Flesh and bones

23

A good prosecutor is a careful carpenter building a bookshelf. He saws a sure cut, hammers the nails straight, and hangs the shelves in plumb. Nothing fancy. The goal is to build the case slowly, competently. No razzle, no dazzle. No missing pieces.

A good prosecutor does not ask questions without knowing the likely answers. He does not ask a defendant to try on a pair of gloves that may not fit. He is a solid fullback, not a dipsy-doo wide receiver. The path to the end zone is a straight line if you don't fumble.

Abe Socolow is a master of his craft. His strength is his burning desire to win. He is fueled by a righteous indignation toward those miscreants who dare violate the law, and he takes seriously his role as representative of the people.

As a career prosecutor, Abe is not looking for a cushy job in private practice or an appointment to the bench. He wants to do what he always has done: get in early, work like hell, eat a brown-bag lunch, work some more, and, by the end of the day, ship another criminal upstate.

Abe sees the world in stark contrasts. Good and evil are painted in white and black, to hell with shades of gray. A defendant had a shitty childhood. Tell it to the prison chaplain. Drugs made you a robber or a rapist. Fine, we've got the cure, and it's not hugs and therapy. When the law has been broken, justice demands a penalty. It's as simple as that, and most folks in this great land of ours would agree.

Even me. Unless I'm representing the lawbreaker. Then my duty is different. It's not to society as a whole, or to the victims, or to abstract notions of justice. My loyalty belongs solely to my client, and I'll ford the deep rivers where the current is swift if it will save the poor soul whose fate is entrusted to me.

So our roles are clearly defined, Abe's and mine. From my days as a drama student and woeful actor, I sometimes cast friends and foes in various productions. If you were casting Les Miz, Abe Socolow would be a perfect Javert, the relentless arm of retributive justice. And me?

All defense lawyers see themselves as Atticus Finch, standing tall before a jury, pleading for-no, demanding-justice. But few of us look like or sound like Gregory Peck, and our clients are hardly virtuous, so there is little social utility in beating the rap. It's an ethical conundrum, this duty to the individual that conflicts with the rights of society. Do your job well enough and you've returned a killer, rapist, or robber to his chosen line of work. Fail, and you've done society a favor.

On direct examination, Abe Socolow stayed out of the way. He stood at the end of the jury box and asked his questions simply and directly. His witnesses were well prepared, concise, and matter-of-fact. Johnny Fiore, the bartender at Paranoia, used to work at the Delano Hotel, just up the street. He was a short, muscular man in his late twenties with a buzz cut and a black silk shirt decorated with mermaids. Fiore had recognized Harry Bernhardt from the lobby bar of the Delano, where he'd been a regular, and they chatted this last night while Harry drank. Harry had asked him the time twice, even while checking and double-checking his Rolex.

"Did Mr. Bernhardt appear to be waiting for someone?" Socolow asked.

"Objection!" I was on my feet. "Mr. Bernhardt might have been waiting for the eleven o'clock news. He could have been late for an appointment elsewhere. He could have needed to know when to take his heart medicine."

"Mr. Lassiter!" The judge shot me a look that could have left bruises. Chrissy passed me a note saying that her daddy had never taken heart medication, but I knew that. "Please refrain from speaking objections," the judge ordered. " 'Objection, leading' will do nicely. 'Objection, calls for speculation' wouldn't be bad either."

"That's the one," I agreed.

"Granted."

I was pleased with my clever, lawyerly self for planting the notion that old Harry had heart trouble. So pleased that something didn't occur to me until I sank back into my chair. "Your Honor, I withdraw the objection."

"What?"

"Mr. Fiore has worked several years as a bartender. It is within his area of expertise to determine when a patron appears to be waiting for someone."

Socolow looked at me in true amazement. The judge just shook his head. "Mr. Fiore, you may answer the question."

"Yeah, I suppose he did. I mean, he kept asking the time and looking toward the door."

"And did there come a time when someone did appear and approach Mr. Bernhardt?" Socolow asked, without thanking me for my assistance.

"There sure did," Fiore said, looking toward my client.

"And who was that?"

"A tall lady in a black dress. The lady sitting right there." He nodded in Chrissy's direction, and Socolow pointed a bony finger at her. "For the record, the witness has identified the defendant. Now, please describe what happened next."

Fiore took about three minutes to tell his story. He had been clearing empty glasses from the bar and hadn't actually seen the defendant pull a gun, his view being partially blocked by the patrons at the bar. But he had heard the first shot, looked up and saw her pointing the gun at Bernhardt, heard the second shot and the third, and heard the man gasp, then slump against the bar. No, Bernhardt never fell from the barstool. Just leaned back into the bar, sort of pinned there, blood dripping down his guayabera.

There wasn't much to do on cross-examination. Oh, I had done my homework. I had sent Cindy, my multitalented secretary, to South Beach in her tightest T-shirt, the one that reads I'D

LIKE TO FUCK YOUR BRAINS OUT, BUT SOMEBODY BEAT ME TO IT. Cindy learned that Fiore had been fired from the Delano for drinking on the job. I could have asked whether he'd been sipping the Scotch that night. I could have asked how many women in black dresses had been at Paranoia that night. I could have asked if he'd seen a muzzle flash, and if not, I could have implied that someone else had shot Bernhardt. The problem, of course, was that Chrissy had shot him, and a hundred witnesses, both eyeball and forensic, could say so.

"No questions," I said pleasantly, as if nothing could dent my confidence.

The witnesses strolled up, told their stories, and left quietly. Jacques Briere had been sitting at a table twenty feet from the bar. He was a free-lance talent scout playing host to a dozen models, photographers, hangers-on, and wannabees. He heard the first shot and turned around in time to see Chrissy squeeze off two more. One of his guests, the famous Italian photographer Anastasio, had watched Chrissy walk in from the front door and head for the bar. Socolow used Anastasio to demonstrate, at least implicitly, that Chrissy knew what she was doing, had planned it, and had walked a straight line, literally, to get the job done.

Anastasio hadn't actually seen Chrissy pull the gun. He was admiring her Charles Jourdan shoes and didn't notice anything amiss until after he heard the second shot, having mistaken the first for a champagne cork.

Several others testified, a blur of South Beach's party crowd. At night, in their club duds, they're a flashy group. Today, under the fluorescent lights, they looked pale and out of place. If they'd taken blood tests the night of the shooting, I'd bet none of them could have operated heavy machinery. Abe had discarded the worst of the Ecstasy-popping, cocaine-sniffing, heroin-smoking folks who thought they'd seen a chorus line of dancing hippos. He barely managed to haul in half a dozen citizens who could simultaneously put one hand on the Bible, another in the air, and say, "I do."

My old antagonist was piling it on thick, and I objected once on the grounds of cumulative testimony, but Judge Stanger overruled me. Abe was clever enough to draw one new fact from each witness. No, the woman didn't seem hysterical. Calm. Just shot the man, pop-pop-pop.

I kept my cross-examinations brief. Michelle Schiff, a makeup artist, had commented on Chrissy's placid demeanor as well as her tasteful use of eyeliner.

"On direct examination, you testified that Christina Bernhardt had no expression on her face when she apparently shot Mr. Bernhardt?" I said.

"That's right."

"I wonder if you could be more precise."

"I don't understand."

"Well, we always have some expression on our face, don't we?"

Socolow bounded out of his chair. "Objection, argumentative." It was a silly objection to a silly question, and I figured Abe just wanted to stretch his legs.

"Overruled," Judge Stanger said. "You may answer the question, if you can."

"I don't think I understand."

"Let's try it this way," I said. "Ms. Bernhardt didn't look excited, did she?"

"No."

"And she didn't look agitated?

"No."

"Or angry?"

"No."

"Happy?"

"No."

One of the trial lawyer's tricks is to eliminate every snippet of evidence that could be harmful, in order to leave the impression that what is left is favorable. Sometimes it is a tedious task.

"Did she look intense?"

"Objection!" Socolow called out. "Calls for speculation."

"Overruled," the judge said. "The witness can testify as to her observations."

I shot Socolow a dirty look. He was just trying to break the staccato rhythm of my cross.

"Did Ms. Bernhardt appear to be intense, to be focused on what she was doing?"

"Not really," Michelle Schiff said.

"Then what was her expression?" I asked.

Michelle Schiff ran a hand through her hair, which was tinted the color of a copper penny. "I don't know. Her eyes seemed blank. Her face was kind of dreamy. Her mouth was just a tiny bit open. I remember she wasn't wearing lip gloss, and in that light-"

"Blank," I repeated, interrupting her before we sped off in another direction. "Blank and dreamy. As if she were in a daze?"

"Yeah, I guess."

"Or a trance?"

"Sort of."

"Or hypnotized?"

"Your Honor!" Socolow stood so quickly he jostled a file, which crashed to the floor. "Unless the witness is an expert on hypnosis-"

"Sustained. Move it along, Mr. Lassiter."

I paused long enough for the jurors to turn and look at me. "So, in summary, Ms. Bernhardt seemed to be in a daze or a trance when she walked by your table?"

"Yes. I said that."

Actually, I had said that. But I wanted the jury to think she had. "Nothing further," I concluded.