Final Vows

by Karen Kingsbury

  “No way, Louie boy.” A grin flickered across Gamboda’s scarred face. “I helped him design the bomb last year.”

  Now, one week after his moral turnaround, Garrett Trapnell remembered every detail of Gamboda’s conversation. He knew the consequences of squealing. He would be banished from the common criminals, set aside like some kind of freak. He would be hated, mocked, and quite possibly killed. Trapnell thought the possibilities over and decided they had never seemed better in his life. Juliana’s death would not be in vain. The prosecution needed someone to dispute Santinni’s alibi and Garrett Trapnell had the information to do it. He made up his mind. His atonement had begun.

  A year later it was Trapnell’s testimony that provided the prosecution with a stunning victory and put Santinni away for life. It was the first in a series of convictions that eventually brought the Gamboda family to its knees.

  Ten years passed and everything Garrett had imagined about the consequences of finking on fellow inmates had taken place. With one exception. They hadn’t been able to kill him yet. But he had been placed in the Federal Witness Protection Program for convicts, which had meant being moved to a special unit at the Federal penitentiary in Missouri. He had received death threats and had been made an outcast among prison inmates. For his own safety, he had to eat, sleep, and live in quarters set off from the others.

  This treatment did nothing to change the way Garrett felt about finking. He had since had the opportunity to act as a Federal witness in two other cases. Each time he testified, prosecutors raised a suspicious eye his way. What did he want? An amended prison term? Special privileges? But Garrett surprised them. He wanted nothing in return—only the wonderful, peaceful feeling that came with knowing he was finally doing the right thing.

  In the past decade Garrett Trapnell held no illusions about being released from prison. The life term he was serving held no clauses for parole or good behavior. But none of that mattered. Garrett believed that a person did not need to be behind bars to be imprisoned. Likewise, a person did not need to be on the streets to be free.

  At age fifty-two, Garrett enjoyed his freedom in many ways, but his favorite pastime was watching true crime shows each evening on television. These shows would detail terrible crimes and the people who solved them. Garrett could relate to those people and he knew that if his life had been different he would have been happy as a detective, or perhaps a prosecutor. On the evening of October 16, 1990, twenty-two days into the trial of The People v. Dan Montecalvo, Garrett Trapnell was watching such a true crime show.

  “Next up,” the announcer was saying, “the story of Dan Montecalvo, a Burbank man accused of killing his wife and shooting himself in what prosecutors say was merely an attempt to collect her insurance money.”

  Garrett could hardly believe his ears. He had shared a cell block with Montecalvo and spent hours playing cards with him. Garrett remembered Dan’s dream of marrying a middle-aged woman, insuring her, and killing her for the payoff.

  The announcer began telling the story.

  “Carol Montecalvo never loved anyone like she loved her husband, Dan. . . .” Pictures of Carol and Dan flashed across the screen. Garrett studied the woman, the trusting look in her soft, brown eyes. Nausea began to build in his stomach at the injustice that had been done to her.

  “. . . and because evidence against Montecalvo is purely circumstantial, he is optimistic about being acquitted.”

  Garrett had nothing against Dan, personally. The man had always treated him with respect, and they had been prison buddies back at Marion. But suddenly Garrett knew what he needed to do. The peaceful feeling that always accompanied his acts of atonement began washing over him. The next morning he was granted permission to contact his attorney and by October 18 he was on the telephone with Sergeant Kight at the Burbank Police Department.

  Kight was expecting the call. He had been informed about Trapnell’s background and his flawless record of testifying in previous cases. When he learned that Trapnell had information about Dan Montecalvo, Kight decided Christmas had definitely come early. The sergeant wanted to take no chances with the conversation. That morning he began tape-recording as soon as the call came in.

  “Sergeant Kight, here.”

  “Yeah, this is Garrett Trapnell.”

  “Okay, Garrett. Give me a minute here.” Kight paused, glancing at the recorder until he was certain it was working properly. “I understand you have some information on one of our boys.”

  “Dan Montecalvo.”

  “Correct.”

  “Yeah, well, I did time with Dan Montecalvo.”

  “Yeah.” Kight was determined to say as little as possible, to let Garrett do the talking so that later no one could accuse him of leading the conversation.

  “And, well, at the time I knew him in Marion, he uh . . .” Garrett paused and coughed into the telephone. “He had told me about his uh, his plans to get rich. Get married. And, well, he was a notorious gambler at Marion. The minute I saw him on TV I knew who he was.”

  “Were you cell mates with him?”

  “Yeah, same row. Many times he borrowed money from me and this sort of thing. We were good friends.”

  “Uh-huh. How long were you guys incarcerated together?”

  “More than two years.”

  “When was this?”

  “I’d say about 1976 or ’77.”

  “And what did he tell you about?”

  “Well, first let me tell you, uh, they did a lot of cooking on the range.”

  “Cooking on the range?”

  “They’d hide their cooking utensils in the books. The minute I saw that carved-out book on TV, I knew what the story was.”

  “What do you mean the carved-out book? What did that have to do with what happened in the cell?” Kight was playing it safe.

  “He liked to cook. There was a bunch of Italians together. You know, we used to cook at nighttime. We’d hide our hot plates or, you know, our cooking utensils in our books. Then, uh, we’d get together for steaks late at night.”

  “Uh-huh. You guys ever get caught?”

  “Sometimes. I talked to the lieutenant here. He worked at Marion back then and he remembers it.”

  “He remembers that Dan Montecalvo and some of his cronies would hide cooking utensils?”

  “Right, yeah.”

  “In hollowed-out books?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh-huh.” Kight penciled the words “hollowed-out book” across a notepad on his desk.

  “We used to fantasize about making money.”

  “Okay.”

  “And he told me, he says, one of the best tricks was to get married, insure your old lady, and knock her off.”

  “Did he say how he’d knock her off?”

  “Well, you had to make it look like an accident. Make it look like, you know, like a robbery or something like that.”

  “Uh-huh. Did he ever talk about how he’d plan this?”

  “Oh, yeah, many times.”

  “You heard about this case on television, is that right? It brought back old memories?”

  “Right. I knew what the story was immediately. Didn’t have to think twice about it. Didn’t even finish watching the show.”

  Garrett paused and there was a sudden change in his tone as if he’d forgotten a very important detail.

  “Look, first off, Mr. Kight, I’ll tell you straight. I don’t want anything from you. I’m not looking for anything. So this isn’t one of those jail house, uh, you know, let’s-trade-something-for-something deals.”

  “I understand. How much time do you have to do?”

  “I’m doin’ a life sentence, so there’s no way in hell you could do anything for me.”

  “Okay. Because we’d want to know the motive for this.”

  “Well, I have no motive. It’s just that I know this guy knocked her off. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever.”


  “Okay.”

  “He talked about it so many times. He used to dream up ways, how he’d make money.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He told me the insurance scams are the best way. You know, either getting a member of the family to do it, or make it look like a burglary or boat accident.”

  Kight suddenly thought of the trip the Montecalvos had been planning to Hawaii. They would have had plenty of opportunities to go boating.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “He was fed up with bank robberies. The percentages were too risky. Then one day he came out and said he wanted to marry some woman, a certain kind of woman, and that was one way to make money. Marry her, insure her, knock her off and make a fortune. But it had to look like an accident.”

  “A certain kind of woman?”

  “Yeah, you know, wallflowers. Lonely women, maybe in their early to mid-thirties. Maybe widowed, or divorced, maybe just not very sociallike.”

  “Did he talk about working when he got out of prison?”

  “No, he had no intention of going to work. He was a flashy kind of guy, used to talk about Vegas all the time. And organized crime. But he was always broke.”

  “Broke?”

  “Yeah, he owed everybody money.”

  “Okay, I understand you’ve testified in other cases?”

  “Yeah. Testified for the government against the nation’s top narcotics organization.”

  “Okay, you’re in for aerial piracy. What else?”

  Garrett thought a minute. “A couple of attempted escapes, but that was a while ago. There’s been nothing in the last ten years. Absolutely nothing. Not even an incident report.”

  “You’d be willing to testify?”

  “Yes, sir. But I couldn’t stay at a county jail.”

  “Because of your jacket?” Prison finks were considered to have a jacket. A fink’s jacket grew more colorful and more dangerous with each convict he brought down. By then, Garrett’s jacket was a vivid rainbow of colors.

  “That’s right. I would need a special facility.”

  “Okay, one more thing, you’re in prison because you’re a notorious criminal. Why testify against a good friend?”

  “All right . . .” Garrett took a deep breath. “I had a day, about ten years ago, when everything came together and I just turned my life around.”

  “When was that?”

  “April 28, 1980. That was the day I faced up to the fact that I couldn’t keep abiding by the convict code and sit on my keester while somebody killed someone else. I decided if I could prevent it I would. From that point on I alienated myself from the rest of the prison population.”

  “Okay.” Kight could hardly believe it. The interview had gone far better than he had ever hoped. “I want to make one thing absolutely clear for the record. You’re not asking for any favoritism for this, is that right?”

  “Nothing at all.”

  “No special treatment?”

  “I want nothing.”

  “You were never in a fight with Dan Montecalvo?”

  “I have nothing against Dan. Nothing. The fact is, in my own heart of hearts, there is no doubt in my mind that he killed her. Now, if I know facts that would be helpful in solving a crime and don’t come forward, that leaves me back on the side of the outlaws. Understand?”

  “Certainly.”

  Garrett paused a moment and his voice softened.

  “Sergeant, I’m not doing this because of Dan Montecalvo. I’m doing it because of his wife.”

  Later, Brian and Bernard weighed the options of interrupting the defense’s case to bring Trapnell in as a last-minute prosecution witness—a move that would cost the court twenty thousand dollars because of the special security he would need. In the end they agreed to wait until the defense had presented its case before making a decision.

  “He’ll be our little secret,” Bernard smiled. “Imagine Trapnell sitting up there telling the jury about Dan’s get-rich-quick fantasy.”

  Chapter 42

  Suzan Brown sat nervously on the wooden bench outside Department J. For the past ten minutes she had been trying unsuccessfully to button the cuffs of her striped men’s dress shirt. Her heart was beating wildly and each time the elevator door opened to the sixth floor she looked up expecting to see Carol Montecalvo.

  It was just before 10 o’clock in the morning, Tuesday, October 24, 1990. Suzan Brown was about to be the first defense witness. She closed her eyes and silently rehearsed the happenings of March 31, 1988, the way she now remembered them. The gunfire, the sound of someone running through the backyard, the falling woodpile, the shoe print.

  Dan would certainly not go to prison for something she knew he was innocent of—not unless the police had found the guns. She smiled complacently. There was no way they would find the guns now; she had long since sold them and by now they were most likely out of the country. Just then a bailiff opened the courtroom doors. On this occasion Suzan had decided against using her wheelchair. She took a deep breath and stood up.

  Inside, Ron Applegate was hurriedly going over some last-minute notes. The strength of his case rested on the stories Suzan Brown and a handful of other neighbors would tell about someone running through their yards the night of the murder. If he could prove the house had been burglarized, the jury would have to return a not-guilty verdict. Applegate did not plan to ask Suzan how she knew the color of the cash box. She had not admitted to any kind of involvement and that line of questioning would make her look like an unreliable, crazy woman. Which was, of course, exactly what she seemed to be. But her doctors had released her from the hospital six weeks earlier and there was no reason the defense couldn’t use her story about the falling woodpile to support the theory that the Montecalvo home had, indeed, been burglarized.

  Dan’s testimony might help, also. The jury would be more likely to believe Dan in light of evidence that someone had burglarized his home. He was also planning to call on Sergeant Lynch for verification that the police had suspected a burglary when they first responded to the call. Then he would bring up the footprints on the Montecalvo kitchen floor, which after being lifted by evidence technicians that night had somehow disappeared.

  Still, Ben Bernard had done a significant amount of damage to their case. Applegate didn’t need a degree in psychology to read the looks on the faces of the jurors. They thought Dan was despicable. Worse, they thought he was guilty. And apparently, so did Judge Tso. Early in the trial, the judge had called the defense attorney into his chambers.

  “Listen, Applegate,” the judge had told him. “I know you took on the Montecalvo case with the understanding that you would be paid by the defendant only if he won.”

  “That’s right, Your Honor,” Applegate replied, looking slightly embarrassed.

  “Rest easy, Applegate. When this thing’s over and Mr. Montecalvo is sentenced, I’ll appoint you as counsel retroactively so you can be compensated for your effort.”

  Applegate hadn’t been quite sure what to say. The judge was in essence telling him that he believed that the jury would find Dan guilty. But at the same time, he took comfort in knowing that his work wouldn’t be for nothing—just in case they lost.

  Applegate had stared at Judge Tso. “Thank you, Your Honor.”

  Now the attorney glanced about the courtroom at the bored faces of the jurors who had just taken their seats. He looked over the spectator section and his eyes fell on Gene Brisco, who had made a point of being in court that morning.

  The more Gene and Chuck had researched Dan’s version of the story, the more credible they thought it was. Especially after Suzan’s statements about the cash box. Gene and Chuck thought the recent evaluation of her mental health which determined she was fit for release was a tremendous mistake. Since her release Gene had kept track of her, meeting with her at the Glendale motel where she was currently living and constantly trying to learn the truth from her. Gene kept his eyes on S
uzan as Ron Applegate called her to the stand. I’ll get to the truth one day, he promised himself as he watched her take the stand. And someday everyone will know it.

  The testimony of Suzan Brown was mundane and anticlimactic. She slumped over in the stand, her shoulders bent forward and her eyes only half open. She seemed so bored with the questions that several times she appeared to be falling asleep.

  Tediously Applegate extracted from her the story of how she had been sitting in her garage earlier that March evening and seen Dan and Carol walk by. She knew they were going to Hawaii and she testified that she had spoken to them and asked them to bring her back a souvenir. She then testified about hearing gunfire and someone running through her backyard. This was the first proof that burglars might indeed have been in the Montecalvo house and the jurors seemed interested.

  When Applegate finished, Ben Bernard stood up and began asking questions that shed light on Suzan’s character, if not the truth. Aware of Suzan’s background of mental illness, Ben was asking about her clothing that night.

  “How were you dressed when you were sitting out in your garage?”

  “I had on a pair of shorts and a tank top.”

  Ben tilted his head and the jurors could read the confused look on his face. “Would it surprise you that the National Weather Bureau said it was fifty-one degrees that night?”

  Suzan could feel her eyes beginning to widen. This man did not believe her. Carol has gotten to him, she thought. Aloud she said, “Yes, I’d be surprised.”

  “You wouldn’t dress that way if it was fifty-one degrees?”

  “Yes, I would,” Suzan said. “I also sleep with my window open.”

  Ben switched topics. “You were recently in the hospital, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, I was. At the Veterans Administration hospital.” Fear was beginning to make it difficult for her to answer.

  “For what?”

  Suzan racked her brain and then came up with this answer: “I have osteosarcoma of the right femur,” she said matter-of-factly.