Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

“To tell you the truth, Counselor, I honestly don’t remember if I asked him or not.”

Which might have won him points with the jurors for honesty and politeness, but it really true broke a cardinal rule of drug enforcement. Still, Jaywalker decided to leave the answer alone. Not that it wouldn’t continue to nag at him, though.

“No further questions,” he said.

They broke for lunch.

“The People call Investigator Lance Bucknell,” Miki Shaughnessey announced when the trial resumed that afternoon. And the moment Bucknell entered the courtroom, the jurors nodded in recognition. Apparently they had taken to heart Jaywalker’s point that Investigator Bucknell’s all-American looks hardly equipped him to blend in with the brothers in Harlem.

Because of that, Jaywalker was curious as to exactly why Shaughnessey had decided to call Bucknell. The best guess he could come up with was that she’d thought the investigator’s good looks would help win over the women on the jury. Or perhaps it was a desire on her part to bring in a representative from the third and final agency that had made up the joint task force, the New York State Police. Ten minutes into Investigator Bucknell’s testimony, it occurred to Jaywalker that Shaughnessey might be playing defense with her witness, using him to preempt any further attack by Jaywalker on the failure of the backup team to identify Alonzo Barnett’s source of supply. But if that was her goal, she’d picked a strange witness to do it with.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did there come a time during the course of that first buy, Investigator Bucknell, when you got out of your surveillance vehicle and followed the defendant on foot?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And were you able to see where he went?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am, I was. He walked to number 345 West 127th Street, a large apartment building on the uptown side of the street.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What did he do when he got there?

BUCKNELL: He walked through the outer set of doors into a vestibule area. There he appeared to press a button on a large board of names. A moment later he appeared to be speaking over an intercom system. Then he stepped to the inner set of doors and, after a second or two, pushed one of those open, entered the lobby and disappeared from my view.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you attempt to follow him into the building?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am. Not on this occasion.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How about on the second buy? Did you also follow him on foot during that event?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am. On the second buy I followed him to the same building. And after I saw him get buzzed in, I entered the vestibule. But I found the inner doors locked, and I was unable to proceed farther. Eventually someone came out of the building and I was able to gain entry as she exited, but by that time the defendant was nowhere in sight.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And on the third buy?

BUCKNELL: On the third buy, anticipating that the defendant would go to the same building, I wore a disguise and stationed myself inside the lobby even before his arrival.

SHAUGHNESSEY: How did you get inside the lobby?

BUCKNELL: I slipped the lock with a credit card.

SHAUGHNESSEY: And did there come a time when you saw Mr. Barnett?

BUCKNELL: Yes, ma’am. About twenty minutes later he entered the vestibule area from outside the building, pressed a button on the board and was buzzed in.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Were you able to see which button he pressed?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am.

SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened next?

BUCKNELL: The defendant walked to one of the elevators, pushed the button and got on when the door opened. I…I got on behind him. I waited for him to push a floor button so I could push a higher one and see where he got off. But he pushed twelve, which was the top floor. I pushed ten, so it wouldn’t look like I was following him. When the elevator door opened on ten, I figured I better get off. I looked around for the stairs, but it took me a moment to find them, and by the time I did and ran up to the twelfth floor, the defendant was out of sight.

Even as Jaywalker struggled to jot all that down in his own cryptic version of shorthand, he could feel his client nudging his elbow to get his attention. Jaywalker put him off for a moment, afraid he might miss something. Other lawyers solved the problem by instructing their clients to pass them notes whenever necessary. Jaywalker discouraged the practice, fearful that a note-taking defendant might be perceived by the jurors as a jailhouse lawyer, a smart-ass who thought he knew better than his lawyer. So only when he’d finished his note-taking did Jaywalker lean his head toward his client and ask him what he wanted.

“He’s lying,” Barnett whispered. “I went to the eighth floor. And I’ve never seen this guy in my life. Believe me, I’d remember.”

Interesting.

SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you stay there on the twelfth floor, Investigator Bucknell, in order to see which apartment Mr. Barnett came out of?

BUCKNELL: No, ma’am. I was afraid it would look too suspicious for me to still be there. Also, I could see the apartment doors had peepholes, and I was afraid I’d be visible standing there. So I left and went back downstairs and out of the building.

Shaughnessey left it there, concluding her questioning of the witness. She evidently figured that the jurors would understand that the obstacles Investigator Bucknell had run into would have stymied any member of the backup team.

As Jaywalker rose to cross-examine Bucknell, he knew better.

He knew better because on at least half a dozen occasions in his DEA days he’d encountered the same problem, or a pretty close cousin of it. Once he and another agent had gotten hold of a couple of elevator repairman uniforms and a bunch of cast-iron test weights, just so they could see what floor a dealer was heading to. On the next buy they’d hidden in a utility closet on that floor, cracking the door ajar just enough to see which apartment the guy entered. During another investigation, knowing it would be only a matter of time until they zeroed in on a particular apartment in a ten-floor building, Jaywalker had been confident enough to set up an office pool, copying the names from the tenant board onto slips of paper, putting them in a hat and charging five bucks a pick against a chance to win $250. Stymied? Stymied was nothing but a state of mind, a seeing-the-glass-half-empty sense of defeatism.

JAYWALKER: Have you ever made any undercover buys, Investigator Bucknell?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. I have.

JAYWALKER: Where was that?

BUCKNELL: It was at a NASCAR event in Watkins Glen.

JAYWALKER: Where’s Watkins Glen?

BUCKNELL: It’s in Schuyler County, New York. That’s over in the Finger Lakes region.

JAYWALKER: And what kind of drugs did you buy there?

BUCKNELL: It wasn’t drugs, sir. I bought a beer from a vendor when I was still a probationary trooper and not yet twenty-one years old. So it was illegal for him to sell alcohol to me.

JAYWALKER: I see. Anything else?

BUCKNELL: No, sir.

JAYWALKER: Any idea why not?

BUCKNELL: Why not what?

JAYWALKER: Why you haven’t been given more undercover assignments?

BUCKNELL: They keep telling me I’m too clean-cut looking for undercover work. I’m working on it, though.

[Laughter]

JAYWALKER: And the disguise you mentioned earlier. Was that part of your working on it?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. Exactly.

JAYWALKER: May I ask what you disguised yourself as?

He expected to hear “a black man” or “a kid stoned on crack,” or something like that. Maybe even a meter reader from Con Ed, or a cable TV installer, both of which Jaywalker had impersonated in his DEA days.