Overkill

JAYWALKER: What did it say?

CARMEN: That he was absent from school.

JAYWALKER: After you read the letter, did you do anything?

CARMEN: Yeah, sure. I spoke with Jeremy.

JAYWALKER: And what did he say?

CARMEN: In the beginning, he don’t want to say anything. But I make him tell me what the problem is. He say he’s afraid to go to school because they follow him and threat him.

JAYWALKER: They?

CARMEN: These guys. This gang.

JAYWALKER: What did you say?

CARMEN: I say, “We gotta go to the police.” He say no, he was scared for his life. A gang was following him, and they was going to kill him.

Carmen described how she’d pulled Jeremy out of school at that point. By that time it was too late to put him in another school, so he’d just stopped going. Her son’s life, she said, was more important than anything they could teach him at school.

Jaywalker tried to draw Carmen out as to the changes she’d noticed in Jeremy, but despite all his hours of preparation, she used conclusive words when descriptive ones would have been more compelling. He was “panic,” she recalled, “nervous,” “hysteric.” But she did manage to say that he’d lost one job after another because he was scared he was being followed.

Jaywalker moved to the very end of August and the day of the barbershop incident.

JAYWALKER: Do you know a man by the name of Francisco Zapata?

CARMEN: That’s Frankie, the man from the barbershop.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when something happened just before Labor Day, involving Frankie?

CARMEN: Yeah.

JAYWALKER: Tell us what you remember.

CARMEN: I was in my kitchen cooking when they knocked on the door. It was about six-o’clock. When I opened the door I get scared. I see my son all white, like pale.

JAYWALKER: Was anyone with him?

CARMEN: The girl, Miranda. And Frankie from the barbershop.

JAYWALKER: How was Jeremy acting?

CARMEN: He was very nervous. He can’t even talk. He was panic, crying. I asked him what happened, he can’t answer me. The man, Frankie, he told me to keep him home, don’t let him go downstairs.

JAYWALKER: Did Frankie say why?

CARMEN: No. But I could tell it must have been very, very bad.

It was time to bring Carmen to the day of the shooting.

JAYWALKER: Do you remember a day about five or six days later, in the very beginning of September? Do you remember something happening then?

CARMEN: You mean the accident?

There it was again: the accident. Jaywalker had warned her at least a dozen times not to use the term. He realized now she simply couldn’t help herself, that she would go to her grave thinking of it as just that.

JAYWALKER: The shooting. Tell us the first thing you remember about that day.

CARMEN: I remember when Jeremy came home.

JAYWALKER: Was he alone, or was he with someone else?

CARMEN: He was with the girl, Miranda.

JAYWALKER: What did you see when they came in?

CARMEN: I see Jeremy very, very nervous, walking back and forth. He can’t talk. There was blood on his face, his mouth. And his shirt was all like burn, with like a little hole in it. And under it, right under it, his skin was red.

She found a spot on her own midsection, and began rubbing it. Even as she answered the next few questions, recalling that Jeremy had been so nervous he couldn’t talk, she continued to massage her belly.

It had finally fallen to Miranda to describe what had happened.

JAYWALKER: After that conversation, did you do something with Jeremy?

CARMEN: Yeah. I took him and Miranda out of the apartment.

JAYWALKER: Why did you do that?

CARMEN: Because when he could talk again, he told me he was too scared to stay there.

JAYWALKER: Did he say who he was scared of?

CARMEN: Yeah. He told me that the gang, the gang was going to kill him.

JAYWALKER: Where did you take him?

CARMEN: I took them to the Bronx.

JAYWALKER: What was in the Bronx?

CARMEN: My sister.

JAYWALKER: Did Jeremy stay in the Bronx for a long time?

CARMEN: No, just one night.

JAYWALKER: Where did he go from there?

CARMEN: I send him to Puerto Rico.

Jaywalker paused. He figured seven months was certainly worth a pause.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when Jeremy came back to New York?

CARMEN: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Did you and he go somewhere then?

CARMEN: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Where did you go?

CARMEN: To a lawyer.

JAYWALKER: And did you and the lawyer and Jeremy do something?

CARMEN: Yeah.

JAYWALKER: What did you do?

CARMEN: We took him to the police.

JAYWALKER: And did Jeremy give himself up?

CARMEN: Yeah.

Jaywalker thanked Carmen and sat down. Despite hours of preparation, she’d earned no better than a C in his book. Her nervousness had caused her to leave out most of the details she’d been able to recall at the office, her home, and even in the courthouse as recently as an hour before she’d taken the stand. And whose fault was that? Jaywalker’s, of course. Because Carmen was his witness, he’d been barred from asking her leading questions in which he could have suggested the answers to her, such as “Did Jeremy suffer from nightmares?” Nor could he have asked her to repeat conversations she’d had with Miranda; those would have been hearsay. Still, he knew, when a witness underperformed, as Jeremy’s mother had, it was rarely the fault of the witness and almost always that of the examiner. Whatever shortcomings Carmen had, it had been Jaywalker’s job to identify them and