You Don't Have to Live Like This (33 page)

“If Mrs. Smith testified that you stayed at least fifteen minutes, would you have any reason to doubt the accuracy of her testimony?”

“If that’s what she says, I’m sure she’s right. Because at that point for her it was just, you know, an ordinary visit.”

“Can you tell me why you left Nolan unconscious in your apartment for more than a quarter of an hour, while you sat around with his mother drinking lemonade?”

“She’s very welcoming. If she gives you something to drink, you take it. I didn’t want to appear rude. I know this doesn’t make much sense, but I didn’t want her to know what Nolan had done. It would have upset her. Also, we couldn’t get Michael away. Everything takes longer with kids.”

A few minutes later Judge Westinghouse called it a day. What surprised me is this: already I was reluctant to get off my chair. For someone who likes to talk, who cares about the difference between one way of saying something and another, who thinks of speech as the best kind of action . . . it was like, for sailors, being in a high wind. People were paying attention, my answers mattered. Whereas that evening, I made myself dinner alone and had nothing to do but go over these answers in my head.

E
very morning the steps of the courthouse were packed with reporters and television crews. There were protesters, too, waving placards:
Free Nolan Smith
, with a picture of Nolan, based on one of his mug shots. Some guy held up a handmade sign that said
It Isn’t a Crime
on one side and
To Live in Detroit
on the other. And the next day I had to push my way through these people. All of which reinforced what I felt the day before, that I was an important person, out of all proportion. This time I didn’t have to wait in the waiting room. When the judge called me up to the witness stand, I felt very conscious of the way I walked—about fifteen paces from my seat, around a table and up a few steps. It was like going on stage.

The heating was on, and since it had rained all morning the smell of wet clothes was strong. But you couldn’t hear the rain outside; there were no windows.

Judge Westinghouse took us through the motions. And then Nolan’s lawyer, the black guy, stood up to cross-examine me. He looked fifty, maybe a little older—he had short, well-cut, grizzled hair and rimless glasses, he wore a bow tie, I don’t think he could have been taller than five foot seven. His name was John Barrett; he introduced himself.

“Mr. Marnier,” he said, “I’m going to start by asking you a few general questions. I want you to bear with me for a moment.” He
looked at his notes and put them on the table and walked over to me. “How long have you known Robert James?”

“I don’t know, fifteen years, a little more.”

“Can you tell me where you first met?”

“At university,” I said.

“And which university is that?”

Larry Oh stood up. “I don’t see how this is relevant,” he said. “Mr. Marnier is not on trial here. Robert James is not on trial.”

So Barrett wandered over to Judge Westinghouse. He didn’t do anything in a hurry. “Judge,” he said. “I’m going to show that what happened that day happened as a result of a misunderstanding. You had at least two, maybe three, angry people who weren’t listening to each other. Now, there’s a context to that misunderstanding, there’s a history to it, and I plan to show what that history is.”

“All right,” she said. “I’ll let this go for now. But it better go somewhere.”

“Yale,” I said.

“When did you move to Detroit?”

“About two years ago.”

“Had you ever been to Detroit before?”

“No.”

“Do you have any connection to the city, any kind of family history here?”

“No.”

“Can you explain to me why you moved here? Was it for the job opportunities?”

“No, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me sir,” he said. “Mr. Barrett is fine. So why did you come?”

And it went on from there. I found him hard to read. For one thing, his accent shifted sometimes, he changed his voice, too, usually to make a joke. When he asked me again why I moved to Detroit, I
told him, “Cheap real estate.” He said, “Come to Gary. We got a lot of empty houses,” and a few people laughed. It doesn’t take much in a courtroom, people are nervous and bored, it’s tension laughter, but still, there was something in the way he said it, like, you and me, buddy, we come from different sides of the tracks. Later I looked up Barrett online (there was a profile of him on legalnews.com), and it’s true, he grew up in Miller Beach, Indiana, and was raised by a single mother. But she was superintendent of the Gary Community School Corporation, and he majored in economics at Notre Dame before going on to Michigan Law. I mean, his background wasn’t that different from mine.

Eventually he said, “Can you describe for this court your first encounter with Nolan Smith?”

So I did my best. I told him some guys were working on my house, and there was a problem with the grid connection, so we had to shut down the street. Anyway, I knocked on people’s doors, I wanted to give them a heads-up. That’s how I met Nolan.

“Did he threaten you on that occasion?”

“Isn’t that a leading question?”

So he smiled at me and said, “I’m cross-examining you, Mr. Marnier. I’m allowed to lead. But I’ll put it this way if you prefer. What was the nature of his response to this information?”

“He wasn’t too happy about it.”

“How did he express this unhappiness?”

“I was with a friend of mine, the guy who was supervising the work. Nolan said that if we went ahead he’d break this guy’s windows with a baseball bat.”

“Did you feel threatened?”

“I don’t know. Nolan talks a big game.”

“Did you go on with the work?”

I thought about this for a minute and said, “Not immediately.”

I couldn’t understand what Barrett was driving at. A lot of what he asked put Nolan in a bad light. But he was also interested
in the time Michael told Clarence that he didn’t like “chocolate people”—and Clarence poured milk in his face. It’s amazing the information these people get access to. Maybe Gloria told him. Every little thing becomes a fact.

“What was Tony’s reaction to this incident?”

“Well, he came in right in the middle, when the kids were fighting on the couch. And Clarence is bigger than Michael. Tony wasn’t best pleased.”

“Did he say anything to you about it?”

“Of course he did. We had to break them up.”

“Well, what did he say?”

“I don’t know. We talked about it.”

“Was he angry with you?”

“Yes.”

“Why was he angry?”

“He thinks I should have stepped in.”

“Did he say anything else? Did he make any kind of request?”

“Yes. He did. Tony said he didn’t want his son hanging out with Nolan’s son anymore.” I looked at Nolan, who was looking at me, so I looked away. “I don’t know why you’re asking me about all this.”

“You let me worry about that. Did you tell Nolan what happened?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t have told Tony, except Tony walked in.”

“Is that the whole reason?”

“I don’t know.” After a minute, I said, “I didn’t want to get Clarence in trouble.”

“Do you think Clarence would have got into trouble?”

“I didn’t want to make Nolan any more pissed off than he already was.”

But we talked about Robert James, too.

“Did he ask you to say something to Nolan about the Meacher case? Did he ask you to intervene?”

“What do you mean, intervene?”

“Were you aware that Nolan was talking to Dwayne Meacher’s family, that he was talking to lawyers and trying to drum up publicity?”

“I guess so.”

“Did Robert James ask you to intervene?”

“I still don’t know what you mean by intervene.”

“Did he want you to stop Nolan from doing the things he was doing?”

“You can’t stop Nolan from doing something if he wants to do it. I told Robert that. But Robert just wanted me to pass on some information.”

“What information was that?”

“About the medical attention Meacher was getting.”

“Did you pass it on?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you or didn’t you?”

“I went to see Nolan about it, but I don’t know if I said what Robert asked me to say. I guess when I saw him it didn’t seem—appropriate.”

“What about this case?”

“What about it?”

“Did Robert James ask you to communicate something to Nolan about this case?”

“No.”

“Did he ever express any opinion to you about it?”

“Of course, he’s a friend of mine. This case is a big deal in my life.”

“I’m glad to hear it. So what did he say?”

“He said that it’s the job of Nolan’s lawyers to make sure it doesn’t go to trial.”

There was a little laughter at that, and Barrett smiled when he said, “And why was that?”

“Because he didn’t think Nolan would win.”

“Did he have any other reasons, do you think?”

But here Larry Oh stepped in and I didn’t have to answer. Barrett kept pushing, though. He asked me about Beatrice, too. He wanted to know if she ever told me to talk to Nolan.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“We had a conversation about Nolan, and maybe she wanted me to say something to him, but it wasn’t clear.”

“But she had, let’s call it, misgivings about the trial, which she expressed to you?”

“Yes.”

“Can you describe for me what those misgivings were?”

Larry Oh stood up again, but the judge overruled him. It gave me a minute to think of an answer, and eventually I said, “This isn’t the kind of publicity they want for what we’re doing here.”

There was a lot more on these lines; it’s all in the transcript. When I was talking to Gloria about my testimony, I had this idea that all I had to do was tell the truth. She thought I needed to do more than that. I needed to edit and shape what I said, for Nolan’s sake. The fact is, I found it hard enough just answering the questions. Answering them honestly, I mean. Partly because there were things I wanted to be dishonest about, but also because the answers seemed so limited, they left so much out. I was too caught up in the whole thing to exercise any control over how I came across. I wasn’t telling the story, Barrett was. I didn’t get to say what I wanted to say.

“Tell me about the guns,” Barrett said. “How many you got?”

“Two. A Remington and a Smith & Wesson.”

“Can you tell me why you bought these weapons?”

Larry Oh tried to step in again. “Objection, Your Honor, to this whole line of questioning. The witness is not on trial here . . .”

But Judge Westinghouse overruled him and I said, “That’s all right. I want to answer this. I want to address this. When I came to Detroit, I didn’t know anything about it. Just the stuff you see on TV, I read the news. People said to me, do you have a gun. I thought I needed one.”

“But after coming here, you got better information, is that right?”

“Something like that.”

“After you came to Detroit you realized you had nothing to worry about. Did you register the guns?”

“Yes.”

“The Smith & Wesson. That’s a police gun, right?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you get one of those?”

“A friend of mine is an officer, and you can pick up used guns pretty . . . cheaply, if you’re in the loop.”

“And you registered that one, too?”

“Yes, he helped me.”

“How did you meet this guy? What’s his name?”

“Mel Hauser. He’s a friend of Tony Carnesecca. He lives on Tony’s street.”

“And when did you meet Mel Hauser? I mean, after you came to Detroit?”

“Towards the beginning.”

“What does that mean? How long after you came to Detroit did you register the second gun?”

“Maybe six months.”

“Six months? Mr. Marnier, these are legal documents. Do you want me to look them up?”

“Maybe eight months.”

“All right, all right.”

It wasn’t just that I felt manipulated, though I did. After a while, you start to lose track of what you actually think—I mean, they begin to persuade you. Barrett said, “There’s a few things I need to get straight in my own head, there are a couple of things I’d like you to clear up for me. When everybody was standing around in your apartment, shouting at each other. You and Tony Carnesecca and Nolan Smith.”

“I wasn’t shouting at anybody.”

“That’s fine. Tony and Nolan. And you said, Nolan was barring the door.”

“I don’t think that’s what I said.”

So Barrett asked the court stenographer to repeat what I said, and eventually she found her place in the transcript and read it out. “And then when Tony wanted to leave Nolan blocked the door.”

“How do you know Tony wanted to leave?” Barrett said.

“I don’t know; you know.”

“Did he try to leave?”

“He couldn’t. Nolan was blocking the door.”

“I guess what I’m asking you is, how did you know Nolan was blocking the door?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’m trying to get a sense of what the difference is, in your mind, between standing in the doorway and blocking the door.”

“I don’t know what the difference is. You’re asking me these questions like I can watch it on instant replay. I haven’t seen it again, I don’t know what happened. I know what it felt like at the time, I know what it seemed like. Nolan’s a big guy, he was angry, you just have to be in the room with him to realize . . . and Tony was pretty pissed off, too. I’m not sure you can blame him. I don’t really know what you’re getting at.”

“I’m not getting at anything, and I’m not blaming anybody. I leave that to the prosecution. I’m just trying to understand what happened here. That’s hard enough. But this is what it looks like to me: you’ve got two guys with a history of antagonizing each other brought together by someone with a history of miscommunicating between them.”

Afterwards, after he was finished with me, Larry Oh pushed himself up, with both hands on the table, and walked over. He looked at me for a minute and said, “Nolan is a friend of yours.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what you feel about what happened?”

“Not really. There’s a whole side of my life that’s being closed off. I used to go out with a good friend of Nolan’s. We all had dinner together, that kind of thing. I like his mother a lot. Will she want to talk to me now? I don’t know.”

“Can you tell me what you did after leaving Mrs. Smith’s house?”

“Well, Tony took his kid away, they drove off, and I went back home to wait for the ambulance.”

“What did you do while you waited?”

“Nothing. I just sat there. I checked his breathing, I checked his pulse. It took me a while to find his pulse, but it seemed okay, and I just sat there with him. It’s like he was sleeping, I just sat there with my hand on his head.”

This is true, it’s what I did, but saying it felt like lying. Larry said, “No more questions,” and the judge dismissed me. So I got up out of my chair. People were looking at me, but I looked straight ahead. I had to walk past Nolan and Gloria and Robert and Beatrice and everybody else. Walter was there, too, I suddenly saw his face. Then I was out of the room, in the hallway; the light was dimmer, it was cooler, too. Sharia met me with a cup of coffee—we could talk out loud. “Put some sugar in it,” she said, handing me a couple of packets. “You can probably use a little sugar.” I wanted to sit in one of the public rows and watch, but she told me I couldn’t—
in case I got called back in. “We don’t want you getting confused by what other people say.”