The Touch of Treason (29 page)

“No, sir.”

“Did that flask by any chance belong to you?”

“No, it did not.”

“There’s no reason to be angry, Detective Cooper.”

“I’m not angry,” said Cooper, angrily.

“No more questions,” Thomassy said. As he went back to his table, he stole a glance at the jury. Several of them seemed amused by the exchange they had just witnessed.

At the table, Ed whispered into Thomassy’s ear. “I think you’re terrific,” he said.

“Quiet,” Thomassy whispered back.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Less than ten minutes before Thomassy’s critical meeting with Ed, he received a phone call from a calm-voiced Malcolm Sturbridge.

“What are my son’s chances?” Sturbridge asked.

He’d heard that question dozens of times, from a parent of a kid busted on a drug charge, or one with a kid who took someone else’s car for a joy ride, or the mother of a kid who got a pocketknife from dad for Christmas and who, during a high school locker-room scrap over who put a wet towel down on the bench, stabbed another fifteen-year-old to death. Some parents ought to be charged with environmental pollution for spreading kids onto the world.
Son’s chances?
What did they think he was, a bookmaker?

“Mr. Sturbridge,” Thomassy said, “what do you think your son’s chances were when he was eighteen years old?”

“Chances for what?”

“For being a law-abiding citizen.”

“Mr. Thomassy, I have paid you a considerable retainer to defend my son. Surely, you have some idea as to how it is going?”

“I don’t want to mislead you.”

“I’m not pushing for an answer you can’t give. Just an interim appraisal. Please?”

“Mr. Sturbridge, I’m intent on preserving my reputation with regard to the defense of people charged with murder. But your son has also been charged with reckless endangerment in the first degree, which is a class D felony.”

“What does that mean in layman’s language?”

“It means, Mr. Sturbridge, that under circumstances evincing a depraved indifference to human life—those are the law’s words, not mine—he is accused of recklessly engaging in conduct that created a grave risk of death to another person. If the state convinces the jury that Ed mixed gas into the kerosene, they could nail him on that charge. There’s also assault in the first degree. That’s a class C felony.”

“Surely Edward didn’t assault anybody, that’s not at issue.”

Be patient,
Thomassy told himself.
He’s a worried parent with a pacemaker.
“Under the law, assault in the first degree means that the individual intended to cause serious physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument. I think there was a rolling-pin case, and one about the heel of a high-heeled lady’s shoe. But I don’t think there’s been one with a kerosene heater as the alleged dangerous instrument. Kerosene heaters have killed a lot of people by accident. It gives me some room to work in.”

“I see.”

“My main concern’s the murder charge. Mr. Sturbridge, do you think you know your son well?”

“As well as any father knows his son.”

“Do you think he intended to murder Martin Fuller?”

There was a moment’s silence.

Thomassy said, “Don’t worry, Mr. Sturbridge, it won’t influence me. I just want to know if you think Ed intended to murder Professor Fuller.”

Malcolm Sturbridge said, “I think the only person he ever thought of killing was me.”

*

Thomassy watched Ed scrunched into the armchair opposite as if he were having a touch of postadolescence, not knowing what to do with his gangling arms and legs, trying to look everywhere in the room except at Thomassy. Not a word passed between them for minutes. Finally, Ed said, “Okay, counselor. What’s on the agenda?”

That’s all right, Thomassy thought.
I’ll need him cool in the courtroom. Let him practice on me.
He said, “I’m thinking of having only two witnesses.”

“I thought you’d round up a dozen character witnesses from Columbia.”

“Juries don’t fall for that anymore. A former concentration camp guard can get half a hundred people in Queens to swear he’s a teddy bear. On television, the neighbors always say nice things about crazies in their midst. Juries know people are blind. I’m having two witnesses period.”

“Which two?” Ed asked.

“First, Ludmilla Tarasova.”

He saw Ed’s lip twitch. “What do you want her for?”

“I’ll probably have to subpoena her. She may not want to get involved in your defense voluntarily.”

“What would you want to drag out of her? I know she—”

“Shut up a minute,” Thomassy said. “I don’t want you to know what she’s going to say until she says it because when she gets off the stand, you get on.”

“What the hell do you want to put me on for?”

Thomassy watched the panic flicker. Then the control. Paul Newman as Cool Hand Luke. How much of how we live comes from what we see in the movies?

Thomassy said, “Most jurors don’t understand the fifth amendment. Ever. They just think that if someone, anyone, refuses to take the stand, even if it’s his right not to, that he’s hiding something. And if that someone is the defendant, they want to hear from him. They want the man accused to deny the charge in front of them, to explain what happened. It’s a very rough chance, Ed. You could help get yourself acquitted. You could hang yourself in one sentence. Or in the way you act. And remember, it won’t be me asking you the hard questions. It’ll be that prick Roberts who wants to see you convicted so he can add your head to his watch chain for the coming election. Don’t answer me now. Think about it. Make sure. If you decide to testify, you’ll need to be rehearsed so well that every answer seems spontaneous and true.”

“What’s the worst kind of question anyone can ask me?”

“They can ask you to identify the people in a set of three pictures taken in the UN lobby. If the prosecution gets their hands on those pictures. What were you doing there?”

“Pictures?”

“I saw them.”

“You sure it was me?”

“I’m not sure of anything.”

“Is the person who’s supposed to be me clearly identifiable?”

“Not clearly.”

“It wasn’t me.”

“Suppose, just suppose, they can produce a witness who says it was you?”

“People make mistakes. Besides, what’s wrong with being in the UN lobby? They have thousands of visitors, don’t they?”

“Not all the people in the lobby are visitors. Some of them work there. You know the name Semyonov?”

Ed stared into space.

Give him time,
Thomassy thought. Then he said, “Did I pronounce it correctly?”

“I’ve heard of a Russian playwright named Semyonov. He’s had a book or two published over here.”

“You know a man named Trushenko?”

Ed looked at Thomassy as if wondering if a question would lead too far. “What’s the relevance?”

“He’s in the picture, too. He and the other guy. And someone who looks like you trying to talk to them.”

“What’s this got to do with the charges against me?”

“All they need to do is link you with the Russians in some way and the jury will pounce on it.”

“I’ve seen you object,” Ed said. “You’re terrific at it.”

Thomassy felt strangely relieved. Ed was very careful not to appear to lie. He’d make a good witness on the stand if they didn’t sandbag him.

“If I knew you were going to deliberately lie on the stand,” Thomassy said, “I couldn’t let you testify.”

“I don’t intend to,” Ed said. “I don’t have to.”

Thomassy thought
We’re both lying by omission. I haven’t told him Francine was in the photos, too.

“You know,” Ed said, “I sure don’t like the way the law works.”

“In the end, nobody does. We just use the system because it’s what we’ve got. What they’ve got is worse.”

“Who’s they?” Ed said.

*

Haig Thomassian had used the word
they
often in front of his son.
They
were the Turks who massacred Armenians.
They
were the cops you never saw except at Christmas with their hand out.
They
were nuns who married God instead of farmers.
They
were Jew counterfeiters who manufactured money inside their brains. Haig Thomassian hated to go to the movies to eat popcorn while the good guys won because when you went outside you realized that nothing had changed. Thomassy thought
Our
theys
are different now, Pop.

He’d tried to discuss that with Francine, his father’s
theys.
“He was wrong about nuns, Jews, and bureaucrats,” Thomassy said. “He was right about the Turks.”

Francine had said, “We have our Turks, too.”

He’d meant to talk about his father and she was going to come back at him about him. He smelled it.

Finally she said, “George, you don’t like the Russians much because they wear baggy pants.”

“I know they’re unreasonable,” he shot back.

“You’re absolutely wrong,” her eyes were shouting at him, “they’re perfectly reasonable. They know what they want, they wanted the same thing all along and they’re getting it. Someone like you’d have to take to the hills in Afghanistan.”

“I’m not going to Afghanistan,” he shrugged, wanting her to stop.

“They couldn’t let you walk the streets in Moscow.”

“I’m not going to fucking Moscow.”

“You’ve never been anywhere. You wouldn’t give a damn if the Russians took over everything except Oswego and Westchester.”

“Stop talking to me as if I’m a political idiot.”

“You’re defending a spy.”

There it was. A cat he loved had left a mangled bird at his front door.

“Nobody’s proven anything yet!” he yelled.

“Don’t shout. You sound like every innocent of the last fifty years.”

“I don’t want you talking down to me. I’m not dumb!”

“Einstein wasn’t dumb. But in my field he was as innocent as you are. Maybe worse. He let fellow travelers use him like a borrowed pen. But you, they’d see you couldn’t be pushed around. If the Russians ever got their hands on you, George, they wouldn’t put you on trial. They wouldn’t try to force a confession out of you. They’d lock you up in a lunatic asylum.”

“I’m not crazy!”

“That’s just the point. You’re an innocent. To them that puts you on the other side. To them you are
they.
And because you won’t stop fighting, eventually they’d have to kill you.’’

He’d sat frozen, convicted, not wanting her hand to touch his fists. But she surprised him. She reached out and touched his face.

“Innocence is like a hymen,” she said gently. “You can’t put it back.”

She had fallen in love with his strength. Now that she saw him split open, she loved him not less but more. Very quietly she said, “Your father would have fought in the hills with the Afghans, and so would you. That’s one of the many reasons I love you. I don’t want anybody using you except me.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Somehow he knew it was a dream while he was dreaming it. He and Francine were twins, male and female, looking the same, running down a boardwalk together hand in hand, laughing in one synchronized sound.

He woke from the dream with a start, needing to tell Francine about it. She wasn’t in the bed. He checked the bathroom. Not there. Grabbing a bathrobe, he ran down to the kitchen. He looked out the window. Her car was gone.

Each stair up seemed too high. He dropped back on the bed, weighed down by the pain of utter loss. She had had her three days away. After their talk hadn’t it been understood that they would be together from now on? Even sons-of-bitches like Roberts kept their end of a deal. He and Francine hadn’t talked about her moving back. He had assumed it. And what was that crazy dream all about? Did he make them similar because if there were two dissimilars on God’s earth it was the two of them and he feared their differences would drive them apart? The ultimate test of a dream was like the test of any truth, was it fact or fancy, could you put it to someone on the witness stand: “What did you dream last night?” Objection! Sustained! Dreams were for couches, not for forums where you got sentenced on the basis of fact. That wasn’t true either. In summation, he was the interpreter of the jury’s imaginings.

Suddenly the face of the clock on the nighttable screamed:
You’ll be late to court!
Quietly he got himself showered and dressed and, breakfastless, raced to the courthouse, unprepared for the day, wanting only to get there in time to have two minutes inside a pay phone before entering the courtroom.

She was at her desk in her office. To her simple “Hello, George,” he said, “You took off without saying good-bye. We need to talk.”

“Talk.”

“Not on the phone. Phones are for teenagers. I want to see you.”