“How are we going to end this?”
“If everything works out as planned, she’ll sign a nondisclosure agreement, drop the charges, and this whole thing will be over.”
“Yeah, offer her the cash. I know that bitch will jump all over the deal. She’s a money-grubbing ho, just like the rest of them.”
The way he talked about her, he never made her sound like a person. He only referred to her with derogatory names, which made me question if he were a racist, an asshole, or both.
“Mr. Alfieri—”
“Just call me Johnny.”
“OK, Johnny. If things don’t work out, and we go to trial, you have to make a habit of calling her by her name. Since you’ve been here, you’ve called her a ‘bitch’ and a ‘ho’ several times in our brief conversation. That won’t fly in front of a jury.”
“A‘ight. I see whatcha talkin’ about.”
I brought Paul and Greg into the conference room and shared the plan with them. Everyone seemed optimistic and felt we could get things settled smoothly.
Johnny, Paul, Greg, and I rushed to the limo to head to the precinct but were bombarded by reporters.
“Mr. Alfieri, did you rape that stripper?”
“Do you think this tarnishes your image to your African American fans?”
“Yo, I didn’t rape that... woman,” Johnny said, catching himself.
“Come on, Johnny, don’t make any more comments,” I said.
He nodded and got in the limo.
The paparazzi gathered around the limo snapping pictures and knocking for Johnny to lower the window so they could ask more questions. I hated media attention with cases. I’ve had high-profile cases in the past that went well, but being front and center for all of the world to see made me feel exposed. I preferred to keep a low profile and not be all over the cover of newspapers.
We pulled away from the firm, and I was confident I could end this before it even got to trial.
Chapter 4
Ben
Oreos
After rushing through morning traffic, I arrived at the 6th Precinct. There was a media circus in front of the precinct already. All the attention from the press was a little intimidating, but I’ve had high-profile cases like this before and relished it. The bigger this case got, the bigger the reward would be if I were able to pull out a win. There’d be no way the firm wouldn’t bring me in as a partner.
I took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, avoided responding to the numerous reporters’ questions, and rushed inside.
In the lobby was a sitting area along the side wall filled with people waiting to report their problems to a young white officer with a clipboard standing in front of them. The dark-skinned brotha with the sergeant’s badge sat behind a huge wooden desk in the middle of the room, filling out paperwork. Above the desk were numerous closed-circuit monitors that displayed the cells and all the various areas around the precinct.
I walked up to the desk, flashed my business card, and spoke to the sergeant. His name badge read Sergeant St. Clair.
“Good morning, sir, I’m Ben Turner. I’m representing Mr. Reginald Brown. I was told he was being detained here.”
He grunted. “Yeah, we got him. That’s your client’s publicist and manager sitting down over there,” he said, pointing to a short, heavyset, balding white man and a thin, blond woman with glasses.
“Give me a minute, and I’ll have my detectives set up a room so you can talk to your client,” he said.
I nodded.
Sergeant St. Clair lowered his voice and said, “Look, brotha, I know you got a hard job just like me, but that guy killed four people, two of whom were cops. Think about that before you defend a murderer.”
I nodded, although there was no doubt in my mind I was going to be defending Co-Kayne for this case.
I signaled to the people the sergeant mentioned.
“Are you Co-Kayne’s lawyer?” the blond woman asked.
“Yes, I’m Ben Turner. Have you seen him?”
The heavyset man cut in. “No. These bastards said we couldn’t talk to him at all because he’s under arrest. He used his phone call to contact us, and we reached out to your firm. I’m Bernie, his manager. This is Jessica, his publicist.”
We shook hands.
“I’m so sick of this asshole always getting into shit,” Bernie said. “I purposely got him bodyguards to stop him from fighting and keep him out of trouble, but he sneaks away from them and goes and does this shit.”
His nostrils flared as he continued. “Do you know how many damn times I’ve been woken up in the middle of the fucking night to bail that drunken dumbass out of jail? Too many. I always have to clean his messes when he fucks up. This time, I might not be able to fix this clusterfuck for his sorry ass.”
“I’m going to do everything possible to help him get through this,” I assured them.
“Thank you, Ben,” Jessica said.
“You tell him this: If he doesn’t want to spend the rest of his fucking life in prison, he’ll shut up and listen for once and do everything you ask of him,” Bernie said. “He’s in enough shit, and the last person he needs to piss off is you, who’s here to save his stupid ass. You have to be firm with him, or he won’t respect you. If he acts up, call him by his real name, Reginald. That’ll fix him.”
“You ready? I’m going to escort you to your client now,” an officer said, cutting short my conversation with Bernie and Jessica. I nodded.
We walked up one flight of stairs to the second floor and stood in front of the detective’s office. The officer knocked on the door.
“The detectives will help you from here,” he said before heading back downstairs.
A balding black man wearing a blue suit opened the door. “You’re Co-Kayne’s lawyer?”
“Yeah.”
“Follow me.”
We walked to a steel door with a small Plexiglas window. The detective with me opened the door to a small, gray room. Half of the wall on my left was glass, but I was sure it was a two-way mirror. Co-Kayne was sitting at a metal desk in the middle of the cramped room. He was brown-skinned, with long cornrows, and was wearing a pair of blue sweatpants and a sweatshirt. I was sure they gave him whatever clothes they could find around the precinct because they were keeping his clothes for evidence. I took a seat across from him at the metal desk.
“Wait a minute. Hold up. Who’s this?” Co-Kayne asked the detective. His breath still reeked of liquor.
“It’s your lawyer, jerk-off,” the detective snidely answered before slamming the door behind him.
“Hi, I’m Ben Turner. I’m going to be representing you,” I said, extending my hand.
Co-Kayne batted my hand away and said, “Nah, I told Bernie I wanted a brotha, and he gets me some prep-school Oreo to defend me.”
I exhaled and rolled my eyes at his comment. Oreo. I hated being called that. It meant I was black on the outside but acted as if I were white.
“Did the detectives read you your Miranda rights before questioning you?” I asked.
“Yeah, but I didn’t tell them shit.”
“Good.”
“Ben Turner. You even got a white-ass name. What kind of Uncle Tom shit is that?”
“Reginald-” I said.
“Don’t call me by my government name.”
Bernie said it would piss him off. It was my subtle way of getting him back for calling me an Oreo. “Can I call you Reggie?”
“Whatever.”
“I come from Wayne, Rothstein, and Lincoln, the best criminal defense law firm in New York—”
“I don’t care where you come from. I want a black man as my lawyer, and you’re not what I’m looking for.”
“Well, I’m the best chance you have of not doing life in prison, so you can either accept me as your lawyer or rot in a cell for the rest of your life. Your choice.”
Reggie sucked his teeth and looked at me. “You walk around with your Ivy League education and nice
suits and look at me like I’m just some poor, stupid, street nigga.”
I glared at him.
“You know why I think you’re a sellout? Because I can tell you’re the type that doesn’t live around other blacks,” Reggie said.
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“And you don’t know shit about me, either, but I bet as soon as you walked through those precinct doors, you already believed you knew all you needed to about me. You’re not a real black man. I told your firm I wanted a real nigga.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I’m nobody’s ‘nigga,’ and to degrade me because I don’t meet your standard of ‘blackness’ is sad and ignorant. We’re both running the same race and jumping over the same hurdles, but instead of helping to lift me up, fellow black man, you’d rather drag and put me down. Now, are we going to go over your case or not?”
Reggie smirked. “You don’t like me, do you?”
“I don’t know why you insist on thinking I have a problem with you, but it’s not my job to like or not like you. My job is to keep you out of prison, and that’s what I plan on doing.”
“Well, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anybody.”
“OK.”
“I’m serious.”
“OK.”
“Be straight with me. You think I did it, don’t you?”
“You said you didn’t, so as your attorney, I’m taking your word, and I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt,” I said.
“Stop giving me the bullshit lawyer answers. Do you think I killed those people?”
I took a long breath and exhaled through my nostrils before answering him. “I don’t know. Honestly, you have a lot of evidence against your innocence. You have an extensive rap sheet of assaults with weapons and previous convictions dating back to when you were a juvenile, which shows a history of violence. Before the murders, you argued with the victims in the club, which shows a motive and places you at the scene. A lot of your songs encourage violence toward gays, and on top of all that, you were found with the gay couple’s blood on your clothes. You were also holding the murder weapon when the cops arrested you. It’s asking a lot of me to believe you had nothing to do with their deaths, but I’m going to do my best to try to convince the jury that you’re innocent.”
“If you can’t even convince yourself, how do you expect to convince a jury?” Reggie asked. “I knew having an Uncle Tom-ass nigga like you was going to put me back in prison.”
“Explain it to me then. Help me understand what happened.”
He sighed. I opened my briefcase and checked my notes as he went on.
“I was in the club drinking and dancing when these two dudes came up to me and told me they recognized me. They told me I was cute and wanted to take me home with them. People were watching us. I couldn’t have that shit leaking out to the media that faggots were hitting on me in clubs. My fans would think I’m about that life, and that’s bad for business, so I flipped out on them. I was drunk. I didn’t mean it when I said I’d fucking kill them.”
“According to witnesses, you said you’d ‘kill their faggot asses.”’
“Whatever. Anyway, between the paparazzi and my security team always following me around like my fucking shadow, I snuck out of the club to go down the block to clear my head and smoke a cigarette alone without a million people in my face.”
I watched and studied his mannerisms to see if he was lying to me, but so far, he seemed genuine.
“When I got to the corner, I heard gunshots. I ducked down because I didn’t know where the shit come from. I stood up to head back to the club, but some guy dressed in black slammed into me. We collided so hard that both of us were on the ground, and he dropped his gun. Blood was all over him, and some of it got on me. Without thinking, I stupidly picked up the gun, and it was still warm. The guy stood up and balled up his fist like he was gonna swing on me. Before he decided to go all crazy on me, I raised the gun to his face, and he ran off. I looked to my right and saw two bodies on the ground. I walked up to them, and it was the gay guys I argued with earlier in the club. The cops came, and it hit me that I was still holding the fucking gun and standing over the bodies. I know how it must’ve looked, and I know how the cops are, so before they killed my ass for some shit I didn’t do, I got the fuck outta there.”
“Then what happened?”
“What do you think? I couldn’t outrun them, and I didn’t want to get shot in the back, so I stopped running.”
I pulled a pen and a pad from my briefcase and quickly scribbled down notes.
“What you writing down?” Reggie asked.
“Your story so I can go over it later.”
“You think I’m lying, huh?”
“I don’t think anything yet. I’m just gathering all the facts.”
“Yeah, right. You think I’m stupid and don’t see this shit?”
“See what?”
“The silent judgment you have for me.”
“And you don’t have your thoughts about me?” I asked. “You think because I don’t live in the projects, I’m oblivious to how black people are viewed in this world.”
Reggie laughed at me.
“Stop laughing.”
He kept laughing at me.
“Stop laughing, or I’ll walk out of this precinct right now, and you’re on your own.”
Reggie shut up and stared at me after hearing my empty threat. I glared at him and said, “I make a choice every day to not be another angry black guy like you. You think I don’t see when salespeople and security guards watch my every move when I’m shopping, or when I’m getting pulled over by the police because I drive a nice car? There are a million things daily I have to choose to let go, so I’m not consumed by anger.”
Reggie clapped and smiled. “I’m fucking with you. I don’t want a bitch for my lawyer. I needed to know you’re tough enough to handle this shit.”
“I’m not here to play mind games with you. I’m here to defend you. Now, I’m assuming from what you told me, that we’re pleading not guilty, correct?”
“Yeah, I didn’t do shit.”
“Good.”
There was a solid knock on the door before it swung open.
Detectives came in, stood Reggie up, and checked his handcuffs and leg shackles.
“Sorry to cut this short, but we’re ready to transport him to Central Booking now,” one said.
I nodded and faced Reggie. “Don’t say anything to anyone.”
“This isn’t my first time being locked up. I know the drill,” he replied.
“I’ll see you at the arraignment.”
We walked outside, and a sea of reporters, spectators, fans, and protesters stood outside the precinct. The press snapped pictures and shoved microphones in Reggie’s face and mine.
“Co-Kayne, what caused you to go on a murderous rampage and kill those people?”
“Do you hate gays?”
“Were you beaten by the police after killing two officers?”
“Were you influenced by drugs and alcohol?”
Reggie didn’t answer. He kept his head down as the cops waved off the reporters. The protestors, press, and spectators parted to allow the detectives to put Reggie in the back of the unmarked Chevy Impala.
Reggie looked defeated as he was being taken to Central Booking. I guessed reality was starting to hit him.
* * *
Thousands of people stood outside the court building on Centre Street in Manhattan. Some were fans, and some were protestors angry that he’d killed a gay couple. In an attempt to limit the amount of time the unwanted crowds spent surrounding the building, the court had pushed his arraignment to be earlier.
I called the firm and briefed Tim on everything Reggie told me. I let him know I was waiting on the arraignment, and Reggie planned on pleading not guilty. Then I called my best friend, Gabby, and made plans to get coffee with her as soon as I got out of court.
Quietly, I sat on the benches
in the courtroom and waited for Reggie’s case to be called. I reflected on everything he had said to me at the precinct, and it brought back old feelings I thought I’d buried and healed from. It bothered me that he and other people in my race believed I wasn’t “black enough.” My thoughts drifted back to my childhood.
Every year around Thanksgiving, my dad took my cousin, Simone, and me to his old neighborhood, the Edenwald Houses in the Bronx. We were forced to stand in the schoolyard of PS 112 and hand out turkeys and food to the community. Simone was more like a sister than a cousin to me. She lived with us and was raised by my parents for most of her life. Simone’s mom, my aunt Joan, was a junkie prostitute and was constantly getting arrested. Since she was always in and out of jail and unfit to be a mother, the courts gave my parents custody of Simone.
* * *
“Dad, do we have to go there?” I’d asked.
“Yeah, Uncle Curtis, do we have to?” Simone added.
“Yes, we have to and stop asking,” Dad replied. “It’s important to give back to the community.”
The last place either of us wanted to be on a Saturday was Dad’s old neighborhood.
“Those people are mean. I hate going there,” Simone said.
“Me too,” Mom mumbled.
“You’re not helping, Maybelline,” Dad said.
“I don’t understand the reasoning of going to the ghetto and giving those ungrateful people food for Thanksgiving. They just take your free food and talk behind your back every year.”
“Those ‘people’ are ‘our people,’” Dad said. “I wouldn’t be the man I am today if it weren’t for my old neighborhood, and when you say things like that, you sound no better than the white people who say that blacks just mooch off the system. Yes, some of them are ungrateful, but a lot of them aren’t. We’re bringing hope to some of these kids, and it’s important to me. Besides, it’s good to toughen up our kids and make them appreciate the lives they have.”
Defining Moments Page 3
