Authors: David Ellis
Alex Baniewicz looks at his watch. It’s early. Seven-forty. Open gym at the City Athletic Club usually goes until eight, maybe eight-thirty. Ronnie Masters, who was going to pick him up—who has been so protective of Alex since he learned about Alex’s meetings with Ray Miroballi—wouldn’t be here yet. Kicked out of the gym as he is, Alex decides to head to the bus. He certainly doesn’t want to linger out here.
The streets on the southwest side of the commercial district are empty. It has been dark since five, and most of the professional buildings in the district are to the east and north, so it is quiet as he walks toward the bus stop. Quiet is not good, not anymore. These days, he prefers noise and company to drown out the howling in his head.
He hears it before he turns his head and sees it behind him, to the north. Squad cars are unmistakable, even from a distance. This particular police vehicle is headed south on Gentry, toward him. The car has just crossed Bonnard Street, which puts it less than a block away from him. The boy finds it difficult to walk with his head craned back, but he will do what he can to be nonchalant. There is no reason to panic. He doesn’t know the officers’ intentions. More than likely, it’s a routine cruising. He’s a white kid in a long coat and sweats, obviously leaving the City Athletic Club after a game of hoops. They might not think anything of him. Or they might stop him. They might even ask him what’s in the gym bag he’s carrying. But he doesn’t know this, and he can’t react preemptively because that would draw suspicion, could turn a nonevent into something.
He hears the squad car stop, short of him. That seems odd, because there is nothing behind him that would draw their interest, no reason to stop. He doesn’t know how to respond. He listens a moment, slowing his pace. He hears another car drive by, on Bonnard Street north of the officers. That car, headed east, sounds like it’s moving quickly, which might normally catch the attention of police officers on a sleepy night. But he hears no response from the cops, which means something else—some
one
else—has their attention just now.
They are looking at him.
He tries to be casual as he turns and looks back at the squad car. He tries to catch a glimpse of the car he heard speeding by. He hopes it was Ronnie, just arriving and seeing a scene that would make his blood boil. The illumination of the street is decent, with the towering lights, and he sees two of them inside the car. The driver—it’s Miroballi. Miroballi and that partner of his. Miroballi is speaking into a radio.
Alex turns and continues walking, stifling the instinct to run. His heart is drumming now. Perspiration on his forehead, when it’s only ten degrees or so outside.
He hears car doors open, then close, one after the other.
He will not run, not yet. If nothing else, he will let them walk a sufficient distance from the vehicle, so that if Alex does run, it will take some time before they can return to the vehicle, if that
is their choice. He assumes that only one of them will give chase—Miroballi—but he can’t know this.
He looks ahead of himself now. He is walking among high-rises, so there are few options. Buildings will be closed, or open only to the extent that he could approach a security guard. Wait—an alley, before the end of the block. His mind races as he taps his recall. The alley goes through to the next street. Yes. He can cross through the alley to the next street. Yes.
“Hey,” Miroballi calls out.
It has happened in a finger-snap. He has been identified and called out. Until now, it has been something of a game, Alex pretending not to notice Miroballi. Now a line has been drawn.
Alex tries to calculate the amount of time that has passed since he heard the car pass by to the north. He prays that it was Ronnie, that somehow Ronnie will come driving up the street now.
But he’s been called out, so Alex runs. He’s in the perfect outfit, sweats and court shoes, though a sixteen-year-old probably doesn’t need such advantages against a large man pushing forty. It takes him under thirty seconds to reach the alley. He hears the officer calling to his partner, something about the car, which means that the vehicle will be giving chase soon as well.
He looks down the alley. Bags of garbage next to full dumpsters, an old fire escape running up one wall. A parked car on the next street over. Something in the shadows, maybe his eyes playing tricks.
No. It’s Ronnie, lurking in the shadows, waving to him. An escape route. Ronnie has the car waiting on the next street over, he assumes. Alex turns and runs down the alley, his heart lifted now.
He hears Miroballi again, talking into the police radio as he gives chase.
“—in pursuit—”
He looks back for signs of the officer as he’s running. A mistake. He knows it before it happens. His foot catches something, a pipe, probably, and he falls. His gloves rip against the uneven pavement. Worse, his knee. His kneecap, even with the protection of the wool coat, has landed awkwardly onto the tattered concrete. He can’t diagnose the damage. It just hurts like hell.
“Shit,” he hears Ronnie say in a violent whisper.
Alex gathers his gym bag and manages to get to his feet. He is shrouded in the darkness of the alley, only indirect lighting from the street allowing him to see at all. He can’t run anymore, will probably need a moment before he can even put weight on his leg. He is not even midway between the two streets now. He couldn’t possibly escape.
“I just want to talk to you, kid. Relax.” Miroballi is standing at the threshold, casting an ominous figure with the light behind him. One hand on his police radio, the other extending forward. But not holding a gun. The officer shakes his head, even shows the palm of his open hand, as if to decelerate the threat. He is moving cautiously toward Alex, shuffling his feet as each one eyes the other.
“See those hands,” he calls out. “Lose the bag.”
Miroballi moves slowly, his gaze alternating between Alex and the gym bag. Alex shows the palm of his free hand as he moves backward. It actually hurts less to backpedal, but he still moves with a limp. His heartbeat drums, not from the physical exertion. He swallows hard and feels a hot, sickening taste in his mouth. He asks himself, in a flash of a moment, how it could have come to this.
Miroballi pulls his radio close to his mouth, speaks urgently but quietly. Then he moves closer to the boy, his index finger still extended. Do-not-move.
That’s smart, Alex thinks to himself. Miroballi has come forward without his weapon drawn, in peace, because he didn’t want Alex to run. He thinks he has fooled Alex, when the only reason Alex isn’t running is because he cannot.
“I said drop the bag,” he says to Alex. “Let’s just talk a minute.”
Alex drops the bag. Raises his hands to waist level. His fingers are spread out, his palm showing, but his hands remain there, at his waist. He continues to move backward, away from the streetlight’s faint illumination.
Miroballi’s right hand falls to his side, sweeping gently at his leather jacket, exposing for the first time the holster, his weapon. The boy waits another beat, looks into the eyes of the police officer.
“I haven’t said anything,” Alex says. “I won’t. I swear.”
The officer looks at him, seems to note for the first time Alex’s limp. Then he brings his radio close to his mouth. He mumbles something into the radio that Alex can’t make out.
But Alex hears him the second time.
“I repeat,” Miroballi says in a louder voice. “Suspect is armed.”
Then he clicks off the radio, moves toward Alex. Alex keeps his eyes on Miroballi’s right hand. He does it quickly, gracefully. Slides the gun out of his holster and holds it at his side.
“No, I know you won’t say anything, kid.” He closes the distance on Alex, again watching the gimp in his movements. He knows it now. Alex won’t run, can’t run. He slowly raises the gun so it is pointed at Alex. “I just wanted to tell you one thing, and that’s all. I wanted to tell you that your mother was one hell of a good fuck—”
A noise, a bottle smashing, to Miroballi’s right and slightly behind him, shattering into pieces on the pavement. Miroballi jerks to the right and behind him, points his gun in that direction as well.
It has happened just like that. That moment in which the officer turns, shifts his weight, to look. The moment he takes to redirect his weapon in that direction. The moment spent measuring the situation, realizing it was glass, then realizing that someone from behind Alex must have tossed it. Or—was it someone behind Miroballi? That momentary limbo, unsure of the who or how of that shattering glass. That moment spent readjusting, bringing the weapon back to the forward position and refocusing on a boy who has had time now to remove a weapon of his own from his coat pocket.
Miroballi’s face explodes, a shower of blood. Alex stands in disbelief, holding the gun in his hand but not sure of how long he can keep holding it. Not sure of anything, really. Time passes, but he could not possibly estimate seconds. It feels like a lifetime.
A hand on his back. A hand removing the gun. A force, pulling him back. And he is running, with some help from Ronnie. An alternating limp and run.
Out of the alley now, onto the next street over. Ronnie’s car is running. He moves to the passenger door but Ronnie is behind
him, stripping him forcefully of his gloves, then his coat, then his sweatshirt. Then the car door opens and Ronnie shoves him in.
Ronnie squeals the tires forward, moving three, four blocks away in what seems like an instant. He pulls around a corner and quickly sheds his own leather jacket. As he pulls off his sweatshirt, Alex is suddenly aware of Ronnie.
Ronnie.
Alex opens the car door.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ronnie asks as Alex fumbles out of the car.
Alex leans in and takes the sweatshirt and the jacket from Ronnie. “They know me,” he says. “If I run, they’ll come to the house. They already got me.”
“Get the fuck back in the car, Alex.”
“
You
get out of here,” Alex answers, turning his back on his brother. He walks a few steps, onto the curb, staggering forward. It seems like an eternity before he hears the squeal of tires behind him. Alex collapses to the pavement as the sirens grow louder.
S
HELLY TOOK
a step closer to the jury box, looked at each juror individually before continuing. “This is the truth, ladies and gentlemen. It is the truth as told to you by Ronnie Masters and by my client, Alex Baniewicz. And it is not only the truth, because let’s remember who has the burden of proof here.” She pointed at Dan Morphew. “The state has the burden of proving that this shooting was
not
committed in self-defense. Who has refuted this testimony? Who? Certainly not Monica Stoddard, the woman who came in here and testified that, from her office on the nineteenth floor, she saw only Ray Miroballi, that the rest of her view of the alley was obscured, that she saw Miroballi make movements that were consistent with him turning to his right, then coming back forward. That is perfectly consistent with Ronnie’s and Alex’s testimony.”
Ray
Miroballi, not Officer. He was no longer a cop, at least not for the purposes of her closing argument. He was acting outside his role as a peace officer, and she would cut him no slack.
“And all this stuff Mr. Morphew told you in the opening statement? About Alex dropping one gun, duping Miroballi into believing he had surrendered, and then pulling out another one? Remember how bad all of that sounded? I sure do. But guess what, folks? This case is over now, and we never heard a
lick
about that. That is a promise to you that was broken. There is no evidence about those kinds of games or tricks whatsoever. Nothing.”
Shelly felt a bit bad laying it on Morphew like that. The truth was, as he had told her, he was not unsympathetic to her position. Shake him awake in the middle of the night, and Morphew would probably say that Alex didn’t deserve to go to prison. And in that spirit, Dan Morphew had reinterviewed the homeless man, Joseph Slattery, who had been the one who gave that version of events to the state. Morphew had conducted the interview himself this time—as opposed to the police officers who originally took his statement—and he had come away not believing in his witness. So he had done the right thing. He had refused to call him. Shelly firmly believed that Morphew was inclined to drop the charges altogether, but the politics of the situation would not permit it, and maybe this was the best Morphew could do. Surely, he had to know that she would crucify him for this in closing argument. One of the cardinal rules of opening statements was, don’t make a promise to the jury you can’t keep. And by not calling Slattery, Morphew was breaking a promise. He knew she would do this.
“The version of events as told to you by Ronnie and by Alex stands uncontroverted. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to disprove the notion that Alex acted in self-defense.”
Shelly paused. She was running on empty, and she had been arguing for over an hour, nearing the end of her argument with her second recount of Alex’s and Ronnie’s testimony. She had covered almost everything she could think of. She was just about done but wanted to discuss Ray Miroballi’s partner in more detail.
“This isn’t about a cop,” she said. “This is about a man who happened to be wearing that uniform. He directed the events that night. He went to find Alex for no legitimate reason. No reason pertaining to law enforcement. Alex wasn’t Miroballi’s
snitch. We all know why Alex had met with Miroballi in the park on those occasions—it was a question of paternity. It was a question of criminal sexual assault years ago. It was a man being confronted with his past.”
She took a step to the side. “This whole ‘snitch’ thing was made up by Miroballi, and willingly accepted by his partner, who frankly didn’t want to know
what
was going on. I can’t sit here and tell you that Julio Sanchez is a bad man. I honestly don’t know. But I do know this, and so do you. He was being a cop’s cop that night. He was letting his partner do his thing and not asking questions. He may not have known precisely who Alex was, and he may not have known why, but as sure as we’re all sitting here, he absolutely knew that Ray Miroballi was going to eliminate Alex that night. How do we know that?”