Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel

by Jeanine Pirro

  I considered that a crucial bit of testimony based on Dr. Swante’s earlier testimony about a lack of any tooth decay in Benita’s mouth. Satisfied, I sat down.

  Pisani began his cross-examination by asking Officer McLean if either Carmen or Hector had seemed afraid of their father.

  “The kids had both been crying, which was understandable, but no. I didn’t think either of them was afraid of him. I asked them if they wanted to speak to a counselor and they both said no.”

  “If you would have suspected foul play, you would have called for a homicide detective, isn’t that right?”

  “Normally, one of them would have come that night. That’s routine, but we were told it was a suicide and we had a bunch of other calls. There was a couple of shootings, so when the M.E. showed up, the body got taken away and, well, that was the end of it. I filed my report and the case was closed.”

  “The case was closed because no one suspected anything improper had happened, isn’t that true?”

  “Yeah, I figured the woman had killed herself.”

  “Did you ask Mr. Gonzales if his wife ever took cocaine some other way besides orally? For instance, in her milk at night to help her sleep?”

  “No,” Officer McLean said. “He told me that she used cocaine because she was depressed. That she sucked on it. That was all he said.”

  After Officer McLean stepped down, Judge Morano adjourned court for lunch. I noticed Agent Longhorn standing at the courtroom’s double wooden doors. When Pisani reached him, they walked out together.

  I hoped they both choked on a pastrami sandwich.

  51

  I began the afternoon with Yolanda Torres. After the allegations in the rape trial, I didn’t want to call her. O’Brien had interviewed her during Gonzales’s first trial, but I wasn’t comfortable calling her. Even now, I knew it was risky putting her on the stand but she had called O’Brien and shared a story with him that could help our case. Just to make sure that she’d show up sober, I had O’Brien pick her up that morning, buy her breakfast, and babysit her until I called her as a witness.

  Yolanda Torres was from Guatemala. She had dark skin and long black hair that she’d woven into a single braid and coiled around the back of her head. She took the witness stand wearing a plain black cotton skirt and a pink, long-sleeved blouse. Both were well worn but, I suspected, were the best clothes that she owned. She was currently unemployed but worked sporadically cleaning houses.

  I asked her a series of questions that established how she knew the defendant.

  “Did you know Benita Gonzales?”

  “Yes, I knew her for years, but then we lost touch. She called me one day and asked if I wanted to see Carmen and Hector. She brought them to the park and I saw them there. I hadn’t seen them since their mother died and now they are much older.”

  “Why didn’t you stay in touch with them?”

  “I was afraid—of Carlos. He didn’t want me near them. He’d never liked me because I didn’t like how he had treated Rosita, who I loved like a sister. I was devastated when she died during childbirth.”

  “After Carlos Gonzales remarried and his second wife, Benita Gonzales, was found dead, did you have a conversation with him?”

  We were moving into dangerous territory. I had warned Yolanda that she could not tell the jury about the earlier trial. She could not tell them that Carlos Gonzales had begun raping and abusing Carmen. She could not say that Gonzales had moved Carmen into his bedroom. Yolanda was supposed to keep her testimony short and answer only my direct questions. I didn’t want Pisani asking for a mistrial because I had tainted the jurors.

  “Yes,” Yolanda said, “I spoke to Carlos about Carmen. She used to come see me after her own mother died because I was like another mother to her. Then, when her father remarried, she stopped coming. She liked her stepmother, Benita. They became close. Carmen was upset when she died. She had lost her own mother, Rosita, and now her stepmother, too. She asked me to talk to her father. She said the two of them were having serious problems. I went to see him and he got very angry and threatened me.”

  “The defendant threatened you? What did he say?”

  “He told me to leave him and his family alone. He said, ‘I killed that bitch I was married to and I will kill you, too.’”

  “Do you know whom he was referring to when he said ‘that bitch’?”

  “He meant Benita, his second wife. He told me he’d poisoned her. He said the cops were stupid and believed she’d taken an overdose, but he’d killed her.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “I sure did.”

  “Did he tell you why he killed her?”

  “He said she was going to call the cops on him and divorce him. He said it was because he was selling cocaine and Benita didn’t want any part of it.”

  I had just established a motive for Gonzales wanting his wife dead. I’d also managed to get into the transcript that Gonzales was selling cocaine. As I sat down, I said a silent prayer. Yolanda Torres was going to need all the help she could get to withstand the harangue that was coming.

  “Are you an alcoholic?” Pisani asked.

  “I drink too much sometimes,” Yolanda replied.

  “Have you ever been arrested for being drunk in public?”

  Yolanda looked at me for help, but Pisani was well within his rights. I knew the judge would override my objection.

  “Yes, the police arrested me a few times.”

  Picking up a sheet of paper, Pisani said, “How many times in the past, say, four years, have you been arrested on disorderly conduct charges?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  In a belittling voice, Pisani said, “How many times have you been arrested by the policia for being desordenado?”

  “Quizás cuatro veces.”

  Judge Morano said, “You need to answer in English.”

  “Maybe four times.”

  “Four times?” Pisani said. “According to these police reports, the correct number would be more than ten times. Isn’t that true?”

  “If you say.”

  “Who is Romero Sanchez?”

  I objected. “This witness is not on trial here. How is this relevant to her testimony?”

  “It goes to her credibility,” Pisani said.

  “Objection overruled. Answer the question.”

  “We lived together for a while—him and me.”

  “Did you go to the police and swear out a complaint against Mr. Sanchez at one point?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you tell the police?”

  “He was beating me. I told them to arrest him.”

  “Did you tell them anything else?”

  “I said he had threatened to kill me.”

  “What happened after the police arrested him?”

  “I told the police to let him go.”

  “Can you elaborate on that, please?”

  Yolanda looked confused, so Pisani said, “I want you to tell us exactly what happened. Why did the police let Mr. Sanchez go?”

  “Because I told the police I’d lied.”

  “About Mr. Sanchez hitting you? Or him threatening to kill you?”

  “Both,” she said softly.

  “Romero Sanchez had never hit you, had he?”

  “No.”

  “He’d never threatened to kill you, had he?”

  “No.”

  “But you told the police that he had, is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “You lied. When was the last time you had a drink of alcohol?”

  “Do you mean beer?”

  “Any alcoholic beverage.”

  “I had a few beers last night to calm my nerves.”

  “How many beers is a few? Give us a number.”

  “Two six-packs.”

  Pisani had effectively put Yolanda on trial. She came across as a drunk and a liar.

  I still had time that afternoon for one more witne
ss. I called Maria Hildago, the former stripper who’d been Gonzales’s last girlfriend before he’d been arrested by the FBI. I watched a scowl appear on Judge Morano’s face as Miss Hildago walked forward. She was wearing shiny knee-high, white patent-leather boots and a red patent-leather micro skirt. She was at least an E cup and both of her breasts were prominently on display in a V-neck madras blouse that matched a two-inch-wide headband that was holding her shoulder-length platinum-colored hair in place. She’d chosen silver lip gloss and eye shadow for her appearance.

  Judge Morano called us to the bench. Covering his microphone, he said, “Miss Fox, your witness is not dressed appropriately to appear in my courtroom. This is not a disco or a bordello.”

  “Your Honor, I can’t control what a witness chooses to wear to court.”

  “Well, you’d better if you wish for her to testify. We’ll take a half-hour break.”

  A half hour was not enough time for Hildago to get to her Yonkers apartment and back to court, so I hustled her into a nearby JCPenney clothing store. She was not happy when court reconvened and she appeared in a modest three-button jacket and skirt. Out of spite, she kept her white patent-leather knee-high boots.

  Judge Morano looked pleased.

  I asked the witness if she knew Gonzales, how they’d met, and a quick series of other background questions. She had been dancing at a gentlemen’s club and he’d bought her several drinks, she testified. A week later, when she needed a place to stay, Gonzales had taken her into his house and his bed.

  I asked, “Did you ever have a conversation with the defendant about the death of his second wife, Benita?”

  “Yeah, sure did. He said she’d OD’d on cocaine.”

  “By OD, you mean overdosed?”

  “Well, of course, darling. We were in his bedroom and he asked me if I wanted to do some coke and I said—”

  Judge Morano interrupted her.

  “Miss,” he said sternly, “do you realize you are under oath in a court of law?”

  She looked up at him and said, “Well, of course I do.”

  “Do you understand that if you admit here that you engaged in a crime, you can be prosecuted? You are also entitled to plead the Fifth and not incriminate yourself.”

  A look of surprise came over her face. “Oh, you mean doing coke?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Your Honor,” I said, “Miss Hildago has not testified that she used cocaine. She said the defendant offered her the drug.”

  Judge Morano shot me an irritated look and said, “I know what she said.”

  “Perhaps I should rephrase my question.”

  “Go ahead,” he said, “but the witness has been warned.”

  “What, if anything, did the defendant tell you about his wife’s death?”

  In a cautious voice, Hildago said, “He told me his wife took five grams of coke that was dissolved in milk and drank it. He said it killed her.”

  “He told you that she had put cocaine into her milk, dissolved it, and drank it voluntarily?”

  “Yes, that’s what he said. I looked at him and said, ‘No wonder she’s dead. She either wanted to get really high or she was really stupid.’ And then he got this funny look on his face and he said, ‘She never used drugs. She didn’t know I put it there.’”

  “So he told you that he was the one who actually put the cocaine in the milk?”

  “That’s right and it really upset me because that’s a lot of coke for a newbie and I thought to myself, ‘What the hell?’ He realized I was upset and he said, ‘It was an accident.’ But I thought, ‘How could it be an accident?’ I mean, if you got five grams and a glass of milk and you put that in the glass and you give it to someone, what do you expect is going to happen?”

  “Did you ask him why he put it in her milk?”

  “No, that’s all he said and I let it drop because we were sorta busy, if you know what I mean.”

  “Miss Hildago, how are you employed?” Pisani began.

  “I’m a professional dancer in gentlemen’s clubs.”

  “You testified that you moved into Mr. Gonzales’s house. Did he ever mistreat you?”

  “You mean like hit me? Heck no! I wouldn’t stand for that.”

  “Were you afraid of him?”

  “Heck no. He treated me real nice.”

  “Did you meet his children?”

  “Yep, all four of them, but I didn’t really spend any time with them. I’m not a real kid person.”

  “You testified that the defendant told you that he had put cocaine in milk for his wife, is that your testimony?”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “What was your condition when he told you this?”

  Hildago glanced at the judge nervously.

  “I’m not saying anyone took cocaine but I am saying we both were feeling, well, very happy.”

  “Were you high?”

  Again she looked at the judge and then said, “Yes.”

  “When you get high, do you hallucinate?”

  “Yes, oh, I have hallucinated, I don’t think that’s a crime.”

  “Did you hallucinate that night?”

  She pondered the question and said, “As a matter of fact, I did.”

  “And when you had this conversation about his wife and the cocaine, were you hallucinating?”

  “I don’t think so. But maybe I was, like I said, we was busy.”

  “Busy?”

  “We was having intimate male and female relations.”

  Judge Morano adjourned court for the day. As I was collecting my papers, O’Brien came up to me.

  “Whew!” he said, letting out a sad sigh. “Rough day, Counselor. You putting Carmen on tomorrow?”

  I nodded. Carmen Gonzales would probably be my last and most important witness.

  “I hope she does as well at this trial as she did at the first one because we need help here. No offense, but Pisani is knocking the you know what out of our witnesses,” O’Brien said.

  I should have been furious with him. But I knew he was right.

  52

  Having Carmen testify against her father the first time had been an ordeal. I thought of the way he’d glared at her when she’d testified in the first trial. I thought of the power and control over her that he represented. I could only imagine her terror. When I had told Carmen that her father might disappear into the Federal Witness Protection Program, the look on her face had been one of true horror. She knew that if he remained free, she would always be looking over her shoulder and live in fear of retribution. His freedom would mean constant captivity for her.

  Friday morning would be hell for her.

  Carmen Gonzales did not look at her father when she took the witness stand. I asked her to recall the day when her stepmother died.

  “My stepmom took us to the shopping mall. It was almost Christmas and my stepmom had given me some money to buy presents for my brother and stepsister and stepbrother and my dad and her. We were happy when we got home. We put extra decorations on the tree that we’d bought and I told my stepmom that I loved Christmas. She told me, ‘Carmen, I’m going to leave the lights on the tree burning all night from now until Christmas because I know you kids love seeing them.’ And then my dad came in.”

  “What happened next?”

  “My stepmom had made meatloaf for dinner. My dad took a taste of it and got really angry. He stood up and threw his plate on the floor and said, ‘How dare you serve me this fucking garbage!’ All of us kids ran up to our rooms to hide because we knew there was going to be a fight.”

  “They were going to argue?”

  “No, my dad was going to beat her. That’s what he did when he got angry. I heard them go into the bedroom and my father say, ‘I’m going to keep hitting you, you fucking bitch, until you start bleeding.’ I could hear her screaming. It was awful.”

  “Did anything else happen that night?”

  “I was woke up by my father after midnig
ht. He came into my bedroom and told me to get up because my stepmom was sick. He said I needed to get her a glass of milk in the kitchen. He said he’d poured one for her but she was angry at him, so he wanted me to get it from the kitchen and take it to her. I went downstairs and got the glass of milk on the counter and took it to my stepmom.”

  “Did she drink it?”

  “When I went into her room she was crying. She took the milk and drank a sip of it and thanked me and told me to go back to bed.”

  “Did you tell her that your father had told you to bring her the milk?”

  “No. I went back to bed, and about two hours later, he woke me up again and said, ‘Something’s wrong with your stepmom.’ I went into the bedroom and she was lying on the bed and not moving; there was vomit near her mouth. It was whitish, not yellow like most vomit. And there was white powder all over the night table. The covers on the bed were all messed up, too.”

  “What was your father’s state of emotion?”

  “He was calm. He told me to get my brother, so I ran down to his bedroom and got Hector. My father told us to clean up the room. He told me to sweep up all the white powder on the nightstand and floor. He told me to take the glass of milk to the kitchen and wash it out. When Hector and I were finished, he told us he was going to call the police, and if they asked any questions, he told us to tell them that we were a happy family and that my stepmom had been depressed and sad because it was the holidays.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Yes, I was fourteen and I was afraid of him. I told the policeman that my stepmom had been sad and we were a happy family.”

  “Did your father ever tell you how your stepmother died?”

  “After my stepmom’s funeral, my father took my brother and me into his bedroom and he said that my stepmom had killed herself. He said she had committed suicide because she was sad and depressed.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “No. She’d been happy at the mall. I’d seen him use drugs, but never her. She was sweet to us.”

  “Was she a moody person?”

  “No, she was always a happy person except when my father was around.”