Corrupt Practices (47 page)

“And what would that be?” the judge asks.

“Through Mr. Bennett, we’ll prove that what Grace Trimble testified to this morning is accurate.”

I’m prepared to argue for another twenty minutes, but the judge says, “One moment, counsel.” She spends what seems like forever writing something on a legal pad. When a judge does this during an oral argument, it usually means she’s made up her mind and she’s drafting an order on the fly. I just don’t know what she’s decided. At last, she stops writing and looks up at us. “Mr. Bennett’s motion to quash is denied.”

Burowski moves over to the podium. “Your Honor, we’d request a stay of your order so we can appeal your ruling.”

“I’m not going to grant a stay,” the judge says. “You can go across the street to the court of appeal and see if they disagree with me if you want. In the meantime, I order Mr. Bennett to testify. If he doesn’t, he’ll be held in contempt.”

“Your Honor, the subpoena—”

“Enough, Ms. Burowski. No more argument. Bailiff, please go get the jury. Mr. Bennett, you’re to remain in the courtroom.”

Burowski confers with Bennett and sits down. It looks like they’ve decided not to appeal. As soon as the jury is seated, he takes the stand.

Before I can ask my first question, I feel a slight tremor in my fingers. The shaking quickly gets so bad that I can’t turn the pages of my notes. My chest tightens and my legs wobble. The courtroom walls oscillate in nauseating sine waves. I grip the lectern with both hands so I won’t fall. I’m incapable of forming the words to ask the judge for a break, to tell her I’m ill. Never again will I let myself believe that I’m cured of this. I look down at my notes, hoping to hide my terror from the jurors.

I feel a hand on my shoulder. Raymond Baxter is standing by my side, his body strategically placed between the jury and me.

“No matter what happens from now on, we’ve won,” he says in a hoarse whisper. “Everybody knows that my son wasn’t a thief or a drug addict. And the most important thing is that
his
son will know the truth. Thank you.” He pats my shoulder and sits down. And in that moment, I remember why I love being a lawyer.

I gather myself and slowly pry my fingers from the sides of the podium. Lovely pours me a glass of water. I take a long drink and manage to say. “Mr. Bennett, what do you do for a living?”

He lifts his chin and points his long nose in the air. “I’m chief of staff for Lake Knolls, member of the US House of Representatives.” Once I’m into the questioning, the residual stage fright gradually subsides. I go on to establish that he has a degree in communications from Harvard and a law degree from the University of Chicago and that he worked for a downtown LA law firm before going into politics full time. He served as an aide to a US senator and managed Knolls’s first congressional campaign. As chief of staff, he oversees every aspect of Knolls’s congressional life. I lay this foundation so the jury will understand that the man is powerful and intelligent, not someone easily duped.

“Mr. Bennett, are you familiar with Lake Knolls’s signature?”

“Of course I am.”

I hand him a document that Grace and I found at Harmon’s beach house, a 2003 contract for a production financing deal for a movie called
The Gaunt Girl
. I tell him to turn to the last page. “Is that Lake Knolls’s signature?”

“It appears so.”

“Is this contract what’s called a ‘film financing agreement’?”

Frantz stands to object, but sits down when Bennett says, “I have no idea. I’ve never worked in the movie industry.” But my point isn’t lost on the jury. Harmon’s notes said that Assembly money was being laundered through a film financing deal. This is a film financing deal.

“Let me direct your attention to page nineteen, paragraph twelve,” I say. “Do you see language about allocating the movie’s gross revenues among the investors?”

“It seems so. But I don’t know for sure. As I told you, I don’t know anything about the film business.”

“It doesn’t matter for my purposes if you do or you don’t, sir. I’d just like you to look at this film financing contract and tell me the name of the eighth investor listed in paragraph twelve.”

He pauses to read the paragraph. “It’s something called the Bank of Buttonwillow.” His tone is matter-of-fact because he doesn’t understand the significance of his words. He’s just tied his boss’s production company to the money-laundering scheme. The Assembly hid the flow of money by running it through Knolls’s company and calling it film revenue and then laundering it through the Bank of Buttonwillow, one of the entities referred to in Harmon’s notes. From the rustling in the gallery, I’m sure that many of those in the courtroom get it.

“Would you also read aloud the names of the companies identified on page twenty-one, paragraph fifteen?” I ask.

“Octagon, LLC; Pentagon Investments, LLC; Hexagon, Inc.; Rhombus and Heptagon, both LLCs.”

Lovely calls them the Geometrics—the shell companies through which the laundered Assembly money flowed before it ended up in The Emery Group’s account. More evidence of Knolls’s complicity.

I glance over at my adversaries, who are furiously flipping through the production contract trying to catch up with me. Only now do I realize that Christopher McCarthy isn’t in the room, hasn’t been since the lunch break. Before this, he hadn’t missed a moment of trial. The jury will surely notice his absence.

“Let’s move on to another subject,” I say. “Do you travel with Mr. Knolls on legislative business?”

“Yes, sir, that’s part of my job.”

“Did you travel abroad with Mr. Knolls in the summer of 2009?”

“If you’re referring to the trip to South America, of course I did.”

Again, fraught silence in the courtroom. Judge Schadlow leans forward in her chair. I sense that Frantz wants to object but can’t think of a reason.

Confused, Bennett says, “Congressman Knolls is on the House foreign relations committee. It’s part of his job to visit other countries.”

“I’m sure it is,” I say. “What countries did you visit in South America?”

We visited . . . I’m not sure of all of them. It’s been several years.”

“Let’s see if this helps.” I show him a printout from the LexisNexis research service showing that in July 2009, Knolls went on a so-called “fact-finding” tour of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. Of the seven countries Knolls and Bennett visited, four were identified in Harmon Cherry’s notes as part of the bribery schemes. An unsuspecting Bennett confirms that he accompanied Knolls to those countries.

“And then in May 2011, you traveled with Lake Knolls to Central and Eastern Europe?” I ask.

“That’s correct. Another mission to serve the interests of the United States of America.”

“Really?” I say. “Let’s explore that.” I mark as an exhibit another LexisNexis printout, this time Knolls’s itinerary for the trip to Europe in 2011. Then Lovely displays McCarthy’s vacation itinerary on the courtroom monitors. When Bennett understands what he’s seeing, the color drains from his face.

“Let’s look at Mr. Knolls’s European itinerary. Start with the entry for May 22, 2011. Were you aware that you and Lake Knolls and Christopher McCarthy were all in the city of Bratislava on the very same day?”

“I . . . I don’t know anything about that. Coincidences happen.”

“You’re aware you’re under oath?”

“Yes.”

“Were you and Mr. Knolls and Mr. McCarthy in Sofia the same day, as a comparison of the LexisNexis printout and the McCarthy itinerary indicates?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you were, was it just a coincidence?”

“I . . .”

“You what, sir?”

“I don’t know,” he says almost in a whisper.

“Could you speak up Mr. Bennett?”

“I said,
I don’t know
.” This time, his voice is much too loud.

“And if you and Knolls and McCarthy were in the same cities on the same days in the countries of Moldova, Finland, and France, as a comparison of the documents indicates, would those be coincidences, too?”

He stares at me, his eyes rimmed red. I don’t press for an answer. His silence tells the jury all I need it to—McCarthy and Knolls were in on the bribery scheme together, simultaneously traveling to countries where the Assembly sought legal recognition.

“Mr. Bennett, on May 2, 2011, did you receive a half-million dollar payment from a company called The Emery Group?”

“I did not, sir,” he says indignantly.

“You’re quite sure of that?”

“Absolutely.”

I hand the clerk, Frantz, and Bennett a copy of the other document that Harriet gave me, the wire transfer memo showing that the enigmatic Emery Group paid him five hundred thousand dollars a few weeks before the trip to Europe.

“Do you recognize this bank receipt, Mr. Bennett?”

Frantz bolts out of his chair. “I object to use of this document. This has never been produced to us.”

The judge looks at me. “That’s true, Your Honor. I’ll withdraw it. May I have the exhibit back, Mr. Bennett?”

I approach the witness stand. It doesn’t matter that I can’t use the document, because Bennett has already read it, exactly as I hoped. He’s fair skinned to begin with, and now his cheeks are almost translucent, like onionskin. His hand trembles so uncontrollably that he can barely hand the piece of paper back to me. This receipt proves that he personally received the laundered money and that soon after, he and Knolls and McCarthy together visited foreign countries where the Assembly is fighting for recognition. It implicates him and his boss—and McCarthy—in bank fraud, violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and possibly murder. I might not be able to get the document admitted at this trial, but it will be compelling evidence in his criminal trial.

He turns toward Judge Schadlow. “May I confer with my attorney?”

“I think that would be very wise, Mr. Bennett.”

He steps down from the stand and huddles with Burowski. As he whispers in her ear, her eyes narrow and her frown deepens. She speaks to him, and he nods. After several minutes, he returns to the witness stand.

“My question, Mr. Bennett, is did you receive a payment of five hundred thousand dollars from the Emery group in May 2011?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that any answer I give may tend to incriminate me.”

He looks not at me, but at the clock on the back wall. He’s clasping his hands tightly together as if to stop them from shaking. His upper lip glistens with sweat.

“Do you know what The Emery Group is?”

“I refuse to answer on the grounds that any answer I give may tend to incriminate me.”

He goes on to plead the Fifth in response to my next ten questions. Although I could keep him twisting on the stand for another fifteen minutes if I wanted, I tell the judge I have no further questions. Bennett’s cheeks have turned a sickly scarlet, and I fear that if I don’t stop, some of the jurors might start feeling sorry for him.

Frantz asks for a recess, which Schadlow gives him. His haphazard style of dress has finally gotten the better of him—somehow during my examination of Bennett, his shirttail escaped from his slacks and is now hanging below the back of his jacket.

As soon as Bennett leaves the stand, the reporters race toward him. Burowski shoos them away and confers with Bennett in the corner. I’ll leave it to the news outlets and the Internet bloggers to decide whether Knolls is an Assembly fellow traveler or a blackmail victim. I’m betting that McCarthy dug up dirt about Knolls’s relationship with Billy Ness, The Tinsel Town Pusher. Knolls was certainly the perfect person to make contact with the foreign officials and dole out the Assembly’s cash—what foreign politician wouldn’t give access to a former movie star turned US Congressman?

Five minutes before the trial is to resume, Frantz and Weir walk into the courtroom. Instead of returning to his table, Frantz comes over and says, “Talk to you in private for a few minutes, Parker? The lounge?”

I nod.

“Nick will tell the judge we’re conferring.”

I look over at Lovely. “Come on. You’re part of this, too.”

“Are you sure, Parker?”

“Lead counsel only,” Frantz says.

“You’ll talk to both of us or neither of us,” I say.

He frowns, but motions for us to follow him. We go to our conference room in the attorneys’ lounge. I expect Grace to be there, but she’s gone. Frantz gestures for us to sit down at the table, but Lovely and I remain standing.

“You know, the jury’s going to get the case in a day or two,” he says in an unctuous tone that he’s never used with me. “We think we’ve met our burden of proof, but anything can happen. So I’ve been talking to my client, and they want me to explore settlement before that possibility is foreclosed.”

“This is a waste of time,” I say. “We’re not paying the Assembly anything.”

“My client was thinking of a nonmonetary settlement. Mutual releases and a walk away.”

Lovely and I glance at each other. Frantz just offered to dismiss the case, and all Raymond Baxter has to do is give up his right to sue the Assembly for malicious prosecution. It’s sounds like total victory.