ISAAC STAYED
for only one drink, talking strategy the entire time. After he left the rest of us got another round.
"I can't imagine how much pressure you must be feeling," Shelly said to Myra.
"Why should Myra be feeling pressure?" Zach asked. "She's not the
one who stays in jail."
"Well, no, obviously," Shelly said, looking unsure of whether or not Zach was joking.
"But to have somebody else's life in your hands . . ."
"We always do," Myra said. "That's not the issue."
"What is, then?" I asked.
"Usually we're trying to help somebody get away with something," Myra replied.
"Even for me, it's hard to lose too much sleep over the prospect that a guilty
person will actually be punished for his crime. It's a bit different when it's
somebody who didn't do anything who's looking at spending the rest of his life
in jail."
"You actually think about whether your guy is guilty or innocent?" Zach asked Myra.
"You don't?" Shelly asked him.
"Not if I can help it," Zach said. "I mean, sometimes they're just
so guilty that you can't really help noticing it. But to the extent that I can
keep from thinking about it I certainly do."
"So you never lose sleep over a case?" I asked.
"I didn't say that," Zach said. "I can never sleep the night
before a trial starts. But that's just nerves."
"Have you ever had a client you were sure was innocent?" Shelly asked Zach.
"I really don't think of it that way," Zach said. "I think of it
more in terms of degrees of plausibility. It's about whether I think I can
manage to sell the story they've given me."
"But you can't avoid wondering what really happened," Shelly protested.
"It's human nature."
"You never know what really happened," Zach said. "So it's best to
just let it go."
"Sure," Myra said. "Except it's not always that easy."
"It is if you make it," Zach replied. "Besides, you know as well
as I do that what Isaac was peddling tonight doesn't play. The appellate courts
are pretty much incapable of even thinking about innocence. It's not in their
DNA. Their whole purpose is just to make sure the rules were followed. If they
were, then they're going to affirm. If they weren't, but it's not egregious,
they're going to affirm. If they weren't, and it seems sort of brutally unfair,
they're going to reverse. That's why I hate doing appeals."
"I didn't know you hated appeals," I said.
"Plus the fact that they're all about the law. Meaning you
actually have to do research, read cases, all that shit that almost made me drop
out of law school. Bores me to tears. Give me a good old-fashioned
blood-on-the-walls cross-examination any day."
"Me too," Myra said. "But I can't let this one go. That's never
happened to you?"
"Honestly, no," Zach said. "And looking at you right now, I have
to say I hope it never does."
18
M
YRA AND
I were overdue to pay another visit to Lorenzo Tate at Rikers, and we'd carved out time on a Friday afternoon to leave the office early and head out there. On the drive I updated Myra on the additional material we'd gotten from the DA along with the photo array. I still hadn't told her anything about Shawne Flynt, hadn't found a way to do so without bringing up my own past as well.
"There's only one thing that helps us," I said. "But it's pretty
cool. Apparently Latrice was right about Yolanda Miller's budding drug habit.
She quickly fell on black days after the shooting. She's had two quick busts,
one for possession and one for assault. She's got both of those pending, could
be facing some time in the system."
"No shit," Myra said loudly. We had the windows of her Volvo open because Myra was smoking a cigarette, and the wind was whipping around inside the car.
I nodded. "We still don't really have an angle in terms of her making Lorenzo the shooter," I said.
"We can point out that her trial testimony is presumably in aid of her hoping to
cut a deal, but it lacks some punch when she's only backing up her initial ID."
"So why would she fall hard into drugs right after she pins the shooting on Lorenzo?" Myra said.
"I can see two angles," I said. "One is she got all sad seeing her
sweetheart shot in the back. Two, she couldn't carry the weight of fingering an
innocent man."
"I know which one I like," Myra said, ashing out her window.
"What do we know about the state of Devin and Yolanda's relationship post shooting?" I asked.
"We know that Devin had his other caretaker when we just paid him a visit," Myra said.
"But that doesn't necessarily mean anything. Every man in the life I've ever
come across feels entitled to two or three women."
"Because theory three would be that Devin just dumped her," I said.
"And she turned to drugs to knock her pain out of the park."
"One way or another, it's ammunition for cross," Myra said. "It's
better than nothing, which is what you usually get."
I waited for a moment to see if she had anything else to say about Yolanda's fall into trouble.
"We got some bad news too," I said.
"What's that?" Myra said, not taking her eyes off the road as she stubbed out the butt of her cigarette in the car's full ashtray.
"A new witness."
"A witness to the shooting?"
I shook my head. "A cellmate of Lorenzo's from Rikers. He's given
a statement saying that Lorenzo confessed to him."
"Godfuckingdammit," Myra said. "I fuckin' hate jailhouse
snitches."
I looked over at her as she drove, surprised by the depth of her sudden anger. I would've thought a half dozen years of working as a PD might have inured her to developments like the abrupt appearance of new witnesses, but that didn't seem to be the case.
"We told Lorenzo not to talk to anyone about what he was accused of," I said.
"This doesn't mean he did talk to anyone. Most of the snitches
I've dealt with are straight-up lying."
"So what do we do about it?"
"The first thing is to find out what Lorenzo knows about the guy," Myra said.
"Best-case scenario is they've never even met."
ONCE CLEARED
through Rikers, we sat in a small interview room, glass running the length of one wall. I couldn't tell if it was the same room I'd been in the first time we'd come to see Lorenzo, or a different room with the same characteristics. I supposed that was part of the idea of jail.
We waited for Lorenzo for nearly twenty minutes. When he was finally shown in I was surprised by the genuineness of his smile: Lorenzo looked truly happy to see us. On second thought, why wouldn't he be? We represented the outside world; we were working for free to help him; we were the closest approximation of hope currently in his life.
We shook hands all around; then Lorenzo sat down across from us.
"Let's start with the bad news," Myra said. "The DA has a
statement from a new witness."
"Can't be no witness," Lorenzo protested. "Because ain't nobody
gonna see me do something I didn't do."
"It's actually someone from Rikers," I said. "Do you know Lester
Bailey?"
Lorenzo's brow furrowed. "There's a dude named Lester here, sure.
We was in the same cell for a couple of weeks, but I ain't seen him lately."
"That's probably because the DA moved him away from you once they'd gotten a statement from him," Myra said.
"How can he be saying anything about me?" Lorenzo demanded. "He
don't know shit."
"He claims you confessed to him," I said.
Lorenzo's whole body jerked back, his chair skidding away from the table. He held his arms open wide, his face contorting with disbelief.
"What he trippin' on?"
"You ever say anything to him about the shooting?" Myra asked.
"Why I gonna cop to something I ain't even do?" Lorenzo protested.
"But you did speak to him?"
"Motherfucker was up in my cell, sure, we talk. But I ain't ever
admit to no killing."
"Did you tell him what you were accused of?" Myra asked.
"He'd heard from around the way."
"From who?"
"I don't got clue one. Ain't no secrets in Rikers for nobody."
"Did he ever ask you about it?"
Lorenzo was focused now on figuring out how Lester Bailey had played him.
"He did ask me. I didn't think nothing about it, but now as I'm thinking on it,
he was trying to get me to tell him shit."
"So what did you actually tell him?" Myra asked.
"I didn't tell him nothing, 'cause I ain't got nothing to tell him," Lorenzo said.
"He sayin' I flat-out copped to the shooting?"
"He is," I said.
"I never said nothing like that."
"Be that as it may, this could cause us problems," Myra said. "If
Lester Bailey wants to get on the stand and lie, there's not a lot we can do to
stop him."
"This is some bullshit, yo." Lorenzo was still agitated. "They
gonna be puttin' me away 'cause some snitch is gonna lie?"
"We'll see what we can do," Myra said. "We'll try to speak to
Bailey, see if we can rattle his cage a little. Maybe we can get him to back
down."
"What about my boy Marcus?" Lorenzo said. "I got me an alibi on
this shit."
"We've talked to Marcus," Myra said. "And we don't feel we should
put him on."
"Not put him on?" Lorenzo said, smiling like he thought Myra was kidding.
"But he was with me that night."
"Marcus was pretty out of it when we talked to him. I think he'd
make an extremely bad witness. Plus, if he takes the stand, the DA's going to be
able to cross him on his criminal record. That'll just ensure that the jury
associates you with drugs."
"But I ain't got Marcus, I ain't got no alibi," Lorenzo protested. He was already thrown off by the news of Lester Bailey, and it was clear that our lack of interest in his alibi witness was making things considerably worse for him.
"We don't think Marcus would be seen as a reliable alibi witness by the jury," Myra said.
"He's going to hurt a lot more than he's going to help."
"What kind of defense we gonna have without Marcus?"
"We don't win on establishing our case," Myra said. "We win on
tearing down theirs."
Lorenzo looked at her, a little challenge in it; then he rubbed his hands over his face, taking a deep breath as he did so.
"So what's your good news?" he asked after collecting himself.
"What do you mean?" Myra asked.
"You said you were startin' with the bad news. So what's the good
news?"
"I didn't actually mean to imply that there was good news," Myra said.
"But we have made some progress. Do you know someone from the neighborhood named
Malik Taylor?"
"Malik? I know him from around, sure, how come?"
"Apparently Devin Wallace told Malik to stay away from his girl, meaning Yo-Yo, despite the fact that Malik was the father of her child," Myra said.
"Malik isn't ready, willing, or able to pretend that he was down with that. You
ever hear anything on the street about Malik and Devin? Any beefs?"
"Now you say, I do remember hearing something," Lorenzo said after a moment.
"Word 'round the way was that Malik was all up in Yo-Yo's crib on nights when
Devin ain't around. People be talkin' some shit 'bout how them two were back
together."
I glanced over at Myra, who was staring at Lorenzo with as much surprise on her face as I'd ever seen her show.
"Who told you this?" she asked.
Lorenzo shrugged. "Don't remember who I heard that from. It was
just what people be sayin'."
"Did Devin know about this?"
"I sure wasn't gonna tell him. Ain't none of my business. I got no
need to get mixed up in some shit like that."
"Devin ever say anything about it, anything at all?"
"Now you got me thinking, I remember he say something about how
Malik was disrespecting him, how he was gonna have to educate the motherfucker
on how to behave."
"How did this come up?"
Lorenzo looked away from us as he tried to remember. "He was just
talking about shit that needed to get took care of. He said something about how
Malik had gotten up in his business where he didn't belong."
"Do you think Devin was saying he knew about Malik and Yolanda?"
"I didn't pay it no mind back then. You put them two things next
to each other now, it do seem that way, sure."
"Assuming Devin did know about Malik and Yolanda," Myra said,
"what would he have done to take care of it?"
"Way Devin sees it, the Gardens is
his
, you know what I'm
saying? The whole damn place belongs to him. You the number one dealer in a
project, you gotta make sure anybody who steps up to you gonna get took down
real quick."
"So maybe Malik decided he needed to strike first," I said. "Maybe
he shot Devin Wallace over this, and Yolanda's lying to protect him."
Myra's dismissive glance told me that in her view I was stating the obvious.
"Lorenzo," she said, leaning forward in her chair, "why didn't you tell us this
before?"
"I didn't think how it could mean Malik capped Devin," Lorenzo said.
"A civilian like Malik don't take out a gangster like Devin. That's just not the
way the game is played."
"And you're sure you can't remember who told you about this?" Myra said.
"This helps us a lot more if we have a witness who can testify about the
relationship between Malik and Yolanda."
"I'll think on that," Lorenzo said.
"Please do. And we'll do our own investigating, see what we can
find out about it on our end."
"You think we can put this shit on Malik?" Lorenzo said.
"He's got a motive, and it gives their only eyewitness a reason to lie," Myra said.
"This could change everything."
"I guess I should have thought to tell you all sooner, you put it
like that."
"You should err on the side of telling us too much, Lorenzo," Myra said.
"You never know what's going to make the difference."
"I feel you."
"So I guess the other thing we have to talk about is the pretrial hearing," Myra said, turning to me.
I explained the issue with the photo array, and how we would try to use it to suppress Yolanda's identification.
"I hear you," Lorenzo said when I was finished. "That gonna be enough?"
"Not necessarily," I said. "But there's also the fact that the DA
didn't turn over the photo array to us—we're going to argue that the ID should
be suppressed due to their discovery violation."
"Generally speaking, there's two ways we can go at Yolanda's ID of you," Myra said.
"Either she's mistaken or she's lying. For purposes of the
Wade
hearing,
we're arguing that the ID procedures may have caused her to make a mistake. But
is there any reason you can think of why she'd lie about seeing you?"
"If Malik tried to take out Devin, she might lie about that," Lorenzo said.
"But in that case she could just lie and say she didn't see anything, or that she didn't recognize anybody," I said.
"Any idea why she'd pick out you?"
Lorenzo looked me in the eye. "Ain't no kind of reason for that," Lorenzo said.
MYRA WAS
playing Notorious B.I.G.'s
Life After Death
as we drove back from Rikers, the thumping bass filling the car.
"I didn't have you pegged for a gangster-rap fan," I said.
"I can't stand most of it," Myra said. "All that 'I'm gonna smack
my bitch' shit. But you can't work the streets of Brooklyn and not give it up
for Biggie."
I unbuttoned the top button of my shirt and loosened my tie. "Long week," I said.
" 'Cause of this?"
"I admit I lost a little sleep over fucking up your interview with Devin Wallace," I said.
"It was a rookie mistake," Myra said. "But, you know, you're
basically a rookie, so there it is."
"I'm not a rookie, though," I protested. "I've been practicing law
roughly as long as you have."
"You want me to be your rabbi, maybe while I'm navigating rush
hour is not the best time."
"I'm pretty sure I don't want you to be my rabbi," I said.
"I wasn't trying to be rude," Myra said.
"I don't think trying is really the issue for you."
"What I meant was, you want to really talk about the job, we can
do that. But not while I'm already on the cusp of road rage."
"You want to go get a drink?" I said. I hadn't been planning on asking, hadn't known I was going to an instant before I did.
"As a matter of fact," Myra said, "I think I could use a drink."
WE WENT
to Great Lakes, a bar on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. Myra ordered a cosmo; I got a Maker's Mark on the rocks.
"I can't believe you drink cosmos," I said. "They're so
Sex and the City
."
"It just so happens that I liked
Sex and the City
," Myra said.
"And even if I didn't, cosmos are yummy. What do you think I should drink,
chardonnay?"
"I had you down for more like a whiskey sour or a gimlet," I said.
"You know, something film noir that would put hair on your chest."