by Adam Mitzner
Less than a second after I typed “Legally Dead” into Google, over three million hits popped up. Even limiting it to “Legally Dead rapper” or “Legally Dead Roxanne” or “Legally Dead murderer” didn’t significantly reduce the number.
I clicked on the first site listed and began to read.
The first thing I learned (aside from L.D.’s penchant for being photographed shirtless) was that he acquired his moniker when he was fifteen. A drug deal he was involved in went bad, and he ended up getting shot four times—once each in the neck and upper thigh and twice in the torso (above and below the rib cage). For a guy who seemingly never caught a break in his life—no father, mother dead of a drug overdose before he could walk, in and out of foster care—it was nothing short of a miracle that none of the bullets pierced anything vital. The story is that one of the paramedics at the scene pronounced him “legally dead,” which didn’t make a lot of sense to me because it’s a phrase with no medical significance, but when he survived, the nickname stuck.
From there I went to L.D.’s Wikipedia entry. A section labeled “Recordings” listed his one and only album as First Kill All the Hos. Lovely, I thought to myself. Another thing we’d have to deal with. The album “dropped” on October 30, less than a month before the murder, and had fifteen songs—“A-Rod” among them.
The full lyrics to “A-Rod” were printed. Three readings later, I still couldn’t tell if it was about Roxanne or gangbangers or something else entirely. It was like a Rorschach test; the listener would interpret it according to preconceived prejudices—those who thought L.D. was guilty would immediately think it was about Roxanne; anyone who believed he was innocent could find a half-dozen alternate interpretations.
The entry about Roxanne’s murder was the longest at five paragraphs, but the information it contained I’d already learned from Nina—the alleged pre-Thanksgiving breakup, which led to his allegedly being disinvited to Stocks, South Carolina, for Thanksgiving, which led to the alleged post-Thanksgiving confrontation upon Roxanne’s return to New York, which led to L.D.’s allegedly grabbing the baseball bat Roxanne had been given for singing the national anthem at the World Series, and then allegedly beating her to death with it, before he allegedly got rid of the murder weapon.
I surfed through another ten or so websites, but found nothing new. Interestingly, none of the sites mentioned that L.D. had a daughter, which gave me some faith that not everything was publicly available in cyberspace.
When I reentered the living room, Nina was still on the phone, but smiling. She held up her index finger, telling me that she wouldn’t be long.
“Okay,” she said into the phone. “I understand. And thank you. Good-bye.”
When she put down her cell, I said, “Does your smile mean we have an expert?”
“Sure do. The three names you gave me were all noes. One claimed to be too busy, and the other two said there was a conflict. But the last guy told me to call a guy named Marty”—she looked for her notepad—“Popofsky. He just left the ME’s office.”
“And he’s willing to consider coming aboard?”
“Better than that. He’ll be here at four.”
7
As we waited for Popofsky to arrive, I got an unexpected call.
“Hold one moment, please,” a woman’s voice replied after I said hello.
The next thing I heard was “This is Matt Brooks.”
My first thought was that I was being punk’d. That’s how unlikely I found it that Matt Brooks would be returning my phone call.
“Thanks for calling, Mr. Brooks,” I said, somewhat tentatively. “I reached out to you because my partner and I are about to come in for Marcus Jackson as counsel of record for Legally Dead.”
“Let me stop you right there, Counselor. You need to call me Matt, okay?”
Brooks’s voice was confident and encouraging. It was more than just a pleasant surprise. It was something of a shock, actually. Not only did I not expect him to return the call but I had imagined that if he did call back, he’d be hostile, considering that our client stood accused of murdering his label’s biggest star.
“Of course,” I said.
“I’ve checked up on you a little bit, and I must say, L.D. is very lucky to have you in his corner. I know you did wonders for Darrius Macy.”
There was a time when someone knowing your professional accomplishments in a first phone call was disconcerting, like they’d run a background check on you, but now all it takes is plugging your name into a search engine, and voilà, instant biography. Anyway, I was reasonably sure I knew a lot more about Matt Brooks than he knew about me.
“I’m hoping I can help L.D. the same way,” I said. “He’s an innocent man.”
It was the first time I’d said it out loud. The words flowed easily, as if I actually believed what I was saying, which made me wonder if, at least on some level, I did.
“So, what can I do to help you in your noble endeavor?”
“I’d like to meet with you, Mr . . . . Matt.”
He didn’t hesitate. “Sure thing, Dan. Right now I’m in Atlantic City. My man Looming Large is performing at the Borgata tonight, and I got to represent, as they say. Unfortunately, I’m getting on a plane right after the show, and I’m not going to be back in the country until after the New Year.”
No wonder he called me back. I had little doubt that when I called him after the New Year, he’d string me along for a few more weeks before finally telling me that, upon further reflection, it was bad PR for him to help out L.D.’s defense. No hard feelings, right?
“Can we fix a definite date to meet upon your return?” I asked, awaiting some excuse about how much was up in the air or whatever he came up with.
But he surprised me. “Why put it off, Dan? Can you come down here tonight?”
I looked at my watch. I’d need an hour, maybe two, with Popofsky, and figured the drive to Atlantic City would be about three hours.
“I’ve got a meeting starting in about ten minutes,” I said, “but we could drive down right after that. Depending on traffic, I think we could be there by nine.”
He laughed. “Traffic?” and then laughed again. “You know that line in Back to the Future?”
“What?” I said, although I understood him.
“At the end of the movie Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox? The inventor guy says, ‘Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need any roads’?”
“Yeah, I remember,” I said.
“Well, you go down to the heliport on Wall Street. My Sikorsky will be there. Takes less than an hour.”
He didn’t expand on what his Sikorsky was, but I figured it was a helicopter, seeing that we were meeting him at the heliport.
“Okay. Thank you. I’m also going to be bringing my partner, Nina Harrington.”
“The more, the merrier. Looking forward to meeting the both of you. Come find me at the poker tables.”
• • •
Marty Popofsky was at my door exactly at four.
An expert willing to come over upon request was always a good sign, because it meant he didn’t have a lot of other things to fill up his day. The more hungry for paying work, the more likely the expert will give you the opinion you want, because he knows that if he doesn’t, you’ll find someone else who will.
As soon as I opened the door, however, I realized that no matter what came out of Marty Popofsky’s mouth, we had some work to do before he’d be ready for prime time. He was wearing a New York Mets baseball cap and a suit that looked like it had been slept in. When he took off the hat, he revealed a comb-over that he smoothed into place with his hands.
“Thanks for making time to meet us on such short notice,” I said, extending my hand.
“My pleasure,” Popofsky said. “I figured, no time like the present, right?”
At least his voice was good, deep and confident. How an expert sounds makes up a lot for how he looks. The initial impression of his appearance lasts a second, but then
the jury hears what he has to say for hours.
The meeting was more like a first date than anything else, just getting to know each other. I told him the basic facts of the case that had appeared in the press, none of which he seemed too familiar with. I chuckled at the thought that he’d be our ideal juror—the last man on earth who did not have preconceived prejudices about the case.
“We’re looking for a full-service guy,” I said, “to give us an opinion on cause of death, analysis of blood spatter, the whole nine yards. The prosecution’s theory is that the murder weapon is the baseball bat Roxanne had in her bedroom, but the police never found it. So we’ll also need you to analyze splinters, if there are any.”
“If they haven’t found the bat, why do they think it’s the murder weapon?” Popofsky asked.
“Because of the song,” Nina said.
From the blank look on Popofsky’s face I could tell that he had no idea what she was talking about. Nina pulled out her iPhone. A few touches later, the pounding beat of L.D.’s music was blaring, and then his staccato rhyming began.
Gonna stop you when you sing,
gonna give it til you scream;
don’t like what you said,
gonna go A-Rod on your head.
Popofsky didn’t even blanch. It was as if he didn’t fully understand what the words meant, and then it occurred to me that he just might not.
“ ‘Going A-Rod’,” I said, “is a reference to beating someone with a baseball bat. A takeoff on Alex Rodriguez, the Yankee third baseman, who’s known as A-Rod.”
“Oh, I got that part,” Popofsky said, “even though I’m a Mets fan. Although the way that guy’s been playing lately, it just as well could mean that he swung and missed.” Popofsky chuckled at his joke, and then said, “But the thing I don’t get is, why’d she have a baseball bat in her bedroom? That’s kind of strange for a woman, isn’t it?”
“Not really,” Nina answered. “She sang at the opening game of the World Series, and the teams presented it to her. It was signed by the players or something.”
“Oh,” he said. “I saw the game, but I guess I didn’t pay much attention to who sang the national anthem. I never heard of any of those pop stars, anyway.”
“So, is this all something you can help us with?” I asked.
“I don’t see why not,” he said cheerfully. “It’s all within my area of expertise. In fact, I can tell you right now, if the murder weapon was a baseball bat, there probably won’t be any evidence of it in the victim’s skull. Major-league bats are made out of northern white ash, and they just don’t splinter when they come in contact with a human skull.” He shrugged. “That’s the kind of information you acquire from twenty-plus years in a coroner’s office. Sad to say, this won’t be my first baseball-bat murder. So I’m pretty confident that I’ll be able to tell you everything that good ol’ Harry Davis tells them.”
“Who?” Nina asked.
Popofsky chuckled. “I guess he’s not a household name outside of the forensics world. Harry Davis is the head of the city’s medical examiner’s office. And I tell you, a bigger SOB you’ll never meet. The guy was my boss for twenty years. And don’t ask me how I lasted that long.”
“How does he come off in front of a jury?” I asked.
“He’s very smart. Even more arrogant, though. Product of the New York City public school system, something I bet you he mentions within the first thirty seconds of his testimony. He’s very proud of that. For the past . . . I don’t know how long, Davis’s main job function has been to serve as a professional witness. Others in the office, which up until a month ago included me, do the work, and when it’s showtime, Dr. Harry Davis steps out in front of the cameras and reveals the findings.”
“Here’s my first bit of legal advice, Marty. You don’t have to outexpert him. All we need is for you to fight him to a draw. If the jury’s not going to be able to tell which expert is telling the truth, we’ll be awfully close to reasonable doubt.”
“I’ll do my best,” Popofsky said, now looking less confident than I would have preferred.
It was time to explain the facts of life.
“One thing that you may not have experienced when you were at the ME’s office,” I said, “is that there’s a difference between a testifying expert and a consultation expert. Right now, we’re going to retain you solely to provide consulting advice to help us as part of our legal representation. That means that what you tell us will be covered by the attorney-client privilege. Later on, we may choose to designate you as our testifying expert, at which time we’ll also have to waive the privilege. That’s when the real work begins, and we’ll be spending a lot of time with you, preparing for testimony.”
“I get it,” he said with a knowing smile. “Just because I’m new to the private sector doesn’t mean I don’t know how the game’s played. If you like my opinion, I’ll be your expert. And if you don’t, you’ll find someone else.”
Spoken like a man who’s seen the light.
8
At the time, I thought Darrius Macy was going to be the case of my career.
It wasn’t without good reason. Darrius Macy was that year’s Cinderella story of the NFL. He’d begun the season as a walk-on at the Jets’ training camp, and ended it as the Super Bowl MVP. A full-on superstar, and one with all the trappings, he was on the Wheaties box, hosted Saturday Night Live, and hawked half a dozen products on TV, in magazine ads, and on billboards.
And then, when it seemed like there was nowhere to go but up, the bottom fell out. A waitress named Vickie Tiernan, who worked at a fancy New York hotel, claimed that two months after his triumph, Darrius Macy, America’s Mr. Everything, and a married father of three, invited her up to his hotel room and raped her.
The confluence of events that fueled Darrius Macy’s meteoric rise and even greater fall began when the Jets’ starting quarterback went down during the preseason, moving Macy up from third- to second-string. Ahead of him, however, was a former All-Pro named Michael Ross, who led the team to the playoffs with a 10-6 record. The Jets advanced through the playoffs, getting a huge break when the top-seeded Patriots fell to the wild-card Raiders, making the Jets the favorite in the AFC Championship Game. They won by ten, and headed to the Super Bowl against Chicago.
But from the Super Bowl’s opening kickoff, which the Jets fumbled, it was clear that it wasn’t going to be their day. In the first half, the Jets were within striking distance only once, and that drive ended with an end-zone interception that the Chicago cornerback ran all the way for a touchdown.
The score was 24–0 when, about five minutes into the third quarter, Ross was crushed under more than a thousand pounds of Bears, and left the game on a stretcher. That’s when Darrius Macy came in to take his first NFL snap.
In the next twenty minutes, Macy threw for three touchdowns, bringing the Jets within three. With four and a half minutes to go, the Jets had the ball on their own twenty, when Macy engineered a final drive that left them sixteen yards from victory, with twelve seconds to go. It was enough time for one more play from scrimmage. Touchdown, and the Jets would be world champions; fail, and they’d call a time-out and go for the game-tying field goal.
That one play, however, made Macy the most famous football player in the world.
He faded back to pass, and must have seen a receiver open, because his arm shot forward, releasing the ball. But the pass was swatted at the line of scrimmage and, as if God Himself had a wager on the Jets, the ball fell back into Macy’s arms.
Macy turned on a dime and scrambled to the other side of the field. By the time he was able again to look upfield for receivers, the clock read double zero—meaning that the game would end on this play. There’d be no game-tying field goal. It was now or never.
I was watching the game in my living room. For most of it, Sarah was reading, periodically asking me the score, usually after I’d shouted at the screen. But for that last drive, she was keenly focused, and ev
en Alexa, who had been coloring on the floor for most of the second half, seemed interested in the outcome.
It was Sarah who first said, “He’s going to run.”
When she said it, Macy was around the twenty-yard line. “Nah, that’s too far away,” I said, sounding as if I was far more expert about football than I actually was.
As was usually the case when Sarah and I disagreed, she was right. Almost as soon as the words left my lips, Macy darted forward.
I’ve seen the play fifty times by now, and yet I could see it fifty more times and still not look away for a second. It was unbelievable, electrifying. The Bears defenders, who must have seemed miles away when Macy made the decision to head for the end zone, closed in a flash. From the camera angle, it looked as if Macy was alone in taking on the entire Bears defense. He shot to the left, and then juked to the right, like a slalom skier, weaving in and out of 350-pound men as if they were stationary gates.
Seconds before, all seemed hopeless for New York. Now it actually looked like he was going to make it. He hurdled one linesman, spun around another, and literally flew over the last two, landing safely on the other side of the goal line.
“Yes! Yeeeeeeeesssssss!” I screamed, standing in front of the TV now, and even Sarah shouted something, because Alexa said, “What just happened?”
“The man on the television just scored a touchdown, and the Jets won the Super Bowl!” I exclaimed.
“Oh,” Alexa said, putting the event in some perspective, as Sarah howled with laughter.
The next time I thought of Darrius Macy was nearly three months later, when Benjamin Ethan called me. It was a Thursday night, and as usual on Thursday nights, I was still in the office at ten p.m.
“Have you ever heard of a football player named Darrius Macy?” Ethan asked.
I remember thinking that it was almost like asking, Have you ever heard of a president of the United States named Barack Obama? Of course I’d heard of Darrius Macy.
“Yes” was all I actually said.
“Well, he’s in lockup down at the Tombs, awaiting a seven a.m. arraignment tomorrow on rape charges. It’ll be yours if you feel like meeting him down at 100 Centre Street.”
