Can we get a witness? Not Bertram Fields

Editor's note: Rachel Abramowitz will be periodically checking in on the trial of Anthony Pellicano -- former private eye to the stars, who faces 79 counts of racketeering, wiretapping, conspiracy and other federal charges -- and writing about what the case means to Hollywood.

It was "Waiting for Godot" week at the Pellicano trial, though for those who follow the shenanigans of the Machiavellian private eye, Godot wasn't a Brechtian invocation of God but of esquire Bertram Fields, famed Hollywood mega-lawyer, and Pellicano's benefactor.

For two days last week, Fields lingered at the Roybal Federal Building as he waited for his turn on the witness stand. The government investigated Fields but never charged him with anything, and the litigator has always maintained he knew nothing about his gumshoe's alleged illegal activities. Here, it seemed as if the court was finally going to get to hear from Fields' mouth his professions of innocence.

Fields' nonappearance capped weeks of backstage drama. First, prosecutor Daniel Saunders announced to the court that he'd been notified by Fields' then attorney, famed trial maven John Keker, that Fields planned to plead the Fifth if called as a witness. Fields would invoke his right not to incriminate himself. Within hours, Fields had contacted the media to say he wasn't planning to take the Fifth, that he had nothing to hide. By the next morning, Keker had been replaced as his lawyer. Then the government decided not to call Fields at all. Then defense lawyer Chad Hummel, who represents Pellicano's LAPD crony Mark Arneson, announced that he intended to question the legal liege, a pronouncement that left Saunders swearing that he'd cross Fields for four hours. Hummel dropped that plan Thursday after Saunders eviscerated his client, Arneson, on cross-examination.

So the public is left to imagine what the 79-year-old lawyer might have said under oath. Would the Harvard-trained Fields, who once wrote a nonfiction book examining Richard III's guilt or innocence, insist that he was naive to Pellicano's alleged repeated forays outside the realms of the law?

Mum's the word