“ Anything else?”
“ I advised him not to leave the state because of certain…ah…potential court proceedings in Miami.”
“ Did he follow your advice?”
“ Apparently not.”
“ Thank you, Mr. Socolow. Your witness.”
H. T. Patterson was in a bind. If he brought out the mutual respect Socolow and I shared, it would help polish my tarnished image. It would also show the jury that Socolow, this good, decent state attorney, had concluded his old buddy had sunk so low into depravity he would now testify against him.
Patterson stood at the lectern a respectful distance from the witness stand.
“ Now, Mr. Socolow, you never thought Mr. Lassiter intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps, did you?”
“ No, sir.”
“ Or tear his heart out?”
“ No, sir.”
“ We all say things in the heat of passion that we don’t mean?”
“ Yes, sir.”
“ Mr. Lassiter was upset at the time of these statements?”
“ He seemed to be.”
“ Was he, in fact, recuperating from injuries inflicted by Mr. Cimarron?”
“ Yes, he was.”
“ A fight in which Mr. Cimarron was the aggressor?”
“ That was Mr. Lassiter’s position. It was not shared by Mr. Cimarron.”
“ And Ms. Baroso?”
“ Mr. Lassiter wanted her to press charges against Mr. Cimarron. She declined. Frankly, I don’t know who did what that night.”
“ But Mr. Lassiter suffered serious injuries?”
“ I believe he broke his hand and had a number of bruises and scrapes, that sort of thing.”
“ You’ve known Jake Lassiter a long time. Have you ever known him to provoke violence?”
Socolow wrinkled his high forehead. He didn’t want to answer. “I’m not sure what you mean. Once, in a trial, he provoked a witness into a fistfight, but it was a ploy, a strategy to show the violent streak of the witness.”
“ They must do things differently down in Miami,” the judge said, and a couple of the jurors smirked.
H. T. Patterson had heard all he wanted on that subject and sat down. “Nothing further.”
“ Redirect?” the judge asked.
McBain stood and buttoned his suit coat. “Are you saying, Mr. Socolow, that you didn’t take Mr. Lassiter’s threats seriously?”
“ No, sir.”
“ What are you saying?”
“ I didn’t take them literally. I didn’t think he intended to shoot Mr. Cimarron in the kneecaps or tear his heart out.”
“ I suppose not,” McBain said, already easing back into his chair. “I suppose he just intended to shoot a nail through the man’s brain.”
“ Objection,” Patterson yelped.
“ Withdrawn,” McBain said, sitting down.
The judge called for the noon recess, and not a moment too soon. Socolow walked by my table, clasped me on the shoulder, and left without a word. The jurors filed out, then the judge, and then the spectators. The prosecutor and his assistants hitched up their pants and walked out, too.
Patterson and I were alone.
“ H.T., you look a tad peaked.”
“ What?”
“ You look pale.”
“ That’s impossible, I assure you.”
“ Okay, then you look stressed out. Hey, it’s still the top of the first inning. We haven’t been to bat yet.”
He forced a smile, but his eyes were glazed over and distant.
“ H.T., I think you need to drink some lunch.”
“ Demon rum won’t cure what ails me.”
“ Counselor, you’re a little rattled, that’s all.”
He looked at me with sorrow in his eyes. “It’s hell to represent a friend, Jake. It’s so much easier to take a fat fee from a stranger and give it your best shot. You win, you lose, you go on. Hell, we’re not paid to win, right, just to force the state to prove its case. But now, with you, I care. I want to win, but I don’t know how. They’ve got us outflanked on self-defense, and there’s no way to pin this on Jo Jo or anyone else. I lie awake at night trying to come up with theories and I don’t have any. Oh, I can cross-examine until the snow melts, but once the state rests, we’ve got to put on a case, and there isn’t a thought in my head.”
“ Okay, I get it. We need to brainstorm. Just tell me what can I do to help?”
His smile held more sadness than joy. “Fetch me my brown trousers, Fritz.”
Sergeant Kimberly Crawford was assigned to something called the Spousal Abuse Unit. She took the third statement of the night from Josefina Baroso, driving her back to the station after Sheriff s Deputy Clayton Dobson and Detective Bernie Racklin did their work. Defense lawyers love to get prosecution witnesses on the record as many times as possible to ferret out contradictions. We had copies of all three statements, and there wasn’t an inconsistency in the bunch.
Sergeant Crawford took photos of bruises on Jo Jo’s thighs and ribs, and a shot of the face revealed a black eye. Jo Jo looked appropriately distraught, helpless, victimized.
Yes, Ms. Baroso was crying and moaning.
No, not about her injuries. Poor Simmy is dead. Poor Simmy is dead. That’s what she kept repeating, rocking back and forth in a chair down in the station, right here in the basement of the courthouse.
The photos were passed out to the jurors, who appeared more upset with Josefina’s black eye than Cimarron’s gray matter splattered in the straw.
The woman cop was on and off the stand in fifteen minutes, and the judge asked the prosecutor to call his next witness. I thought McBain looked a little too smug when he sang out, “The state calls Josefina Baroso.”
The bailiff hustled into the hallway and called her name. The jurors had been waiting for this. McBain was no dummy. Most prosecutors would have started their case with her. She could tell the story chronologically, and that always makes it easier for the jury. You also want to create a good first impression, and Jo Jo could surely do that. But if you’re clever and subtle, it’s a neat trick to save your star witness. Build the jurors’ interest with hints and clues and let them wonder. Who is this woman who launched a thousand fists? What does she look like? Is she worth dying for?
Even before I saw her, I knew. “Ten to one, she’s wearing black,” I whispered to Patterson. In her own cases, Jo Jo dressed her witnesses for maximum sympathy. Pluck the jurors’ heartstrings with a grieving widow and all the kids. When her witnesses gathered for lunch in the Justice Building cafeteria, it looked like an Italian funeral.
The heavy door swung open, and Josefina Jovita Baroso walked into the courtroom. She wore a flared black wool dress with gold buttons from its high neck to its hem, which stopped halfway down her black, knee-high crushed leather boots. The dress concealed her womanly curves and, combined with the sophisticated look of hair pulled straight back and a light dusting of makeup and lip gloss, spoke volumes of who she was, or rather, who she appeared to be. Her dark eyes were bright and intelligent and avoided mine as she strode on long legs to the witness stand. She nodded to the jurors, looked the clerk in the eye as she took the oath, smoothed her dress, and sat down.
I studied her. Now, here was a total woman. Here was a woman who had been assaulted, who had witnessed a savage crime, and who was ready to do what had to be done to right those wrongs. She was attractive without being seductive. She was purposeful without being pugnacious. She was here, not because she thirsted for vengeance, but because she sought justice. She was, in short, the perfect witness, which was precisely the image she had worked so hard to create.
Jo Jo recited her name, her address, and her profession.
“ So you have the same job I have?” McBain asked.
“ Yes,” she said.
Bonding with the witness, telling the jury: If you like me, you’ll like her.
McBain had her run through the life and times of Jo Jo Baroso, beginning with her family fleeing Castro’s Communist island when she was still an infant. Her father lost everything in Cuba and never adjusted to life in the States. He turned to liquor and gambling and eventually left her mother who raised a son and daughter by herself. She met the defendant while she was still in college, and he was a pro football player.