Dead Man's Rule

by Rick Acker

  “He said that the Brothers’ lawyer testified and that he said he was at a meeting where Zinoviev said he had a contract with Ivanovsky. The Brothers became very angry. One of them threatened to kill the lawyer when it was over. He was so loud that the watcher heard it through the door.”

  Elbek digested the news, trying to evaluate how serious it was. “What about the judge? What did he say?”

  “He said he would make a decision and that the lawyers could come get it when the court opens tomorrow.”

  “Did he say anything about what his decision would be?”

  “No, sir. I questioned the watcher closely on that.”

  Elbek paused, evaluating his options. “When does the court open tomorrow morning?”

  “I don’t know,” Yunus admitted. “I will find out.”

  “Do that. I will need to know in the next half hour. But first, set two guards to watch the Russian. Tell them to keep him alive—I’m not quite done with him yet. He was close to breaking when you came in, Yunus. Very close.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “No, no. You were right to bring me this news immediately. There are things we need to do.”

  Ben and Noelle started packing up notes, extra copies of exhibits, highlighters, and other trial paraphernalia into boxes. Anthony Simeon and Janet Anderson did the same on the other side of the courtroom. Ordinarily, the lawyers would have exchanged pleasantries as soon as the judge left, but the scene a moment ago with the Brothers left a lingering cloud in the courtroom. They all wanted to leave as quickly as possible—except for Dr. Ivanovsky. He talked excitedly with his wife, laughing and gesturing expansively. After a few minutes, he walked over to Ben, a wide smile splitting his leathery face and tears of joy gleaming in his eyes.

  Ben smiled back and put out his hand. “Congratula— “Whoa,” he said as his client ignored the proffered hand and enveloped him in a bear hug, planting kisses firmly on both of his cheeks. Ben chuckled and hugged Dr. Ivanovsky back. “Congratulations!”

  “Thank you. Thank you so very, very much,” said Dr. Ivanovsky when he finally released Ben. “I am so happy.” He gestured to the dingy, windowless courtroom. “This is now my favorite place in all America because of that you won today,” he declared.

  “We haven’t won yet,” Ben cautioned reflexively. “We don’t know what the judge will do tomorrow morning.”

  “No, but we do have a pretty good idea,” said a voice behind Ben. He turned and saw Anthony Simeon approaching. “I’m not going to hug you,” he said, extending his hand, “but I did want to congratulate you. Nice work.”

  “Thanks,” replied Ben as he shook the other lawyer’s hand. “I appreciate your candor on the stand. I wouldn’t have had a chance without it.”

  Simeon gave Ben an odd half-amused, half-knowing look. “I expect you have plans for dinner,” he said, glancing at Noelle and the Ivanovskys, “but if you have time, I’d like to buy you a drink when you’re done here.”

  The phone rang in Dmitry’s office, where he, Pavel, and Anton were discussing their next move. “Hello?”

  “Hello, Dmitry,” said a soft, familiar voice. “This is Leonid. What happened in court today?”

  Dmitry had expected this call and steeled himself. “The judge threw out Ivanovsky’s case, but then his lawyer put our lawyer on the witness stand. The judge postponed his decision until tomorrow morning.”

  “I see. Which way do you think the judge will rule?”

  “For us, of course,” replied Dmitry as confidently as he could. “The judge has already ruled our way twice. I don’t see any reason why he won’t do it again.”

  “What did your lawyer say?”

  “He’s confident too,” Dmitry assured him.

  “What did he say on the stand?”

  “Oh, nothing important,” Dmitry said just a little too quickly. “He just talked about a meeting we had with Zinoviev. The minutes from that meeting were on an easel for the whole trial, staring the judge in the face. The lawyer just rehashed what was in them. It was no big deal.”

  “Then why did you threaten to kill him?”

  The question flustered Dmitry badly. He had thought the man in the back of the courtroom had left before Anton’s outburst. “We had a . . . uh . . . a misunderstanding about his bill. One of my colleagues got a little upset.”

  There was a pause. “I understand perfectly. It is very disturbing to pay a large sum of money to someone and then have them fail to perform as expected.”

  Dmitry could feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “Yes. Well, our business should be concluded tomorrow. I’ll call you as soon as we have the judge’s ruling. I expect we will be delivering the merchandise by lunch tomorrow.”

  He hung up the phone and looked at Pavel and Anton, who were watching him apprehensively. “We have to run. Now.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  EVENING PRAYERS

  Khalid Mohammed approved of his new neighbors. They were quiet, they didn’t park in front of his building, and they were observant Muslims. He knew this last fact through an incident the previous week. Dawn had just been breaking and he had been at work early, loading his small delivery truck in back, when he’d heard a tinny, recorded voice chanting the morning call to prayer. He’d looked through a window in the neighboring building and seen two men prostrated in prayer. Feeling guilty, he’d climbed into the back of the truck and prostrated himself between crates of fragrant hummus.

  He nodded at the memory. Allah had called him to account that day for neglecting his prayers, using his neighbors to set an example for him. Khalid was thankful for that. As the father of five and the owner and operator of a small Middle Eastern food-distribution business, he rarely had enough time for anything. He often caught himself forgetting his prayers.

  He wanted to meet his neighbors, but he had been unsuccessful so far. On the rare occasions when he spotted one of them outside, they seemed to be in as much of a hurry as he always was. He didn’t feel comfortable accosting them on the street just to introduce himself.

  The day after they had unknowingly shared their morning prayer with him, Khalid took fresh falafels to them as a welcome gift. No one answered the door when he knocked and rang the bell. The bell was corroded and the door appeared to be made of thick wood, so he hadn’t been sure whether anyone inside had heard him. He considered walking in and announcing his presence, but instead he simply left the falafels and a friendly note on the concrete doorstep. The falafels and note were gone the next morning, but no one had ever thanked him.

  As the days passed without any word from his neighbors, Khalid began to wonder whether they had found the gift he’d left for them—or whether someone else had stolen it from their doorstep. There were vagrants and other disreputable people on the streets, even during the day—though this problem had diminished with the arrival of the men next door. Khalid had seen a particularly aggressive homeless drug addict harassing one of the men as he carried a car battery and some wires into the building one day. Khalid turned away quickly to avoid making eye contact with the addict—a mistake he had made once before—but as soon as he turned his back, he heard a piercing shriek. When he turned again, the addict was limping away quickly while spewing profanity at the man with the battery, who then calmly walked into the building.

  The addict hadn’t returned, and many other undesirable street dwellers also vanished as word of his experience apparently spread. Khalid approved of this too. A good Muslim is considerate of the poor, of course, but Khalid had always understood the Prophet’s maxims on this subject to include an implicit exemption for the obnoxious and ill-mannered poor.

  So Khalid was pleased to see one of the men coming out of the building just as he was parking his truck after making the last delivery of the day. The man was about forty or forty-five, a little shorter than medium height, and he had a sling on his le
ft arm and bandages on his right hand. He was too pale-skinned to be an Arab or a Persian. Perhaps he was an Azeri or northern Turk.

  Khalid left the truck and walked quickly over to intercept the man before he climbed into his car. Khalid came up to him just as he reached out his good hand for the car door. He saw Khalid out of the corner of his eye and turned with a sudden catlike move that made Khalid pause and hold up his hands.

  “I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood,” he said with a friendly smile. “My name is Khalid Mohammed, and I own a wholesale food business right there.” He pointed to his building. “So you see, we are neighbors. Did you receive the falafels I left on your doorstep last week?”

  The other man relaxed, but only slightly. “Yes, a gracious gift. Thank you.”

  Another man burst out of the building and ran to the car. He stopped beside the first man and looked darkly at Khalid. “You’ll forgive us, Mr. Mohammed, but we must go,” said the first man as he got into the car with his companion.

  They sped off, leaving Khalid looking after them and wondering where they could be going in such a hurry. Then he saw the sun hanging heavy and red-gold just over the western edge of the world and it hit him. He smiled and shook his head ruefully. “Evening prayers at the mosque,” he said to himself. “Of course, how foolish of me. I can’t believe I almost forgot again.”

  He went into his building to pray.

  The rays of the setting sun poured through the western windows of the West Lounge at the Metropolitan Club, filling it with a rich, golden light. The club occupied the sixty-sixth and sixty-seventh floors of the Willis Tower and gave a spectacular view of the surrounding city. The forest of glass, steel, and stone towers—the tallest of which ended well below the club’s windows—gave way to shorter buildings of brick and concrete and then to a sea of homes and small buildings. The expanse of rooftops stretched to the horizon, broken only by the grid of car-choked streets.

  Anthony Simeon had doubtless seen this view many times before, but it was new to Ben, who gazed out the window as he drank a glass of Chardonnay.

  “So what made you decide to call me as a witness?” asked his host.

  “It was actually a point you made in arguing your motion for judgment as a matter of law.” Ben set his glass on the white linen tablecloth. “You said I didn’t know who wrote the minutes, which was true. So I looked at that blowup on the easel, wondering who had written it. I realized that there was something I hadn’t noticed about the wording.”

  “And what was that?”

  Ben took a sip of his wine. “It was pretty clear that a lawyer had written them. None of the Brothers are lawyers, so I knew it couldn’t have been one of them. You represented them, so I guessed that you either wrote the minutes or knew who had. And then I also realized that throughout the whole trial you never once claimed that the minutes were fake, only that I hadn’t laid a foundation for them.” He paused and looked at Simeon, who had the same amused and knowing look he had worn in the courtroom. “You didn’t seem very surprised when I called you. You were expecting it, weren’t you?”

  “By that point, yes. I had hoped the Brothers would testify differently or that you’d be able to get the minutes into evidence some other way, but—”

  “Tony!” a man’s voice called from near the door.

  They both turned and saw Steve Rocco walking toward them. He was a tall man about ten years younger than Simeon, with a booming voice, a perpetual tan, and suspiciously good hair. Like many good litigators, he would have made an outstanding salesman.

  “I haven’t seen you in here for at least two weeks,” Rocco said as he reached them. “Where have you been?”

  “On trial,” replied Simeon, nodding toward Ben. “Do you know Ben Corbin?”

  “Sure. We’ve got a case going to trial pretty soon down in Chancery.” He gave Ben’s shoulder a patronizing pat. “So, Ben, drowning your sorrows after your first battle with Tony Simeon? He’s practically made an alcoholic out of me over the years.”

  “He won,” said Simeon.

  Rocco stared at Ben. “You won?”

  “The judge hasn’t issued an order yet,” Ben said, “but—”

  “But he won,” interjected Simeon. “Did you say you’ve got a trial coming up against him in the near future?”

  Rocco nodded dumbly.

  “Settle.”

  Rocco laughed uncertainly. “Uh, thanks for the advice, Tony. See you later, Ben.”

  Simeon laughed quietly as he watched Rocco retreat to his own table. “There’s less to him than meets the eye. He’s like a puffer fish: if you can manage to let a little air out of him, you can eat him for lunch anytime.”

  “Which I take it you’ve done?” responded Ben.

  “He hasn’t been willing to take a case to trial against me for five years, but before that he lost eight straight to me.”

  Ben realized the favor Simeon had just done for him. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

  “You earned it. Let me know if he takes my advice.”

  “I will. And thanks for calling me the other night and sending me the minutes. I couldn’t have won without your help.” Ben’s voice was casual, but he watched Simeon intently as he spoke.

  The older man didn’t react visibly. “Not a problem. I hope I didn’t wake you with that call.”

  “I was already awake. Those were some pretty unusual litigation tactics. Why did you do it?”

  “I had my ethical and discovery obligations, of course, once I realized that my clients weren’t going to produce the minutes. I have a duty to zealously represent them, but that duty doesn’t extend to violating the rules on their behalf. If you mean why didn’t I simply produce the minutes in discovery, the reason is that it was safer for me to do my duty in a more discreet fashion than usual. Besides”—he winked—“it was more fun to make you do some of the work yourself.”

  Ben laughed. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself.” He studied the older man. “Was that it, though? Was that really why you did it? This can’t be the first time you’ve had clients like this.”

  Simeon’s smile faded and he looked out the window, squinting slightly in the setting sun. His face was suddenly very old and very tired in the fading light. “No . . . no, it’s not.”

  Simeon was silent for a moment, then looked back at Ben with his bantering smile back in place. “But it is the first time I’ve been both a secret informant and my opponent’s star witness. I’ve found that the key to keeping my practice interesting as I ossify is to always try something new in each case. And today was definitely a new and interesting experience for me.” He raised his glass. “Congratulations on a job well done.”

  “Likewise.” Ben raised his glass in return. “I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that the case turned out more or less the way you wanted.”

  “There are other defeats that have bothered me more,” the older lawyer acknowledged.

  “Do you know what’s in the safe-deposit box?” Ben asked suddenly.

  “You mean other than the Seiko and the earrings?”

  “Other than those.”

  “No idea whatsoever, but . . .” Simeon looked out the window again. “But it might not have been in my clients’ best interests to obtain whatever it is. It might not have been in anybody’s best interests.”

  Ben’s heart pounded. “Why do you say that?”

  Simeon gave Ben a measuring look. “I am going to tell you this because I think you have a right to know, but I ask that you keep it completely confidential.”

  “Of course,” said Ben.

  “They were afraid. They were afraid of whomever they had resold the box to, but they were afraid even before that. All along I’ve had the feeling that they were dealing with something too serious for them, but that there was too much money involved for them to get out.”

&n
bsp; “Were they afraid enough to kill Nikolai Zinoviev and Josef Fedorov?”

  Simeon chuckled at Ben’s directness, but then grew serious. “If they were, then they’re probably also afraid enough to kill other people, don’t you think?”

  A single case file lay open on Elena Kamenev’s desk, surrounded by mounds of other files. The open file was titled “Spassky, Sergei.” The other files contained the prep materials for twenty-three witness interviews for a complicated extortion scheme that was going to the grand jury by the end of the month. She needed to finish the interviews by the end of the week, and she hadn’t even begun to get ready for them. Now it was six o’clock on Tuesday evening and she had no choice. She would have to stay up all night just to be ready for the interviews tomorrow, and the day after didn’t look any better.

  Realistically, there was very little more that she could do for Sergei at this point. She had interviewed every witness. She had circulated the sketches and descriptions of the suspects she’d obtained from both Sergei and the pot farmers. She had also posted a “missing persons” bulletin with Sergei’s picture and description and a notice that he was a potential kidnapping and/or murder victim. And she had pulled and reviewed all the records she could find on Elbek Shishani.

  So far, she had found nothing. There were no more leads for her to follow and nothing left on her to-do list for the case. All she could do now was wait for something to turn up—and hope that it wouldn’t be Sergei’s dead body.

  She took a picture out of Sergei’s file and looked at it. It came from one of Auntie Olga’s photo albums and had been taken at a Spassky family reunion over the Fourth of July weekend. The picture showed a tan and smiling Sergei sitting in a speedboat. His hair was slightly damp and he was wearing swim trunks. He was more muscular than she had guessed from his slender build, and she was surprised to see a tattoo on his right shoulder. Her gaze lingered on his eyes. They were a deep brown that would have looked dark and piercing if he hadn’t been smiling. She had never noticed them before because he hid them behind his glasses.