Guilty As Sin

“I understand that,” she said. “But what does that show? What does it mean? What’s the jury supposed to make of it?”

“It could mean Barnett gave him some of it,” said Jaywalker. “But Barnett swears he didn’t.”

“And of course you believe him.”

It was one of their private little jokes, that Jaywalker invariably believed whatever his murderers, rapists, thieves and drug dealers told him. Not always, he’d tell her. But once they’d gotten to know him and trust him? Once they understood that he was really on their side and would fight for them even if he knew the full truth? Yeah, then they’d tell him the truth.

Almost always.

“Suppose Hightower had simply bought some of the same stuff?” she asked him. “Directly from the same guy Barnett was buying from?”

“Didn’t happen,” he assured her. “Barnett insists his source wouldn’t sell to anyone but him. Refused to even meet with Hightower, or with his so-called friend from Philadelphia. It’s the only reason Barnett’s in the hot seat now.”

“So what, then?”

“I don’t know,” Jaywalker confessed. “Maybe the agents thought Hightower was a pain in the ass, coming up on them like he did while they were trying to arrest Barnett. Those can be scary situations. Buncha white guys surrounding a brother in the middle of Harlem. Who knows? Maybe they got pissed off and flaked him.”

“Flaked him?”

“Took some of the drugs they’d skimmed off from the second buy and planted it on Hightower.”

“They do things like that?” she asked.

“Occasionally.”

“Did you?”

“Moi? No. But I know that kind of thing used to happen back then, and I’m sure it still happens today.”

“Great system you work in,” she said. And even in the dark, he could feel her turning away from him.

“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend I don’t know stuff like that goes on? Not argue that cops lie? Roll over and give up?”

“No,” she said, her voice softening. “What you’re supposed to do is roll over and try to get some sleep.”

Which turned out to be easy for her to say. For another hour Jaywalker continued to lie in the darkness, listening to the rise and fall of his wife’s breathing. He’d been able to go only so far with Olga Kasmirov and her lab reports, he knew. Even as he’d been busy with his chart-making, he’d noticed blank stares coming his way from the jury box. Sure, he’d had them there for a moment when the numbers had matched perfectly, Hightower’s drugs with what was missing from Barnett’s. But his wife was right, as she almost always was. What inference were the jurors supposed to draw from that match that could possibly steer them in the direction of acquitting Alonzo Barnett? Especially when Jaywalker himself couldn’t come up with an answer to that question.

He lay awake for another forty-five minutes. At one point he reached down to the floor by his side of the bed and groped around until he found the pen and pad of paper he always kept there. Blindly, he scribbled down two words. It was the last thing he remembered before finally falling asleep.

12

Hightower

Helping his wife make their bed that Saturday morning, Jaywalker stepped on something with his bare foot. When he bent down to see what it was, he found a crumpled piece of paper with scribbling on one side of it. It took him a moment to recognize his own handwriting and another moment to decipher it.

Call Miki

was all it said. With no pockets in his pajama top-and no pajama top, either, for that matter-he held on to it and didn’t put it down until he got to the kitchen. There he poured himself a glass of iced tea and grabbed a handful of Cheez-It crackers. Breakfast, Jaywalker style.

“So who’s this Miki?” his wife wanted to know.

“The D.A. I’m up against,” he said between mouthfuls.

“You’re going to call her on a weekend?”

“Yeah,” said Jaywalker. “I got an idea.”

His wife rolled her eyes but said nothing more. She was familiar with Jaywalker and his ideas. It was when he was most creative that he was also most dangerous. Like the time he’d decided their living room needed a fireplace. For two full years they’d lived with a blue plastic tarpaulin draped over an entire wall. But eventually they’d ended up with a pretty cool fireplace. So she’d learned to get out of the way and give her husband room while she feared for the worst and hoped for the best.

It took him a while to get hold of Miki Shaughnessey’s home phone number, because, like those of all A.D.A.’s, it was unlisted. But with a little lying and cajoling, he got it.

“How’d you get my number?” was the first thing she wanted to know.

They spent a few minutes on that, before moving on to the purpose of Jaywalker’s call. “I want you to have Clarence Hightower’s drugs tested by Dr. Kasmirov, so we can hear the percentages of the various additives. That way we’ll know for sure if there’s a match.”

“What difference could it possibly make?”

His wife couldn’t have said it better.

He spent the next five minutes trying to convince Shaughnessey that it did make a difference. He even went so far as to try out his flake theory on her. But if her reaction was any indication of what the jury’s might be, it left Jaywalker with second thoughts about whether his argument would fly.

Finally she relented, but he strongly suspected it was just to get him off the phone. And even then, all she said was that she’d run it by her supervisor.

“Promise?” he asked, reduced to begging.

“Promise.”

“Cross your heart and hope to die?”

“Stick a needle in my eye.”

First thing Sunday morning, Jaywalker got a call from his former client Kenny Smith. Naturally Smith had his home number. All his clients and former clients did. It was what you did when you refused to own a cell phone but still wanted to be accessible to important people. Like your clients on Rikers Island, say.

“What’s going on?” Jaywalker asked Smith.

“Can we talk?” Kenny asked.

Ever since his voice had been identified on a wiretap ten or twelve years back, Smith had been totally paranoid about saying more than hello and goodbye on the phone. And while Jaywalker considered it unlikely that anyone might be listening in on either of their phones, he wasn’t willing to bet on it, having made an enemy or two in law enforcement over the years. Besides, he had absolutely no idea what Kenny was about to tell him. The last thing he wanted to do was assure him it was okay to talk, only to hear a murder confession and then have it played back in court six months from now.

“Have you had breakfast?” he asked Kenny.

“No. You wanna meet somewhere?”

“Nah,” Jaywalker told him. “Come on over here.”

And the thing was, he didn’t even need to give Kenny the address. “Do me a favor,” he told his wife. “Make some more of whatever you’re making?” It was a drill she’d become familiar with over time. It came down to a choice of having strange people drop over from time to time, or having her husband go out even more than he did to