Innocent

CHAPTER 32

Nat, June 23, 2009 Judge Yee tells Sandy to call his next witness, and Marta springs up and calls Rosa Belanquez, who proves to be a customer service representative at my parents' bank.

Mrs. Belanquez is a pretty woman in her thirties, a little round and nicely put together for her moment in the big time. There is a small cross at her throat and a tiny diamond on her ring finger. She is America, the good America, a woman who probably came here or whose parents did, who worked hard and for whom the right things happened, a solid job in the bank, some success, a little money, enough to help her family, whom she raises the way she was raised, to work hard, to do the right things, to love God and one another. She is a real nice lady. You can see it just in the way she settles herself on the stand and smiles at Marta.

"Calling your attention to September 23, 2008, did you have any occasion to have a conversation with a woman who identified herself to you as Barbara Sabich?"

I do the math. September 23, 2008, was the Tuesday before my mother died.

"I did."

"And what did Mrs. Sabich say and what did you say?"

Jim Brand, big and solid, wearing a heavy plaid suit in the dead of summer, stands up and objects, "Hearsay."

"Judge," says Marta, "none of this will be for the truth. Only to show knowledge."

Judge Yee nods. Marta is claiming that the defense is not attempting to use my mom's statements to prove that anything she said is actually true, just that she said them.

"One answer at a time," he says. He means he'll rule on the hearsay objection with each answer, an advantage for the defense, who will get to trot all of this out for the jury, even if the judge ultimately decides it shouldn't have been heard.

"First of all," says Marta, "did Mrs. Sabich have anything with her?"

"Mrs. Sabich had a receipt from a lawyer's office."

"Calling your attention to what has been marked and admitted as People's Exhibit 24, do you recognize that document?" The receipt from Dana Mann's office, which was on the screen a few minutes ago at the end of my dad's testimony, reappears there.

"That was the receipt that Mrs. Sabich had."

"And did Mrs. Sabich tell you how she had received it?"

"Objection, hearsay," says Brand.

Marta gives him a simpering frown but withdraws the question.

"All right," she says. "Do you recall how Mrs. Sabich produced the receipt?"

"She had it in an envelope."

"What kind of envelope?"

"Standard commercial window envelope."

"Do you remember if there was a stamp on it?"

"Pitney Bowes, I think."

"Did you see any return address on the envelope?"

"How it was," says Mrs. Belanquez, "was she handed me the envelope and I took out the receipt. It was from the mail. You could see."

Brand stands up to object again. Molto puts his hand on his sleeve, and Brand sits down without a word. Tommy doesn't want it to look as though the prosecutors are hiding something. More than his boss, Brand is inclined to fight even the facts that are obvious. Prima Dana's office fucked up and mailed a receipt to my parents' home for the invoice my dad had paid, and my mom, who ordinarily handled all the bills, opened the envelope and went to the bank, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Now tell us, please, about the conversation you had with Mrs. Sabich."

"There's a cashier's check number on the receipt." Mrs. Belanquez has revolved in the chair and is pointing at the screen beside her. "She wanted to know if that was our number. I said I thought so, but I had to see. I went and looked at the record, and then I told her that I needed to talk to the manager."

Marta takes a plastic envelope off the defense table and goes over to Brand. He studies it and comes to his feet.

"Judge, we haven't seen this."

"Your Honor, that document was produced to the defense by the prosecution last November during initial discovery."

That must be true, because Detective Gissling is motioning to Brand and nodding. Marta whispers to Brand, he throws out a hand, and the paper is received in evidence, and a slide of it is lit up on the screen for the jury by Sandy's paralegal. It's the requisition for a cashier's check. I saw the document last fall. It really didn't count for much compared with the check to the outfit that tested for STDs.

"Calling your attention to Defendant's Exhibit 1, what is that?"

"It's the record I looked at. The backup on our bank check."

"Now, you say you had a discussion with your manager."

"Yes."

"And after you spoke to the manager, did you speak further to Mrs. Sabich?"

"Yes, sure."

"And what did you tell her?"

"I telled her-" Mrs. Belanquez smiles and licks her lips and apologizes for being nervous. "I told her what the manager said."

"Which was what?"

Brand objects that this is hearsay.

"I'll hear it," says Judge Yee.

"Well, see. The judge bought the bank check with cash he had in hand and a three-hundred-dollar ATM withdrawal that he made right there. I mean, you could tell from the time of the ATM record. So it was basically a withdrawal from the account. And we didn't charge him to issue the cashier's check because he was an account holder. So the question was, well, Is this an account record, and what can she see and what can't she see, because she, Mrs. Sabich, was on that account, too. And the manager just said, Well, if we gave him a free cashier's check because he had an account, and she's on the account, then it's an account record and show her whatever she wants to see.

"So I told her that. And I showed her the purchase invoice for the bank check and the actual check."

"And calling your attention to People's Exhibit 23, is that the bank check you showed Mrs. Sabich?"

Made payable to "Mann and Rapini," the check reads in the memo section, "Payment-Invoice 645332."

Mrs. Belanquez says, "Yes," and Marta says she has nothing further. The courtroom is silent. Everyone knows something just happened, something huge. My dad said my mom committed suicide, and now there's a reason why. Because she knew he'd been to see Dana the divorce lawyer, that he was getting ready to leave her.

Across the courtroom, Jim Brand is not happy. Prosecutors rarely are when the defense turns out to know something they don't. He sits in his chair with his legs splayed and actually tosses his pen in the air and catches it before he gets out of his seat with the air of a cowpoke about to get after unruly livestock.

"So was that the full extent of your conversation with Mrs. Sabich?" he asks.

"No, hardly."

"Well, tell us what else happened," says Brand, as if that's the most natural question in the world, as if he just can't understand why Marta wouldn't ask herself. The art of the courtroom continues to impress me, the theatrical improvisations and the backhanded ways of communicating with the jury.

In response, Marta in her printed silk jacket comes to her feet but says nothing as Mrs. Belanquez answers.

"Well, after she saw the cashier's check, she wanted to know if there were others and how they got paid for, and whatnot. And so we got to going back and forth with other checks and statements and withdrawal slips and deposit slips. Lots of transactions. We were there most of the day."

"Judge," says Marta, "I think we're pretty far beyond the scope of the direct. We're now talking about documents Your Honor has ruled several times have nothing to do with this case."

"Anything else, Mr. Brand?" Judge Yee asks.

"Guess not," says Brand. But he's regained a little ground, let the jury know that something else was going on. Mrs. Belanquez is excused and clacks out of the courtroom in her tall high heels, casting a small smile at Marta, whom she must like. Her heavy perfume lingers behind her as she passes me on the front pew.

I'm not sure any of the spectators besides me, including the jurors, have absorbed the full impact of Mrs. Belanquez's testimony. But I have that feeling again that my heart is pumping hot lead. I'm not supposed to be surprised. I have said all along my mom knew. And yet it is unbearable, particularly as I add in the contents of those documents the jury will never really know about. I see it all-Mrs. Belanquez's desk in the bank, with the usual phony colonial furnishings, and customers and employees streaming by on every side, and there is my mom, who sometimes needed half a Xanax before she went out in public, who despised feeling observed or exposed. And now she is sitting in front of nice Mrs. Belanquez as she pieces together what was going on, first that my dad has been to see Dana Mann, a divorce lawyer, for professional advice, only a few weeks earlier, and then fifteen months before, he had been cleverly bootlegging money from his paycheck and spending it on things like a payment to a clinic to test for sexually transmitted diseases. She knows right then he's been unfaithful, that he's lied to her nonstop in half a dozen ways, including, worst of all, about whether he is going to continue to be her husband, and she has to take in all of that with a stone face and a breaking heart as she sits across from Mrs. Belanquez, knowing Rosa Belanquez can see the wedding ring on her finger and, therefore, the magnitude of her humiliation.

By now, I am in the corridor outside the courtroom, crying. It's all clear now, that she returned home that Tuesday and sooner or later went through my dad's e-mail and learned whatever else there was to discover about who he had been fucking the year before. Did they fight that week before she died? Did they scream and shout and knock over the furniture and just put on a good face the night Anna and I arrived? Or did my mom take all that with her? It had to be the latter way, I think. She'd known for close to a week by the time we came to dinner and obviously had kept it to herself. She'd been smiling and scheming, considering her alternatives and, I am sure now, planning her death. My dad had picked up the phenelzine for her two days after my mom had been to the bank.

Marta Stern has come out in the hall to find me. She's not within six inches of my height as she reaches up to my shoulder. She's wearing a heavy necklace of hammered gold I haven't noticed before.

"It was so wrong," I tell Marta. I doubt she knows exactly what I mean, because until I speak I'm not sure I know myself. My dad didn't kill my mother in the meaning of the law. But it doesn't change what happened. He deserves to walk out of the courtroom, but when he does, somewhere in my heart, he will always be to blame.