The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [164]
I started things out cordially but wasn’t planning to continue that way. I had one goal here and the verdict was riding on whether I achieved it. I had to push the man in the witness box to the limit. He was there only because he had been cornered by his own avarice and vanity. He had ignored legal counsel, declined to hide behind the Fifth Amendment and accepted the challenge of going one-on-one with me in front of a packed house. My job was to make him regret those decisions. My job was to make him take the Fifth in front of the jury. If he did that, then Lisa Trammel would walk. There could be no stronger reasonable doubt than to have the straw man you’ve been pointing at all trial long hide behind the Fifth, to refuse to answer questions on the grounds that he would incriminate himself. How could any honest juror vote guilty beyond a reasonable doubt after that?
“Good morning, Mr. Opparizio. How are you?”
“I’d rather be somewhere else. How are you?”
I smiled. He was feisty from the start.
“I’ll tell you that in a few hours,” I answered. “Thank you for being here today. I noticed a bit of a northeastern accent. Are you not from Los Angeles?”
“I was born in Brooklyn fifty-one years ago. I moved out here for law school and never left.”
“You and your company have been mentioned here during the trial more than a few times. It seems to hold the lion’s share of foreclosure work in at least this county. I was—”
“Your Honor?” Freeman interrupted from her seat. “Is there going to be a question here?”
Perry looked down at her for a moment.
“Is that an objection, Ms. Freeman?”
She realized she had not stood. The judge had instructed us in pretrial meetings that we must stand to make an objection. She quickly stood up.
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Ask a question, Mr. Haller.”
“I was about to, Your Honor. Mr. Opparizio, could you tell us in your words what it is that ALOFT does?”
Opparizio cleared his throat and turned directly toward the jurors when he answered. He was a polished and proficient witness. I had my work cut out for me.
“I’d be happy to. Essentially, ALOFT is a processing firm. Large loan servicers such as WestLand National pay my company to handle property foreclosures from start to finish. We handle everything from drawing up the paperwork to serving notices to appearing in court as necessary. All for one all-inclusive fee. Nobody likes to hear about foreclosures. We all struggle on some level to pay our bills and try to keep our homes. But sometimes it doesn’t work out and foreclosure is required. That’s where we come in.”
“You say ‘but sometimes it doesn’t work out.’ Over the past few years it has been working out pretty good for you, though, hasn’t it?”
“Our business has seen tremendous growth in the past four years and it has only now finally started to level off.”
“You mentioned WestLand National as a client. WestLand was a significant client, correct?”
“It was and still is.”
“About how many foreclosures do you handle for WestLand in a year?”
“I wouldn’t know off the top of my head. But I think it’s safe to say that with all of their locations in the western United States, we get close to ten thousand files from them in a year.”
“Would you believe that over the past four years you have averaged over sixteen thousand cases a year referred by WestLand? It’s in the bank’s annual report.”
I held it up for all to see.
“Yes, I would believe that. Annual reports don’t lie.”
“What is the fee that ALOFT charges per foreclosure?”
“On residential we charge twenty-five hundred dollars and that’s for everything, even if we have to go to court on the matter.”
“So doing the