The Good Lawyer: A Novel (27 page)

We told only Carolyn. She congratulated us, expressed both sympathy and understanding for my concerns, but dismissed them as easily resolvable.

When she embraced and kissed us both, I knew I had made a new friend.

Chapter 53

I
experienced many firsts with the Guevara case, and yet another by preparing him
ad nauseam
to testify before the grand jury. But when his time came, despite the many office vigils during which I pored over every piece of paper in my file, every record, report, letter, court document and note I had made no matter how obscure or superfluous, I still felt that there was something I had overlooked. I attributed it to last minute jitters. With the support of two P.S. 92 mothers willing to testify as character witnesses and the stalwart and charming Shula Hirsch ready to tell all about Jose Chavez, whatever it was I had forgotten, I told myself, could not be consequential.

It was Friday morning, 10:30 a.m. I had just left a chilly May wind along 161st Street to meet Guevara in the grand jury waiting area on the fourth floor of the Bronx Criminal Court Building. He had lost weight. Overhead florescent lights accentuated several premature lines of age on his face.

Clean-shaven and in a gray pinstriped suit, he looked more like a junior executive than a defendant about to testify before a grand jury. He carried a black leather attaché case also identical to my own (a gift from Mom), but without the initialed inscription under the handle. And he never looked more serious as he thanked the women from P.S. 92 for coming, while politely kissing Mrs. Hirsch on the cheek. I admired his stoic resilience and grace under pressure.

Oddly, I felt uncomfortable in Guevara’s presence as we waited for Jimmy Ryan to call us in, not because we were short of small talk, never having engaged in any, but because he acted like no other client I’d ever had. No nervousness. No bitterness. No need for reassurance or comfort. It was as if he knew he had to rise to the occasion, and was perfectly confident he could.

The grand jury was on a ten-minute break. They’d begun at 9:30 A.M. hearing the first witness, Jose Chavez. Sandra Chavez followed. Afterward, Jimmy Ryan motioned me over for a private one-on-one. Since the arraignment Ryan had developed a small spare tire. With a blotchy red face and Nordic features, he was beginning to look like a bloated leprechaun, the button on his suit jacket about to pop.

“I hate this fuckin’ case. And you know why?”

“Enlighten me, Jimmy,” I said in a ho-hum manner as I pictured myself punching his lights out in the grand jury room while he attempted to save his case through bitter cross-examination of Guevara.

“Because I think your client is dead fuckin’ guilty and my a-hole boss wants me to lie down on this one, give your boy his head in the grand jury room, let him tell his bullshit story, lighten up on the cross, save the taxpayers a trial he’s convinced we’ll lose.” He cocked his shoulders as if to brace himself. “So when this piece of shit goes out and does it again, it’s my head that’ll roll. I’ll be lucky to get a job selling hot dogs in the parking lot.”

“You’re forgetting two children recanted,” I said gamely.

“Yeah, right. What did you do, drug ‘em?”

“Yeah. With truth serum.”

Ryan huffed then yanked open the grand jury room door. He took a deep breath, composed himself, and walked in. Guevara and I followed.

When I turned to pull the door closed, Mrs. Hirsch gave me a reassuring smile. She had been standing with the help of a walker and leg braces, refusing to sit down for over twenty minutes.

Inside a room that looked more like a college lecture hall, Guevara and I planted ourselves in two armless metal chairs. I nodded in respectful salutation to the jurors facing us. The grand jury foreman, a man in his sixties dressed in a vest sweater over a white shirt with a triangle knotted tie, sat at a heavy wooden table just left of Guevara. A female clerk sat next to him. A court stenographer, an attractive Hispanic girl in her early twenties, sat in front of the foreman, facing us.

Ryan took a deep breath. He had a waiver of immunity in his hands that Guevara had signed before entering.

Any witness who testifies before a grand jury in New York State has automatic immunity for all crimes which relate to the subject matter of his or her testimony. A defendant is allowed to testify in the grand jury only if he waives this right of immunity.

The grand jury foreman swore Guevara in. “Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Guevara calmly gazed out over the grand jurors’ heads, and said: “I do.”

Ryan approached with the waiver.

For five minutes he questioned Guevara on the authenticity of Guevara’s signature on it, that it was signed voluntarily, and with the advice of counsel. Ryan must have asked the same questions five or six different ways. It was the same every time I took a defendant into the grand jury to testify. And I was never sure if this drawn out series of questions was for the sole purpose of covering the DA’s ass, or some feeble tactic to get a defendant to change his mind about testifying.

I had prepared Guevara for this. Good student that he was, he answered each question with absolute certainty and did all but tell the grand jurors:
I’m here testifying, knowing that what I say could be used against me, completely aware of the danger, but willing to speak anyway.

His forthright manner was already leaving an impression—and he hadn’t even begun to discuss the case. He was all composure and credibility.

I thought about the impression the undisciplined Jose Chavez and his loudmouth mother must have made, and what a stark contrast Guevara must seem.

Even the court stenographer was listening intensely, and when her skirt rose up high on her thigh, as closely as I was watching the grand jurors’ every reaction, I couldn’t help taking a few furtive glances. But not Guevara. He was rigid with involvement.

After a brief pause, Ryan walked to the back of the room and asked Guevara if he wished to make a statement. Without answering, Guevara began to outline his entire life story: from abandonment by a drug addicted mother, to adolescent life in a Catholic orphanage, to developing into a hardworking college student and full-time teacher’s aid. He set forth chapter and verse with a poise and directness that was nothing short of captivating.

He talked about the prospect of post-graduate study in education and his dream of becoming a teacher. I had organized this short biography for him and gave him the word
dream
to use. Everyone dreams. It is instinctively American to do so. It’s the kind of word that touches jurors where they store their heartfelt sympathy.

He again neglected to mention the part-time job in the real estate office, which didn’t naturally fit into his background and goals anyway.

He told the jurors about Jose’s psychological problems, and how Mrs. Hirsch had tried against all odds to help. He spoke deftly but with empathy about the child’s horrible home life, Sandra Chavez’s abusive boyfriends, her-on-and-off-again romance with heroin, her failure to attend over a half dozen appointments with school officials to discuss her son’s disturbing behavior. His voice soured with each detail of Jose’s life as if his own sadness deepened with each comparative recollection.

Guevara had moved beyond the what-to-say and the how-to-say-it of my preparation and coaxing. He was reliving with every word the events as they happened. Had I any doubt about his innocence, it was wiped away then and there.

He did not believe his job as a school aide ended with the three o’clock bell, especially when working with Special Ed students like Jose. But Jose never stayed after school despite Guevara’s urging and Jose’s need for help in every subject. So Guevara invited him to his apartment for tutoring as he did with many other students. As a reward, when the lessons were over, he’d let the kids play video games on his TV. Jose, however, only came over to play. On his last visit, when Guevara insisted that he participate in the lessons or leave, Jose responded by kicking a hole in the plaster wall next to the apartment door and running out. Later the same day the police arrived with Sandra Chavez—the stink of liquor on her breath and screams of “Arrest him!” He choked up with emotion. It was the worst day of Peter Guevara’s life.

Although I had thoroughly prepared him and rehearsed the ending to this soliloquy over and over for the last three days, each time he came up with different parting words, and each time I hated them but dared say so for fear of crippling his confidence. When at long last he could not come up with an impressive finish, I spoon fed him exactly what I wanted him to say.

“And I would just like to add”—a tear dropped from his right eye; his voice was weary and hoarse—“I have never been arrested or in trouble before in my whole life. And I am completely innocent of these charges. But no matter what you decide here today, I lose. No matter what the result, after this case is over I will never be able to work with children again. And this I have loved more than anything in the whole world.”

Ryan never interrupted and asked no questions.

Although I wasn’t supposed to, I whispered in Guevara’s ear, reminding him of Mrs. Hirsch and the two school mothers in the hall willing to testify if asked.

Every juror’s eye was fixed on him, calmly studying him as if the truth would ooze from some hidden place to affirm the testimony he’d given so convincingly.

After Guevara mentioned the witnesses in waiting, Ryan, seemingly impressed but unmoved, asked us both to step outside. I nodded to Guevara, and thanked the grand jurors before we left.

Mrs. Hirsch was waiting in the hall. “Do I go in now?” she asked with girlish excitement.

The grand jury room door swung open. “The jurors would like to hear from Mrs. Hirsch,” Ryan said morosely.

“I’m here,” Mrs. Hirsch said, her hands gripping the plastic handles of her walker, her leg braces barely visible below her dress. The jurors would see more of them once she sat down.

Ryan held the door open then looked down at his watch like an impatient schoolboy. Mrs. Hirsch would enter alone. The law only permits a defendant to be accompanied by a lawyer. Ryan, if he dared, would be no match for her anyway.

I waited outside with Guevara who was leaning against the wall, head tilted down, eyes closed.

“I think it went well,” I said.

“I hope so.” He was without emotion, without expression, without movement.

I wanted to say something more, but all I could manage was: “This is only the grand jury. We’ve still got a trial to win if they indict.”

He said nothing, as if he hadn’t heard a word.

I started to pace in front of the door, hoping to hear something, anything. Time seemed to stand still, until the door jarred open and Mrs. Hirsch ambled out with her walker scraping the floor.

“Do they want to hear from the other two women?” I asked Ryan.

“No,” he said definitively then closed the door.

Mrs. Hirsch took a seat in the waiting room near the two mothers from P.S. 92 who were chatting about the exorbitant prices of food in the Bronx compared to the other boroughs. Guevara followed me with his eyes as I took a seat beside Mrs. Hirsch.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“They were attentive. I was a little nervous. More than I thought I’d be. I tried to keep out of my mind what was at stake for Peter, though it seemed impossible. But don’t worry. I told them everything we talked about.”

I needed to explain away the anal laceration found on Jose at Lincoln Hospital right after Guevara’s arrest. So I had asked Mrs. Hirsch to be sure to mention the many times she discovered bruises on Jose at school, and how she hadn’t thought to check his private areas for injury also or tell the school nurse to.

“Then you did great,” I said.

She patted my hand with hers.

Deja vu
. I immediately flashed back to Jones Beach and Eleanor and the moon and a distant ship’s call.

I wondered whether there was some master planner pulling all the strings, then and now, and I, one of an infinite number of different game pieces with predetermined limits on mobility, strength, and power. Maybe that was the grand adventure—seeking one’s own limits.

A few minutes later Ryan emerged from the grand jury room and stood like a centurion on the opposite wall from where Guevara was frozen in place. The jury was deliberating. Ryan stared at Guevara in disgust. When he turned his attention to me seated in the waiting room, his expression did not change.

Three loud hollow thumps sounded on the jury room door—a signal voting had ended. Ryan went inside. Seconds later he came out, bolted passed Guevara, and opened the waiting room door.

Like some involuntary defecation, he blurted sourly, “Dismissed.”

A sensory high immediately enveloped me. Shula Hirsch hugged and kissed me then looked at me like I had just won an Olympic gold medal.

I turned to Guevara. He took my hand and squeezed it until my knuckles cracked. Though I had expected him to jump with jubilation and smother me with thanks and praise, he did neither.

“You were the perfect lawyer,” is all he said.