Guilty As Sin

BARNETT: I don’t know. Prison is a tough place, ten times tougher than your worst imagination of it. I was a dead man…I really was. When no one else would reach out and help me, one man did. He saved my life. So did I owe him a debt? Yes. Did that mean I had to repay it when he called on me to? I’m not sure. I held out as long as I could, and then I said yes.

JAYWALKER: And if you had to do it all over again, would you still say yes?

BARNETT: I honestly can’t say. A debt is a debt, after all. So I might. I hope not, but I might.

By asking his questions softly, almost gently, Jaywalker had elicited responses from his client that were just as soft, just as gentle. Thoughtful, he hoped, thoughtful and honest. Anyone can say, “No way. I’ve learned my lesson. I’d never do that again.” It takes some real soul-searching to admit that, in spite of the horrendous price you’ve paid for doing something, you’re not sure how you’d react if asked to do it all over again.

For better or for worse, the quiet portion of Alonzo Barnett’s testimony was over. Jaywalker stepped back a few paces and, in a matter-of-fact tone, asked his client if after saying yes, he’d agreed to meet Hightower’s man and bring him to someone he knew for the purpose of buying heroin. Yes, said Barnett, he’d done that. Only the guy had refused to meet either Hightower or his man. He said he’d deal only through Barnett, who he’d known for years. So three times Barnett had taken money from the man he now knew to be Agent Trevor St. James. Three times he’d exchanged it for heroin, each time in increasing amounts. And three times it had been his intention to deliver the heroin to St. James. Twice he’d succeeded; on the third occasion he’d been arrested before he’d made it back to the agent’s car.

Just like they’d said.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was heroin each time?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to possess heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you know it was against the law to sell heroin?

BARNETT: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: But you did those things nonetheless?

BARNETT: Yes, I did. I’m ashamed to say so. But yes, I did.

Jaywalker looked up at the clock, saw it was nearly five. He had a few minor questions left on his notepad, but Alonzo Barnett’s last answer had been a good one, and it seemed an okay place to leave things. Miki Shaughnessey would have the whole night to work on her cross-examination, of course, but there was nothing Jaywalker could do about that.

“Thank you,” he said, and sat down.

15

One-Eyed Jack

The typical defense lawyer will allow himself the luxury of relaxing just a bit following a lengthy direct examination of his final witness. Next up is the prosecutor, after all, who conducts cross-examination while the defense lawyer gets to sit and relax. But relaxing simply wasn’t part of Jaywalker’s vocabulary when he was on trial.

On trial.

A friend, a banking lawyer, had once accused Jaywalker of misusing the phrase. “It’s the defendant who’s on trial,” she’d said. “Not you.”

She’d obviously never tried a case. Certainly not a criminal case.

So Jaywalker didn’t even think about taking the evening off. Time off was something he treated himself to after a trial, not during it, and even then, only if he’d won. Until the moment he heard the verdict delivered, there was simply too much to do. And if he lost, there would be still more. It was one of the reasons he fought so hard to win, so it would be over. He could still feel the sting of learning he’d flunked the bar exam the first time he’d taken it. Not because he felt stupid or because his pride was hurt. Jaywalker and pride had barely been on speaking terms for as long as he could remember. No, it was the realization that he’d have to go through it all over again, that it wasn’t over.

Which was why he spent what was left of Monday, as well as the first hour or two of Tuesday, preparing his redirect examination of Alonzo Barnett. Even though he hadn’t yet heard a word of Miki Shaughnessey’s cross, Jaywalker knew what she’d ask. Despite the fact that Jaywalker had preemptively gone into Barnett’s criminal record three times now-during jury selection, in his opening statement and now on direct examination-no young, inexperienced prosecutor was going to be able to avoid the temptation of covering the same ground on cross. After that, she’d try to challenge Barnett’s notion that owing a debt to another man constituted a moral justification to sell heroin, or a legal defense to having done so. She’d pin him down on the amounts involved, which had gradually grown from small to significant to substantial. She’d bring out that as a former addict himself, Barnett had to have been aware of the consequences of his actions. And she’d use that same “former addict” label to accuse him of being that worst of all combinations: a seller without the excuse of being a user needing to support his own habit. She’d pointedly ask him about the money he’d made or hoped to make from the sales. She’d want to know why he hadn’t considered his debt to Hightower paid off after the first sale, or at least the second. She’d suggest through her questions that, had Barnett not been arrested when he was, there might have been a fourth sale, then a fifth, and that the sales might still be going on to this day. Then, mostly because Jaywalker hadn’t-in fact especially because Jaywalker hadn’t-she would go into the details of how the three transactions had gone down, in order to show how accurate and honest her own witnesses had been in describing them. Finally, she’d try to put Barnett on the hot seat by asking him about his source, the person he’d gotten the drugs from on each occasion. It was a question no dealer ever wanted to answer, whether out of fear, loyalty or a combination of both. And it was a subject Jaywalker had purposefully avoided going into on direct.

In other words, by asking certain questions on direct and refraining from asking certain others, Jaywalker was able to not only predict what his adversary would ask on cross but to consciously and purposefully dictate her questions. So even as he was able to prepare his witness-in this case his client-to answer her questions, he could also prepare himself for his own next round of questions on his redirect examination.

But doing that was by no means all that Jaywalker did that Monday night into Tuesday morning. He considered it a distinct possibility that once they’d finished with Barnett’s testimony and the defense had rested, Shaughnessey would begin calling rebuttal witnesses. That, too, was something that inexperienced prosecutors tended to do. She’d recall agents and detectives-or call new ones-in an attempt to assure the jurors that Hightower hadn’t been working as an informer, and that the dangers involved in following Barnett too closely had been real ones. So Jaywalker prepared for those rebuttal witnesses, too, even though at this point they existed only in his imagination.

And when he’d finished working on his redirect examination of Barnett and his cross-examination of the imaginary rebuttal witnesses, he worked on his summation. Though the truth is, he’d begun working on it the day he’d met Alonzo Barnett and had been working on it ever since.

It certainly wasn’t easy, being Jaywalker. But it was the price he paid for being an obsessive-compulsive whose obsession forced him to do everything he possibly could in each case he tried, and whose compulsion drove him to avoid losing at any cost.

He finally climbed into bed around two in the morning, kissing his wife’s neck gently, so as not to wake her. Then he rolled over in the dark and blindly ran his hand along the floor by his side of the bed, until he felt the pen and notepad that were there, as they always were.

Just in case.

Miki Shaughnessey didn’t disappoint Jaywalker. She cross-examined on each of the areas he’d expected her to, though not in the order he would have bet on. Okay, so maybe he wasn’t quite Nostradamus yet. But by