Guilty as Sin (15 page)

JAYWALKER: And on the other hand?

BARNETT: I don't know. Prison is a tough place, ten times tougher than your worst imagination of it. I was a dead man…I really was. When no one else would reach out and help me, one man did. He saved my life. So did I owe him a debt? Yes. Did that mean I had to repay it when he called on me to? I'm not sure. I held out as long as I could, and then I said yes.

JAYWALKER: And if you had to do it all over again, would you still say yes?

BARNETT: I honestly can't say. A debt is a debt, after all. So I might. I hope not, but I might.

By asking his questions softly, almost gently, Jaywalker had elicited responses from his client that were just as soft, just as gentle.
Thoughtful,
he hoped, thoughtful and honest. Anyone can say, “No way. I've learned my lesson. I'd never do that again.” It takes some real soul-searching to admit that, in spite of the horrendous price you've paid for doing something, you're not sure how you'd react if asked to do it all over again.

For better or for worse, the quiet portion of Alonzo Barnett's testimony was over. Jaywalker stepped back a
few paces and, in a matter-of-fact tone, asked his client if after saying yes, he'd agreed to meet Hightower's man and bring him to someone he knew for the purpose of buying heroin. Yes, said Barnett, he'd done that. Only the guy had refused to meet either Hightower or his man. He said he'd deal only through Barnett, who he'd known for years. So three times Barnett had taken money from the man he now knew to be Agent Trevor St. James. Three times he'd exchanged it for heroin, each time in increasing amounts. And three times it had been his intention to deliver the heroin to St. James. Twice he'd succeeded; on the third occasion he'd been arrested before he'd made it back to the agent's car.

Just like they'd said.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was heroin each time?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to possess heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to sell heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: But you did those things nonetheless?

BARNETT: Yes, I did. I'm ashamed to say so. But yes, I did.

Jaywalker looked up at the clock, saw it was nearly five. He had a few minor questions left on his notepad, but Alonzo Barnett's last answer had been a good one, and it seemed an okay place to leave things. Miki Shaughnessey would have the whole night to work on her cross-examination, of course, but there was nothing Jaywalker could do about that.

“Thank you,” he said, and sat down.

One-Eyed Jack

T
he typical defense lawyer will allow himself the luxury of relaxing just a bit following a lengthy direct examination of his final witness. Next up is the prosecutor, after all, who conducts cross-examination while the defense lawyer gets to sit and relax. But relaxing simply wasn't part of Jaywalker's vocabulary when he was on trial.

On trial.

A friend, a banking lawyer, had once accused Jaywalker of misusing the phrase. “It's the
defendant
who's on trial,” she'd said. “Not
you.
”

She'd obviously never tried a case. Certainly not a criminal case.

So Jaywalker didn't even think about taking the evening off. Time off was something he treated himself to
after
a trial, not during it, and even then, only if he'd won. Until the moment he heard the verdict delivered, there was simply too much to do. And if he lost, there would be still more. It was one of the reasons he fought so hard to win, so it would be over. He could still feel the sting of learning he'd flunked the bar exam the first time he'd taken it. Not because he felt stupid or because his pride was hurt. Jaywalker and pride had barely been
on speaking terms for as long as he could remember. No, it was the realization that he'd have to go through it all over again, that it wasn't
over.

Which was why he spent what was left of Monday, as well as the first hour or two of Tuesday, preparing his redirect examination of Alonzo Barnett. Even though he hadn't yet heard a word of Miki Shaughnessey's cross, Jaywalker knew what she'd ask. Despite the fact that Jaywalker had preemptively gone into Barnett's criminal record three times now—during jury selection, in his opening statement and now on direct examination—no young, inexperienced prosecutor was going to be able to avoid the temptation of covering the same ground on cross. After that, she'd try to challenge Barnett's notion that owing a debt to another man constituted a moral justification to sell heroin, or a legal defense to having done so. She'd pin him down on the amounts involved, which had gradually grown from small to significant to substantial. She'd bring out that as a former addict himself, Barnett had to have been aware of the consequences of his actions. And she'd use that same “former addict” label to accuse him of being that worst of all combinations: a seller without the excuse of being a user needing to support his own habit. She'd pointedly ask him about the money he'd made or hoped to make from the sales. She'd want to know why he hadn't considered his debt to Hightower paid off after the first sale, or at least the second. She'd suggest through her questions that, had Barnett not been arrested when he was, there might have been a fourth sale, then a fifth, and that the sales might still be going on to this day. Then, mostly because Jaywalker hadn't—in fact
especially
because Jaywalker hadn't—she would go into the details of how the three transactions had gone down, in order to show how accurate and honest
her own witnesses had been in describing them. Finally, she'd try to put Barnett on the hot seat by asking him about his source, the person he'd gotten the drugs from on each occasion. It was a question no dealer ever wanted to answer, whether out of fear, loyalty or a combination of both. And it was a subject Jaywalker had purposefully avoided going into on direct.

In other words, by asking certain questions on direct and refraining from asking certain others, Jaywalker was able to not only predict what his adversary would ask on cross but to consciously and purposefully
dictate
her questions. So even as he was able to prepare his witness—in this case his client—to answer her questions, he could also prepare himself for his own next round of questions on his redirect examination.

But doing that was by no means all that Jaywalker did that Monday night into Tuesday morning. He considered it a distinct possibility that once they'd finished with Barnett's testimony and the defense had rested, Shaughnessey would begin calling rebuttal witnesses. That, too, was something that inexperienced prosecutors tended to do. She'd recall agents and detectives—or call new ones—in an attempt to assure the jurors that Hightower hadn't been working as an informer, and that the dangers involved in following Barnett too closely had been real ones. So Jaywalker prepared for those rebuttal witnesses, too, even though at this point they existed only in his imagination.

And when he'd finished working on his redirect examination of Barnett and his cross-examination of the imaginary rebuttal witnesses, he worked on his summation. Though the truth is, he'd begun working on it the day he'd met Alonzo Barnett and had been working on it ever since.

It certainly wasn't easy, being Jaywalker. But it was the price he paid for being an obsessive-compulsive whose obsession forced him to do everything he possibly could in each case he tried, and whose compulsion drove him to avoid losing at any cost.

He finally climbed into bed around two in the morning, kissing his wife's neck gently, so as not to wake her. Then he rolled over in the dark and blindly ran his hand along the floor by his side of the bed, until he felt the pen and notepad that were there, as they always were.

Just in case.

 

Miki Shaughnessey didn't disappoint Jaywalker. She cross-examined on each of the areas he'd expected her to, though not in the order he would have bet on. Okay, so maybe he wasn't quite Nostradamus yet. But by anticipating what she'd do, Jaywalker had been able to take a smart defendant with a nice manner of speaking and prepare him for just about every question that would come his way. Now, as he sat and listened to things play out, Jaywalker wondered if the combination of his preparation and his client's receptiveness would be enough to offset what he was up against: the fact that no matter how well Barnett came off as a witness, he was going to be forced to admit that he'd knowingly and repeatedly sold large amounts of heroin for profit when he, of all people, should have known better.

It didn't take too long to find out.

SHAUGHNESSEY: If I understand what you said yesterday, Mr. Barnett, you sold heroin to Agent St. James only because you felt you owed some kind of a debt to Clarence Hightower. Is that correct?

BARNETT: Yes, except that I wouldn't call it “some kind of a debt.” It was a very specific debt. The man saved my life.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And you sold heroin to repay him.

BARNETT: That's what it came to. I'd hoped to get off the hook by simply introducing Mr. Hightower to someone he could buy from. But it didn't work out that way. So yes, it ended up with me getting the heroin for his friend, who turned out to be a federal agent.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you make any money in the process of repaying this debt?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How much?

BARNETT: I'd have to break it down for you.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Please do.

BARNETT: The first time I was given one hundred dollars and spent eighty of it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you made twenty dollars?

BARNETT: No, I gave the twenty dollars to Mr. Hightower.

SHAUGHNESSEY: All of it?

BARNETT: All of it. I wanted no part of it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the second time?

BARNETT: The second time I was given fifteen hundred dollars and spent twelve hundred. Of the three hundred left over, I gave Mr. Hightower two hundred, and kept one hundred.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Suddenly you
did
want part of it?

BARNETT: I'm human. I was behind in my rent, and I figured I'd earned it. It was wrong of me to keep it, but I did. I'm not going to lie about it.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the third time?

BARNETT: The third time I was given five thousand dollars and spent four thousand five hundred.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you would have made five hundred on that occasion alone, had you not been arrested. Correct?

BARNETT: No, that's not correct.

SHAUGHNESSEY: No?

BARNETT: No. It wasn't just a coincidence that Mr. Hightower showed up right after I was arrested. He was there to hit me up for some of the five hundred dollars.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Was your rent paid up by that time?

BARNETT: Yes, it was.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you would have given him the whole five hundred. Right?

BARNETT: No, ma'am. I'd be lying to you if I said that. I was going to keep one hundred of it again, maybe even two hundred. I hadn't decided which. I was going to keep it to buy something nice for my daughters. They were in foster care at the time, and were on a pretty tight budget. No new clothes, no new books or school supplies. Nothing but bare essentials. So the way I figured it, it was better spent on them than going into Mr. Hightower's veins.

Bravo,
thought Jaywalker. He and Barnett had worked hard trying to come up with zingers like that, hoping there'd be opportunities to use them. Score one for the bad guys.

SHAUGHNESSEY: You knew Mr. Hightower was using?

BARNETT: He told me he was. It was one of the things he told me, trying to convince me to help him.

SHAUGHNESSEY: So you helped him get money to feed his drug habit. You
enabled
him.

BARNETT: Actually, I was still refusing to help him at that point. It was only when he reminded me about the debt that I agreed to help him.

SHAUGHNESSEY: I see. You yourself weren't using drugs at that point, were you?

Here it comes, thought Jaywalker.
You're a seller, not a user.

BARNETT: No, ma'am, I wasn't.

SHAUGHNESSEY: You had no habit of your own to support, did you?

BARNETT: No, ma'am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Yet you thought it was okay to sell heroin so others could use it?

BARNETT: I never thought it was okay, not even back when I used to sell to support my own habit. I always knew it was wrong.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And being a member of the Muslim religion, you knew it was wrong to use alcohol or illegal drugs. Did it ever occur to you that it might also be wrong to
sell
illegal drugs?

Good question, thought Jaywalker, and one he hadn't seen coming. He bit down on the inside of his mouth, hoping that Barnett wouldn't try to split hairs and insist that while using was prohibited by the Koran, selling wasn't covered.

BARNETT: Please forgive me, ma'am, but the religion is called Islam. One who practices it is a Muslim. And yes, it was wrong of me, as a practicing Muslim, to do what I did, and I knew that. I am by no means perfect, and I have never claimed to be. I've made more than
my share of mistakes in my life, and this was certainly one of them. For a lot of reasons, not just religious.

Not bad for an ad lib.

Looking to regroup, Shaughnessey sought a safe place and apparently figured a good bet could be found in Alonzo Barnett's criminal record. But she hadn't counted on the weeks of drilling Jaywalker and his client had put in on just that subject. For the next half hour, she tried to catch Barnett denying his guilt of some twenty-year-old arrest or hedging about some conviction from a decade ago. But she got nowhere. Alonzo Barnett was that rare defendant who truly understood, actually
got
it, that his record was his record, and as bad as it was, he could only make it worse by attempting to minimize it.

He was, in other words, a Jaywalker defendant.

Finally Shaughnessey turned her attention to the one area Jaywalker expected his client to have real difficulty with. She asked him who'd sold him the drugs.

Not that Jaywalker hadn't anticipated the question; he had. Still, asking a man to name and identify his drug connection is pretty much the same as asking him to become a snitch. And the problem is only heightened when the man being asked has done time and spent years living under a code that reduces snitches to the lowest of the low. In prison you have your general population, comprised of inmates who are free to mingle with each other.
Free to mingle
is something of a misnomer in this case, of course, and is generally limited to mealtimes and yard time, with an extra hour thrown in now and then.

Then you have younger inmates, those below twenty-one or maybe nineteen, who are almost always separately housed for a variety of reasons, including preventing them from expanding their knowledge as apprentices of
hardened criminals. After them come homosexuals—prison administrators will no doubt get around to adopting the word
gay
eventually, but seem in no particular rush to do so—psychiatric cases, the very old, the very weak, sex offenders, and anyone else who might be considered a likely target of violence. A corrupt cop or public official, say, or a transgendered individual. And finally, way down at the bottom of the barrel where the scum settles, the snitches.

Alonzo Barnett had no interest in being labeled a snitch, certainly not while he was in jail, and not now, when the overwhelming odds were that he'd soon be shipped back to prison. He'd told Jaywalker that, and Jaywalker hadn't needed to ask him why. His suggestion to Barnett had been to make up a name and an apartment number on the twelfth floor of 345 West 127th Street, where Investigator Lance Bucknell claimed he'd gone during the third transaction. After all, according to Barnett, Bucknell had been lying; the apartment Barnett had actually gone to was on the eighth floor. In either event, almost two years had passed, and even were Barnett to now pinpoint a particular apartment, no judge in his right mind was going to sign a search warrant on information that stale. Which narrowed it down to the handful of judges who would.

Barnett had initially balked at the suggestion. He didn't like the idea of supplying a name and identifying an apartment, even if the name was fictitious and the apartment wasn't the one he'd gone to. But over the weeks they'd talked about it, he'd been forced to agree that if asked, he had to come up with something; he couldn't refuse to answer the question. There was the doctor-patient privilege, the priest-penitent privilege, the husband-wife
privilege, and lately the president-advisor privilege. But no one had gone so far as to argue the existence of a dealer-supplier privilege. Not even Jaywalker.