26
S
O, BUDDY,"
Paul said.
"Long time no see."
It had been. In fact, it'd been some time since I'd seen any of my friends from what I'd increasingly come to view as my past life. A gulf had opened up between what I'd done and what I was doing, and as someone who was, for better or worse, defined by my work, this separation had made it hard for me to talk about my present with people from my past.
I hoped this wouldn't be true of Paul, who'd been my closest friend since I'd graduated from law school. He'd supported me during the worst crisis of my life, even at some risk to his own career at the firm. I owed him for that, but I also knew that it was going to be hard for us not to be divided by our work.
"It has been," I said. "Too long." It was Friday night, and we were drinking martinis at Loki, a neighborhood bar that had a sprawl of mismatched couches spread through an open loftlike space. Paul and I were settled side by side on a plush purple couch that could easily pass muster as either hipster accoutrement or grandmotherly tackiness. The place was full, an old Pretenders song playing on the jukebox, a crowd that looked like they'd all wandered over together from a grad school seminar—typical for Park Slope's bar scene.
"I've barely seen you since you got on that murder case," Paul said.
"Not since my party."
"It's been keeping me busy," I said. "We're just about to start
picking the jury."
"You think you're going to win?"
"I honestly don't have the faintest idea," I said with a smile.
"And don't ask me if I think he did it."
"I saw the article in the paper yesterday. The thing about your
victim."
"About Lipton being a drug dealer?" I said. "Yeah, how about
that?"
Adam Berman's article had just run in the
Journal
, and other than the fact that it'd made me feel disgusted with myself, I'd liked it very much. Berman was a diligent reporter; he'd ferreted out a number of students who'd confirmed that Seth Lipton was dealing on campus. The story had run just before we'd started picking a jury, which meant that our jury pool had a chance to see it before coming in and being warned by Judge Ferano to ignore any press accounts of the case.
"Did you know about his dealing before the article ran?"
"There's a limit to what I can say here."
"I'm going to take that as a yes," Paul said, looking closely at me.
"Shit," he said suddenly with a laugh. "You fed it to them, didn't you?"
"Neither confirm nor deny."
"You diabolical motherfucker," Paul said. "I love it. A little
poisoning of the jury pool before trial."
"I don't play to lose," I said.
"Apparently not," Paul said, shaking his head. "Speaking of
playing, I know about what happened with Melanie. I'm sorry about that."
"It's not your fault," I said, a little thrown by Paul's abrupt transition. I hadn't planned on bringing Melanie up.
"I kinda feel like it is. I mean, I insisted that you come to my
party, even though I knew it was going to be full of people from the firm. I
thought it would be good for you to show your face, but I realize that was dumb.
You can't go home again, right? I mean, you're better off just moving on."
"I'm not complaining," I said. "It was a fun little frolic,
anyway, even if that's all it was."
"Was she the only person you've been with since Beth?"
"It hasn't been my priority," I said. "I mean, I've just gotten
back to the starting gate, you know? It took me over a year to get my life even
close to back in order."
"Welcome back," Paul said.
I lifted my martini glass in a toast to that and took a long drink.
"Besides, I've been so busy at work that I don't really meet anyone outside of
that."
"They've got this thing called the Internet now," Paul said. "It's
like a dating smorgasbord. There's, like, a quarter million New York girls for
you to choose from."
"What am I going to talk about on a first date with someone I met
on the Internet? My job? You know what the highlight of my week was? Pleading
out a junkie college student on drug charges—before we go to court to do the
plea, he asks me whether I think he's going to get raped in prison. I mean, it's
pretty hard to turn that into a cocktail-party anecdote."
"I'm sure there are girls out there who dig that sort of thing," Paul said.
"They've probably got a closetful of handcuffs and leather masks, but nobody's
perfect."
"Besides, how many serious relationships have you gotten into with
girls you met online?"
"That's asking the wrong question. Why don't you ask me how many
girls I've fucked who I met on the Internet? I'm not saying you should get
married; I'm just saying you need to get back in the game."
"You're right," I said.
"I know I'm right," Paul said.
"I guess too it's that I've gotten used to being alone. It feels
safer, you know?"
"What's so great about feeling safe?"
"You've got to remember just how thin the ice got for me there.
Beth's father was trying to get me criminally prosecuted for her death. I could
have ended up with manslaughter charges against me. Even when I got through
that, I didn't know if I'd ever work as a lawyer again. Safe feels pretty
fucking good."
"Fine, be safe. But for Christ's sake, get yourself laid, at
least."
"I'll see what I can do," I said.
"What about the girl you're working with on the murder case?" Paul asked.
"How's she?"
I hadn't really talked to anyone about Myra, hadn't acknowledged our intermittent flirtation, which often felt more rooted in anger than it did in potential affection. I still wasn't sure if it really meant anything, or if it was just something the two of us were doing in the absence of the will to do anything that might carry actual risk.
"She's cool," I said. "It's weird, a little—sometimes we get to
really talking about things; other times she's all business. She lets me in and
then she kicks me out, if you know what I mean."
"That's all fascinating," Paul said. "But I meant how does she
look?"
"She's cute," I said. "Actually, she would totally beat me up if
she knew I described her as cute, so maybe that's not the word. But she's a
little too threatening to actually be called hot, so I guess somewhere between
the two."
"You made any moves?"
"I don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to
office romances."
"If anyone has nowhere to go but up in that department, it's probably you," Paul said.
"I won't argue with that," I said. "But also, she and I are in the
middle of a murder case that's going to trial. The last thing we need is for me
to throw some kind of a pass at her. However she responded, it would be a bad
idea."
"What about after the trial?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"Ten will get you twenty if she says yes."
"Why are you always trying to bribe me to have sex with women?"
"I don't know," Paul said. "It's probably one of those things we
shouldn't talk about."
27
J
URY SELECTION
in the Tate case began on Wednesday morning. Jury selection was always a drawn-out chess match, especially in a murder trial, and never more so than when race came into play.
The judge had called for a jury pool of eighty, out of which we would pick twelve jurors and two alternates. We wanted as many blacks on the jury as possible, while knowing the prosecution would want as many whites as they could get. Neither side was allowed to strike jurors explicitly based on their race, but everyone in the system knew that in a case like this, both sides were doing exactly that.
After two days, we'd ended up with a fairly mixed jury, mainly because we'd struck as many whites as we could get away with while the ADAs did the same thing to blacks. The fourteen spots had gone to three black women, two black men, one Asian woman, two Hispanic men, four white women, and two white men. Their ages ranged from twenty to seventy, their education ranged from a high school dropout to a PhD. It was a jury that more or less looked like Brooklyn.
When we'd finished late on Thursday afternoon the judge had announced that we would start the trial at nine thirty on Monday morning.
"All right," Myra said as we left court. "So we've got three days before this
trial starts. Maybe we should talk about what the fuck we're going to do."
"Sure," I said.
"I could use a drink," Myra said. "Let's have our meeting at the
Ale House."
We got a booth in the back. I took out a legal pad and a pen. Myra looked at it, smiling.
"You really can't take notes in a bar," she said.
"Why not?" I said. "People will think you're someone famous."
"I mostly just wanted to talk about strategy. Which isn't anything
we'd really want to write down, even if there was a reason to."
"Got it," I said. "No notes. What is it you want to strategize
about?"
"I'm thinking we don't have enough here to just be playing defense," Myra said.
"I think we need a counter story after all."
"I thought you told me we don't win by building our case but by
tearing down theirs."
"It's generally true. But I'm worried their whole is going to be
more than the sum of their parts. The fact is, nothing we say about Yolanda
Miller is going to erase the fact that she claims she saw the shooting with her
own eyes, and that she recognized our guy as the shooter and told the police his
street name. Throw in credible motive by way of the sister, and then the
supposed confession through the snitch, and they've got a case."
"So what do you want to do?"
"I wish we could put what's-his-name on—Lorenzo's friend."
"Marcus?"
"Yeah, Marcus," Myra said. "An alibi wouldn't hurt."
"Don't you think it's possible that Lorenzo's telling the truth and he was with Marcus at his apartment that night?" I asked.
"Sure, I think it's possible. But there're only two people who can
tell that story to the jury. The first is Lorenzo, and he can't tell it without
opening himself up to a full-scale cross-examination, which I don't think he'd
survive. The second is Marcus, and he couldn't tell it so that it sounded like
he believed it."
"But if it's the truth—"
"It doesn't matter if he's telling the truth if it doesn't sound like he is," Myra said.
"Plus, bringing him into it would allow the DA to backdoor drug stuff into the
case."
"Giving up our client's alibi seems like a high price to pay."
"You'd call Marcus to the stand? First of all, you really feel
confident he'd say he was with Lorenzo? Marcus seemed like the last thing he
wanted was to put himself even in the outside corner of a murder investigation.
My guess is he's got a thing or two to hide."
"So what's our plan of attack then?"
"Way I see it, our most important target is Yolanda Miller. We get
her credibility out of the way, the links between the rest of their case don't
look so strong."
"As we've always said, the two possibilities are she's lying or she's wrong," I said.
"She's wrong seems difficult, given that she'd seen him before."
"Okay," Myra said. "So why's she lying?"
"Because she's covering for Malik Taylor."
"And why did Malik Taylor shoot Seth Lipton?"
"He intended to shoot Devin Wallace."
"Why'd he want to do that?"
"Love triangle," I said. "And over the kid. Plus, he's got to
shoot Devin before Devin shoots him, given what Lorenzo told us about the word
on the street."
"Why would Yolanda lie about it?"
"Telling the truth puts her in the middle of a murder. Plus, it
guarantees she loses both the men who are helping to take care of her son."
"Why does she pick Lorenzo as her fall guy?"
"Haven't got the slightest fucking idea."
"Okay," Myra said, leaning back in her seat and finishing off her drink.
"We've got the start of a story there, but it still needs a lot of work. You got
anywhere you need to be? Because I'd like to brainstorm around this for a few
hours."
"You know me," I said. "I've almost never got anywhere I need to
be. You want another drink?"
"Absolutely," Myra said. "There's a reason we aren't having this
meeting in a conference room."
MYRA AND
I spent a couple of hours throwing ideas around about what our counterstory should be and how we'd present it. We agreed that Malik Taylor was our only real option as an alternative suspect, although there were obvious problems with trying to pin it on him: he appeared to be a solid citizen, and while we had at least some kind of motive for him, we didn't have anything in the way of evidence that he'd actually done it.
"I guess the other thing we need to talk about is who's going to do what," Myra said.
"Isaac came by to talk to me the other day. He said that he wanted to make sure
that I wasn't just treating you as my bitch."
"Did you confess?"
"You have no idea how I treat my bitches," Myra replied.
"So what did Isaac tell you to do?"
"Just to make sure you actually got to do some stuff at the trial.
My thought was to have you do a lot of the defense case. I think that's a good
time to bring in a new face—it'll get the jury's attention. Hell, they'll think
you're our closer."
"We have a defense case?"
"We've got Lipton's roommate; we've got Malik Taylor. Who knows,
maybe we'll find an alibi witness over the weekend."
"That's great," I said. "I'll do whatever you'll let me do."
"I'm sure you will," Myra said. "Listen, I'm starting to get
drunk, and I'm absolutely starving. I think that's my strategizing for the day."
"Sure," I said. "You want to order some food here?"
"Why not?" Myra said. "We can just segue right into the evening."
We ordered some bar food and another round of drinks from the waitress.
"So what else is going on?" Myra asked me.
"I pled out Chris Delaney last week."
"Who's Chris Delaney?"
"He was the addict who told me about Lipton being a dealer."
"Right," Myra said. "The names all blur. I can barely keep my own
clients straight, let alone anyone else's."
"He was really scared," I said. "I mean, I've had other ones who
were scared, but he was all the way up there. I didn't know what to tell him."
"It's not like you can tell him it's not scary," Myra said. "It is
scary. I certainly wouldn't want to go to jail."
"You ever get in any trouble with the law?" I couldn't resist asking.
"Me? Never. Not even close. My stepfather would've killed me. Why,
did you?"
Isaac was the only person in the office who officially knew the full story about my past, but I'd wondered if the truth had gradually leaked out to my coworkers. If Myra knew anything she was being a good actress.
"Nothing where I actually thought I was going to jail," I replied.
"What does that mean? You got bench warrants riding on you I
should know about?"
"I'm in the clear," I said. "Honest."
I could tell Myra wanted to ask me more questions, so I decided I needed to quickly change the subject.
"You ever gotten someone off who you were absolutely sure was guilty?" I asked.
Myra took a second to think about it, leaning back in her seat. "I
had a repeat felon on a gun charge; the cops' search was blatantly illegal and I
got the whole thing tossed. There was no doubt he'd had the gun on him. So I
guess, yeah, I mean, everybody knew that guy was guilty, but he walked."
"Were you okay with it?"
"Sure," Myra said immediately. "Cops can't do warrantless,
suspicionless searches just because somebody's black and is walking down the
street in East New York. It didn't have much to do with me, anyway. Any lawyer
would've been able to get him off—the DA shouldn't have gone forward on it after
the cops fucked it up."
"You never worried that he'd go out and shoot someone?"
"If he did, it's on the cops, not on me. My job is just to make
sure that everybody else does their job correctly. If they do, then there's
usually not a whole lot I can do to change the outcome of the case."
"You honestly think it wouldn't bother you?"
"I honestly don't think about it. Why are you?"
"I don't know," I said, regretting having brought it up. What was bothering me was Shawne Flynt, but I still hadn't told Myra what was going on with him. I knew that I probably should, but wasn't ready to include what Shawne had known about me, and there wasn't much point in telling the story if I left that part out. I decided that I'd tell her when and if Shawne actually made his play, but that for now there wasn't any point, as there was nothing that we could do.
"I just had a kid, a dealer, where the DA didn't go forward because they didn't
have a case on him. But there was no missing the fact that he ran the corner
they were trying to clear up."
"And it's bothering you?"
"It's not that I think they should have prosecuted him without any evidence," I said.
"It's just . . . he was going to go right back out to that corner, keep dragging
the neighborhood down."
"I've never gotten from you why you left your fancy-pants career to become a PD," Myra said.
"You still just don't quite seem the type."
"I had my reasons," I said, wondering again if she knew more than she was letting on.
"What were they?"
"I'll tell you sometime."
"What's wrong with now?"
"Maybe after the trial's over."
"Whatever," Myra said. "If you think I find this intriguing you
couldn't be more wrong."
The waitress arrived with our food—a turkey burger with mashed potatoes for me, a regular burger with blue cheese and bacon and fries for Myra.
"You drink like you're on
Sex and the City
and eat like you're in a fraternity," I said.
"No one asked you."
"I find it intriguing," I said. "It's like you've got these
dueling adolescents battling it out inside you."
"You know what I noticed?" Myra said. "Before, when I asked you
what else was going on, you started telling me about work things."
"I assumed that was what you were asking about."
"It was a pretty broad question."
"It's not like you've ever shown any interest in my life outside
of work."
"I wasn't aware that you had one."
"Why?" I said. "Do you?"
"Not so much," Myra said. "I used to, but it just sort of fell
away over the years. I didn't really notice the steps; then all of a sudden it
was basically gone."
"That sounds depressing."
"I don't mean for it to be. I love what I do. I don't really mind
that it defines me. Something has to. I'd rather it be this than, you know,
changing some squalling baby's diapers."
"Sometimes I think that drinking cosmos is the closest thing you
have to a feminine characteristic."
"Maybe," Myra said. "That's what scared away my last serious
boyfriend. Not the cosmos, the fact that I didn't see myself moving to the burbs
and popping out little screamers. We'd been together for over a year before I
realized that he viewed my job as some sort of phase I was going through."
"Doesn't sound like he knew you very well."
"I think he just didn't have the imagination to see those parts of me that he couldn't relate to," Myra said.
"Like spending my time defending criminals and barely getting paid for it."
"Somebody who didn't understand
that
about you probably
didn't understand very much."
"He was like most guys I've dated, I suppose," Myra said. "If I
judged him, he seemed pretty lame, but if I compared him, he seemed like a good
deal."
"And that's enough for you?"
"Well, not really, but what choice do I have?"
"You don't think any man can possibly be your equal, is that it?" I said with a laugh.
"It's not that so much as that men aren't looking for an equal," Myra said.
"There's too much dirty work that has to get done in a relationship, and men are
scared that if they settle down with an equal they might actually have to do
their fair share of it."
"Some men want a woman who's their equal."
"What, like you, for instance? I'm sure you want a woman who's
smart, but I bet you still want her to be the one who cleans up after you make
the mess."
"Well sure," I said. "But that's just based on what I'm good at."