The Fifth Witness - Michael Connelly [169]
“What is the name that is on your birth certificate?”
Opparizio paused and I think I saw the first inkling or recognition of where I was going with this.
“My birth name was Antonio Luigi Apparizio. Like now but spelled with an A. Growing up, people called me Lou or Louie because there were a lot of Anthonys and Antonios in the neighborhood. I decided to go with Louis. I legally changed my name to Anthony Louis Opparizio. I Americanized it. That’s it.”
“But why did you change the spelling of your last name too?”
“There was a professional baseball player at the time named Luis Aparicio. I thought the names were too close. Louis Apparizio and Luis Aparicio. I didn’t want to have a name so close to a famous person’s so I changed the spelling. Is that okay with you, Mr. Haller?”
The judge admonished Opparizio to simply answer the questions and not ask them.
“Do you know when Luis Aparicio retired from professional baseball?” I asked.
I glanced at the judge after asking the question. If his patience was being stretched before, it was now probably as thin as the piece of paper a contempt citation would be printed on.
“No, I don’t know when he retired.”
“Does it surprise you to learn that it was eight years before you changed your name?”
“No, it doesn’t surprise me.”
“But you expect the jury to believe that you changed your name to avoid a match to a baseball player long out of the game?”
Opparizio shrugged.
“It’s what happened.”
“Isn’t it true that you changed your name from Apparizio to Opparizio because you were an ambitious young man and wanted to at least outwardly distance yourself from your family?”
“No, untrue. I did want to have a more American-sounding name, but I wasn’t distancing myself from anyone.”
I saw Opparizio’s eyes make a quick dart in the direction of his attorneys.
“You were originally named after your uncle, were you not?” I asked.
“No, that’s not true,” Opparizio answered quickly. “I wasn’t named after anyone.”
“You had an uncle named Antonio Luigi Apparizio, the same name as on your birth certificate, and you are saying it was just coincidence?”
Realizing his mistake in lying, Opparizio tried to recover but only made it worse.
“My parents never told me who I was named after or even if I was named after someone.”
“And a bright person like you didn’t put it together?”
“I never thought about it. When I was twenty-one I came west and was not close to my family anymore.”
“You mean geographically?”
“In any way. I started a new life. I stayed out here.”
“Your father and your uncle were involved in organized crime, were they not?”
Freeman quickly objected and asked for a sidebar. When we got there she did everything but roll her eyes back into her head as she tried to communicate her frustration.
“Your Honor, enough is enough. Counsel may show no shame in besmirching the reputations of his own witnesses, but this has to end. This is a trial, Judge, not a deep-sea fishing trip.”
“Your Honor, you told me to move quickly and that is what I am doing. I have an offer of proof that clearly shows this is no fishing trip.”
“Well, what is it, Mr. Haller?”
I handed the judge a thick bound document I had carried to the sidebar. There were several Post-its of different colors protruding from its pages.
“That is the U.S. Attorney General’s ‘Report to Congress on Organized Crime.’ It’s dated nineteen eighty-six and the AG at the time was Edwin Meese. If you go to the yellow Post-it and open the page, the highlighted paragraph is my offer of proof.”
The judge read the passage and then turned the book around so Freeman could read it. Before she was finished he ruled on the objection.
“Ask your questions, Mr. Haller, but I’m giving you about ten minutes to connect the dots. If you don’t do it by then, I’m going to shut you down.”
“Thank you, Judge.”
I went back to the lectern and asked the question again, but in a different way.
“Mr. Opparizio, were you aware that your father and your uncle were members