Guilty As Sin

ST. JAMES: Spooked means nervous like, afraid.

Interesting, thought Jaywalker. If he had the timing down right, this conversation would have taken place at the point where Alonzo Barnett had been telling Clarence Hightower that he couldn’t help him. Not because he was nervous, though, but because he’d given up selling drugs and had no interest in getting back in business. So either Hightower had been deliberately stringing his customer along with a story while he tried to break down Barnett’s resistance, or Agent St. James was now putting his own spin on what Stump had told him. One of them was fudging. But which one? And why?

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened after that?

ST. JAMES: Me and Stump set up another meet for a couple days later. And at that meet, he told me it was a go, that his man AB-that’s what he called him-had agreed to meet me. So the two of us, me and Stump, we went back to the stoop that evening. He introduced me to AB, and then he left the set.

SHAUGHNESSEY: He left the set?

ST. JAMES: Stump. He split. Walked away.

SHAUGHNESSEY: I see. And the man Stump introduced to you as AB. Do you see him in the courtroom today?

ST. JAMES: Yes, he’s sitting right over there. [Points]

THE COURT: Indicating the defendant, Alonzo Barnett. Correct, Mr. Jaywalker?

JAYWALKER: Absolutely.

It was always a good idea to concede what you couldn’t contest. It bought you credibility in the eyes of the jury. That way, when you fought over something, the jurors were more likely to take your side.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you and the defendant then have a conversation?

ST. JAMES: Yes. I told him I was up from Philly and looking to score some high-quality heroin. I said I was prepared to buy as much as a kilo, but that I wanted to start small, with a sample, to check out the purity.

SHAUGHNESSEY: When you said a kilo, what did you mean?

ST. JAMES: A kilo is a kilogram, a little over two point two pounds, or about thirty-five ounces. It’s a lot of weight, and it can go for as much as forty thousand dollars if it’s uncut.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened next?

ST. JAMES: The defendant told me to come back the next evening. In the meantime, he said, he was going to talk to his connection.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What’s a connection?

ST. JAMES: A source of supply. The guy he was getting it from.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And the following evening, did you do as he instructed you to?

ST. JAMES: Yes, I did.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How did you get there?

ST. JAMES: I drove an unmarked government vehicle, a late-model Cadillac.

Jaywalker looked up from his note-scribbling, suppressing a grin. Just as they had back in his day, DEA agents still seized cars that had been used to facilitate drug deals. Then, after conducting civil forfeiture proceedings, they put the cars into service to use during undercover and surveillance operations. Which was how Jaywalker had once ended up in an almost-brand-new five-speed Corvette, trying to see how fast it would go early one morning on the Harlem River Drive. He’d opened it up pretty good before being flagged over by a motorcycle patrolman, one of those guys in the storm trooper outfits, with the squashed down cap and knee-high boots. “I’ll give you a choice,” the cop had said. “Two tickets for exceeding sixty, or one for going a hundred and twenty.” Sorry, Jaywalker had told him, but he was on the job. An insider’s way of saying he was the Man.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened when you arrived there?

ST. JAMES: The defendant got in and told me to drive to a particular corner, 127th Street and Broadway.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened there?

ST. JAMES: He told me to wait while he got out. He walked around the corner and out of my sight. He was gone about twenty minutes. When he came back, he told me that his man refused to meet with me, that he’d deal only with him. So I took a chance. I fronted the defendant a hundred dollars and told him to bring me back a sample.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Fronted?

ST. JAMES: Gave him the money up front, in advance.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Was there anything special about the money?

ST. JAMES: Yes, it was what we call Official Advance Funds. Meaning the bills had been photocopied to show the serial numbers. That way, if the backup team recovers any money at the time of an arrest, they can compare the bills to the photocopy for evidentiary purposes.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did there come a time when the defendant returned to your car?

ST. JAMES: Yes. After about another twenty minutes, he came back, got in and told me to drive. When we’d gone a few blocks he handed me an amber-colored glass vial containing a white powder. I thanked him and said I’d be checking it out, and would want more if it was good. We agreed to meet again in two days. I drove him back to his building and dropped him off.

From there Agent St. James had proceeded to a pre-arranged location, where he met with the backup team. There he field-tested the contents of the vial, watching the re-agent turn a telltale red, indicating a positive reaction for the presence of an opiate. He then turned the evidence over to one of the backup team members for vouchering and a more sophisticated chemical analysis.

The second of the three buys, according to Agent St. James, followed much the same pattern. The United States chemist had reported that the sample tested out as eighty-one percent heroin, pretty close to pure, and strong enough to drop a user in his tracks were he to cook it and shoot it up uncut. St. James met with Barnett as scheduled and ordered an ounce, which Barnett told him would cost fifteen hundred dollars. A day later they drove back to the same corner, where St. James handed Barnett the money and watched him walk out of view. Twenty minutes later Barnett returned with a small paper bag. Inside the bag was a glassine envelope containing a white powder that turned out to be just over an ounce of eighty percent pure heroin.

The third buy had taken a little longer to set up. Agent St. James had said he wanted an eighth of a kilo this time. Jaywalker knew the amount arrived at had been no accident. Since an eighth of a kilogram translated to a little more than four ounces, it would bump the case up into the first-degree category, not only for sale but possession, with the mandatory life sentence that an A-1 felony carried.

After checking with his source, Barnett had reported that an eighth would cost five thousand dollars. St. James said he’d have to go down to Philadelphia to get the money. By the time he “returned” and was ready to make the buy, it was October 5.

Again St. James picked Barnett up in the Cadillac and drove to 127th Street, where this time he handed Barnett five thousand dollars in prerecorded bills. Again Barnett took the money and disappeared from view. Twenty minutes later-and Jaywalker knew it was no coincidence that it seemed to take twenty minutes each time, since claiming that it had made it easier for the witness to remember-Barnett reappeared. Only this time he never made it to the Cadillac. As Agent St. James watched from behind the wheel, members of the backup team swooped in and made the arrest. St. James, satisfied they had the right man, pulled away from the curb and drove off, just as he would have done had he been a real buyer.

Shaughnessey had him identify the glass vial from the first sale, and the paper bag and glassine envelope from the second one. The third package, the eighth of a kilo, he’d never seen, of course. Not that Alonzo Barnett hadn’t been charged with selling that, too. The Penal Law conveniently defines sale to mean “sell, exchange, give or dispose of to another, or to offer or agree to do the same.” Next time you share some of your marijuana with a friend or pass him a half-smoked joint, think about it. It’s a sale.

With that, Shaughnessey announced that she had no further questions and resumed her seat at the prosecution table. Miki Shaughnessey had certainly done her job well, just as Trevor St. James had done his. Okay, so maybe he’d put a bit of a spin on whatever Stump had told him about Barnett’s initial reluctance to deal with him. And perhaps he’d made all of the intervals twenty minutes in order to make things easier to remember on the witness stand. But the bottom line was, the three transactions had gone down pretty much as he described them. Alonzo Barnett had indeed sold him heroin, not just once but three times, if you wanted to count the aborted third