The judge said, “Mr. Swyteck, you’re on. For your sake, I hope you can explain yourself.”
Jack rose and stepped to the lectern. He didn’t have to glance over his shoulder at the rapt audience to know that all eyes were upon him. “Your Honor, contrary to Mr. Torres’s suggestion, we have not hounded Brian Pintado or his grandparents at every turn. We have made limited attempts to set up an interview, and we have been very discreet and polite in all our communications.”
The judge scoffed. “I don’t care if you hired Miss Manners to print up engraved invitations. If the boy doesn’t want to meet with you, then you’re just going to have to take no for an answer.”
“I understand that. But this is the first time I’ve heard anyone say that he doesn’t want to meet with us. Every time we’ve spoken to the Pintado family, the response has been along the lines of, ‘Yes, he will meet with you, but now is not a good time.’ Never did they say that it was Brian’s desire not to meet with us.”
Torres sprang from his chair. “Judge, I resent the implication that we have somehow led the defense to believe that an interview with the boy was forthcoming. If Mr. Swyteck got that impression, it was his own mistake.”
The judge removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes, as if tired of the bickering. “Fine,” he said from the bench. “Perhaps it was a misunderstanding. Or perhaps it was a case of the defense overstepping their bounds. As of this moment, however, I trust the air has been cleared. Has it not, Mr. Swyteck?”
Jack glanced at Sofia. It was a setback, to be sure, not to be able to interview Brian. But the judge was showing no sign of ruling that Lindsey’s lawyers had a right to force an interview with her son. “If that’s the way Brian feels,” said Jack, “then we’ll accept that.”
“Good. There will be no more phone calls to the Pintado household. No more attempts to contact Brian Pintado. Agreed?”
Again Jack hesitated. The blow to their trial preparation was one thing, but his disappointment ran deeper. As absurd as it had once seemed for Lindsey to try to limit Jack’s access to her son, it was even more bizarre that things were now playing out exactly as she had wished: Jack would never meet Brian-unless he won her acquittal.
“Mr. Swyteck,” said the judge, “do I have your agreement on that?”
“Yes,” he said without conviction. “Agreed.”
The judge looked across the courtroom and said, “Is that satisfactory to you, Mr. Torres?”
“That should be fine, Judge. I’ll simply hope against hope that Mr. Swyteck is as true to his word as his father is.”
Jack shot a look of annoyance. What a cheap shot, Torres.
“Is there anything further that the court needs to take up?” asked the judge.
Jack heard the members of the media shuffling in the press gallery behind him. They were poised to run for the exits the minute the judge adjourned the proceeding.
But the prosecutor had one last surprise.
“There is one more thing,” said Torres. “It has to do with that certain witness that is the subject of the court’s gag order.”
The judge practically rolled his eyes. “Consider the gag order lifted. I don’t think there’s a reporter in this courtroom who doesn’t already know more about that than I do.”
A light rumble of laughter rolled across the courtroom, then silence.
Torres said, “In accordance with the court’s pretrial order, the parties have already exchanged witness lists. Perhaps I missed it, but I did not see anywhere on the defense’s list of witnesses the name of a Cuban soldier.”
The judge flipped through the file and located the list of witnesses. Then he looked toward Jack and said, “Is he on your list or not, Mr. Swyteck?”
Jack hesitated. He wasn’t being dishonest, but one of the oldest tricks in the book was perhaps about to backfire on him. “We didn’t list him by name, Your Honor. But we did list our intention to call rebuttal witnesses.”
The judge snorted. “You didn’t really think you were going to slide a Cuban soldier in sideways over the transom by listing him generally under the category of ‘rebuttal witnesses,’ did you?”
“To be perfectly honest, Judge, we haven’t decided whether or not to call the soldier as a witness at trial.”
The prosecutor said, “In the interest of avoiding surprises, I would like the record to be very clear on this point. If Mr. Swyteck intends to call a Cuban soldier as witness, he should be required to disclose that fact here and now.”
“I won’t go that far,” said the judge. “Mr. Swyteck can decide at a later time whether or not to actually call him to the stand. But if there is a Cuban soldier out there who claims to know something about this crime, I want to hear his name. If I don’t hear it now, Mr. Swyteck, you’ve waived your right to call him.”
Jack glanced toward the crowd. Many of the onlookers had quite literally moved to the edge of their seats. “Judge, we’re in a public forum. I don’t know what consequences might be visited upon this soldier or his family if I were to reveal his name in open court.”
“Then don’t call him as a witness. But if you want to preserve your rights, Mr. Swyteck, let’s hear his name. Now.”
Jack paused, then said, “His name is Felipe Castillo.”
Silence gave way to a growing murmur through the crowd. Jack could almost hear the pencils scratching across notepads in the press gallery behind him. Jack wasn’t happy about giving up the soldier’s name, but there was some satisfaction to be had in the astonished expression on the prosecutor’s face. It was as if Torres had indeed thought that the defense was bluffing-as if, when push came to shove, Jack would be unable to deliver a name.
“All right,” said the judge, his tone reflecting a little surprise of his own. “We have a name. Does that satisfy you, Mr. Torres?”
Again the prosecutor glanced at Jack, still unable to believe that there actually was a Cuban soldier who might soon be walking into the courtroom. “That’ll do it, Judge.”
“Then that concludes our pretrial conference. I will see you back here tomorrow morning, nine o’clock sharp. We’ll pick a jury. Until then, this court is adjourned.” The judge banged his gavel and left the courtroom through a side exit to his chambers, immediately unleashing the mad rush for the exits. No cameras were allowed in federal court, so the television journalists were leading the charge out the doors to their media vans to make their reports. Others charged toward the rail and fired questions at the lawyers.
“Is Felipe Castillo in Miami now?” one asked.
“Is it true that the soldier will be staying in your home, Mr. Swyteck?”
“Have you spoken directly to Fidel Castro?”
Jack wanted to respond, but with all the confusion and borderline hysteria, he feared that his answers would only be distorted in print. He looked at no one in particular and said, “We will issue a statement on this matter once we’ve made a final decision about this witness. That’s all for now. Thank you.”
The questions kept coming. Like it or not, Felipe Castillo was about to become a household name-at least a Latin household name-in all of south Florida. Jack and Sofia pushed toward the exit. It seemed to take forever, but they finally made it down the long aisle and out the double doors. Several more minutes passed before they could wind through the crowded corridor and reach the main exit. It was difficult for Jack to hear himself think, let alone to discern any one particular voice among the many that were coming at him. But somewhere above the ruckus he heard Hector Torres issue one last sound byte for the evening news.
“Watch carefully tomorrow,” said Torres. “It won’t be the prosecution that is systematically excluding Cuban Americans during jury selection.”
Jack pushed through the revolving doors, and Sofia was at his side as they stepped into the afternoon sun. Compared to the mob outside the courthouse, the crowd inside had been a model of civility. A pretrial conference wasn’t typically a spectacle, but it could be-particularly if someone as powerful as Alejandro Pintado had gotten wind from the prosecutor that he was going to force the defense to commit one way or another on the Cuban soldier as witness. Hector Torres was without question a friend to Jack’s father. But he was proving himself no friend of Jack’s.
“Looks like we have some more visitors,” said Sofia. She was following closely behind him, like a running back behind a blocker.
A huge crowd had gathered on the sidewalk in front of the federal building. A few were the courthouse version
