Acosta’s on his gavel, hammering away. He senses what’s coming.

“You were his enemy,” he says. “You and her.”

Acosta’s now up out of his chair, towering over the Greek, hammering on the railing around the witness box, inches from Tony’s ear. He is bellowing at the Greek, at the top of his voice. “Mr. Skarpellos, another word and I’ll hold you in contempt,” he says. Skarpellos is one sentence, one angry burst from a mistrial, and Acosta knows it. Ambition, judicial elevation flash before his eyes. If he had a gag, even a garrote, he would use it now.

Skarpellos splits an infinitive, stops in mid-sentence, looks at the angry judge, and reins in his wrath.

“I will have no more of this,” says Acosta. He points his gavel like a blunted sword at the Greek. Their eyes meet and the Coconut makes plain who is in charge here. Halting, never giving up eye contact, like he’s warding off some mongrel dog searching for an opening, the judge finally takes his seat.

“Counsel.” He looks at me. “Are you finished?”

“Not quite, Your Honor.”

“Then get on with it.”

I have the certified copy of the Greek’s check marked for identification and move it into evidence. There’s no objection from Nelson. Meeks is making notes. I can tell by the way he is eyeing the Greek that these are little mental ticklers to take a hard look at the statutes on embezzlement.

I look at Skarpellos. “As I recall, you told police the morning after the murder that you couldn’t think of anyone who might kill Ben Potter. Is that correct?”

He looks at me. He’s breathing heavily now, a lot of adrenaline pumping inside that barrel chest.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Skarpellos, that you yourself had a heated argument with the victim, Ben Potter, only a few days before he was killed?”

He looks back up at Acosta. “This is bullshit,” he says. “I don’t have to put up with this.”

“The witness will answer the question,” says Acosta. “And he will watch his language while he’s in my courtroom.”

“I’m sorry, Your Honor. I apologize. But this is not true. I never had an argument with Ben Potter. We were good partners.”

“Then you should so testify,” says Acosta. “But watch your tongue.” Acosta nods toward me to continue.

“Isn’t it true, Mr. Skarpellos, that in fact Mr. Potter had discovered that you had taken sizable sums from the firm’s client trust account, diverting those moneys to your own personal use, and that he gave you an ultimatum, that unless you paid that money back, restored it to the trust account, he would report you to the state bar?”

“This is garbage. I don’t have to answer that.”

“Isn’t it true that Ben Potter discovered you stealing money from the trust account and threatened to report you to the bar, to have you disbarred from the practice of law?”

“That’s garbage,” he says. “I don’t know where you’re hearing this crap.”

“I’ve warned you once, Mr. Skarpellos. I won’t do it again. I don’t accept that kind of language in my courtroom.” There are a lot of indignant looks flashing from the judge to the jury, like maybe the judiciary and the courts are some offshoot of the temperance league. “That question can be answered with a simple yes or no,” says Acosta.

“No,” says Skarpellos.

“Are you telling us that you never took any money from the trust account?”

“I’m taking the Fifth,” he says.

I retreat to the counsel table and retrieve the final document. “Besides the check,” I say, “that you wrote to Susan Hawley, isn’t it true that you failed to pay over funds owing to another client, one Melvin Plotkin, for whom your firm had taken possession of a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar settlement in a personal injury case?”

“Where did you hear that?” he says. “A lotta gossip.”

I hand him a copy of the formal letter of complaint filed by Plotkin with the bar. Mr. Plotkin had made five demands on the firm for payment over a period of seven months. The attorneys in the case had gone to the Greek, imploring him to release the funds to the client, but Skarpellos had ignored them. Tod had given me the inside dealings on this, anxious to implicate his boss. We have searched for the letter dictated by Ben to Jo Ann and addressed to the bar. So far we have been unable to find this smoking gun. But the Plotkin letter is the next best thing.

“I ask you to examine this letter, Mr. Skarpellos, and tell me whether you’ve ever seen a copy of it before.”

Again he looks at it, but his eyes are not following the words. He’s stalling for time.

“Where did you get this?” he says. “There’s been no disciplinary finding in this case, no action taken by the bar. State bar investigations are supposed to be confidential.”

“Not from a criminal courts subpoena,” I tell him.

“Your Honor, this is a terrible breach of confidentiality, an invasion of privacy,” he says.

He gets no sympathy from the judge.

“I would ask you again, have you ever seen a copy of this letter, Mr. Skarpellos? You will notice that you are copied on the ‘cc’s’ at the bottom,” I tell him.

“Yes I got a copy of it,” he says. “And the entire matter has been resolved.”

“Yes, you settled it privately, isn’t that true?”

“Absolutely,” he says. “We take care of our clients. This was a simple misunderstanding.”

“I see, you took Mr. Plotkin’s money and used it for eighteen months and he somehow misunderstood how you could do that. Is that it?”

Tony doesn’t answer this, but his head is constantly shaking, like he wants to say “no” but doesn’t know how.

“The state bar didn’t quite understand it either, did they?”

I get no response to this.

“Isn’t it true that you settled this complaint, that you paid Mr. Plotkin his money only after the bar began its investigation, and then you only paid him on condition that he would withdraw this complaint, to get the bar off your back? Isn’t that true?”

“No,” he says.

“I can bring Mr. Plotkin in here to tell us what happened.”

The Greek is looking at me, his eyes darting.

“Isn’t it true that to settle this case you took other moneys from trust, that you operated a little shell game, stealing from one client to pay another, and that this is what Ben Potter discovered?”

I am off in never-never land now, guessing, filling in bare spots with a little imagination.

“No,” he says.

“How did you lose the money, Mr. Skarpellos, gambling?” I pour a little more vice over him and turn him slowly on the skewer.

“Isn’t it true that Ben Potter found out about your diversions of money, and that the two of you argued in the office violently, and that he gave you forty-eight hours to pay the money back or he was going to the bar?”

I give him more to worry about, a little detail, the forty-eight-hour deadline told to me by Jo Ann.

He looks at me round-eyed now, ready to kill, I think.

“If this had happened you’d have lost your ticket to practice, your interest in the firm, maybe gone to jail,” I say. “That is something someone would kill for, isn’t it, Mr. Skarpellos?”

“No,” he says, “that’s not true.”

I would warn him of the consequences of perjury, but what is a lie when employed to conceal a murder?

I turn away from him and to the bench.

“Your Honor, this is a certified copy of a letter received by the state bar, signed by Melvin Plotkin, a client of the Potter, Skarpellos law firm. Mr. Plotkin is under subpoena and will testify as to the authenticity of this letter and the circumstances leading up to its submission to the bar. We would ask at this time that the letter be marked for identification.”

“I will mark it, subject to further foundational testimony,” says Acosta.

I turn and look at the Greek for a long moment; then I shake my head, a little scorn for the benefit of the jury.

“I don’t think I have any further use for this witness,” I say. There is more than a trace of derision in my voice.