“You’ll be acquitted, honey. I know you will.” The waitress came by and plopped bowls of broth and noodles in front of them. They were both relieved at the interruption. For a while they slurped in silence. Then Elaine said, “Arthur’s sorry he couldn’t be here.”
“Okay,” Olivia said, noncommittally.
“It’s just that Tuesday is one of his work days. Since he’s only part-time, he doesn’t like to miss the days he’s supposed to be there. He’ll come tomorrow. He promised.”
“It’s fine. I don’t mind. I’m glad you’re here, though.”
Elaine looked up, gratefully. “Thank you.”
“No, I mean it. I’m really glad you’re here.”
“I’m…I’m so sorry.” Elaine’s face was red and she blinked rapidly.
“Sorry?”
“If I had lent you the money when you asked…”
Olivia shook her head. “What are you talking about?”
“If I’d lent you money that day in the restaurant. Then Jorge wouldn’t have been so desperate. None of this would have happened.”
“It’s not your fault he did the drug deal.”
“But it is. I could have lent you the money. I should have.”
Olivia patted her mother’s hand. “Jorge didn’t like taking money from you or from me for that matter. He would have done the deal anyway. I’m sure of it. None of this is your fault.”
Elaine smiled gratefully and turned back to her soup. Olivia stared into her own bowl, feeling a strange satisfaction in having offered up to her mother such a hopeful lie.
***
The aroma of roasting lamb greeted Elaine and Olivia as they walked into the house that evening. The dining room table was set for three with the Umbrian pottery Elaine and Arthur had brought back from their trip to the Italian countryside. Candles flickered in the silver-plated candlesticks Elaine had received as a wedding present long ago and used only on the rarest of occasions. Arthur bustled out of the kitchen, an apron wrapped around his waist and a smear of flour on his cheek.
“Welcome home, ladies,” he said. “I thought you could use a special dinner after your first day in court, so I cut out of work a little early. It’s Chez Panisse at the Goodman-Roth house tonight. Our first course is seared tuna, served at room temperature with shaved fennel and radishes. We’ll follow that with leg of lamb marinated in garlic, herbs, and olive oil, served with wilted escarole. And for dessert, buckwheat crepes with mangoes. That is, if I can get the little fuckers to stop sticking to the crepe pan.”
“Wow,” Olivia said.
Elaine attempted a smile, but she was seething. How like Arthur to leave work early to prepare an elaborate meal, but not to take time off to be at her side during the torturous first day of Olivia’s trial. She had expected him to come, although when she’d informed him of the date and he’d expressed his regret that he was scheduled to work, it hadn’t surprised her. She probably could have forced him to be there. In fact, had she asked him outright, he would likely have rescheduled his work days. She told herself that she had not made her request explicit because the desire to be present, to be her bulwark and support, should have come from him, rather than have been demanded by her. If she were honest with herself, though, she would have admitted that there was some other, perhaps more malignant, reason for her failure to ask for what she knew she needed: for some, inexplicable reason, she found her inevitable disappointment with Arthur satisfying.
“Let’s eat,” Arthur said. “You two can tell me how it went over dinner.”
They sat down at the table, and Elaine took a mouthful of the fish. It was only once the first bite was dissolving on her tongue that she realized how hungry she was. She resolved to feel grateful to Arthur for having worked so hard on the meal. She glanced over at Olivia, who was fastidiously slicing slivers off the outside edges of her ahi.
“What’s wrong?” Arthur asked, a trace of irritation in his voice.
“Nothing,” Olivia said. “It’s delicious.”
Then Elaine remembered. “She can’t eat raw fish, Arthur. Because of the baby.”
“Oh, of course,” he said. “Here, give me that,” he snatched up her plate.
“It’s really fine. I’ll just eat the outside.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll cook it through. It’ll take two minutes.” He carried the plate out to the kitchen, and Elaine lay her fork down.
“It was sweet of him to make dinner,” she said.
Olivia nodded.
Elaine lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are you at all hungry?”
Olivia shook her head.
“Try to eat, okay? His feelings will be hurt if you don’t. And you and the baby need the food, too.”
“Okay,” Olivia said.
Arthur came back and put the plate in front of her with a flourish. “Cooked-through tuna for the pregnant lady. Excuse the grayish color.”
Elaine smiled reassuringly at her fiancé, and they continued with their meal. Over the lamb, she filled Arthur in on the events of the day in court.
“So, Izaya’s doing a good job?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Elaine said. “Don’t you think, Olivia?”
Olivia nodded.
Elaine said, “I think he’s in his element in the courtroom. You should have seen his opening statement, Arthur. He scooped that jury up, held them in the palm of his hand, and took them right where he wanted them to go. It’s remarkable in someone so young. It really is.”
“He probably learned it from his father,” Arthur said, around a mouthful of escarole. Elaine nodded. “I think he’s every bit as good as Ervin T. Upchurch,” she said, “and not so flashy. Well, except for the hair. And the Italian suits.”
“Well, let’s hope he does as well for Olivia as his father would have.”
“He will,” Olivia said.
Elaine ate quickly and watched as Olivia tried to choke down at least a few bites of her meal. Finally the girl rose from the table, saying that she was exhausted and wanted to take a bath and head to bed. Elaine tackled the kitchen, scouring the heavy casserole and iron skillet, up to her elbows in congealing fat and burnt, caramelized sugar. Not for the first time she wondered why none of Arthur’s cooking classes had ever bothered to teach him the art of washing a dish.
***
“Mr. Contreras, does this figure mean anything to you?” Izaya pointed at the huge poster he’d propped up in front of the jury. The large white sign was blank, except for the number $3,560,633 printed in oversized, black letters. The dollar sign was a bright, almost fluorescent green.
“No.” Gabriel Contreras sat in the witness box. He wore a dark, pin-striped suit that seemed to crumple around his body as Izaya’s questioning continued. For the first few hours of his cross-examination, Olivia’s lawyer had painstakingly gone through the Cuban’s past, lingering over such highlights as his stint in the Havana insane asylum, his arrest and subsequent incarceration for drug dealing, his history of drug use. For almost two tedious hours, Izaya played tape recordings of contradictory testimony given by the witness in various other cases.
At the end of each bit of tape, Izaya would ask, “That is your voice, correct?”
“Yes.”
“You were under oath when you made that statement, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But the statement is false, isn’t it?”
At first Contreras had objected to the characterization of his testimony as untrue, but finally the sheer number of his own contradictions seemed to overwhelm him, and he simply answered, again and again, “Yes.”
Just when Olivia had grown worried that Izaya would lose the jury through sheer thoroughness, he had spun around on his heel. He lifted the poster up with a flourish and propped it on a tripod right in front of the jury box.
“This figure means nothing to you at all?” Izaya repeated.
“Objection, your honor, asked and answered.” Amanda Steele had risen to her feet. She looked tired, but still as calm as when the trial had begun. Olivia had amused herself, day after day, by trying to distinguish the prosecutor’s many expensive suits one from another. They were all black or navy blue and only subtly different. This one had a shawl collar, and the skirt seemed just the tiniest bit shorter than those of the days before.
Judge Horowitz looked up at Izaya. “Mr. Feingold-Upchurch, I believe Ms. Steele has a point. Why don’t you get to yours. Objection sustained.” The judge waggled the long eyebrows that sat atop his forehead like white millipedes. He seemed not at all irritated with Izaya, despite his rebuke. On the contrary, he seemed entertained by the young attorney.
Izaya picked up the poster and held it up. “Three million, five hundred and sixty thousand, six hundred and thirty-three. Dollars.” He drawled out the words slowly, almost hissing on the final S. “Mr. Contreras, isn’t that, in fact, the amount of money you have been paid by the DEA over the course of the past four years?”
Contreras shrugged. Olivia hoped she wasn’t imagining the tiny beads of sweat appearing on his upper lip.
“Words, Mr. Contreras,” Judge Horowitz said. “Use words. My court reporter has no key for the expressive shrug.”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” Contreras said.
“You don’t know?” Izaya’s voice was incredulous. “Why? Too much cash to count?”
“Objection.” Ms. Steele rose only halfway to her feet.
“A little less drama, Mr. Feingold-Upchurch.” One or two members of the jury tittered at the judge’s comment, and Olivia could see an almost imperceptible tightening in Izaya’s jaw.
“Your honor, I’d like to refresh the witness’s recollection with the forms establishing that he did, in fact, receive $3,560,633 dollars from the DEA in return for being a snitch.”
Contreras interrupted, “I don’t need to see nothing. That number sounds right more or less.”
“More or less,” Izaya sounded ostentatiously confused. “Oh, right!” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand. “The car. How could I forget the car?” Izaya reached behind the poster with the number on it and brought out another—a blowup of a photograph of a shiny green sports utility vehicle. “You were also given this Lincoln Navigator, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice car.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s worth, what, forty, fifty grand?”
“Not anymore.”
“Not anymore?” Izaya kept his voice neutral and curious.
“It ain’t worth nothing anymore. I cracked it up.”
“No insurance?” This time Izaya almost sounded as if he were commiserating with the informant.
Contreras said, “No,” before Amanda Steele had time to get out the objection. The judge flicked his hand at Izaya. “Let’s move on, shall we?” he said.
“Of course, your honor. Mr. Contreras, you didn’t pay any taxes on that three million, five hundred sixty thousand, six hundred thirty-three dollars, did you?” Again Izaya drew out the figure, saying each word slowly and clearly.
“No.”
“Didn’t file any tax returns?”
“No.”
Izaya shook his head and walked back to the podium. He left the posters propped up on the tripod in front of the jury.
“Mr. Contreras, you’ve helped send thirteen people to jail, haven’t you?”
Gabriel puffed out his chest. “That’s right. Thirteen drug dealers.”
“Thirteen drug dealers?” Izaya asked again.
“Yup.”
“And how many of those drug dealers had ever committed a crime before you set them up?”
Amanda Steele was on her feet, her voice no longer calm but quite clearly angry. The judge motioned the lawyers over to the side bar, and they held a whispered conference. Olivia turned back to look at her mother who sat in the row immediately behind her. Elaine smiled at her and then reached into her purse. She pulled out a tissue, and, rising from her seat, walked over to the bar and gently rubbed a smudge from the side of Olivia’s mouth. At the courtroom deputy’s frown, she hurried back to her bench.
The attorneys walked back to their tables, the prosecutor’s mouth tightened into a thin line and Izaya looking confident.
“Mr. Contreras, isn’t it true that not a single one of the thirteen people you set up had been arrested for drug dealing before you crossed their paths?” Izaya said, facing the jury.
“I don’t know.”
Izaya spun back to Contreras. “You don’t know? Would it help to refresh your recollection if I asked your handlers at the DEA if they’d informed you of that fact?”
“Look, none of them got caught. That doesn’t mean they weren’t dealing. I’m just the first guy that caught them is all.”
Izaya turned to the judge. “Your honor, would you instruct the witness to answer the question posed to him?”
Judge Horowitz shook his head disparagingly, either at Contreras or Izaya; Olivia wasn’t sure who. Then he looked ostentatiously at his watch, an oversized gold face on a thick, braided leather band, raised his eyebrows in a pantomime of shock at the time, and said, “Answer the question, Mr. Contreras.”
“What was the question?”
“Isn’t it true that none of the thirteen people you set up had ever been arrested for drug dealing before you got them involved in your deals?” Izaya repeated.
“I guess so.”
“You guess so?”
“Yeah. It’s true.”
“Mr. Feingold-Upchurch,” the judge interrupted. “Are you almost done here? It’s getting late.”
“I have only one more question, your honor.”
“Fine.”
“Mr. Contreras, what happens to Cuban immigrants who get convicted of crimes in America?”
“What do you mean? Same thing that happens to anybody.”
“Really? Isn’t it in fact the case, Mr. Contreras, that Cubans who commit felonies in the United States are held in permanent detention until Fidel Castro is willing to let them go home to Cuba?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let me put this another way, Mr. Contreras. Weren’t you in fact told that if you didn’t cooperate with the DEA, you would be held in indefinite detention until Castro wanted you back?”
“Objection, your honor. Hearsay.” Amanda Steele was on her feet.
“State of mind, not truth of the matter asserted,” Izaya said, looking disgusted.
“Objection overruled.” The judge looked expectantly at Contreras.
The informant muttered, “Somebody might have said that.”
“Somebody might have told you that if you didn’t work for the DEA, you would spend the rest of your life in jail unless Castro said you could go back to Cuba?” Izaya asked.
“Yeah.”
Izaya turned on his heel and headed back to the defense counsel. As he walked, he called back over his shoulder, “Nothing further, your honor.”
Olivia sat very still in her seat as the jury filed out. She couldn’t decide whether to look at them or not. She was afraid if she looked away they would think her shifty, unable to look them in the eye. If she smiled at them, they might think she was trying to worm her way into their good graces. She settled for as neutral a face as she could muster. She watched them leave, and after the door to the jury room had closed, she collapsed in her chair as though the wires that had been holding her upright were suddenly cut. She laid her head on the table for a moment, savoring the feel of the cool, smooth wood under her cheeks.
Izaya patted her on the back and, leaning over, whispered in her ear, “How you doing?”
She sighed and sat up. “Fin
e.”
“That went really well, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I think so,” she replied.
“We nailed him. We definitely nailed him. Don’t you think we nailed him?”
Izaya was leaning over her seat, his hand still on her back. He looked at her expectantly, almost beseechingly. She mustered up a smile.
“We nailed him,” she said.
“Come, honey. Let’s go home.” Elaine held open the wooden gate that separated the observers’ seats from the front of the courtroom. As Olivia walked through, her back aching from the weight of her belly, her mother put her arm around her. Olivia leaned heavily against her, and inhaled the familiar smell of gardenia soap that all but covered the acrid, medicinal tang of the pharmacy. Elaine held her all the way to the car.
***
The next morning, after the preliminary motions and announcements that started every courtroom day, Amanda Steele called Jorge Rodriguez to the stand. Olivia felt her pulse quicken as the door behind the jury box opened, and Jorge was led into the courtroom by the U.S. Marshal. Just as he sat down, the baby kicked her, hard, and she gasped. The heads of everyone in the courtroom turned sharply toward her. She put her hands on her belly and willed the baby to settle down. Only Jorge hadn’t looked at her. He kept his eyes firmly affixed to a point in the back of the courtroom. He looked pale and thin. He had shorn his hair, and it stuck up in short spikes on the top of his head. His ears looked red, unused to the exposure. His nose was even more hawk-like. He was still handsome, but he looked haggard and frightened.
A young woman who had been sitting in the back of the courtroom stood up and crossed to the witness stand. At the judge’s instruction, she gave her name to the court reporter. Then she began to translate for Jorge. Olivia thus heard every question asked twice and every answer given twice. She heard the firm words of the prosecutor moderated as they were translated into Spanish by the soft-spoken young interpreter. She heard Jorge’s monosyllabic, mumbled tones spoken clearly and distinctly in an impeccable English, denuded of the vague tone of guilt and dread with which they had left his lips.
The AUSA, today clad in a simple black dress under a long black jacket, painstakingly, question by question, led Jorge through the period of time leading up to his arrest. With her prodding, he described his life with Olivia, his work, her work. Jorge never once looked at Olivia. He stared at his hands, or at a spot high on the opposite wall of the courtroom. But never at her.
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