Beyond Suspicion

“Never.”

“Next sentence. Mr. Swyteck states, quote: Ms. Merrill said to me in no uncertain terms that she was in fear for her life. Specifically, she told me that the viatical investors had discovered that she and Dr. Marsh had perpetrated a fraud against them. Ms. Merrill further stated to me that the viatical investors were thugs, not legitimate businesspeople. According to Ms. Merrill, someone acting on behalf of the viatical investors had warned her that she was going to wish she had died of ALS if she did not return the one-and-a-half-million-dollar viatical settlement to the investors. End quote.”

Jancowitz gave the jury a moment to digest all that. Then he looked at Dr. Marsh and said, “Are you aware of any threats Ms. Merrill received from anyone acting on behalf of the viatical investors?”

“No, sir. None whatsoever.”

“As her alleged coconspirator in this supposed scam, were you ever threatened by anyone acting on behalf of the viatical investors?”

“Never.”

“Were you ever threatened by anyone in co

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“Jack Swyteck.”

“Tell me about that.”

“After Jessie was found dead in the Swyteck house, I went to his office.”

“How did that go?”

“Not well. It took him only a few minutes for him to realize that I suspected he had something to do with Jessie’s death.”

“What happened?”

“He went ballistic. Told me to get my ass out of his office before he batted my head across the room.”

“As best you can recall, what exactly were you talking about before he threatened you?”

“As I recall, we were talking about whether he was having an extramarital affair with Jessie Merrill.”

“What prompted that discussion?”

“I asked him about it.”

“Why?”

Dr. Marsh turned his swivel chair and faced the jury, just the way the prosecutor had coached him earlier in their prep session. “My wife and I are separated and we will soon be divorced. I was… vulnerable, I guess you would say. I felt sorry for Jessie and took a special interest in her case. That developed into a friendship, and by the time her lawsuit was over it had blossomed into romance.”

“So, when Mr. Swyteck states in his letter that he saw you and Jessie Merrill holding hands in the elevator just minutes after the verdict, that statement is true?”

“That is not true. I went over to congratulate her. Mr. Swyteck twisted things around to try to put a sinister spin on the whole episode. That was one of the reasons I went to his office to confront him.”

“Do you know why he made that up?”

“In a general sense, yes. Mr. Swyteck was extremely jealous of the relationship between me and Jessie. It was becoming irrational, to the point where he’d accuse her of things like this alleged scam on the viatical investors. Things that never happened.”

“Did you ever ask Mr. Swyteck if he and Ms. Merrill were involved in a romantic relationship?”

“Yes, in the conversation in his office, I asked him.”

“What was his response?”

“He denied it and became extremely agitated.”

“Is that when he threatened to bat your head across the room?”

“No. It’s my recollection that he didn’t actually threaten me until I asked him point blank whether he had hired someone to kill Jessie Merrill.”

Jancowitz checked his notes at the lectern, making sure that he’d set the stage properly for his big finish. “Just a few more questions, Dr. Marsh. You testified that you are not aware of any threats that Jessie Merrill may have received from anyone acting on behalf of the viatical investors.”

“That’s correct.”

“Are you aware of any threats that she received from anyone other than the investors?”

“Yes.”

“How did you become aware of those threats?”

“We talked on the telephone after it happened. She told me.”

“What was the nature of those threats?”

“She was told that if she said or did anything to tarnish the name and reputation of Jack Swyteck, there would be hell to pay.”

“Did she tell you who conveyed that threat to her?”

He leaned closer to the microphone and said, “Yes. A man by the name of Theo Knight.”

The prosecutor struggled to contain his excitement. It wasn’t the whole story, but it was more than enough at this stage of the game. “Thank you, Dr. Marsh. No further questions at this time.”

47

•

Vladimir had a business meeting at “the club,” a generic term that lent the place much more dignity than it deserved. The actual name on the marquee was “Bare-ly Eighteen,” a strip joint where any middle-aged man with ten bucks and an aching hard-on could watch recent high school dropouts dance naked on tables. No jail bait, but not a single dancer over the age of nineteen, guaranteed. Of course, if 60 Minutes ever called, the girls were all honor students in premed who simply liked to dance naked for extra money.

Vladimir knew the truth, which was why he never showed up at the club with less than a pocketful of ecstasy pills, a wildly popular, synthetic club-drug that acted both as a stimulant and a hallucinogen. The distribution pipeline was largely European, so Russian organized crime had found huge profit in it. Each aspirin-sized tablet was manufactured in places like the Netherlands at a cost of two to five cents and then sold primarily in the over-eighteen clubs for twenty-five to forty bucks a pop. A girl-any girl, not just a stripper-could go nonstop for eight hours on one pill, dancing, thrusting, craving the caress of strangers. At his cost and with those kinds of results, Vladimir was happy to give it away to his own dancers, especially when he had guests to impress.

He handed the bag of pills to the bouncer at the entrance. “One for each girl,” he said, then pointed with a glance toward the double-D blonde on stage showing off her tan lines. She had a pacifier in her mouth, a telltale sign that she was already on ecstasy. The drug sometimes made users bite their own lips and tongue, and a pacifier was a curious but commonly accepted way of preventing that. In a strip club, it had the added bonus of making it look as though she really loved to suck.

“Give her two,” said Vladimir.

“Yes, sir.” The guy was a brute, and no one but Vladimir was ever a “sir.”

Vladimir had with him two men dressed in expensive silk suits. One was big and barrel-chested, with a neck like a former Olympic wrestler’s. The other was shorter and overweight with the round, red face of a Russian peasant who’d somehow found money. Vladimir led them through the lounge area, a circuitous route to his usual booth in the back. It gave them a chance to enjoy the scenery before turning to business. The bar was basically a dark, open warehouse with neon figures on the walls and colored spotlights suspended from the ceiling to highlight each dancer. Young, naked flesh was everywhere, surrounded by men who coughed up the cash to gawk, talk, laugh, and shout at women as if they owned them. A numbing sound system drowned out most of the obscenities, blasting the pere

At the snap of his fingers, Vladimir’s two hottest dancers hopped off nearby tables and assumed new posts at the brass firehouse pole closer to his booth. Vladimir sat with his back to the stage, facing a mirrored wall of cheap thrills. His guests sat across from him with an unobstructed view of the show. As if the girls cared or would even remember, he introduced his guests. The wrestler’s name was Leonid, a Brighton Beach businessman whose business was best left unexplained, though it was pretty common knowledge around the club that Miami was second only to Brighton Beach in terms of number and organization of Russian Mafiya. The short guy was Sasha, a banker from Cyprus.