MR. JAYWALKER: Routinely?
MR. BURKE: Objection.
THE COURT: Perhaps you'd like to re phrase the question.
MR. JAYWALKER: Sure. Would you say it hap pened more than once over the years since Barry and Samara married?
MR. SMYTHE: More than once? Yes.
MR. JAYWALKER: More than half a dozen times?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes.
MR. JAYWALKER: More than a dozen?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes.
MR. JAYWALKER: More than two dozen?
MR. SMYTHE: Most likely.
MR. JAYWALKER: Routinely?
MR. BURKE: Objection.
THE COURT: Sustained.
Again Jaywalker walked over to the prosecution table and huddled with Burke.
'What is it you want this time?' Burke asked. 'My undershorts?'
'Not yet,' said Jaywalker. 'But I'll take that check over there, the one that paid for the premium.'
Burke coughed it up and sat helplessly by as Jaywalker had the exhibit re-marked, identified by the witness and received in evidence as Defendant's B.
MR. JAYWALKER: Do you recognize the signa ture on that check?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes, I do.
MR. JAYWALKER: Would you read us the name that was signed.
MR. SMYTHE: 'Samara M. Tannenbaum.'
MR. JAYWALKER: Did Samara in fact sign that check?
MR. SMYTHE: No.
MR. JAYWALKER: Sorry, I couldn't hear your answer.
MR. SMYTHE: No, she didn't sign it.
MR. JAYWALKER: Who did sign it?
MR. SMYTHE: I did.
MR. JAYWALKER: You signed Samara's name?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes.
Jaywalker had a few more questions written down for Smythe, but anything else was going to be severely anti climactic. He knew the accountant would no doubt have a logical explanation for having done what he did. But why give him the chance to rehabilitate himself? Better to leave that to Burke on redirect examination and then come back on recross.
A lot of lawyers never know enough to quit while they're ahead. Jaywalker, who'd been ahead precious little in this trial, was going to be damned if he made that mistake.
'No further questions,' he said.
Burke was on his feet before Jaywalker was off his.
MR. BURKE: A few minutes ago Mr. Jay walker asked you about this document, Defendant's A in evidence. Specifically, after conceding that it bears his client's signature, he asked you if she signed it only because you told her to. Do you recall his ask ing you that?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes, I do.
MR. BURKE: And you replied, rather em phatically
MR. JAYWALKER: Objection.
THE COURT: Sustained. Leave out the char acterization, please.
MR. BURKE: And you replied with the words 'absolutely not.'
MR. SMYTHE: Yes.
MR. BURKE: Can you tell us why you said, 'absolutely not'?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes. I never gave Mrs. Tannen baum that document to sign. In fact, I'd never even seen it until you showed it to me, several weeks after Mr. Tannenbaum's death.
MR. BURKE: How can you be certain that you never gave it to Mrs. Tannenbaum to sign?
MR. SMYTHE: Because unlike Mrs. Tannen baum, I read every word of everything I ever gave her.
Nicely done, thought Jaywalker. But how was Smythe going to explain away his signature on the check? It turned out it wouldn't take long for him to find out, and he didn't like the explanation any better than he'd liked the previous one.
MR. BURKE: What about Defendant's B in evidence, the check that paid for the premium? You say you signed that yourself. Is that correct?
MR. SMYTHE: Yes, it is.
MR. BURKE: How do you explain that?
MR. SMYTHE: Just as I used to collect Mr. Tan nenbaum's bills as they came in, so did I collect Mrs. Tannenbaum's. When a bill showed up from a life in surance company in the amount of some twentyseven-thousand dollars, I made it a point to question Mr. Tannenbaum about it.
MR. BURKE: Not Mrs. Tannenbaum?
MR. SMYTHE: No, I figured that wouldn't have done me much good.
MR. BURKE: Why not?
MR. SMYTHE: Let's just say that Mrs. Tannenbaum doesn't have much of a head for business.
More laughter, again at the expense of the bubble-brain.
MR. BURKE: And what was Mr. Tannenbaum's response?
MR. SMYTHE: I don't recall his exact words. But as was his habit with just about all of his wife's bills, he told me to go ahead and pay it.
MR. BURKE: You say, 'just about all.' Were there exceptions?
MR. SMYTHE: I do recall that on one occasion he declined to cover a twelve-thousand-dollar charge for a bathroom mat in the shape of an elephant. He felt that was a wee bit extravagant, and he made her return it.
MR. BURKE: I see. In any event, when Mr. Tannenbaum told you to go ahead and pay the bill for the insurance premium, what did you do?
MR. SMYTHE: I paid it.
MR. BURKE: And how did you do that?
MR. SMYTHE: I wrote out a check, signed Mrs. Tannenbaum's name and sent it off.
MR. BURKE: And the check you wrote out and signed. Is that Defendant's B in evidence?
MR. SMYTHE: It is.
And just like that, the last of Jaywalker's 'suspects' was, for all intents and purposes, crossed off the list.
Burke had one remaining witness, and following a recess, he called her. Miranda Thomas was a dark-skinned woman in her thirties or forties, with a slight singsong lilt to her voice that suggested to Jaywalker that she might have been born in Jamaica. The Caribbean version, not the Queens one. She was employed as a custodian of records by the Equitable Life Insurance Company. Burke had her identify Defendant's A as an application for a term life in surance policy, submitted by Samara Tannenbaum on the life of her husband, Barrington Tannenbaum, in the amount of twenty-five million dollars. Next he had her identify Defendant's B as the twenty-seven-thousand-dollar check that represented the initial-and, as it turned out, the only-premium paid toward the policy. Then he handed
