Jury of One

66

Shelly closed the door behind her. She and Alex were in the evidence room on the side of the courtroom. The prosecution was in charge of custody of the evidence and brought it into the courtroom every day. It served as a confidential meeting place for an attorney and client with a short break.

“Sit there.” She pointed to a chair. She positioned herself on the table, which was holding various exhibits. “I am going to handle this in the way that I think is best. You can give me your opinion and I’ll take it under advisement. But I make the trial strategy.” She patted her chest. “If you don’t like it, you can fire me. Try. Tell the judge you want to fire me. See if he lets you, at this late date.”

“I told you,” he answered. “I won’t let you say that Ronnie or Todavia did this.”

“I haven’t. I’m laying the groundwork. We can decide later.”

Alex brought his hands to his face.

“These people want to execute you, Alex.”

He opened his hands, silently pleading. They stared at each other a moment before he finally spoke.

“I did it, Shelly. I’m the one who shot him.” He held up his right hand. “God as my witness. I shot him.”

His voice had a different quality to it. Deeper yet quieter, as if he were confiding in her. At that moment, she believed him. She had ample reason not to, but she did.

She moved to him, knelt down so she was face-to-face with Alex in his chair.

“I don’t care,” she told him. “Let’s put Todavia next to you in that alley. The jury will be happy to go that way.” She took his hands in hers. “Don’t you see this, Alex? At most, the only person who puts that gun in your hand is a homeless man with mental and social problems. I’ll do what I need to do to him. All you have to say is Eddie Todavia did it and”-she took a breath-“you could walk out of that courtroom.”

He pulled his hands away and got out of the chair, moving around her. He moved to the door and put his hand on it. “And then what?” he asked.

“Then what?” She got to her feet.

“I have more than myself to think about.” He turned around to her. “I accuse Todo of killing this cop and what happens to Angela? What happens to Ronnie?”

She nodded. “He’s a Cannibal, you mean.”

“Shit.” Alex shook his head. His face was crimson. A sheen cast over his eyes. “I just”-his voice cracked; he swallowed hard-“I just got away from this guy.” He began to pace the small room. “I can’t go back to that. You get me out of one death sentence and into another one.”

“I would take care of Angela.” The words startled her, both because she was acknowledging the possible outcome of this case and because-well, she meant it. Angela was not technically her flesh and blood but Ronnie hadn’t made that distinction, and so neither would she.

Alex, whether from relief or fear, broke down. He collapsed in the chair, head in his hands, and wept like she had never seen a boy cry. The tremble of his body, the sounds of anguish emanating from this boy, had the opposite effect on Shelly, emboldened her to action. She gave him his space, taking note of the time-they only had another minute or two, at most. Then she moved to him, knelt beside him again.

“I’m going to help you with Angela either way, Alex. Either way. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that Eddie Todavia never lays a glove on your family.”

“One stupid mistake,” he said. She didn’t know what he meant. It was as if he hadn’t heard what she had said.

She wasn’t following. What mistake did he mean?

“What did you mean before?” she asked him. “You just got away from Todavia. What does that mean?”

It took Alex a moment to calm. He looked up at her, his face washed out, streaked with tears. “The car I hot-wired,” he said. “When I was a freshman?”

Right. Okay. Ronnie had helped Alex out of that. Saved his life, Alex had said. He had hot-wired the wrong guy’s car-

“It was Todavia’s car you took,” she said.

Alex nodded his head. “I didn’t know it was his. But I was the driver. I was the one everyone knew about. Man, of all people, I hot-wired the car of a C-Street Cannibal.”

“He was going to kill you,” she said. “Ronnie talked him out of it.”

“But nothing’s for free.”

“He put you to work for him. He made you sell drugs for him. Oh, Alex.”

Me and Alex is all good. Eddie Todavia had nodded at Alex when he said that yesterday. Alex had nodded back. Now she got it.

Alex opened his hands. “He beat the piss out of Ronnie and then he told me that if I would work for him, he’d let me skate.”

“But that was freshman year. You didn’t start selling until 2003, right? Sophomore year.”

“Todo got busted, like, a month after this happened. It bought me a year. Ten months. Whatever. But he had a good memory. He had moved out to the west side after he served his time. He said he could use a white kid to sell to the professionals that don’t want to come out to his ’hood to score. He also said he’d heard I had a daughter now.” He deflated. “I got the point.”

Shelly stood again, reached for the wall to steady herself. “So you started selling drugs to settle a debt to Todavia.”

He nodded. “I liked the money, too. I admit it. But yeah, that’s how it started.”

“And what Todavia said in court yesterday-you were ‘all good’-he was saying the debt was paid now. He screwed you in court so he felt he owed you one.”

Alex took a deep breath, settled now. “Yeah. I’m free of him now. You go after him, he’ll come back harder.”

“Was it Todavia in the alley with you, Alex?”

He looked at her with a look that told her she knew better. “C’mon, Shelly. You know it wasn’t.”

She did know. She had never truly thought so. She just liked the idea because it worked. It was convincing. But there was more here. You know it wasn’t, Alex had just said. Alex was admitting, without saying so, that someone was there. He was telling her they both knew who that someone was.

And truly, Shelly had known that, too. She had lived with the small residual doubt that Alex’s denials had given her. She had taken every morsel of rationalization she could to avoid what she knew to be true. Ronnie was the one in the alley.

A knock on the door. One of Morphew’s assistants poked her head in.

“One minute and we’ll be there,” Shelly said.

The door closed again.

“You were a confidential informant for Miroballi, weren’t you, Alex? The reason you met with him was you were trying to get him to bust Eddie Todavia. Right? Because if Todavia were arrested, you’d be free of your debt. That’s why you were meeting with Miroballi.”

Alex smiled. She couldn’t read the expression.

“Everything I say, you have a new story,” he said. “I guess that’s why you’re a good lawyer.”

Another knock on the door, and this time the assistant said, “We really need you out here, Counsel.”

“One second.” Shelly turned back to Alex as the door closed. “Listen to me, Alex Baniewicz. We are going to put Eddie Todavia in that alley with you. I will do that. I’ll make sure that kid never gets near you. You have my word on that. No one with any credibility is going to say that it wasn’t Todavia. I’ll make the jury believe that. And you don’t get an opinion on this.”

She opened the door and went into the courtroom, where all eyes at the prosecution table were fixed on her. Dan Morphew walked over to her and handed her a videotape and a file.

“We have a new witness,” he said.