Leader of the Pack (Andy Carpenter) (17 page)

“Karen Solarno committed adultery; she was married to Richard Solarno, when she had an extramarital affair with this man, Joseph Desimone. That is an uncontested fact.” He points to Joey, just in case the jury had any doubt whom he meant.

“In fact, you’ll hear that Karen Solarno was prone to this sort of thing; that Joseph Desimone was certainly not the first man with whom she cheated on her husband.

“But he was the last.

“Karen ended the affair; she told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, and that she wanted to try and repair her damaged marriage. That happens in things of this nature, and the rejected party can get hurt. But generally they get over it, and move on.

“But not Joseph Desimone. He didn’t get over it. The evidence will show that he was furious, and expressed that anger publicly. And he tried to get her back; the evidence will show that as well.

“But nothing worked, so this defendant decided that he was going to get his revenge, both on Karen Solarno and on her husband. So he went to their house, and he killed them.

“That, ladies and gentlemen, is Joseph Desimone.”

Dylan goes on to list some of the evidence he is going to present at trial. He takes too long to do it, which is characteristic of Dylan, but he also does it effectively. It’s quite similar to his opening at the first trial, no doubt under the theory that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

It’s always difficult to assess the impact of anything on a jury, and one should never take significant action based on that kind of assessment. So I can’t be sure if Dylan is succeeding in getting his points across, but it certainly seems like he is.

As always, I have the option of giving my opening statement now, or waiting until we begin the defense case. And as always, I choose to speak now. It’s important now, and will be throughout the prosecution’s case, that I let the jury know that there is another side to this story.

“Forty-eight hours after the brutal murder of the Solarno family, the police settled on Joey Desimone as the prime suspect. In fact, the evidence will show that he was their only serious suspect. Forty-eight hours after that he was arrested in his New York apartment.

“This may surprise you, but I think there was good reason to have him on the list of suspects. You’ll hear those reasons during the trial, and you’ll think it was correct that the police considered him when trying to decide who committed this crime.

“But he should not have been the only suspect, and the police and the district attorney should not have rushed to judgment.

“Evidence will be presented to prove that a police lieutenant in another state wrote to the authorities here, telling them that people in his state had threatened Richard Solarno because he cheated them in a business deal. Don’t you think that was something that would have attracted some suspicion? Called for some investigation? And it was a substantial threat; these people said they were going to kill him.

“And I should add that it wasn’t exactly the chess club that was angry at Richard Solarno for moving his bishop to queen four, or something like that. And it wasn’t a cooking club, irritated that he stole their soufflé recipe. No, this was a militia group. An armed militia group. The leader of that group is currently in jail for trying to kill a federal agent.

“And who armed them? Well, it turns out that it was Richard Solarno, who trafficked in illegal weapons. And how did he cheat them? The arms he gave them were not quite as deadly and powerful as they said he promised.

“Do you suppose law enforcement here might have checked into this? Well, they didn’t.”

I’ve milked this pretty well, and I can almost see the steam coming out of Dylan’s ears. Time to move on.

“There was a quiz show that used to be on television when I was a kid called
The Match Game
. Part of the game was the contestants having to finish a phrase by guessing the most popular answer. So if we were playing and I said ‘oil,’ you might say ‘oil well,’ or ‘oil and gas,’ or something like that.

“If I said, ‘trial by,’ you might say ‘trial by fire,’ or ‘trial by jury.’ But what is happening here, what best describes the entire investigation, what you are a part of, is something that I call, ‘trial by family.’

“Joey Desimone stands before you today because he is the son of Carmine Desimone, who I know most, if not all, of you are familiar with. But Joey has never been a part of what is said to be the family business, and there will be no evidence to show that he has.

“Joey Desimone has led an exemplary life, no matter who his father is, and that is a fact. But his last name made him an easy target, and once you have an easy target, why bother to look for a hard one?

“Mr. Campbell is right about one thing, and that is that Joey had an affair with Richard Solarno’s wife. It’s not something he is proud of, but it does not make him a murderer.

“Nothing could make Joey Desimone a murderer.”

“She was afraid of him. She said he might kill her.”

Dylan’s first witness, Lisa Holland, is reprising her testimony from the first trial, albeit a bit earlier. I think Dylan moved her up in the order because she is testifying to a threat Joey allegedly made, which could counter my opening statement about the threat from Montana.

Holland was a neighbor and friend of Karen Solarno, and represented herself in the first trial as an intimate confidante.

“When did she say that?” Dylan asks.

“We were having coffee at her house; she asked me to come over because she wanted to talk.”

“What was the status of her relationship with Mr. Desimone at that point?”

“They were having an affair, but she had just told him it was over.”

“How did he respond to that, according to her?”

These questions would ordinarily be disallowed as hearsay, since Holland wasn’t actually there to see Joey’s reaction, but because Karen Solarno is deceased, Holland’s answers are admissible.

“She said he became furious, and said that no one rejects a Desimone. He said that he would have her or no one would.”

“So she feared for her life?” Dylan asks.

“Definitely.”

“Why was she breaking it off with him?”

“She wanted to make it work with Richard. She said she still loved Richard, but that she had treated him badly. She wanted to make it right, and she wanted them to have a child.”

“Did she say that to Mr. Desimone?”

Holland nods. “Yes. She said that made it worse. That Joey said he would put Richard in the ground. Those were his words. And she was afraid he could do it, because of his family.”

Dylan turns the witness over to me, and I start with a pleasant “good afternoon,” and she responds in kind.

“It’s nice to see you again,” I say, “it’s been a while. Do you remember that we’ve spoken before?”

“Yes.”

“Actually, I was questioning you, and you were under oath, as you are now. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

“And you were answering truthfully then, as required by law, just as you’re doing now. Isn’t that right?”

“Yes.”

I hand her a page from the transcript of the last trial, and ask her to read it. She does so; it’s a series of questions as to whether she intended to try and profit from the trial or her experience. She absolutely denied any such intention. “I only want justice for Karen,” she had finally concluded.

“Did you profit from it?” I ask.

“I did not.”

“Did you attempt to?”

She hesitates for a moment, afraid of where I might be going, and says, “No.”

“Never tried to sell your story?”

“No.”

I introduce into evidence a document that Laurie had uncovered in the investigation, and I ask Holland if she recognizes it. “Yes.”

“Is it a proposal for a book?”

“Yes.”

“Can you read the title, please?”

She doesn’t want to do so, but can’t seem to figure a way out. “Deadly Affair: The Karen Solarno Story.”

“And what words come right after that?”

“By Lisa Holland.”

“Which, coincidentally, is your name.”

Dylan objects to my sarcasm, and Hatchet sustains. Before I can ask another question, Holland says, “My husband did that.”

“Did what?”

“Tried to sell it as a book,” she says.

“Without your knowledge?”

“That’s correct.”

“If it sold, were you going to write it without your knowledge?”

“I wasn’t going to write it.”

I read from the proposal. “‘The story that shook America, as told by the best friend she confided in.’” I put the proposal down. “That wasn’t you? This is a different best friend we’re talking about?”

“It’s referring to me,” she says. “But my husband prepared that proposal. I told him I didn’t want to be involved.”

“Because you swore under oath that you wouldn’t do so?”

“That’s correct.”

“But he went ahead anyway? Without your involvement?”

“Yes.”

“Are you still married to this guy?”

Hatchet sustains another Dylan objection, so I move on to even more fertile ground. “OK, so forgetting whether or not you told the truth the last time you testified, this time you’re telling the truth, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“And everything you’ve said today is equally true? All your statements have had the same level of truthfulness?”

I can see in her face that she’s scared of where I might be going, and she has good reason to be. “Yes.”

“Does the name Nancy Ellman mean anything to you?”

She hesitates, as the import of what I just said sinks in. “Not that I can recall.”

“Maybe I can refresh your memory. She’s a senior editor at Prescott Publishing. They publish mostly nonfiction, current events kind of books. Actually much like the proposal that your husband wrote, without your knowledge.”

“I can’t recall.”

“Well, that memory refresher obviously didn’t do the trick, so let’s try another.” I hand three copies of a letter to Hatchet, Dylan, and Holland, and say, “Here’s a letter from you to Ms. Ellman, thanking her for meeting with you and considering the book proposal.”

She doesn’t say anything, so I continue with, “I sure hope that worked, because I only have a couple of memory refreshers left.”

Finally, she says, “I did it as a favor to my husband. He asked me to.”

“Did he ask you to lie about it today?”

I torture her a little more, and then let her off the stand. This was a case where the passage of time worked to my advantage. During the first trial, I suspected she was lying when she said she wouldn’t try to sell her story, but I couldn’t demonstrate it. Now I could, so I was able to nail her with it.

The rest of the witnesses won’t be so easy.

Carmine Desimone always loved
The Godfather.

Unlike many of his colleagues, who thought it painted them in a negative light, he didn’t think so at all. He thought Vito, Sonny, and Michael Corleone were heroic figures. He liked
Godfather II
a little less, and walked out of
Godfather III
after twenty minutes, but the original, in his mind, was a classic.

He identified more with Michael than with Vito, probably because he was born in the United States, and he also “inherited” the mantle of family leader from his father. But it wasn’t that it seemed autobiographical, because there were many differences.

Like Michael, Carmine had to deal with changing times, in ways that his father never did. It had become a new and very different world, much more so than Michael ever faced, and it had proved very difficult for Carmine to deal with.

Carmine had lately been thinking of his father often. He felt that his father would have been very disappointed in him, and how he had presided over the disintegration of the family business, of the family itself.

And he thought of Nicky. He had never bought Iurato’s explanation of what happened; it was laughable on its face. He had no idea why Nicky was killed, or what possible threat the old man had presented. And even though he was just a shell of the old Nicky, he would be avenged.

He would be avenged that night. Because that night Carmine felt most like Michael Corleone, the night he went to the restaurant and shot Sollozzo and the police captain.

Gino Bruni picked him up at seven that evening for the fifteen-minute drive to Spumoni’s restaurant in downtown Elizabeth. It was a favorite of Carmine’s from the old days, though no business was ever discussed there. Law enforcement was all over the place, and it was probably the only restaurant in the New York metropolitan area with more “bugs” than cockroaches.

But that was then, and as Carmine and his colleagues stopped going there, the appeal to the cops faded as well. Now it was just a struggling restaurant with great food and a private room in the back. A private room reserved that night for Carmine Desimone, party of four.

Carmine and Gino arrived at seven twenty, ten minutes before the scheduled dinner. As Gino shut off the car, Carmine said, “Your people are here?”

“Yes. One is posing as a waiter, one as a busboy, and one is having dinner at a small table near the kitchen. He’s with his wife.”

“Good. I want to be warned if they come in with extra people. I don’t want this to be a trap.”

“It’s a trap, but we’re setting it,” said Gino. “Why would they be trapping you? You called the meeting.”

They went inside, and were greeted by the owner and led into the back room. Gino had earlier told Carmine that the owner had been paid more for that night than the restaurant would earn in a year, and he could be counted on to be quiet.

At exactly seven thirty, Gino looked out the window and saw a dark sedan pull up. Iurato and Ryerson got out of the backseat, and started walking toward the restaurant entrance. He said, “They’re here.”

“Alone?” asked Carmine.

“There’s a driver with them, but he stayed in the car.”

“Good.”

When Ryerson and Iurato came in, Ryerson immediately went over to Carmine, even before he took off his coat. “Hello, Carmine, you’re looking well,” he said, extending his hand.

Carmine did not shake his hand, simply saying, “What are you drinking?”