James Grippando - Hear No Evil

“Lindsey on her way down?” said Jack.

“Actually, I just sent her back to her cell. We had a long talk.”

“Without me?”

“Yes. You and I need to talk.”

She invited him to sit with a wave of her hand, but Jack remained standing. You and I need to talk. Never in his life had he heard a woman utter those words and then follow up with good news. “What’s going on here?” said Jack. “Why did you and Lindsey meet without me?”

“She’s coming back, so cool down, okay? The three of us will have our full session together. But there was one thing she needed to speak to a woman about. It’s nothing personal against you. There are certain things a woman can’t say in front of a man. Even if the man is her lawyer.”

“You gonna tell me what’s going on, or do I have to guess?”

“It’s about the Cuban soldier.”

“The Cuban?” Jack said, incredulous. “How does that not involve me?”

“It does, and we’ll talk more about it when Lindsey comes back. There’s just an aspect of his testimony that’s-well, frankly, highly embarrassing for Lindsey. So she and I talked it out first.”

“Obviously you mean the part about her and Lieutenant Johnson in the bedroom.”

“Obviously.”

Jack laid his briefcase on the table and pulled up a chair. “There’s no way around the embarrassing parts. If we call the Cuban to the stand, he’s going to give us the good and the bad.”

“Lindsey understands that. And, frankly, I don’t see it as all that bad.”

“You don’t?”

“No. I’ve been watching that jury carefully. I see how they’ve been looking at Lindsey ever since that fertility doctor shared his assassin sperm theory. There is no doubt in my mind that every single one of those jurors has already labeled Lindsey an adulteress.”

“I can’t argue with that,” said Jack. “But we certainly run the risk of reinforcing that impression by calling the Cuban soldier to the stand.”

“That was my fear, too. Before I had this little talk with Lindsey.”

“You think differently now, do you?”

“I do. I think the Cuban soldier may be the only way to prove that Lindsey isn’t lying when she says she wasn’t having an affair.”

“Excuse me? The Cuban saw her having sex with Lieutenant Johnson. Going at it like porn stars, I think were his exact words.”

“Things aren’t always what they appear,” said Sofia.

“Ah, yes. I see your point. It must have been one of those newfangled CPR classes. Groin-to-groin resuscitation.”

“I understand your skepticism. But you haven’t heard Lindsey’s side of the story yet.”

“And you have?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

Sofia ’s expression was stone-cold serious, as serious as Jack had ever seen her. “You need to call the Cuban, Jack. He should be witness number one for the defense.”

Security at the courthouse was extra tight on Monday morning. A ring of police cars surrounded the building. Plainclothes officers (some wired with headsets, some less conspicuous) wandered amid the onlookers. Miami Avenue was completely closed off, and hundreds of demonstrators had pushed their way up to the barricades, getting as close to the courthouse as the police would allow. They shouted in English and Spanish, not a single word of support in any language for the first witness for the defense.

The atmosphere inside was less charged but equally tense. Visitors, both media and nonmedia, were patted down and individually searched with electronic wands. Metal detectors at the entrance were set high enough to detect gold fillings. Bomb-sniffing dogs led their masters through the long corridors. Armed federal marshals were spaced at fifty-foot intervals.

It was every bit the spectacle that Jack had expected, yet it was in a strange way the first confirmation that this might actually happen. Jack had worried about it all weekend, ever since he’d placed the phone call to Colonel Jiménez on Saturday afternoon.

“We’re on for Monday morning,” Jack had told him.

“I’m very pleased to hear it,” the colonel replied.

Because Jack had notified the U.S. government before trial that the defense might call a Cuban soldier as witness, a detailed procedure had been worked out through the State Department to bring him to Miami quickly and smoothly. While a typical Cuban migrant would be forced to pay the Cuban government approximately five years’ salary in cash upon departure for the United States, all it took was Castro’s blessing to get this particular Cuban soldier into Miami overnight. Still, Jack had his doubts. Would the soldier actually come? Would he defect when he reached U.S. soil, recant his testimony, and disappear into freedom? Those doubts followed him all the way into the courtroom.

One way or the other, he knew he didn’t have long to wait.

Jack rose and said, “Your Honor, the defense calls Private Felipe Castillo.”

A shrill cry pierced the courtroom, and a barrage of angry shouts erupted from the galley.

“Order!” the judge said with a bang of his gavel.

The shouting continued, all of it in rapid-fire Spanish. Each speaker had his own message, which made the collective impact indecipherable to Jack’s ears. But he knew they weren’t shouting, Go, team, go!

Federal marshals covered the disturbance immediately. A man and a woman went peaceably to the exit. Three other men had to be handcuffed, their shouts of protest still audible as they disappeared into the hallway. Some of the jurors watched the arrests, horrified. The others kept their eyes on Jack and his client, as if to say, How dare you.

The courtroom had more than its usual rumbling and shuffling of feet, which the judge quickly gaveled down. “That will be the end of that,” the judge said sharply. “Any further outbursts, and I will close this courtroom to all but the media.”

A stillness came over the courtroom, but the tension remained.

“Bailiff,” the judge said, “bring in the witness.”

The bailiff walked to a side door, opened it, and escorted a young Hispanic man into the courtroom. He was dressed in civilian clothes, a suit and tie, as if that would tone down the controversy. Lindsey squeezed Jack’s hand. Spectators moved to the edge of their seats. Jurors sat up rigidly in their chairs. It was as if everyone suddenly realized that they were watching history in the making, or at least something pretty cool to talk about at cocktail parties.

Private Castillo stepped up to the witness stand to take the oath. The bailiff recited the familiar words in English, and then a translator spoke to the witness in Spanish.

“Sí, lo juro. Yes, I swear,” he replied, and then he took a seat. His eyes darted from the judge, to the jury, to the audience. His gaze finally came to rest on Jack, the only familiar face, the least hostile expression in the courtroom.

Jack approached slowly. He wanted the witness to feel comfortable enough to say all that needed to be said to help his client, but coddling him would brand both Jack and his client as Castro-loving communists in the eyes of the jury. He knew he was walking a fine line.

“Good morning, Private Castillo.”

“Buenós,” he said, which was translated to “Good morning.” The translator seemed almost superfluous, since all but one of the jurors was bilingual, and one or two of them probably would have benefited more from an English-to-Spanish translator. It was yet another factor for a defense lawyer to throw into the mix: the jury for the most part would hear each question and answer not once, but twice. Any misstep was a fuckup times two.

Jack moved through Castillo’s background quickly, or as quickly as possible with a translator. There was no way around the fact that he was an enemy soldier, but Jack did his best to downplay the man’s love for the regime, continuing in the question-translation/answer-translation format