Jury of One (18 page)

The real victims were the neighborhoods. Abandoned houses on the verge of demolition became crack houses, or dangerous playgrounds for children, and in any event an utter blight. Property values remained depressed, and any attempt at revitalization was thwarted. The deregulation of the ’80s was paying dividends, in spades, in the new millennium.

“Shelly, just so you know,” said Joel. “This is business to me. Yeah, a cop was killed and I used to be one, but don’t count me out of the inner circle here. I got one and only one loyalty, and that’s to you. You need
someone
you can trust.”

She wondered if he was referring to Alex in that last comment. A former cop would naturally have plenty of skepticism built up. She looked at him. “I pleaded self-defense for many reasons,” she said. “One is that I think Alex may be in danger.”

“Retaliation.”

Close enough. She wasn’t sure whether she should share the undercover drug operation with him yet. “So now, anyone thinking of going after him will have to think twice. There will be a lot of questions now, if something happens to him.”

“Good enough.”

“Plus, I’m throwing the state off the scent. They think I’m conceding the facts, or at least most of them. They think I’m conceding Alex shot him, and just arguing the details. That may be true. But it may not be.”

Yes, he was right. She had to trust someone. She removed the photograph she took of the boy—Manuel, he called himself—who had helped the armed intruders get into her apartment.

“What the heck’s this?” Joel asked, holding up the photo as he drove. “Junkie porn?”

She would laugh, under different circumstances. “This kid came to my house and told me he had information about Alex. I made him strip down to his undies to make sure he wasn’t armed. What he didn’t tell me was that he had brought some friends.”

Joel glanced over at her.

“They gave me a little pep talk about not smearing Ray Miroballi.”

“No shit.”

“I don’t know if they were cops, Joel. But it’s the best guess.” She pointed at the photo. “They rousted some junkie and used him to get in.”

“You want me to find this kid.”

“If it’s possible. It’s probably a needle in a haystack.”

“I’ll start with the morgue.”

The thought had occurred to Shelly as well. Whoever used
this boy, if they were ruthless enough, might dispose of “Manuel” once his role was over.

Joel pulled his car into the lot across the street from the criminal courthouse. They went through a detailed security process and made their way to the fourth floor, home of the County Attorney Technical Unit. The CAT Unit had been set up about ten years ago, after one too many questions about one too many cases, amid accusations of evidence tampering by the city police. The county’s criminal investigation procedures were revamped, and the county attorney took over crime-scene work.

“Nothing great on the background,” said Joel as they left the elevator. “I don’t see anything dirty about Miroballi at all. Or his partner, Sanchez. But I’m working on it.”

“I need to talk to Sanchez next,” she said, as much to herself as him.

“Ask him how his girlfriend is doing.”

“What does that mean?”

“He’s got a thing on the side. He’s married. Got a hot little mama on the sly.” He cast a glance at Shelly. “It’s my guys’ bread and butter. That stuff pays the bills while I handle these highfalutin cases that Riley shoots me. They got some photos, even, if you want them.”

They reached the door. Joel Lightner knew several of the people inside. Their familiarity with a former colleague seemed to be sufficient for the officials to leave Joel and Shelly alone with the physical evidence, in a small room that had been prepped for them. Nice, she thought, to be with someone on the inside. And funny, she noted, that the daughter of the most powerful man in the state considered herself an outsider.

“The .38,” said Joel, pointing at the weapon wrapped in plastic. Next to it in similar wrapping was Officer Miroballi’s firearm. Hanging from a metal, stand-alone hanger set was the black leather jacket Alex had been wearing. The thought passed in and out of her mind, that she had never seen this jacket, which only reminded her of how little she knew of this boy.

“No blood spatterings on the jacket,” said Joel, putting his nose almost against the plastic. He touched the next item, Ray Miroballi’s uniform top. “Plenty of it here.”

“The gunpowder residue test was negative,” said Shelly, referring to the test performed on Alex the night of the shooting.

Joel uttered a dismissive grunt. “That’s not uncommon,” he said, “if you were getting your hopes up. Doesn’t mean Alex didn’t shoot the firearm.”

Doesn’t mean he did, either.

“When the fuck’s the coroner gonna do the autopsy?” he asked.

“No idea.” In a case like this, where cause of death was so obvious, autopsies were not necessarily of primary import. The only critical issue, as far as Shelly could tell, was the distance between Alex and Miroballi when the shooting occurred.

“Pardon my French, by the way.” Joel moved away from the hanging rack. “Back in my old haunts, I get my old mouth back.” He wiped his hands, for some reason. “Actually, in this case, I don’t know how much the distance matters. Closer the better, I suppose, if you’re thinking self-defense. Especially if he never drew his weapon.”

He walked back over to the table. Shelly was looking around, too, but not with expert eyes. She felt more like an escort than a technician. Joel pointed to the plastic baggie containing the two grams of cocaine. “No prints,” he said. “But on a night like that, Alex was probably wearing gloves. Or he was smart when he packaged it.”

“Or,” Shelly offered, “they weren’t his drugs.”

“The ol’ drop-and-plant.” Joel smiled. “Drop the perp, put a gun and some drugs in his hand. We used to do it all the time.”

She assumed he was kidding but didn’t respond. “That would make the .38 his, too. Miroballi’s, I mean.”

Joel cocked his head to allow for the possibility. He didn’t seem to think too much of it.

“And Alex wasn’t wearing gloves,” she added.

“You mean they didn’t
find
him wearing gloves.”

“You think he dumped them?”

“Certainly a possibility, Counselor. Same place he dumped the gun.” Joel reached into his gym bag, his briefcase for the day, and removed a camera to photograph all the evidence. “They’ll find that gun, by the way,” he added. “They found
him—what—a half mile away? That’s a very workable radius.” He closed an eye and started photographing items one by one.

“You’re assuming he shot him,” she rejoined.

“So are you.” He moved the camera from his face. “Until you ask him.”

I
T WAS AFTER
another week, courtesy of an extension she had provided him, that Jerod Romero had delivered a copy of a plea bargain to Shelly’s attention at the law firm. It had arrived in an 8
¹
⁄
₂
-by-11 envelope, emblazoned with the seal of the Department of Justice, United States Attorney’s Office. A letter agreement, already signed by Jerod Romero at his line. A yellow Post-It note had been stuck to the agreement with the words,
You get the discovery when you sign this.

She’d looked it over. The U.S. Attorney had agreed not to prosecute Alex Baniewicz for any offenses, including but not limited to possession of not less than fifty grams and not more than one hundred grams of cocaine with intent to distribute, on December 5, 2003, as previously referred to in a letter agreement dated December 6, 2003. In consideration of said promise, neither Alex Baniewicz nor his counsel, Michelle Trotter, Esquire, and/or any counsel that may join or succeed her would disclose any facts relating to an undercover federal operation probing the activities of city law enforcement in the distribution of controlled substances until such time as the matter of
People v. Alex Gerhard Baniewicz,
Case Number 03 CR 4102, commenced trial.

More details. She’d taken her time with it, spent a day looking it over for loopholes. In the end, she had been satisfied. She had secured full immunity for Alex. She’d taken the agreement
to Alex for his signature, a meeting she’d cut short under the pretense of needing to get it immediately to the federal prosecutors, and then did just that, delivering a fully executed copy of the agreement two nights ago.

She looked over the agreement again now with butterflies in her stomach, now that it was fully executed, waiting for the word or phrase that she had missed the first six times around and that would suddenly doom her client. But she was satisfied and felt content. On its face, there was little reason to break out party hats. Alex was looking, at most, at maybe a year and a half in a federal camp, a rap on the knuckles compared to the death penalty that state prosecutors were seeking. It was the terms of the agreement she appreciated. No conditions on his further cooperation with the feds, who no longer needed him anyway. No condition of truthfulness. It gave Alex wiggle room. It gave Shelly, as his lawyer, wiggle room.

And it gave her indigestion, at how little she trusted Alex’s word, that she found it necessary to cover him through this agreement from any lies he may have told. This was, after all, her son she was talking about.

Son.
Just a word. It lacked feeling. Why? She had cared so much for this young man before she knew the truth. Why did she have to look at him differently now? Alex hadn’t lied to her. A crime of omission, perhaps, but how could she judge him for that? She’d left him at birth, given him up, and now she was irked at him for the manner in which he found her?

She brought her hands to her face. She didn’t cry. She was less a crier than a weller, emotions rising to the surface with some ease, eyes filling, but tears rarely falling. A powder keg inside but a cool exterior. Could be a defense mechanism. She was looking at the boy as nothing more than a client because she needed to, right? She needed to keep the objectivity that would make her an effective advocate. Would she ever be able to embrace him for who he was? Or was it easier to feel connected when he was an abstraction, a genderless, nameless somebody with no faults or virtues?

“For God’s sake,” she mumbled.

She heard footsteps a moment later, and she got to her feet in
the small room. Alex was escorted into the room, wearing the ever-present shackles and moving slowly.

“We got the stuff from the F.B.I.,” she said quickly. “Lots to do.”

Alex looked at her a second. “Okay.” He’d barely sat down, the prison guard hadn’t left the room yet, and they hadn’t even said hello. Shelly busied herself removing the folders from her bag. She knew what she was doing, as she had every time since she learned the news, using an excuse to avoid any personal interaction with him.

She pushed a file in front of him as she continued to remove items. Alex opened the folder and held each photo in his shackled hands, as if seeing the concept of photography for the first time. He was the object of attention, probably something he was not accustomed to. Shelly had seen it before, in the children she had represented, a perverse enjoyment from all the fuss about them.

“You hadn’t seen these?” she asked him.

He shook his head no. “They told me they had me meeting with Miro but they didn’t say much more.” He continued through the pictures, an eager child.

Shelly moved her chair so she could view the photos along with Alex. A number of grainy black-and-white, 5-by-7 photos, pictures taken in a park. Close-ups, though Shelly guessed the photographer was far away, probably across the street. One man sitting on a bench in a light jacket and slacks, leg crossed, heavyset, wearing a baseball cap and smoking a cigarette. Looking at these snapshots yesterday, she had matched up the face, out of context, with the newspaper photo and shuddered. It was Raymond Miroballi. The next one, Miroballi was standing by the bench, hands stuffed in a thick jacket as another person had approached, seen from the back. Shelly had recognized the long black coat and stocking cap. It was Alex.

She watched Alex go through them and nod with recognition. Miroballi patting Alex down, making him remove his coat, hands tapping his ribs, his stomach, the insides of his thighs. Alex talking, one hand waving as he spoke. Miroballi, leaning into Alex, a finger jabbing the air, a close-up of his stern expression. Near the end of the set of snapshots, Alex was
handing Miroballi a letter-sized envelope with a bulge. The first of this sequence showed Alex holding out the envelope; the second and third, Miroballi was looking around in different directions; the fourth one, Miroballi took the envelope; finally, Miroballi stuffed the envelope inside his jacket.

On the back of each photograph in this series were the words
RAYMOND MIROBALLI / ALEX BANIEWICZ, ABBOTT PARK, 11-24-03, 6:26 P.M.

“So let’s talk about that meeting with Miroballi.”

Alex looked at the photo and held his breath.

“You’re giving him the money there,” said Shelly. “The envelope has cash?”

Alex continued to stare at the snapshot. He slowly nodded yes.

“He seemed upset with you,” Shelly observed.

“Yeah, what was that—November? Yeah, that’s when he upped it to five hundred.”

“Tell me about the conversation,” she said, scrolling through the photos again. Miroballi punching the air with a finger, a grimace on his face.

Alex nodded at the photo. “He’s telling me he can mess me up good. A kickback of five hundred is nothing compared to going away for twenty to life.”

“What did you say?”

“I said I wouldn’t go alone.”

She studied him. It was hard to imagine the Alex she had come to know, a gentle soul, talking tough. But it was his life he was talking about. His daughter’s future.

Alex made a face. “He said I couldn’t prove a thing. Said the money couldn’t be traced.”

“But you agreed to bumping up his fee?”

“Said I’d think about it.” Alex shrugged.

She looked at him a moment, then continued on. After the photographs was a typewritten report by F.B.I. Special Agent Constantine Padopoulos. It noted that Officer Raymond Miroballi ended his shift at 5:00
P.M.
on the day of Monday, November 24, 2003, and left the police station in plainclothes at 5:22
P.M.
He drove in his personal vehicle to Abbott Park, which he circled in his car three times before parking and getting out.
At 5:52
P.M.
—and this matched up with the photographs; Shelly went through them as she read the narrative, a process she had repeated over and over again into the wee hours last night—Miroballi sat at a park bench and waited. He was approached by an unidentified male, Caucasian, midtwenties, at 6:02
P.M.