winning a murder acquittal for Carl Coppalino in New Jersey, had made the mistake of allowing his client to be photographed cavorting on the beach with his lover in Florida, while he awaited a second murder trial. To Jaywalker's thinking, Bailey had lost the second case right then and there, before the trial had even begun.
So he would let the jurors see Samara heading to the ladies' room, talking with the court officers or standing alone with her thoughts by the elevator bank. What they weren't going to see, or think they were seeing, was her lawyer whispering in her ear and coaching her, telling her what to say and how to say it, when to smile demurely, and when to allow a tear to well up and roll down her cheek.
Besides, there was no need for him to tell her any of those things. He'd already done so, a hundred times over.
After the recess, Jaywalker picked up precisely where he'd left off.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when you met a man named Barry Tannenbaum?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, there did.
MR. JAYWALKER: When and where was that?
MS. TANNENBAUM: I was eighteen, so it would have been in 1997, I think. I'd just become legal, so I could work at the hotels. You didn't have to be twenty-one back then. So I was working in one of the cocktail lounges at Caesars Palace. That's where I first saw Barry.
MR. JAYWALKER: Tell us about that first meet ing.
MS. TANNENBAUM: I saw this man sitting alone at a table in the corner. He was smallish, not too much bigger than I am. He was already sixty-one, old enough to have been my grandfather, as a lot of peo ple have pointed out since. He was pale, and his hair was thinning, though I didn't know that right away, because he was wearing a wig, a wig and sunglasses. So nobody would recognize him, he told me later.
MR. JAYWALKER: Would you have recognized him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Me? I'd never heard of him. In fact, I figured he had to be gay. You know, the wig, the shades. I figured he was scoping out guys.
MR. JAYWALKER: So it wasn't your intention to hit on him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No. I was legit by then. I didn't have to do that any more.
Gay or straight, the man had looked so alone and so sad that Samara had walked over to his table, even though it wasn't part of her station, and asked him if he was okay. He'd replied that he wasn't sure. She could see that he was drinking Diet Coke-she knew from the lemon slice he'd removed from the rim of the glass but hadn't used-so on her next trip by, she'd brought him another one, no charge. He'd seemed terribly grateful for the gesture, she recalled. And when she got off her shift, at three in the morning, he was waiting for her, just outside the door. At his invitation, they'd gone to his room upstairs, where he'd taken off the wig and the sunglasses, but no more. And for the next five hours, they'd talked.
MS. TANNENBAUM: Talked. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I'd never talked to anyone in my whole life, not for more than a minute or two. And then it would be about the weather, or to say, 'Please pass the salt,' or 'Do you know what time it is?' or 'Your place or mine?'
MR. JAYWALKER: What did you talk about?
MS. TANNENBAUM: All sorts of stuff. Where we'd grown up, what we liked, what we hated, whether we cried when we were sad or when we were happy
MR. JAYWALKER: How did that come up?
MS. TANNENBAUM: It's going to sound silly.
MR. JAYWALKER: Try us.
MS. TANNENBAUM: At some point, I started cry ing, just like that. And Barry asked me what was the matter. And I told him nothing was the matter. When he asked me again, I felt I had to tell him the truth. So I told him I was crying because I'd never been so happy in my life.
MR. JAYWALKER: Did you go to bed with Barry that night? Did you have sex with him?
MS. TANNENBAUM: No, not that night. Not for a month, maybe two. I still thought he was gay. Any way, it wasn't about sex. I'd had enough sex by then to last me a lifetime. Two or three lifetimes.
MR. JAYWALKER: Was it about money?
MS. TANNENBAUM: (Laughs) I'd bought him Diet Cokes all night, out of my own paycheck, be cause I figured he couldn't afford to spring for a real drink. I didn't think he had a dollar to his name, to be honest.
MR. JAYWALKER: But he had a room at Caesars Palace, didn't he?
MS. TANNENBAUM: Back then, the big hotels would comp just about anybody, at least once. I don't know if they still do it. But in those days, all you had to do was ask. You have no idea how many flat broke guys there were back then, hanging on by their teeth, waiting for their luck to turn.
MR. JAYWALKER: So if it wasn't about sex and it wasn't about money, what was it about?
MS. TANNENBAUM: To tell you the truth, I had absolutely no idea. Love, I probably would have said at the time. Now that I'm older, and maybe just a tiny bit smarter, I guess maybe it was about finding my father. You know, the father I never had.
And right there, she lost it. No solitary tear welled up and trickled slowly down her cheek. No practiced feminine sob begged for the audience's attention. Without warning, Samara doubled over as though shot through the gut with a cannonball, her face contorted in pain, her hands knotted into fists, her shoulders shaking uncontrollably, her body heaving for breath. Strange, low animal noises rose from somewhere deep inside her. There was nothing in the least bit attractive about it, nothing charming, nothing to make some Hollywood director envious. But it was r eal.
For a full minute she stayed contorted like that, showing no sign that she was the least bit capable of reclaiming herself from whatever demons had so suddenly and so un expectedly seized possession of her. Jaywalker stood by helplessly, hugging the sides of the lectern with both hands to hold himself back from rushing to her. They hadn't re hearsed this. They hadn't talked about it. They had contin gency plans for just about anything that might happen while she was on the stand, right down to sneezing fits and bladder issues. But they had no plan in place for a total meltdown. There was no adjustment for something like this in Jaywalker's mental playbook. All he knew was that his client was in a place way beyond where the offering of a tissue or the extending of a glass of water made any sense, light-years past the point of asking her if she could use a few minutes to compose herself before continuing.
'I think,' said Judge Sobel, 'that we're going to take our lunch break a little early today.'
And all Jaywalker could do was to say thank-you, walk to the defense table and take his seat, and do what everyone else in the courtroom was doing: watch and listen, and try to not w atch and listen, as Samara continued to writhe in the agonizing memory of her lost childhood. Only when the jurors had been led out, the judge had left the bench and the last of the spectators had filed out of the room in silence, could he then make his way to her and collect her from where she crouched, by then on one knee, on the bare floor of the witness stand. Only then could he take her in his arms and hold her and rock her, until finally he felt the first subtle signals that her body was beginning to unclench and soften, and he could at last allow himself to believe that she was on her way back from whatever long-ago and far away place her story had carried her off to.
25
Samara had pretty much regained control of herself by the time the afternoon session began, but from Jaywalker's per spective, her doing so proved a mixed blessing. While she was able to respond to his questions without outburst or interruption, there was something missing from her answers. Gone was her willingness to
