by Reason of Sanity (28 page)

While attending undergraduate school I majored in Chemistry and planned to get a Bachelor of Science degree. The only thing holding me back was the requirement that B.S. candidates must complete one year of a foreign language.

I tried a couple of semesters of Spanish but failed miserably. French sounded too hard, so my last chance was to try German. I could never get the hang of how to conjugate verbs in a foreign language but my prior failing experiences gave me the idea that if I could memorize enough words and build a great vocabulary, I might be able to get through in some way. All summer before the fall term I memorized vocabulary. I knew so many words that I was almost able to understand what Colonel Klink was talking about when he scolded Schultz, the prison guard in
Hogan’s Heroes
reruns
.

I somehow managed to get through the first semester. Fortunately, the final exam was a written one and it required translation from German to English. My superb vocabulary came through for me and I easily passed with a well-earned C minus. This was encouraging, so I signed up for the second semester. If I could get through this one, I’d get my B.S. instead of a B.A.

The day of the final exam was a real shock for me. All of the hundreds of new words I learned weren’t going to help much. The final was going to be oral, and our job was to translate from English to German. I knew this was going to be a problem, but I had to go through with it.

The teacher used the well-known story of William Tell and as she went from student to student, each one of us was required to translate a few sentences of the story from English into German. When she got to me, the sentence I was supposed to translate was the part where Tell used his bow and arrow to shoot the apple off of his son’s head.

This was possible. I knew the German words for ‘Arrow,’ ‘Apple,’ ‘Shoot’ and ‘Head.’ However, vocabulary alone isn’t good enough because there was a verb in there somewhere and my old problems with conjugation and pronunciation roared up. There are two words in German that are spelled almost the same, but are pronounced differently, and mean two different things. ‘Geshiesen’ is pronounced gesheesen. The vowel sound is an ‘E’ and it means
to shoot
. If you make the error of transposing two of the vowels in the middle of the word and it comes out ‘Gesheisen,’ the vowel sound is pronounced as an ‘I’ and the verb takes on quite a different meaning – one that was never covered in our class. The wrong spelling and pronunciation changes the verb from ‘to shoot,’ into ‘to shit.’

T he only person in the room who caught my error was the only person I wish hadn’t caught it – the teacher. To say she was shocked would be a gross understatement, because my error changed the entire meaning of the story. As you can probably tell, instead of shooting the arrow off of his son’s head, Mister Tell performed quite a different act to the top of that head. The teacher was not amused.

To make matters worse, not having the slightest idea that I had done something wrong, I had a completely straight face. The law school I enrolled in accepted my B.A.

Things are starting to come together. I have an appointment with Lieutenant Evans in a little while, so I’m casually driving through the Sepulveda Pass on the 405 Freeway planning my strategy. First, I give him all the details of the Drago case, complete with Immigration Service documents, photos, and fingerprint info. Next, I show him the case file in which Handelmann sued for wrongful death – and a copy of the settlement draft.

If I’ve got all the documentation together, I should be able to convince him that Handelmann has committed a crime by making a fraudulent claim to the insurance company, but he didn’t stop there. By accepting the settlement draft, the crime steps up to grand theft, so if someone connects the dots properly, Handelmann is looking at some serious time as a guest of the State.

Because his law office is located on Ventura Boulevard in Encino, all of his criminal acts took place within the jurisdiction of Lieutenant Evans’ Valley police division giving him authority to investigate the alleged crimes and make the arrest.

Some extra information from Jack B. also comes in handy. When he checked the hospital’s outgoing phone logs he noted that Drago made only one telephone call from his room on the day he was admitted. That call was to Handelmann’s office, no doubt to tell him where he was, because the rest of the gang in the bank that day were certainly not going to stick around and ask questions of the paramedics.

This means that we have a direct way to link Handelmann to the attempted murder of Drago. Handelmann was the only one who knew exactly what hospital and room that Drago was in. He can now be implicated in the murder conspiracy – and this is how I can get Myra involved in the case. She was appointed as a special prosecutor against Blitzstien when he was charged with murdering Drago. Blitzstien was found not guilty, so it certainly should be the continuing responsibility of the same prosecutor to bring the real killer to justice.

Seymour would probably explode if he knew that Myra was back on the case, so I think it best that we just let nature take its course. After I’m through with Evans today, I’ll call Myra. If the cast of characters for next week’s federal court appearance is to be complete, Myra will have to be there too.

Once at Evans’ office it takes less than a half hour to lay out the whole case against Handelmann. After he’s on the same page with me, he calls two of his detectives in and I go over it again for them. We talk about it for a while and the decision is made to go ahead and pick him up. Their only reluctance is about the deputy district attorneys who’ve recently been assigned to Van Nuys. They tell me that these deputies aren’t experienced with criminal law, having been sent here from the district attorney’s civil division as a reward for their loyalty to the present acting D.A. I tell them to hold that thought for a minute or two. A solution to their problem is in the offing.

At this point, I ask for a few minor conditions so that everything meshes with the other plans I’ve already put into motion.

First, I ask them not to get a warrant for Handelmann’s arrest. If they do it the way I suggest, I’ll personally be in the location where he’s making a court appearance to point him out and make sure that they get the right guy. I show them his picture, so they don’t worry about nabbing some other crooked lawyer by mistake.

Second, I don’t want my name mentioned anywhere. On this case, the credit’s all going to Evans and his boys, who will say that they received their information from someone other than me, who will also be in the courtroom at the time of the arrest. To answer their question as to the identity of that person, I inform them that it’s none other than the next district attorney of this county - Myra, and she will owe them a big favor for this. As a newly elected official, she’ll probably want to make some changes in the duty assignments. If they prepare a list of the deputy D.A.’s they’ve had good successes working with in the past, there’s a good chance they may be coming back to the Van Nuys office.

This news brings out some smiles in the room. I also explain to them that the reason she’ll be in court when they make the bust is to complete her job as prosecutor on the Drago murder.

I know that Handelmann will be making an appearance in court next Thursday to offer some discovery motions and try to have the robbery gang members’ bail lowered, so I start to work on getting the rest of the entire cast of characters together. I’ve always dreamed of having my own ‘showdown,’ where like Nero Wolfe, I can see the culprit nailed. That’s why I want to have everyone in that courtroom next Thursday, so I can wrap up all the loose ends.

My call gets put throu gh to Myra’s office. “What’s up Petey?”
I really hate it when she calls me that. “Listen, I’ll make it fast and only say it once. We know that Blitzstien didn’t kill Drago, but someone told him to do it. That person is an attorney, who was also one of the robbery gang, so we’ve got him for conspiracy to commit murder. Never mind that it didn’t work out the way he planned it, we both know that all you need to make the conspiracy case against him is the overt action – and we’ve got plenty of that.
“You were the prosecutor on the original case in that murder and since I haven’t heard anything to the fact that you’ve been relieved of that responsibility, I think you have a further duty to see this case all the way through to arrest and conviction of the other member of that conspiracy.
“Your new defendant also filed a fraudulent claim against an insurance company I represent, so when he gets arrested, that charge will be added to the complaint.
“Don’t worry about procedure here. I’ve already gone over this case with L.A.P.D. Lieutenant Evans and two of his detectives. Based on the information I gave them, they’re prepared to make the arrest and turn their report over to you for the filing of charges.
“Your defendant will be making an appearance in court next Thursday afternoon. I will pick you up at your office at noon that day and we will ride to the courthouse together, where we will meet up with the police. The defendant hasn’t the slightest idea of what’s going on, so this should be a good show to watch.
“And if you’re wondering, I have nothing to do with this whole thing. The press will be there because the case that Handelmann is appearing on is a high profile one – the bank robbery bust. I suggest that you get ready to make a statement outside on the courthouse steps.
“I’m sorry to throw you into the spotlight like this but I feel confident that you can handle it. I’ll be faxing you the details of the case, so you’ll be able to talk about it intelligently with the police and the press.
“All I want to hear from you is one word – yes, to the question of whether or not you will be in front of your office building next week when I get there to pick you up.” The one word answer is given to me and another cast member is now in place.
Another job well done by Mister Jack Bibberman. He staked out the district attorney’s employee parking lot and spotted Seymour’s fastfood lunch date. After running his license plate we now know that he’s part of a special law-student intern program that was started last year when Seymour took over as acting District Attorney. By using this program, second-year law students can work part-time in the D.A.’s offices and earn credit at school. When they graduate law school and pass the bar, they get placed on top of the prospect list to work at the prosecutor’s office and have their previous part-time work period count for seniority and pension purposes.
By some devious questioning of other employees, Jack learns that our suspect has been working in that office since the first day Seymour started the program, about nine months ago.
Under the guise of working for a transcript service, Jack checks with all the local law schools but can’t find any trace of our law student. If he’s not going to one of the regular accredited schools, then he must be attending a storefront or correspondence law school that has a special requirement in California.
For screening purposes, the State Bar wisely requires students of non-accredited law schools to take a first-year law students’ exam that covers the three main subjects they all take – Torts, Contracts, and Criminal Law. The students must pass this ‘junior bar’ exam before they’re permitted to continue with their law studies and get credits for qualification to sit for the regular bar examination.
This system weeds out most of the crummy law schools and unfit students, so that the sad case of so many people wasting their time and money for four years doesn’t result in a succession of bar exam failures.
If our law student falls into this group, it means that he must have taken the junior bar exam. Our computer expert searches the records and with a little ‘hacking,’ discovers that the student has just filled out his first application to take the junior bar exam. This means that he was not a law student at all when he joined Seymour’s new program for secondyear law students. In fact, he was working there all this time before finally enrolling in some correspondence mail-order law school.
If Seymour knew about this timeline, then we’ve just found another skeleton in his closet. Unfortunately, there’s another career in danger and I don’t want to destroy the student’s chance of ever practicing law. This situation will have to be handled very delicately. It’s not the type of thing I enjoy doing because neither of these guys has ever done anything nasty to me, and I’m just not the do-gooder whistle-blowing type.

I’ve been in touch with Handelmann’s office for the past day or so, and after numerous faxes have been exchanged, he’s under the impression that our bail bond company definitely will meet him in court and that the deal will be made.

When a legitimate attorney settles a client’s case, he or she has the client sign off on the draft, endorses it, and then deposits it to a trust account. A draft is not a check because it is not instantly negotiable. You can’t take a draft to any bank and cash it because it requires something to be done first
– the claim for which it is being issued must be closed by the claimant’s signing of a release form. Once the claim file is closed, the insurance company then authorizes its bank to honor the draft. This procedure can take as long as two weeks, during which time the draft sits in the attorney’s trust account. If Handelmann were on the up-and-up, that’s what he would do. When the draft clears his account, he could then have two certified checks issued in the sum of each of his client’s bail, get them released and avoid the paying of a ten percent fee to a bail bondsman. But Handelmann is not a legitimate attorney… that’s why he wants to use the services of our phony bail bond company. We don’t need no stinkin’ trust account. We don’t exist.

If you’re careful, you can usually recognize a con job when someone tries to pull one on you. There are two definite danger signs. First, there is an urgency involved. For some reason, whatever the con artist wants must be done now. If you delay, then the entire benefits you are promised will no longer be available.

Second, there is always some reason why other than normal procedures must be followed to expedite the urgency, and the reason given will usually have some grain of truth to it, to make it believable.