to that area of the mouth as it is with anything else?
KAPLAN: Yes, sir. It’s consistent with absolutely anything that would have caused the tooth to bite through the lip.
JAYWALKER: Thank you.
And with that Jaywalker let him go. Despite his having been able to score a few points on cross, he knew that Dr. Kaplan had been a pivotal witness for the prosecution. And the fact that Katherine Darcy didn’t feel any need to get up and rehabilitate him on redirect examination underscored what Jaywalker already knew: the witness’s conclusion that the head shot had been fired from inches away-or even less-wasn’t really in doubt and was something the jurors would be hearing much more of during Darcy’s summation.
Between direct and cross, Seymour Kaplan’s testimony had taken over two hours, and by the time he stepped down from the witness stand it was nearly five o’clock. Judge Wexler recessed for the day. “And I know you’ll be disappointed to hear this,” he told the jurors, “but tomorrow is my calendar day. That means I’ll be spending the morning dealing with other cases, ones that aren’t on trial. As a result, your presence won’t be required until two- fifteen in the afternoon. But don’t let my generosity lull you into being late. I’m told by the Department of Corrections that there are plenty of vacancies on Rikers Island.”
Vintage Wexler, taking what promised to be a beautiful free morning in mid-May and turning it into a threat of jail time.
Even with the next day’s late start, that evening was a busy one for Jaywalker. Not that they all weren’t when he was on trial. But once they resumed Wednesday afternoon, Katherine Darcy would announce that the People were resting their case. That meant it would be the defense’s turn.
In exchange for Darcy’s agreement to permit Jeremy’s mother and sister to remain in the courtroom during the testimony of the prosecution witnesses, Jaywalker had promised to call them first, and it was a promise he intended to keep. Carmen had been steadfast in her refusal to allow her daughter to testify, and Jaywalker had neither seen Julie nor spoken with her since she’d been chased and threatened by the Raiders. As a result, following Carmen’s testimony he would be putting Francisco Zapata on the stand. True to his word, Frankie the Barber had flown in from Puerto Rico over the weekend, and Jaywalker now arranged to meet both Carmen and him at the courthouse at noon, to go over their testimony one last time.
After them, of course, would be Jeremy. And it was only fitting that he should be the trial’s final witness. In a very real sense, all those who preceded him on the stand-the grieving father, the three eyewitnesses, the police officers, the crime-scene detective and the medical examiner, and even the defense’s own witnesses-were nothing but a preface to the main act. The case wasn’t about Victor Quinones or his father, or Teresa Morales or Regina Fortune or Seymour Kaplan. No, it was about Jeremy, about his falling in love, paying a terrible price for having done so, and finally fighting back. Tomorrow afternoon his mother and his barber would set the stage for him. And then, most likely Thursday morning, the jurors would hear what this case was really about.
They would hear Jeremy’s story.
17
As things turned out on Wednesday, Judge Wexler’s calendar spilled over into the afternoon session, and it was after three o’clock before the trial resumed. Jaywalker regarded the delay as a minor blessing. For one thing, it gave him an additional hour to make sure that Carmen and Frankie the Barber were fully prepared to testify. Not that that they wouldn’t have been without it; he’d already spent hours with each of them. But there was prepared, and then there was Jaywalker prepared.
Beyond that, the delay made it all but certain that Jeremy wouldn’t be taking the stand until Thursday morning. That was good for several reasons. It would give Jaywalker an opportunity to reconcile Jeremy’s version of the facts with anything unexpected his mother or Frankie might say. And it would mean that in all likelihood Jeremy’s testimony would begin and end on a single day, rather than being broken up and spread out over two days. Not only would that enhance his story, at the same time it would deprive Katherine Darcy of the luxury of an overnight between Jaywalker’s direct examination and her cross.
It was little things like that, Jaywalker knew, that could affect the outcome of a close case. What worried him right now, however, were those last three words:
Carmen Estrada didn’t so much walk to the witness stand as waddle. She promised to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in a voice so low and gravelly that Jaywalker abandoned the lectern in favor of standing back by the wooden rail that separated the front of the courtroom from the spectator section. Years of experience had taught him that the farther he stood from the witness, the more that witness would be forced to raise his or her voice. If that didn’t work, he’d try cupping a hand behind one ear, in an exaggerated parody of deafness. And if all else failed, he’d badger and bully his witness into speaking more loudly. That last technique usually did the trick and often created an extra measure of sympathy for the poor witness.
Little things.
JAYWALKER: Do you know the defendant, Jeremy Estrada?
CARMEN: Sure, I know him. He’s my son.
Jaywalker took her back two years. She’d been living on the Upper East Side with Jeremy and his twin sister, Julie, their father having left some ten years earlier. That May, Jeremy had been seventeen. He’d been attending Catholic school at All Hallows High. But Carmen had reached a point where she could no longer afford the tuition, so Jeremy had transferred to public school and was by that time attending Park East, on 105th Street between Second and Third Avenues.
JAYWALKER: In addition to going to school, was Jeremy doing anything else?
CARMEN: Yes, sure. After school and on weekends he was working.
JAYWALKER: Where was he working?
CARMEN: At a bodega, and a dry-cleaning store, and later a hardware store. Lots of places.
JAYWALKER: Did something happen, some change with respect to Jeremy, that May or June, that you became aware of?
CARMEN: Yeah.
JAYWALKER: Tell us about it, please.
CARMEN: Well, before he was normal, regular. You know, like any other seventeen-year-old boy.
JAYWALKER: And then?
CARMEN: After a while he became very nervous-like. I see him walking back and forth in the house, looking out the window through the venetian blinds. He stop eating, stop talking. I ask him what happen to him. He say, “Nothing.” He don’t want to tell me.
JAYWALKER: Anything else you remember?
CARMEN: Sometime he be shaking or crying in the nighttime, while he’s sleeping. I try to wake him up. I say, “What happen, what’s the matter?” And he say, “Nothing, nothing.” Finally, one day in June, a letter had arrived from school.
JAYWALKER: Did you open the letter?
CARMEN: Yes.
