“Mr. Moses, this is a deposition, not a trial. I believe the rules allow me to obtain information in my own way.”
“As long as you don’t actually expect him to answer that.”
Levin puffed on his cigar. He was a little man with a New York accent, a tough Jewish lawyer as someone, 1 forget who, had said. He turned and looked at me down the length of the table. “Let me ask you this. Are you seriously asking us to believe that you removed those handcuffs and inflicted the severe body and facial damage”—he opened the package of photographs and threw them across the table—“to Mr. Newton that we see in this evidence?”
“That’s what happened.”
“Now Mr. Newton is a big man, would you agree with that?”
“No.”
“Nevertheless, he’s bigger than you are, by quite a bit.”
“He’s got more beef, if that’s what you mean.”
“How would you describe Mr. Newton, Mr. Janeway? Just his physical appearance, please.”
“He’s a white male, approximately six feet four inches, two hundred thirty pounds, muscular, brown hair, brown eyes, sometimes wears a mustache.”
“And yourself? Describe yourself in the same terms.”
“White male, five-eleven, one ninety, dark hair, dark eyes…
“Mr. Newton outweighs you by some forty pounds, by your own description.”
“About that.”
“His reach is longer…”
“Yeah.”
“And would you say that Mr. Newton carries much fat on him?”
“Not much.”
“How much?”
“None that’s evident.”
“In fact, Mr. Newton is a bodybuilder, isn’t that right?”
“That’s what I hear.”
“He boxes, lifts weights…all in all, for his age, a prime specimen of manhood, wouldn’t you say?”
“Look,” I said, “if you want to ask me questions, go ahead and ask. Don’t make statements and try to get me to agree with them.”
“Here’s a question for you, then. Do you expect us to believe that you took on this man on equal footing—in spite of the fact that his wrists still bore chafe marks from the shackles that you bound him with—that you released him and defeated him so overwhelmingly in a fair fight?”
“Is that the end of it?”
“Answer the question, please.”
“The answer is yes.”
“How did you do it, Mr. Janeway? Frankly, I find it a little hard to believe. How did you conduct this fight and bring it to such a successful conclusion, from your viewpoint?”
“I beat the hell out of him. He tried to beat the hell out of me, but he lost.”
“And you expect me to believe that.”
“I don’t particularly expect anything from you, sir.”
“I should apologize for belaboring the point, but I find it very hard to believe—”
“You’ve said that,” Mose said. “Get on with it.”
“I’m trying to find out how he managed it,” Levin said.
“It wasn’t by the Marquess of Queensberry rules,” Mose said. “They were two guys brawling in the country. You ever been involved in a fight like that, Levin? One guy throws a punch, then the other. The guy with the most heart usually wins.”
“I don’t know anything about this so-called heart, Mr. Moses. What I do know is what I see in evidence before me. This is a small man, compared with my client. My client is a man supremely conditioned to such physical combat, yet he was the only one who was physically battered. I’m trying to find out, if the handcuffs really were off, how that happened.”
“It’s simple,” I said.
“If it’s so simple, please explain it to me.”
“Bring your client in here, clear away the furniture, and I’ll show you how it happened.”
38
“I don’t think he’ll ask that question again,” Mose said. “I might have to do it for him.”
“Why would you do that?” I said.
“Are you kidding? You couldn’t have a more perfect answer to the most damaging question we’ll get in the whole trial.”
“How can it hurt us if nobody asks it?”
“Because it’s there, Clifford, whether anybody asks it or not. They’ll look at you, they’ll look at him; then they’ll look at those pictures and they’ll ask it themselves. So I’ll bring it out. You’ll say the same thing all over again. Clear the court, bring him on down here, I’ll show you how I did it. Jesus, I love it. You don’t say it in any flip or arrogant way. Whatever you do, you don’t act disrespectful to the court. You just say it, like you have no doubt whatsoever that it’ll turn out the same way again. I’m even flirting with the idea of asking the court’s permission to stage a fight between the two of you just for the benefit of the jury. That kinda shit’s a little risky and it smacks of an old Perry Mason rerun. The court would never allow it, but it sure makes points. Once you say it, and mean it, the jury never forgets, no matter what that old man on the bench tells them.”
We were sitting in a little cafe across from Levin’s office, doing the postmortem on my deposition. Levin had eaten up the afternoon: it was four-thirty and already the streetlights were on. Hard to believe I had been in Oregon just this morning. I felt depressed, as if I had lost a week instead of one afternoon.
“Next time don’t look so fierce,” Mose said. “Lighten up a little. Think of this as a popularity contest, which it often turns out to be. I know that’s distasteful to a purist like you, but a smile at the right time—if it’s not forced—can sometimes pay big dividends.”
I gave a big stupid grin.
“There you go,” Mose said. “Now you’ve got it. Nobody’ll find against a retard.” He signaled for more coffee. “Come home with me for dinner.”
It sounded good. They were all good people, Mose and his wife, Patty, and their two kids. The daughter I had saved was now nineteen. She was a forest ranger, a child of the earth, a lovely young woman. I hadn’t seen her in a long time.
But not tonight. “Think I’m gonna work awhile,” I said. “I’ve gotta make something out of this day.”
“You’re a real Type-A, Clifford,” Mose said over his coffee. “You better learn to relax, pal, or what happens to you won’t be so funny.”
I was looking through the front window when the Lamborghini pulled up and stopped in front of Levin’s office. Jackie Newton and Barbara Crowell got out just as Levin began to close shop for the day. It was cold in Denver. They huddled for a moment at the front door, then Levin pointed at the cafe and they started across the street. Mose must’ve seen me tighten up. He looked where I was looking, but we didn’t say anything. A little bell rang when they came in. The place was crowded: the only open tables were against the far wall, and they had to walk past us to get there. Levin saw me and hesitated. He said something to Jackie and they all looked. Jackie smiled and said something: he pointed to one of the tables and they came toward us. Barbara passed two feet from where I sat. I hadn’t seen her in all these weeks: she looked haggard, worn out, drained of life.
“Hello, Barbara,” I said.
She couldn’t look at me. Her mouth quivered, and Jackie took her arm and propelled her past our table. They sat in a far corner, as far away as possible.
Mose was looking at me over the sugar bowl. “That was Crowell?”
“That was the lady.”
“She looks like a nervous breakdown waiting to happen.”
“When Jackie gets his hooks in you, he doesn’t leave much.”
“He’ll need more than a hook when I get hold of her. I really think you can stop worrying about this, Clifford. They are in very deep doodoo if that’s their main witness.”