Overkill

7

BRICKS AND BOOKS

Exempt as they are from New York’s speedy trial rules, murder trials tend to travel through the system more slowly than other cases. Jeremy Estrada had been arrested only seven weeks ago, a fact that normally would have put him at the very end of the line. But in court time, Jeremy’s case had actually begun with his indictment seven months earlier and was therefore now approaching its first birthday. That fact alone immediately caused it to jump half the cases ahead of it. By Jaywalker’s calculation-and he considered it his business to be able to predict such things with accuracy-they were looking at a trial sometime around the middle of next year.

That might have seemed like an awful lot of time to somebody else, but not to Jaywalker. He was firmly convinced that of the acquittals he’d gotten-and he got more acquittals than most lawyers allow themselves to dream of-a good half of them were won before the trial had ever begun. Other lawyers prepared for trial. Jaywalker over-prepared; he ultra-super-hyper-over-prepared. He organized, interviewed, investigated, interrogated, subpoenaed, photographed, recorded and visited the crime scene. And then he did all those things over again, three or four times. He totally obsessed over every single case, no matter the simplicity or complexity of the charges, or the length of the potential sentence, and he did it to a degree that was arguably pathological. His therapist had suggested that he was engaged in a struggle to the death with his father, in order to win his mother’s affection.

“They’re both dead,” Jaywalker had commented dryly from the couch. Okay, the big leather chair.

“Ahaaa!”

Make that his former therapist.

So the time clock Jaywalker now envisioned in Jeremy Estrada’s case was anything but a generous one. In Jeremy he had a defendant who gave up information only grudgingly, and who would take endless hours to prepare. Then there were the other witnesses to hunt down and interview. There was research to conduct, cases to read on justification, deadly force and extreme emotional disturbance. There was the autopsy report to reread, break down and comb for clues. There were the ballistics report and the crime-scene sketch. Not only did the list go on, the list of lists went on. And as Jaywalker thought about it, the sheer amount of work that lay ahead of him was enough to trigger a migraine.

Nor did he have the usual comfort of knowing that his adversary would be in pretty much the same bind. Katherine Darcy had been working on the case from day one, or at least day two or three, when it had first been assigned to her. That fact had given her a significant head start, a head start that no matter how hard he worked, Jaywalker would never be able to erase.

So it was time to get down to work. And work would begin with hitting the bricks.

The first thing he wanted to do was to locate and nail down defense witnesses. Jeremy’s mother and twin sister could testify to the changes they’d observed in Jeremy as a result of his torment at the hands of the Raiders. But their value as witnesses would be limited. For one thing, they hadn’t actually seen any of the gang members or directly observed any of the events that had occurred. And even if they had, their relationship with Jeremy, and their understandable loyalty toward him, would immediately render their testimony suspect. But the good news was that neither Carmen nor Julie was going anywhere. They’d be right there for Jaywalker to interview indepth and prepare to testify, whenever he got around to it.

He was much more concerned with locating the two people who’d actually witnessed the harassment. The first of these, and by far the more important, was Miranda. For starters, she’d been the catalyst who’d set off the entire chain of events; she was the case’s Helen of Troy. Next, according to Jeremy, she’d been present on a number of occasions when Sandro and the others had confronted Jeremy and bullied him. Finally, she’d been right there at the fight between Jeremy and Victor Quinones, and at the shooting itself. Whatever Victor’s girlfriend Teresa Morales could say about those events, Miranda could contradict and hopefully neutralize. So in every sense of the word, she was indispensable.

But neither Jeremy nor his family had seen or heard from Miranda since the days following the shooting. And as Jaywalker pondered that fact, he realized that he didn’t even know her last name. It was a sobering thought, and it reminded him once again of how much work he had ahead of him.

The other witness he needed to find was the owner of the barbershop where the gang had tried to get at Jeremy. Jaywalker had already been told that the shop had since closed and the owner had returned to Puerto Rico. On top of that, in this instance Jaywalker didn’t even have a first name to work with, let alone a last.

He walked to the bathroom, opened the medicine cabinet and searched for something strong. But most of the pill bottles were either empty or bore expiration dates from the previous millennium. He settled on a couple of Motrin. Motrin? Perhaps some overnight guest had left them behind. Then again, headaches were sort of like brain cramps, weren’t they? Next he brewed himself a pot of strong caffeinated coffee and downed two cups, black and bitter.

No migraine was going to get in his way.

An hour later, Jaywalker found himself standing on the corner of 112th Street and Third Avenue, where, according to Jeremy, there’d once been a barbershop. He stopped everyone who looked like they might speak English, and asked them if they remembered one. To those who answered him with a blank stare and a “No comprendo,” he tried “Barberio” and pointed to his own hair, just to make sure they wouldn’t mistake him for a barbarian. Finally an old man with no teeth shook his head and said, “No mas.”

“Si, si,” said Jaywalker. “But donde was it?”

Like an idiot, he’d taken French and Latin.

“Come with me,” said the man, in perfect English. And took him a half a block east, where he pointed out a small shop with the word Botanica printed above it.

Inside were rows upon rows of shelves overflowing with dusty jars and amber bottles of vitamins, supplements and herbal remedies. Bilingual hand-lettered signs explained which were good for stomach ailments, which immediately improved eyesight or hearing, and which promised to cure cancer or SIDA, the Spanish equivalent of AIDS. There were cloves for toothaches, mercury compounds for gout, and dried chicken heads for use in Santeria rituals.

Jaywalker was not tempted.

The proprietor, a small woman with a ready smile, spoke no English. “Momentito,” she said, and ducked beneath a curtain and into a back room. When she returned a momentito later, she was accompanied by a girl of seven or eight, presumably her daughter and translator.

Jaywalker explained his business. Did they know if the place had ever been a barbershop? Yes. By any chance, had they bought out the lease from the owner of the barbershop? Yes, exactly. Did they happen to remember his name? No, but if he cared to wait a few minutes, they had papers.

As Jaywalker’s former therapist might have said, “Ahaaa!”

Twenty minutes later, Jaywalker reemerged into the sunlight. In his left pocket, as a result of his appreciation and a twenty-dollar bill, was a small bottle containing a scary fetal-like object labeled Black Toadwort and unconditionally guaranteed to cure him of migraines forever. But even were it to fail to live up to its claim, it would be well worth the investment. For in his right pocket was a piece of paper bearing the careful, practiced lettering of a third grader.

Francisco Zapata

Frankie and Friends

Barbershop

It wasn’t all that far, so from the botanica Jaywalker walked north to 115th Street and the projects, where he