Long Knives (22 page)

CHAPTER 51

I
turned to the court reporter. “Ms. Vacarro, would you swear in Mr. Giordano, please?”

She turned to Quinto. “Mr. Giordano, please raise your right hand.”

He complied, and she asked, “Do you solemnly state that the testimony you will give in this deposition proceeding will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?”

“I do,” he said.

Before I truly began the deposition, there was something I needed to do. I had thought about doing it off the record but decided to make it a formal part of the deposition. “Mr. Giordano,” I said, looking across the table at him, “before I begin today, I understand that you lost your brother early last week, and I want to extend my condolences.”

“Thank you.”

“I lost a sibling myself many years ago, and I know how difficult it can be.”

“I appreciate your understanding.”

“It wouldn’t surprise me if things are probably still quite emotional for you, so if anything I ask you is upsetting such that you need to take a break, please let me know and we’ll be sure to do that.”

“Thank you. I don’t think that will happen, but I’ll let you know if it does.”

I did, of course, actually feel for him. But my reason for offering condolences and the opportunity to take a break is that I didn’t want him to have the excuse at trial to change his testimony by saying, “Oh, I was so emotional that I just couldn’t give a straight answer, and that guy Tarza wouldn’t let up on me.”

With that out of the way, it was time to begin in earnest.

“Mr. Giordano,” I said, “have you ever had your deposition taken before?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, first, the court reporter, Ms. Vacarro, who is to your left, will be taking down my questions and your answers and will later give them to you in printed form to review.”

“Okay.”

“Although your counsel has no doubt gone over with you the procedures we’ll be following today, I’d like to review them with you quickly myself, so that we’re all on the same page about what we’re doing here.”

“Okay.”

I then went over with him the list of what lawyers call the admonitions, admonishing him, among other things, to be sure to give his answers audibly, rather than just shaking his head yes or no, to be sure to listen carefully to each question and let me know if he didn’t understand it—I’d be happy to rephrase—and reminding him that although his lawyer might make an objection, he needed to go ahead and answer the question unless his lawyer instructed him not to, that any objections would be ruled upon if and when the case went to trial. He rather docilely answered “Okay” to all of the admonitions. But then, most people do.

“And do you understand, Mr. Giordano, that when you give an answer today, it is under the same obligation to tell the truth as if you were in a courtroom with a judge present?”

“Yes.”

Then I hit him with something I only rarely do, but this seemed like the right occasion. “And do you understand, Mr. Giordano, that the penalty for perjury—for not telling the truth today—is, pursuant to Sections 118 and 118.1 of the California Penal Code, up to four years in prison?”

Many lawyers in Stevens’s position would have objected to that as harassment and complained that I was suggesting that Quinto was a liar. Stevens did something different.

“Isn’t there a fine, too?” he asked.

I was flummoxed. I had never had an opposing lawyer do that before, and not only that, I didn’t know if there was a fine. I wasn’t sure what to say. A point for him.

“I don’t know,” I said. And then, trying to recover, “Mr. Giordano, do you understand the penalty for perjury?”

“Yes,” he responded. “I understand the prison thing, and I guess the two of you will let me know if there’s also a fine.” The little schmuck actually grinned, and I wondered if he and Stevens had arranged it all in advance.

I now faced a choice. I could start with softball questions about things like age and education, or I could go right to the heart of what I really wanted to know. I usually start with the softballs, because one of my goals in a deposition is to lull the deponent into a fuguelike state in which he’ll forget that his lawyer and everyone else are in the room and just want to talk to me—to answer my questions. Softball questions at the start are one way to try to achieve that.

“Mr. Giordano, how old are you?”

“I’ll be twenty tomorrow.”

I decided not to wish him a happy birthday. Under all the circumstances, it seemed not the right thing to do.

“And where were you born?”

“Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.”

“So you are a citizen of the United States?”

“Yes.”

“Are you also a citizen of any other country?”

“Yes. I have dual citizenship with Italy.”

“Any other citizenships?”


“No.”

“Where did you go to high school?”

“I graduated from Marconi High School in Pittsburgh.”

“Currently, do you have any degrees other than your high school diploma?”

“No. I’m a sophomore at UCLA, so I hope to have a BS in biochemistry in a couple of years.”

“Mr. Giordano, I have premarked as Exhibit A to this deposition the Complaint—the lawsuit—in this matter, and I’m going to hand it to you. I’ve also brought courtesy copies for your counsel.” I handed the marked exhibit to him and also gave copies to Stevens, and to Oscar and Jenna.

“Mr. Giordano, have you read the complaint in this matter?”

“Yes.”

“To the best of your knowledge, is everything stated in the complaint true?”

“Yes, it is.”

“All right, let me direct your attention to paragraph four, in which it is alleged, and I quote, ‘Primo Giordano was my brother.’ Do you see that?”

“Yes.”

“How old was your brother Primo?”

“He was twenty-nine. Would have been thirty in March.”

“Was he a full brother or a half brother?”

“A half brother. He and I have the same father but different mothers. His mother died and our father, who lives in Rome, remarried.”

This was going well. He was volunteering things.

“Where was Primo born?”

“In Rome.”

I thought to myself that it was interesting that Stevens had not objected to any of these questions, even though relevancy objections weren’t appropriate in depositions, or otherwise tried to get in the way of the questioning.

“Do you have other siblings?”

“Objection, relevancy,” Stevens said.

As is the case with most witnesses upon the first objection being made, Quinto didn’t answer the question. He just kind of sat there confused, despite my earlier admonition to him that unless his lawyer instructed him not to answer a question, he should go ahead and answer it.

I didn’t respond to the objection—you never should, unless the objection causes you to revise your question. For example, if probing the objection a bit more might help you improve your question and avoid any chance a judge will sustain the objection and block the answer from being admitted at trial.

“Please answer the question, Mr. Giordano.”

“Well, I have three other siblings.”

“Could you please name them and tell me their ages?”

“Objection, relevancy.”

“Well,” Quinto said, ignoring the objection, “there is my brother Secondo, who is twenty-seven, my sister Terza, who is twenty-five and my brother Quarto, who is twenty-three.”

“So you’re all named in birth order, First, Second, Third and so forth?”

“Yes. It’s an old Italian tradition for sons. But my father was very modern and applied it to girls, too. So my sister is Terza—third. If she’d been a boy, she would have been Terzo.”

“Thank you. Mr. Giordano, let me now direct your attention again to paragraph four, where it says, ‘My brother Primo had possession of a map showing the exact location of sunken treasure.’ Do you see that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Did Primo own the map?”

“Objection. Calls for a legal conclusion from someone who is not a lawyer. And you haven’t established that he has any other qualification to answer the question.”

“I’ll rephrase,” I said. “Mr. Giordano, do you have reason to believe that Primo owned the map?”

“I’ll renew the objection,” Stevens said, “but go ahead and answer, Quinto, if you’re able to. Keep in mind that Mr. Tarza isn’t asking you for a legal opinion, just what your understanding of the matter is…if you have one.”

Quinto sat up straighter in his chair. “Primo never owned the map. I own it.”

“So, to your understanding, Primo didn’t have an ownership interest in the map prior to his death?”

“No.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that any of your other siblings have any ownership interest in the map?”

“They don’t.”

“Do you have any reason to believe anyone else has an ownership interest in the map?”

“No.”

“Do you have any reason to believe anyone other than you has an interest of any kind in the map, even if it’s not as an owner?”

“No.”

“Would it surprise you to learn that Primo told Professor James that the two of you were co-owners of the map?”

“No. He was always making that false claim.”

“How did you come to own the map?”

“Objection. Calls for a legal conclusion.”

“I inherited it from my grandfather.”

“Your father’s father?”

“No, my mother’s father.”

“What was his name?”

“Sven Johannsen.”

“Do you know how your grandfather came into possession of the map?”

“He found it in the Spanish state archive in Seville.”

Now we were getting somewhere.

“Doesn’t that mean the Spanish government owns it?”

“Objection, calls for a legal conclusion.”

“They might own the original, but our copy has had data added to it that show the exact location of the sunken treasure.”

“Do you know when your grandfather found the original?”

“I think it was in the early 1980s, but I’m not sure.”

It was worth a shot in the dark with a broad question that didn’t have any foundation.

“Do you know how he knew where to look for it?”

“Objection,” Stevens said, “no foundation. Assumes that his grandfather knew where to look for it.”

“Yes,” Quinto answered, “he did look, and my mother had told him where to look.”

“If you know, how did your mother know where he should look?”

“She’s a research librarian at the University of Pittsburgh, and her specialty is records in the Spanish state archive. She had a hunch, so she sent my grandfather to check it out.”

“Did your grandfather speak Spanish?”

“Yes.”

“Did he speak it well?”

“He said so.”

“How about your mother?”

“Yes, and she speaks it well.”

“Did your grandfather tell you what he found there?”

“Yes, he told me that he found records relating to the wreck of the Spanish galleon
Nuestra Señora de Ayuda
, which sank in 1641.”

“Did he tell you if he studied those records?”

“He said he did.”

“All right, then, let’s move on to what he found there.”

Jenna suddenly spoke up. “I hate to do this, but I really need a bathroom break. Too much coffee today, I’m afraid. Would that be okay?”

I looked over at Stevens, who nodded his assent.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s take ten.” I knew, of course, that Jenna was asking for a break because she had something to tell me.

CHAPTER 52

J
enna had the good sense to actually go off to the ladies’ room as we took our break, so it looked like her request had been legitimate. Not that any experienced litigator would have believed it. When Jenna returned, Oscar and I were hanging out in the hallway—we’d left the conference room to Quinto and Stevens—and the three of us ducked into an empty office down the hall.

“Listen,” Jenna said, “you can’t just move on to what Quinto’s grandfather supposedly found in the archive because what he’s saying about his going to Seville and doing research there is absurd. Documents from the mid-seventeenth century in that archive are in old Castilian handwritten script. Modern Spanish speakers can usually understand the words and the syntax, but they often can’t make out the handwriting. It’s like trying to read the handwriting of the people who wrote our Constitution, only much, much worse. Here, let me show you.”

She put her iPad down on the table, punched in some letters and numbers, then flipped it up where we could all see. The image of a crinkled document with a small chunk of paper missing on the left side appeared on the screen. “This,” she said, “is a document from the archive in Seville relating to the very ship Quinto’s talking about—the
Nuestra Señora de Ayuda.
Except it’s from 1599, so I don’t really know if it’s the same ship or a different ship with the same name.”

“Like you said,” Oscar remarked, “it’s really hard to read. I speak pretty good Spanish, and I can’t make out a single word of it.”

“Right,” Jenna responded. “A document like that, even if you were there in person, would be hard to make out.”

“What,” I asked, “does the document relate to?”

“Oh, it relates to the departure of a galleon of that name from the Guadalquivir River—the river that runs through Seville—to somewhere in the Spanish colonies in New Spain. That was their name, at that point, for the New World. It could be the same
Nuestra Señora de Ayuda
as was supposedly lost in 1641, although that would make it an awfully old ship. But I don’t know what the average service life of a Spanish galleon was.”

“So what’s your point for this depo?” Oscar asked.

“My point is that neither his grandfather nor his mother could have done this research alone. They would have needed an experienced archival researcher to help them.”

“How do you know,” I asked, “that such people even exist?”

“Because, Robert, I was there myself two summers ago. I got a grant to do some research in the archive in Seville about sunken ships that might have contained treasure and that haven’t been salvaged. For some ships they even have records of the salvage. It was background research for my law review article.”

“Well,” Oscar said, “it’s amazing there are such accurate records from so long ago.”

“The Spaniards,” Jenna said, “were the Germans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They wrote down everything.”

We went back into the conference room. Everyone refilled their coffee cups and I restarted the deposition.

“Mr. Giordano,” I resumed, “I’ll just remind you that you’re still under oath.”

“I understand.”

“Do you know if your grandfather had help in researching the records in Seville?”

“He told me he did.”

“Did he tell you what kind of help?”

“Yes, he told me he hired an archival researcher named Pedro Cabano.”

“Did you grandfather tell you what Mr. Cabano had done on his behalf?”

“Yes, he said he helped him look for the account of a survivor of the shipwreck of the
Nuestra Señora de Ayuda.
”

“Did he help your grandfather with anything else?”

“I don’t know.”

“Did they find the survivor’s account?”

“Yes.”

“Did they find more than one survivor’s account?”

“No.”

“Do you have a copy of the one they did find?”

“Yes.”

“Have you read it?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have it with you?”

“No.”

“Please summarize for me what it says.”

Stevens spoke up. “Objection. Calls for confidential business information.”

“Mr. Giordano,” I said, “please go ahead and answer the question.”

“I’m going to instruct him,” Stevens said, “not to answer the question.”

“You know, Mr. Stevens, that that’s not a proper instruction. For one thing, ‘confidential business information’ isn’t a recognized privilege. And even if it were, the proper procedure is to suspend this deposition and go into court to seek a protective order.”

“Well,” Stevens said, “we can go argue about that in court later if you like, but Mr. Giordano is not answering that question today.”

I knew that I then had to ask Giordano a required follow-up question to make the dispute one a judge would consider ruling on.

“Mr. Giordano, are you going to follow your counsel’s instruction and refuse to answer my question?”

“Yes, I am.”

I made a note to come back to try later in the depo to find out more about the survivor’s account without trespassing on information they considered confidential.

“All right, let me move on, then. Have you ever met Mr. Cabano yourself?”

“No.”

“Do you have any contact information for Mr. Cabano?”

“No.”

“Do you know of any way to reach him?”

“No.”

“Do you know where he lives?”

“No.”

“If I went to Spain, do you know how I might find him?”

“No.”

I had the sense from Quinto’s body language and the slight smirk on his face that he indeed knew something about how to get in touch with Cabano but wasn’t about to volunteer it unless I asked him a question that, somehow, was exactly on the button. Which meant going into thorough mode. At times taking a deposition is like scrubbing the bottom of a pot you can’t see. For the pot, you have to use a pattern of swipes across the unseen bottom to try to get it all—back and forth one way and then the other, clockwise and counterclockwise, then diagonal and the other diagonal and so forth. In a depo you have to use a careful pattern of questions to scrub the bottom of the factual pot. Here I clearly hadn’t yet hit quite the right pattern of questions.

“Does your mother know Mr. Cabano?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does your mother have his contact information?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know if your mother put your grandfather in touch with Mr. Cabano?”

“I don’t know.”

I turned and looked at Jenna, who had been tapping on her keyboard, no doubt trying to find some reference to Cabano on the Internet. She shook her head in the negative. I could, at that point, have given up the pursuit and assumed we’d find him by other means, but since I might not get the chance to ask Quinto again under oath, I decided to spend a little more time trying to unearth what he was hiding.

“Mr. Giordano, have you been in contact with Mr. Cabano by any means, including e-mail or phone?”

“Objection, compound.” Stevens had decided to be difficult, but I decided not to argue about it.

“I’ll rephrase. By e-mail?”

“No.”

“By phone?”

“No.”

“By postal mail?”

“No.”

“By any other means?”

“No.”

I was more or less out of ways to ask about where I could find Mr. Cabano when Oscar slipped a note in front of me. I read it and then asked, “Do you know anyone else who, to your understanding, has been in contact with Mr. Cabano?”

“Yes.”

“And who would that be?”

Quinto smiled a very broad smile. “I believe that Professor Aldous Hartleb has been in touch with him.”

Jenna, who had been slouching in her chair, leaned over to me and said, “Ask for a break.”

“Mr. Stevens,” I said, “I need to confer with my client for a few minutes before we proceed. So let’s take another break.”

Stevens looked at Jenna. “Small bladder?”

“You know, Mr. Stevens,” Jenna said, “I should really report you to the State Bar for that sexist comment.”

“Go ahead. I don’t think there was the least thing sexist about it. Some
people
can’t drink the amount of coffee you drink without needing frequent breaks. If you think that fact has to do with gender, that’s your problem.”

I didn’t think we needed a spat in this depo, which had, so far, been fairly peaceable. “You know,” I said, “I have a proposal. How about we ask the court reporter to simply delete from the transcript everything after my request for a break? Is that agreeable, Mr. Stevens?”

“So stipulated.”

“Good. Madam Court Reporter, please leave the other repartee out of the transcript.”

“I will,” she said.

Whereupon Jenna, Oscar and I headed back to the empty office. This time we went there directly.