Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unlucky in Law

She put him out of her mind. She had to.

Monday 9/29

“RUSSIANS,” KLAUS SAID WITH SATISFACTION. HE FOLDED HIS HANDS on his paunch and snuggled back into the soft leather passenger seat of his Jag. Nina had just told him about the connections Paul had found, and updated him on Ginger’s evidence. “Everybody east of the Danube. All the same.”

“How do you mean?” Nina asked abstractedly. Nine o’clock on Monday morning, court starting up in half an hour, and now that she had safely navigated them both to the courthouse parking lot, she was polishing off lukewarm liquid in the travel mug she had brought from home. Bright marine sun glanced in at them. Klaus was resplendent in navy blue and high spirits.

“I will take Wanda,” he said. “Yes, indeed.”

“Do you know something I don’t know?”

“Put a couple of Slavs in a room,” Klaus said. “Two minutes later, you will have a conspiracy. That is what we have in this case.”

Klaus would have been in his prime in the fifties. He probably had a photo of himself and Stalin tucked away in a box. His idea of Russia was antiquated. “Who’s in this conspiracy?” she asked, setting the brake. “What’s the purpose of it?”

“We will find out. The ball of kite string is rolling free and the kite is flying off into the blue.”

“I’ve got Wanda worked out,” Nina said. She handed Klaus the papers outlining her cross-examination strategy. He folded them neatly and stowed them in his jacket pocket.

“The copy of her marriage certificate is there,” she reminded him. “Sandy had it faxed this morning.”

“We do not need it. She will tell us.” He leaned his head back and fell into a light doze, his eyes fluttering. Nina thought about getting out and leaving him to carry out his courtroom warrioring in his dreams, but he was not really asleep, he was thinking.

“So we have a big family here. The Zhukovskys. Two wives, four children, ties to ancient royalty, however tenuous. The makings of classic tragedy. The Tolstoyan unhappy family.”

Nina hung her purse off her shoulder and put the Jag keys in the flap pocket. “We’d better go. We need to talk to Stefan. This is really two families with the same father,” Nina said. “Wanda, Gabe, and Stefan. Constantin’s first wife, Davida, and their children Christina and Alex. Look. I made a diagram with birth dates.”

Klaus took it. “Thank you,” he said. “You have done well.”

She felt an absurd sense of gratitude for that acknowledgment. “The problem is that connecting Stefan to the Zhukovskys will make him look even more guilty.”

“At first.”

“What if he is guilty? What if he’s part of this conspiracy you’re talking about?”

“Miss Reilly, you have talked to him now how many times? Half a dozen? Can’t you trust your own eyes, your own heart, your own brain?”

“No,” Nina said. “I’ve been lied to and I’ve believed the liar. I’ve watched cases put on by other lawyers, first the prosecution, hugely credible, then the defense, equally sturdy. I believe both of them. I hope I’m never a juror.”

“Hmm. A little more experience and that will never happen to you again.”

“I hope it never will.”

“Well, let me assure you then. Stefan is as innocent as the fuzzy head of a baby. Let us go and talk to him.”

Staring into space, Stefan sat at a conference table in the prisoners’ waiting room. He hadn’t shaved very well, which gave him the slightly dissolute look of a blond Enrique Iglesias, not too bright but oh, so tight. He jumped up when Nina and Klaus came in and pumped the old man’s hand. “Ouch,” Klaus said kindly. “Please sit down, my friend.”

When they were settled, with the rolling file cases parked in the corner, Klaus looked around the ceiling, as if searching for a bug before commencing. Finally he said, “What do you know about your father?”

“My father?” Stefan scratched his head. “John Wyatt was an insurance salesman. He left us when I was, um-three, that would be twenty years ago, man, long time. Gabe was five. He died back East. We barely knew him. Our mom raised us.”

Klaus leaned over, shaking a finger in Stefan’s face. “Lies,” he said, in a quiet voice as startling as a shout. “Your mother lied to you, don’t you know that? Your father was Constantin Zhukovsky!”

“Huh? He was a salesman for Occidental Life…”

“Your mother has a big photograph of him on the piano?”

“She was upset when he left-she didn’t keep photos.”

Klaus pulled the marriage certificate out of his pocket. He stabbed it with his finger. “Look.”

Pale, Stefan read the document.

“Yes. Constantin Zhukovsky was your father,” Klaus said, with the look of a man who had seen plenty worse.

Stefan turned to Nina, a hundred questions flying in his eyes.

“Your mother was married to him, all right,” Nina said. “From 1973 to 1978. You were born in 1975, right?”

“What in hell’s going on here? First my mother testifies against me-I know, she had to-but now you’re telling me she’s been lying about our father for our whole lives?” He seemed truly distraught. “And you’re telling me I dug up my own father’s bones! Shit! What is this craziness?”

“Calm yourself,” Klaus said. “No need for that kind of language.”

“Sorry,” Stefan said, pushing a hand along his forehead.

“We’ll find out more this morning,” Nina said. “Your mother’s taking the stand.”

But he couldn’t let it go. “How could she lie like that to me and Gabe? She never said-she was always like that. Secrets. Always tucking letters away when I came in the room, always hanging up the phone fast when I came in. What was she doing?”

“Russians,” Klaus said. “Secrets.”

“She’s Polish. Wait a minute. But that means-Christina Zhukovsky. We were related? She was my half-sister?” His skin paled down to the white roots of his blond hair. “I saw her dead body,” he almost whispered, “wrapped in garbage sacks. And I put her back in the dirt. Oh, this is so bad.”

Nina said, “Stefan, how did you meet Alex?”

“I told you, he called me. He said he heard I did odd jobs.”

“Yes, but how did he know that?”

“He just said he heard. I never asked him why he called me. He didn’t want me to ask questions. If only I’d turned him down, but five hundred bucks-I couldn’t. Oh, my God. Listen, does this mean I’m related to him, too? Me and Gabe? I need to talk to Mom.” He pounded a fist on the table. “I’m so helpless in here!”

“Stefan, we need you to hold on. I know how hard it’s been, but this isn’t over. We need you strong.” Nina looked at her watch. “Maybe at lunch. She’s testifying in about ten minutes. Klaus, are you ready?”

Klaus got up, straightening his starched cuff. Patting Stefan on the back, he said, “Be patient, my friend. You are in good hands.” They left Stefan wilting at the table like a nutrient-starved plant, waiting for a guard to whisk him away.

In the hall, Wanda Wyatt and Alex Zhukovsky bookended opposite sides of a long hard bench. They spoke quietly to each other. Wanda, in a beige knit pantsuit, looked agitated. She crumpled the subpoena Paul had served on her between twisting fingers. Zhukovsky frowned. His legs were crossed and the raised leg wiggled nervously. The courtroom doors opened. People filed in, leaving the hall empty except for witnesses.

Nina felt like a hunter, barely holding back a desire to pounce and tear the truth out of their throats. Klaus’s confidence had spread to her.

“I thought I was finished on Friday,” Wanda complained. “Why did you do this to me?”