Steve Martini - Prime Witness

Claude’s now looking over my shoulder, out through the one-way glass. “Emil’s arrived,” he says.

I turn. Johnson is in full-dress uniform, polished brass, a shiny chrome pistol on his hip, and shoes that haven’t seen duty since the last parade.

He waltzes in like this is part of his regular evening rounds, just looking after the welfare of the drunks in the tank. Halfway through the main entrance he smiles with feigned surprise. What a coincidence, the press is here. This has all the guile of a silent motion picture. He’s a beaming grin, from ear to ear, for the cameras. He’s shaking hands with the Sanchez boys, a lot of back-slapping and congratulations. He maneuvers himself between the two shorter brothers, and places an arm around each of their shoulders. In this pose there are toothy pictures of the three of them for the morning papers. The two brothers look as if they haven’t slept in three days, wrinkled shirts and dirty pants, stubble on their faces like magnetized metal. Standing next to Emil they look like poor relations to Pancho Villa locked in a bear hug with George Patton.

I can’t hear any sound, but I can see Emil warding off questions, the words “no comment” forming on his lips through a forced smile.

Finally he backs away from the crowd toward the door leading to our little room. Claude pushes a button and the latch buzzes open.

A burst of sound, voices, a fusillade of questions from the outer room. “I’ll have more to say tomorrow.” It’s Emil’s farewell. “Tomorrow,” he says. He’s through the door. It slams shut behind him with the authority of case-hardened steel, locking out the din in the other room. The smile fades from his face.

“Goddamn greasers,” he says. “I oughta throw their worthless butts in the can, give ’em a good shower, and spray some DDT up their kazoos.” He’s talking to Claude, still looking back at the closed door as if the Sanchez brothers were standing in front of him.

Then he turns and sees me.

“Hello, counselor.” He pauses for a few seconds to mentally regroup. He did not expect me to be here.

“Fine pickle they’ve got us in,” he says. “Papers want to know whether we were in on this little escapade. Like asking if I still beat my wife. I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t,” he says. “If I say we had nothing to do with it, we look like a bunch of boobs. If I say we blessed it, Park and Sanchez can call me a liar. Then we look even worse.”

He’s shaking his head at this dilemma.

“What would you do, counselor?”

“I think you handled it well,” I say.

He perks up with this.

“A messy international situation,” I tell him. “It’s best that we say as little as possible for the present. No sense alienating our neighbors up north, or the State Department,” I tell him.

Though neither of these groups can vote for him in the next election, Emil seems to buy this, at least for the moment. He takes off his uniform cap and wipes the sweat out of the hatband with the palm of his hand.

“Will we be able to prosecute him?” he asks me.

I nod.

“For capital crimes?” He means can we invoke the death penalty.

“Yes.”

“Then maybe it’s not all bad.”

“The Canadians will make a lot of noise,” I say. “Big headlines.”

“Fuck ’em,” he says. Emil’s version of the Truman Doctrine.

“God help us,” says Claude, “when the next fugitive flees north.”

“As long as he doesn’t come from this county,” says Emil.

Dusalt looks at me. “You’ll have to call Jacoby in the morning, and tell him we won’t agree,” he says, “to return the suspect.”

“Damn right,” says Emil.

Lester Osgood is a judge of marginal abilities. He would have a tough time in any setting were he not king. But this morning Adrian Chambers and I are before him in Osgood’s temporary realm, a dingy chamber in the basement of the county jail.

This place serves as the courtroom of last resort in high security cases in this county. We are here for the arraignment of Andre Iganovich.

The Russian is seated, chained to a metal chair that in turn is fastened to the floor. He wears an orange jail jumper, the word “Prisoner” stenciled in letters eight inches high across his back. He is cuffed, and chained at the waist, his ankles shackled so that he sounds like Santa’s reindeer when he walks. Two beefy jail guards, unarmed, stand behind him.

Chambers has another chair next to his client, at a small table. Between them is a court-appointed interpreter, a woman who will be chattering in undertones into the defendant’s ear once we start.

There’s a gaggle of press and television here, the cameras outside in the hall. They lend a certain circus atmosphere to the proceedings.

Osgood shuffles papers on the table. He is in a hurry, mention of an 8:30 calendar back at the courthouse. He slaps his gavel on the metal surface of the table and a hundred conversations die in mid sentence.

“Mr. Chambers, is your client ready?”

I’m standing alone off to the side, far enough away so as not to invade any whispered confidences between Chambers and the Russian.

“We are, your honor.”

Osgood looks at me.

“The people are ready,” I say.

“You have a copy of the information, Mr. Chambers?”

Adrian holds it up, evidencing that he has received this, the charging document in these cases.

“Can we waive a formal reading?” says the judge.

Chambers is agreeable. This means Osgood can dispense with a voluminous and detailed reading of every word contained in the criminal information. Instead he hits the high points in layman’s terms.

“Mr. Iganovich.”

The Russian looks up at the judge. He does not appear overly disturbed by his circumstances. I would say less concerned than Chambers.

“You are Andre Iganovich?”

The interpreter is in his ear. A brief delay.

“Da.”

“Yes,” says the interpreter.

“Have you ever been called by any other name?”

Again an interpretation, then a dense look by the defendant. Suddenly, a twinkle in the eye.

“Sometimes call me some-of-bitch,” he says. A smile. Some laughing from a few of the reporters. Osgood looks at him sternly.

He tells Iganovich to speak his native tongue, to forget the butchered English and the comedy routine. “It is better for the record,” he says.

“I will ask you one more time. Have you ever been known by any other name?”

Iganovich gives him a leering smile, then the eye, something which in certain countries might be read as an offer of seduction, one man to another. He does not seem terribly intimidated by Osgood’s manner. I think perhaps he has seen more fearsome interrogation, maybe in the place from which he originates.

After interpretation: “Nyet” followed by the interpreter’s “No.” He has no aliases, at least if he is to be believed.

“Andre Iganovich, you are charged with four counts of first-degree murder.” Osgood reads off the dates of the crimes and the names of the victims, the four college students, Julie Park and Jonathan Snider, Sharon Collins and Rodney Slate.

“Do you understand the charges against you?”

A brief conference as the interpreter works the middle ground between Chambers and Iganovich.

“Da,” says Iganovich. It is the last thing I can understand. Suddenly he’s a staccato of unintelligible words, animated expressions, shaking his head, trying to bring his shackled hands up to ward off these slanders. During part of this, toward the end, he is looking at me, venomous little slits. When he is finished, he spits on the floor in my direction.