Prime Witness (21 page)

“Twenty thousand dollars,” says Claude. He tells me that this is what Dr. Park paid the two men to stalk the Russian through the extradition hearing, on the long-odds chance that they might have an opportunity to abduct Iganovich and bring him back.

“I’ve interviewed Park,” he says. “Got him in a back room in case you wanna talk to him.” He tells me that Park is now a broken man. He is ready to do whatever time is required for this crime. According to Claude, Park was concerned that we were about to cut a deal on the death penalty.

“Said he didn’t have any confidence that we would hang tough. So he took things into his own hands. Do you want to talk to him?” he says.

“No. The damage is done,” I say.

“You wanna charge him with anything?”

“Not likely,” I say. On this I have the same problem Emil does. If charged and tried, any reasonable jury would award Park the Nobel Prize.

“Has anybody told Jacoby?” I ask.

“He damn near tore my head off,” says Claude. “He says the authorities up in Ottawa are ‘outraged’—his word. I had to swear a blood oath that we had nothing to do with it. I think he’s more than a little suspicious. He tells me they’re getting ready to file a formal note of protest with Washington, demanding that we return the suspect for proper extradition. He wants to know if we’ll agree to this.”

A few years ago such a note would have sealed our fate. Iganovich would have been returned to Canada for completion of extradition. A federal court would have blocked our prosecution until this was done. But the Supreme Court has changed all of that.

In a case involving a Mexican physician and the torture-murder of an agent of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Supreme Court has thrown the gates open to abduction as an acceptable remedy for producing fugitives in U.S. courts.

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.

Chapter Seventeen

L
ester 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.

“Enough of that,” says Osgood.

“Yes. Ah—ah.” The interpreter is playing for time trying to pick through the exuberant language before she speaks.

“Yes, I understand,” she says. “But it is no . . . ah. I did not do these things. I did not kill anyone. These are perverse lies.” She searches for the right word. “Swill,” she finally calls them. I think perhaps he used something stronger, a little interpretive license. “It is not true what they say, what that man says. He is a liar, a . . . ah . . .”

The term “that man” I take to be me.

The interpreter searches the air for the proper adjective. “A fucking liar.” So much for license. She omits the expectoration, only to look at the loogie, floating like some little green egg in its own juice on the concrete floor. There are limits it seems, even to verbatim translation.

“Mr. Iganovich, I will not tolerate foul language in my court. We are here for a reason, to get to the truth of these matters. You need not worry. You will be given a fair trial,” says Osgood. He is a wellspring of calming tones, a picture of composed paternal authority draped in black.

Iganovich looks at him like he is lunch, then another seductive smile. I think the defendant has a penchant for men of power. He would like to get Osgood in this room alone, bent over the table with his gown raised from behind. At least half the members of the bar in this county would vote to give him the chance, if they could.

Osgood informs the defendant of the smorgasbord of pleas available under law—not guilty, guilty, not guilty by reason of insanity, nolo contendere. He asks Iganovich if he has discussed the matter of a plea with his lawyer.

It comes back from the interpreter that he has. Before she can finish: “No guilty,” he says. He looks arrogantly off to the side, a smug expression as if this is his last word, an end of it, his final statement on the subject. Then he sees me, cracks a grin in my direction, something like a broken picket fence, a toothless map of the Old World. But in his eyes is a look, like he is sizing me up for a coffin.

Nikki would love it. The arraignment, and I am already getting psychic death threats. It is one of the reasons she insisted that I leave my job at the DA’s office in Capital City twelve years ago, the fear that one of my customers would ultimately get my home address, make overt moves on what to me, after a time, seemed like so many idle threats.

“Is your client ready to enter a plea, Mr. Chambers?”

“He is, your honor.”

Very well. Osgood walks the defendant through each count. To each charge of murder in the first degree, the interpreter states for the record “not guilty” after listening to Iganovich butcher the term in Pidgin English. He has discarded Osgood’s earlier admonition. The judge has given up.

“Mr. Chambers, as to each and every count, do you join with your client in the entry of each plea?”

“I do, your honor.”

“Have you had a chance to discuss possible dates for a preliminary hearing?” Osgood addresses this to Chambers and me.

“We haven’t, your honor,” I answer.

“Your honor, at this time, before we get to the issue of a preliminary hearing, the defendant would like to make a motion for bail,” he says. He’s crossing off items on a yellow legal pad as he talks. I can see several other notations below the one just eliminated.

Osgood looks over at me. He seems a little surprised, but not nearly so much as I. Chambers cannot be serious. A suspect who all but fled to Canada and sequestered himself behind the Chinese wall of extradition, and he wants us to put him on the street. I don’t know who would be more dangerous at this point, Iganovich who might kill again, or Kim Park who would have a contract out on the defendant’s life within the hour, were he to be released.

“Your honor, we would object to any thought of bail,” I say. My face is a full smile, like this is some kind of joke. I talk about the problems, the fact that the defendant is a public safety risk, that he himself is a marked man in a community on the edge of hysteria.

“He is not a public safety risk,” says Chambers, “until and unless he is convicted. In this country there is a presumption of innocence. I would have thought Mr. Madriani, so recently of the defense bar, would be the last to forget that.”

He sees me turn a little smirk his way.

“I’m glad Mr. Madriani sees some humor in this motion,” he says. “Perhaps it will be easier for him to find his way to some reasonable middle ground on the issue.”

“Isn’t there some code section?” says Osgood. He’s fumbling through his book on the table.

A state with a law for everything, and we have a judge who knows none of them. Like much of the bench in the rural counties of this state, Osgood was a borderline lawyer with better political instincts, one of three municipal court judges in the county. At local bar meetings he is the cock-of-the-walk, aloof to anyone not seen as his social peer, which includes all humans below the level of superior court. There is not the slightest chance that he would release this defendant on bail. He may not know the law, but he has mastered the theorems of politics in a small county. He will deny it, even if he has to ground his ruling on the schoolboy doctrine of “tough titty.”