Bronx Justice

by Joseph Teller

  Leaving for another day the fact that they'd gotten the date wrong, Jaywalker sent off a letter to the Housing Au thority's legal department, informing them that an appeal was pending in the case and requesting that they hold off until it had been decided.

  Several days later, he got a call from one of their law yers. He was willing to grant a postponement of the pro ceedings, but only a short one. A hearing would have to be held within the next few weeks.

  In early May, Darren showed up at Jaywalker's office to report an interesting development. He'd gone into a candy store in the Bronx to buy cigarettes. He'd recog nized the young woman behind the cash register as Tania Maldonado, the third of the four victims. What struck him, and Jaywalker, as significant was the fact that Tania Mal donado hadn't recognized him. Or if she had, she'd done a wonderful job of pretending not to.

  Together, Jaywalker and Carolyn pondered what pos sible use they might make of the incident. They decided that Darren should visit the store again—several times, if necessary—although never alone. They would keep a detailed written record of the dates and times of his visits. Then, if Darren continued to be unrecognized, they would consider approaching Miss Maldonado or Jacob Pope, or both of them, with the fact that, in a neutral situation, at least one of the victims had completely failed to recognize Darren as her attacker.

  In the third week of May, Jaywalker received word from the Housing Authority that a hearing on Darren and Char lene's apartment had been scheduled for early June. He checked with Carolyn Oates, who reported that she ex pected to submit her brief sometime in August, and esti mated that the oral argument would be scheduled for November or December. That meant no decision on the appeal would be likely until early next year. Jaywalker knew there was no way they were going to be able to buy that much time with the Housing Authority. He decided their best bet would be to go forward with the hearing and then try to convince the examiner to put off making a decision for as long as possible. He even allowed himself the fantasy that the hearing might turn up a new lead of some sort.

  * * *

  Jaywalker met Darren at the Housing Authority's ad ministrative offices on the afternoon of June 5th. He located Kenneth Metzger, the lawyer who would be rep resenting the authority. Metzger explained that he had no "live" witnesses present, that all he intended to do was submit a certified copy of Darren's conviction.

  So much for new leads.

  Metzger asked if Jaywalker planned on contesting the truth of the document. Jaywalker assured him that he didn't. Together, they went into the hearing room. A printed sign on the door proclaimed

  MILES MICHAEL

  IMPARTIAL HEARING EXAMINER

  The first thing Jaywalker did was to ask if all of the hearing examiners were impartial, or if it had just been their good luck to get one that was. His question drew a smile from Miles Michael, an athletic-looking black man who turned out to be every bit as impartial as his title claimed.

  Jaywalker explained that he was prepared to concede the fact of the conviction, and was only asking that Mr. Michael reserve decision on Darren and Charlene's tenancy until the appeal had been decided. When Kenneth Metzger voiced no objection, Mr. Michael agreed.

  It was a small victory, but in a war that had been marked with pretty much nothing but defeats, it was a welcome one. And although Jaywalker would never tell his col leagues that he'd stooped to appear on such a lowly admin istrative matter, he understood its importance to Darren and Charlene. Sometimes being a criminal defense lawyer meant going before the Housing Authority or the Motor Vehicle Department, even the Taxi and Limousine Com mission. Sometimes it meant visiting an inmate whose family couldn't afford the bus fare upstate. Sometimes it meant bringing along a book for that inmate to read, or a warm blanket to help him get through the winter. Whatever it was, you did it, and then you went home and thanked your lucky stars that you were fortunate enough to be on the giving end, instead of the receiving one.

  The finishing touches were put on the appeal brief by the middle of August. The argument ran twenty-eight pages, and represented the combined efforts of Carolyn Oates and Jaywalker. The final wording was hers, and it was good. Jaywalker had to temper his excitement at reading it by reminding himself how few appeals were suc cessful, and how, to the judges who read it, it would discuss just another rape conviction.

  The brief was served upon the district attorney's office and filed with the Appellate Division that governs the Bronx and Manhattan. The next order of business was to sit back and wait for the D.A.'s brief in opposition. But sitting back and waiting was something that Jaywalker found impossible to do. So once again he aimed his old Volkswagen for the Bronx, to Castle Hill.

  It had been almost two years since his first trip to the project, and things had been changing, bit by bit. Whereas at first he had been able to pretty much blend in, by now his face was just about the only white one in sight. On this particular day, he spotted only one other, an elderly, ruddyfaced woman whom he took to be Irish, though he had no real way of knowing. She peered out from behind the drapes of a second-floor window. At one point they locked eyes, and she wagged a bony finger back and forth in his direction, her way of warning him that for a person like him, it was no place to be.

  24

  JAMMED UP PRETTY GOOD

  September 12th, 1981

  Two years to the day since Darren's arrest.

  Jaywalker and Carolyn Oates were still waiting for the district attorney's brief. They'd heard that the appeals bureau was overworked and backed up, and that it would be another month at least before they should expect it. Jay walker regarded that as good news, a reprieve of sorts.

  That was what they were down to.

  Jaywalker's wife's sister and her husband had come over to the house to play bridge. Not the younger sister, who still worked at the Welfare Department with Inez Kingston, but the older one, a special-ed teacher from Brooklyn. She and her husband had brought bagels and lox, cream cheese with chives, and that day's NewYork Post and Daily News—all items hard to find in New Jersey back then.

  Jaywalker was in the process of underplaying a hand he'd overbid. His partner at that particular moment, his sister-in-law, had laid down her hand and assumed the role of dummy. Either bored or exasperated at the num ber of tricks Jaywalker was managing to lose, she picked up one of the newspapers and began leafing through it.

  "Hey, Jay," he heard her say. "Another rapist for you to check out."

  By now, Jaywalker and his crusade had become something of a family joke. Not that any of them came right out and ridiculed him to his face. But he'd caught a look or two here and a comment there, and pretty much knew they all thought he'd slipped off the tracks some time ago.

  He finished losing the hand before taking a look at what his sister-in-law had spotted. It was a tiny item in the Daily News, buried deep in the middle pages, about a Bronx man who'd been charged with a number of rapes in various housing projects. Jaywalker searched for some mention of the Castle Hill Houses, but it was missing from the list. Just their luck. He tore out the article anyway, figuring he would check it out when he got a chance. If nothing else, it would give him something to do and make waiting for the D.A.'s brief a little easier.

  Less than an hour later, Charlene Kingston phoned. Jaywalker laughed as soon as he heard her voice. Without giving her a chance to explain why she'd called, he said, "I saw it."

  They both laughed, something neither of them had been doing much of lately. Jaywalker promised he would look into it first chance he got.

  * * *

  On Monday, word came from the D.A.'s office that they were asking for an extension to get their brief in. It's customary to consent to such requests, particularly when the defendant's out on bail. In Darren's case, the request came as music to their ears. Carolyn Oates told them to take as much time as they needed. They could have months if they wanted. Years.

  Jaywalker reached into his pocket for something and felt a piece of paper. He took
it out and looked at it. The newspaper clipping. The man's name was Joseph Sperling. No age, no race, no physical description. Not much to go on. He phoned the Bronx D.A.'s office. They couldn't help him, other than to tell him that Sperling was due to appear in court on September 25th. Jaywalker made a note of the date and resolved to be there.

  He couldn't be.

  He was on trial in Manhattan. He tried to get hold of a photo of Sperling but had to settle for a description relayed over the phone by an obliging court officer. Black, medium height, medium build. How many times had Jaywalker been down this road? Far too many to count. But in spite of the odds, he felt the old excitement beginning to build once more.

  He asked the officer about Sperling's next court appear ance and was told it was October 14th. Jaywalker smiled to himself. The date was his own half-birthday.

  He drove his daughter to a farm stand to buy a pumpkin for Halloween. This time, she didn't insist on the biggest one they had. Instead, she wanted two.

  "Why two?" he asked her.

  "So I can carve two faces," she explained. "One happy and one sad. Like you, Daddy."

  It took his breath away and made him resolve to smile more, though it soon went the way of most of his resolutions.

  Jaywalker managed to make it to the Bronx on October 14th, but Joseph Sperling didn't. There'd been a mix-up of some sort, and he was never produced. Prisoners aren't just brought to court; they're produced.

  It was becoming clear to Jaywalker that if he wanted to get a look at Joseph Sperling, he was going to have to do it the hard way. He called the Department of Corrections and learned that Sperling was being held on Rikers Island. Because Jaywalker wasn't his lawyer, he wasn't entitled to a counsel visit with him. He toyed with the idea of con tacting Sperling's lawyer—he was someone Jaywalker knew, but not at all well—and working through him. It would certainly be the ethical way of going about it. But would Sperling's lawyer permit Jaywalker access to his client? Jaywalker certainly wouldn't have, had the roles been reversed. So he decided to be devious. In the greater scheme of things, he told himself, what could possibly be more ethical than bending the rules on behalf of a wrongly convicted man? And if that rationalization led to a slippery slope, well, Jaywalker was no stranger to the slopes. And at that point, he was far less interested in ethics than he was in results.

  So he drew up papers requesting a special one-day pass, swearing falsely that Sperling was a witness in an up coming trial. People v. Esperanza, he called the nonexis tent case. Spanish for hope. Jaywalker realized he could land in deep shit if either Sperling or his lawyer decided to make a complaint against him, but it was a chance he was willing to take.

  Then, before he could make it out to Rikers Island, he got caught on trial again. Joseph Sperling, the rapist, would have to wait while Jaywalker defended Dwayne Pittman, the robber. Pittman was as guilty as they came. He and an accomplice had attempted a "push-in" robbery, trying to force their way into the apartment of a woman who'd just come home from the supermarket, but her screams had frightened them off. The accomplice had fled to the roof and gotten away. Pittman had run down the stairs and into the arms of the arriving police officers. In spite of that fact, Pittman was acquitted. After the trial, the jurors confided in Jaywalker that they were pretty sure his client was guilty but they hadn't quite been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.

  Two thoughts immediately came to Jaywalker. First, he must be getting better at what he did for a living. And second, where had these jurors been when he'd really needed them?

  It was raining the day he finally drove out to Rikers Island. He'd altered the date on his one-day pass, but it got him through the first checkpoint anyway. He crossed the bridge that separates the real world from the redbrick com pounds that dot the island. He squeezed his VW into half a parking spot and caught the corrections bus to HDM, the House of Detention for Men. He surrendered his pass, showed his identification and was buzzed into a secure area. At a set of steel bars, he hollered his loudest "On the gate!" and was admitted to the counsel room. He had spent a lot of hours, awake and asleep, wonder

  ing what the real rapist would look like. Because his faith in eyewitness identification was so minimal, each time he'd made one of his forays to Castle Hill, he'd known better than to expect to find a doppelgänger, a perfect double for Darren. He knew that, Yvette Monroe's experi ence notwithstanding, the resemblance between Darren and the actual perpetrator might turn out to be rather slight. But when Joseph Sperling walked into the room, nobody had to point him out to Jaywalker.

  Even from thirty feet away, Jaywalker was immedi ately struck by two things. First, Sperling looked like Darren. Second, he looked exactly like the man described by the victims. His height, complexion and hair were the same as Darren's. But he looked older and heavier than Darren, precisely as the victims had initially described their attacker.

  Jaywalker walked over to him. "Joseph Sperling?" he asked.

  The man turned his way and nodded, but said nothing.

  "My name is Jaywalker."

  They walked to one of the interview cubicles, a small enclosure with a table that separated two matching chairs, both of them bolted to the floor. On the table was a plastic ashtray. In 1981 it was still okay to smoke.

  They sat down.

  Jaywalker opened his mouth to say something. He'd had all morning to rehearse his speech. Or more than two full years, if you wanted to look at it that way. Yet no words would come out. He could only sit there, frozen, his mouth open, his eyes wide.

  There are moments in life that stay with us forever, moments that, years later, when we shut our eyes, we can relive as vividly as if the event were happening all over again. Sitting there in the counsel room, Jaywalker sud denly found himself in the midst of such a moment.

  He was looking into a pair of maroon eyes.

  Afterward, he would have no idea how long he stared at the man. It might have been ten seconds, or it might have been ten minutes; he truly didn't know. He would know only that somehow he must have managed to get hold of himself, because at some point he found himself speaking.

  He asked Sperling to listen to what he had to say before responding. He told him exactly who he was, and why he was there. He told him he was free to speak with him or not, as he pleased. He did all those things not to be fair to Sperling, but to make Joseph Sperling think he was being fair to him.

  Sperling said he'd speak with him.

  "I hear you're jammed up pretty good," said Jaywalker, lapsing into street talk from his DEA days.

  Sperling nodded and said, "You could say that."

  They discussed his situation. Sperling did most of the talking, Jaywalker most of the listening. In a soft voice, he described the chain of events that had led him to where he was.

  If he was to be believed, Joseph Sperling had been a bright and talented teenager. He'd won a track scholarship to a well-known university in the south. There he'd fallen in love with a white woman. They'd moved into an apart ment off campus. Before long, a disapproving neighbor had complained to the police. One thing had led to another, and Sperling had been expelled from school and run out of town. He'd ended up in New York. A year or two later, he'd been arrested for a minor sex offense with another white woman, in Manhattan. He'd been tried and con victed—unjustly, he claimed. He came away bitter, and his bitterness festered and ripened into an obsession. He began prowling various housing projects, mostly in the Bronx, committing rapes that in his mind he'd already been pun ished for. His victims were always young, always pretty and always white. Eventually he'd been caught. Relieved that the ordeal was over, he'd quickly confessed.

  "How about my client's rapes?" Jaywalker asked him. "Castle Hill. August and September, nineteen-seventy nine."

  "No," he said, "I didn't do those. But I did make the phone call."

  Phone call?

  Sperling said that shortly after Darren's trial, he'd seen the article in the Daily News. "I picked up the phone and called
the D.A.," he said. "I told them they had the wrong man. I sorta made it sound like I did those rapes. But I didn't."

  If true, this was an incredible piece of news. No one had ever reported such a call to Jaywalker. But this was no time to wonder why. He needed to press on.

  "So why did you call?" he asked.

  Sperling shrugged absently. "I felt sorry for your man, I guess. I knew what it felt like to be framed. But there's no way I did those rapes. I was working then, and that was before I started."

  "Where were you working?"

  "The telephone company," said Sperling. Then, when he saw Jaywalker staring at him, he added, "You can check it out if you want to."

  But Jaywalker didn't want to. He was staring not because he doubted Sperling's employment, but because it struck him that his having worked for the telephone company wasn't all that different from Darren's having worked at the post office. Here were two young men who not only looked alike but whose lives, at least up to a point, hadn't been so different. Now those two lives were on a collision course, with Jaywalker at the intersection. And because he still couldn't get over Sperling's maroon eyes.