Guilty as Sin

by Joseph Teller

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Did there come a time in September of 1984 that you were asked to participate in a narcotics investigation in Harlem?

  ST. JAMES: Yes, there did.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Can you tell us how that came about?

  ST. JAMES: Yes. I was assigned to the Philadelphia office at the time. But I’d grown up in Harlem and was familiar with the area. So somebody must have decided that I was well suited to impersonate an out-of-town dealer looking to buy large quantities of heroin to resell out of state.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: And what did you do upon your arrival?

  ST. JAMES: I met with the team leader, Lieutenant Pascarella, and the various members of the backup team. I learned that an individual initially known only as John Doe “Gramps” had been positively identified as Alonzo Barnett, and that he was the subject of intensive ongoing surveillance. I was told—

  THE COURT: Mr. Jaywalker?

  It was Judge Levine’s way of checking to make sure he was awake. But she needn’t have bothered. Jaywalker does a lot of things during the course of a trial, but falling asleep has never been among them. His decision not to object to what was obviously going to be hearsay testimony was therefore a calculated one. He wanted to hear what Trevor St. James had been told, and he wanted the jurors to hear it, too. So when he stood to say “No objection,” he threw in an exaggerated shrug, his way of saying, Hey, we’ve got nothing to hide here.

  What Agent St. James had been told, it turned out, was pretty much what Jaywalker had expected, that up until that point in the investigation, the surveillance of Alonzo Barnett had failed to bear fruit. St. James’s job would be to figure out a way to approach Barnett, gain his confidence and attempt to buy drugs from him.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: And how did you go about trying to do those things?

  ST. JAMES: Well, surveillance had established that Mr. Barnett had several associates, individuals he hung out with. One of those associates in particular interested the team. They’d tentatively identified him as John Doe “Stump,” because he was short and heavyset. And they’d observed him in Mr. Barnett’s company on a number of occasions. So what I did was try to strike up a conversation with Stump one day, approaching him a few blocks away after he’d been seen meeting with Mr. Barnett.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you ever learn Stump’s true name?

  ST. JAMES: Yeah, I think I heard it. I believe the backup team found it out at some point, but I honestly don’t remember it.

  Agent St. James described how he’d called to a couple of people within earshot of Stump and asked them if they knew how to get to Big Wilt’s Small’s Paradise. Small’s was a Harlem institution that had opened way back in the 1920s. At some point the basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain had bought into it, hence the name. Everyone in Harlem had heard of it, but none of the people St. James asked knew exactly where it was. Except Stump.

  “It’s up on 135th Street,” he told the stranger. “Over on 7th Avenue.”

  “Which way is that?” St. James had asked him.

  “Where you from, man?”

  “Philly,” St. James had replied.

  “Ain’t got no cheese steaks at Small’s, you know.”

  “Ain’t lookin’ for no cheese steaks,” St. James had laughed, before rubbing both nostrils and sniffing in loudly.

  The gesture hadn’t been lost on Stump. “What is it you might be lookin’ for?” he’d asked. “Little bit a blow?”

  “Nah,” St. James had said. “Blow I can find any ole place. I be lookin’ for some shit, brotha. Some weight.”

  Here Miki Shaughnessey stopped her witness and had him explain a few of his terms. Blow was cocaine, shit was heroin, and weight was a lot of it.

  “How long you in town?” Stump had asked St. James.

  “A few days. A week if I gotta be.”

  “Do yourself a favor,” Stump had told him, “and stay away from Small’s. Place be crawling with the po-leece.”

  “Good to know,” St. James had said.

  “Tell you what,” Stump had offered. “You be back here this same time tomorrow. I see if I can’t hook you up with my man. He jus’ might be able to help you out with what you lookin’ for.”

  St. James had said, “Bet,” meaning he’d be there.

  But before Stump had walked off, he’d issued a warning of sorts to St. James. “’Tween now an’ then,” he’d said, “I be checkin’ you out, makin’ sure you ain’t the Man.”

  The Man, Shaughnessey had St. James explain, was another term for the po-leece, and was definitely not to be confused with my man.

  Several jurors laughed loudly at the distinction, until Jaywalker stared them down. This isn’t funny, he wanted them to know. There’s a man’s freedom on the line here.

  As for Stump’s threat to check out the stranger, it was just that, a threat. Jaywalker knew that from his own undercover days. The same dealer who’d accuse him of being the Man one minute would sell to him the next one. The truth was, nobody ever really bothered to check out anybody. In the world of buying and selling drugs, caution got trumped by greed. Every time out.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened after that?

  ST. JAMES: I met Stump the next day, like he’d suggested. But he said there was a problem. His man was spooked, he told me, and didn’t want to meet me.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What did you take him to mean when he said “spooked”?

  ST. JAMES: Spooked means nervous like, afraid.

  Interesting, thought Jaywalker. If he had the timing down right, this conversation would have taken place at the point where Alonzo Barnett had been telling Clarence Hightower that he couldn’t help him. Not because he was nervous, though, but because he’d given up selling drugs and had no interest in getting back in business. So either Hightower had been deliberately stringing his customer along with a story while he tried to break down Barnett’s resistance, or Agent St. James was now putting his own spin on what Stump had told him. One of them was fudging. But which one? And why?

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened after that?

  ST. JAMES: Me and Stump set up another meet for a couple days later. And at that meet, he told me it was a go, that his man AB—that’s what he called him—had agreed to meet me. So the two of us, me and Stump, we went back to the stoop that evening. He introduced me to AB, and then he left the set.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: He left the set?

  ST. JAMES: Stump. He split. Walked away.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: I see. And the man Stump introduced to you as AB. Do you see him in the courtroom today?

  ST. JAMES: Yes, he’s sitting right over there. [Points]

  THE COURT: Indicating the defendant, Alonzo Barnett. Correct, Mr. Jaywalker?

  JAYWALKER: Absolutely.

  It was always a good idea to concede what you couldn’t contest. It bought you credibility in the eyes of the jury. That way, when you fought over something, the jurors were more likely to take your side.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Did you and the defendant then have a conversation?

  ST. JAMES: Yes. I told him I was up from Philly and looking to score some high-quality heroin. I said I was prepared to buy as much as a kilo, but that I wanted to start small, with a sample, to check out the purity.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: When you said a kilo, what did you mean?

  ST. JAMES: A kilo is a kilogram, a little over two point two pounds, or about thirty-five ounces. It’s a lot of weight, and it can go for as much as forty thousand dollars if it’s uncut.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened next?

  ST. JAMES: The defendant told me to come back the next evening. In the meantime, he said, he was going to talk to his connection.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What’s a connection?

  ST. JAMES: A source of supply. The guy he was getting it from.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: And the following evening, did you do as he instructed you to?

  ST. JAMES: Yes, I did.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: How did you get there?

  ST. JAMES: I drove an unmarked government vehicl
e, a late-model Cadillac.

  Jaywalker looked up from his note-scribbling, suppressing a grin. Just as they had back in his day, DEA agents still seized cars that had been used to facilitate drug deals. Then, after conducting civil forfeiture proceedings, they put the cars into service to use during undercover and surveillance operations. Which was how Jaywalker had once ended up in an almost-brand-new five-speed Corvette, trying to see how fast it would go early one morning on the Harlem River Drive. He’d opened it up pretty good before being flagged over by a motorcycle patrolman, one of those guys in the storm trooper outfits, with the squashed down cap and knee-high boots. “I’ll give you a choice,” the cop had said. “Two tickets for exceeding sixty, or one for going a hundred and twenty.” Sorry, Jaywalker had told him, but he was on the job. An insider’s way of saying he was the Man.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened when you arrived there?

  ST. JAMES: The defendant got in and told me to drive to a particular corner, 127th Street and Broadway.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: What happened there?

  ST. JAMES: He told me to wait while he got out. He walked around the corner and out of my sight. He was gone about twenty minutes. When he came back, he told me that his man refused to meet with me, that he’d deal only with him. So I took a chance. I fronted the defendant a hundred dollars and told him to bring me back a sample.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Fronted?

  ST. JAMES: Gave him the money up front, in advance.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Was there anything special about the money?

  ST. JAMES: Yes, it was what we call Official Advance Funds. Meaning the bills had been photocopied to show the serial numbers. That way, if the backup team recovers any money at the time of an arrest, they can compare the bills to the photocopy for evidentiary purposes.

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Did there come a time when the defendant returned to your car?

  ST. JAMES: Yes. After about another twenty minutes, he came back, got in and told me to drive. When we’d gone a few blocks he handed me an amber-colored glass vial containing a white powder. I thanked him and said I’d be checking it out, and would want more if it was good. We agreed to meet again in two days. I drove him back to his building and dropped him off.

  From there Agent St. James had proceeded to a pre-arranged location, where he met with the backup team. There he field-tested the contents of the vial, watching the re-agent turn a telltale red, indicating a positive reaction for the presence of an opiate. He then turned the evidence over to one of the backup team members for vouchering and a more sophisticated chemical analysis.

  The second of the three buys, according to Agent St. James, followed much the same pattern. The United States chemist had reported that the sample tested out as eighty-one percent heroin, pretty close to pure, and strong enough to drop a user in his tracks were he to cook it and shoot it up uncut. St. James met with Barnett as scheduled and ordered an ounce, which Barnett told him would cost fifteen hundred dollars. A day later they drove back to the same corner, where St. James handed Barnett the money and watched him walk out of view. Twenty minutes later Barnett returned with a small paper bag. Inside the bag was a glassine envelope containing a white powder that turned out to be just over an ounce of eighty percent pure heroin.

  The third buy had taken a little longer to set up. Agent St. James had said he wanted an eighth of a kilo this time. Jaywalker knew the amount arrived at had been no accident. Since an eighth of a kilogram translated to a little more than four ounces, it would bump the case up into the first-degree category, not only for sale but possession, with the mandatory life sentence that an A-1 felony carried.

  After checking with his source, Barnett had reported that an eighth would cost five thousand dollars. St. James said he’d have to go down to Philadelphia to get the money. By the time he “returned” and was ready to make the buy, it was October 5.

  Again St. James picked Barnett up in the Cadillac and drove to 127th Street, where this time he handed Barnett five thousand dollars in prerecorded bills. Again Barnett took the money and disappeared from view. Twenty minutes later—and Jaywalker knew it was no coincidence that it seemed to take twenty minutes each time, since claiming that it had made it easier for the witness to remember—Barnett reappeared. Only this time he never made it to the Cadillac. As Agent St. James watched from behind the wheel, members of the backup team swooped in and made the arrest. St. James, satisfied they had the right man, pulled away from the curb and drove off, just as he would have done had he been a real buyer.

  Shaughnessey had him identify the glass vial from the first sale, and the paper bag and glassine envelope from the second one. The third package, the eighth of a kilo, he’d never seen, of course. Not that Alonzo Barnett hadn’t been charged with selling that, too. The Penal Law conveniently defines sale to mean “sell, exchange, give or dispose of to another, or to offer or agree to do the same.” Next time you share some of your marijuana with a friend or pass him a half-smoked joint, think about it. It’s a sale.

  With that, Shaughnessey announced that she had no further questions and resumed her seat at the prosecution table. Miki Shaughnessey had certainly done her job well, just as Trevor St. James had done his. Okay, so maybe he’d put a bit of a spin on whatever Stump had told him about Barnett’s initial reluctance to deal with him. And perhaps he’d made all of the intervals twenty minutes in order to make things easier to remember on the witness stand. But the bottom line was, the three transactions had gone down pretty much as he described them. Alonzo Barnett had indeed sold him heroin, not just once but three times, if you wanted to count the aborted third sale. And even if you didn’t count it, the backup team witnesses would soon enough testify to Barnett’s possession of the eighth of a kilo, a crime every bit as serious as its sale, and one that carried the identical punishment.

  So no matter how you chose to look at things, Alonzo Barnett had done precisely what the indictment accused him of. And what the indictment accused him of was repeatedly selling fairly substantial amounts of heroin. Not only was that serious stuff, it was bad stuff. But as Jaywalker rose now to begin his cross-examination, he couldn’t afford to think about that, or to ask himself how he could possibly represent someone at trial whom he knew was guilty. Jaywalker had a job to do, and he knew only one way to do it. And that was to pretend that the man sitting next to him at the defense table was his own brother or his own son. Did the fact that he happened to be neither mean that he deserved any less than Jaywalker’s best?

  9

  Tilting at windmills

  “So help me out here, Agent St. James. You were brought up here from Philadelphia because the surveillance team was unable to observe Mr. Barnett making any sales. Is that correct?”

  The witness shifted slightly in his seat before answering, “Only if you want to put it that way.”

  “Well,” said Jaywalker, “you were brought up from Philadelphia, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And the surveillance team had been watching Mr. Barnett. Or, in your words, conducting intensive ongoing surveillance. Right?”

  “Right,” St. James agreed.

  “All twelve of them?”

  “I’m not sure exactly how many—”

  “With binoculars, unmarked cars and secret outposts, no?”

  “If you say so.”

  “How about if Lieutenant Pascarella says so?”

  Miki Shaughnessey’s objection was sustained. Which was just as well, because Jaywalker was ready to move on.

  JAYWALKER: Now, this guy “Stump.” You say you don’t remember his name?

  ST. JAMES: That’s right.

  JAYWALKER: Does the name Clarence Hightower refresh your recollection?

  ST. JAMES: That sounds like it might be it. But remember, I only saw him and spoke to him a couple times.

  JAYWALKER: Know anything about his six-page criminal record?

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Objection.

  ST. JAMES: No.

  THE COURT: Well
, he’s answered the question. He doesn’t know.

  JAYWALKER: In fact, you don’t know much of anything about him. True?

  ST. JAMES: True.

  JAYWALKER: And yet, when Stump told you that Mr. Barnett was “spooked” and didn’t want to meet you, you chose to accept that at face value—

  ST. JAMES: Yes.

  JAYWALKER: —rather than wondering if perhaps Mr. Barnett simply wasn’t interested in helping anyone buy drugs. Correct?

  ST. JAMES: Yes, I believed Stump.

  JAYWALKER: This man you knew nothing about, not even his name?

  ST. JAMES: I believed him.

  Jaywalker moved on to the three transactions themselves. He had no interest in getting the witness to repeat everything he’d said about them on direct. But he did have a point or two he wanted to make. First he wanted to ascertain whether St. James had been the sole undercover operative in the case, or if he’d had a second officer nearby, shadowing his every move. That officer, had there been one, would have been referred to with a highly appropriate designation.

  JAYWALKER: Were you working alone in this case, or did you have a “ghost”?

  ST. JAMES: I was working alone.

  JAYWALKER: No one close by, blending in?

  ST. JAMES: No.

  JAYWALKER: Either for your safety—

  ST. JAMES: No.

  JAYWALKER: —or to confirm that everything you’re telling us is true?

  ST. JAMES: No.

  JAYWALKER: Now, I notice that the third time you wanted to buy heroin, you ordered an eighth of a kilogram.

  ST. JAMES: That’s correct.

  JAYWALKER: Which is just over four ounces and therefore constitutes A-1 felony weight, for both sale and possession. Right?

  SHAUGHNESSEY: Objection.

  THE COURT: Overruled. The witness may answer the question, and then we’ll move to another subject.

  Meaning, no questions about the severity of the sentences involved, which might affect the jurors’ decision.