Jury of One

5

“We picked up Alex Baniewicz in December of last year.” Special Agent Donovan Peters pushed a file in front of Shelly. They were sitting in the federal building downtown, in a small conference room with a view of the state courthouse. The room, she thought, was quintessentially government-cheap furniture, modest artwork that seemingly was placed there only because something was supposed to go on the wall, thin carpeting of no discernible color.

Shelly opened the manila file before her. Her heart sank as she viewed a mug shot of Alex, a black-and-white photo clipped to one side of the file. A summary report written by another federal agent was on the opposite page, explaining that, on December 5, 2003, Alex Gerhard Baniewicz was arrested in possession of seventy-four grams of powder cocaine.

She closed her eyes. Oh, how it must look to the government. Seventy-four grams of cocaine! He looked like your run-of-the-mill purveyor of drugs. She wanted to come forth with excuses, that Alex only sold small quantities to some wealthy professionals, not children or junkies. She imagined that Alex had made the same excuses to the federal authorities. The excuses, of course, were no excuses at all. And worse yet, Shelly realized with a shot to her gut, she couldn’t even be sure they were true.

“You didn’t know,” Peters said to Shelly.

No, she certainly did not know. She thought back to the time she had spent with Alex over the last year, tried to connect conversations and dinners to specific dates. It all made sense. Beginning of December, end of November-that had been when Alex cut off contact with her. She could recall nothing since December 5, with the exception of her trip to his house in early January this year, after she hadn’t heard from him for six weeks. She could see from the way he had looked at her then-or rather, hadn’t looked at her, had cast his eyes downward, stuffed his hands in his pocket, as he’d stood in the doorway of his house. Something had happened. He wouldn’t tell her what. Just some things I gotta take care of, he’d said then. You shouldn’t be here, he’d warned. What could Shelly do? She couldn’t make him tell her. All she could do was offer to help.

“I take it he cut a deal,” she said, realizing that she was exposing her ignorance. But that was the least of her worries. She felt so many things at the moment, including a betrayal that these men seemed to know more about Alex than she did.

The prosecutor, Jerod Romero, looked stronger with his coat off. He was an intense man. He was standing behind Peters with his arms folded. “He cooperated, yes.”

That was common enough. Catch a drug dealer and flip him, use him to catch people higher up on the chain. She looked through the file and found it, the letter of cooperation. In a circumstance like this, the U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t usually arrest and charge the suspect, because if they did, they would be required to put him before a judge in less than twenty-four hours for an initial appearance. That would expose the arrestee publicly, which was precisely the opposite of what the federal government wanted if they were going to use the suspect as an undercover informant. Instead, the U.S. Attorney’s office had signed Alex to a letter of cooperation, in which he was informed that he was the target of a federal investigation and that he might later be arrested and charged with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance. Alex, through the letter, agreed to cooperate and was guaranteed only that such cooperation, if it came to fruition, would be made known to the judge at his sentencing. Alex also had to agree not to violate any local, state, or federal law during this time-except, of course, under circumstances controlled by the feds-and to inform the federal government if he was going to leave the jurisdiction.

She moved the file away and looked at the men. “Okay. So?”

Romero began to pace. “So, we are in the midst of an operation that is bearing fruit. We expect to bring dozens of indictments.”

“But we’re not ready,” said Peters.

Shelly’s heart raced. Dozens of indictments? That didn’t jibe. Alex only had a couple of contacts at work to whom he sold drugs. Those people, and maybe Alex’s supplier, didn’t add up to dozens of indictments. “Okay,” she repeated. “So?”

Romero leaned onto the table, facing her. “So it’s bad enough that he’s out of operation now. We’ve already lost a valuable asset out there. We were hoping to contain the damage.”

Shelly nodded. “Okay, I’m a slow learner. You don’t want Alex testifying in open court that he is working for the G. Anyone who’s been in contact with Alex will know they’ve been targets.”

Peters, the F.B.I. agent, lifted a shoulder, as if Shelly were only half right. “It could endanger the whole operation. It could place the lives of undercover federal agents at risk.”

“That’s what I don’t get,” said Shelly. “What does the one have to do with the other? What does your federal investigation have to do with the shooting of this police off-”

She froze. The men across from her, now both seated, cast glances at each other and then at her. They were calculating what to reveal, and they seemed to understand that Shelly had figured it out herself. They also had probably calculated, correctly so, that she could get much of this information from her client, Alex Baniewicz.

“Cops,” she said. “You guys were investigating cops. A drug ring of cops.” She stuck an index finger into the table. “Including this one here. The one Alex is accused of shooting.”

Romero opened his hands, then brought them together.

“Alex was helping you take down a dirty cop.” She looked at them for confirmation. Their lack of a response was sufficient. “And-this cop found out, didn’t he? He found out Alex was working for you and he tried to silence him.” She looked at them again. “Am I getting warm?”

“That’s all speculation,” said Peters. “Every single thing that you have said, Counsel, cannot be proven. But we certainly expect that you might say it in court.”

Romero concurred. “We were assuming you’d be pleading self-defense.”

Shelly got out of her chair. She felt a surge of hope mixed with her confusion. She was playing catch-up but she was getting the picture now, and there might be a way out of this. Maybe. But it wasn’t going to happen right now. So she would keep mum about her intentions. This was time to be gathering, not giving, information.

“Has your client spoken with the police?” asked Peters.

She shook her head no. “He won’t.”

“That’s very important to us,” he said. “I need to know if my guys on the street are safe. If your client is flapping his mouth and word spreads, my guys are sitting ducks-”

“He’s not talking. He won’t.”

“We need your word on that,” said Jerod Romero. “Everything we’ve told you.”

Shelly looked out the window. “You need a lot from us, Mr. Romero. And it doesn’t come free. Let’s start talking about a deal, right now. And not just on this drug bust. I want a deal on this cop-shooting, too. I want the whole thing.”

“Understand that this is sensitive ground,” said the prosecutor. “The assistant county attorneys can be pretty tight with cops. We have to be very choosy about whom we share this with.”

“I got that. I also have a client facing a capital murder charge. Because he was doing your dirty work.”

Peters, the special agent, scoffed and made a show of it with his hands. Romero didn’t accept the characterization well either. “Okay,” he said. “Listen. All we’re acknowledging is that you’ll plead self-defense. That doesn’t make your story true. If you haven’t figured it out yet”-Romero made eye contact with Peters-“your client says a lot of things. Some may be true, a lot of them probably aren’t.”

Shelly felt a shiver run through her. She felt as if the insult somehow implicated her as well, at least her gullibility. “Well,” she said, a little more testily than she would have preferred, “was Alex connected with this cop or wasn’t he?”

“They had met,” said Romero. “Look-do we think Officer Ray Miroballi was using Alex Baniewicz to sell drugs? Sure. Of course. But good luck going to trial on what we think. Maybe if we’d had the time to fully investigate this thing, we would have gotten somewhere. Right now, you don’t have much of a leg to stand on.”

And they were not going to help her in that endeavor, they were saying. Okay. Regardless of the merits of a self-defense plea, the point was the federal government didn’t want Shelly or Alex disclosing the federal sting. This thing would be high-profile when it was announced, and the more cops caught in the web, the merrier for the federal prosecutors. Thus, no need to debate the merits right now. Focus on the soft spot.

Shelly gathered her briefcase. “Here’s what I want from you. First of all, in exchange for our silence for now, I want these federal charges to disappear.”

Both of them moved on that one. They didn’t appear to be falling to their knees in compliance.

“Dropped,” she repeated. “Gone. Complete immunity. That’s for starters. And then you do whatever you need to do with the county attorney to make this murder case a little more manageable.”

Romero, still shaking his head, raised a hand. “Part of your client’s plea is that he keeps quiet. So don’t act like that’s some gift-”

“Oh, come now,” said Shelly. “My client has a constitutional right to present a defense in his murder case. If his defense relates to undercover work he was doing for you, you can’t stop him from talking about it. And you’d look bad trying to.”

She put down her briefcase. As she thought about it, the federal government was already looking bad. One of their undercover informants in a shoot-out with one of their suspect cops? They’d look out of control of their own investigation, to say nothing of having their entire sting halted prematurely. Yes, they had plenty of incentive to keep this quiet.

Romero stood and collected himself a moment. Shelly tried to see things from his perspective. He probably saw Shelly as somewhat reasonable-and sympathetic to his mission of ridding the streets of drugs-but also willing to stand up to the feds, and to do whatever was necessary to promote Alex’s interests. She didn’t intimidate easily, and if Romero had done his homework about her, he probably knew there was only so far he could push.

He framed his hands. “Those kids you try to help, Shelly? Those are the same ones we’re trying to help. We’re talking about ten-year-old kids. Strung out. Addicted. Giving blow jobs in an alley at ten bucks a pop for drug money. Child porn? Teen prostitution? That’s all about drugs, Counselor. We’re fighting the scum of the earth here.”

“So keep fighting,” she urged. “Let’s call this thing what it was. Alex was fighting off a rogue cop. Get him out of jail. We’ll keep this whole thing silent. And your investigation keeps going.” She handed him her business card. “For now, we’re on the same team. We’ll keep mum. But you get us a deal. And get it fast.” She moved to the doorway and stopped. “And don’t you ever lump Alex in with those scumbags on the streets.”

She held her breath as she walked out, ignoring the audible reaction to that last comment. She was in the dark on so many things. She needed answers.