Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

Jaywalker began his cross-examination after the mid-morning recess. There wasn’t all that much he needed from Agent Cruz, but there were a couple of points he wanted to make.

JAYWALKER: Agent Cruz, were you involved in the surveillance of Mr. Barnett during the time period before Agent St. James joined the investigation?

CRUZ: Yes, I was.

JAYWALKER: Do you know what prompted the investigation in the first place?

CRUZ: I was told it began with an anonymous phone call.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever speak with the anonymous caller?

CRUZ: No, I didn’t. Not personally.

JAYWALKER: And in the period before Agent St. James got involved, did you see Mr. Barnett make any sales?

It would have been a dangerous question, but Jaywalker already knew the answer from the reports. “No,” said Agent Cruz, and in response to Jaywalker’s next question, he admitted that neither he nor any other member of the team had seen anything that even remotely resembled a sale.

JAYWALKER: I see. Now, during the first buy that Agent St. James made, you say you stayed in your vehicle, while your partner got out and followed Mr. Barnett on foot. Is that correct?

CRUZ: You got it.

JAYWALKER: Whose decision was that?

CRUZ: I’m not sure what you mean by that.

JAYWALKER: Well, who decided who’d stay in the car and who’d get out?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Based upon what?

CRUZ: I was in the driver’s seat.

JAYWALKER: That was it?

CRUZ: That was it, Counselor. Plus the fact that I had seniority.

A couple of the jurors laughed at the obviousness of the answer. But to Jaywalker the decision had been not only wrong but suspiciously wrong, and therefore probably dishonest. So at this point he was willing to put up with a little laughter.

JAYWALKER: Who was your partner that day?

CRUZ: Investigator Lance Bucknell.

JAYWALKER: Of the New York State Police?

CRUZ: That’s right.

JAYWALKER: From Plattsburgh, New York?

CRUZ: I have no idea at all where he’s from. Somewhere in upstate New York, I’d guess.

JAYWALKER: But you do have an idea what he looks like, don’t you?

CRUZ: Yes.

For the first time since they’d begun, Agent Cruz had limited his answer to a single word. It’s what sometimes happens when a slightly cocky witness begins to realize the cross-examiner is taking him somewhere that he doesn’t particularly want to go.

Not that Jaywalker knew Investigator Bucknell. He didn’t. But as usual, he’d done his homework and was willing to bet that Bucknell was the guy he’d seen earlier that morning out in the hallway talking with Cruz. Rehearsing. And from his clean-cut appearance, he certainly should have had a name like Lance Bucknell. So Jaywalker decided it was worth a shot.

JAYWALKER: Fair to say he’s blond, blue-eyed, young and about six feet four?

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: And has “cop” written all over him?

SHAUGHNESSEY: Objection.

THE COURT: Overruled. I assume you understand the question, Agent Cruz?

CRUZ: I think I do.

THE COURT: Does he look like a cop?

CRUZ: [Shrugs]

JAYWALKER: Did it ever occur to you, Agent Cruz, that you, being a somewhat dark-complexioned Hispanic about five feet six and what-forty years old? — might have blended into the Harlem neighborhood that day just a bit better than Lance Bucknell from upstate New York?

CRUZ: [No response]

JAYWALKER: After all, you figured Mr. Barnett was going to go and get the drugs Agent St. James had ordered. Right?

CRUZ: Right.

JAYWALKER: And you knew that Agent St. James, sitting in his Cadillac, was in no position to see where Mr. Barnett was going. Right?

CRUZ: Right.

JAYWALKER: So it was left to the backup team to try to discover Mr. Barnett’s source. Right?

CRUZ: If we could.

JAYWALKER: Which, of course, is one of the major goals of any buy operation, to identify the source, the higher-up, and make a prosecutable case against him, as well. Agreed?

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: So you decided to stay in the car and send Lance Bucknell to do the job instead. Yet you did want to identify the source of the drugs, didn’t you?

CRUZ: If at all possible.

JAYWALKER: Investigator Bucknell does know how to drive a car, doesn’t he? I mean, he is a state trooper.

CRUZ: Yes.

JAYWALKER: And who followed Mr. Barnett on foot during the second and third transactions?

CRUZ: Investigator Bucknell.

Jaywalker had gone over the reports so many times that he could recite much of them verbatim. He knew the answer before he’d asked the question. But even if he hadn’t, he would have guessed anyway. Once again, he knew from experience that the team members would have gone to great lengths to simplify things, just as they had with the twenty-minute intervals and the right-side pockets, and just as they would have with the right-handed exchanges. That way, when it came time to testify, they would know how to answer if they couldn’t actually remember, without running the risk of contradicting each other.

JAYWALKER: We already know from Agent St. James that he was never able to identify Mr. Barnett’s source. How about the backup team? Did you succeed in identifying him?

CRUZ: No, we didn’t.

JAYWALKER: But you did succeed in arresting “Stump,” didn’t you?

CRUZ: We did.

JAYWALKER: How did that happen?

CRUZ: By accident, actually. We’d just arrested Mr. Barnett and patted him down. One of the team members was about to handcuff him and read him his rights when out of nowhere, Stump walks up. So I patted him down, too.

JAYWALKER: And lo and behold, I suppose you detected something in his right pants pocket that felt like drugs. Right?

CRUZ: That’s right.

Of course it was right. It had been in the reports.

JAYWALKER: And when it turned out to be heroin, you arrested him, too?

CRUZ: Not me personally. One of the NYPD guys took that collar.

JAYWALKER: And you learned that Stump’s true name was Clarence Hightower, and that he’d done time with Mr. Barnett?

CRUZ: We learned that later.

JAYWALKER: And naturally you charged Mr. Hightower with acting in concert with Mr. Barnett, since he’d been the one who’d brought Agent St. James to Mr. Barnett in the first place, for the express purpose of buying drugs. Correct?

CRUZ: No, that’s not correct. Mr. Hightower was charged only with possession.

JAYWALKER: Felony possession? Or just misdemeanor possession?

CRUZ: Misdemeanor possession. It was a small amount of heroin, which he told us he’d bought across town and was for his own use.

JAYWALKER: And you believed him?

CRUZ: [Shrugs]

JAYWALKER: I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.

CRUZ: Lieutenant Pascarella said we didn’t have enough on Mr. Hightower to charge him with sale. And he was in charge of things.

JAYWALKER: Mr. Hightower was in charge of things?

CRUZ: No, Lieutenant Pascarella was.

JAYWALKER: So you never did learn who Mr. Barnett got the drugs from. And the guy who set everything up in the first place, you never charged him in connection with any of the three sales. Right?

CRUZ: That’s right.

JAYWALKER: Who arrested Mr. Barnett?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Who processed him? Searched him, took his pedigree, vouchered his belongings?

CRUZ: I did.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever ask him who he got the drugs from?

This time it was nothing but a shot in the dark. Barnett had told Jaywalker that he’d never been asked about his source, which made no sense. But even if that was true, Agent Cruz could hardly admit it. Chances were he’d say that Barnett had refused to discuss the subject, asked to speak with a lawyer or gotten belligerent. But Cruz surprised Jaywalker.