, by his proclamation of the men’s relationship. Gay marriage was unheard of in solidly Catholic Mexico. Clever, Paco thought, and preferable to the supercilious rebuff given by most tourists to the locals. His interest in this couple deepened.

  “I would be delighted to show you around,” Paco said. “I’ve lived here for a very long time. Although you have a guidebook,” he motioned to the Fodor’s clutched in Allen’s left hand, “I can take you off the beaten path.”

  Marlon raised a hand in protest, but Paco persevered. “It would be my great pleasure,” Paco said. “This is a small town, and the families are
close-knit. We don’t see many tourists. I am on my own. The break from my ordinary solitude would be most welcome.”

  Marlon and Allen exchanged glances. Allen shrugged.

  “Okay, then,” Marlon said. “Lead on.”

  Paco motioned the couple towards the portal through which they had come, and the three started walking, abreast.

  “Why is someone like you living in the mountains in Mexico, and alone?” Allen asked.

  Paco flapped a hand. “Later. I’m not at all interesting. What brings you two here?”

  Marlon explained. Allen persuaded him to embark on a two-week road trip through Mexico. “Not exactly my idea of a nice vacation. I only agreed under duress.”

  Allen laughed. “Oh, come on. It was high time to do something other than stay in a five-star hotel and eat in Michelin-rated restaurants. I promised to drive, planned the trip, and insisted on buying an emergency break-down kit …

  “… the need for which filled me with horror,” Marlon finished Allen’s sentence. “We’d be leaving AAA and the rest of civilization far behind.”

  Paco laughed out loud, for the first time in months.

  By mid-afternoon, the three were companionable. Paco knew Allen was a corporate lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Marlon, also an attorney, specialized in medical malpractice. Marlon told the story of his and Allen’s first date and described their “perfect” wedding. They discussed the North American Free Trade Agreement and found common interests in classical music and American civil war history.

  Paco suited the American couple as a guide, as well. He satisfied Marlon’s fetish for detailed information by filling in the blanks in the Fodor’s description of “must-see” sites. After Allen revealed his desire—to find a local treasure no ordinary tourist would discover—Paco fulfilled his wish. He led the couple down a roughly carved, stone staircase into a hidden, underground chapel in the cathedral. Inside the tiny, dim room, lit only by the candle Paco held, a marble altar, streaked with lime green veins, glowed from within. On the altar lay a golden pyx embedded with magnificent emeralds. Not in the guidebook, Allen trumpeted triumphantly.