closeness and intimacy. Men report what they do; women reveal their feelings. So here I was, a former varsity member of the AFC Eastern Division All-Star Party team, master of the one-night stand, lying entangled with Lourdes Soto with lots of me touching lots of her, trying to make sense of it all.
“Talk about it?” she responded.
“Like what just happened. What it means.”
She chuckled into my ear. “You mean, will I call you tomorrow?”
She was mocking me, just like Mimus polyglottos.
“I was just surprised, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting this.”
“So you want to analyze it?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I just thought that, as a woman, you might want to talk…”
“Hey, big guy, just lean back and enjoy it.”
She was tracing figure eights on my chest with her manicured nails. And then the eights moved south to my stomach. And then lower still. Soon her lips took over the movements. I gave up and did what I was told to do.
I have some news for you about the Crespo case,” Lourdes Soto said, her head resting on my chest.
“No business now. Let’s enjoy the moment.”
“ Good news.”
“Whatever it is can wait.”
“Okay, but I’ve got sworn statements from two witnesses that the Russian threatened Crespo on several occasions and once attacked him with a knife.”
“What? Who?” I sat up so quickly Lourdes nearly slid off the bed.
“Tomas Rivera and Lazaro Soler. They’re on your witness list.”
“Sure they are. I listed everybody who worked for Atlantic Seaboard, just to cover all the bases. But I’ve interviewed them, and they didn’t see, hear, or know anything.”
Lourdes propped herself on an elbow and ran a fingernail across my thigh. “Maybe you didn’t smile when you asked the questions.”
I wanted to believe her. And when we want to believe, we sometimes do. But Francisco Crespo never told me about being attacked. “Crespo told me he owed Smorodinsky some money, and they argued about it, but he said nothing about a knife.”
“I’ll give you the written statements. The Russian tried to slice Crespo’s throat with a survival knife. You know, like Rambo used. Three rows of saw teeth, a hollow handle, and a spear point. Took Soler and Rivera to stop him, had to threaten him with a gun. Of course, you’ll need their live testimony, and they’re willing to come forward.”
Three rows of saw teeth. The best lies are crammed with details, like the redheaded Anglo with the American flag tattoo I’d invented ten years before. “The police didn’t find a knife, not at the scene or in Smorodinsky’s belongings.”
“They didn’t report any,” she corrected me. “A knife like that, maybe a cop slipped off with it. Maybe another worker did.” She pushed me back into the pillows. “It happens.”
Outside, the rain had stopped, but the mockingbird was still singing up a storm. He sounded like a bobwhite. My windows are open because I choose not to have central air. I don’t want to live in a hermetically sealed tomb. I like the breeze and the smell of mango trees and the sounds of burglars in the bushes. I listened to the mocker and the rhythm of the paddle fan, whompety-whomping its endless circles. “If the two guys saw the attack,” I said, after a moment, “we can get that into evidence, but I don’t know about the threats. All hearsay, unless they’re considered res gestae or excited utterances. How long before-”
“Three days. The Russian attacked him April thirteen. Then on the sixteenth, it happened again. Only no Soler and Rivera to stop it or witness it.”
It was neat. All wrapped up like a Christmas package and delivered by one of Santa’s elves. A naked elf who at this moment was resting her right breast on my forearm. A smart guy would shut up and take it all. He would conveniently forget that his own client admits attacking the Russian without provocation.
“I was going to keep Crespo off the stand and try it as a reasonable doubt case. Plant the seed that maybe somebody else came along and killed the guy. Now you’re telling me the Russian attacked Crespo. Now, it’s self- defense.”
“Looks that way.”
The bird quieted down. From across the hibiscus hedge, I heard a radio with a late-night talk show, Larry King interviewing a Hollywood starlet whose book discussed the sexual equipment of numerous leading men. Larry announced that Ross Pero t was the next guest, but I didn’t think the two segments were related.
“It’ll work,” I said, “if Crespo corroborates it.”
“I think you’ll find he will.”
“What do you know that I don’t but should?”
“Trust me.”
How do you tell a naked lady you wouldn’t trust her to change a ten into two fives?
You lie.
“I trust you all right, Lourdes, but I don’t trust Yagamata. Somebody besides me is handling Crespo’s defense, and it’s got to be him. Yagamata’s sending in the plays. I’m just supposed to call the numbers.”
“What if he is? If he found the witnesses and told them to talk to me, why not-”
“ Found? Paid is more like it. Let your star witnesses take a polygraph. If they pass, I’ll use them.”
She slid a hand up my leg, cupping it against the part of me that has a mind of its own.
“Why do that? Why look for reasons not to win?”
“It’s one of my many flaws. I want to win, but I want to win fair and square.”
“If you don’t know whether or not they’re lying, it’s not unethical to put them on the stand, is it?”
“No. It’s up to the jury to decide.”
“And if you know they’re lying…”
“I can’t use them.”
“So, forget the polygraph. Just let the jury decide. You have an obligation to your client.”
More than she knew. A two-generation obligation. Emilia Crespo had been there for me and only asked one thing in return. Protect my son. Francisco Crespo had put his life on the line for me. Now I was being handed a way to make the first installment on my debt to both of them.
So easy.
Kill two burdens with one stone.
Maybe three. Yagamata would be happy, too. I’d made such a fuss about defending Crespo and not rolling over that Yagamata came up with a way to get him off. It’s called suborning perjury. Maybe there’d be a bonus for my crafty work.
So why didn’t I just take the ball and run with it?
Because I have an obligation to me, too. Sometimes I just need to know. I need to know the truth. It isn’t supposed to be part of my job, and usually it’s better not to know. But it just doesn’t work for me. I wanted to know who killed Smorodinsky.
Why was Crespo willing to take a fall? And what was Yagamata covering up? There were just too many questions and too few answers.
“I can’t do it, Lourdes.”
“Why on earth not?” There was genuine astonishment in her voice.
“It’s hard to explain. I just live by a code that isn’t written down anywhere but tells me to do what I think is right. I make compromises like everybody else, and I sometimes break the rules, but usually only the little ones. I try to go through life doing the least damage possible. I drop quarters into tin cups and feed stray cats. I don’t lie to the court or let witnesses do it. It may sound old-fashioned, but I don’t cheat to win. As for Francisco Crespo, I’m not going to tank the case, and I’m not going to win it with perjured testimony, either.”
No one applauded, and best I could tell, no bands struck up the national anthem. So I shut up and waited for my bedmate to show me her beatific smile, draw me to her bosom, and tell me how proud she was of my moral fiber.
Lourdes sat up and seemed to be looking for her clothes. The last I had seen them, they were scattered on
