Aziz Jehassi, a thickset man with a beard worthy of the Prophet himself, sat at a table in the corner, going over the receipts. His shiny suit reflected faint light from the high windows. He sprang up, receipts flying, as Martin and Drelincourt came across the dance floor. When they were close enough, he grabbed Martin’s hand and shook it vigorously. He was always ready to help the police, he said. Drelincourt stopped a few steps behind and crossed his arms, impassive as Joe Friday interrogating a hippie.
“There’s been a misunderstanding,” Martin said. “I’m not the police. I’m with the Public Defender’s Service.”
Jehassi looked confused for a moment; then he nodded. “We are happy to help any representative of the District government,” he said. “Please, what may I get you?” He waved at the bar, and the three of them went over and sat down. After some discussion, two Cokes and a ginger ale were brought by the young woman in the torn T-shirt.
Jehassi’s dark eyes glittered nervously; a few beads of sweat appeared on his upper lip.
“We are most anxious to clear up this matter,” he said. “For such a thing to happen at my club...” He wagged his head sorrowfully and pulled at his long whiskers.
“It must have been quite a shock,” Martin said sympathetically. “We’d just like to talk to some of the witnesses, if you don’t mind.”
Jehassi turned to the young woman behind the bar. “Daisy, go get them from downstairs!” he ordered in a voice used to command.
Martin opened his briefcase and prepared to interview the witnesses at Jehassi’s table in the corner, hastily cleared of paperwork. There were now only four: the VIP room bouncer, who was an ex-Howard University football player named Jason Thompson; Arturo, the Guatemalan busboy; the DJ, a young black kid known as Funk Master Swank, whose real name was Charles Emerson; and Daisy, the barmaid. Three other witnesses had disappeared the week before; they had simply failed to show up for work, and now their phones were disconnected. And the two patrons who had witnessed the crime were also gone. According to Drelincourt’s sources at District police headquarters, they had left town without forwarding addresses.
The interviews went better than Martin could have hoped:
“It was dark as shit down there, and with the strobe lights going, I couldn’t see a damned thing,” Funk Master Swank said.
Arturo pretended that he spoke no English and showed Martin his green card.
“I work legal,” he said. “I pay the tax.”
“Why did you tell the police you saw Mr. Smerdnakov strangle Ms. Volovnaya if you now say you didn’t see what you said you saw?” Martin asked Thompson.
The ex-football player thought for a few minutes, something like panic blooming behind his dull eyes. “I made a mistake,” he said finally. “It must have been somebody else.”
Daisy, the barmaid, was the last to be interviewed. She was an anorexic-looking young woman, about twenty-six, her blond hair cut short and pulled back with a battered rhinestone barrette. Six earrings hung from one ear, five from the other, a ruby stud glittered in her nose, but she had excellent bone structure. She looked to Martin like a concentration camp survivor who had been accessorized by Gypsies. Still, he tried to avoid staring at her breasts, reduced by starvation but undeniably pert, pointing up at him from beneath her torn T-shirt. She would be quite beautiful if she gained a little weight and fixed herself up, Martin found himself thinking.
“Like, I didn’t see anything, man!” she said before Martin could speak. “Nothing at all!” She swiped her thin hand through the air for emphasis.
Martin nodded and consulted his usual padful of doodles. This was getting a bit ridiculous. He added a butterfly with one wing crushed.
“That’s not true,” he said when he looked up. He noticed now that her eyes were beautiful. “You saw something. It doesn’t have to go any further than this table. But I need to know.”
Daisy shot a sideways glance at Drelincourt who sat on the banquette at Martin’s right hand, observing discreetly from behind his green sunglasses.
Martin turned to the investigator. “Just a couple of minutes, André,” he said.
Drelincourt nodded and withdrew to the bar. Now the young woman leaned forward.
“I don’t appreciate lying,” she said. “I’m an honest person, that’s me, I’m a straightedger, okay? But I’m scared. I’ll tell you what I saw that night. I saw that Russian guy strangle a woman. First he hit her, and like, everyone was horrified. Then he dragged her by her hair, by her hair, man, over to the corner, and he’s like, shaking her and no one does anything. But this is the VIP room, okay? The customer’s always right because he’s paying a fortune to be down there, and he’s got to know somebody cool to get through the door in the first place. And you know, all sorts of weird things go on; it’s what puts the naked in Naked Party. I mean I’ve even seen two men fucking a girl, you know, at the same time on one of the couches, like, right in front of everybody.”
Martin was shocked. “You mean, rape?”
Daisy shook her head. “No, I mean the girl was really getting off. Like orgasming.”
“Oh.” Martin felt his face go red.
“So here’s the deal. The Russian bastard hits her again, and then he takes his tie out of his pocket and puts it around her neck, and this girl, she’s so terrified, she’s not even moving, she’s like hypnotized. Then he starts to twist. I can see her eyes pop out, her tongue. I scream for Thompson to do something, but by the time he gets there, the Russian bastard has moved off, and the girl is dead. Lying on the floor dead.”
Martin held up a police mug shot of Smerdnakov. “This is the man, you’re sure?”
Daisy nodded. “That’s the motherfucker,” she said. “He came in with a bunch of real hard-looking guys. Russian Mafia, if you ask me. We get them in here sometimes; they road-trip down from New York in rented limos to party, and they drink vodka all night until they’re stinking drunk. Big tippers, though, I’ve got to give them that.”
“What about these other Russians?” Martin said. “What did they look like?”
Daisy hesitated. “They were all big guys, tattooed,” she said. “Which makes me think they were mob types. But what are you really asking me, could I have made a mistake? Got the wrong guy?”
“It’s a consideration,” Martin said.
“No,” she said, tapping Smerdnakov’s photograph. “That’s him. I’ll tell you now, but I’m not going to say it in court, understand? I’ll look right at the motherfucker and I’ll say, ‘Never seen that guy before in my whole fucking life’.”
Martin was surprised by this frank admission. He slipped Smerdnakov’s picture back into his file, tucked the file into his briefcase. “Let me ask you something,” he said, looking away, a little spooked by the fear showing in her face. “Why are you so willing to perjure yourself?”
Daisy leaned across the table, hugging her elbows. “Because someone called me one night last week at like, three A.M. It was a foreign-sounding voice, a guy. If I didn’t keep my mouth shut, he said, I’d he raped repeatedly, then hacked to pieces and my pieces would be left in different states up and down the East Coast. That’s what the bastard said, they’ve done it before, he said. And the next day you know what I found?”
Martin was afraid to ask.
“Half of a rat stuffed into my mailbox in my building. The other half I found in my locker right downstairs here when I got to work.” Daisy stood up abruptly. “Anything else?”
“No, thanks,” Martin said, and he tried to smile. “You’ve been a big help.”
She was a tough girl, Martin saw now, but not nearly as tough as she pretended. Tears were shining in her eyes. She turned and walked away from him with a nice swaying hip motion that wasn’t practiced or false but as natural as an island girl. He watched her sway across the dance floor, pick up a dirty rag, and resume her work behind the bar.