Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

PASCARELLA: I guess they’re my initials, if you want to get really technical about it.

JAYWALKER: I want to get really technical about it. Who put them there?

PASCARELLA: I guess I must have.

JAYWALKER: You guess?

PASCARELLA: I put them there. I forgot, was all. I…I didn’t notice them.

All of a sudden, he was a different witness. Gone were the swagger, the cockiness, replaced by a meekness that would have been almost comical if another man’s freedom hadn’t been at stake. It was almost like watching all the helium go out of one of those giant Thanksgiving Day balloon characters.

JAYWALKER: Why did you put your initials there?

PASCARELLA: I honestly don’t remember. It’s what we do.

JAYWALKER: When did you put them there?

PASCARELLA: It would have had to be on the day we arrested Mr. Hightower, the same day the other photo of him was taken.

JAYWALKER: Are you certain about that?

PASCARELLA: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Where did you take it?

PASCARELLA: In the squad room at the precinct house.

JAYWALKER: Is that where you kept the Polaroid camera?

PASCARELLA: Yeah.

JAYWALKER: It was no use to you on the street, was it?

PASCARELLA: No.

JAYWALKER: Too bulky, too cumbersome, too slow?

PASCARELLA: Right.

JAYWALKER: Now, you didn’t take Mr. Hightower home with you at any point, did you?

PASCARELLA: Home? No, of course not.

JAYWALKER: So he could shave and shower, perhaps?

PASCARELLA: No way.

JAYWALKER: Or take him shopping for clothes?

PASCARELLA: Not a chance. The man was under arrest.

JAYWALKER: Then I don’t suppose you can explain to the jurors the reason why Mr. Hightower seems to be wearing two different sets of clothes in the two photos.

Because there was no rise in the inflection of Jaywalker’s voice as he reached the end of it, it came out sounding more like a statement of fact than a question. And the truth is, it hadn’t really been a question at all. Questions have answers. This didn’t.

JAYWALKER: Who took this photo, Detective? The one that’s got your initials on the back of it, in your handwriting?

PASCARELLA: I guess I must have.

JAYWALKER: Now look carefully at the two photos, if you will. Not just at the clothing, but at the length of Mr. Hightower’s hair and the stubble of his beard. Any doubt in your mind that they were taken on different days?

PASCARELLA: No, I guess not.

JAYWALKER: No doubt?

PASCARELLA: No doubt.

JAYWALKER: What happened to Mr. Hightower after he was arrested? Where was he taken?

PASCARELLA: Like I said, to the precinct house. Specifically, upstairs to the detective squad room.

JAYWALKER: And from there?

PASCARELLA: Central Booking.

JAYWALKER: And after that?

PASCARELLA: Court.

JAYWALKER: Did he make bail?

PASCARELLA: No.

JAYWALKER: Was that the last you ever saw of him?

It was one of those wonderful shit-or-go-blind questions Jaywalker loved so much. If Pascarella were to say no, that in fact he’d seen Hightower again-by going out to Rikers Island to visit him, for example-Jaywalker would use his answer as proof that the two of them had had a continuing relationship. From there it would be only a baby step to believe that Hightower had been Pascarella’s informer.

So instead Pascarella said yes. Yes, the day of the arrests had been the last time he’d ever seen Hightower.

Jaywalker paused before asking his final two questions. And when he asked them, he did so quietly, gently, with no trace of anger, sarcasm or irony. He had no need for volume at this point, no desire to reach the back rows of the audience. The audience was out in the hallway, after all, locked out of the courtroom. So when the final questions were asked, they were asked with something that sounded very much like sadness, the way a morgue attendant might ask the next of kin to take a good look at the body of a loved one long missing and recently found.

JAYWALKER: In other words, Detective, you took this photo, the one that bears your initials in your handwriting on the back of it, days or even weeks earlier than the arrest photo. Am I correct?

PASCARELLA: [No response]

JAYWALKER: Back before the sales in this case ever took place. Am I correct again?

PASCARELLA: [No response]

As the old saying goes, silence can be deafening. And nowhere, nowhere, is that more true than the inside of a courtroom.

Jaywalker collected the photos from the witness, walked to the defense table and sat down. To his way of thinking, while he hadn’t succeeded in getting Lieutenant Pascarella to admit that Clarence Hightower had in fact been working with him as an informer, he’d at least made it seem like a reasonable possibility. At this point, that was about the best he could do.

But Daniel Pulaski wasn’t about to let things end there. Rising from the prosecution table, he walked to the lectern, then seemed to change his mind and kept walking another three or four steps before stopping. That put him squarely in front of Pascarella and only a body length away. Had Jaywalker taken up such a confrontational position, he would have been told to step back, that his closeness was intimidating to the witness. For a split second he considered objecting but then thought better of it. Let’s see where this goes, he told himself.

It didn’t take long to find out.

PULASKI: Is a detective permitted to use an informer without registering him? Or would that constitute a serious violation of police department rules?

PASCARELLA: That’s not allowed. It would be a violation.

PULASKI: A violation serious enough that the detective could be disciplined, perhaps even discharged?

PASCARELLA: I would certainly think so.

PULASKI: How about giving false testimony at a trial? Is that an equally serious violation?

PASCARELLA: I’m sure it is.

PULASKI: And a felony, as well?

PASCARELLA: Yes, sir.

PULASKI: You testified last week that this case began with an anonymous phone call. Was that the absolute truth?

PASCARELLA: Yes, sir.

PULASKI: No doubt about it?

PASCARELLA: No, sir. No doubt at all.

PULASKI: Counsel seems to be suggesting-

Counsel.

When lawyers get angry at other lawyers, they stop using their names and start referring to them as counsel. Kind of the way an irate legislator calls a despised member of the opposing party my most esteemed colleague.

PULASKI: — that these photographs of Clarence Hightower are some kind of proof that Mr. Hightower was working for you as a confidential informer. Was that the case?

PASCARELLA: No, sir. Absolutely not.

Pulaski took another two steps forward. By the time he stopped to ask his next question, he was close enough to Pascarella that he could have reached out and touched him.

PULASKI: Was he ever your informer?

PASCARELLA: No, sir. Never.

PULASKI: Thank you. No further questions.

With that, he turned and headed back toward the prosecution table. Because Pulaski had been so close to the witness box when he’d concluded his cross, Jaywalker could now see the satisfied sneer spread across his face that neither the judge, behind Pulaski, nor the jurors, off to one side, could. But Jaywalker wasn’t the only one in a position to see it, and as Pulaski neared his table and was about to take his seat, the morning’s most remarkable event took place.

It wasn’t Jaywalker’s production of the second photo of Hightower, or the revelation of the initials on the back of it, or the dramatic lowering of his voice as he questioned Pascarella about it. It wasn’t Pascarella’s pregnant silence when asked if he had taken the photo before the sales had even occurred. Nor was it Pulaski getting up in the witness’s face and having him reiterate the business about the anonymous phone call and proclaim his flat-out denial that Hightower had ever been an informer.