“Mr. Smerdnakov, you have been directed to testify,” Judge Deal said sternly.
The Russian heaved himself up and lumbered around the table toward the witness box. The courtroom was silent; his shoes creaked as he walked. The court clerk swore him in. Smerdnakov settled down with difficulty; his massive torso seemed to fill the entire box. Marlin looked up at him and saw disdain and anger in the Russian’s eyes.
“Alexei, did you kill Katerina Volovnaya?” he said.
“No,” the Russian said in a thick voice.
Martin nodded and clasped his hands behind his back. Shoulders hunched, he appeared lost in thought, troubled by the fate of nations, like Nixon on the eve of resignation.
“Why don’t you tell the court exactly what really happened that night?” he said, and he unclasped his hands and moved to a spot where he would be able to make eye contact with the jury.
“OK,” the Russian said. “You heard it from me before, but I tell again...” and he proceeded with his story, now so familiar to Martin: Smerdnakov had gone to the bathroom. When he had come back, his new friends had scattered, and his woman was dead. “I wanted to cry,” he said. “But I don’t know how to cry. My life has been very hard in old days of the Soviet Union. I look at her lying there on the floor and I think maybe she has drunk too much vodka, and I’m going to give her a piece of my mind when we get back to the hotel. Then I reach down to pick her up and I think to myself: My God, she’s dead! The woman I love is dead!”
Martin nodded, sympathetic. “And what did you do then?”
Smerdnakov stared at the floor. “Nothing,” he said. “I couldn’t do nothing. I knew she was dead. I figured the police would come soon enough, and I was very angry and very sad, and so I danced.”
“Wasn’t that behavior” — Martin chose his words carefully — “this dancing, a little unusual, given the circumstances?”
The Russian shook his head. “You must know what it is like where I am from. When somebody dies who you love, when there is no food to eat, when KGB is coming to get you and there’s no place to hide, we dance. Life is so hard we must dance to forget.”
Martin glanced over at the jury. He thought one of the church ladies might have a tear glittering in her eye.
“So this dancing, it’s a cultural thing?”
Smerdnakov looked puzzled; then he nodded. “Yes, it is my culture.”
Martin kept Smerdnakov on the stand for the next hour and a half. Through a carefully planned series of questions, he was able to touch on nearly every aspect of the case, concluding with the identity of the mysterious Russians who had accompanied Smerdnakov and Katerina to the club.
“So you didn’t know any of these men?”
“Never met them before in my life,” Smerdnakov said. “We were having a few drinks at the Rio Bar and we run into these other Russians. You know, this doesn’t happen too often and one of them is from Vladivostok, where I used to live, so we’re talking and I buy him a drink and he buys me a drink and then his friend says, ‘Hey, I know a place to dance.’ So we go to dance. It is only later I think that the one from Vladivostok is looking at my Katinka out of the corner of his eye, you know, like he really wants to sleep with her or something. I think what happens is I go away to the bathroom and he grabs her and tries to force her, you know, and she doesn’t want any of it, and then he gets pissed off like a real psychopath, and he kills her, just like that. When the police come, I give them this man’s description, but they say no, they have already caught the murderer and it is me.”
Martin carefully omitted questions regarding one very important point from his examination. When he released the witness to the prosecution for the cross, he sensed that Rossiter and his team could barely contain their excitement. They conferred for a quick moment before approaching the stand; the sound of their lowered voices was like the busy hum of a hive of bees, ready to swarm.
“Does the prosecution wish to examine this witness?” Judge Deal said.
“We do, Your Honor,” Rossiter said, and his blond assistant came forward, smoothing out her blue suit with her hands. Her name was Emily Blake, Martin had learned; she had graduated from Harvard Law the previous spring. Now she motioned to her young colleague, who brought a flat plastic tub marked evidence from under the table. She removed from the tub a large plastic bag containing a hand-painted psychedelic necktie and, holding it out like a piece of filthy laundry, approached the witness box.
“Mr. Smerdnakov, is this your tie?” she said.
Smerdnakov looked at it and nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“Were you wearing this tie the night of the murder?”
“Yes,” he said again.
“Are you aware that this tie has been identified by expert witnesses as the same one used to strangle Katerina Volovnaya?”
Smerdnakov’s expression darkened; then he nodded.
“I can’t hear you, Mr. Smerdnakov!” Emily Blake’s voice rose to an unpleasant shriek on the last word. Martin saw the Pakistani garage manager wince.
“Yes,” Smerdnakov said.
She replaced the bag in the evidence tub and turned to confront the Russian, hands on her hips like a shrewish wife.
“Tell me something else, Mr. Smerdnakov,” she said. “How did your tic come to find its way from around your neck to Ms. Volovnaya’s? Did it fly there on its own?”
The Russian sighed. “I have no idea,” he said. “I took it off earlier and put it down with my jacket.”
“I see,” Emily Blake said. “And why do you suppose a man would wear a tie out for the evening and then take it off?”
Martin tried to hide his smile behind the doodles of his legal pad. She had just broken one of the prime rules of trial law. Never ask a witness a question if you don’t already know the answer.
“I take off my coat and my tie because I was dancing and it was very hot in the club,” Smerdnakov said. “Ask anyone who saw me. I do not wear a coat and tie when I am dancing.”
Emily Blake looked abashed. It was obvious she didn’t know what to say next.
Judge Deal stared down at the young attorney through her bug glasses. Behind her silver head in the stained glass rosette Washington seemed to have paused on his way to heaven.
“Ms. Blake?” Judge Deal said. “Do you wish to proceed with this witness?”
Rossiter stood up hastily. “I’ll take it from here, if Your Honor pleases,” he said.
“Mr. Wexler?”Judge Deal said.
“I have no objection.” Martin shrugged, but he was surprised. Switching lawyers in the middle of a cross was bad form, almost never done, and made his own case look that much better.
Rossiter exchanged places with Emily Blake, who, somewhat red in the face, resumed her seat at the prosecution table. He now continued the cross-examination of Smerdnakov with vigor, but to no avail. He could not succeed in unnerving the Russian enough to discredit his version of events the night of the murder, and when Smerdnakov stepped down, Martin was sure the jury was solidly on the side of the defense. Martin then proceeded to call the remaining witnesses from the club. One by one, they were sworn in by the court clerk and testified that Smerdnakov was not the man they had seen strangling Ms. Volovnaya in the smoky darkness of the VIP room at Naked Party.
The most memorable testimony came from Daisy, the barmaid. For the occasion she wore a white thrift store beaded sweater, a pretty Betsey Johnson minidress, and her Sunday black Doc Martens boots, newly shined. A single pair of rhinestone teardrop earrings dangled from her ears. She sat straight-backed in the witness box, hands in her lap, and spoke in a clear voice when she answered Martin’s questions.