‘I went out to dinner with my wife, Pat, to Lulu’s. After we finished, she took her car back home. She’d been downtown earlier in the day and I decided to pick up some papers that I’d left at my office so I could review them over the weekend. My office is at the federal courthouse on Seventh Street, which happens to abut the alley where Sal Russo had his apartment.

‘Mr Russo and I had been friends for many years and I’d made it a habit to buy fish from the back of his truck on Fridays, put it in a cooler in the trunk of my car, take it home for the weekend. On this Friday, Sal hadn’t shown up so I thought I’d go check and see if he was all right. I knew he’d been sick. I was in the neighborhood anyway.’

‘And what did you do then?’ Soma prodded.

The heavy brow clouded. Giotti didn’t appreciate getting prompted. He knew what he had to say and he’d get to it. The scowl faded slowly as he went on. ‘I walked up and knocked on his door. There was a light on inside, but no one answered, so I tried the doorknob and it opened and I saw him – Sal – lying on the floor in his living room.’

‘He was lying on the floor?’ Soma asked.

Giotti’s eyes narrowed. Soma wasn’t scoring points with the judge. ‘I said that, didn’t I?’

Trying to recover, Soma stammered. ‘Yes, you did. I’m sorry, Your Honor. So Sal Russo was lying on the floor? What did you do next?’

Giotti had delivered his message to Soma. Hardy wasn’t about to object. The judge went on without interruption for another couple of minutes. He’d called 911, waited for the paramedics and the police – first two uniformed officers and then the inspectors – noticed the DNR sticker on the table, the syringe and vial, the bottle of whiskey. He didn’t touch anything; he knew the drill. So he just waited, then answered the police questions and went home.

Though he’d guessed wrong on the timing, Hardy had assumed that Soma would call Giotti as a witness at some point, not because of any real strategic reason but simply because it was natural that the person who first came upon the body would be a necessary step in drawing the picture of what had happened. Giotti would fill in that blank.

But that was not Soma’s only rationale. After asking Giotti one or two innocuous questions – a chair had been knocked over in the kitchen; the syringe and empty vial were on the low coffee table – he got to some meat.

‘Your Honor, you’ve testified that Sal Russo was lying on the floor, is that right?’

‘Yes.’

‘Was there a chair or something nearby he could have been sitting on?’

Giotti closed his eyes, visualizing. ‘His chair. He had an old recliner he liked. He was on the floor in front of that.’

‘In other words, between the recliner and the coffee table?’

‘Yes.’

Soma went back to his table, grabbed a photograph passed to him by Drysdale, had it entered as People’s Exhibit One, and asked Giotti if the picture captured the reality he’d witnessed upon entered the apartment.

‘That’s the way it looked,’ he agreed. ‘Sal was on the floor, on his side, just like here.’

The image was clear and damaging, its message undeniable.

If something benign had happened, wouldn’t Sal have been sitting in his favorite recliner, at least? Wouldn’t his deliverer have tried to make him comfortable in his last moments? Instead, the victim lay on his side, in a hump on the floor. As though he’d been poleaxed.

Soma left the jury to ponder all of these things. He’d gotten what he wanted, so he thanked the judge and sat down.

Hardy felt that he and the federal judge were basically on the same side, although Giotti was, technically, a witness for the prosecution. His testimony in a fair world – ha! – should have come a little later in the trial, and Hardy had been almost looking forward to it; he thought he’d be able to put some points on the board. But first, now, he’d have to undo some of Soma’s damage.

‘Judge Giotti,’ he began, ‘you were good friends with Sal Russo, weren’t you?’

A nod, genial. ‘I’d known him for years, although we didn’t socialize much anymore. We were close acquaintances.’

‘And as his close acquaintance, did you see him often?’

Giotti considered this. ‘As I said, almost every Friday I’d pick up some fish when I wasn’t traveling. Once or twice I’d gone up to his apartment and had a drink with him. End of the day, end of the week.’

‘On your visits to Sal’s apartment for drinks, did he sit in his recliner?’

‘Sure. Yes.’ Then Giotti threw him a bone. ‘Sometimes.’

‘But not always?’

‘No.’

‘Where did he sit other times?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma spoke quietly, reluctant to intrude upon Giotti’s testimony. ‘This is irrelevant.’

But Salter didn’t think so. ‘Overruled.’

Hardy repeated his question about where Sal sat. ‘He’d sit anywhere,’ Giotti said. ‘Sal was a free spirit. He’d sit on the coffee table, on the recliner, the couch, the floor. He’d move around.’

‘So he could have been sitting on the floor when he received this injection and-’

‘Objection!’ This was Drysdale, citing speculation, and this time Salter sustained him.

Hardy turned back to his table, and Freeman was surreptitiously motioning him over, so he pretended he was getting a drink of water. ‘What?’

Armed with Freeman’s quick advice and the photograph, he returned to the witness. ‘Judge Giotti,’ he said, ‘looking here at People’s One, is the reclining chair in a reclining position?’

Freeman, of course, had spotted that it wasn’t. In the picture it appeared to be straight up, and Giotti said as much. ‘Now, to the best of your recollection, was it like this when you entered the room?’

Giotti closed his eyes again briefly. ‘I’d say yes. I don’t remember it being down. I would have had to push it up to walk around it, and I didn’t do that.’

This was good enough and Hardy would take it. He could later argue that Sal’s body had simply either fallen out of its chair or, better, that he’d been seated on the floor when the injection was given. In all, he was heartened. Giotti had helped him. The jury would at least have some possible alternatives to consider. He considered it was time to move to the other point he’d originally intended to bring up.

‘Judge Giotti, you’ve testified that you were aware that Sal was sick. Did you know he had Alzheimer’s disease?’

‘Not for sure, no.’

‘Did you know he had cancer?’

‘Your Honor!’ Soma was behind Hardy, objecting, his voice developing its telltale shrillness. ‘I fail to see relevance.’

And of course, in a legal sense, there wasn’t much. But Hardy felt he had to get some human feeling for Sal’s pain into the proceedings. He had a sense Giotti would cooperate.

First, though, Salter had to be gotten around. And the trial judge seemed to agree with Soma; Hardy’s questions were irrelevant and unnecessary. But Giotti’s authority cut both ways in the courtroom, and when he looked up at Salter and told him he didn’t mind answering – though this was beside the point – Salter acquiesced and overruled the objection.

Giotti turned back to Hardy. ‘The headaches were evidently pretty horrible. Sal told me’ – now Giotti looked over to the jury, speaking to them – ‘half kidding, but you knew he meant it, that if I didn’t see him for a few days, I should check his apartment. He might be dead. If he didn’t die from the pain, he might just kill himself.’

‘And is that why you did just that on May ninth? Stop by his apartment?’

‘Essentially, yes. I think he’d planted that seed.’

Hardy nodded, pleased that he’d gotten it in. ‘He knew he was going to die soon, is that what you’re saying?’

Drysdale: ‘Objection, speculation.’

‘Sustained.’

Hardy: ‘I’ll rephrase, Your Honor. Judge Giotti, did Sal Russo ever seriously tell you he thought he was near death?’

Drysdale again: ‘Objection.’