Jury of One (43 page)

“Thanks.”

“You never at any time saw the officer brandish his firearm, did you?” Dan Morphew had barely waited for Shelly to make it to her seat to begin his redirect examination.

“No, I can’t say that I specifically recall that.”

“And you can’t sit here and tell us, with any certainty whatsoever, that the officer was even
reaching
for his weapon when the shot was fired.”

“No, I can’t.”

“Nor can you tell us what the officer was seeing if, in fact, he did reach for his weapon.”

“I couldn’t see what he was seeing, no.”

“You can’t tell us, for example, whether the officer—if in fact he did reach for his weapon—whether the officer did that because the young man in the alley had pulled a gun on
him.
”

“Objection.” For this one, Shelly stood. “That question assumes facts not in evidence, your Honor.” She pointed at Monica Stoddard. “This witness never said that a ‘young man’ pulled a gun or shot anyone. There has been no testimony about
who
did that shooting. This witness specifically said that this ‘young man,’ whoever it was, left her line of vision and did not return.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Morphew, as if the point were elementary. “It’s an inference clearly drawn from the evidence.”

The judge stared at Morphew a moment. “The objection is sustained. Rephrase it, Counsel.”

Morphew adjusted his stance a bit to show displeasure, then framed his hands. “Ms. Stoddard, if we were to assume—
assume
—that Officer Miroballi was reaching for his weapon just before he was shot—you couldn’t tell us if he did that in response to
someone
pulling a gun on
him.
”

“No, I have no idea.”

“And we know that someone
did
shoot the officer, right?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, ma’am. That’s all.”

“No recross,” Shelly said.

“Let’s take five minutes,” the judge said. “Mr. Morphew, do you have your next witness ready?”

“Judge, we do—could I beg for ten minutes?”

“Okay. Ten minutes.”

“Julio Sanchez,” Morphew said to the bailiff. Then he hustled out of the courtroom.

S
HELLY CLOSED THE
door behind her. She and Alex were in the evidence room on the side of the courtroom. The prosecution was in charge of custody of the evidence and brought it into the courtroom every day. It served as a confidential meeting place for an attorney and client with a short break.

“Sit there.” She pointed to a chair. She positioned herself on the table, which was holding various exhibits. “I am going to handle this in the way that I think is best. You can give me your opinion and I’ll take it under advisement. But I make the trial strategy.” She patted her chest. “If you don’t like it, you can fire me. Try. Tell the judge you want to fire me. See if he lets you, at this late date.”

“I told you,” he answered. “I won’t let you say that Ronnie or Todavia did this.”

“I haven’t. I’m laying the groundwork. We can decide later.”

Alex brought his hands to his face.

“These people want to execute you, Alex.”

He opened his hands, silently pleading. They stared at each other a moment before he finally spoke.

“I did it, Shelly. I’m the one who shot him.” He held up his right hand. “God as my witness. I shot him.”

His voice had a different quality to it. Deeper yet quieter, as if he were confiding in her. At that moment, she believed him. She had ample reason not to, but she did.

She moved to him, knelt down so she was face-to-face with Alex in his chair.

“I don’t care,” she told him. “Let’s put Todavia next to you in that alley. The jury will be happy to go that way.” She took his hands in hers. “Don’t you see this, Alex? At most, the only person who puts that gun in your hand is a homeless man with mental and social problems. I’ll do what I need to do to him. All you have to say is Eddie Todavia did it and”—she took a breath—“you could walk out of that courtroom.”

He pulled his hands away and got out of the chair, moving around her. He moved to the door and put his hand on it. “And then what?” he asked.

“Then what?” She got to her feet.

“I have more than myself to think about.” He turned around to her. “I accuse Todo of killing this cop and what happens to Angela? What happens to Ronnie?”

She nodded. “He’s a Cannibal, you mean.”

“Shit.” Alex shook his head. His face was crimson. A sheen cast over his eyes. “I just”—his voice cracked; he swallowed hard—“I just got away from this guy.” He began to pace the small room. “I can’t go back to that. You get me out of one death sentence and into another one.”

“I would take care of Angela.” The words startled her, both because she was acknowledging the possible outcome of this case and because—well, she meant it. Angela was not technically her flesh and blood but Ronnie hadn’t made that distinction, and so neither would she.

Alex, whether from relief or fear, broke down. He collapsed in the chair, head in his hands, and wept like she had never seen a boy cry. The tremble of his body, the sounds of anguish emanating from this boy, had the opposite effect on Shelly, emboldened her to action. She gave him his space, taking note of the time—they only had another minute or two, at most. Then she moved to him, knelt beside him again.

“I’m going to help you with Angela either way, Alex. Either way. I’ll do whatever I have to do to make sure that Eddie Todavia never lays a glove on your family.”

“One stupid mistake,” he said. She didn’t know what he meant. It was as if he hadn’t heard what she had said.

She wasn’t following. What mistake did he mean?

“What did you mean before?” she asked him. “You just got away from Todavia. What does that mean?”

It took Alex a moment to calm. He looked up at her, his face washed out, streaked with tears. “The car I hot-wired,” he said. “When I was a freshman?”

Right. Okay. Ronnie had helped Alex out of that. Saved his life, Alex had said. He had hot-wired the wrong guy’s car—

“It was Todavia’s car you took,” she said.

Alex nodded his head. “I didn’t know it was his. But I was the driver. I was the one everyone knew about. Man, of all people, I hot-wired the car of a C-Street Cannibal.”

“He was going to kill you,” she said. “Ronnie talked him out of it.”

“But nothing’s for free.”

“He put you to work for him. He made you sell drugs for him. Oh, Alex.”

Me and Alex is all good.
Eddie Todavia had nodded at Alex when he said that yesterday. Alex had nodded back. Now she got it.

Alex opened his hands. “He beat the piss out of Ronnie and then he told me that if I would work for him, he’d let me skate.”

“But that was freshman year. You didn’t start selling until 2003, right? Sophomore year.”

“Todo got busted, like, a month after this happened. It bought me a year. Ten months. Whatever. But he had a good memory. He had moved out to the west side after he served his time. He said he could use a white kid to sell to the professionals that don’t want to come out to his ’hood to score. He also said he’d heard I had a daughter now.” He deflated. “I got the point.”

Shelly stood again, reached for the wall to steady herself. “So you started selling drugs to settle a debt to Todavia.”

He nodded. “I liked the money, too. I admit it. But yeah, that’s how it started.”

“And what Todavia said in court yesterday—you were ‘all good’—he was saying the debt was paid now. He screwed you in court so he felt he owed you one.”

Alex took a deep breath, settled now. “Yeah. I’m free of him now. You go after him, he’ll come back harder.”

“Was it Todavia in the alley with you, Alex?”

He looked at her with a look that told her she knew better. “C’mon, Shelly. You know it wasn’t.”

She did know. She had never truly thought so. She just liked the idea because it worked. It was convincing. But there was more here.
You know it wasn’t,
Alex had just said. Alex was admitting, without saying so, that
someone
was there. He was telling her they both knew who that someone was.

And truly, Shelly had known that, too. She had lived with the small residual doubt that Alex’s denials had given her. She had taken every morsel of rationalization she could to avoid what she knew to be true. Ronnie was the one in the alley.

A knock on the door. One of Morphew’s assistants poked her head in.

“One minute and we’ll be there,” Shelly said.

The door closed again.

“You were a confidential informant for Miroballi, weren’t you, Alex? The reason you met with him was you were trying to get him to bust Eddie Todavia. Right? Because if Todavia were arrested, you’d be free of your debt.
That’s
why you were meeting with Miroballi.”

Alex smiled. She couldn’t read the expression.

“Everything I say, you have a new story,” he said. “I guess that’s why you’re a good lawyer.”

Another knock on the door, and this time the assistant said, “We really need you out here, Counsel.”

“One second.” Shelly turned back to Alex as the door closed. “Listen to me, Alex Baniewicz. We are going to put Eddie Todavia in that alley with you. I
will
do that. I’ll make sure that kid never gets near you. You have my word on that. No one with any credibility is going to say that it
wasn’t
Todavia. I’ll make the jury believe that. And you don’t get an opinion on this.”

She opened the door and went into the courtroom, where all eyes at the prosecution table were fixed on her. Dan Morphew walked over to her and handed her a videotape and a file.

“We have a new witness,” he said.

S
HELLY LOOKED AT
the videotape. It had a sticker on it that said
DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS.
She looked back up at Morphew.

“We took it last night,” he said. “They’re not family, Shelly, in case you were going to argue confidentiality. We checked the D.O.C. regs last night. Before we even looked at it. Ronnie Masters isn’t related to your client any more than the prime minister of Japan is.”

She opened the file folder. It was a plea agreement between Ronnie Masters and the county attorney.

“I told the judge about this,” he said. “I told him you’d want to see the tape right away. There’s a VCR back there.”

They went through the same door the judge used, passed his chambers, and went to another room where a television and VCR were assembled. While Morphew worked the machine, Shelly looked through the file. She saw the form signed last night by Ronnie Masters—signed by every visitor to a corrections facility, in fact—acknowledging awareness that the government could record conversations unless the visitor was either the detainee’s counsel or blood relation.

“Nobody really reads these things before they sign them,” she said, hardly even pretending to accept her own argument.

“That dog won’t hunt,” he said. “Here we go.”

He stepped back and the screen came alive. The hidden camera in the detention center was angled so that the person in
clearest focus was the detainee, who sat in the same spot every time—the end of the table where the chain from the prisoner’s handcuffs was locked down. Smart. Guaranteed that you’d get the prisoner on tape clearly.

She held her breath as she watched the tape.

Ronnie Masters walked over to Alex with a piece of paper rolled up in his hand. “What the fuck is this?” he asked, slapping the paper down on the table.

“I don’t know,” Alex answered, seated in the chair with his hands in manacles. “What is it?”

Ronnie kept a distance but pointed at it. He couldn’t stand still. “That’s the paper tonight. The
Watch,
on-line. Look at the fucking headline.”

Alex read it aloud. “‘Defense blames drug dealer in Miroballi trial.’”

Ronnie paced a small area and pointed at it again. “It says Shelly’s not going with self-defense anymore. When the fuck did that happen?”

Alex looked at Ronnie. “Take it easy—”

“I’m not gonna ‘take it easy,’ okay? I’m not gonna be the scapegoat here, got me? I’m not going to jail for you. I’ll tell them. I’ll tell them everything.”

“Ronnie”—Alex came out of his chair, as best he could with his hands shackled. “What the hell are you doing? They can—”

“I don’t care what you or your lawyer says. I’m not—”

“Ronnie, shut up! What the hell are you doing?” He nodded his head upward.

Ronnie looked around the room. He seemed to understand the reminder. He moved closer to Alex and pointed a finger at him. “Do not mess with me,” he warned in a softer, but no less firm voice that came through perfectly clear on the tape.

“What the hell are you—”

“Alex.” He moved away but kept his finger directed at Alex. “Don’t forget what I said. Don’t make me do anything here.”

He left the room. Alex called after him but to no avail.

Shelly fell back in her chair. “That tape isn’t coming in,” she said.

Morphew sat next to her in a chair. He was a gentleman, more or less, and he seemed above outright gloating. But he was awfully pleased. “Who needs the tape?” He pointed at her file. “The tape just explains how we first came upon him. It shows we’re not springing this on you.”

Morphew motioned to the plea agreement he’d given Shelly. “We got him last night and finalized the deal this morning,” he told her.

The plea agreement was signed, only an hour ago, by a public defender representing Ronnie. That answered the question of why Morphew had seemed preoccupied. In exchange for receiving immunity for obstruction of justice charges, Ronnie Masters agreed that he would truthfully testify to the following: