Guilty As Sin

“What kind of case?”

“Sale.”

Blackstone had grimaced almost reflexively. “Well,” he’d said, “good fucking luck.”

Translation? Because jurors invariably ended up believing cops, sale cases were all but unwinnable. Which might have been a good enough excuse for Blackstone, but not for Jaywalker. All but unwinnable was where they separated the men from the boys. All but unwinnable was Jaywalker’s briar patch.

“It is a Monday, a Monday in September, perhaps twenty months ago this very day,” Jaywalker had begun, taking the jurors back with him to that fateful day when Clarence Hightower had first shown up on the stoop of Alonzo Barnett’s apartment building.

And that was as far as he got.

He never saw the court officer rise quietly from his seat and walk to the wooden partition that separated the well of the courtroom from the audience section. Nor did he hear the officer whispering to the man standing on the other side of the partition, ordering him to find a seat. Because Jaywalker had been standing directly in front of the jurors as he’d begun to address them, those things had taken place behind him, out of his field of vision.

But he quickly became aware that as much as the jurors were trying to give him their undivided attention, something was distracting them. First one pair of eyes, then another, then five or six more, were looking past him and focusing on someone or something else.

Almost reflexively, he turned to see what they were watching. There at the partition, a uniformed court officer was pressing one index finger to his lips while using the other to direct a tall black man toward an empty section of seats in the third row. But the man wasn’t obeying the officer’s instructions. Instead he was gesturing frantically in Jaywalker’s direction, trying to make himself understood.

Which was right about when Jaywalker recognized the man. It was Kenny Smith, Jaywalker’s official unofficial investigator, who’d testified earlier in the trial.

“Please excuse me,” Jaywalker told the jurors, turning and stepping away from them. Then, even as Shirley Levine reached for her seldom-used gavel, he raised a hand and asked if he might be permitted to approach the man. Which he did, without bothering to wait for her response.

He quickly reached the partition and assured the court officer that he knew the man, and knew he wasn’t a threat of any sort. Then he turned his attention to Smith.

“What are you doing?” he whispered.

“I’ve got him,” Smith whispered back. “He’s here.”

But there are whispers, and there are not-quite-whispers. And in Kenny Smith’s inability to contain his excitement, his reply fell squarely into the latter category, the sort guaranteed to draw a sharp rebuke from any librarian within a hundred yards. But on this Monday morning in Part 91 there were no librarians in sight, only a gavel-banging judge, a bunch of jurors and a few rows of spectators.

“Who’s here?” Jaywalker asked Smith.

“Hightower.”

“Here here?”

By way of an answer, Smith pivoted and pointed toward the front door of the courtroom, the one that led directly to the hallway just beyond it.

“Do you need a recess, Mr. Jaywalker?” Judge Levine was asking.

“No, Your Honor, no. What I need is to reopen the case so that one more witness can testify. The defense calls Clarence Hightower.”

“Objection!” shouted Daniel Pulaski. “He can’t do that. He’s already rested. It’s too-”

“That’s enough,” barked the judge. “Everyone be seated. Now. That includes both lawyers and the gentleman standing at the rail. All of you.”

Kenny Smith mumbled “Sorry” and found a seat. So did Pulaski and Jaywalker. But there was still an audible buzz in the courtroom that refused to die down.

“Quiet,” ordered the judge.

The buzz complied.

As she turned to face the jurors, Levine looked positively pained. “Please forgive us once again,” she told them. “But I’m afraid we’re going to have to excuse you while we sort this all out. I’m truly sorry.”

In the twenty-minute argument that followed, Jaywalker formally asked permission to reopen his surrebuttal case in order to put Clarence Hightower on the stand. “He hasn’t been available until this very moment,” he explained. “And he’s the one person who’s in a position to tell us whether he was actually cooperating or not. The interests of justice demand that we hear what he has to say.”

Pulaski was equally fierce in his opposition. “Both sides rested,” he pointed out. “Then we had rebuttal, followed by surrebuttal. After that, both sides rested again. At some point the evidence has to come to an end, Your Honor. Enough has to be enough already.”

Shirley Levine spent a lot of time listening to the arguments and trying to balance the equities. In the end, the clincher for her wasn’t Clarence Hightower’s unique ability to clear things up, or that the interest of justice demanded that he be given an opportunity to do so. Nor was it the fact that both sides had rested, then rested again. It wasn’t even that the evidence had to come to an end, or that enough had to be enough already.

No, the clincher was the fact that Jaywalker had already begun delivering his summation.

“It turns out the case law is quite clear,” said Levine. “I have the discretion to permit either side to reopen the evidence for good cause and in the interest of justice, even after both sides have rested. Even after rebuttal and surrebuttal and rerebuttal. But once closing statements have begun,” she said, glancing up from a law book her law clerk had hastily retrieved and handed her moments earlier, “that discretion comes to an end.”

Jaywalker continued to press the point. He happened to know the case the judge was reading from. Knew it by name, in fact. He tried his best to convince Levine that it was distinguishable on its facts. “That case concerned an application to visit a crime scene,” he pointed out. “The lawyer hadn’t requested it until he heard his adversary say something during his summation. This situation is totally different. Here a previously missing witness suddenly shows up just as summations are beginning. Not only that, but he’s ready, willing and able to testify about something absolutely crucial.”

“I’m sorry,” said the judge. “But unless both sides consent to reopening, I’m not going to permit it. Mr. Pulaski?”

“The People strenuously oppose the application to reopen.”

“Then that’s my ruling, Counsel. And you have an exception, Mr. Jaywalker.”

Meaning that in a year or two, after the conviction and the sentencing, long after Alonzo Barnett had been shipped upstate to spend the rest of his life, Jaywalker could take up the issue with some appellate judge. Only to be told that the trial court had lacked discretion in the matter, and even if that wasn’t so, she’d been justified in acting as she had.

“So what’s the key to this entire case?” Jaywalker asked the jurors once the trial resumed. “Better yet, who’s the key?”

It wasn’t how he’d started summing up a half an hour earlier. But Kenny Smith’s interruption had changed things, prompted him to discard his notes and take a totally different approach. And from the expressions on the jurors’ faces, he knew he’d grabbed their attention with those opening questions, knew that the trial was his to win if only he could do it right.

“Despite the fact that the case bears his name, it’s not Alonzo Barnett who’s the key. Sure, he’s the defendant and he’s important, and we’ll have plenty to say about him, but he’s not the key. Nor is Trevor St. James, or Dino Pascarella or Angel Cruz or Lance Bucknell or Olga Kasmirov or Thomas Egan. Nor is Kenny Smith, who so rudely interrupted us this morning. If we count them all, including those who testified a second time on rebuttal, we’ve heard a total of nine witnesses during the course of this trial. Yet not one of those nine holds the key. Not one of those nine witnesses can unlock the dirty little secret that lies at the very heart of this case.

“But there is someone who can.