Joseph Teller - Overkill

TERESA: I wouldn’t know.

JAYWALKER: But members of the gang-I’m sorry, the group-did wear Raiders jackets, didn’t they?

TERESA: Not that I’m aware of.

Twice burned, Jaywalker gave up on the Raiders and got back to Sandro. He asked Teresa if she knew what he did for a living. She said she didn’t, that she hadn’t been aware that he’d had a job of any sort.

JAYWALKER: In all of the three or four years you knew him, he never once went to work?

TERESA: Not that I remember.

JAYWALKER: Never talked about working?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: And that’s because Sandro supported himself by selling drugs, didn’t he?

TERESA: I don’t know.

Jaywalker stared at her, letting her words hang in the air for a few seconds.

JAYWALKER: Were you ever aware of a relationship between Sandro and Miranda, the young woman who was with Jeremy the day of the shooting?

TERESA: Sandro once told me he was seeing her.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever see the two of them together, Sandro and Miranda?

TERESA: What do you mean, together?

JAYWALKER: Well, not when the group was chasing Jeremy, or pretending their fingers were guns and-

DARCY: Objection.

THE COURT: Sustained.

JAYWALKER: I mean “together” like man and woman, like you and Victor. Did you ever see Sandro and Miranda like that?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: Never?

TERESA: Never.

He took her through the barbershop incident, making her repeat some of the names the group had called Jeremy by, and some of the taunts they’d hurled his way. He had her describe how the owner had come out and finally gotten them to leave.

JAYWALKER: Even as they were leaving, they said things to Jeremy, didn’t they?

TERESA: Yes.

JAYWALKER: What did they say?

TERESA: “We’ll get you next time.”

JAYWALKER: Excuse me?

TERESA: “We’ll see you next time.”

JAYWALKER: Well which was it, “We’ll see you” or “We’ll get you”?

TERESA: “We’ll see you.”

Jaywalker had heard her correctly the first time, of course. He just wanted to make sure the jurors had.

JAYWALKER: And that day at the barbershop, that wasn’t the first time the group had chased Jeremy and threatened to get him, was it?

TERESA: No.

JAYWALKER: It had happened a number of times that summer, hadn’t it?

TERESA: A few times.

JAYWALKER: A few times? How about seventeen times, not counting the barbershop?

He’d made up the number on the spot. He’d learned over the years that if you were specific enough with numbers or pretended to be reading from some official-looking piece of paper, people tended to get intimidated and ended up agreeing with you.

TERESA: I don’t know. I wasn’t really keeping count.

Jaywalker decided to leave it there, figuring it was about as good as he was going to get before he began to draw denials from Teresa and yawns from the jury box. He knew that when it came time for him to put Jeremy on the stand, he’d be able to go into the earlier confrontations in depth and breadth. And all he’d be up against would be Teresa’s lame I don’t know, I wasn’t counting as the prosecution’s version.

Now he took a look at the clock, saw it was ten minutes to one. He was about to move forward to the day of the fight and the shooting, but he didn’t want to do so only to have to stop ten minutes in. So rather than ask a question, he caught Judge Wexler’s eye. Wexler, who’d tried a few cases in his day as a defense lawyer, got the message.

“This might be a good time,” he announced, “to break for lunch.”

Once the jurors had been led out one door and Jeremy had been escorted through a very different one, Jaywalker sat back down and began gathering up his notes and files. As always, he intended to find a bench or a windowsill where he could spend the next hour refining the rest of his cross-examination. But suddenly Jeremy’s mother was hovering over him, extending a brown paper bag his way.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“Lunch,” she said. “Jew gotta eat somesing.”

Jaywalker stared at the bag. There was a large grease spot on one side of it, and a strong smell emanating from it. Cumin, perhaps? Garlic? He looked away, forcing himself to breathe through his mouth. Had he eaten breakfast, he would have been in serious danger of losing it right then and there.

“It’s good,” Carmen assured him. “I make it myself. Pork, rice and beans. Very good for jew. Give jew energy, Mr. Jailwalker.”

He looked around for help, but the only court officer in sight, an old friend who was quite familiar with Jaywalker’s trial diet, was trying his hardest not to burst out laughing at the scene. Everyone else had left, like rats fleeing a doomed ship. Next thing he knew, Jaywalker found himself not only accepting the bag-grease spot, aroma and all-but thanking Carmen for her thoughtfulness. He’d learned over time that you didn’t reject heartfelt offerings from people of modest means. When the court-appointed client with no roof over his head extended a twenty-dollar bill your way after a hard-earned acquittal, you explained that the rules prohibited you from accepting it, that the city would be sending you a check to cover your hours. But when the guy insisted and said, “Please, you saved my life,” you took the twenty and you pocketed it. To refuse a second time would be nothing less than a slap in the face, a rejection of a kindness. And if the disciplinary judges wanted to disbar him for that, so be it, they could have his ticket.

He thanked Carmen again and took the bag with him to the fifteenth floor, where he opened it, gagged from an overwhelming whiff of its contents and left it on a bench. Someone, he told himself, would be thrilled to discover it. Someone with a stomach far stronger and even emptier than his own.

When they resumed that afternoon, Jaywalker had the sense that the jurors were looking at Teresa Morales a little differently from the way they’d regarded her first thing that morning. In their eyes, she’d begun the day as not just a witness but a victim of sorts. Her boyfriend had been beaten up in front of her, then shot, chased and murdered. She’d tried to stop him from bleeding to death and had been unable to. The last she’d seen of him had been when he’d been wheeled away from her at the emergency room.

But as the morning wore on, the jurors had learned other things about Teresa. She’d gotten married to another man within a year, for one. She’d been forced to admit that she’d been part of a group that had followed Jeremy, called him names, taunted him, promised to “get” him, and finally backed up their words with gestures that could only be construed-unless you happened to be Katherine Darcy-as mimicking gunfire. So by the time the afternoon session began, the average defense lawyer would have concluded that Teresa had been softened up to the point where she was now ripe for the kill, and would have pounced on her.

Jaywalker, however, was anything but your average defense lawyer. Never was, never would be. As strong as the temptation was to attack a wounded witness, he knew better than to try. For one thing, he considered it entirely plausible that Teresa Morales had told the truth that morning and would continue to do so that afternoon. With very few exceptions-the Raiders jackets and which boy had first pulled the gun-nothing Jeremy had ever told Jaywalker contradicted Teresa’s testimony in general and her account of the day of the shooting in particular. So a full-bore attack ran the risk of accomplishing nothing more than getting her to repeat herself, only in more-and more convincing-detail than before. Again Jaywalker reminded himself that Jeremy would have his turn on the witness stand. Any blanks in the story left by Teresa meant more room for Jeremy to fill in as he recalled things.