Free Dead Man's Rule by Rick Acker Page B

the gangs taking orders from Grozny?”
    “Not that I know of. Why?”
    “My boy Kolya heard that a gang based near Grozny might be trying to put together something here. Not Obshina. Someone else. He heard they were buying a brewery in the western suburbs, but that doesn’t make any sense, because they’re Muslims.”
    “Think it might be a cover for a meth lab?”
    She nodded. “That’s what scares me. If they try to push into the drug market in an organized way, there could be a war. Maybe they’re attacking people now to build a reputation for the future.”
    “If I hear anything that I can tell you, I will,” he assured her.
    “You’re such a good boy,” she said with an affectionate smile. They had learned what they needed from each other and the conversation turned to other topics, but a lingering worry remained in the back of Sergei’s mind. Criminals from the former Soviet Union, particularly Obshina and other Chechen gangs, tended to be brutal, smart, well educated, and highly effective when organized. In Russia they had corrupted most major businesses and all levels of government so badly that they had become a serious threat to the country’s stability. For some reason, ex-Soviet criminals in America almost never organized in gangs of more than half a dozen, which made them much less effective. It would be bad if that changed. Very bad.

    “So, Mr. Ivanovsky, you say that you paid $5,000 in cash to Mr. Zinoviev for something you had never seen?” said Janet Anderson, a junior partner working with Anthony Simeon on the Ivanovsky case.
    Ben took a sip of coffee and awaited his client’s response with mild interest. Dr. Ivanovsky’s deposition had been going on now for two and a half hours, and he was doing well. Unlike many witnesses, he was doing exactly what Ben had told him to the evening before: listening carefully to Anderson’s questions, pausing before each answer to give Ben a chance to object if necessary, and answering the questions directly but without volunteering extra information, even if it were damaging to the other side—which would merely alert them to problems in their case. Also, Ben and Dr. Ivanovsky had practiced most of the questions that the opposing attorney had asked so far, which helped.
    “Yes.”
    “And the reason you weren’t able to see it is that American Union Bank was closed, correct?”
    “Objection, asked and answered,” said Ben, who was a little annoyed that the other attorney was replowing old ground. “Just because the rules give you three hours doesn’t mean you have to use it all. If you don’t have any new questions, let’s call it a day.”
    Anderson ignored Ben. “You can answer,” she said to Dr. Ivanovsky, which was true. If Ben didn’t instruct him not to answer (which he couldn’t do simply on the ground that Anderson was repeating herself), he had to.
    “Yes,” he said again.
    “Was American Union the only bank closed at that time?”
    “No.”
    “Was your bank closed?”
    “Yes.”
    Ben could see the concealed eagerness in her face and realized that she was about to spring her trap. This was a common tactic in depositions—asking hours of relatively harmless questions to tire the witness and get him off his guard, then trying to ambush him near the end. “You had to pay Mr. Zinoviev within two hours or the deal was off, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “But if your bank was closed, how were you able to get the money?”
    “ATM.”
    Her eyes gleamed. “But ATMs have withdrawal limits, don’t they?”
    “Yes. I had to go to many ATMs. And then they would not give me more and I still did not have enough, so I must sell some things to secondhand stores and pawnshops. There are many receipts, which I gave to my lawyer.”
    “You’ll find them at Bates numbers IVA000142 to 163, counsel,” said Ben, referring to the stamped numbers on the documents they had produced the day before.
    There was a pause while she riffled through the