35
The defense strategy was simple: Blaze a path that would lead the jury to James Marco and the unalterable conclusion that he was a rogue drug agent who was entirely corrupt and willing to kill to avoid exposure. Trina Rafferty was one of the steps on that pathway, and I called her as my first witness Tuesday. She had been associated with Gloria Dayton and both had come under Marco’s influence and control.
No matter how conservatively she had dressed, there was something about Trina that still displayed an undeniable tawdriness. The stringy blond hair and hollow eyes, the pierced nose and bracelets tattooed around her wrists. These were all features found in many respectable women, but the combination of these and her demeanor left no doubt about who she was when she made her way to the witness stand. As she stood to be sworn in, I remembered that there was a time when Kendall, Trina, and Gloria all covered for one another on jobs because they looked so similar. Not anymore. There wasn’t even a remote resemblance between Kendall and Trina. Looking at Trina, I knew I was looking at what could have been for Kendall.
After Trina was sworn in, I didn’t delay in confirming the obvious to the jurors.
“Trina, you also have a professional name, do you not?”
“Yes.”
“Can you share it with the jury?”
“Trina Trixxx, spelled with a triple x.”
She smiled coyly.
“And what is the profession you use that name for?”
“I’m an escort.”
“You mean you have sex with people for money, correct?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“And how long has this been your profession?”
“Going on twelve years, on and off.”
“And did you know another escort named Gloria Dayton, who used names like Glory Days and Giselle Dallinger?”
“I knew Glory Days, yes.”
“When would that have been?”
“I probably met her ten years ago. We used the same answering service.”
“And did you also have some sort of work arrangement with her?”
“We covered for each other, if that’s what you mean. There were three girls and we covered for each other. If one was busy with a client or had a full schedule and a call came in for her, then one of the other two would take it. And sometimes if a customer wanted two girls or even three girls, then we would all work together.”
I nodded and paused for a moment. That last part had not come up previously and it was distracting to me, since the third girl who had not yet been named was Kendall Roberts.
“Mr. Haller?” the judge prompted. “Can we get through this?”
“Yes, Your Honor. Uh, Ms. Rafferty, did you have contacts within the law enforcement community during these times?”
Trina acted puzzled by the question.
“Well, I got busted a couple times. Three times, actually.”
“Did you ever get busted by the DEA?”
She shook her head.
“No, just LAPD and the sheriff’s.”
“Were you ever detained then by the DEA, by an agent named James Marco?”
In my peripheral vision I saw Forsythe lean forward. He always did it before objecting. But for some reason he didn’t object. I turned to look at him, still expecting the objection, and saw that Lankford had reached forward from his seat at the railing and touched Forsythe’s back. I read it as Lankford, the investigator, telling Forsythe, the prosecutor, not to object.
“I don’t think so.”
I turned back to the witness, unsure about what I just heard.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Can you repeat that?”
“I said no,” Trina said.
“You’re saying you don’t know a DEA agent named James Marco?”
“That’s correct. I don’t know him.”
“You’ve never even met him?”
“Not as far as I know—unless he was undercover or something and using a different name.”
I turned and glanced back at Cisco in the first row. Obviously, Marco had somehow gotten to Trina Rafferty, and in that moment I wanted to know how. But what was more pressing than the explanation was what I was going to do right now. I could turn on my own witness, but the jury might not like that.
I decided that I didn’t have much of a choice.
“Trina,” I said, “didn’t you tell me previous to your testimony here today that you were a confidential informant who worked for Agent Marco and the DEA?”
“Well, I told you a lot of things because you were paying my rent. I told you whatever you wanted me to tell you.”
“No, that’s—”
I stopped myself and tried to remain composed. Not only had Marco and Lankford gotten to her, but they had turned her into a weapon of mass destruction. If I didn’t salvage this, she could blow up the entire defense.
“When was the last time you spoke with Agent Marco?”
“I don’t know him, so I didn’t speak to him.”
“You’re telling this jury that you have no idea who Agent James Marco is?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t. I needed a place to stay and some food. I might have told you things so you would give me things back.”
It had happened to me before, a witness shifting sides like this. But never so dramatically and with so much damage inflicted on my case. I glanced over at my client at the defense table. He looked bewildered. I looked past him at Jennifer and she had an expression of embarrassment on her face—embarrassment for me.
I turned and looked at the judge, who was equally perplexed. I did the only thing I could in the situation.
“Your Honor, I have no further questions,” I said.
I slowly returned to the defense table, passing Forsythe on his way to the lectern to further the damage. As I moved through the narrow channel between the empty prosecution table and the chairs running along the railing I had to pass Lankford. I heard him make a low humming sound.
“Mmm mmm mmmmm.”
Only I would have heard it. I stopped, took a step back, and leaned down to him.
“What did you say?” I asked in a whisper.
“I said, keep going, Haller,” he whispered back.
Forsythe began his cross-examination by asking Trina Rafferty if the two of them had ever met. I moved to my seat and sat down. The one good thing about Forsythe jumping on his cross so fast was that it saved me for the moment from having to tell my client how badly things had just turned. The Rafferty fiasco was a one-two punch to the guts of our case. Already, without Forsythe piling on—which he was about to do—I had lost a key piece of testimony connecting Marco and Gloria Dayton. Adding insult to that injury, she was more than implying that I was suborning perjury—paying a witness with rent money to lie.
Forsythe seemed to think that by destroying me he was destroying the case. Almost all of his cross centered on Trina’s testimony that I fed her the lines she was supposed to speak in testimony in exchange for the apartment just a few blocks away behind the Police Administration Building. And in his zeal to take me down, I saw the way to possibly salvage things. If I could show her to have lied, I stood a good chance of undercutting—in the eyes of the jury, at least—the accusations she was making about me.
Forsythe finished after fifteen minutes, curtailing his cross when I started objecting to nearly every question on the basis that it had already been asked and answered. You can beat a dead horse only so many times. He finally gave up and sat down.
I slowly got up for redirect, walking to the lectern like a condemned man to the gallows.
“Ms. Rafferty, you gave the address of this apartment I am supposedly paying for. When did you move in there?”
“In December, right before Christmas.”
“And do you recall when you first met me?”
“It was after. I think March or April.”
“Then, how is it that you think I was paying for this apartment for you when I did not meet you until three to four months after you moved in?”
“Because you were meeting with the other lawyer, and he was the one who moved me in.”
“And which lawyer was that?”
“Sly. Mr. Fulgoni.”