Bronx Justice (18 page)

Jaywalker's heart resumed beating. Pope, visibly disappointed, launched into a series of questions about Darren's daily routine as it had been back in August.

Eventually Pope grew tired of questioning Darren about his routine. It seemed to Jaywalker that Darren had handled himself flawlessly, and that Pope had accomplished absolutely nothing in the exchange.

Next Pope took aim at Darren's stutter.

Bravo,
thought Jaywalker. He couldn't have come up with a better answer himself.

As Jaywalker rose to object to Pope's nonquestion, he could hear Charlene crying in the spectator section of the courtroom. And he couldn't have been the only one to hear her.

The remainder of Darren's answer was drowned out by his wife's sobs. As Jaywalker objected, Pope complained,
and as Justice Davidoff called for order, Marlin and Inez helped Charlene from the courtroom. A ten-minute recess was declared.

Outside in the corridor, Jaywalker found Charlene sobbing uncontrollably, fighting to catch her breath. Someone pulled up a chair for her. George Goddard, a physician who'd arrived a little while earlier to be the final defense witness, finally succeeded in calming Charlene down. He later confided to Jaywalker that his motivation had been at least partly self-serving. An internist with a subspecialty in endocrinology, Dr. Goddard hadn't delivered a baby in many years, and he wasn't particularly anxious to renew his obstetrical training on the sixth floor of the Bronx County Courthouse.

 

Following the recess, Darren resumed the witness stand. Pope questioned him briefly about his uncle Samuel, who lived near Castle Hill, and about Darren's own residence back in 1975, which had also been close to the area. But Darren continued to deny that he'd been back there since, except for that one time with John McCarthy.

Jaywalker thought it a strange way for Pope to conclude, reducing Darren's testimony—and anticipating Jaywalker's summation—so neatly for the defense. He should have known better, should have figured out that there was a method to Pope's madness.

Darren stepped down from the witness stand and rejoined Jaywalker at the defense table. For two hours, he'd become an active participant in his trial—indeed, the central player of it. And he'd come through beautifully, Jaywalker felt. Now Darren's moment was over. As it had been before, his role was reduced to that of a spectator.

 

As much as Jaywalker would have liked to rest after Darren's testimony, he had one more witness to call, and circumstances beyond his control had dictated the order of doing so.

For the better part of two weeks, he'd been trying to locate a doctor willing to come to court and testify to the fact that unlike the man Joanne Kenarden had described, Darren wasn't circumcised. What had seemed a simple enough proposition had taught him just how leery the medical profession is of the legal profession. Darren's own doctor refused, as did at least twenty others contacted by his family or by Jaywalker. Several declined because the defense couldn't afford to pay them enough for their time, with some of their demands running well into four figures. But most stated candidly that no amount of money could induce them to testify, about any matter. A few offered to sign letters or even affidavits, but those would have been inadmissible as hearsay, inasmuch as the doctors themselves wouldn't have been available for cross-examination. At one point Jaywalker had been ready to
give up and ask Pope to concede the point and stipulate to it. But he much preferred the idea of a live witness, for the impact he felt it would have upon the jury.

In the end, he'd had to impose upon a personal friend. The evening before, in the makeshift examining room of Jaywalker's study, George Goddard had come over and examined Darren. Then he'd managed to cram a full day's schedule into a morning, and driven from his office in Livingston, New Jersey, to the Bronx.

As he now began by asking Dr. Goddard to state his credentials, Jaywalker felt that the jurors couldn't help but be impressed. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Goddard had interned at Bellevue and Columbia Presbyterian hospitals, completed residencies at both places, and studied under a fellowship at Mount Sinai. He was board certified and licensed in both New York and New Jersey.

The remainder of Jaywalker's examination was predictably brief.

Jaywalker hadn't expected there to be any cross-examination, but Pope surprised him. He asked Dr. Goddard to describe the difference between a circumcised penis and an uncircumcised one. Then he tried to suggest that although a doctor could distinguish between the two, a layperson might have difficulty.

Still Pope pressed on. First he got Dr. Goddard to concede that it might be more difficult for a layperson to make the determination seeing a penis only in its erect state. Never mind that Jaywalker had gotten Joanne Kenarden to say that she'd seen her attacker's penis both erect and flaccid. Then Pope broke new ground in the annals of disguise, by asking if it would be possible for an uncircumcised person to pull back his foreskin, in order to appear circumcised. To this suggestion, Dr. Goddard acknowledged that it might be possible, though rather unlikely, and perhaps even quite painful.

As he stepped down from the stand, Jaywalker stood and announced that Dr. Goddard had been his final witness. The defense rested.

Pope, however, indicated that he had rebuttal witnesses to call, and that they weren't immediately available. Justice Davidoff gave him until the following morning to produce them. Then he recessed.

If Jaywalker's witnesses had come off well enough, not one of them had been able to provide an alibi for Darren. The closest thing to that had been supplied by a single sheet of paper from the post office. As for the witnesses themselves, however well-meaning and earnest they'd been, they'd also been pretty much family and friends, two groups that jurors were often quick to disregard. Even if he'd scored a few points here and there during the defense case, he was painfully aware that the potential for disaster was still there. And now Pope was promising just that.

It would be a long, sleepless night. For a change.

O
n Thursday morning, just before the jury was brought into the courtroom to resume the trial, Jacob Pope asked to approach the bench for a conference. There, in his usual businesslike voice, he announced that something had come up that might prove beneficial to the defense. He couldn't say what it was until he checked it out, and it would take him the rest of the day to do so. But he assured Jaywalker that whatever it was, at the very least it couldn't hurt the defense. When Jaywalker pressed him for more detail, he wouldn't budge, except to repeat that the defendant had everything to gain and nothing to lose.

“You've found the real rapist,” said Jaywalker.

“I can't say anything more yet,” was the best Pope would do. But even his refusal to tell Jaywalker that he was way off with his guess seemed pregnant with possibility. And Justice Davidoff was no help. He declined Jaywalker's request that he compel Pope to disclose what was going on.

Jaywalker walked back to the defense table and ex
plained the situation to Darren, who reacted with visible excitement. They agreed to go along with Pope's request. Justice Davidoff called for the jury. He told them that certain legal matters had come up that didn't concern them but required that he excuse them for the day. He instructed them to return the following morning, Friday, at ten o'clock. Whispering among themselves, the jurors filed out of the courtroom. Perhaps they were every bit as intrigued by the latest development as Jaywalker and Darren were. More likely their enthusiasm was over the prospect of a free day to go shopping or sit in front of their television sets.

Out in the corridor, Jaywalker tried to pry some hint out of Pope, without success. The prosecutor did promise to let them know what was going on as soon as he'd had an opportunity to check it out. Then he excused himself, walked away, and joined a cluster of people that included two detective types and a pair of young women in their late teens or early twenties.

Jaywalker tried to contain his excitement as he and Darren discussed the matter with the Kingston family downstairs. Something had obviously happened, or was happening, or was about to happen. Either they'd found the real rapist, or another attack had occurred that bore his signature. And it couldn't have been Darren, because this time Darren had the best alibi of all time: he'd been sitting in court.

Whatever it was, it could only be good. Even in his secrecy, Pope had said enough to hint that he was now on their side. Justice was about to be done. Darren was about to be rescued. And if Darren was about to be rescued, so was Jaywalker.

 

Friday.

Jaywalker arrived in court so early that he had to wait for the doors to be unlocked. Fueled by pure adrenaline, he'd slept two hours, if that. And he was only the lawyer; he couldn't begin to fathom what Darren was going through.

But the suspense was to be continued.

Pope informed them that he was still awaiting further developments and asked that the case be put over once more, until Monday morning. Again he gave solemn assurances that the delay was in the interest of justice and could only benefit the defense. Jaywalker said he was prepared to agree to the continuance, but that fundamental fairness required their being told what was going on.
Fundamental
and
fairness
are two words that appellate courts tend to use a lot when reversing convictions, and Jaywalker's use of them was no accident. This time, after thinking about it for a moment, Justice Davidoff agreed.

Reluctantly, Pope complied. Measuring his words carefully, he prefaced his remarks by stating that he himself had no doubts about the case. But Jaywalker's insistence on his client's innocence had prompted the district attorney's office to continue surveillance in the Castle Hill area, even as the trial progressed. Over the past several days, Pope had been receiving reports that a young black man had been seen hanging around the project, acting suspiciously. Preliminary indications were that he closely resembled Darren Kingston. Pope wanted to continue the surveillance a bit longer. If the man made a move, he could be arrested on the spot. If he didn't, he would still be picked up and brought in, so that the defense could see
him. Perhaps a lineup could even be arranged for the victims to view.

Jaywalker's heart pounded as he took all this in. He was immediately skeptical about the lineup; the victims were by now convinced it was Darren who'd raped them and would continue to identify him. But as far as having this new suspect watched and brought in, they certainly had nothing to lose from that.

“Have you thought about setting up a decoy operation?” he asked. Why wait for the man to pick out a victim, after all, when a young female officer could be enlisted for the role and sent in, backed up by an undercover surveillance team?

“Why don't we leave it to the professionals?” was Pope's response to the suggestion.

Jaywalker bit his tongue and said nothing. Never mind that he'd
been
one of the professionals not too long ago, making multikilogram undercover purchases of heroin and cocaine for the Drug Enforcement Administration. This was Pope's show, and he didn't want to do anything to derail it. He readily agreed to the requested continuance, and the judge granted it.

If the jurors had been curious about the first postponement, now they looked truly mystified as they were told for the second time in as many days that they would be hearing no testimony. Justice Davidoff instructed them not to speculate about the reason and sent them home for the weekend.

Again Jaywalker huddled with the Kingstons, sharing with them everything Pope had said earlier. They left the courthouse seeming cautiously optimistic. The optimism, of course, came from the news of the “other man.” The caution came from Jaywalker and, he guessed, from their
own reluctance to trust in something that seemed too good to be true. Perhaps they'd suffered too many disappointments already: the arrest, the arraignment identification, the high bail, the indictment, the many polygraph frustrations, the severance decision, the racial composition of the jury, and the continuing certainty of the victims that it had been Darren who'd attacked them. If their faces wore expressions that translated as “We'll believe it when it happens,” Jaywalker could hardly blame them.

As for Jaywalker, he drove home filled with a strange mix of emotions. He took comfort, and even a measure of pride, from the notion that Pope had, at least to a certain extent, made Jaywalker's doubts his own. It renewed his faith in Pope, and in the system. Beyond that, he was thrilled that the detectives might be onto the real rapist. He knew in his heart that the man was still out there somewhere. And more than anything else, he wanted Darren's nightmare to end.

Yet for all that, Jaywalker was also aware that there was a part of him that wanted to be the hero. Not Jacob Pope. Not some detective.
Him,
Jaywalker.
He
wanted to win this. He didn't want his role to be reduced to that of a bystander when the case got solved.

He turned on the AM radio of his old VW. An AM-FM upgrade would have cost him another fifty bucks, and tape decks, CD players and iPods hadn't even been born yet. He gave the thing a hard rap to get it working. He wanted to drown out the voice of his own ego, needed to remind himself that this wasn't about him. When it came right down to it, it didn't matter
how
Darren got off, it only mattered that he
did.
The radio finally warmed up, and the single station that worked on it came to life. Through the
static and the whine of the engine, Jaywalker could just make out the throaty voice of Carly Simon.