A Cure for Night (23 page)

I thought about just throwing it away, walking over to the trash can on the corner and tossing it. Of course, if the police were watching even that wouldn't necessarily get me out of trouble; they'd just claim that I saw them coming.

Besides, dropping some smack into a trash can a few feet away from the courthouse in broad daylight seemed like a pretty bad idea. In addition to the two cops stationed in front of the courthouse, there was also a steady stream of cops and prosecutors going in and out of the building; I might have already drawn some attention for standing frozen on the middle of the sidewalk with my hands now jammed in my pockets.

There was something else, too. There was the buzzing in my veins, an electrical charge dancing in my blood. The back of my throat had gone dry; my stomach had clenched into a fist. It had taken only a few seconds of having the stuff nestled in my hand for me to be deep in the clutches of a jones.

It wasn't just the drug itself that I missed. I'd ended up doing most of the copping back when I was doing it with Beth; I'd come to enjoy that part of it too. I'd done it up on Amsterdam Avenue and 106th Street, sometimes buying from the dealers who worked out of a Chinese take-out joint, other times from the crew across the street that operated out of the vestibule of an apartment building. I'd enjoyed the charge of going up there, often the only white face around, trying not to get busted or burned. I hadn't expected to like it but I had. I liked scoring it and I liked having it, the illicit feeling of having heroin tucked in my pocket as I walked down the street. I had no illusions that any of this was a good thing.

I couldn't just stand here in front of the criminal courthouse indefinitely. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to just go back to my office. When I turned around to head back I found myself staring into the eyes of Devin Wallace, who stood by himself five feet away. I stopped instinctively, then forced myself to keep walking past him, Devin just standing there, a smile on his face, his eyes locked on mine.

I MADE
it back to my office without being arrested. Whatever Shawne Flynt was up to, it apparently didn't involve the police.

Back in the office and at loose ends, I went to check in on Myra to see if she wanted any help with tomorrow's closing argument, the heroin still tucked into my pocket. Myra's door was closed. I knocked, but got no response. I decided to leave her a note, telling her that I was going home but that she should feel free to call me if she needed anything. I opened her office door and started to step inside when I saw that Myra was sitting with her back to the door, her head cradled in her folded arms on the desk. She looked up quickly, allowing me a glance of her pain-etched face before looking quickly away.

"Sorry," I said. "I didn't think you were here. I was just . . ."

"What?" Myra said after I'd trailed off. "You just what?"

"What's wrong?"

Still without looking at me, Myra picked up a short document and held it out.
"I got this in the mail," she said. "I found it when I came back from court."

I walked over behind Myra's desk and took the court's order, glancing quickly through it. It was the decision of the Appellate Division in
The People v. Terrell Gibbons.
The entire opinion was no more than a half dozen paragraphs, just a quick and dirty disposal of all claims. They'd affirmed the conviction, and Terrell Gibbons had lost his one clear chance at reversing his guilty verdict.

"Shit," I said. "Myra—"

"No platitudes," Myra interrupted. "I swear to God, Joel, you say
some kind of platitude right now and I won't be held responsible."

"I don't know what to say. Obviously there're still other
avenues—"

"The chances of getting the Court of Appeals to even hear this are maybe one in twenty," Myra snapped.
"And even that's probably optimistic. And winning a federal habeas these days is
like winning the lottery—there's maybe a couple a year in this whole circuit.
The only real shot we had was this appeal."

"You never know," I protested.

"You don't ever know," Myra agreed. "But sometimes you're pretty
damn confident."

I put my hand on Myra's shoulder, wanting to offer whatever comfort I could. She was still wearing her suit jacket, so I all I felt under my hand was its shoulder pad. To my surprise, Myra reached up and put her hand on top of mine. After a moment I turned my hand slightly, taking hers between my thumb and fingers. I looked down at Myra, who was looking at me in a way I hadn't seen before. I felt my throat constrict suddenly in a rush of nerves.

"It's not your fault," I said, my voice coming out hoarse.

"Whose is it if not mine, Joel?" Myra said. "The guy didn't do it,
and now he's gone away for life. Who's that on, if not me?"

"You're a great lawyer, Myra," I said. "You can do things that
nobody at my fancy firm could even dream of doing. I'm sure you did everything
that could've been done for Terrell."

Myra smiled at me, taking her hand away from mine and swiping at her eyes.
"I'm pretty sure that was a platitude," she said. "But I'll let it go."

IT WAS
a little after nine when I got home. I'd stayed around in the office even though I didn't really need to, returning some phone calls, scheduling appointments, closing out the paperwork on cases I'd pled out. It was the sort of work I always had a backlog of, the stuff that I usually put off.

I'd thought about trying to find someone to keep me company, calling Paul or asking Zach to get a drink. But I hadn't actually tried to make it happen, and it was clear that at least on some level I didn't want to. I told myself it was for the best to just face it head-on, do whatever I was going to do when I got home.

So here I was, alone with the dope. I pulled it out of my pocket, dropped the packets down on my glass living room table.

I didn't want this, I told myself. I hadn't gone looking for it, not once since Beth had died. I'd learned my lesson from what had happened to her. The only way the story of doing smack ended well was if you stopped on your own, and did so before it got the best of you.

But what harm would one more little snort do? What was the danger, really, of one last toot for the road? It was all famous last words, I knew that, but any attempt at logic was swimming upstream against an ocean of brutal need.

But there was also the fact that I still didn't understand what Shawne Flynt was up to, and what role Devin Wallace might have in his plan, or if the two were even connected. I didn't need to do it, I told myself. It was as simple as that. I'd gotten clear of the stuff, stayed clear for well over a year now. There was no reason to put myself back down in that hole. I was strong enough not to.

But I wasn't strong enough to just throw it away. Instead I tucked it inside a thick law school textbook on the bottom of my bookshelf. Out of sight, for now, but hardly out of mind.

34

I
'D ARRIVED
at the courthouse a half hour before we were scheduled to resume for closing arguments, wanting to be available to help Myra out if she needed anything. I'd asked her if she wanted my help preparing the night before, but she'd insisted that she'd be fine. I was worried she wouldn't be able to focus on putting together her closing after losing the Gibbons appeal, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

The courtroom was empty, and I sat at our table, feeling both exhausted and charged up with adrenaline, that feeling your body gets when it's running on nothing but caffeine and nerves. It'd been a long night; I'd managed to fall asleep readily enough, but I found myself suddenly wide awake a scant three hours later, jolted into consciousness as if I'd been thrown there. I'd awoken with a need like hunger, a craving as deep and primitive as any the human animal can feel. My hands were clenched together so tightly it felt as though I'd developed arthritis overnight. The hours had dragged by with the slow grief of a funeral as I lay curled up, blinking in the gradually lightening dark. I hadn't managed to doze off again until dawn was creeping into the room.

I told myself the night was over now, that it was time to turn my attention back to this courtroom and the task at hand. My perspective was long gone: I had absolutely no idea whether we were winning or losing, no clue whether the prosecution had proven Lorenzo's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in the eyes of the jury. I'd long ago stopped wondering about what had actually happened that night in the Gardens, long ago left the truth for the jury to figure out.

Seth Lipton's parents were the first people to arrive. They took their customary seats in the front row directly behind the prosecutor's table. Trials were like weddings in that the audience seated themselves according to their sides, only instead of bride and groom it was prosecution and defense. Lipton's mother glared over at me, and I quickly turned away.

The courtroom gradually got more crowded, with additional family members, Adam Berman and some other reporters, and, in the very back row, Devin Wallace. There was no sign of Shawne Flynt. Myra, who was usually early to court, didn't arrive until a couple of minutes before nine thirty, when we were scheduled to begin closing arguments.
"You ready?" I asked.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Myra said, not looking at me.

"
THE PROSECUTION'S
case hinges on exactly two people," Myra said to begin her closing argument. She stood before the jury without notes, pacing slightly away from the podium.
"One of these people, the sister of one of the victims, claims that Lorenzo Tate
came looking for Mr. Wallace that night. Another supposed witness, who just so
happens to be the then girlfriend of that same victim, claims she saw the crime.
These two people represent the only real evidence against Lorenzo Tate. And both
of them are, very obviously, interested parties. And that's not just my
opinion."

Myra proceeded to go through everything we considered to be weaknesses in Latrice's and Yolanda's testimonies. She talked about how Latrice had changed what Lorenzo had supposedly said to her when she'd told him that Devin hadn't left the money to make it sound more threatening. She talked about Yolanda's spate of arrests, the suddenness of the crime that had happened outside late at night, how Yolanda's description of what the shooter was wearing was completely different from the clothes Latrice had described Lorenzo as wearing a few hours earlier.

"It's possible that Yolanda Miller was simply mistaken about what she saw that night," Myra said.
"But something else is possible, too. It's possible that Ms. Miller is deliberately not telling us the truth.

"Her reasons to lie include protecting her son, Jamal, and protecting Jamal's father, Malik Taylor. And let's bear in mind, these weren't reasons that the prosecution supplied you with. They didn't even
mention
them. You never even heard Malik Taylor's name from the prosecution. You never heard from them about the fight Malik Taylor had with Devin Wallace a couple of weeks before this crime. You never heard about how Devin Wallace told Malik Taylor that he wouldn't let Malik stay in touch with his own son.

"I think we all have a pretty good idea of what kind of guy Devin Wallace is. We know that what he was doing on the street that night related to selling drugs on a college campus. A guy like that tells you to stay away from somebody, you're going to take it seriously. You're going to take it as a threat.

"But let's think about what exactly Devin Wallace was demanding. He was telling Malik Taylor that he couldn't see his own son anymore. Now, that's bad enough, of course, but let's stop and think for a minute about what exactly it would mean in this case. Let's think about what it would mean for that little boy, Jamal. Instead of being raised by his own natural father, a young man who was working two jobs, a young man who was trying to educate himself, a young man who was trying to make a better life for himself and his community, instead of being exposed to all that, what would Jamal be exposed to? A drug dealer whose innovative business practices included selling drugs right on a college campus. Think what this would mean for Jamal's future.

"Then ask yourself this: what would you do if you were Jamal's father? To defy Devin Wallace would be to risk your life; I think we all know that. We know that disrespecting the neighborhood drug dealer is not a ticket to longevity, not in the projects. So this is the Catch-22 facing Malik Taylor. He either agrees to never see his son again, or he risks getting killed.

"Maybe Mr. Taylor found a third way. Maybe that third way was to get rid of Devin Wallace. That way he could see his son without risking his own life: a perfectly understandable thing to want.

"You may have noticed I only said maybe. The reason I only said maybe is because the police never investigated Malik Taylor. They never even
talked
to him. The police can't get to the right answer if they don't ask the right questions. I don't know whether Malik Taylor shot Devin Wallace and killed Seth Lipton. But I do know that the case against him would be every bit as strong as, if not stronger than, the case against Lorenzo Tate.

"Because let's remember, there's no evidence against Lorenzo Tate other than the word of two people who had abundant reasons to lie, or at least to exaggerate. The police didn't recover the murder weapon. There's no physical evidence linking my client to the crime.

"I said the prosecution's case hinged on two people, the two purported witnesses from the night of the shooting. Of course, the DA would have you believe that they have another witness, Lester Bailey. But Lester Bailey isn't actually a witness to anything. He's a hardened criminal working an angle. Lester Bailey wants to play let's make a deal with the DA's office, he wants to do anything he can to help himself out, and he doesn't mind who he has to hurt to do so. He has no credibility, he's a repeat felon, he's testifying here in hopes of getting himself a better deal in his own criminal case. His testimony isn't worth the air it took to speak it.

"As I'm sure you all know from watching TV, to convict my client
you have to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The judge will instruct
you as to what exactly that means. I think your doubts here will at least be
reasonable. I think you will be far from sure that the police got the right man
here. In fact, I think you will wonder whether they even spoke to him. Thank
you."

"
THIS IS
a straightforward case," O'Bannon began his closing remarks. In contrast to Myra, he was standing at the podium with a few pages of notes. As always, his delivery was dry and methodical, devoid of emotion.
"Devin Wallace owed the defendant a sum of money. On the night of April 6, the
defendant decided he'd waited long enough to get that money back."

O'Bannon proceeded to summarize the testimonies of Latrice Wallace, Yolanda Miller, and Lester Bailey. He acknowledged Yolanda's recent arrests, but argued that they had nothing to do with her ability to make an identification of Lorenzo Tate.

"The defense has tried to distract you," O'Bannon said once he'd finished summing up the state's evidence, turning and pointing his finger directly at Myra as he spoke.
"They've tried to create an alternate suspect, a reason for one of our eyewitnesses to lie. They are trying to create confusion where clarity exists. Don't fall into that trap, ladies and gentlemen. Keep focused on what you actually know.

"For example, did anything in the defense's supposed theory actually contradict Latrice Wallace's testimony? Did they explain how it just so happened that the defendant was out looking for Devin Wallace that night, uttering threats against him? Was it just a coincidence that he said these threats on the same night that Mr. Wallace got shot? Did they present some harmless explanation for the defendant's exchange with Ms. Wallace that night? No. In fact, ladies and gentlemen, the defense didn't really refute any part of our case. Instead, they simply tried to distract you from it.

"The defense also tried to distract you by claiming that Seth Lipton was a drug dealer. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't honestly know whether Seth Lipton was involved in some way with illegal drugs or not. But I do know this: no matter what put him on that street, he didn't deserve to be shot and killed. So why did the defense drag the victim's name through the mud? To distract you. And I ask you not to let yourself be distracted.

"Don't be fooled by smoke and mirrors. Pay attention, instead, to
the simple facts of this case. Those facts will lead you to find the defendant
guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt, for the murder of Seth Lipton and the
attempted murder of Devin Wallace. Thank you."