Key Witness (24 page)

“That is not what he wants to hear,” Wyatt said, stopping him. To Marvin: “You don’t have to prove anything. They have to prove everything. That’s the whole deal. Since they’ve accused you of all of those murders they have to put you at every single one of those murder sites, at the time the murders occurred. It’s a long chain and every link in it has to be solid. And Marvin,” he said in a calm, reassuring voice, “I don’t think they can do that.”

“No fucking way,” Marvin said stoutly. “Sorry, Mama,” he apologized again.

“It’s okay, baby,” she said. “You’re under a lot of stress here.”

“Okay, thank you,” Walcott said to Wyatt. He turned his attention to Marvin again. “Let’s not get sidetracked here, okay? We have a lot of work to do together. You and your lawyer are going to be working hand in hand for the next several months, preparing the best defense you can have. And a lawyer who has never walked down that road before—we can’t let that happen. It would be unfair to you.”

Marvin stared at him. Then he looked at Dancer, then at Wyatt, then at Walcott again. “So what’re you telling me? That he ain’t my lawyer anymore?” he asked, pointing at Wyatt. Then the finger swung to Dancer. “And he is?”

“Yes,” Walcott said. “That is our intention.”

Marvin looked at Wyatt. “Where’s this coming from, man? I thought you were my lawyer.”

“I was,” Wyatt answered. He didn’t want to go to war with Walcott—not in front of Marvin, anyway.

“And he can tell you what to do?” Meaning Walcott.

“He’s the boss.”

“I thought you were a private lawyer. I’m confused,” Marvin said.

“I am a private lawyer, but I’m working for the Public Defender’s office on this case.” Even as Wyatt said the words, they sounded ridiculous. He didn’t work
for
anyone, except his clients.

Marvin looked at Dancer. “How many murder cases you tried, man?”

“I’ve tried over a dozen cases of murder in the first degree,” Dancer answered.

“And how many you won?”

“I’ve won more than my share. You can’t win them all,” Dancer said.

“I don’t give a fuck about them all,” Marvin said. “All’s I care about is me.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen too many of my friends go down because they got lame defenses from the Public Defenders. You guys don’t have what it takes to go up against them big guys.”

Wyatt winced. He shifted in his chair, away from the two lawyers to his left.

“We do as well as anyone in the private sector,” Walcott interjected strongly, stung by Marvin’s accusation.

Marvin glared at him. “Let me ask you a question,” he said.

“All right.”

Watching this bitter repartee, Wyatt felt compassion for Walcott. The man was doing the best he could under difficult circumstances. The sad reality was that there was a basic truth to Marvin’s accusation. Everyone knew the Public Defender’s office in the city, like public agencies all over the country that catered to the underclass, was woefully underfunded—deliberately—so that the prosecution would have a clear edge over them. An equal playing field was not what the public wanted. They wanted the Marvin Whites of this world to go down, and go down hard.

“Ain’t this my decision?” Marvin asked, “I mean I am being tried as an adult here, so I should make an adult’s decision, ain’t that right?”

“Yes,” Walcott conceded, “it is your decision to make. And it is our obligation to help you make the best decision you can. The best decision for you.”

“Well, my decision is, I want him.” He pointed to Wyatt. “I want me a private lawyer who wins big cases. You still my lawyer, man?” he asked Wyatt.

“If that’s what you want.”

“That’s what I want.”

“This is not a good idea,” Dancer interjected forcefully. “The state bar is going to look closely at this, not to mention our opponents in the prosecutor’s office. We could stand accused of malpractice, or worse,” he impressed upon Walcott.

“Hey, man, let me ask you a question,” Marvin interjected.

Dancer turned to him.

“How many Rolexes you own?”

“What?” Dancer asked, confused.

“Rolex watches, man. How many do you own?”

“Watches? Oh, I get it,” Dancer said, catching on. “Rolex watches.”

“Yeah. How many?”

“You don’t get rich in my job,” Dancer said. “But you have other rewards. You get to help people who really need your help. People like you,” he said pointedly.

The sarcasm, blunt as a hammer blow, was wasted on Marvin. “That’s real good—for you,” he said. “Me, I want the lawyer does good enough he can buy a
armful
of Rolexes. That’s the lawyer I want.”

Wyatt leaned back in his chair. It had come down to the watch on his wrist. But as he thought about it, he could see the logic. Winners got the rewards. And that’s what Marvin White wanted, more than experience. A winner.

Wyatt sent Jonnie Rae home in a taxi. Then he cornered Walcott in the lobby before he left the jail. Dancer had already stormed off.

“I didn’t want it this way,” Wyatt said. “I want this case, and I’ll bust my gut, but I wasn’t trying to go around you.”

“Well, for Marvin White’s sake, I hope it works out,” Walcott said. He turned and walked out.

Wyatt ran across the street in the rain to his car. He thought to ask Walcott if he wanted a ride, but he knew the answer would be no. The man’s pride had been hurt; he wouldn’t accept the offer.

As he got into his Jaguar he saw the small figure trudging down the street. The Public Defender’s umbrella was of little use to him—as Wyatt drove away he could see that Walcott was already soaking wet.

D
ARRYL DAVIS REACHED WYATT
on his car phone. It wasn’t an unexpected call. He drove down to the firm, parked in his designated spot, and rode up to his office. After greeting the receptionist, he strode down the long corridors to his office. “Let Darryl Davis know he can come see me as soon as it’s convenient,” he instructed Annetta, his secretary. Then he went into his office, shut the door firmly behind him, and sat down at his desk, swiveling around to look outside at the rainy day, the wet streets far below, the river running fast and brown.

His phone buzzed. “Mr. Davis is here, Mr. Matthews,” Annetta announced.

He opened the door and drew Darryl in, taking his colleague’s arm and practically dragging him into the room. As he closed the door behind him: “No disturbances,” he told Annetta. “I’m not even here.”

“I already heard,” Darryl said, cutting to the chase. They sat cattycorner at his coffee table, facing each other. “Walcott called. He ain’t too happy with you, pilgrim.”

“Good news travels fast. What’d he tell you?”

“That you’re a hog and a prima donna and a jive ass. Nothing I didn’t already know.”

“Seriously, what did he say?” Wyatt shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

“That you’re putting this kid’s life in jeopardy because of your ego.”

Wyatt exploded. “Oh, man, that is such a crock of shit! Marvin White
wants
me to be his lawyer. I offered to step aside. The kid wouldn’t hear of it, nor would his mother. These guys down there”—pointing with a cocked finger at some nebulous place below him—“they’re the ones with the swollen egos.”

Darryl looked at him squarely. “I think everybody needs to park their egos outside the door and start looking at the big picture. Especially you,” he said bluntly.

Wyatt started to respond—something hot, which was how he felt. But he thought better of it in a flash. There was truth to what Darryl was saying. His ego
was
large; he had won the right for it to be with his success over the years. No one would deny that. In this situation, however, while what he had done wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t exactly in key, either. “You’ve got something to say, go ahead and say it,” he told Darryl.

Darryl crossed his long legs and eased back into the deep couch. He stroked his goatee, which he had started wearing in college, an homage to his boyhood idol, Bill Russell. Now when people looked at him they thought of Cornel West, if anyone. Facial hair had helped when he was a young man, making him look older, which for a lawyer normally meant more qualified, more trustworthy; but this particular beard, with its Vandyke upswirl around the lips, was not a standard-issue confidence-inspirer. This kind of beard had a subtle threat to it; it was a beard vaguely of the street.

Darryl knew that his beard made some people uneasy, in a subconscious way. But it also conveyed a certain power, the power of being his own man. And like all powerful men, he had a big ego. However, he had been studying Zen for years, and he knew when his ego was an encumbrance rather than an asset.

“What the PD guys said is true,” Darryl began. “You’re not qualified to handle this,” he said bluntly. “You don’t know from trial law, and you’re going up against a machine that grinds out guilty verdicts by the boxcar load. And you don’t know your client’s world. Lots of white people do—cops, social workers, probation officers, teachers. And regular folks. But you’ve been isolated from all that.”

Wyatt bristled but held his tongue.

Darryl continued. “The one thing in your favor is, because you haven’t been exposed to that life, you don’t have an attitude formed from hundreds of negative experiences. All you know about it is what you see on TV and read in the papers. And that’s always a glorification of the negative, never the positive, because shootings and rapes and drug busts and all that crap sells. Getting by day by day doesn’t. So maybe, in a weird way, you being a naïf will be a good thing for your client.” He paused. “Walcott’s intentions were wrong, but his reasoning was right. This is an extremely important case—”

“You think I don’t know that?” Wyatt interjected.

“—not just for justice in this city,” Darryl continued, “not just for the safety and peace of mind of the people of this city, but for race relations in this city.”

Wyatt whacked the sides of his skull with his knuckles. “Am I missing something? Why is this a racial issue? The victims were black, most of them. If any segment of the community should want to solve this thing, I would think it’s the black community.”

“It isn’t that simple. Lookit here,” Darryl said, leaning forward. “What we’ve got—your client—is a young, big, strong black man with a criminal record. A man who when he walks down a street is automatically suspect, especially in a white neighborhood. Who scares women and children.”

“What does that have to do with my being his lawyer?”

Darryl took his time before answering. “Okay. This is a
racial
trial,” he said, drawing out the word “racial.” “Any time a black man goes on trial, it automatically is a
racial
trial. The black man may be guilty, and his victim might be another black, and the jury might be black, and the judge might be black, but it’s still a
racial
trial. And this case in particular is going to be a racial trial, Wyatt, because this is about taming the black beast. This trial is going to be only partly about whether or not this kid did these killings. What it really is going to be about, deep down underneath, is putting the animal back into the cage—or worse, eliminating him.”

He got up and started pacing around, the way a lawyer does when he’s deep into his jury summation and is starting to pull out the stops. “Here’s the thing. Young black man. Disadvantaged—in some way he is bound to be disadvantaged, it’s a given in our society, kid with his background. Poor, of course, people with money don’t go the public defender route. So here he is, accused of the crime of the century the way the press in this city’s going to play it. And who is defending him? Why, it’s none other than the great white father. The great benevolent white liberal who has given his time, free of charge, to help out this poor black youth.” He stopped. “Do you see what’s wrong with this picture?”

“You’re telling me I can’t defend him because I’m white? That’s outrageous!”

“Yes, but it is the way it is. It isn’t just the white part. A white public defender, some guy with gravy stains on his tie, who went to law school at night, all that stuff, he could do the job. He’d be accepted, because he has his problems, too. Or someone like William Kunstler—God rest his ornery soul—he had the history, he was cool with black folks before it was cool and after it was cool, too. But you—you don’t have any problems, Wyatt. You’re rich, you’re talented, you do your lawyering for corporations like Microsoft and AT&T. The jury isn’t going to be able to relate to you, man. They’re going to be suspicious of you from the minute you walk in that courtroom until the minute you walk out of it.”

“But that’s racist,” Wyatt protested. “That’s reverse racism.”

“Yes, well, it is, but it is. You think Robert Shapiro would have got O.J. off? If he had done the exact same things, word for word, that Johnnie Cochran did? I don’t think so. It was a brother doing it that pulled that off.”

“O.J. had white lawyers.”

“A Jew from Brooklyn. One step up from a black. But putting that all aside—those men were professional criminal-defense trial lawyers. They had all done this before. Lee Bailey’s probably been involved in over a hundred murder trials. You have never, not ever, tried this type of a criminal case, let alone a capital crime.”

Wyatt thought about that for a moment before he answered. “Well, that’s true,” he admitted. “But you know what? I don’t care. I’m not one to brag on myself, but I am one terrific lawyer. And there are a hundred and fifty members of this firm who know that, including you.”

“You’ve got no argument there,” Darryl agreed. He sat down next to Wyatt. “Maybe you should take this out of the Public Defender’s office altogether,” he said. “Run it out of my division. You’d have a lot more support that way, and you’d still be doing what you want to do.”

Wyatt cracked his knuckles backward. “Believe me, I thought about that. A lot. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Walcott’s already had to eat crow, big-time. Taking the case out of his office would be a brutal insult. But that’s not the real reason.” Now it was his turn to get up and start pacing. “If I bring this case in here, I’ll have every tool I’ll need. Your guys will do the legwork, and I’ll be left to run the show. Which would be fine normally—I’ve been on that track for twenty years now. But that’s not what I want to do, in fact it’s the opposite of what I want to do. I want to do the work, as much of it as I possibly can. I mean hitting the bricks, finding and interviewing the witnesses, formulating the philosophy of the case, all of it. That’s as important to me as the results. That’s why I left. You know what?” he continued, really seeing what it was that was troubling him about that idea. “If I leave the Public Defender’s office with this case, then I’ve lost. They’ll be right. I’ll be this prima donna who’s pulling rank. I don’t want that. I want to win this because
I
can do it, not because of my surroundings. Because
I’m
better.”