Joseph Teller - Overkill

JEREMY: I’d be getting nightmares, and wetting the bed sometimes.

Jaywalker asked about school attendance, and Jeremy admitted it had gotten even worse than before, because he’d grown afraid to walk down Third Avenue. As a result, he began getting “cut slips,” warning him that he was in danger of failing his classes.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when your mother confronted you about your attendance?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: She got a letter in the mail.

JAYWALKER: What happened as a result of that letter and that confrontation with your mother?

JEREMY: I told her everything, and she pulled me out of school.

JAYWALKER: Did you continue to work?

JEREMY: For a while.

JAYWALKER: And then what?

JEREMY: I got fired.

JAYWALKER: Why?

JEREMY: ’Cause I stopped going to work.

JAYWALKER: Why did you stop going to work?

JEREMY: ’Cause they’d follow me to my jobs and come inside and make trouble. Or follow me home. One time I had to hide in the bushes in front of my building ’cause they wouldn’t leave.

JAYWALKER: What happened?

JEREMY: After an hour or so I urinated in my pants. And then after another hour or so I–I-I-

And as much as Jaywalker would have liked to rescue the young man, to have spared him from continuing with his answer, he stood there silently, listening to the stuttering, watching the tears flow, waiting for the rest of it.

JEREMY: [Continuing] I couldn’t hold it any longer. I–I defecated in my pants.

As much as the jurors, raised on a steady diet of political debates and in-depth interviews, might have grown accustomed to that great American institution, the Follow-up Question, Jaywalker sensed that this was one time when none was required. If wetting one’s bed had represented the ultimate in shame for a seventeen-year-old boy, soiling one’s pants had to have been in the next universe of humiliation. And describing it in front of a roomful of strangers would only have multiplied the agony.

So far, Jeremy had done what he’d had to do.

Jaywalker glanced at the clock and saw it was a few minutes before one. Catching Harold Wexler’s eye, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, just enough to signal that he’d reached a good stopping point. The judge nodded, then recessed for lunch.

As the jury filed out, a friendly court officer sidled over to Jaywalker and offered the opinion that perhaps it hadn’t been the most appetizing note on which to send the jury off for lunch.

“Good,” said Jaywalker. “I want them to gag on it. I want them to choke on every last bite.”

Even Carmen backed off without argument when Jaywalker looked down at her latest grease-stained, paper-bagged offering, thanked her, but assured her and Julie that he wouldn’t be having lunch on this particular day. Then, once he’d made sure the last of the jurors was out of the courtroom, he reached past Carmen, grabbed Julie and hugged her tightly. “You were terrific,” he told her. “And you be careful.”

“Don’t jew worry,” said Carmen. “She be with me.”

When they resumed that afternoon, Jaywalker lost no time in reintroducing the jurors to someone whose name they’d barely heard mentioned for nearly two days.

JAYWALKER: All right. Up until this time, it was Sandro who was the main person who was bothering you. Is that correct?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: Did there come a time in August when somebody else began bothering you?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: At the time, did you know the name of this other person?

JEREMY: No.

JAYWALKER: Have you since learned his name?

JEREMY: Yes, Victor. Victor Quinones.

JAYWALKER: Did you ever learn where Victor Quinones had been during the months of May, June and July?

Katherine Darcy rose to object, but for once Jeremy was uncharacteristically quick with his response. His “In prison” beat her “Objection, calls for hearsay” by a full second-precisely as Jaywalker had coached him. And the judge’s “Sustained, disregard the answer” was pretty much beside the point.

Jaywalker had Jeremy describe his first encounter with Victor. Jeremy had been in the flower shop with Miranda, and a few of the gang members had spotted him from outside. One of them, a newcomer, had made a move to come inside, but his girlfriend had stopped him.

JAYWALKER: Was his girlfriend the same young lady who testified earlier this week?

JEREMY: Yes, she was.

JAYWALKER: Do you now know her name to be Teresa Morales?

JEREMY: Yes.

Jeremy described several subsequent incidents in which Victor had played an increasingly central role. These included chasing Jeremy, spitting on him, and twice threatening him with a straight razor. And he seemed to have gradually taken over from Sandro in the name-calling department, as well.

JAYWALKER: What were some of the names he called you?

JEREMY: Cunt. Pussy. Pussy ass. You smell like pussy.

JAYWALKER: What did you do on these occasions?

JEREMY: Nothing.

Although the room was quiet, his voice could barely be heard.

JAYWALKER: How did you feel?

JEREMY: Like dirt. Ashamed. Embarrassed.

THE COURT: Angry?

Here was Harold Wexler, stepping in not only to break the flow of Jaywalker’s examination, but to suggest that perhaps the shooting had been motivated by something other than self-defense. And while Jaywalker was tempted to object to the interruption, he knew better. For one thing, Wexler had what it took to get even: a black robe. More to the point, Jaywalker had known for months that this moment would come, in some fashion or another, and he’d warned Jeremy to expect it and not be intimidated.

JEREMY: Angry?

THE COURT: Yes, angry. Didn’t all this make you feel terribly angry?

JEREMY: I honestly don’t remember feeling angry. I do remember feeling scared, terrified. Paranoid.

JAYWALKER: When you say you felt paranoid, what do you mean by that?

JEREMY: I was always looking back to see if I was being followed. Or looking out the window to see if they were waiting for me downstairs.

JAYWALKER: And were you being followed?

JEREMY: Sometimes, yes.

JAYWALKER: And were they waiting for you downstairs?

JEREMY: Yes.

JAYWALKER: All the time?

JEREMY: A lot of the time.

It was time to move on. Not because Jeremy had folded under Harold Wexler’s questioning-he hadn’t-but because Jaywalker didn’t want to run the risk of over-doing things and desensitizing the jurors to Jeremy’s plight.

JAYWALKER: Where did you used to get your hair cut, Jeremy?

JEREMY: At Frankie’s. At 112th Street, off Third Avenue.

JAYWALKER: Is Frankie the witness who testified yesterday?

JEREMY: Yes.

Jeremy described the barbershop incident as he recalled it. It pretty much dovetailed with Francisco Zapata’s account. But where the group of tormenters had been anonymous to the barber, Jeremy was able to supply names. Sandro had been there, and Victor, as well as Shorty and Diego and three or four others. And the young lady Frankie had mentioned was Victor’s girlfriend, Teresa Morales.

Following the barbershop incident, it had been six full days before Jeremy had dared to venture out of his apartment again. Jaywalker made a point of having Jeremy recite the two dates and calculate the exact number of days between them. Not only did it show just how terrified the boy had been, it meant-if Jeremy was to be believed-that he’d had no opportunity to go out and get hold of a gun.

JAYWALKER: Why was it, Jeremy, that having been afraid to go out for six days, you eventually did go out again?

JEREMY: Well, Miranda called my house to say she’d be going to the Labor Day carnival with her little sister and her cousin. And I thought at the carnival there’d be a whole bunch of people, and I’d be safe. And I was tired of staying upstairs, you know? I wanted to get out. I just thought it would be okay.