I took a nap. I made a few phone calls. I grabbed a cab. It smelled of sardines. The traffic was hell. I thought about the Case of the Red Car Door.
My client, Juan Perros, had been convicted on the testimony of one witness, his girlfriend, who hadn’t actually seen him commit the crime. Now, I didn’t know whether Juan did it or not. I still don’t. But I did think that something wasn’t right. It didn’t pass the smell test. There just wasn’t enough evidence presented to the jury to take a man’s freedom away. It seemed clear to me that Juan was put away on the basis of nothing more than preconceived notions about guys named Juan from Brooklyn.
Jury verdicts are awfully hard to overturn, though, and I had to find something other than the fact that Juan’s court-appointed lawyer had slept through large parts of the trial. That didn’t make him any less effective than half the criminal lawyers in town.
I was lucky. I found Butch. It wasn’t his case, directly. He’d been a minor witness. But he had a sense of justice that was, shall we say, somewhat more nuanced than that of many of his colleagues. And with his help I found the one thing that was guaranteed to spring Juan. Prosecutorial misconduct. Big, juicy prosecutorial misconduct. Up-the-wazoo prosecutorial misconduct.
When they’d arrested Juan, they’d taken pictures of his car. The car was a black Chevy Impala, just like the one that had been seen at the crime scene. But, as was plain to see from at least two of the photos, photos that appeared mysteriously in my e-mail in the middle of the night, it wasn’t all black. It had a bright shiny red driver’s side door that Juan had gotten from a junkyard to replace the original after he’d been sideswiped in a 3 a.m. drag race on Prospect Boulevard.
More importantly for the appeal, the prosecutor had never seen fit to share the photos with Juan’s lawyer. And nobody at the trial ever testified that they’d seen a black Impala with a bright red driver’s side door at the crime scene.
So there I had it: not only prosecutorial misconduct, but misconduct that, especially given the flimsy state of the evidence, had clearly had a material impact on the verdict.
So I got Juan out of jail. Whether he was re-tried and re-convicted, I don’t know. I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know whether he turned around and murdered someone else, either. I felt ambivalent enough about the case as it was. I mean, frankly, the guy probably did do it. It made me remember why I hadn’t gone in for criminal defense work in the first place.
But the case got me a little publicity for a time. SELFLESS CRUSADER FOR JUSTICE RESCUES INNOCENT MAN FROM PRISON. All that shit. I didn’t bother enlightening the reporters. That I’d only taken on the case to fulfill a pledge the firm had made to the Bar Association. They would have ignored that detail anyway. Why let the facts get in the way of a good story?
More important, the case got me a friend. Butch admired what I’d done for Juan. And I appreciated what he’d done for me, at considerable risk to his career. We hung out a bit. He’d invite me to the weekly poker game with some of his guys once in a while, when they had an extra chair. Cops and goombahs. A fun crowd. We had a bond. An unspoken, unnamed bond that’s shared by those who have walked the fine, fine lines of legal ethics on the edge. The place where nobody can tell you what the answer is. You have to make the call yourself, and live with it. With others’ freedom in the balance.
That’s why I knew he’d give me something. At least that he wouldn’t brush me off with a quote from the manual. ‘Members of the force are not to talk to defense attorneys without a member of the Departmental Legal Staff present,’ or whatever.
11.
Butch’s hang was the velvet dog, across the street from the twenty-ninth precinct. Best to approach him there, where he’d be comfortable. A couple of drinks down and I’d be more comfortable too.
The place was full of noise when I arrived. Full of noise and beer and friendship. There were groups of two and three and four dispersed throughout the joint, each group enclosed in its own small world of warmth, shared experience and feeling.
I found a seat in the back. I ordered a Guinness. A meal in itself. Thick, meaty and nutritious. Carbs enough for a week.
I nursed it.
I thought about stuff.
The kind of sweaty camaraderie that now was all around me made me more than faintly uncomfortable. I’d missed the locker room thing. I’d spent my adolescence avoiding it. Cultivating contempt for sweaty guys who’d never heard of Dostoevsky. I was always smaller than the rest, and slower. Lacking killer instinct. Late to sport the hair and manliness you needed to compete for shower space and recognition.
I was on my second Guinness when I spied Butch, coming in the door, nodding and smiling, shaking hands and slapping shoulders. In his element.
I let him settle in. When he seemed as comfortable as a man can be, I contrived to sidle up to him.
Hey Butch, I said, good to see you.
Rick, my man, he said. How goes the battle?
It goes. It doesn’t go. Shit happens. Then it doesn’t.
I think I get the drift, he laughed. Sounds like my life, too.
I smiled. I put a hand on his shoulder.
Come on back, I said.
I nodded to my booth.
Sure, he said. Give me a minute. I got to talk to some guys.
I retreated to the back. Butch made the rounds. Some backslapping here, a little joking there.
He was a big guy. Broad-shouldered and black as Kenyan coffee, with a smooth shaved head that somehow made him look even bigger. But he also had that huge warm smile, and a soft side that he knew how to use to his advantage.
Ten minutes later, he made his way to the booth. He sat down.
So what can I do for you, my friend?
Butch did not stand on ceremony. It was one of the things I liked about him. No need to indulge in the tribal chitchat. Get to the point.
Hey, I said, I know you’ve got your rules. But I was hoping you could tell me what you can.
He gave me a knowing smile.
Hey, Rick, he said, you’re not tight with Internal Affairs, are you?
Not on this one, I laughed. Next time maybe.
Okay, just wanted to make sure. Anyway, I don’t mind telling you what I know, because what I know isn’t much. I hear it’s pretty cut and dried, Rick.
That may be so, I said. But I’ve got my job to do. The kid says he didn’t do it.
Well, there’s a shock.
I know, I know, I smiled. But I got to tell you, there’s something very believable about him. He’s an angry kid. But I don’t see any guile in him.
You don’t need guile to hit a guy upside the head with a blunt instrument.
All right. I know. I’m not going to convince you of anything.
You always were a wimp.
Just tell me what you can.
He gave it some thought. He ran his hands over his cleanly shaven head.
Okay, here’s what I know. The guys have a fight. Sounded pretty damn vicious. A lot of thumping and banging and yelling. Then it all goes quiet. We got a time on that. One thirty-five a.m. Almost exactly an hour later, some homeless guy in an alley about three blocks away picks up a big cardboard box. Going to use it for a house or something. And under the box is the body of this kid. His face is half caved in. Blunt trauma. Kid’s dead as a doorknob. They haven’t found the weapon yet.
Nose broken.
