Joshua Ferris - The Unnamed

“We’ll let you know when to bring them in,” said Tim. “Thank you.”

After the door closed Peter opened the envelope and set the sketch before R.H. Tim had sat for an hour with one of the freelancers from the courthouse and considered it a good likeness.

“I don’t recognize him,” R.H. said within five seconds.

“Now, just take your time, R.H. Look long and hard. Clear your mind. There’s no pressure. Take all the time you need.”

“This is the man who showed you the knife?”

Tim nodded. R.H. focused on the sketch again.

“I could stare at this picture until Judgment Day, I still wouldn’t recognize him.”

“Are you absolutely sure?”

“Well, Jesus Christ,” said R.H. “I sure the hell wish I did.”

The secretary ushered in the lead detective and the assistant district attorney. Detective Roy had a pack of cigarettes in the front pocket of his buttondown. He had the fissured skin of a veteran smoker, as if someone had come along and smoothed out the crumpled ball of his face. He filled the conference room with his smoker’s stench and the impertinence of a hostile witness mocking his interrogator. The assistant district attorney was a short, stout woman who upon sitting down declared her hope that no one here was wasting anyone’s time.

Tim pushed the sketch across the table to Detective Roy. The detective pulled it toward him slowly with all the indifference in the world. He puckered his lips as he looked it over and swished air between his two front teeth, disrupting the room’s silence. He passed the sketch to the assistant district attorney who, before looking, lifted her eyeglasses to her forehead, where they sat well perched.

“So he stops you,” said the detective, “he tells you your client’s innocent, he shows you what he claims is the murder weapon, and then he walks away.”

“That’s correct,” said Tim.

“Well, ain’t that just fucking bizarre-o, hey?” The detective turned to the assistant district attorney. “Isn’t that bizarre-o, Thelma?”

“Pretty bizarre,” said Thelma.

“And where again?”

“Just outside the office here. Right as I was leaving for the night.”

“And when?”

“Last week. Tuesday. No, Wednesday.”

“Uh-huh,” said the detective. “Hey-ho. Hundred percent bizarre. Thelma? Bizarre?” The detective turned once again to look at Thelma.

“Does your client recognize the man?” she asked Tim.

“Sure the hell wish I did,” said R.H.

Tim reached out and delicately touched R.H.’s arm. “Let us do the talking,” he whispered. And then, more audibly, he said, “He does not. But that has no bearing on whether or not this man is somehow involved with the crime my client has been accused of committing.”

“You didn’t try to, I don’t know… take the knife away from the man? You say he had it in a Ziploc bag. He wasn’t brandishing it?”

“It was inside the bag.”

“And you, what — you just looked at it?”

“You’re asking why I didn’t try to take the knife away from him?”

“Well, if he wasn’t brandishing it.”

“Yeah, why the hell didn’t you try that?” asked R.H.

Tim attempted to touch his arm again, but R.H. pulled back.

“Couldn’t you have at least swiped at it?”

Tim directed his answer at the detective. “When you are approached by a complete stranger who brandishes a knife that may be a murder weapon, your first instinct is not to try and take it away.”

“Maybe not your first instinct,” said R.H.

“Fair enough,” the detective said to Tim.

“During the course of your investigation, Detective, did you have a suspect, or perhaps interview someone, who looked like the man in that sketch?”

Detective Roy smiled. He looked directly at R.H. “We only ever had one suspect, Counselor.”

The room turned silent.

“Did you interview anyone who looked like that man?”

“What are you asking us to do, Mr. Farnsworth?” asked the assistant district attorney, whose glasses remained on her forehead.

“Look into who this man might be. He had the murder weapon.”

“Alleged murder weapon.”

“Fine, alleged. All the same, that’s not your everyday occurrence, I think you can agree.”

“Oh, for sure, for sure,” said the detective. “Bizarre-o indeed.”

“Why does he keep saying that?” asked R.H.

Tim had to reach out again. The detective and the assistant district attorney quietly conferred.

“Sure, why not,” said the detective as he stood and put a fresh cigarette in one corner of his mouth. The cigarette bobbed up and down as he spoke. “Terrorism, murdered police, getting guns out of the hands of children. We got all the time in the world for this shit.”

The assistant district attorney returned her glasses to her nose, and they departed.

Tim had had to excuse himself directly after the meeting to visit the men’s room. He returned to discover Mike Kronish inside his office with R.H. Sam Wodica was there, too. Wodica was the firm’s managing partner, overseer of all its departments, perched on the final rung of the invisible ladder. Wodica resembled an aging surfer. His sandy-blond hair, suntanned complexion and year-round seersucker had a way of disarming jurors. They expected him to pour sand out of his shoes during closing arguments and then invite them all to the bonfire afterward, which went a long way toward winning them over.

Kronish’s elbow was on a bookshelf and Wodica’s ass was in Tim’s chair, gently swiveling. Their unexpected presence gave the office a charge. Tim had walked into a voluble silence.

“Oh, I’m in your seat,” said Wodica, standing and gesturing for Tim to sit in his own chair.

Do you expect a goddamned thank-you? he wanted to say.

He walked around the desk as Wodica retreated to the wall. Tim set the backpack in the corner. He sat down. He looked directly at R.H. and said, “What’s up?” R.H. stared at him but remained silent.

Kronish spoke. “R.H. is worried that because of Jane’s health, Tim, you don’t have your head in the game.”

“I feel for you having to deal with she has cancer,” said R.H., “but I’m looking at some serious consequences if things don’t go my way. They’ll take my fortune and I’ll rot in a cell, or I’ll just fucking die who knows, so I need to know. Do I have your undivided attention?”

Tim looked across the desk directly into R.H.’s heavy-hanging eyes, ignoring the two partners, and said, “There’s nobody that can try this case like I can.”

“Everybody here knows you’re working this case hard,” said Wodica. “R.H. doesn’t see it like we do, day in, day out. So he just asked that we talk this through.”

“If he saw what we saw,” Kronish added, “he’d know he doesn’t have a worry in the world. Basically we’re just here to clear up a minor communication problem.”

“My guess is he needs to hear more often from you is all. He needs to hear from you every day the way he did before Jane fell ill and then he won’t have any worries.”

Tim did not once look at his colleagues. His eyes remained fixed on R.H. The room fell into silence and he said, “I’m the man who’s going to get you acquitted.”

R.H. peered back with an expression even more despairing than his breakdown in the hall. He craned his neck to look at Kronish and on his way back to Tim glanced briefly at Wodica. “You fellows figure this out on your own,” he said. He stood and buttoned his suit coat. “But for fuck’s sake, figure it out and figure it out quick, because I’m not going to jail for something I didn’t do.”