Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

BUCKNELL: An encyclopedia salesman.

JAYWALKER: Excuse me? You went in there carrying a set of encyclopedias?

BUCKNELL: Not exactly. I did carry a briefcase, though. And it was definitely big enough to hold several volumes.

JAYWALKER: Sell any of them?

It was a dumb question, and Jaywalker was sorry he’d asked it as soon as it came out of his mouth. The last thing he wanted was to make fun of the witness and get the jurors feeling sorry for him. So when Miki Shaughnessey stood up, Jaywalker hastily apologized and withdrew the question even before the judge could sustain the objection.

Still, it was frustrating. There’d been a time early on in his involvement in the case when Jaywalker had hoped to learn that Clarence Hightower had been acting as a government informer when he’d prevailed upon Alonzo Barnett to bring him to somebody who was dealing weight. Had that been the case, Jaywalker would have had a viable entrapment defense for Barnett. But those hopes had been dashed by the disclosure about the anonymous caller and the form Daniel Pulaski had shown him indicating that no CI had been used in the case. Even so, it continued to look as though the task force had gone to great lengths to keep Hightower out of the case, rather than tie him to it, as might have been expected.

Now the same thing was happening at the other end. Both the undercover agent and the backup team should have been doing everything they possibly could have not only to find out who Barnett had gotten the drugs from but to make a case against that guy, as well. Surely they had black officers who could have gone into the building without arousing suspicion. Even Angel Cruz could have done the job. So what had they done? They’d gone and picked a guy whose white-bread WASPy looks all but guaranteed that he’d fail. And that “disguise” business of his? That had been nothing but a joke, a joke so lame that Jaywalker had succumbed to sarcasm.

But it got even worse. If Alonzo Barnett was telling the truth-and Jaywalker had no reason to believe he wasn’t-then Investigator Bucknell had never even made it upstairs after he’d followed Barnett inside the building. He was making up the whole twelfth-floor business in order to give himself an excuse for not having been able to see which floor Barnett had ridden the elevator to and which apartment he’d entered.

But how did you prove that? How did you show the jury that this innocent-looking, fresh-faced kid from upstate was deliberately lying through his teeth?

JAYWALKER: Tell me, Investigator Bucknell. Did you attend the team meeting prior to the third and final transaction?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir.

JAYWALKER: And was it made clear at that meeting that Mr. Barnett was to be taken down-I’m sorry, arrested-once he was seen emerging from the building and walking back toward Agent St. James’s Cadillac?

BUCKNELL: Yes, sir. That was made clear.

JAYWALKER: So you knew this was going to be your very last opportunity to see which apartment in the building he was going to in order to get the drugs?

BUCKNELL: I suppose so.

JAYWALKER: Well, was there any question about that in your mind?

BUCKNELL: I guess not.

JAYWALKER: It was now or never, wasn’t it?

BUCKNELL: I guess.

JAYWALKER: Time to take a chance.

BUCKNELL: [No response]

JAYWALKER: And yet you chose to play it safe, didn’t you?

BUCKNELL: I’m not sure what you mean.

JAYWALKER: I mean the team already had two solid buys against Mr. Barnett at that point, two hand-to-hand sales of heroin. So what if the third buy didn’t go down exactly according to plan? You were primarily interested in the connection at that point, the source of supply. Weren’t you?

BUCKNELL: I was only doing what I’d been told to do, sir.

JAYWALKER: And what was that? What had you been told, and by whom?

BUCKNELL: Lieutenant…Lieutenant-

JAYWALKER: Pascarella?

BUCKNELL: Right. He told me to be very careful, that Mr. Barnett was a high-value target. And he didn’t want me to blow it by being too aggressive inside the building.

JAYWALKER: And you took that to mean “Don’t try too hard to identify which apartment he’s going to.” Right?

BUCKNELL: In a way. I suppose so.

JAYWALKER: Well, that’s exactly what it sounded like. Didn’t it?

Miki Shaughnessey’s objection was sustained, but not before the witness had already nodded his head and begun to agree.

The problem was, where did you go from there? Did you attack Lance Bucknell, accuse him of making up the business about having been up on the twelfth floor? In television and movie portrayals, witnesses were always breaking down and admitting they’d been lying. In real life, Jaywalker knew, that almost never happened. No matter how hard he went after Bucknell, the guy wasn’t going to fold. He couldn’t very well suddenly reverse course and say, “Oh, yeah, I lied about that.” To do so would cost him not only his job but several years of prison time for perjury. Besides, Jaywalker had nothing to go after him with. It wasn’t like he had a videotape of what had gone on inside the building. He’d already checked, and while there was a security camera, it was nothing but a dummy. All he had was his own client’s whisper in his ear that almost two years ago he’d gone to the eighth floor and not the twelfth. And while Jaywalker believed the whisper, it simply wasn’t enough to go on. Bucknell would duck and parry whatever Jaywalker could throw at him, and in the end, the jury would believe him and feel sorry for him, not to mention regard Jaywalker as a bully and take it out on his client.

So he thanked Investigator Bucknell and sat down.

It was only four-thirty, but up at the bench Miki Shaughnessey explained that she had only one remaining witness, the chemist, who was testifying in federal court and wouldn’t be available until the following morning. “I have another member of the backup team here,” she said, “but I’ve decided against calling him. I think his testimony would be nothing but cumulative.”

“Who is he?” Jaywalker asked. Cumulative was a funny word, he knew. It was supposed to mean that the witness wouldn’t really add anything new to the testimony. What it really meant, Jaywalker had learned over the years, was that the prosecutor didn’t want to call the witness because he might remember things differently from the way previous witnesses had remembered them.

“Detective Lopata,” said Shaughnessey.

“Give me a minute?” Jaywalker asked the judge. When she nodded, he went back to the defense table and found a file he had for Lopata. He pretty much knew the contents by heart but wanted to double-check, just in case he wanted the detective kept on call as a possible defense witness. But from scanning the reports, Jaywalker could see that Lopata’s testimony would indeed add nothing new. He’d counted out and photocopied the official advance funds, weighed the drugs and performed a few other administrative tasks. But in terms of surveillance, he’d stayed back in one of the cars during each buy and had seen nothing of interest.

So it didn’t look like Shaughnessey was trying to hide anything by deciding not to call him. If anything, it showed she was confident that her case was solid without him. And even Jaywalker would have had to agree. Three witnesses down and one to go, and he’d barely made a dent so far. And with the remaining witness being the chemist, what hope did he have? That he was going to be able to somehow show that it hadn’t been heroin at all that his client had sold, but baby powder?

Back up at the bench, Jaywalker told Shaughnessey that she could let Lopata go. Without a good reason for doing so, he wasn’t about to put some detective on the stand without ever having spoken to the guy. The upside was negligible, while the potential for getting clobbered was virtually unlimited.