Bronx Justice

by Joseph Teller

  Downstairs, Jaywalker ushered Darren away from his family. He had a question for him, and he not only wanted to hear Darren's answer, but he also wanted to see his reaction. And he didn't want Darren posturing for the benefit of his family, or looking to them for advice. He watched the young man closely as he spoke to him.

  "Darren," he said, "how would you feel about taking a lie detector test?" He used the phrase lie detector test, instead of the more technically correct polygraph ex amination, because he wanted to make sure Darren under stood the question the first time he asked him and wouldn't be able to buy time by asking, "What's that?"

  Darren's answer came without hesitation. "I'd love to, Jay, if it'll help."

  "Well," said Jaywalker, "I can't promise it'll help. But it will show if you're telling the truth. The problem is, it'll also show if you're lying. I can guarantee that."

  "I'm not lying, Jay."

  "I know that, Darren." It was Jaywalker's second lie in as many statements. "But I'm prejudiced. I'm your lawyer. Besides that, I like you. So as much as I believe you, I have to remind myself that I could be wrong. And you have to understand that if you did commit the rapes, the worst possible thing you could do now would be to take the test."

  Darren started to say something, but Jaywalker held up a hand and cut him off in mid-stutter. He wanted Darren to hear him out.

  "Look," he said, "if you did do those things, if some thing happened to make you snap, if it is you these women are talking about, it's not the end of the world. There are doctors, psychiatrists, programs. There are ways to get you help. Believe it or not, there are even ways to keep you out of prison." It was yet another lie. "So take a moment to think before you decide."

  Jaywalker's little speech finished, he looked Darren hard in the eye. And as he waited for a response, he realized that just as he was torn between wanting to believe Darren and not being able to, so, too, was he torn between wanting him to be innocent and wanting him to be guilty. What he really wanted was for Darren to tell him, "I can't take a lie detector, Jay. I did those things." Together they could break the news to his parents, to his wife. There would be some initial shock and disbelief, followed by a lot of crying all around. But the rest would be simple and straightforward. Psychiatrists, psychologists. Perhaps even an insanity defense, but more likely a guilty plea. But the worst would be over, the nagging uncertainty gone, and the terrible burden of representing a man who seemed to be guilty but claimed to be innocent lifted from his shoul ders. Oh, how Jaywalker wanted Darren to break down and come clean at that moment!

  But he didn't. Break down? Come clean? He didn't flinch. He didn't even stutter, for once. Instead he looked directly into Jaywalker's eyes and said, "I want the test."

  On Friday morning Jaywalker drove to the Bronx County Courthouse, which housed all of the Supreme Court parts. It covered then, as it covers now, an entire city block, from the Grand Concourse on the east to Walton Avenue on the west, and from 160th Street to 161st. From its upper floors you could see then, as you can still see today, the elevated train tracks above Jerome Avenue, and Yankee Stadium just beyond.

  Jaywalker took one of the elevators to the sixth floor. The building was laid out around a square center courtyard, and no matter how many times he'd been there, he always found himself disoriented as soon as he stepped off the elevator. As usual, he walked three-quarters of the way around just to get to a courtroom that would have been right around the corner, had only he chosen to walk the other way.

  Darren, Charlene, Inez and Marlin Kingston were waiting for him outside Part 12. They exchanged greetings and went inside. Jacob Pope was already there. He handed Jaywalker a copy of the indictment.

  SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK COUNTY OF BRONX

  ——————————————————-x THE PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK

  x

  x INDICTMENT

  —against—

  x 5476/79

  DARREN KINGSTON, x

  Defendant. ——————————————————-x

  THE GRAND JURY OF THE COUNTY OF BRONX, by this indictment, accuse the defen dant of the crime of RAPE IN THE FIRST DE GREE, committed as follows:

  The defendant, in the County of Bronx, on or about August 16, 1979, being a male, engaged in sexual intercourse with Eleanor Cerami, a female, by forcible compulsion.

  SECOND COUNT:

  AND THE GRAND JURY AFORESAID, by this indictment, further accuse the defendant of the crime of RAPE IN THE FIRST DEGREE, com mitted as follows:

  The defendant, in the County of Bronx, on or about August 16, 1979, being a male, engaged in sexual intercourse with Joanne Kenarden, a fe male, by forcible compulsion.

  THIRD COUNT:

  AND THE GRAND JURY AFORESAID, by this indictment, further accuse the defendant of the crime of AN ATTEMPT TO COMMIT THE CRIME OF RAPE IN THE FIRST DEGREE, committed as follows:

  The defendant, in the County of Bronx, on or about August 17, 1979, being a male, attempted to engage in sexual intercourse with Tania Maldo nado, a female, by forcible compulsion.

  FOURTH COUNT:

  AND THE GRAND JURY AFORESAID, by this indictment, further accuse the defendant of the crime of AN ATTEMPT TO COMMIT THE CRIME OF RAPE IN THE FIRST DEGREE, committed as follows:

  The defendant, in the County of Bronx, on or about September 5, 1979, being a male, attempted to engage in sexual intercourse with Elvira Cald well, a female, by forcible compulsion.

  And that was only page one. The indictment went on to charge Darren with additional counts of first-degree sod omy, sexual misconduct, sexual abuse, assault against two of the victims, and criminal possession of a weapon—a knife—on each occasion. In all, there were twenty-three separate crimes charged. The only pieces of good news, if they could be called that, were that from the original five victims, it seemed now they were down to four who were willing to testify, and of those only two had apparently been actually raped; the other two counts were of attempted rape. Still, Jaywalker could do the math in his head: two completed rapes, each carrying a maximum sentence of twenty-five years, plus two attempts, worth fifteen each. Add them all up, and Darren was facing eighty years in prison.

  The case was called in its turn, and Jaywalker accom panied Darren to the podium. The clerk asked how the de fendant pleaded, and Darren answered, "Not guilty." His voice was soft, but he didn't stutter. Perhaps he'd been practicing the words, having been told ahead of time by Jaywalker that he would be required to say them. Bail was ordered continued, and the case was adjourned for three weeks, to give the defense time to submit written motions.

  Outside the courtroom, Jaywalker cornered Pope and asked him if he would consider giving Darren a polygraph examination. Pope raised an eyebrow as he seemed to think about it, but Jaywalker could see Why rock the boat? written all over his face.

  Finally he said, "Let me run it by my boss." Passing the buck, no doubt, not wanting to be the one to say no. "Oh, one other thing," he added. "Tell your man he'd better keep out of the area up there."

  "What do you mean?" Jaywalker was puzzled.

  "I mean this," said Pope, in a tone even more serious than his usual humorless one. "I got a call from Detective Rendell the other day. He said one of the girls phoned him and said she'd seen the guy again, in her lobby. Rendell figured shit, maybe we've got the wrong guy locked up. He called me. I did some checking and found out your client had made bail."

  "When was this?"

  "I don't know," said Pope. "Beginning of the week, maybe. He was out before the weekend, right?"

  "Right," Jaywalker had to agree. It was true.

  "Now understand me," said Pope, his eyes narrowing. "This is a free country. I'm not telling your man where he's allowed to go and where he's not. But he starts intimidat ing my witnesses, I'll have him back in jail in an hour, and his family can see if they can make fifty million dollars. I suggest you tell him that."

  "I will," Jaywalker said s
oberly. "She's sure it was him?"

  "She's sure."

  Jaywalker didn't know whether to hate Pope for threat ening them or thank him for the warning. Before he had a chance to do either, Pope turned and walked away.

  Jaywalker lost no time in confronting Darren with what he'd just been told. He was about to read him the riot act for disobeying explicit instructions when Darren inter rupted him. "Jay, you know that's not m-m-me she's talking about. I haven't been out of the house alone for one minute since I got out."

  Darren's family jumped to his defense, backing him up completely and persuasively. So Jaywalker sent them off with homework assignments. Each of them was to take paper and pencil and write out everything they could remember about Darren's movements since his release on bail, as well as his whereabouts on the three days listed in the indictment, August 16th and 17th, and September 5th. Jaywalker instructed Darren to buy a pocket calendar and begin making detailed entries of his comings and goings each day, cursing himself for not thinking of it earlier. Then they set up an appointment at his office for Monday and parted ways.

  Jaywalker headed for his car buoyed by a feeling of ex citement. Admittedly, the indictment had been bad. Of the five victims, Pope had succeeded in getting four of them before the grand jury on short notice, and if he got the fifth, he could always go back in, have her testify and get a superseding indictment. Jaywalker's suggestion of a poly graph examination had met with fairly predictable skep ticism, but at least Pope hadn't quite responded with a flat-out no. But by far the most interesting development had been the business about one of the victims claiming to have seen Darren in the lobby of her building since his release. For starters, Darren and the rest of the Kingston family insisted that he hadn't been out alone since Marlin had brought him home from Rikers Island. But even beyond that, it just didn't make sense. In the movies and on TV, the perpetrator invariably returns to the scene of the crime, blending into the crowd or lurking around fur tively to watch the investigators at work. But in real life, having been unlucky enough to be arrested but lucky enough to have gotten out on bail, wouldn't he want to stay as far away as he possibly could?

  It sure seemed that way to Jaywalker.

  * * *

  Monday's meeting produced very little. While Darren's recollection of his whereabouts since being released from jail was detailed and complete, mid-August was another matter. He'd been working nights at the post office, mid night to 8:00 a.m., to be exact. During the daytime, he was generally home alone, either sleeping or attending to chores. Charlene had been working days, and their son— whose name was Philip, but whom everyone called "Pooh"—was left in the care of Darren's sister, Janie, at their parents' house, the same house that was now the col lateral on Darren's bail bond. Nobody had any specific recollection regarding the first two dates in the indictment, August 16th—when two of the incidents had occurred— and August 17th. But September 5th stood out a bit. That was the day after Labor Day, and therefore the day Janie's classes at school had resumed after summer vacation. So on that day, for the first time, Pooh had been left with a neighbor. Darren recalled having come home from work as usual, about 9:30 in the morning, and hearing Pooh crying next door. He'd called his mother and asked her if she thought he should go knock on the door. Inez had said no, that if he did that the woman would feel they didn't trust her, and that anyway, the child would have to get used to the new arrangement. Darren had reluctantly accepted the advice, stayed in his apartment and gone to bed.

  "But it was h-h-hard," he remembered.

  It wasn't much to go on, but it was something. Jay walker jotted a note to himself to include a request for the precise time of each of the attacks in his motion papers.

  The meeting broke up. By that time, Jaywalker had fully succumbed to the Kingstons' habit of embracing at each greeting and parting. He particularly enjoyed hugging Marlin. Each time he felt the rough stubble of the older man's beard against his face, Jaywalker was reminded of his grandfather, his father's father, whose whiskers had felt like sandpaper and left his young cheeks glowing bright red. So Marlin's hugs were extra-special.

  God, these were good people! Born black in a country that too often tended to be kinder by far to whites, living in a borough that in those days got commonly compared to a war zone, often unfavorably, they'd managed to carve out a life for themselves. They got up and went to work or school, or sometimes both. They took care of their children. From modest salaries, they somehow saved enough to buy a home. They didn't seem to drink, use drugs, gamble, curse, get angry or do any of the other things that used to get so many of Jaywalker's Legal Aid clients into trouble so often. In many ways, the Kingstons epitomized that most overworked of all clichés, the American Dream. They lived honest, hardworking and productive lives, day in and day out. They didn't look to others to take care of them; they took care of themselves, and of each other. Now something terrible had happened to one of their number. Some outside force, not fully com prehensible in its awfulness and randomness, had suddenly reared up and threatened to destroy everything. Their re action was as simple as it was immediate. Even as they'd reached out to Jaywalker for outside help, they'd drawn together even more tightly. They'd mustered their collec tive strengths, pooled their resources and drawn on their faith. That faith was not so much in a higher power as it was in the system itself. They trusted that the system, which they'd always believed in and lived by, would now protect them.

  But the system, Jaywalker knew only too well, pro tected no one. The system was cold and impersonal. The system was all about budgets and payrolls, statistics and seniority, politics and patronage. When it came right down to it, in an adversarial contest that pitted a professional prosecutor against a designated defender, a person could be protected only by another person. And for better or for worse, because of the absurd accident that Inez Kingston happened to work in the same Welfare Department office as Jaywalker's sister-in-law, he had become the person charged with the responsibility of protecting a young man and, with him, the rest of his family, born and unborn. It was a responsibility that Jaywalker both wanted and didn't want, one that he relished even as he loathed it, and one that was already waking him up each morning and accom panying him to bed each night.

  In the short space of a month's time, it had become a responsibility that scared the living shit out of him.

  4

  HEDGING BETS

  Jaywalker busied himself preparing motions.

  The days of the computer had not yet arrived, at least for a seat-of-the-pants solo practitioner like Jaywalker. That meant typing out a set of papers the old-fashioned way, on a trusty Remington, the kind that fit into a square black box and came without a cord, much less a battery. He moved for suppression of any statements that might be attributed to Darren as admissions or confessions, exclu sion of any identifications of him that might have been tainted by suggestive police procedures, and a severance that would divide the case into four separate trials instead of one. He asked for court-ordered discovery of police reports, medical records, photographs, artists' sketches and the like. He demanded particulars regarding the pre cise date, time and place of each of the crimes charged. He made copies, served and filed them, and waited for Pope's written response.

  Next Jaywalker contacted a private investigator. He called John McCarthy, a former NYPD detective who would go on to do work for F. Lee Bailey, among others. McCarthy was bright, capable, and would make a good appearance on the witness stand, if his testimony were needed. Jaywalker had him come to the office to meet Darren, and the three of them went over the facts of the case in as much detail as they knew them. He instructed McCarthy to use his contacts in the department to gain access to whatever police and housing authority records he could. He told him there would come a time when he'd want him to see if the victims would talk with him. Finally, Jaywalker asked him to spend some time in the Castle Hill area of the Bronx, where the attacks had taken place, on the outside chance that he might be
able to locate the real rapist, assuming it wasn't Darren. At that suggestion, McCarthy looked up from his notepad and stared at Jay walker as though he were on drugs.

  Jaywalker looked away.

  Things slowed down. And Jaywalker had no complaint about that. A speedy trial, which is a defendant's constitu tional right—and these days his statutory right, as well—is in fact a defendant's worst enemy. Time is his ally. Time for his lawyer and his investigator to do their jobs; time for the victims to grow less vindictive and more forgetful; time even for another attack to occur while the defendant's pres ence elsewhere could be documented. And with Darren out on bail, time also brought the opportunity for him to get back to work, family and normalcy—if there was such a thing as normalcy for a young man facing eighty years in prison.