“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—
“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.”
“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.”
