Swindlers

by Buffa, D. W.

  “Roughly two hundred million.”

  “And the rest of it – which must run into the hundreds of millions, if not more – Who would have inherited that?”

  “His wife, Danielle St. James.”

  I stood next to the jury box, holding him tight in my gaze.

  “With his death, then, Mrs. St. James would have become one of the wealthiest women in the world. I say would have, because Mr. St. James changed that will, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he -”

  “And he did that at about the same time he told you to prepare divorce papers, didn’t he – just days before he left New York?”

  “Yes, that’s right: he changed his will.”

  I stared hard at him, letting him, and the jury, know that this was crucial, indispensable to an understanding of what had happened.

  “And how much does Mrs. St. James stand to inherit now, Mr. Wiley – after the changes made to the will?”

  “Nothing. He was going to divorce her, he was going to -”

  “Give her what he was required to give her under the pre-nuptial agreement. Yes, we understand. But she doesn’t get even that now, does she, Mr. Wiley?”

  The jurors looked at one another, wondering how this was possible.

  “And why is that, Mr. Wiley? Tell the jury why the woman who supposedly murdered her husband for his money doesn’t benefit at all from his death!”

  Rufus Wiley swallowed hard.

  “He died before he could get a divorce.”

  “And because of that, she doesn’t get anything, does she? She doesn’t get the house in the Hamptons; she doesn’t get a million dollars a year.”

  Shaking my head in derision, I shot a glance at Robert Franklin, but he had his face buried in a file, desperate to find something – anything – he could use to repair the damage. I wheeled around and challenged Wiley.

  “You never told anyone about this, did you? – The fact that Nelson St. James changed his will; the fact that Danielle St. James was going to be left with nothing; the fact that, if she was after his money, the last thing in the world she would have wanted was for her husband to die!”

  “I was Mr. St. James’ lawyer! What I did for him was private!” he shot back, outraged and indignant. Suddenly, his expression changed. The anger vanished and a cold, cynical smile cut across his straight thin mouth. He sat back in the witness chair, full of the old confidence. “I doubt he told anyone, either. So she wouldn’t have known that she had been cut out of the will, would she?”

  “It was obvious the moment you took the stand that you didn’t like her,” I said, smiling back. “Of course he told her! How would I have known about it if I hadn’t heard it from her?”

  With a last, disdainful glance, I went back to the counsel table and started to pull out my chair, but I stopped and looked up.

  “One last question, Mr. Wiley: That last time you spoke to him, when he told you he still wanted a divorce, did he sound like a man on top of the world, or did he perhaps sound a little depressed?”

  “Understandably, it had all been quite a strain.”

  “Yes, not only was he about to lose his wife, he was about to lose everything else as well, wasn’t he?”

  Wiley had been bred to caution. He waited for me to expand upon the question, sharpen the details.

  “He had been indicted by a federal grand jury; he was one of the most despised men in America. He was facing charges that could send him to prison for the rest of his life. And instead of trying to prove his innocence, he had left the country, disappeared -”

  “Yes, but he was coming back. I told you that. In that last phone call, the night before he was killed, he said he had made a mistake, that he was -”

  “Coming back to stand trial! We’ll never know for sure though, will we, Mr. Wiley? All we know for certain is that before he disappeared, sailed away on that yacht of his, he promised he would not leave. You may take his word for things; all the people he defrauded may not be quite so willing.”

  Franklin was on his feet, objecting.

  “Is there a question in there somewhere? If there is, I missed it!”

  Brunelli started to tell me to move on, but I was ahead of her. I glared at Rufus Wiley.

  “There he was, out there on the ocean alone, about to lose not just his beautiful young wife, but his money, his reputation, and if he did what he told you he was going to do – come back and stand trial – his freedom. It isn’t any wonder - Is it, Mr. Wiley? - that a man in his condition would decide to take his own life!”

  CHAPTER Thirteen

  Rufus Wiley had done more for the defense than any witness I could have called. The pre-nuptial agreement Franklin had thought crucial, proof of what Danielle would have lost in a divorce, proved instead what she would have won. The murder of Nelson St. James was supposed to have been all about the money, but in terms of money, the worst thing that could have happened to Danielle was to have her husband die. His death had cost her everything she would have had in a divorce.

  In one of the great ironies, the question of money, instead of a motive for murder, had suddenly become our best defense. The prosecution could not prove motive, and without motive Franklin could not prove his case. It was true that the gun had Danielle’s fingerprints on it, but Nelson’s prints were there as well. The physical evidence was just as consistent with suicide as it was with murder, and Rufus Wiley, the prosecution’s own witness, had been forced to admit that Nelson St. James had been depressed.

  We were almost home. Rufus Wiley was the prosecution’s last witness and there was no one I could call, no one who could testify that anything said by any of the prosecution’s witnesses was wrong; no one who could give Danielle an alibi, insist she was not there when her husband died; no one who could make a credible claim that Nelson St. James had been killed by someone else. I could scarcely put Danielle on the stand to tell the jury how she had done it, how it was not suicide at all, that she had done exactly what the prosecution said she had done: killed her husband with a gun. I did not have a case, but, then, I did not need one. The burden was on the prosecution to prove that Danielle had done it, and I was as certain as I could be that Robert Franklin had failed to do that, and that the jury, whatever they might really think about her guilt, would have to acquit her.

  I explained this to Danielle that evening, but she had heard it all before. The distance I normally kept between myself and a client had long ago ceased to exist. I had held nothing back, telling her everything I thought about what happened each day in trial, and what I planned to do next. But more than that, I told her things about myself I had never told anyone, the kind of secrets all of us have, the ones we keep hidden except when we find ourselves desperately in love. I trusted her, but only, or mainly, because I knew how much she trusted me. Her life was in my hands, and she was perfectly content, I might even say eager, to let me decide everything we did in court. The next morning, as we waited for the judge to enter and the day’s proceedings to begin, I felt relaxed and confident, as certain of the outcome as I could be.

  “Mr. Morrison,” said Alice Brunelli, after she settled herself on the bench, “Is the defense ready to call its first witness?”

  Lawyers, honest ones, will tell you that there is always a sense of relief when they know the case is over, when they know the last witness has been called and there are no more questions to be asked, no more answers to be dissected and analyzed on the spot. There is still the closing argument, still that terrible, endless wait for the verdict, but with no more witnesses there are no more surprises, nothing that can catch you unawares. Rufus Wiley, the last witness for the prosecution, had been the last witness in the trial. Everything that remained, the long summations both Franklin and I would make, the lengthy instructions Judge Brunelli would give to the jury, the jury’s slow deliberations behind closed doors, all of that would be based on what was now completed.

  “Your Honor,” I said with perfect self-assurance, “the defen
se rests.”

  There was a collective sigh as the courtroom crowd realized that Danielle St. James, the woman they had all come to see, would not be taking the witness stand in her own defense. You could almost feel the disappointment, the chance missed to listen for themselves to this notorious woman that, through the mouths of others, they had heard so much about. Then, almost immediately, there was a second reaction, a puzzled silence as for some reason Danielle had risen from her chair and was looking directly at Alice Brunelli as if waiting for the chance to speak.

  “Your Honor, don’t I have the right to testify should I choose to do so?”

  My legs went weak, my stomach started churning. The blood rushed to my face with such rapid force that for an instant everything went black.

  “Danielle!” I whispered in a harsh, strident voice. “We decided this.”

  Alice Brunelli was all attention. Her lips parted and pushed forward, like someone about to exhale after holding their breath. With a deeply worried look in her eyes, she tapped two fingers on the bench, considering what she ought to do, and then, the decision made, she nodded once to seal it and turned quickly to the jury.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, there is a matter that has to be discussed outside the presence of the jury.”

  The moment the jury was out of the room, Brunelli started to ask Danielle a question, but then, changing her mind, she asked me one instead.

  “May I assume that you have advised your client of her rights in this matter, Mr. Morrison?”

  “Yes, your Honor; I have.”

  “Specifically, her right to testify in her own defense?”

  “Yes.”

  “You told her that a defendant in a criminal trial does not have to testify, that no one can compel her to testify, but that she can testify, if she so chooses?”

  Alice Brunelli was making a record, getting my testimony about what I had done before she asked the defendant, my client, if what I said was true. Alice Brunelli did everything according to a strict interpretation of the rules, especially when it involved a potential question about a lawyer’s conduct.

  Was that what Danielle was up to? Was it regarding my conduct as a lawyer? It was an old game, usually played by street-wise criminals who had been in and out of the system for most of their lives: make the lawyer the issue, claim ineffective assistance of counsel as the reason why they should get a new trial. Danielle had better grounds than most of them ever had. She could claim that I had not spent as much time as I should have done on her defense because I was too desperate to spend time with her in bed. It was ludicrous, idiotic, insane; but it would have been all she needed.

  Alice Brunelli adjusted her spare, thick glasses and placed both hands on the bench. For a long moment, and without a trace of sympathy to break the severity of her countenance, she studied Danielle closely.

  “Mrs. St. James, you’ve just heard what your attorney said. Is all of it true? Has he advised you that you have the right to testify or not as you choose, and that no one, not even your attorney, can make that decision for you?”

  To my great relief, Danielle nodded emphatically. She was not going to turn on me after all.

  “Mr. Morrison has done all that and more. He’s explained everything to me. I know I don’t have to testify; I know no one can make me. And, yes, he’s told me that the decision whether I do or not is mine to make. This is my fault, your Honor. Mr. Morrison went through all of this with me again yesterday after court. I told him I would follow his advice, and perhaps I should; but now that I have to make that decision, now that there isn’t any more time, I suddenly realize that, whatever happens, I want to tell the truth. I want everyone to know what happened. I want to clear my name.”

  There was no change of expression on Danielle’s eager, innocent face, not the slightest doubt or uncertainty about what she meant to do, and I now realized that, despite what she had just told the court, this was no spontaneous, last minute decision. She had made up her mind a long time ago to take the stand and testify. If she had not come right out and lied to me about her intentions, her silence had done it for her.

  “Would you like a few minutes to confer with your client, Mr. Morrison?” asked Brunelli after Danielle had finished.

  Confer with her? I wanted to kill her! What could I talk to her about now? – What a liar she was, what a fool she had made out of me? She thought she knew more than I did about how to win at trial? – Let her try!

  “No, your Honor,” I replied with an angry, tight-lipped smile. “If I had known the defendant wanted to testify, I would have called her. I apologize for the confusion.”

  Brunelli motioned toward the bailiff and ordered him to bring back the jury.

  We had a minute, maybe two, before the jury was back in the box and I had to call the first and last witness for the defense. I moved my chair closer to Danielle.

  “I’ve spent the whole trial trying to make them think he might have killed himself, and now you’re going to get up there and tell them that you pulled the trigger instead? If you take the stand,” I warned her, “there’s nothing I can do to save you. It’s not too late; all I have to do is stand up and say you’ve decided not to do it after all. For God’s sake, Danielle! – Think what you’re doing. Your child doesn’t have a father. Don’t you want him to at least have a mother?”

  She was nodding her head, following every word. The nodding stopped. Her eyes became hard, cold, and determined.

  “Trust me,” she said in a voice that, even after everything she had done, astonished me for the almost callous certainty it carried; “I know what I’m doing.”

  There was no choice: I had to call her. For the first time in my career, someone else had taken charge of the defense.

  Every eye was on her as she stood and without hesitation swore to tell the truth. If there was a trace of nervousness in her voice, no one heard it. The silence in the courtroom as she settled onto the witness chair echoed back on itself, the way it does late at night when the very stillness seems to speak a language all its own. Everything was up to her now.

  I began as if this were just another routine examination, no different than what I would do with a witness in any other trial.

  “Would you please state your full name and spell your last for the record?”

  I should have asked her to state her real name, the one given her at birth, instead of the made-up lie with which she had become famous, rich, and, I was now convinced, truly lethal.

  “Danielle St. James,” she replied in that thrilling, breathless voice which, as I had learned, she could turn on and off at will. She turned to the court reporter and slowly spelled her last name. Philip Conrad did not bother to look, but methodically went about his business.

  One question, the one that always gets asked first, and I did not know what to ask next. I had no idea what she was going to say. All I could do was invite her to tell her own story in her own words and, while I listened along with everyone else, try to pretend that it was the same story she had told me from the beginning. That was my intention, but then something happened. Whether it was the lawyer in me, the pride I had in what I did, or simply wounded vanity, I asked the question I would have asked if I had even once thought she might be innocent.

  “Mrs. St. James, did you or did you not murder your husband, Nelson St. James?”

  “No, I didn’t kill Nelson. He killed himself. But it’s my fault. He wouldn’t have done it if it hadn’t been for me.”

  It was quite simply the most stunning lie I had ever heard. Even more astonishing, she actually seemed to believe it. Her eyes were filled with anguish and remorse, her voice a soft, choking sob. I was so lost in amazement I could not quite hide my own incredulity.

  “It’s your testimony, given here under oath, that you did not murder Nelson St. James, that you didn’t shoot him with a gun? It’s your testimony that your husband killed himself?”

  “Yes!” she cried with desperation, looking every bit a woman on th
e verge of collapse. “But he wouldn’t have done it if I hadn’t said what I did!”

  “Said what you did?” I asked with a blank stare.

  “He told me he was going to do it,” she said through bitter tears. “I told him he should!”

  A shock wave spread through the courtroom, hitting everyone at once. It was such an awful, dreadful thing to admit - that she had told her husband to kill himself and that then he had - it had to be true. No one would lie about a thing like that. And she was just getting started.

  “I told him to go ahead, kill himself, for all I cared!” she cried, her eyes bright with the memory of her own wicked defiance. “He may have pulled the trigger, Mr. Morrison – but I’m the one responsible. So when you ask me, did I kill him, the honest answer is yes!”

  I was trapped. There was no way out. She was lying through her teeth and I knew it. I had put on the stand a witness who was committing perjury and she was doing it with my assistance. And I had no choice; I had to pick up the thread of her deceit and see where it would take us.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. What was the reason you went with your husband on that last voyage, when he decided to leave the country rather than face trial? You’ve heard the testimony of your husband’s attorney, Rufus Wiley, that your husband wanted a divorce and that you wanted a chance to talk him out of it.”

  She had had time to collect herself, and was now ready to answer questions without undue emotion.

  “There was more to it than that,” she explained. “It’s true that Nelson said he wanted a divorce, and he told me that he had changed his will – just as Mr. Wiley said. But this wasn’t the first time Nelson had made a threat like that. The thing that was different is that this time I told him that if he didn’t file for divorce, I would. I couldn’t stand it anymore, all his infidelities, and then, despite that, all his jealous rages whenever he saw me even talk to another man.”

  The color had started to rise to her cheek, a blush of anger and defiance I had seen before when she began to talk about something that had been done that she did not like. But she caught it coming, as it were, and quickly turned it to her own advantage.