by Paul Levine
She shrugged, opened the fridge, and found some milk that didn’t predate the Carter Administration. We ate standing up at the counter, looking at each other, contemplating the situation. At least that’s what I was doing. What was going on here? After a moment of silence, I said, “We sure needed the rain, huh?”
She looked at me as if I were a complete fool, which of course I was. There is that peculiar mating dance for the species that doesn’t sing songs or lock antlers to win its mate. We paw the earth and shuffle and smile and chat about everything and nothing and send out little coded signals. I decided to dispense with the meteorological insights.
She touched her ebony hair and smoothed it back over an ear. She cocked her head and looked at me from under dark eyelashes. I responded by taking a bite of my sweet turkey sandwich and leaving a glob of cream cheese stuck in the corner of my mouth. When it comes to savoir faire, I come up a little short in the savoir department.
“Let me,” Lourdes said, with a come-hither look. She moved close enough for us to breathe each other’s air, and she scraped up the cream cheese with the ruby red fingernail of a pinky. Then she stuck the fingernail in my mouth. And then the whole finger. When the finger came out, her tongue went in.
We stood there, kissing soft and slow, pressed against each other, my hands running from her shoulders to her buttocks. She arched herself into me, running the tips of her nails across my bare back, full lips caressing mine. I cupped my hands under her leather-clad bottom and lifted her off the floor, bringing her to my height. She wrapped her legs around me, and we stood there, motionless except for the grinding of loins.
“The bedroom’s upstairs,” I whispered.
“Here’s fine,” she said.
And it was. I stepped out of my shorts. She wriggled out of her mini and pulled the white silk blouse over her head. Underneath she wore lacy white panties and matching bra. From somewhere she produced a foil-wrapped condom. She opened the foil with her teeth, smoothing the condom on me with steady fingers.
She slipped out of the panties and bra with no help from me and was left in her red stiletto high heels. The shoes stayed on as I lifted her again, feeling her moist heat pressed against me. My hands flowed over her, from the shoulders through the smooth valley of her back to the silken skin where her hips flared into that wondrous sweep of womanhood.
“I want you,” she breathed into my ear.
“Whatever the lady wants.”
Our engines hummed along, the fires building. She raised her breasts to my mouth, cradling them in each hand. Her nipples were taut and erect, startling in their darkness against the creaminess of her skin. I lifted her buttocks higher and pressed into her. As she took me into her sweet soft vise, her body stiffened and her eyes widened, nearly fearful. Then she exhaled a slow warm breath, closed her eyes and locked onto me.
There was a perfect meshing of gears, temperature rising, cadence matching. When my pace increased, hers matched stride. When my breathing deepened, hers followed. Our tempo built to a crescendo, she dug her nails into my back, wailed some entreaty in Spanish I had never heard, threw her head back, and tightened her grip while spasms shook us both.
“Good Lord,” I said, at last.
“Ay, Dios mío,” she breathed in my ear.
Later, upstairs in the bed under the paddle fan, her head cradled in the crook of my right arm, she said, “I nearly forgot why I came to see you.”
“It wasn’t to cook—sorry—make sandwiches?”
“No.”
“Or to clean my kitchen?”
“Hardly.”
“Or to fix my clock?”
“That just happened. Yo no planee.”
Uh-huh.
“Want to talk about it?” I asked.
Lately, I’ve become sensitive to a woman’s needs. I’m not sure why, but it seems only fair. My rules are simple: I say what I feel, and I never pretend, mislead, or say I love you unless I mean it, so the words have seldom been heard. After a bedroom encounter, I try to talk, and not about the recent narrowing of the goalposts in college football.
“Talk about what?” she said.
Some years ago, in the dentist’s office, I picked up one of those women’s magazines with a bosomy woman in a low-cut dress on the cover. I took a quiz on my lovemaking skills and made Dean’s List in technical proficiency but flunked the part about post-coital cuddling and conversation. So I read some of the other stuff, too, about connection and communication. Now, I’ve picked up the buzzwords about how men and women misunderstand each other. Men speak the language of power and independence; women speak of 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 what just happened,” I said.
“Confused? Was it your first time, Jake?”
“C’mon. You know what I mean.”
She chuckled into my ear. “You mean, will I call you tomorrow?”
She was mocking me, just like the damn mockingbird in my marlberry bush. “I was just surprised, that’s all,” I said. “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 her fingers moved south. And then lower still. Soon her lips followed. 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.” My respiration was just returning to normal. “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. “Crespo told me he owed Smorodinsky money, and they argued about it, but he said nothing about a knife. Or ever being attacked.”
“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. It took both Soler and Rivera to stop him. You’ll be happy. They make great witnesses.”
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,” I said.
“They didn’t report any,” she corrected me. “A nice 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.
“How long before Smorodinsky was killed did he atta
ck Crespo?” I asked.
“Three days.”
“But Soler and Rivera didn’t see it.”
“No, they’d already told the police that.”
“But they left out the earlier attack.”
“They say the cops never asked, so they never told.”
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 admitted 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 after Crespo lost consciousness. Now you’re telling me the Russian likely attacked Crespo, just as he did three days earlier.”
“Right, now you’ve got a self-defense case.”
The bird quieted down. From across the hibiscus hedge, I heard a radio with a late-night talk show, a Hollywood starlet discussing the sexual equipment of numerous leading men.
“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 for certain they’re lying, you can put them on the stand, right?”
“Right. 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 not rolling over that Yagamata came up with a way to get my client 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 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 any other way. I needed to know who killed Smorodinsky. And 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.
Instead, Lourdes seemed to be looking for her clothes. The last I had seen them, they were scattered on the kitchen floor. She stood and turned away, leaving me watching the smooth, naked expanse of her flank. “You’re just an overgrown Boy Scout, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer and she continued, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “You want a merit badge and a pat on the back. You want to be told just how wonderful and decent you are. Okay, here it is. You’re honest and noble and virtuous. You have principles and scruples and morals. You’re all that and more.”
“More?”
Her bare feet were already padding out of the bedroom as she called to me over her shoulder. “You’re also a damn fool.”
11
TO SPEAK THE TRUTH
Judge Herman Gold adjusted his eyeglasses, ran a hand over his shiny skull, and peered in the general direction of the twelve warm bodies filling the jury box. “Does each of you understand that a defendant is not required to prove his innocence or to furnish any evidence whatsoever, and that this right is guaranteed by the Constitution?”
Twelve heads bobbed yes.
“And does each of you promise not to hold it against this defendant if he chooses to exercise his constitutional right not to testily?”
The double negative notwithstanding, on cue, all the sheep baaed.
Sure, I thought. They’ve all heard of the Fifth Amendment, some technicality used by wily lawyers to keep racketeers out of jail. Jurors want to follow the law, they really do. And they’ll answer all the questions correctly in voir dire. But behind the closed door, whether it’s said openly or not, the thought is there. Dadgummit, if I was innocent, I’d just get right up there and say so. What’s that fellow hiding? Every lawyer knows this, but there are simply times you cannot subject a client to cross-examination. It is often the most important decision a lawyer will make in a criminal case.
With Francisco Crespo, it was easy. If Crespo took the stand and told the story he had recited to me, he would convict himself. No doubt about it. So my original plan was to keep him sitting at the defense table looking frail and innocent while I took a whack at the state’s witnesses and tried to ferret out some reasonable doubt. That morning, I had asked him whether he had forgotten to tell me about Smorodinsky threatening him with a knife three days before the fatal fight.
“Ay, el cuchillo. Three rows of saw teeth.”
Those teeth again. At least they had their stories straight. “And three days later. Did he come at you again with this knife?”
“Would it get me off if I said he did?”
I like someone who thinks before answering.
“Maybe. But you never mentioned it to the cops and nobody found a knife. If the jury thinks you’re lying, you’ll be convicted for sure.”
“Veintecinco años.”
“Right, without parole, and it would be a damn shame, Francisco, because you didn’t kill him. If you’d only tell me what happened . . .”
He shrugged and his neck disappeared inside the dress shirt I had just bought for him. I got him a new suit two sizes too large and a white shirt with a collar that would fit me. When Crespo dozed off during the judge’s preliminary statement to the jury, his chin disappeared inside the shirt collar.
Emilia Crespo sat in the first row of the gallery, directly behind me. She gave us moral support plus a bag of homemade guava pastries. In the corridor that morning, she kissed Francisco and hugged me, but without the strength I remembered. Then she whispered a prayer in Spanish, crossed herself, and said again, “Protégeme a mi hijo.”
I hugged her back and promised I would. I looked into her eyes. She had gotten old without my noticing it. Dark sha
dows clung to the folds below her eyes. Along the jawline, the skin was no longer taut. She moved slowly and seemed to have lost weight. A robust woman when I first met her—she carried my suitcase into the house that day years ago—she had shrunken with age.
Now Judge Gold was holding up a blue-backed document and waving it at the jury. “Does each of you understand that this piece of paper called the information is not evidence. It carries no inference of guilt.”
Twelve heads nodded in unison. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That sumbitch didn’t get here by helping little old ladies cross the street. Sometimes, I wonder why we even bother. Just round up the first six people you find and sit them in the box. Our juries wouldn’t be any better or any worse.
Abe Socolow sat at the state’s table, furiously taking notes, recording observations about each prospective juror on the twelve-square grid he had drawn on his legal pad. He was also trying to memorize each name before he began his questioning. All lawyers do that.
How about you, Mrs. Ferbergooble? Can you give the state a fair trial, Mrs. Ferbergooble?
We all love to hear our own names. If you don’t believe it, you haven’t been imprisoned in an eight-foot-square cubicle with a car salesman.
Socolow was good. He was always prepared, and once he worked with them, so were his witnesses. Once, when I was new at this and he was still handling misdemeanors, I defended a DUI case where my client caused an accident that didn’t hurt anybody but ruptured his own car’s radiator. Socolow’s main witness, the investigating officer, testified that he smelled alcohol on my client’s breath.
“Isn’t it possible,” I asked on cross-examination, “that what you smelled was antifreeze?”
“Sure,” the cop replied, not missing a beat, “if that’s what he was drinking.”
Judge Gold was reciting his litany, asking if anyone had served on a jury before, if there were any policemen in the family, and if each juror would base his or her verdict solely on the testimony and the law. He received what he sought, mindless agreement. The judge droned on, hunched over the bench, a wizened old bird who liked running a courtroom better than poling for bonefish or whacking a little ball out of the sand or any other sane activity. He asked whether they would be more likely to believe testimony of police officers, and they all solemnly said no. Funny, I whispered yes because cops are the best liars.