Joseph Teller - Guilty As Sin

“As I said earlier, I’m not at all sure he’s going to take a plea.” It wasn’t exactly the truth. Jaywalker was actually pretty sure Barnett would come around, sooner or later. But Pulaski’s certainty about that had been enough to prompt Jaywalker to suggest he was mistaken.

“You understand,” said Pulaski, “that eight to life is the best he can possibly get under the law, don’t you? And that’s on a plea, to an A-2. He goes to trial, the minimum starts at fifteen.”

“We both know that,” said Jaywalker. “But he doesn’t seem particularly interested.”

“Then fuck him. He can go to trial and get twenty-five to life, for all I care. It’ll be my pleasure.” Followed by another look at the wristwatch, this one even more deliberate and more dismissive than the first.

The meeting, for all intents and purposes, was over. Nine minutes after it had begun.

Well, thought Jaywalker, at least he’d managed to get through it without throwing a punch at Pulaski, a temptation he’d succumbed to three years earlier. The target hadn’t been Pulaski that time. It had been an A.D.A. in Brooklyn, an ex-cop named Jimmy Spagnelli, who’d accused Jaywalker of being overzealous in the way he’d gone after an arson investigator on the witness stand. Jaywalker had ignored the insult, accepting it as a compliment in disguise. But Spagnelli hadn’t wanted to let it go at that, and a moment later he called Jaywalker a “low-life shyster.” Jaywalker’s Jewish half had reacted by taking offense at that, and his Irish half had reacted by clocking Spagnelli with a right hook. Unfortunately, it had landed a bit high on the side of Spagnelli’s head, clearly not a vital organ. For Jaywalker, the result had been a broken hand and a two-year suspension from practicing in Brooklyn.

Kind of like losing his driving privileges in Lithuania.

Over the course of the next three days, Jaywalker did precisely what Daniel Pulaski had left him no recourse but to do. He met in turn with each of Alonzo Barnett’s three previous lawyers, collecting copies of court documents, motion papers and discovery materials. By the end of the week he’d put together the bare bones of a file. And during the course of amassing it, he’d gained a few insights into Barnett’s reluctance to take a plea, but only a few. Among the highlights were “He’s self-destructive,” “He’s a psycho,” and “I dunno, beats the shit outa me.”

The case appeared in court that Thursday, in Part 91. Part 91, located at the far end of the fifteenth floor of 10 °Centre Street, was at that time designated as the L.T.D. Part, which stood for Long Term Detainees or, as one cynic suggested, Let Them Die. Its calendars were filled with cases of jailed defendants that were not only ripe for trial, but overripe. In a system that supposedly guaranteed an accused felon a speedy trial within six months of arraignment, every defendant in Part 91 had already been locked up for a year or more. And in a business that was evaluated largely on statistics, these aging cases were negatively skewing the average arrest-to-completion time that the administrative judge desperately needed to bring down in order to demonstrate efficiency and justify budget increases. So the word had gone out to get the cases disposed of by plea or, failing that, to get them tried.

Jaywalker had a couple of other cases besides Barnett’s on that Thursday, involving defendants who were out on bail. So he stopped by Part 91 early in the morning and left word with the clerk that he’d be back. Back turned out to be just before eleven, and when he walked in, the judge was waiting for him.

Judges come in all shapes and sizes. Not all of them look like they were born to the bench like Learned Hand, say, whose iconic photograph-featuring his shock of white hair and bushy eyebrows, his black robe and his craggy face-has “judge” written all over it. Then again, it’s entirely possible that Justice Hand may have looked like that at birth, only in miniature, seeing as his parents had pretty much named him to the bench, too. Still, we tend to think of judges as dignified, august father figures, peering down from the bench with an overabundance of firmness and just a hint of compassion. John Marshall comes to mind, as do Oliver Wendell Holmes, Benjamin Cardozo and William O. Douglas. Giants, all.

Shirley Levine hardly fit the mold.

Barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds if she was that, Levine was not what Jaywalker would have called a beautiful woman. Somewhere in her sixties, she was either cursed with a permanent bad hair day or simply unconcerned with her physical appearance. Her voice could charitably be called squeaky. She had no use for formality, having long ago dispensed with the trappings of the standard-issue black robe that came with the job. Or perhaps she’d simply been unable to locate one small enough for her. She didn’t expect people to rise to their feet when she entered her courtroom, and she quickly beckoned them to sit if they insisted on doing so. She needed no gavel to bring the room to order, and so far as Jaywalker knew, she’d never once raised her voice in anger.

Some judges maintain decorum through the volume of their voices or the sheer force of their personalities. Others develop a reputation from their willingness to toss troublemakers into the pens at the first hint of insubordination. A few make it their business to get even, taking out their frustrations on defendants in the rulings they make and the sentences they dispense.

Shirley Levine did none of those things.

She didn’t have to.

She accomplished everything she needed to, and more, through her unfailing cheerfulness, her unquestioned fairness and her curious habit of treating people-all people-with uncommon decency. How she’d ever ended up as a judge was anyone’s guess.

Not that she didn’t have an interesting backstory. Rumor had it that in her early twenties she’d been involved in some sort of special operations in the War, and had been parachuted behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany. That she’d been good with a gun and better still with a knife. Jaywalker had tried to get her to open up once about the subject, offering to trade a few of his DEA stories in exchange. But she’d demurred. “Who can remember?” She’d laughed him off. Still, the rumors persisted, and in a place like 10 °Centre Street, rumor was often as good as it got.

This would be Alonzo Barnett’s trial judge, should he really insist on a trial. And though that would ensure a relatively pleasurable couple of weeks for Jaywalker, in the long run it would do absolutely nothing for Barnett. Save for the fact that after the jury had convicted him and the judge had sentenced him, her parting “Good luck” to him would be genuine instead of sarcastic.

“Ahh, Mr. Jaywalker,” she said now as she spied him making his way up the aisle. “How nice to see you. And thank you for leaving us a note earlier.” Then, turning to a court officer, she said, “Would you please bring out Mr. Barnett.”

Would you please. Mister. From a judge, mind you.

Not that anything of substance went on that first day. The assistant D.A. in the part read off a note from Daniel Pulaski. The eight-to-life sentence was still being offered on a plea to an A-2, it said. But if the defendant didn’t take it this time or next, it would be withdrawn. After that, he could have fifteen to life-or worse.

“How much time do you need?” the judge asked Jaywalker, once his client had been brought out from the pen.

“Two weeks would be good,” he told her.

“Two weeks it is. See you then. Are you doing all right, Mr. Barnett?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was stuff like that that confounded Jaywalker. Try as he might, he just couldn’t picture Shirley Levine jumping out of a plane in the dark of the night, a gun stuck in her belt and a knife clenched in her teeth.