Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

They talked some more that day, Jaywalker and Barnett, but not all that much more. It was already apparent to Jaywalker that, like most cases, this one wasn’t going to trial. It couldn’t. Sooner or later Alonzo Barnett was going to have to plead guilty, even if it meant copping to an A-2 felony and accepting a minimum sentence of eight years to life. And since there was little likelihood that a parole board was going to give him yet another chance, Barnett might not die in prison, but he was going to be one very old man by the time he came out the other end of the meat grinder.

But that realization by no means ended Jaywalker’s job. Just as he’d been the first of four lawyers to bother to read the charges to Barnett, so would he be the first to listen to the rest of the man’s story, and to come to know him as an individual and not just a defendant. He would make it his business to draw Barnett out and make him talk, make him explain just why an intelligent-sounding man who had to have known better had succumbed yet again to the lure of easy money. Jaywalker would describe in detail the trial process itself, since despite all Barnett’s arrests and convictions he’d never been through a trial, having pleaded guilty each time. Jaywalker would point out the futility of changing that pattern now, and the dire consequences of being convicted after trial, when all bets were off.

In a word, he would become a friend.

Only not now.

Having resisted taking a plea for a year and a half, Barnett evidently had his reasons, whatever they were and however foolish they might be, for wanting to go to trial this time. For Jaywalker to begin that conversation now, at the very first meeting between lawyer and client, would have been totally counterproductive. It would have marked Lawyer Number 4 as no different from Numbers 1, 2 and 3. It would have undermined the very foundation of something Jaywalker needed to build between himself and his client.

Something called trust.

So they talked some more, but about other things. Jaywalker learned that Barnett had two young daughters who were somewhere in foster care. That he’d been a heroin addict beginning at age fifteen, but had been clean for almost eight years now. That, like Jaywalker, he was a Yankees fan. That not only had he taught himself how to read and write, but that he’d begun composing poems, a sample of which he agreed to show Jaywalker sometime.

They didn’t teach you in law school to ask about that kind of stuff. You didn’t need it in order to pass the bar exam or to hang up a shingle on the outside of your office door. Nor did the supervisors at Legal Aid talk about it. But it mattered; it mattered hugely. And even back then, back in 1986, without ever having been taught about it, Jaywalker knew and understood that. And the best thing about doing it was that it cost absolutely nothing, just like saying “please” or “thank you,” or pausing for a second to hold a door open for someone a few steps behind you. So the only thing about doing all that stuff that mystified Jaywalker was that nobody else seemed to realize how terribly, terribly important it was.

He didn’t go home after meeting with Barnett, or to court or his office. Instead he went back around the corner and walked south, downtown. He passed both entrances to 10 °Centre Street on his left. Even though the district attorney’s office was located there-albeit listed under the side street address of One Hogan Place-Jaywalker knew he wouldn’t find the assistant D.A. in charge of Alonzo Barnett’s case there. No, he’d noticed from a telephone number on the file that the case was assigned to someone in Special Narcotics.

Despite the promising name, Special Narcotics are not high-quality drugs. Created with an infusion of municipal, state and federal funds in 1971 to help deal with the city’s mushrooming drug problem, the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor for the City of New York was, and continues to be, located one block farther south, at 8 °Centre Street. Its chief function is to handle a portion of the thousands of drug cases that would otherwise overwhelm the regular district attorney’s office. It’s headed by a Special Narcotics Prosecutor and staffed by a fluctuating number of lawyers who act as assistant district attorneys. Except that they handle nothing but drug cases.

Twenty minutes later, Jaywalker was sitting in a medium-sized office across the desk from the A.D.A. in charge of the prosecution of Alonzo Barnett. It was a medium-sized office rather than a small one, because the assistant also happened to be a supervisor, one of a half dozen who oversaw ten or fifteen other assistants and reported directly to the Special Narcotics Prosecutor himself. Though these days that would be her self.

Times change.

The name of the assistant was Daniel Pulaski. He was a good-looking man in his forties, careful with his three-piece suits and his slicked-back dark hair. He was also, at least according to the general consensus of the local defense bar, a Class A prick.

Jaywalker has never had qualms about going up against a prosecutor with sharp elbows. In fact, when it comes time to go to trial, he generally prefers that his adversaries are able to take care of themselves. He’s found over the years that weak prosecutors tend to arouse the sympathies of both judges and juries, sympathies that Jaywalker would far sooner have directed at the defendant.

But there’s sharp, and then there’s nasty. And at least by reputation, Daniel Pulaski fell squarely into the latter category. That said, Jaywalker had never tried a case against him. He’d stood up opposite him on a few matters in court, but none of them had ended up going to trial, or even to an evidentiary hearing, for that matter. So he was willing to suspend judgment on Pulaski for the moment, and even determined to give the man the benefit of doubt, at least until he demonstrated he didn’t deserve it.

It wouldn’t take long.

“So,” said Pulaski, “I see you’re the latest flavor-of-the-month for Alonzo the Malingerer.”

“I’m his new lawyer,” Jaywalker deadpanned. “If that’s what you mean.”

“Right,” said Pulaski, checking his wristwatch in what struck Jaywalker as a crude parody of impatience. And, he wondered, who wore cuff links these days? Especially gold cuff links?

“If this is a bad time-”

“No, no,” said Pulaski. “It’s as good a time as any. What can I do for you?”

“Well,” said Jaywalker, “I was hoping you might have copies of papers for me, discovery material. That sort of stuff.”

“Listen, Mr. Jaywalker-”

“Jay.”

“Mr. Jay-”

“Just Jay.”

“Whatever. The point is, you’re this scumbag’s fourth lawyer. I’m out of copies and have better things to do than run off more of them. You want copies, why don’t you go see your predecessors?”

“I guess I can do that,” Jaywalker conceded. “I just thought that since it seems like you and I might have to try this case, we might start off on the right-”

“We’re not going to try this case,” said Pulaski. “Your guy is going to jerk you around for six months, just like he did with all the others. Then he’s going to say he can’t communicate with you and ask the judge to give him a new lawyer. We both know that.”

“Actually,” said Jaywalker, “he seems to be communicating with me pretty well.”

“You’ve met him?”

Jaywalker nodded matter-of-factly. Pulaski countered with a look of surprise. Evidently he didn’t know any lawyers who went to the trouble of going to the jail and visiting their assigned clients even before their cases came on in court.

“So if you’ve met him,” said Pulaski, “maybe you can tell me what he’s waiting for before he takes his plea.”