Guilty As Sin

10

Thursday’s witnesses were members of the backup team, the task force officers who’d conducted surveillance during the buys and arrested Alonzo Barnett. First up was a veteran DEA agent by the name of Angel Cruz. Cruz was a short, medium-complexioned Hispanic. Today, he’d be a Latino. In his younger days he’d done his share of undercover work, and Jaywalker had cross-examined him some years back in a federal trial down in Foley Square. That one had turned out well for Cruz and the government. For Jaywalker and his client, not so well.

Miki Shaughnessey wasted little time with preliminaries. Jaywalker had half expected her to begin with the time period prior to Agent St. James’s entry into the case, back when the surveillance team watching the defendant had had no luck in observing anything resembling a narcotics transaction. But apparently Shaughnessey had decided to leave that time period to Jaywalker, preferring instead to get right to the sales themselves. And it was a smart decision on her part, Jaywalker had to admit. By zeroing in on the charges in the indictment, Shaughnessey would come off as focused and relevant in the eyes of the jury. Jaywalker, if he chose to backtrack into the period before the first sale took place-as he’d done already to some extent with St. James-would run the risk of looking as though he was trying to divert the jurors’ attention and, worse yet, waste their time.

As a result, Agent Cruz’s direct testimony took less than an hour. He described a team meeting conducted prior to the first buy, at which Agent St. James had been supplied with prerecorded bills. Then, keeping back a discreet distance, two teams of officers in unmarked cars had followed St. James and his Cadillac. At 125th Street they’d seen him meet a short, stocky, black man known at that time only as John Doe “Stump.” Stump had joined St. James in the Cadillac, and together they’d driven to 562 St. Nicholas Avenue, known from earlier surveillance to be the building in which Alonzo Barnett, also known as John Doe “Gramps,” lived. Both men had gotten out of the car then, although in cop-speak that came out as “At that particular location and point in time, I did surreptitiously observe Agent St. James and John Doe ‘Stump’ proceed to exit from the official government vehicle in which they had previously been present.”

SHAUGHNESSEY: What, if anything, did you see?

CRUZ: I observed Stump walk over to another black male who was sitting on the stoop and engage him in conversation.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Do you know that man’s name?

CRUZ: Yes. I’ve since learned his name is Alonzo Barnett.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Do you think you would recognize that man if you were to see him today?

CRUZ: Yes. That’s him sitting right over there.

Jaywalker conceded that sitting right over there was the defendant. Shaughnessey asked her witness what had happened next.

CRUZ: After a minute or so, Stump motioned Agent St. James over and appeared to introduce him to Mr. Barnett. Then Stump walked away, out of my sight. After speaking together for a minute or so, Agent St. James and Mr. Barnett walked to the Cadillac and got in, Agent St. James behind the wheel and Mr. Barnett in the front passenger seat.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened next?

CRUZ: They started moving, and I followed them, a few cars back.

The Cadillac had continued to the corner of 127th Street and Broadway. There Barnett had gotten out and walked around the corner and out of sight, while Agent St. James had remained behind the wheel.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What did you do?

CRUZ: I remained in my vehicle and continued to watch the Cadillac.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Why did you do that?

Jaywalker knew the answer by heart from his DEA days, could have recited it in his sleep if called upon to do so.

CRUZ: Because the safety of the undercover agent is always my paramount concern.

Well, that and the money, Jaywalker knew. Although that particular consideration didn’t seem to get mentioned quite as often in court. In any event, Agent Cruz explained that another officer had gotten out of the vehicle and followed Barnett on foot.

About twenty minutes later, Barnett reappeared and got back into the Cadillac. Five minutes passed, and then Barnett got out again and, as before, walked around the corner, while Agent St. James stayed behind the wheel.

Another twenty minutes went by. Funny how that happened, noted Jaywalker. Again Barnett appeared, walked to the Cadillac and got back in. Agent St. James pulled away from the curb and drove back to 562 St. Nicholas Avenue. There he dropped Barnett off and drove away.

The members of the team met up at the same location as before. There Agent St. James produced a small glass vial. A field test for the presence of opiates proved positive, indicating that the white powder inside it was heroin. Agent Cruz took custody of the evidence and later delivered it to the United States Chemist for a more sophisticated analysis.

The second and third buys pretty much followed the same script, according to Agent Cruz’s observations and testimony. Again, Agent St. James had waited in his Cadillac while Alonzo Barnett had gotten out and walked around the corner. It wasn’t until the third and final transaction that Agent Cruz and five other members of the backup team had intercepted Barnett and arrested him as he was walking back to the Cadillac.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Was a search conducted of Mr. Barnett at that point?

CRUZ: Yes, it was.

SHAUGHNESSEY: By whom?

CRUZ: By me, in the presence of other members of the team.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What, if anything, was recovered?

CRUZ: From Mr. Barnett’s right jacket pocket I recovered a paper bag, inside of which was a double glassine bag containing white powder. And from his right pants pocket I recovered five hundred dollars.

The white powder again field-tested positive for opiates and was delivered to the chemist. The serial numbers of the bills were compared to a photocopy of those supplied earlier that day to Agent St. James. Each of the serial numbers matched.

At that point Miki Shaughnessey produced four sealed evidence envelopes. One by one, she handed them to the witness and had him identify them from serial numbers and initials on the outside. Then she handed him scissors so he could cut the seals and open the envelopes. The first contained the small glass vial from buy number one; the second, the glassine envelope from buy number two; the third, the paper bag and double glassine envelope recovered from the defendant’s right jacket pocket during buy number three; and the fourth, the five hundred dollars recovered from Barnett’s right pants pocket.

Just as time intervals were always twenty minutes, so were pockets all right-side ones. And had there been testimony about which hand Barnett had used to give Agent St. James a package and which hand St. James had received it with, those would have both been right hands, too. Amazing how that happened.

But while Jaywalker waxed cynical, the jurors appeared to be mesmerized by the physical evidence. And while looking at four ounces of white powder may not sound like much, hearing from a federal agent that those four ounces are high-quality heroin worth five thousand dollars-or forty-five hundred, if you wanted to deduct the defendant’s cut-is bound to have an impact upon a dozen people who’ve probably never seen hard drugs in their lives. Build up to it with sealed evidence envelopes, serial numbers and initials, and then top it off by allowing the jurors to pass the items among themselves, though only under the watchful eyes of a pair of large uniformed court officers, and the overall impact is high drama. Miki Shaughnessey instinctively knew that and played it for all it was worth, but to her credit, she never overdid it. Then again, she didn’t have to.

Jaywalker began his cross-examination after the mid-morning recess. There wasn’t all that much he needed from Agent Cruz, but there were a couple of points he wanted to make.

JAYWALKER: Agent Cruz, were you involved in the surveillance of Mr. Barnett during the time period before Agent St. James joined the investigation?

CRUZ: Yes, I was.

JAYWALKER: Do you know what prompted the investigation in the first place?

CRUZ: I was told it began with an anonymous phone call.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever speak with the anonymous caller?

CRUZ: No, I didn’t. Not personally.

JAYWALKER: And in the period before Agent St. James got involved, did you see Mr. Barnett make any sales?

It would have been a dangerous question, but Jaywalker already knew the answer from the reports. “No,” said Agent Cruz, and in response to Jaywalker’s next question, he admitted that neither he nor any other member of the team had seen anything that even remotely resembled a sale.

JAYWALKER: I see. Now, during the first buy that Agent St. James made, you say you stayed in your vehicle, while your partner got out and followed Mr. Barnett on foot. Is that correct?

CRUZ: You got it.

JAYWALKER: Whose decision was that?

CRUZ: I’m not sure what you mean by that.

JAYWALKER: Well, who decided who’d stay in the car and who’d get out?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Based upon what?

CRUZ: I was in the driver’s seat.

JAYWALKER: That was it?

CRUZ: That was it, Counselor. Plus the fact that I had seniority.

A couple of the jurors laughed at the obviousness of the answer. But to Jaywalker the decision had been not only wrong but suspiciously wrong, and therefore probably dishonest. So at this point he was willing to put up with a little laughter.

JAYWALKER: Who was your partner that day?

CRUZ: Investigator Lance Bucknell.

JAYWALKER: Of the New York State Police?

CRUZ: That’s right.

JAYWALKER: From Plattsburgh, New York?

CRUZ: I have no idea at all where he’s from. Somewhere in upstate New York, I’d guess.

JAYWALKER: But you do have an idea what he looks like, don’t you?

CRUZ: Yes.

For the first time since they’d begun, Agent Cruz had limited his answer to a single word. It’s what sometimes happens when a slightly cocky witness begins to realize the cross-examiner is taking him somewhere that he doesn’t particularly want to go.

Not that Jaywalker knew Investigator Bucknell. He didn’t. But as usual, he’d done his homework and was willing to bet that Bucknell was the guy he’d seen earlier that morning out in the hallway talking with Cruz. Rehearsing. And from his clean-cut appearance, he certainly should have had a name like Lance Bucknell. So Jaywalker decided it was worth a shot.

JAYWALKER: Fair to say he’s blond, blue-eyed, young and about six feet four?

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: And has “cop” written all over him?

SHAUGHNESSEY: Objection.

THE COURT: Overruled. I assume you understand the question, Agent Cruz?

CRUZ: I think I do.

THE COURT: Does he look like a cop?

CRUZ: [Shrugs]

JAYWALKER: Did it ever occur to you, Agent Cruz, that you, being a somewhat dark-complexioned Hispanic about five feet six and what-forty years old? — might have blended into the Harlem neighborhood that day just a bit better than Lance Bucknell from upstate New York?

CRUZ: [No response]

JAYWALKER: After all, you figured Mr. Barnett was going to go and get the drugs Agent St. James had ordered. Right?

CRUZ: Right.

JAYWALKER: And you knew that Agent St. James, sitting in his Cadillac, was in no position to see where Mr. Barnett was going. Right?

CRUZ: Right.

JAYWALKER: So it was left to the backup team to try to discover Mr. Barnett’s source. Right?

CRUZ: If we could.

JAYWALKER: Which, of course, is one of the major goals of any buy operation, to identify the source, the higher-up, and make a prosecutable case against him, as well. Agreed?

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: So you decided to stay in the car and send Lance Bucknell to do the job instead. Yet you did want to identify the source of the drugs, didn’t you?

CRUZ: If at all possible.

JAYWALKER: Investigator Bucknell does know how to drive a car, doesn’t he? I mean, he is a state trooper.

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: And who followed Mr. Barnett on foot during the second and third transactions?

CRUZ: Investigator Bucknell.

Jaywalker had gone over the reports so many times that he could recite much of them verbatim. He knew the answer before he’d asked the question. But even if he hadn’t, he would have guessed anyway. Once again, he knew from experience that the team members would have gone to great lengths to simplify things, just as they had with the twenty-minute intervals and the right-side pockets, and just as they would have with the right-handed exchanges. That way, when it came time to testify, they would know how to answer if they couldn’t actually remember, without running the risk of contradicting each other.

JAYWALKER: We already know from Agent St. James that he was never able to identify Mr. Barnett’s source. How about the backup team? Did you succeed in identifying him?

CRUZ: No, we didn’t.

JAYWALKER: But you did succeed in arresting “Stump,” didn’t you?

CRUZ: We did.

JAYWALKER: How did that happen?

CRUZ: By accident, actually. We’d just arrested Mr. Barnett and patted him down. One of the team members was about to handcuff him and read him his rights when out of nowhere, Stump walks up. So I patted him down, too.

JAYWALKER: And lo and behold, I suppose you detected something in his right pants pocket that felt like drugs. Right?

CRUZ: That’s right.

Of course it was right. It had been in the reports.

JAYWALKER: And when it turned out to be heroin, you arrested him, too?

CRUZ: Not me personally. One of the NYPD guys took that collar.

JAYWALKER: And you learned that Stump’s true name was Clarence Hightower, and that he’d done time with Mr. Barnett?

CRUZ: We learned that later.

JAYWALKER: And naturally you charged Mr. Hightower with acting in concert with Mr. Barnett, since he’d been the one who’d brought Agent St. James to Mr. Barnett in the first place, for the express purpose of buying drugs. Correct?

CRUZ: No, that’s not correct. Mr. Hightower was charged only with possession.

JAYWALKER: Felony possession? Or just misdemeanor possession?

CRUZ: Misdemeanor possession. It was a small amount of heroin, which he told us he’d bought across town and was for his own use.

JAYWALKER: And you believed him?

CRUZ: [Shrugs]

JAYWALKER: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.

CRUZ: Lieutenant Pascarella said we didn’t have enough on Mr. Hightower to charge him with sale. And he was in charge of things.

JAYWALKER: Mr. Hightower was in charge of things?

CRUZ: No, Lieutenant Pascarella was.

JAYWALKER: So you never did learn who Mr. Barnett got the drugs from. And the guy who set everything up in the first place, you never charged him in connection with any of the three sales. Right?

CRUZ: That’s right.

JAYWALKER: Who arrested Mr. Barnett?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Who processed him? Searched him, took his pedigree, vouchered his belongings?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever ask him who he got the drugs from?

This time it was nothing but a shot in the dark. Barnett had told Jaywalker that he’d never been asked about his source, which made no sense. But even if that was true, Agent Cruz could hardly admit it. Chances were he’d say that Barnett had refused to discuss the subject, asked to speak with a lawyer or gotten belligerent. But Cruz surprised Jaywalker.

“To tell you the truth, Counselor, I honestly don’t remember if I asked him or not.”

Which might have won him points with the jurors for honesty and politeness, but it really true broke a cardinal rule of drug enforcement. Still, Jaywalker decided to leave the answer alone. Not that it wouldn’t continue to nag at him, though.

“No further questions,” he said.

They broke for lunch.

“The People call Investigator Lance Bucknell,” Miki Shaughnessey announced when the trial resumed that afternoon. And the moment Bucknell entered the courtroom, the jurors nodded in recognition. Apparently they had taken to heart Jaywalker’s point that Investigator Bucknell’s all-American looks hardly equipped him to blend in with the brothers in Harlem.

Because of that, Jaywalker was curious as to exactly why Shaughnessey had decided to call Bucknell. The best guess he could come up with was that she’d thought the investigator’s good looks would help win over the women on the jury. Or perhaps it was a desire on her part to bring in a representative from the third and final agency that had made up the joint task force, the New York State Police. Ten minutes into Investigator Bucknell’s testimony, it occurred to Jaywalker that Shaughnessey might be playing defense with her witness, using him to preempt any further attack by Jaywalker on the failure of the backup team to identify Alonzo Barnett’s source of supply. But if that was her goal, she’d picked a strange witness to do it with.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did there come a time during the course of that first buy, Investigator Bucknell, when you got out of your surveillance vehicle and followed the defendant on foot?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And were you able to see where he went?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am, I was. He walked to number 345 West 127th Street, a large apartment building on the uptown side of the street.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What did he do when he got there?

BUCKNELL: He walked through the outer set of doors into a vestibule area. There he appeared to press a button on a large board of names. A moment later he appeared to be speaking over an intercom system. Then he stepped to the inner set of doors and, after a second or two, pushed one of those open, entered the lobby and disappeared from my view.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you attempt to follow him into the building?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am. Not on this occasion.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How about on the second buy? Did you also follow him on foot during that event?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am. On the second buy I followed him to the same building. And after I saw him get buzzed in, I entered the vestibule. But I found the inner doors locked, and I was unable to proceed farther. Eventually someone came out of the building and I was able to gain entry as she exited, but by that time the defendant was nowhere in sight.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And on the third buy?

BUCKNELL: On the third buy, anticipating that the defendant would go to the same building, I wore a disguise and stationed myself inside the lobby even before his arrival.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How did you get inside the lobby?

BUCKNELL: I slipped the lock with a credit card.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And did there come a time when you saw Mr. Barnett?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am. About twenty minutes later he entered the vestibule area from outside the building, pressed a button on the board and was buzzed in.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Were you able to see which button he pressed?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened next?

BUCKNELL: The defendant walked to one of the elevators, pushed the button and got on when the door opened. I…I got on behind him. I waited for him to push a floor button so I could push a higher one and see where he got off. But he pushed twelve, which was the top floor. I pushed ten, so it wouldn’t look like I was following him. When the elevator door opened on ten, I figured I better get off. I looked around for the stairs, but it took me a moment to find them, and by the time I did and ran up to the twelfth floor, the defendant was out of sight.

Even as Jaywalker struggled to jot all that down in his own cryptic version of shorthand, he could feel his client nudging his elbow to get his attention. Jaywalker put him off for a moment, afraid he might miss something. Other lawyers solved the problem by instructing their clients to pass them notes whenever necessary. Jaywalker discouraged the practice, fearful that a note-taking defendant might be perceived by the jurors as a jailhouse lawyer, a smart-ass who thought he knew better than his lawyer. So only when he’d finished his note-taking did Jaywalker lean his head toward his client and ask him what he wanted.

“He’s lying,” Barnett whispered. “I went to the eighth floor. And I’ve never seen this guy in my life. Believe me, I’d remember.”

Interesting.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you stay there on the twelfth floor, Investigator Bucknell, in order to see which apartment Mr. Barnett came out of?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am. I was afraid it would look too suspicious for me to still be there. Also, I could see the apartment doors had peepholes, and I was afraid I’d be visible standing there. So I left and went back downstairs and out of the building.

Shaughnessey left it there, concluding her questioning of the witness. She evidently figured that the jurors would understand that the obstacles Investigator Bucknell had run into would have stymied any member of the backup team.

As Jaywalker rose to cross-examine Bucknell, he knew better.

He knew better because on at least half a dozen occasions in his DEA days he’d encountered the same problem, or a pretty close cousin of it. Once he and another agent had gotten hold of a couple of elevator repairman uniforms and a bunch of cast-iron test weights, just so they could see what floor a dealer was heading to. On the next buy they’d hidden in a utility closet on that floor, cracking the door ajar just enough to see which apartment the guy entered. During another investigation, knowing it would be only a matter of time until they zeroed in on a particular apartment in a ten-floor building, Jaywalker had been confident enough to set up an office pool, copying the names from the tenant board onto slips of paper, putting them in a hat and charging five bucks a pick against a chance to win $250. Stymied? Stymied was nothing but a state of mind, a seeing-the-glass-half-empty sense of defeatism.

JAYWALKER: Have you ever made any undercover buys, Investigator Bucknell?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. I have.

JAYWALKER: Where was that?

BUCKNELL: It was at a NASCAR event in Watkins Glen.

JAYWALKER: Where’s Watkins Glen?

BUCKNELL: It’s in Schuyler County, New York. That’s over in the Finger Lakes region.

JAYWALKER: And what kind of drugs did you buy there?

BUCKNELL: It wasn’t drugs, sir. I bought a beer from a vendor when I was still a probationary trooper and not yet twenty-one years old. So it was illegal for him to sell alcohol to me.

JAYWALKER: I see. Anything else?

BUCKNELL: No, sir.

JAYWALKER: Any idea why not?

BUCKNELL: Why not what?

JAYWALKER: Why you haven’t been given more undercover assignments?

BUCKNELL: They keep telling me I’m too clean-cut looking for undercover work. I’m working on it, though.

[Laughter]

JAYWALKER: And the disguise you mentioned earlier. Was that part of your working on it?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. Exactly.

JAYWALKER: May I ask what you disguised yourself as?

He expected to hear “a black man” or “a kid stoned on crack,” or something like that. Maybe even a meter reader from Con Ed, or a cable TV installer, both of which Jaywalker had impersonated in his DEA days.

BUCKNELL: An encyclopedia salesman.

JAYWALKER: Excuse me? You went in there carrying a set of encyclopedias?

BUCKNELL: Not exactly. I did carry a briefcase, though. And it was definitely big enough to hold several volumes.

JAYWALKER: Sell any of them?

It was a dumb question, and Jaywalker was sorry he’d asked it as soon as it came out of his mouth. The last thing he wanted was to make fun of the witness and get the jurors feeling sorry for him. So when Miki Shaughnessey stood up, Jaywalker hastily apologized and withdrew the question even before the judge could sustain the objection.

Still, it was frustrating. There’d been a time early on in his involvement in the case when Jaywalker had hoped to learn that Clarence Hightower had been acting as a government informer when he’d prevailed upon Alonzo Barnett to bring him to somebody who was dealing weight. Had that been the case, Jaywalker would have had a viable entrapment defense for Barnett. But those hopes had been dashed by the disclosure about the anonymous caller and the form Daniel Pulaski had shown him indicating that no CI had been used in the case. Even so, it continued to look as though the task force had gone to great lengths to keep Hightower out of the case, rather than tie him to it, as might have been expected.

Now the same thing was happening at the other end. Both the undercover agent and the backup team should have been doing everything they possibly could have not only to find out who Barnett had gotten the drugs from but to make a case against that guy, as well. Surely they had black officers who could have gone into the building without arousing suspicion. Even Angel Cruz could have done the job. So what had they done? They’d gone and picked a guy whose white-bread WASPy looks all but guaranteed that he’d fail. And that “disguise” business of his? That had been nothing but a joke, a joke so lame that Jaywalker had succumbed to sarcasm.

But it got even worse. If Alonzo Barnett was telling the truth-and Jaywalker had no reason to believe he wasn’t-then Investigator Bucknell had never even made it upstairs after he’d followed Barnett inside the building. He was making up the whole twelfth-floor business in order to give himself an excuse for not having been able to see which floor Barnett had ridden the elevator to and which apartment he’d entered.

But how did you prove that? How did you show the jury that this innocent-looking, fresh-faced kid from upstate was deliberately lying through his teeth?

JAYWALKER: Tell me, Investigator Bucknell. Did you attend the team meeting prior to the third and final transaction?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir.

JAYWALKER: And was it made clear at that meeting that Mr. Barnett was to be taken down-I’m sorry, arrested-once he was seen emerging from the building and walking back toward Agent St. James’s Cadillac?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. That was made clear.

JAYWALKER: So you knew this was going to be your very last opportunity to see which apartment in the building he was going to in order to get the drugs?

BUCKNELL: I suppose so.

JAYWALKER: Well, was there any question about that in your mind?

BUCKNELL: I guess not.

JAYWALKER: It was now or never, wasn’t it?

BUCKNELL: I guess.

JAYWALKER: Time to take a chance.

BUCKNELL: [No response]

JAYWALKER: And yet you chose to play it safe, didn’t you?

BUCKNELL: I’m not sure what you mean.

JAYWALKER: I mean the team already had two solid buys against Mr. Barnett at that point, two hand-to-hand sales of heroin. So what if the third buy didn’t go down exactly according to plan? You were primarily interested in the connection at that point, the source of supply. Weren’t you?

BUCKNELL: I was only doing what I’d been told to do, sir.

JAYWALKER: And what was that? What had you been told, and by whom?

BUCKNELL: Lieutenant…Lieutenant-

JAYWALKER: Pascarella?

BUCKNELL: Right. He told me to be very careful, that Mr. Barnett was a high-value target. And he didn’t want me to blow it by being too aggressive inside the building.

JAYWALKER: And you took that to mean “Don’t try too hard to identify which apartment he’s going to.” Right?

BUCKNELL: In a way. I suppose so.

JAYWALKER: Well, that’s exactly what it sounded like. Didn’t it?

Miki Shaughnessey’s objection was sustained, but not before the witness had already nodded his head and begun to agree.

The problem was, where did you go from there? Did you attack Lance Bucknell, accuse him of making up the business about having been up on the twelfth floor? In television and movie portrayals, witnesses were always breaking down and admitting they’d been lying. In real life, Jaywalker knew, that almost never happened. No matter how hard he went after Bucknell, the guy wasn’t going to fold. He couldn’t very well suddenly reverse course and say, “Oh, yeah, I lied about that.” To do so would cost him not only his job but several years of prison time for perjury. Besides, Jaywalker had nothing to go after him with. It wasn’t like he had a videotape of what had gone on inside the building. He’d already checked, and while there was a security camera, it was nothing but a dummy. All he had was his own client’s whisper in his ear that almost two years ago he’d gone to the eighth floor and not the twelfth. And while Jaywalker believed the whisper, it simply wasn’t enough to go on. Bucknell would duck and parry whatever Jaywalker could throw at him, and in the end, the jury would believe him and feel sorry for him, not to mention regard Jaywalker as a bully and take it out on his client.

So he thanked Investigator Bucknell and sat down.

It was only four-thirty, but up at the bench Miki Shaughnessey explained that she had only one remaining witness, the chemist, who was testifying in federal court and wouldn’t be available until the following morning. “I have another member of the backup team here,” she said, “but I’ve decided against calling him. I think his testimony would be nothing but cumulative.”

“Who is he?” Jaywalker asked. Cumulative was a funny word, he knew. It was supposed to mean that the witness wouldn’t really add anything new to the testimony. What it really meant, Jaywalker had learned over the years, was that the prosecutor didn’t want to call the witness because he might remember things differently from the way previous witnesses had remembered them.

“Detective Lopata,” said Shaughnessey.

“Give me a minute?” Jaywalker asked the judge. When she nodded, he went back to the defense table and found a file he had for Lopata. He pretty much knew the contents by heart but wanted to double-check, just in case he wanted the detective kept on call as a possible defense witness. But from scanning the reports, Jaywalker could see that Lopata’s testimony would indeed add nothing new. He’d counted out and photocopied the official advance funds, weighed the drugs and performed a few other administrative tasks. But in terms of surveillance, he’d stayed back in one of the cars during each buy and had seen nothing of interest.

So it didn’t look like Shaughnessey was trying to hide anything by deciding not to call him. If anything, it showed she was confident that her case was solid without him. And even Jaywalker would have had to agree. Three witnesses down and one to go, and he’d barely made a dent so far. And with the remaining witness being the chemist, what hope did he have? That he was going to be able to somehow show that it hadn’t been heroin at all that his client had sold, but baby powder?

Back up at the bench, Jaywalker told Shaughnessey that she could let Lopata go. Without a good reason for doing so, he wasn’t about to put some detective on the stand without ever having spoken to the guy. The upside was negligible, while the potential for getting clobbered was virtually unlimited.

But having only one prosecution witness remaining created something of a logistical problem for Jaywalker. As ready as he was to put Alonzo Barnett on the stand, he didn’t want to begin with him on a Friday afternoon, only to have his testimony broken up by the weekend. Worse yet, doing so would give Miki Shaughnessey two full days to refine her cross-examination.

“I’m afraid I won’t be prepared to go forward with the defense case until Monday morning,” he said.

The judge shot him a look. In all the years she’d dealt with Jaywalker, he’d never once been unprepared to do anything. Overprepared? Yes. Absurdly overprepared? To a fault. Like the time he’d convinced her he was fluent in Swahili because he’d corrected an interpreter’s translation of a witness’s answer. All he’d done, of course, had been to memorize what the witness had said at an earlier hearing in response to the identical question. But the word had quickly gotten around the courthouse that Jaywalker wasn’t to be fooled, not in English, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Hebrew, Yiddish, Creole, Patois, Hindi, Farsi, Mandarin, or any of a dozen other languages and dialects. While it was as far from the truth as it could have been, Jaywalker wasn’t about to deny the rumor.

“Monday it shall be,” said the judge, evidently knowing that, were she to push Jaywalker to begin earlier, he’d no doubt come down with a migraine, set off a fire alarm or pull some other stunt to get what he wanted. So she turned to the jurors and told them they’d be working only a half day on Friday.

From their reactions, you would have thought they’d been given a reprieve from a death sentence.

That night, long after his wife had kissed him goodnight and headed to bed, Jaywalker pored over his file on the chemist. Very few defense lawyers insisted that the chemist be brought in to testify. The vast majority were more than willing to concede that the drugs were heroin or cocaine or angel dust, or whatever the lab report said they were. Indeed, Jaywalker himself often stipulated to the same thing, especially in cases where he had a viable defense of some sort to focus on. But in this case he had no defense, viable or otherwise. So whether out of mounting frustration or mere stubbornness, he’d told Miki Shaughnessey some time ago that he wanted the chemist brought in to testify.

“Why?” she’d asked, the surprise evident in her raised eyebrows.

“Because,” was all the answer he’d been able to give her.

Now, as he reviewed and re-reviewed lab reports he’d already reviewed a dozen times before, he tried his hardest to find a legitimate reason that, at least in hindsight, might justify his refusal to stipulate as something other than mere childish petulance.

It took him until nearly three o’clock in the morning to find one, but he did. The problem was that by that time he was so exhausted that he had no way of knowing whether it was a meaningful point or not. He finally fell asleep, but not before wondering if all those other defense lawyers didn’t have the right idea. Instead of driving themselves relentlessly over every little thing, they conserved their energy so they’d be ready to recognize a real opportunity if one came along, then pounce on it. Jaywalker was too tired to recognize anything anymore, let alone pounce on it.