“I’m afraid bail is going to be out of the question, considering the charges,” Martin said. “Also, your Russian background makes you a risk for flight”
Smerdnakov poked a thick finger against the glass. “I’m an American citizen,” he said angrily. “I demand right to liberty!”
“Being a citizen is not the point here,” Martin said. “You probably still have family in Russia. From the Districts point of view, you could decide to pay them a visit tomorrow. Then they’d never get you back for trial.”
Smerdnakov flashed an ugly smile. His teeth were white and square, with narrow gaps between them, the teeth of a giant, teeth made for crushing bones. When he breathed, the prison overalls stretched taut across his chest.
“I have no family in Russia,” he said. “I got no friends neither. I got friends in Brooklyn. I want to go back.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened in your own words?” Martin said. “We’ll start there.”
The Russian sighed. “Somebody killed my girlfriend, that’s what happened,” he said. “Now they try to blame it on me because of some things I did in Russia a long time ago.”
Martin nodded, waited for more. When Smerdnakov didn’t say anything else, Marlin said, “I’m on your side here, Mr. Smerdnakov. I’m your defense attorney. I’m going to need details. Everything you can remember.”
Smerdnakov brought his face close to the Plexiglas screen. Martin could almost feel his hot breath steaming through the small holes, clouding the booth.
“Nobody’s on my side but me,” the Russian said. “Defense, offense, you’re all fucking lawyers as far as I can see. Who’d you suck off this morning, the DA?”
Martin was offended by this language. He looked down at his pad, doodled a stick figure clown holding a balloon, looked up, and tried again.
“I can’t help if you don’t let me,” he said wearily. “Try to calm down, and tell me what happened.”
Smerdnakov leaned back again and crossed his arms. “Okay, asshole,” he said. “I tell you once. Me and my girlfriend come down here from Brooklyn for a little fun, you know. We meet some Russian guys at this bar — and the cops already ask me, I don’t fucking remember their names — and these guys say, ‘Hey, let’s go dancing, I know a fun place.’ So we go with them and we dance and we’re down in the YIP room of this fucking club and we’re dancing and having a good time. So I have a couple of beers, and I need to take a piss. I leave my Katinka with these guys, and when I come back from the bathroom, there she is lying on the floor, my necktie is twisted around her neck, and she’s completely dead. Then the cops come and they put the cuffs on me and they say I did it, that everyone saw me. That’s all I know. You want more, fuck you, you go find out yourself.”
Smerdnakov stood up abruptly and squeezed out of the booth. Martin sat there for a long minute. Then he gathered his things and went back to the Moultrie Center, his mind working on trying to find a way out from under this case. He caught Tayloe in the hallway, brown bag in hand, on his way to lunch.
“Can I talk to you?”
Tayloe rolled his eyes. “How about after lunch, Wex?”
“I’m having trouble with the Smerdnakov case,” he said. “The defendant is completely hostile.”
“I’ll give you five minutes,” he said, frowning.
They went across Indiana Avenue to the unkempt little park in the shadow of the Superior Court building. Tayloe was famous for his frugal ways. He packed his own lunch and ate it on the bench out here every day, weather permitting. The two of them settled down, and Martin waited as Tayloe carefully laid his napkin across his lap and unwrapped his sandwiches, always the same: one mayo, cheese, and cucumber on potato bread; one mustard, cheese, and tomato on rye. Today there was also a bottle of Evian water, a pear, and a small Ziploc of trail mix.
“I see no reason to pay seven or eight dollars for lunch every day for a sandwich I can make just as easily at home,” Tayloe said a bit defiantly. Then he took a bite of his cheese and cucumber sandwich, chewed carefully, and swallowed. “You’d be surprised how much that adds up to every year.”
“About the Smerdnakov case...” Martin began.
Tayloe held up his hand. “Just let me finish my first sandwich before we get to it.”
“Yes, of course.”
Tayloe ate with maddening slowness. He took small bites and chewed thirty-two times, each time. Martin looked around, feeling uncomfortable and tired. This little park was depressing. The bushes were ragged, the grass patchy and yellow-looking. A drunk slept unmoving on the bench on the other side of a bronze art deco nymph feeding a bronze doe. Gilding hung in peeling strips off the nymph’s bronze flanks, her arms covered with creeping green corrosion. Rickety-looking scaffolding rose up the brick side of the Superior Court building next door. Built in the neoclassical revival style popular at the turn of the century, this structure was apparently of some historical interest. They were doing a complete renovation. Many of the windows of the upper stories gaped open, covered only with thin plastic sheeting.
Tayloe swallowed the last bite of his sandwich, folded up his napkin, brushed crumbs from his lap.
“All right,” he said. “What is it?”
Martin explained the situation. Smerdnakov was completely hostile, uncooperative, he said. Maybe it was a personality thing, but it wasn’t working between them, and he didn’t feel comfortable handling his first homicide with an uncooperative defendant.
“... and so I’d like to withdraw from the case,” he concluded. “Maybe you could get somebody else. Reeve loves to do homicides.”
Tayloe nodded and took a bite of his pear. He chewed and swallowed, then dabbed at his mouth thoughtfully with half a napkin.
“Let me put it this way,” he said. “Do you think you’re a very good lawyer?”
Martin was taken aback by the question. He didn’t know what to say.
Tayloe nodded and squinted up at the sky. “I’ll answer that question for you,” he said. “Personally I like you, I think you’re a nice guy, but let’s be honest, you’re a terrible lawyer. You’ve lost your last six cases. In fact, you’re the worst lawyer in the department. Worse in your own way than Genevieve was. If you want to keep your job — and believe me, there’s enough evidence to fire you easily tomorrow — you will not withdraw from this case.”
Martin was stunned by the bluntness of these words. He didn’t know how to respond. Half of him wanted to punch Tayloe in the face; the other half wanted to get up, run away, find something else to do with the rest of his life.
“W-what, w-why do you—” he stuttered. Then he stopped himself and caught his breath. “Okay,” he said. “You think I’m a bad lawyer. That’s your prerogative. Why the hell would you want to keep a bad lawyer on a homicide case?” But as soon as he’d asked this question, he had the answer. He looked over at Tayloe, who was smiling at him in a curious way. The man had just finished eating his pear; all that was left was the gnawed stump in his hand.
Tarragon was a chic little restaurant in a strange neighborhood, a sort of no-man’s-land bordered by the warehouses and abandoned industrial buildings of New York Avenue on one side and the Whitworth Terrace housing project on the other. Limousines stood double-parked at the curb out front; the drivers smoked and chatted idly with each other, their backs to the darkness. Valets in red jackets scurried out into traffic to take car keys from men in good-looking dark suits and women in spangled dresses with stiff, sculptural hair. The chef, René Balogh, had been named chef of the year by a noted California culinary organization. Reservations had to be made far in advance, and Dahlia Spears was always very thorough. She had called in July for dinner in September.