Joseph Teller - The Tenth Case

He had Samara talk about how she'd hitchhiked her way west, careful to catch rides at truck stops, lest the police pick her up and send her back home. She described reaching Nevada, and finally Las Vegas itself, with high hopes of becoming a model or a showgirl.

MR. JAYWALKER: What happened to those hopes?

MS. TANNENBAUM: They didn't last very long.

MR. JAYWALKER: Why not?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I couldn't sing or dance. I was too young and too short. My legs weren't long enough. My breasts weren't big enough, and I didn't have any money to have them made bigger.

MR. JAYWALKER: So what did you do?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I tried lying about my age, but they check a lot out there. I'd bus tables, wash dishes, whatever I could. Usually I'd get fired after a week or two, when they'd find out that the Social Security number I'd given them didn't match up.

MR. JAYWALKER: Where did you live?

MS. TANNENBAUM: There are some very bad boardinghouses off the strip, places none of the tour ists ever get to see.

MR. JAYWALKER: How did you pay the rent?

MS. TANNENBAUM: With whatever money I could make working. And when that ran out

Her voice broke off, midsentence. They hadn't re hearsed it that way, or planned it. It just happened. Which was how the best stuff almost always came from the witness stand. You didn't script it. Instead, you tried to impart to the witness just what it was you were seeking to accomplish, the feeling you were striving to create. And every once in a while a witness would get it, and the result would be pure magic. Samara, by doing nothing more than stopping midsentence, showed Jaywalker that she'd gotten it, at least this one time, and worked a little bit of magic.

MR. JAYWALKER: And when the money ran out?

MS. TANNENBAUM: And when the money ran out, I did what my mother had done. I took men home, or let them take me home. And when they of fered me gifts or money afterwards, I kept it.

MR. JAYWALKER: Did you consider yourself a prostitute?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Not at the time, I didn't.

MR. JAYWALKER: And now that you look back on it?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, I'd have to say I was a prostitute.

MR. JAYWALKER: How do you feel about that?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I certainly don't feel good about it. I mean, I'm not going to brag about it or any thing like that. But I'm not ashamed of it, either, and

I'm certainly not going to lie about it. It's what I did.

It's part of my life. It's how I survived.

She'd been telling her story for nearly an hour now, and Jaywalker sensed that it had been long enough. As re ceptive as the jurors had seemed throughout it, he didn't want to risk overstaying his welcome. The same was true of Judge Sobel. To abuse the considerable leeway he'd shown would be a mistake. The last thing Jaywalker wanted to hear was, "Let's move along, counselor." So with a single question, he yanked Samara, and with her the trial itself, back to the business at hand.

MR. JAYWALKER: Did there come a time, Samara, when you met an individual named Barry Tannenbaum?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, there did.

THE COURT: Forgive me, Mr. Jaywalker, but perhaps this would be as good a time as any to take our mid-morning recess.

MR. JAYWALKER: That would be fine, Your Honor.

There's a rule, which may be invoked by either side, that once a witness has begun testifying, there may be no dis cussion between the witness and the lawyer who's put the witness on the stand. When the witness happens to be the defendant, however, that rule gets trumped by a higher constitutional rule: the right to consult with counsel. At the moment the conflict provided something of a conundrum for Jaywalker, who'd never met a rule he didn't want to break. So in Samara's case, he ended up breaking both rules, first by telling her how well she was doing, and then by turning his back and walking away from her. Just in case Burke took the chance of asking Samara on cross-examina tion if she'd discussed her answers with her lawyer during recess, Jaywalker wanted her to be able to answer truth fully that she hadn't.

And there was another reason for his caution. Just as jurors watch the defendant like hawks in the courtroom, looking for some telltale sign of guilt or innocence, so do they continue to look for clues out in the corridor, in the elevator and down on the street. As grateful as Jaywalker was for having Samara out on bail, rather than locked up on Rikers Island, he was aware of the risks. The well-known defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, after winning a murder acquittal for Carl Coppalino in New Jersey, had made the mistake of allowing his client to be photographed cavorting on the beach with his lover in Florida, while he awaited a second murder trial. To Jaywalker's thinking, Bailey had lost the second case right then and there, before the trial had even begun.

So he would let the jurors see Samara heading to the ladies' room, talking with the court officers or standing alone with her thoughts by the elevator bank. What they weren't going to see, or think they were seeing, was her lawyer whispering in her ear and coaching her, telling her what to say and how to say it, when to smile demurely, and when to allow a tear to well up and roll down her cheek.

Besides, there was no need for him to tell her any of those things. He'd already done so, a hundred times over.

After the recess, Jaywalker picked up precisely where he'd left off.

MR. JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when you met a man named Barry Tannenbaum?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Yes, there did.

MR. JAYWALKER: When and where was that?

MS. TANNENBAUM: I was eighteen, so it would have been in 1997, I think. I'd just become legal, so I could work at the hotels. You didn't have to be twenty-one back then. So I was working in one of the cocktail lounges at Caesars Palace. That's where I first saw Barry.

MR. JAYWALKER: Tell us about that first meet ing.

MS. TANNENBAUM: I saw this man sitting alone at a table in the corner. He was smallish, not too much bigger than I am. He was already sixty-one, old enough to have been my grandfather, as a lot of peo ple have pointed out since. He was pale, and his hair was thinning, though I didn't know that right away, because he was wearing a wig, a wig and sunglasses. So nobody would recognize him, he told me later.

MR. JAYWALKER: Would you have recognized him?

MS. TANNENBAUM: Me? I'd never heard of him. In fact, I figured he had to be gay. You know, the wig, the shades. I figured he was scoping out guys.

MR. JAYWALKER: So it wasn't your intention to hit on him?

MS. TANNENBAUM: No. I was legit by then. I didn't have to do that any more.

Gay or straight, the man had looked so alone and so sad that Samara had walked over to his table, even though it wasn't part of her station, and asked him if he was okay. He'd replied that he wasn't sure. She could see that he was drinking Diet Coke-she knew from the lemon slice he'd removed from the rim of the glass but hadn't used-so on her next trip by, she'd brought him another one, no charge. He'd seemed terribly grateful for the gesture, she recalled. And when she got off her shift, at three in the morning, he was waiting for her, just outside the door. At his invitation, they'd gone to his room upstairs, where he'd taken off the wig and the sunglasses, but no more. And for the next five hours, they'd talked.

MS. TANNENBAUM: Talked. I couldn't believe it. I mean, I'd never talked to anyone in my whole life, not for more than a minute or two. And then it would be about the weather, or to say, "Please pass the salt," or "Do you know what time it is?" or "Your place or mine?"

MR. JAYWALKER: What did you talk about?

MS. TANNENBAUM: All sorts of stuff. Where we'd grown up, what we liked, what we hated, whether we cried when we were sad or when we were happy