Joseph Teller - Overkill

JAYWALKER: What did she look like?

JEREMY: She was very, very beautiful.

The day Miranda had been at Jaywalker’s office, he’d thought to take several photographs of her. He wasn’t quite sure why at the time, had even suspected himself of wanting to keep them, so striking-looking she was. Now he drew the best of them from a file, had it marked for identification and handed it Jeremy.

JAYWALKER: Do you recognize the person in this photograph?

For a split second all Jeremy could do was stare at it. Jaywalker hadn’t shown it to him before this moment, hadn’t told him he was going to. Sometimes, he felt, you got the best stuff out of your clients by surprising them. Finally Jeremy managed to pry his eyes away from the image and look up. But when he tried to speak, his voice failed him, and he looked as though he was about to cry. But then, Jeremy had these pale blue-gray eyes and often looked like he was close to tears.

JEREMY: Yes. That’s her.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when you actually met her?

JEREMY: Yes. It took me a few days, but finally I get up the courage to go inside the shop. I pretend I’m looking to buy some flowers. And someone comes up behind me and says, “Can I help you?” And I turn around and I see her. So I start blushing, I guess, ’cause I’m nervous, kind of like I am now. She asks me if I want some flowers, and I go, “Yes, for my little niece. She’s having a birthday party.” And she says, “Am I invited?” So I say, “Sure.”

Jaywalker sneaked a look at the jurors, saw they were enthralled. It was as if Jeremy’s embarrassment at telling the story was providing them with a lens through which they could share his nervousness two years ago.

JAYWALKER: What happened next?

JEREMY: We talked for a minute. I introduced myself. I said, “My name is Jeremy.” And she said, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Miranda.”

Jeremy had arranged to meet her at the shop at six o’clock, when she would be getting off from work. Then he’d turned to leave, only to have Miranda stop him and remind him that he’d forgotten to buy flowers for the party. But Jeremy hadn’t had enough money to pay for them, and had been forced to confess that there was no party after all. “I just said it to meet you,” he’d admitted. And she’d told him he hadn’t needed to lie to her and should never do it again. But, she’d said, she would still meet him.

So Jeremy had picked her up after work. He described how they’d gone for ice cream, walked around and talked. And in the weeks that had followed, they’d seen each other often. They’d done everyday things, going for pizza or to McDonald’s, or for ice cream. There was a little park where they’d sit and talk. Or they’d walk east to the river and look out across the water, watching the boats go by.

Jaywalker paused briefly before asking his next question. Having woven the spell of the young couple falling in love for the very first time, the moment had come to move on, to break that spell.

JAYWALKER: Did all go well in your relationship with Miranda, or did it not go well?

JEREMY: It went well up to a point.

JAYWALKER: And what happened at that point?

JEREMY: I noticed this guy who always seemed to be hanging around Miranda.

JAYWALKER: Can you describe him for us?

JEREMY: He was kinda dark-skinned. Muscular. And to me he seemed very mean-looking.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever learn his name?

JEREMY: Yes, Miranda told me. She said his name was Sandro.

JAYWALKER: What else did she say about him?

JEREMY: That he always wanted to go out with her, but that she didn’t want to have anything to do with him or his friends.

According to Jeremy, Sandro was always surrounded by a gang of six or eight guys who looked to be in their late teens or early twenties. None of them seemed to work or go to school. Several of them sported crude, hand-done tattoos, and a few had “gold decorations” on their front teeth. And even though it was late spring and hot on the avenue, a couple of them still wore black leather jackets with “pictures of stuff” on them.

JAYWALKER: What kind of stuff?

JEREMY: They were Oakland Raiders jackets, and they had the face of a man on them, with crossed swords behind it. And the man has like a patch over one eye. It looks kind of like the face you’d see on a pirate flag. It’s meant to be scary, I think.

JAYWALKER: What would happen when you’d see Sandro and his gang?

DARCY: Objection to the word “gang.”

JAYWALKER: It’s the word the witness himself-

THE COURT: Overruled. The witness did use the term. That said, it will be up to the jurors to determine whether it was a gang or not, should they feel the need to resolve the issue.

JAYWALKER: Could we have the question read back, please?

He listened as the court reporter began to reread the question from her stenotype machine. He wanted the jurors to hear the word gang again, but this time from a different, neutral voice that would serve to put an official-sounding imprimatur on it. A little thing? Sure. But Jaywalker deemed it crucial that by the time the jurors began their deliberations, whenever they’d think of Sandro and his group, the word gang would reflexively come to their minds. There was a world of difference, after all, between being harassed by a young man and his friends, and being harassed by a gang. And to Jaywalker’s way of thinking, if you took enough little things just like that and added them all up, they could take a conviction and transform it into an acquittal.

REPORTER: Question: “What would happen when you would see Sandro and his gang?”

JEREMY: I’d be walking along, and Sandro would say, “There go that white boy, that-”

JAYWALKER: Who were they referring to?

JEREMY: Me.

JAYWALKER: Did they call you names?

JEREMY: Yeah, you know.

JAYWALKER: No, we don’t know. You have to tell us.

JEREMY: Punk. Cocksucker. Maricon. Motherfucker. Stuff like that.

JAYWALKER: What does maricon mean?

JEREMY: It’s like, “You fucking fag.”

Jaywalker had him describe some of the things the gang had done. Jeremy described hand motions imitating guns being fired and knives being drawn across throats. He’d been told to “get the fuck out of here,” to “get lost if you know what’s good for you.” And he’d been chased, often at full speed.

JAYWALKER: Did this pattern continue for a period of time?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: As it continued, what was your reaction? What were some of the things you experienced?

This would be the hard part for Jeremy. Talking about Miranda had been easy. Even talking about what the gang had done or threatened to do had been manageable. But as Jaywalker moved from those areas into the subject of Jeremy’s reactions, he found himself holding his breath between each question he posed and Jeremy’s answer. Because this was the stuff that he’d had such difficulty over so many months prying loose. And despite all the hours lawyer and client had devoted to the process, as he waited for each response, Jaywalker had no real idea what to expect. Would Jeremy recite in riveting detail what he’d gone through that summer, or would he instinctively bend forward and go into a crouch, in order to protect himself from yet more humiliation?

JEREMY: I tried to keep going on like normal, but it was hard. I’d keep getting like paranoid, you know.

JAYWALKER: Tell us what happened to you physically.

JEREMY: I would cry all of a sudden, for like no reason. I had trouble eating. And when I did eat, sometimes I’d vomit, or get diarrhea. I lost weight. I had trouble sleeping. I–I-I-

JAYWALKER: What would happen when you did sleep?