Lassiter 06 - Fool Me Twice (36 page)

“
Yes, it is,” the judge
said, “but when it was repeated to the defendant by this witness,
who is available for cross-examination, and the defendant did not
deny making the statement, it becomes an exception to the hearsay
rule as an adoptive admission. Bring in the jury.”

I sunk lower in my chair, and Patterson
slowly returned to the defense table. It was the first time I’d
ever seen his shoulders slump in a courtroom. Usually, it’s the
lawyer who gives pep talks to the client, but just now Patterson
was the one who needed cheering up. We had made a big deal out of
trying to keep my statement out of evidence, and the jury knew it.
We had lost, so my twelve peers would be keenly interested in what
we didn’t want them to hear.

The judge turned to the stenographer, a
young woman in a pantsuit and cowboy boots. “Please read back Mr.
McBain’s last question.”

The stenographer riffled through her
accordion stacks of paper and read “‘Are you aware of any other
verbal threats made by the defendant?’

Socolow nodded. “About two weeks before the
conversation I earlier related, he had a conversation with Dr.
Charles Riggs, retired coroner. I wasn’t there, but Dr. Riggs
repeated it to me, saying he was worried about Jake, who was acting
strangely. I asked what he meant, and he answered that Jake was
enraged with Mr. Cimarron and had threatened to tear his heart
out.”

“
Tear his heart out,”
McBain echoed, shaking his head, sadly. “Were those his exact
words?”

“
I don’t know if they were
Mr. Lassiter’s exact words, but they were Dr. Riggs’s words,
verbatim.”

“
Did you repeat Dr. Riggs’s
statement to the defendant?”

“
Yes, in the same
conversation I spoke about earlier.”

“
The one in which the
defendant threatened to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps?” McBain
asked, in case the jurors had forgotten.

“
Yes.”

“
And did the defendant deny
threatening to tear out Mr. Cimarron’s heart?”

“
No, he did
not.”

“
Did he say he was only
joking?”

“
No, he did
not.”

“
What did he
say?”

“
First, he said something
about once punching out a tight end for the Jets and drawing a
penalty. Then he said he hated Mr. Cimarron.”

“
I see. So in the course of
one conversation, the defendant threatened to shoot Mr. Cimarron in
the kneecaps, and when reminded of his earlier threat regarding
tearing Mr. Cimarron’s heart out, he concluded by saying he hated
the man.”

“
Yes, that’s just about
it.”

“
And what did you say to
him?”

“
I told him I wanted him to
come into the office after the grand jury—”

“
Objection!” Patterson
pounded the table so hard, it woke up the bailiff. “Your Honor,
this is the subject of our motion
in
limine.”

The judge called the lawyers to the bench
for a sidebar conference. He had already indicated he would
prohibit any mention of the indictment against me in Miami for Kyle
Hornback’s murder. I couldn’t hear the whispers at the side of the
bench, but in a moment the two lawyers, the stenographer, and the
judge were back to business.

“
Mr. Socolow,” McBain said,
“without telling us the surrounding circumstances, did you give Mr.
Lassiter any advice regarding Mr. Cimarron?”

“
Yes. I suppose you’d call
it advice. I told him to stay away from Mr. Cimarron.”

“
Anything else?”

“
I advised him not to leave
the state because of certain…ah…potential court proceedings in
Miami.”

“
Did he follow your
advice?”

“
Apparently
not.”

“
Thank you, Mr. Socolow.
Your witness.”

H. T. Patterson was in a bind. If he brought
out the mutual respect Socolow and I shared, it would help polish
my tarnished image. It would also show the jury that Socolow, this
good, decent state attorney, had concluded his old buddy had sunk
so low into depravity he would now testify against him.

Patterson stood at the lectern a respectful
distance from the witness stand.

“
Now, Mr. Socolow, you
never thought Mr. Lassiter intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the
kneecaps, did you?”

“
No, sir.”

“
Or tear his heart
out?”

“
No, sir.”

“
We all say things in the
heat of passion that we don’t mean?”

“
Yes, sir.”

“
Mr. Lassiter was upset at
the time of these statements?”

“
He seemed to
be.”

“
Was he, in fact,
recuperating from injuries inflicted by Mr. Cimarron?”

“
Yes, he was.”

“
A fight in which Mr.
Cimarron was the aggressor?”

“
That was Mr. Lassiter’s
position. It was not shared by Mr. Cimarron.”

“
And Ms.
Baroso?”

“
Mr. Lassiter wanted her to
press charges against Mr. Cimarron. She declined. Frankly, I don’t
know who did what that night.”

“
But Mr. Lassiter suffered
serious injuries?”

“
I believe he broke his
hand and had a number of bruises and scrapes, that sort of
thing.”

“
You’ve known Jake Lassiter
a long time. Have you ever known him to provoke
violence?”

Socolow wrinkled his high forehead. He
didn’t want to answer. “I’m not sure what you mean. Once, in a
trial, he provoked a witness into a fistfight, but it was a ploy, a
strategy to show the violent streak of the witness.”

“
They must do things
differently down in Miami,” the judge said, and a couple of the
jurors smirked.

H. T. Patterson had heard all he wanted on
that subject and sat down. “Nothing further.”

“
Redirect?” the judge
asked.

McBain stood and buttoned his suit coat.
“Are you saying, Mr. Socolow, that you didn’t take Mr. Lassiter’s
threats seriously?”

“
No, sir.”

“
What are you
saying?”

“
I didn’t take them
literally. I didn’t think he intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the
kneecaps or tear his heart out.”

“
I suppose not,” McBain
said, already easing back into his chair. “I suppose he just
intended to shoot a nail through the man’s brain.”

“
Objection,” Patterson
yelped.

“
Withdrawn,” McBain said,
sitting down.

The judge called for the noon recess, and
not a moment too soon. Socolow walked by my table, clasped me on
the shoulder, and left without a word. The jurors filed out, then
the judge, and then the spectators. The prosecutor and his
assistants hitched up their pants and walked out, too.

Patterson and I were alone.

“
H.T., you look a tad
peaked.”

“
What?”

“
You look pale.”

“
That’s impossible, I
assure you.”

“
Okay, then you look
stressed out. Hey, it’s still the top of the first inning. We
haven’t been to bat yet.”

He forced a smile, but his eyes were glazed
over and distant.

“
H.T., I think you need to
drink some lunch.”

“
Demon rum won’t cure what
ails me.”

“
Counselor, you’re a little
rattled, that’s all.”

He looked at me with sorrow in his eyes.
“It’s hell to represent a friend, Jake. It’s so much easier to take
a fat fee from a stranger and give it your best shot. You win, you
lose, you go on. Hell, we’re not paid to win, right, just to force
the state to prove its case. But now, with you, I care. I want to
win, but I don’t know how. They’ve got us outflanked on
self-defense, and there’s no way to pin this on Jo Jo or anyone
else. I lie awake at night trying to come up with theories and I
don’t have any. Oh, I can cross-examine until the snow melts, but
once the state rests, we’ve got to put on a case, and there isn’t a
thought in my head.”

“
Okay, I get it. We need to
brainstorm. Just tell me what can I do to help?”

His smile held more sadness than joy. “Fetch
me my brown trousers, Fritz.”

***

Sergeant Kimberly Crawford was assigned to
something called the Spousal Abuse Unit. She took the third
statement of the night from Josefina Baroso, driving her back to
the station after Sheriff s Deputy Clayton Dobson and Detective
Bernie Racklin did their work. Defense lawyers love to get
prosecution witnesses on the record as many times as possible to
ferret out contradictions. We had copies of all three statements,
and there wasn’t an inconsistency in the bunch.

Sergeant Crawford took photos of bruises on
Jo Jo’s thighs and ribs, and a shot of the face revealed a black
eye. Jo Jo looked appropriately distraught, helpless,
victimized.

Yes, Ms. Baroso was crying and moaning.

No, not about her injuries. Poor Simmy is
dead. Poor Simmy is dead. That’s what she kept repeating, rocking
back and forth in a chair down in the station, right here in the
basement of the courthouse.

The photos were passed out to the jurors,
who appeared more upset with Josefina’s black eye than Cimarron’s
gray matter splattered in the straw.

The woman cop was on and off the stand in
fifteen minutes, and the judge asked the prosecutor to call his
next witness. I thought McBain looked a little too smug when he
sang out, “The state calls Josefina Baroso.”

The bailiff hustled into the hallway and
called her name. The jurors had been waiting for this. McBain was
no dummy. Most prosecutors would have started their case with her.
She could tell the story chronologically, and that always makes it
easier for the jury. You also want to create a good first
impression, and Jo Jo could surely do that. But if you’re clever
and subtle, it’s a neat trick to save your star witness. Build the
jurors’ interest with hints and clues and let them wonder. Who is
this woman who launched a thousand fists? What does she look like?
Is she worth dying for?

Even before I saw her, I knew. “Ten to one,
she’s wearing black,” I whispered to Patterson. In her own cases,
Jo Jo dressed her witnesses for maximum sympathy. Pluck the jurors’
heartstrings with a grieving widow and all the kids. When her
witnesses gathered for lunch in the Justice Building cafeteria, it
looked like an Italian funeral.

The heavy door swung open, and Josefina
Jovita Baroso walked into the courtroom. She wore a flared black
wool dress with gold buttons from its high neck to its hem, which
stopped halfway down her black, knee-high crushed leather boots.
The dress concealed her womanly curves and, combined with the
sophisticated look of hair pulled straight back and a light dusting
of makeup and lip gloss, spoke volumes of who she was, or rather,
who she appeared to be. Her dark eyes were bright and intelligent
and avoided mine as she strode on long legs to the witness stand.
She nodded to the jurors, looked the clerk in the eye as she took
the oath, smoothed her dress, and sat down.

I studied her. Now, here was a total woman.
Here was a woman who had been assaulted, who had witnessed a savage
crime, and who was ready to do what had to be done to right those
wrongs. She was attractive without being seductive. She was
purposeful without being pugnacious. She was here, not because she
thirsted for vengeance, but because she sought justice. She was, in
short, the perfect witness, which was precisely the image she had
worked so hard to create.

Jo Jo recited her name, her address, and her
profession.

“
So you have the same job I
have?” McBain asked.

“
Yes,” she said.

Bonding with the witness, telling the jury:
If you like me, you’ll like her.

McBain had her run through the life and
times of Jo Jo Baroso, beginning with her family fleeing Castro’s
Communist island when she was still an infant. Her father lost
everything in Cuba and never adjusted to life in the States. He
turned to liquor and gambling and eventually left her mother who
raised a son and daughter by herself. She met the defendant while
she was still in college, and he was a pro football player.

Yes, she became romantically involved with
the defendant. “I was so young then,” Jo Jo said, almost shyly.

Making me sound like a cradle robber.

“
How did the relationship
end?” McBain asked.

“
Rather badly,” she said.
“I always pushed Jake to be better, to make something of
himself.

True, true.

“
He went to law school, and
I like to think I had something to do with that ...”

Okay already, you saved me from a life of
selling insurance.

“
But I always believed in
public service. I wanted to repay this country for what it gave me,
a home, freedom ...”

Arroz con pollo
in every pot. Talk about laying it on
thick.

“
And I don’t think Jake
could relate to that. He had so much, and everything came so easy
to him.”

Wait one gosh-darned second. I’m the one
without a daddy or mommy.

“
I wanted him to do
something meaningful with his life, but he preferred hanging around
with swindlers and con men, including, I am sorry to say, my
brother, Luis, or Louis, as he preferred to call himself. They
hatched schemes together, and Jake would defend him when things
went bad. I was just devastated that my brother and my…my lover
were involved in activities that ran counter to everything I
believed in, so I cut myself off from both of them. It was the
hardest thing I ever had to do.”