Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

JAYWALKER: And quinine. What’s that?

KASMIROV: Quinine is a salt made from an alkaloid from the bark of a tree. It used to be used to treat malaria. Although I forget the name of the tree right now.

JAYWALKER: How about the cinchona?

KASMIROV: That’s it.

JAYWALKER: And what’s quinine doing in there?

KASMIROV: Lactose and dextrose are sugars. Add enough of either one and the sweetness becomes detectable. The buyer will know the percentage of heroin isn’t what it should be. Quinine, on the other hand, is bitter. It cuts the sweetness, like lemon would cut the sweetness in sugared tea. By adding a little quinine to counteract the sugar, it’s possible to fool someone who tastes the drug into believing it contains more heroin than it really does.

JAYWALKER: I see. Now, with respect to your own analyses, Dr. Kasmirov, the three that you made. Did you find substances other than heroin?

KASMIROV: Yes, I did.

JAYWALKER: And unlike the police chemist, did you quantify the various substances you found in each analysis?

KASMIROV: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Please tell us what you found.

Even as the witness began reading from her lab reports, Jaywalker produced a huge piece of white-oak tag he’d brought along with him that morning and a thick black marking pen. By the time Dr. Kasmirov was finished answering and he was finished writing, he had diagrammed her testimony for all to see. What it showed was that there was no discernible difference in the 2.55 grams of heroin seized from Hightower and the 2.55 grams of heroin that were unaccounted for in the second buy made from Alonzo Barnett. Not in terms of weight, strength or additives. Right down to the redundant lactose and dextrose.

On redirect, Miki Shaughnessey got Dr. Kasmirov to agree that, absent a breakdown of the percentages of heroin, lactose, dextrose and quinine in the drugs seized from Clarence Hightower, it was nothing more than speculation that they’d come from the second Barnett sale. After all, weren’t those three additives very common ones? Yes, they were, Kasmirov agreed. “And,” Shaughnessey asked her, “regardless of whatever Hightower possessed or didn’t possess, is there any question in your mind that what Alonzo Barnett sold twice and was caught with on a third occasion contained heroin?”

“No,” Dr. Kasmirov replied. “About that there’s absolutely no question at all.”

That night, as Jaywalker lay in the darkness on his side of the bed, too tired to keep his eyes open but too wired to sleep, his wife asked him about the chart he’d brought home with him.

“What does it show?” she wanted to know.

“It shows that this guy Hightower ended up with some of the identical heroin that Barnett sold to the undercover.”

“I understand that,” she said. “But what does that show? What does it mean? What’s the jury supposed to make of it?”

“It could mean Barnett gave him some of it,” said Jaywalker. “But Barnett swears he didn’t.”

“And of course you believe him.”

It was one of their private little jokes, that Jaywalker invariably believed whatever his murderers, rapists, thieves and drug dealers told him. Not always, he’d tell her. But once they’d gotten to know him and trust him? Once they understood that he was really on their side and would fight for them even if he knew the full truth? Yeah, then they’d tell him the truth.

Almost always.

“Suppose Hightower had simply bought some of the same stuff?” she asked him. “Directly from the same guy Barnett was buying from?”

“Didn’t happen,” he assured her. “Barnett insists his source wouldn’t sell to anyone but him. Refused to even meet with Hightower, or with his so-called friend from Philadelphia. It’s the only reason Barnett’s in the hot seat now.”

“So what, then?”

“I don’t know,” Jaywalker confessed. “Maybe the agents thought Hightower was a pain in the ass, coming up on them like he did while they were trying to arrest Barnett. Those can be scary situations. Buncha white guys surrounding a brother in the middle of Harlem. Who knows? Maybe they got pissed off and flaked him.”

“Flaked him?”

“Took some of the drugs they’d skimmed off from the second buy and planted it on Hightower.”

“They do things like that?” she asked.

“Occasionally.”

“Did you? ”

“ Moi? No. But I know that kind of thing used to happen back then, and I’m sure it still happens today.”

“Great system you work in,” she said. And even in the dark, he could feel her turning away from him.

“So what am I supposed to do? Pretend I don’t know stuff like that goes on? Not argue that cops lie? Roll over and give up?”

“No,” she said, her voice softening. “What you’re supposed to do is roll over and try to get some sleep.”

Which turned out to be easy for her to say. For another hour Jaywalker continued to lie in the darkness, listening to the rise and fall of his wife’s breathing. He’d been able to go only so far with Olga Kasmirov and her lab reports, he knew. Even as he’d been busy with his chart-making, he’d noticed blank stares coming his way from the jury box. Sure, he’d had them there for a moment when the numbers had matched perfectly, Hightower’s drugs with what was missing from Barnett’s. But his wife was right, as she almost always was. What inference were the jurors supposed to draw from that match that could possibly steer them in the direction of acquitting Alonzo Barnett? Especially when Jaywalker himself couldn’t come up with an answer to that question.

He lay awake for another forty-five minutes. At one point he reached down to the floor by his side of the bed and groped around until he found the pen and pad of paper he always kept there. Blindly, he scribbled down two words. It was the last thing he remembered before finally falling asleep.

Helping his wife make their bed that Saturday morning, Jaywalker stepped on something with his bare foot. When he bent down to see what it was, he found a crumpled piece of paper with scribbling on one side of it. It took him a moment to recognize his own handwriting and another moment to decipher it.

Call Miki

was all it said. With no pockets in his pajama top-and no pajama top, either, for that matter-he held on to it and didn’t put it down until he got to the kitchen. There he poured himself a glass of iced tea and grabbed a handful of Cheez-It crackers. Breakfast, Jaywalker style.

“So who’s this Miki?” his wife wanted to know.

“The D.A. I’m up against,” he said between mouthfuls.

“You’re going to call her on a weekend?”

“Yeah,” said Jaywalker. “I got an idea.”

His wife rolled her eyes but said nothing more. She was familiar with Jaywalker and his ideas. It was when he was most creative that he was also most dangerous. Like the time he’d decided their living room needed a fireplace. For two full years they’d lived with a blue plastic tarpaulin draped over an entire wall. But eventually they’d ended up with a pretty cool fireplace. So she’d learned to get out of the way and give her husband room while she feared for the worst and hoped for the best.

It took him a while to get hold of Miki Shaughnessey’s home phone number, because, like those of all A.D.A.’s, it was unlisted. But with a little lying and cajoling, he got it.

“How’d you get my number?” was the first thing she wanted to know.

They spent a few minutes on that, before moving on to the purpose of Jaywalker’s call. “I want you to have Clarence Hightower’s drugs tested by Dr. Kasmirov, so we can hear the percentages of the various additives. That way we’ll know for sure if there’s a match.”