Jury of One

64

“Ronnie was the drug dealer,” Shelly said into the Dictaphone. She had never used the transcription device before, felt odd holding a small tape recorder to her mouth. It came with her office supplies, and she felt the need to speak out loud and bounce her thoughts off someone. She couldn’t go to Paul. She couldn’t go to anyone. So she would go to herself. She would play the tape back later and see how it sounded.

“We know Ronnie has been seen with Eddie Todavia,” she continued, pacing around her office. She had closed the door for privacy. “We know that there were drugs in the car behind their house. We have assumed they belonged to Alex. Maybe-maybe Alex and Ronnie both were dealers.”

She touched the wall, a piece of peeling paint that was giving way to gravity. Truth was like gravity, a law professor had once said. In the end, both prevail. Shelly had always found that professor annoying.

“Ronnie was the confidential informant,” she said. “He must have been busted by Miroballi and flipped.” She held her breath. “But he worked with the Cannibals, so he didn’t want to be seen with a cop. So he sent Alex. Alex was feeding information to Miroballi. Sanchez was right about that. But the information was coming from Ronnie.”

She clicked off the recorder and said a silent prayer. She stared at the tiny device a moment. She considered throwing it out the window, if she could even get the window open. Then she set it on “Record” again.

“When the feds saw Alex with Miroballi, they busted him. Alex couldn’t give up Ronnie. No way he’d do that. But then the feds start talking about Miroballi and selling drugs, and using Alex to catch Miroballi. So what can Alex do? He can’t give up Ronnie. So he takes their bait. He says, yeah, Miroballi was making me sell drugs for him.”

Yes. The F.B.I. had never really trusted Alex, and now she knew why. Their instincts had been accurate. He had been screwing with them.

“So somehow, Miroballi starts suspecting that Ronnie hasn’t been straight with him. Or that Ronnie is telling the Cannibals about him. Something. So he goes to find the person who has been playing around with him. He goes to find the snitch who, he thinks, has turned on him.”

She looked at the door. How much she wished she could walk out that door and leave this case behind her.

“He went to find Ronnie,” she said. “Ronnie, who was returning from a game of basketball at the open gym. Wearing a cap and a long black coat. He had his back to Sanchez the whole time. Sanchez probably never saw him. The other witnesses sure didn’t. Why the black coat, which Alex normally wore? We don’t know. Probably, because he was the only one going out that night, and the long coat was warmer than that leather jacket. These two shared everything else. They probably shared coats, too.”

She moved back to her chair and collapsed in it. “Ronnie shot Miroballi. And Alex got there, too late, and helped Ronnie escape. Alex figured that he wouldn’t look too bad as a suspect because he hadn’t fired the weapon. So Ronnie left with the gun and his bloody clothes. Alex stayed behind, because he hadn’t fired the gun and didn’t have blood on his clothes. He took the hit for his brother, for the boy to whom he owes his life.”

She sighed. “But if Alex thinks he won’t be implicated, he’s wrong. Turns out, Alex did get a little bit of blood on himself, probably from contact with Ronnie. And it turned out that Miroballi’s partner, Sanchez, didn’t know about Ronnie. The only person he knew about was the guy Ronnie was sending to give information to Miroballi-Alex. Alex was the person who had met with Miroballi in the park-meetings that Sanchez watched from his car. Sanchez has probably never heard the name Ronnie Masters. So now Alex goes from not looking guilty to having Miroballi’s blood on himself and being identified as Miroballi’s snitch.”

She clicked off the recorder. She felt uncomfortably warm. Her heart was drumming. Her stomach was a barren wasteland of acid. She desperately needed something in her system but couldn’t even consider the thought. She lifted the Dictaphone back to her mouth. “We don’t know the details. Did Ronnie shoot in self-defense? Was Miroballi going to kill him? Or did Ronnie commit this murder on behalf of the Cannibals? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Ronnie’s not my client and I don’t have to prove any-”

Her throat closed on her. Yes, it was all finally coming together. It all made sense, and suddenly nothing made sense. She couldn’t implicate her own flesh and blood in a cop’s murder, but she couldn’t imagine how she could let this pass, either. Not now. She had solved the puzzle, she was sure of it, and it exonerated her client. And she couldn’t use it because her client wouldn’t let her, would contradict her, in fact, by taking the witness stand and denying Ronnie’s participation.

And she didn’t want to use the information.

She felt a draft and drew her arms around herself. She desperately wanted to go for a run but she was in courtroom attire and low heels, and she probably couldn’t have made it far anyway, from lack of sleep and poor nutrition. She tried to map out the turns this case had taken and how it had all come to this. This, she decided, was her punishment. She needed a priest, like Paul Riley had said. Or a philosopher. A theologian. She considered flipping a coin. Heads, my client goes down. Tails, my son does. All of these momentary diversions as the mind worked at warp speed were preferable to a reality that she wanted so desperately to avoid.

She removed the tape from the Dictaphone, dropped it to the floor, and smashed it to pieces with her heel.