by Sol Stein
Thomassy didn’t stop.
*
From his office, he called Francine. Her room phone didn’t answer. Maybe she was getting X-rayed or something. He called back in ten minutes and she answered.
He told her what he’d done.
“Oh George, you’ll get into trouble.”
“You found trouble without looking for it. Maybe I should learn from you.”
He heard her breathing on the line. Then she said, “George, I have to get well fast. I don’t want another woman running after you unless I’m around to trip her.”
“I’m safe,” he said. “I’ve got my cruise control on.”
He was glad he’d made her laugh. She sounded alive. She’d sounded half-alive before.
She said, “Are there others like you?”
“Sure. I just hope you never find one.”
They hung on, listening to the electricity on the line.
Finally she said, “What do you think that Ramirez person will do after your visit?”
“He’ll hire a lawyer. He’ll check around. He’ll get some gray hairs. Maybe I’ll follow up with a phone call. If someone figures out it’s a hoax, who would they look for?”
“You’re on TV a lot these days. He’ll recognize you.”
“So what. Like you said, the justice system stinks. You could search the statute books for a year and you won’t find anything I did in them.”
She laughed a second time. “You know what daddy always used to say. Some day I’d find a really nice man.”
“That’s somebody else, not me. Really nice men lose. All the time. Everywhere.”
“Don’t lose me, George.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Thomassy, finally home, the rest of humanity shut out, sat in his living room, his legs up on the ottoman, a drink at his side, the evening paper spread before him. DEFECTION BY RUSSIAN OFFICIAL DISRUPTS TRIAL. Thomassy, a tight steel spring all day, read the story twice before his mind strayed.
He had never counted himself among the lonely of the world. He would rather listen to Mozart at home than in a crowded concert hall surrounded by strangers. If, at the beginning of some particular evening, he had a sudden appetite for companionship, there were several women he could call who, if home and alone, would be likely to say something like Come on over, George, if you don’t mind sharing a casserole. What any one of them would also share was a friendly kiss at the door, a bottle of good wine that Thomassy could be counted on to bring, and after dinner, the woman, energized by hope, was quick to touch, the kisses not casual now, honey stirring in the pot, the erogenous brain longing for the gentleness to become less gentle, and the welcome final nerve-end spasms that after rest brought peace.
This evening he did not reach into his jacket pocket for his phone book. His loneliness, he realized, was for a specific other person.
Was this continual longing for Francine a weakness? Once, when he was fifteen, his father, whose true love was killed by the Turks, had said to him George boy, you think tough as nail? Nails bend. Armenian needs be tough as hammer. Hadn’t he gone out into the fucking world as a hammer? If you were a good enough hammer, they wanted to use you. Clients, women. Why was he bending now? When he was roaring, any woman could stroke the lion’s head, but now the lion trusted a particular woman to hold his head in her arms. In the hospital, amid the instruments of intensive care, he’d found fright, a courtroom spinning out of his control, and suddenly it didn’t matter whether you were forty-five or twenty-eight, he saw it could happen any time, a brick from a building, an aneurysm, a crazy driver on the road. You just couldn’t live forever.
He loved her. It wasn’t capitulation. It was two people hang-gliding in the same direction over the rest of the world.
The telephone clanged into his thoughts. He strode to answer it. Her voice said, “Find any cute nurses to keep you company while I’m laid up?”
He laughed. Like a balloon filling. And she laughed too. And he laughed louder, celebrating their life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Judge Drewson had asked both Roberts and Thomassy to a meeting in chambers, a return to the war.
Nobody shook hands. Civility could contaminate.
“I have four things I want to say to you both,” the judge began. “You two don’t like each other. I accept that. But this trial is an adversary proceeding, not a spitting contest. Which brings me to the second point. The purpose of this trial is for a jury to determine, on the facts, whether a particular defendant is guilty of a particular crime with which he is charged. The third thing is that we have had an unholy interruption in our trial that must not permit these proceedings to be tarnished. Of course it is inevitable that the brouhaha yesterday is going to affect some of the jurors in some way none of us is wise enough to determine.”
The judge looked at each of them in turn.
“I feel obliged,” he said, “to advise you that I had a phone call from Washington. Mr. Christov’s defection was genuine. The reasons he gave for doing so in a public place were also genuine. But…” He knew he was on dangerous ground and chose his words carefully. “I must ask that this next point be in confidence. Do I have your agreement?”
Roberts nodded too quickly, Thomassy thought. Was he in on it?
The judge was waiting for Thomassy’s agreement. He couldn’t seem to be uncooperative while Roberts was kissing ass. Thomassy nodded.
“The government suggested this courtroom as the locale for the defection because they wanted to send a signal to the Russians. One of the things yet to be written in the late Professor Fuller’s manuscript was an assessment of the younger members of the Politburo based on whose protégés they were. That information is desperately needed now. Mr. Christov is in a position to supply some of the facts needed by the people who will be making that assessment now that Fuller is dead. The Soviets are apparently much stronger than we are with agents in place in Britain, France, West Germany, and here that have not yet been identified. We apparently have an advantage in that it’s largely a one-way street with defections from East to West. Christov’s defection couldn’t have been more timely. It could focus the Politburo on their internal power struggles and away from the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, where their clients have been gaining ground.”
Thomassy thought he saw uncertainty flicker in the judge’s face. “Gentlemen,” the judge said, “I’m no expert in foreign affairs. My expertise lies here. I know that each of you might have grounds for a mistrial. If granted, that would be a great and in my judgment unnecessary expense for the people and for the defense. I hope my sharing a confidence with you will abort any such thoughts you have had overnight. I want to say that in my instructions to the jurors I will tell them to disregard the scene we witnessed yesterday. I will focus them on the issues in this case. I have a lot of faith in what happens once jurors are closeted for discussion. My advice to you would be to do whatever you feel you must do for the record, but to consider the consequences. Moreover, I want you to know ahead of time that I find it inadvisable for either of you to interrupt summations. Remember that if either of you will have reason to appeal—and I don’t like to have my cases appealed any more than anyone else on the bench—the grounds will have to come from the trial itself and not the summations. If either of you waxes eloquent, I’ll rub that wax off. Understood?”
They both nodded. Thomassy didn’t like judges talking kindergarten to him. Maybe it was meant for Roberts.
“My last point, Mr. Thomassy, is this. Professor Tarasova’s testimony was interrupted in a way that required me to ask her to translate some things that have nothing to do with this trial. If you feel you must continue with her testimony—and if you, Mr. Roberts, feel you must cross-examine—we’ll just pick up where we left off. May I have your thoughts?”
Thomassy, as always, did his homework at home. But last night’s thoughts, the phone call from Francine, and his thoughts about the defection left him unprepared. “May I
have a minute, Your Honor?” Thomassy asked.
“Take your time,” the judge said, and left them in his chambers.
*
“I’m sorry about your girl friend,” Roberts said when they were alone.
“Thank you. I’m sorrier about her friend.”
“I gather the driver of one of the other vehicles had a strange visitor in the hospital,” Roberts said.
“Oh?”
“It wasn’t you by any chance?”
Thomassy looked at the key chain across Roberts’s vest. Roberts looked down as if his fly were open. “Anything wrong?”
“Why don’t we stick to this case right now.”
“I was just being civil about your girl friend. I understand how you feel. I think you need to be careful.”
“Thank you.” No point in getting Roberts angry.
“Tarasova’s testimony sent a lot of red herrings swimming in front of the jury,” Roberts said.
“We had to look at all the possibilities.”
“You going to continue with her testimony?”
“If I don’t, will you cross?”
“You’d like to redirect, I imagine. Take them through all that KGB garbage again. If you let it go, I’ll let it go.”
When Judge Drewson reentered, Roberts said, “We’ve had a chance to discuss the matter.”
“I assumed you would. Gentlemen?”
“Your honor, I am obliged to move for a mistrial,” Thomassy said.
“I know of your obligations, Mr. Thomassy. Your motion is denied.”
“In that case, Your Honor,” Thomassy said, “I won’t resume Professor Tarasova’s testimony.”
“Good,” the judge said. “Let’s get the show back on the road.”
*
When Tarasova was dismissed as a witness, she wanted to take a seat in back of the courtroom, but her throat was dry as if from fever and so she went out to take a long drink at the water fountain before returning. As she raised her head from the fountain and touched her handkerchief to the corner of her mouth, she saw Leona Fuller coming out of the courtroom toward the same water fountain. Before Tarasova could turn away Leona saw her and stopped. They were ten feet apart, twenty years of memory spinning between them.
Tarasova nodded her head. Leona’s bright eyes blazed. Footsteps clattered on the marble floor all about them, but they sensed only each other, isolated in remembrance.
Leona nodded.
So much time had passed, they might have shaken hands, but they did not. Tarasova stepped aside so that Leona might have a clear path to the water fountain. Leona did not move. And so Tarasova, instead of going back into the courtroom, which belonged to Leona now, headed for the exit, the air, and the world outside.
Tarasova, walking around the courthouse, let the memories come: Martin Fuller, the lion lover, so enormously physical. Her fantasy had been to eat his brain. What a tempest they had been! What fun they had had!
Enough. The breeze cooled her face. The walk did her good. The all-clear sounded in her head. Leona had had him back for twenty years. His insurance was hers. Hers the proper widowhood. But his mantle was Tarasova’s. She, once Martin’s other wife, must return to the trial. It was his brain that they had stopped.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
During his Mellon Lectures, Thomassy had told the law students, “Over a period of time you can tell as much about a man by his choice of clothes as his choice of a wife. Clothes are easier to change. What’s more, the defendant’s wife, if he’s got one, doesn’t sit at his side in court. But his clothes are there, and they talk to the jury all the time.”
The usual courtroom costume for someone Ed’s age was a dark suit, white shirt, and a conservative tie designed to make jurors feel they weren’t watching a “young person” but someone who was on the way toward being an accepted part of the community once these flimsy accusations against him could be got out of the way.
“I don’t want you looking like you’d got yourself ready for a wedding,” Thomassy had said to Ed before the trial. And so Ed wore slacks, a sweater over a solid-colored sports shirt, and a corduroy jacket. For his appearance on the witness stand, however, Thomassy had Ed substitute a cream-colored button-down shirt and a knit tie. The sweater under the sports jacket remained. “I’m going for a young professorial look,” Thomassy said. “An almost authority.”
“Do I keep my fly open or closed?” Ed said.
“We’re not trying to cop insanity,” Thomassy snapped. “We want serious attention paid to your answers. I don’t want to have to appeal this case. Think you’ve got the answers straight, or do you want to rehearse again?”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Remember, the DA is going to be bobbing up and down with objections, sometimes just to rattle you.”
“Don’t worry.”
“The judge might pull Roberts and me over to confer at the bench. That leaves you hanging in the witness chair with the jury watching you twitch.”
“I won’t twitch.”
“The whole idea of having a living witness instead of an affidavit is that you form as much of an impression from how someone says something, and how he looks when he says it, as from what he says.”
“I got it, I got it. You have any idea what kind of Spanish Inquisition Ph.D. orals are like? With two, three years’ work on the line?”
“You’ve got thirty years on the line here. When I’m through with you, you’ll have to face a new script I didn’t write. In his cross-examination, Roberts’ll try to show inconsistencies in your testimony. He’ll make you look shifty, he’ll get you nervous, he’ll throw you off balance. He’s a prick, I’ve seen him work. He doesn’t care if you’re guilty or innocent, he only gets a passing grade if the jury finds you guilty, understand?
“Do you care?”
“Care what?”
“If I’m innocent or guilty?”
One of the notations in Thomassy’s devil book said Never let a client know your verdict. If you opt for innocence and lose the case, it’ll be your fault. If you opt for guilty and win the case, he’ll think he can get away with anything the next time as long as you’re his lawyer.
“I’ll tell you,” Thomassy said, “it doesn’t matter what you are anymore. Just be grateful your lawyer isn’t innocent.”
*
Before court convened, Ed said to him, “You know I don’t believe in taking the oath.”
“You could have told me earlier,” Thomassy said.
“Is it important?” Ed asked.
“Its omission would sure as hell come across as important. Most normal people take the oath without even thinking about it. I want you to come across as a normal person. If you can’t put your hand on the Bible and affirm the oath in a way that sounds like you mean it, I’m not putting you on the stand.”
“You’re blackmailing me,” Ed said.
“That’s right.”
“I’m a free person,” Ed said.
“Temporarily. If you want to cut your own throat, you can do it under somebody else’s auspices.”
*
“State your full name,” Thomassy began.
“Edward Porter Sturbridge, sir.”
Attaboy.
He asked Ed where and when he was born, where he went to school and graduate school, what his majors and minors were, and how he came to select Soviet Affairs as his field of special interest.
“Because of its incontestable relevance to our future,” Ed said.
“Who do you mean by ‘our’?”
“The United States, of course. If I were making a choice of major today, I might opt for China.”
“Would your choice of such countries as subject areas be because you thought of studying the potential or actual enemies of the United States or was your interest derived from a desire to see us emulate their governments?”
Roberts was on his feet. “Your Honor, I have to object. This is a murder trial, not a classroom.”
Judge Drewson slowly turned the ring on his fourth finger in a full circle, as if invoking time in the hope of invoking thought. “I will let the question stand. All of the charges involve intent. The jury is entitled to know all it can about the defendant’s intentions, including those that relate to the work that brought him and Professor Fuller together.”
“Thank you,” Thomassy said, then turned back to Ed with a nod.
“I believe,” Ed said, “that if political science is to be of value in practical affairs, foreign governments should be viewed objectively rather than as friends and enemies. The U.S.S.R. was our ally in World War II. Now the very Chinese government that excoriated the U.S. for thirty years because of its backing for Taiwan, is considered an ally of sorts. Times change. Conditions change. If political science is to be even partially scientific, it must involve the accumulation of fact and perception, not the buttressing of a prior theory or view. Otherwise, we will never be able to adapt to changes in our subject matter. I believe that’s what Professor Fuller taught and the principle that I hope I learned from him.”
Well, he pulled it off, Thomassy thought. The perfectly reasonable young specialist. He bet Roberts was thinking something like That son-of-a-bitch is going to try to make his client sound like a saint.
Thomassy asked, “When did you first meet the deceased, Professor Martin Fuller?”
With care, Ed described the first of Fuller’s lectures he had ever attended. He had, of course, read Fuller’s masterpiece and some of his other books, but hearing the incisive mind at work was, Ed said, “an electrifying experience that changed my life.” In response to further questions, he went on to describe how he had qualified to attend a post-Ph.D. seminar given for Soviet Affairs specialists who were planning to make a career in the foreign service.
“Did you intend to pursue such a career?” Thomassy asked.
“No, sir,” Ed said.
“Did Professor Fuller know that when he admitted you to the seminar?”
“Yes, sir. He said that since American policy toward the Soviet Union was so unstable, it was always useful to have knowledgeable experts work outside the government as he always had. In fact, he welcomed my taking the course because by that time we had established a kind of mentor-student relationship outside the classroom.”