“I can’t do it, Lourdes.”
“Why on earth not?” There was genuine astonishment in her voice.
“It’s hard to explain. I just live by a code that isn’t written down anywhere but tells me to do what I think is right. I make compromises like everybody else, and I sometimes break the rules, but usually only the little ones. I try to go through life doing the least damage possible. I drop quarters into tin cups and feed stray cats. I don’t lie to the court or let witnesses do it. It may sound old-fashioned, but I don’t cheat to win. As for Francisco Crespo, I’m not going to tank the case, and I’m not going to win it with perjured testimony, either.”
No one applauded, and best I could tell, no bands struck up the national anthem. So I shut up and waited for my bedmate to show me her beatific smile, draw me to her bosom, and tell me how proud she was of my moral fiber.
Lourdes sat up and seemed to be looking for her clothes. The last I had seen them, they were scattered on the kitchen floor. She stood and turned away, leaving me watching the smooth, naked expanse of her flank. “You’re just an overgrown Boy Scout, aren’t you?”
I didn’t answer and she continued, a tinge of sadness in her voice. “You want a merit badge and a pat on the back. You want to be told just how wonderful and decent you are. Okay, here it is. You’re honest and noble and virtuous. You have principles and scruples and morals. You’re all that and more.”
“More?”
Her bare feet were already padding down the stairs as she called to me over her shoulder. “You’re also a goddamn fool.”
10
Judge Herman Roth adjusted his eyeglasses, ran a hand over his shiny skull, and peered in the general direction of the twelve warm bodies filling the jury box. “Does each of you understand that a defendant is not required to prove his innocence or to furnish any evidence whatsoever, and that this right is guaranteed by the Constitution?”
Twelve heads bobbed yes.
“And does each of you promise not to hold it against this defendant if he chooses to exercise his constitutional right not to testily?”
The double negative notwithstanding, on cue, all the sheep baaed.
Sure, I thought. They’ve all heard of the Fifth Amendment, some technicality used by wily lawyers to keep racketeers out of jail. Jurors want to follow the law, they really do. And they’ll answer all the questions correctly in voir dire. But behind the closed door, whether it’s said openly or not, the thought is there. Dadgummit, if I was innocent, I’d just get right up there and say so. What’s that fellow hiding? Every lawyer knows this, but there are simply times you cannot subject a client to cross-examination. It is often the most important decision a lawyer will make in a criminal case.
With Francisco Crespo, it was easy. If Crespo took the stand and told the story he had recited to me, he would convict himself. No doubt about it. So my original plan was to keep him sitting at the defense table looking frail and innocent while I took a whack at the state’s witnesses and tried to ferret out some reasonable doubt. That morning, I had asked him whether he had forgotten to tell me about Smorodinsky threatening him with a knife three days before the fatal fight.
“ Ay, el cuchillo. Three rows of saw teeth.”
Those teeth again. At least they had their stories straight. “And on the sixteenth. Did he come at you again with this knife?”
“Would it get me off if I said he did?”
I like someone who thinks before answering.
“Maybe. But you never mentioned it to the cops and nobody found a knife. If the jury thinks you’re lying, you’ll be convicted for sure.”
“ Veintecinco anos.”
“Right, without parole, and it would be a damn shame, Francisco, because you didn’t kill him. If you’d only tell me what happened…”
He shrugged and his neck disappeared inside the dress shirt I had just bought for him. I got him a new suit two sizes too large and a white shirt with a collar that would fit me. When Crespo dozed off during the judge’s preliminary statement to the jury, his chin disappeared inside the shirt collar.
Emilia Crespo sat in the first row of the gallery, directly behind me. She gave us moral support plus a bag of homemade guava pastries. In the corridor that morning, she kissed Francisco and hugged me, but without the strength I remembered. Then she whispered a prayer in Spanish, crossed herself, and said again, “ Protegeme a mi hijo.”
I hugged her back and promised I would. I looked into her eyes. She had gotten old without my noticing it. Dark shadows clung to the folds below her eyes. Along the jawline, the skin was no longer taut. She moved slowly and seemed to have lost weight. A robust woman when I first met her-she carried my suitcase into the house that day years ago-she had shrunken with age.
Now Judge Roth was holding up a blue-backed document and waving it at the jury. “Does each of you understand that this piece of paper called the information is not evidence. It carries no inference of guilt.”
Twelve heads nodded in unison. But where there’s smoke, there’s fire. That sumbitch didn’t get here by helping little old ladies cross the street. Sometimes, I wonder why we even bother. Just round up the first six people you find and sit them in the box. Our juries wouldn’t be any better or any worse.
Abe Socolow sat at the state’s table, furiously taking notes, recording observations about each prospective juror on the twelve-square grid he had drawn on his legal pad. He was also trying to memorize each name before he began his questioning. All lawyers do that. How about you, Mrs. Ferbergooble? Can you give the state a fair trial, Mrs. Ferbergooble? We all love to hear our own names. If you don’t believe it, you haven’t been imprisoned in an eight-foot-square cubicle with a car salesman.
Socolow was good. He was always prepared, and once he worked with them, so were his witnesses. Once, when I was new at this and he was still handling misdemeanors, I defended a DUI case where my client caused an accident that didn’t hurt anybody but ruptured his own car’s radiator. Socolow’s main witness, the investigating officer, testified that he smelled alcohol on my client’s breath.
“Isn’t it possible,” I asked on cross-examination, “that what you smelled was antifreeze?”
“Sure,” the cop replied, not missing a beat, “if that’s what he was drinking.”
Judge Roth was reciting his litany, asking if anyone had served on a jury before, if there were any policemen in the family, and if each juror would base his or her verdict solely on the testimony and the law. He received what he sought, mindless agreement. The judge droned on, hunched over the bench, a wizened old bird who liked running a courtroom better than poling for bonefish or whacking a little ball out of the sand or any other sane activity. He asked whether they would be more likely to believe testimony of police officers, and they all solemnly said no. Funny, I whispered yes because cops are the best liars.
I kept waiting for my favorite question as did Bill the Bailiff. Bill is a retired postal worker who’s even older than Judge Roth and skinnier than Abe Socolow. We had a standing bet on the victim-of-crime question. I took “over”; he took “under.” Although we only needed to seat six jurors plus two alternates, there were twelve prospects sitting in the box at all times. If more than six raised their hands, I would win the over, and Bill would bring me a quart of his homemade cerviche, bay scallops marinated in lime juice with onions, peppers, and cilantro. It’s my one exception to the no-raw-fish rule. If fewer than six jurors raised their hands, I would bring him a lug of Saigon mangoes I would steal from neighborhood trees. An even six, and the bet would be a push.
“Any of you ever been a victim of a crime?” Judge Roth asked. Bill the Bailiff tugged his suspenders and winked at me.
Eight hands shot up, then slowly a ninth, a computer systems analyst for a department store chain. “Does it count if my car was broken into but not stolen?” he asked.