Overkill

by Joseph Teller

  JEREMY: I tried to keep going on like normal, but it was hard. I’d keep getting like paranoid, you know.

  JAYWALKER: Tell us what happened to you physically.

  JEREMY: I would cry all of a sudden, for like no reason. I had trouble eating. And when I did eat, sometimes I’d vomit, or get diarrhea. I lost weight. I had trouble sleeping. I—I—I—

  JAYWALKER: What would happen when you did sleep?

  JEREMY: I’d be getting nightmares, and wetting the bed sometimes.

  Jaywalker asked about school attendance, and Jeremy admitted it had gotten even worse than before, because he’d grown afraid to walk down Third Avenue. As a result, he began getting “cut slips,” warning him that he was in danger of failing his classes.

  JAYWALKER: Did there come a time when your mother confronted you about your attendance?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: What happened?

  JEREMY: She got a letter in the mail.

  JAYWALKER: What happened as a result of that letter and that confrontation with your mother?

  JEREMY: I told her everything, and she pulled me out of school.

  JAYWALKER: Did you continue to work?

  JEREMY: For a while.

  JAYWALKER: And then what?

  JEREMY: I got fired.

  JAYWALKER: Why?

  JEREMY: ’Cause I stopped going to work.

  JAYWALKER: Why did you stop going to work?

  JEREMY: ’Cause they’d follow me to my jobs and come inside and make trouble. Or follow me home. One time I had to hide in the bushes in front of my building ’cause they wouldn’t leave.

  JAYWALKER: What happened?

  JEREMY: After an hour or so I urinated in my pants. And then after another hour or so I—I—I—

  And as much as Jaywalker would have liked to rescue the young man, to have spared him from continuing with his answer, he stood there silently, listening to the stuttering, watching the tears flow, waiting for the rest of it.

  JEREMY: [Continuing] I couldn’t hold it any longer. I—I defecated in my pants.

  As much as the jurors, raised on a steady diet of political debates and in-depth interviews, might have grown accustomed to that great American institution, the Follow-up Question, Jaywalker sensed that this was one time when none was required. If wetting one’s bed had represented the ultimate in shame for a seventeen-year-old boy, soiling one’s pants had to have been in the next universe of humiliation. And describing it in front of a roomful of strangers would only have multiplied the agony.

  So far, Jeremy had done what he’d had to do.

  Jaywalker glanced at the clock and saw it was a few minutes before one. Catching Harold Wexler’s eye, he raised his eyebrows ever so slightly, just enough to signal that he’d reached a good stopping point. The judge nodded, then recessed for lunch.

  As the jury filed out, a friendly court officer sidled over to Jaywalker and offered the opinion that perhaps it hadn’t been the most appetizing note on which to send the jury off for lunch.

  “Good,” said Jaywalker. “I want them to gag on it. I want them to choke on every last bite.”

  Even Carmen backed off without argument when Jaywalker looked down at her latest grease-stained, paper-bagged offering, thanked her, but assured her and Julie that he wouldn’t be having lunch on this particular day. Then, once he’d made sure the last of the jurors was out of the courtroom, he reached past Carmen, grabbed Julie and hugged her tightly. “You were terrific,” he told her. “And you be careful.”

  “Don’t jew worry,” said Carmen. “She be with me.”

  When they resumed that afternoon, Jaywalker lost no time in reintroducing the jurors to someone whose name they’d barely heard mentioned for nearly two days.

  JAYWALKER: All right. Up until this time, it was Sandro who was the main person who was bothering you. Is that correct?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: Did there come a time in August when somebody else began bothering you?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: At the time, did you know the name of this other person?

  JEREMY: No.

  JAYWALKER: Have you since learned his name?

  JEREMY: Yes, Victor. Victor Quinones.

  JAYWALKER: Did you ever learn where Victor Quinones had been during the months of May, June and July?

  Katherine Darcy rose to object, but for once Jeremy was uncharacteristically quick with his response. His “In prison” beat her “Objection, calls for hearsay” by a full second—precisely as Jaywalker had coached him. And the judge’s “Sustained, disregard the answer” was pretty much beside the point.

  Jaywalker had Jeremy describe his first encounter with Victor. Jeremy had been in the flower shop with Miranda, and a few of the gang members had spotted him from outside. One of them, a newcomer, had made a move to come inside, but his girlfriend had stopped him.

  JAYWALKER: Was his girlfriend the same young lady who testified earlier this week?

  JEREMY: Yes, she was.

  JAYWALKER: Do you now know her name to be Teresa Morales?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  Jeremy described several subsequent incidents in which Victor had played an increasingly central role. These included chasing Jeremy, spitting on him, and twice threatening him with a straight razor. And he seemed to have gradually taken over from Sandro in the name-calling department, as well.

  JAYWALKER: What were some of the names he called you?

  JEREMY: Cunt. Pussy. Pussy ass. You smell like pussy.

  JAYWALKER: What did you do on these occasions?

  JEREMY: Nothing.

  Although the room was quiet, his voice could barely be heard.

  JAYWALKER: How did you feel?

  JEREMY: Like dirt. Ashamed. Embarrassed.

  THE COURT: Angry?

  Here was Harold Wexler, stepping in not only to break the flow of Jaywalker’s examination, but to suggest that perhaps the shooting had been motivated by something other than self-defense. And while Jaywalker was tempted to object to the interruption, he knew better. For one thing, Wexler had what it took to get even: a black robe. More to the point, Jaywalker had known for months that this moment would come, in some fashion or another, and he’d warned Jeremy to expect it and not be intimidated.

  JEREMY: Angry?

  THE COURT: Yes, angry. Didn’t all this make you feel terribly angry?

  JEREMY: I honestly don’t remember feeling angry. I do remember feeling scared, terrified. Paranoid.

  JAYWALKER: When you say you felt paranoid, what do you mean by that?

  JEREMY: I was always looking back to see if I was being followed. Or looking out the window to see if they were waiting for me downstairs.

  JAYWALKER: And were you being followed?

  JEREMY: Sometimes, yes.

  JAYWALKER: And were they waiting for you downstairs?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: All the time?

  JEREMY: A lot of the time.

  It was time to move on. Not because Jeremy had folded under Harold Wexler’s questioning—he hadn’t—but because Jaywalker didn’t want to run the risk of over-doing things and desensitizing the jurors to Jeremy’s plight.

  JAYWALKER: Where did you used to get your hair cut, Jeremy?

  JEREMY: At Frankie’s. At 112th Street, off Third Avenue.

  JAYWALKER: Is Frankie the witness who testified yesterday?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  Jeremy described the barbershop incident as he recalled it. It pretty much dovetailed with Francisco Zapata’s account. But where the group of tormenters had been anonymous to the barber, Jeremy was able to supply names. Sandro had been there, and Victor, as well as Shorty and Diego and three or four others. And the young lady Frankie had mentioned was Victor’s girlfriend, Teresa Morales.

  Following the barbershop incident, it had been six full days before Jeremy had dared to venture out of his apartment again. Jaywalker made a point of having Jeremy recite the two dates and
calculate the exact number of days between them. Not only did it show just how terrified the boy had been, it meant—if Jeremy was to be believed—that he’d had no opportunity to go out and get hold of a gun.

  JAYWALKER: Why was it, Jeremy, that having been afraid to go out for six days, you eventually did go out again?

  JEREMY: Well, Miranda called my house to say she’d be going to the Labor Day carnival with her little sister and her cousin. And I thought at the carnival there’d be a whole bunch of people, and I’d be safe. And I was tired of staying upstairs, you know? I wanted to get out. I just thought it would be okay.

  And for a while, it had been. Jeremy had met Miranda and the girls right where’d they’d arranged. They’d gone on the Ferris wheel, played games, eaten popcorn and cotton candy. And for a little while the events of the summer had receded and Jeremy had even dared to believe that they might have been nothing but a long bad dream.

  Until Victor had appeared.

  They’d talked about fighting, Jeremy recalled, about having it out right there. Jeremy had surprised himself by saying he was willing. It had been Victor who’d said no. He’d said Jeremy was lucky that Teresa and Miranda and the little girls were there, that he didn’t want to embarrass him in front of all of them.

  JAYWALKER: What happened next?

  JEREMY: He sucker punched me.

  JAYWALKER: What’s a sucker punch?

  JEREMY: It’s when somebody catches you off guard.

  JAYWALKER: And does what?

  JEREMY: Hits you out of nowhere.

  JAYWALKER: Where did Victor hit you?

  JEREMY: Alongside my right eye [indicating].

  JAYWALKER: What did he hit you with?

  JEREMY: His fist.

  JAYWALKER: What happened?

  JEREMY: He caught me good. I went down to my knees. I think I stayed down a couple of seconds.

  JAYWALKER: What happened next?

  JEREMY: I got up and ran after him.

  He’d chased Victor and Teresa up Third Avenue. Miranda had sent the girls home and followed Jeremy. At 113th Street, Jeremy had finally caught up with Victor.

  JAYWALKER: Were you that fast, or was Victor that slow?

  JEREMY: He didn’t run that fast. It seemed like he wanted me to catch up to him.

  JAYWALKER: What happened when you did?

  JEREMY: He turned and said, “You want some more of that?” And we started fighting, right there.

  JAYWALKER: What kind of fight was it?

  JEREMY: It was a regular fistfight.

  JAYWALKER: Do you remember what you were wearing?

  JEREMY: Jeans, a shirt. Sneakers. It was hot.

  JAYWALKER: You heard one of the witnesses from last week testify that you were wearing two or three pairs of socks. Was that true?

  JEREMY: No. I hardly ever wear socks in the summer. If I’m going to wear them, I’m going to wear one pair.

  JAYWALKER: Do you recall if you were wearing socks that day?

  JEREMY: I honestly don’t.

  JAYWALKER: Did you have a gun in your waistband?

  JEREMY: No.

  JAYWALKER: In your socks?

  JEREMY: No.

  JAYWALKER: In an ankle holster?

  JEREMY: No.

  JAYWALKER: Anywhere?

  JEREMY: No, absolutely not.

  He had Jeremy describe the fight, how they’d traded punches until Victor had called a time-out to rest and take off his sweatshirt. Jeremy demonstrated pulling something over his own head. He remembered that underneath, Victor still had a long T-shirt on.

  JAYWALKER: What did you do while Victor was pulling his sweatshirt up over his head to take it off?

  JEREMY: I waited for him.

  JAYWALKER: And what did you do after that?

  JEREMY: We started fighting again.

  Jeremy described how he’d hit Victor a couple of times, hard enough to hurt his own fist. He thought his punches had landed in the area of Victor’s eyes and mouth. Jeremy himself had been hit on his lip and nose.

  JAYWALKER: Who won the fight, Jeremy, if you can tell us?

  JEREMY: I did.

  JAYWALKER: What makes you say that?

  JEREMY: He was more bruised up than I was.

  JAYWALKER: How did the fight end?

  JEREMY: He put his hands up, like this.

  And Jeremy raised both his hands to shoulder height, palms facing forward, fingers slightly spread. Victor had surrendered.

  Jeremy had just stood there at that point, bent over slightly with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He’d noticed blood, his own blood, dripping to the pavement from his mouth or nose, or both.

  JAYWALKER: What happened next?

  JEREMY: I heard a scream.

  JAYWALKER: What did you do?

  JEREMY: I looked up, and I saw Victor pulling out a gun.

  JAYWALKER: Where was he pulling it from?

  JEREMY: From his—from right here.

  He pointed to his midsection, just above his waistband and slightly off to one side.

  JAYWALKER: What did you do?

  JEREMY: For a second, nothing. Then I charged him.

  Jaywalker asked how far apart the two of them had been when Jeremy had first seen the gun. Jeremy pointed to the portion of the jury box closest to him, a distance of maybe eight or ten feet.

  JAYWALKER: What happened?

  JEREMY: I got to him before he could fire it, and we started wrestling over it. I was trying to stop him from pointing it at me. And he was trying to bring it up high, toward my body.

  He stood up and demonstrated by clasping both hands against his chest.

  JAYWALKER: Then what happened?

  JEREMY: The gun went off, real loud. And I thought he shot me.

  JAYWALKER: Why did you think that?

  JEREMY: The bang was so loud, and as soon as it happened I felt a burning sensation right here, in my stomach [pointing].

  JAYWALKER: What happened next?

  JEREMY: I thought I was falling down, but it was him, Victor, who was leaning to one side like.

  JAYWALKER: And as he was doing that, what, if anything, did you do?

  JEREMY: I grabbed the gun away from him, got my finger on the trigger, and I fired.

  JAYWALKER: How many shots did you fire?

  JEREMY: I don’t know. I just kept pulling the trigger and hearing bangs.

  JAYWALKER: Who was firing the gun?

  JEREMY: I was. Me.

  JAYWALKER: Did any of the bullets you fired hit Victor?

  JEREMY: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: How do you know?

  JEREMY: Because he’s dead.

  Jaywalker let the last answer echo in the courtroom for just a second or two. So far, Jeremy had done as well as Jaywalker could have hoped for. But so far had been the easy part. Now came the hard part.

  JAYWALKER: Jeremy, you’ve sat in this courtroom for a week now. And you’ve heard people take the same witness stand as you, and say that at some point after the first shot or shots, Victor ran quite a distance and fell. And that you ran after him and shot him one last time. Did you hear them say that?

  JEREMY: I heard them say that.

  JAYWALKER: Is that what happened?

  JEREMY: I don’t know. I can only tell you what I remember, and I don’t remember anything like that. To me, it all happened fast, and it all happened at once. The first shot goes off. I think I’m shot. Victor leans away. I grab the gun, point it at him and start firing. So maybe those other people are right. But honestly, I don’t remember it happening that way. I just remember shooting at him until he was on the ground and not moving anymore.

  JAYWALKER: And then?

  JEREMY: And then I must have stopped. And I looked and saw this gun in my hand. And I remember feeling like I was in a dream. And Miranda and me, we began walking away.

  JAYWALKER: Did you walk, or did you run?

  JEREMY: I tried to run, but I couldn’t.

  JAYWALKER: Why
not?

  JEREMY: I don’t know. It felt like my legs wouldn’t work right.

  They’d walked uptown, Jeremy still holding the gun in his hand. At some point Miranda had told him to put it away. He’d tried to put it in his waistband, but it was too heavy and started slipping down his jeans. So he’d thrown it into the sewer. Then they’d kept walking to Jeremy’s building.

  JAYWALKER: Did you stay at home that night?

  JEREMY: No.

  JAYWALKER: Where did you stay?

  JEREMY: Up in the Bronx.

  JAYWALKER: And did you continue to stay in the Bronx?

  JEREMY: No. I just stayed there that one night.

  JAYWALKER: Where did you go from there?

  JEREMY: To Puerto Rico.

  JAYWALKER: Why did you go to Puerto Rico?

  JEREMY: I was scared they were going to kill me.

  JAYWALKER: Who?

  JEREMY: Sandro and them.

  Jaywalker established that Jeremy had spent seven months in Puerto Rico and could have stayed there indefinitely, but instead had returned to New York in late April.

  JAYWALKER: What did you do when you got back?

  JEREMY: I told my mother I was going to go to the police and give myself up.

  JAYWALKER: And did you in fact do that?

  JEREMY: Yes, I did.

  Jaywalker asked him when he had last seen Miranda. He replied that it had been half a year ago, when she’d come out to Rikers Island to visit him one time. Since that day, he hadn’t seen her or heard from her. Nor did he know where she was now.

  And finally…

  JAYWALKER: Jeremy, you say you killed Victor Quinones.

  JEREMY: Yes, I did.

  JAYWALKER: Can you tell us why you killed him?

  JEREMY: I can only tell you what was in my mind at the time.