Bronx Justice. Joseph Teller

      6

      LAST CHANCE

      At the same time as he’d said “I know” to Darren, Jaywalker had taken the file he’d been looking at and slid it across the desk. Darren had picked it up, opened it and begun to read. It took him several moments of total confusion before he began to get it. Then he’d looked up tentatively, the way a boy who thinks just maybe he’s got the answer might look up at his teacher. But only when he’d seen Jaywalker’s smile had he taken permission to smile in return.

      “I’m a shit,” Jaywalker confessed, rising and coming around the desk. “And you owe me a punch in the mouth. The tests didn’t show anything one way or the other. I did that because I needed to be sure.” He withdrew a paper towel from his back pocket, his version of a handkerchief, and offered it to Darren.

      Darren dried his tears unselfconsciously. “That’s okay,” he said. “I just didn’t see how I could’ve flunked it.”

      “You couldn’t have. I’m just sorry I lied to you.”

      “That’s all right, Jay. I won’t even p-p-punch you in the mouth.”

      “You’d better not,” said Jaywalker. “It looks like we may be needing it.”

      

      With the private polygraph lost as a weapon in the defense’s arsenal, and the realization that the district attorney’s test was likely to prove every bit as worthless, Jaywalker turned his efforts to other aspects of the case. He phoned his investigator, John McCarthy, who reported that he’d located all the victims and was ready to move in and interview them in rapid succession. Jaywalker gave him the go-ahead.

      Earlier, Jaywalker had instructed Darren and the other members of the Kingston family to write down everything they could recall about Darren’s whereabouts during August, early September, and the week following Darren being bailed out. Now he collected the notes and studied them, searching desperately for some clue, some tiny lead, to jump from the pages in front of him.

      Nothing did.

      He began spending time in the Castle Hill area. He would change into old clothes before leaving his office at the end of the workday, and instead of heading home to New Jersey, he would aim his Volkswagen for the Bronx. Once up in the projects, he would walk through the lobbies or sit on a park bench or lean idly against a trash can, trying his best to blend in to the landscape. It wasn’t easy, because whites in the area were greatly outnumbered by blacks and Hispanics. Still, Jaywalker’s face was by no means the only white one in sight. And, he reminded himself, Joanne Kenarden and Eleanor Cerami were white, and so were Tania Maldonado and Elvira Caldwell and Maria Sanchez. At least they looked white. So Jaywalker pretended he was one of them. He hung around, waiting for Darren’s double to show up. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself spotting him, following him, jumping him, subduing him and dragging him off to the nearest precinct.

      No double showed up.

      He would get home past dark, in time to eat cold leftovers over the kitchen sink. If he was lucky, he’d get to kiss his daughter good-night before she was asleep. His wife put up with his behavior, but only because by that time she knew him well enough to know he couldn’t help himself.

      

      In mid-November, the mail brought an envelope from the judge in Part 12, containing his decision on Jaywalker’s pretrial motions. As expected, he’d granted the defense a hearing on the propriety of the identification procedures the police had used. He’d left the question of a severance—whether there would be one trial or four—up to the discretion of the trial judge.

      They went back to court at the end of the month. Again the appearance was a brief one. Pope told Justice Davidoff that there was a polygraph examination scheduled at his office the first week of December, and the case was adjourned.

      Out in the corridor, Jaywalker huddled with the Kingston family. Despite the fact that he’d assured them that there would be a postponement, they’d all showed up. Now, while they were talking, Jacob Pope walked over and motioned Jaywalker aside. Pope wore his trademark dark suit, white shirt and red tie. As always, he was all business. He never once smiled, cracked a joke or allowed himself to chuckle at one of Jaywalker’s feeble attempts at humor.

      “So,” he said, “we’re on for the sixth, right?”

      “Right,” said Jaywalker. “I just hope we get an answer, one way or another.”

      “We should,” said Pope. “Lou Paulson is good. Any reason you anticipate a problem?”

      “No,” Jaywalker lied, something that was becoming a bit of a habit lately. “Only that he’s a pretty nervous kid. I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but he’s got a noticeable stutter, and—”

      “I’m aware of it.”

      He said it softly, calmly, but with deadly force. Jaywalker felt the wind knocked out of him. Pope turned and walked away, leaving Jaywalker standing there, dazed. How many of the victims had described the stutter? All of them? What was the difference, really? One would be more than enough to destroy Darren. A physical description was one thing. Height, weight, hair color and complexion were seldom enough to convince a jury. And John McCarthy had already reported finding some discrepancies there.

      But a stutter!

      Jaywalker headed back over to the Kingstons. They looked at him expectantly, too polite to ask what Pope and he had talked about, but obviously wanting to know. Cards on the table, Jaywalker decided. It was how he’d always operated, and how he always would. You told your people everything, even the worst news. Especially the worst news. That was the only way they would ever trust you when the time came to tell them something good. If ever it did. So he told them about the stutter.

      “The detective, R-R-R-Rendell,” said Darren. “He knows I stutter, from arresting me. He c-c-could have told Pope.”

      “Maybe,” Jaywalker agreed. “McCarthy’s out interviewing the victims. We’ll find out soon enough.”

      Still, Jaywalker didn’t like the sound of it. And unlike Darren, he wasn’t prepared to assume that a detective would coach a witness on something like this, not with so much at stake. Sure, cops lied. Jaywalker had learned that early in his DEA days. So did detectives, federal agents, state troopers, and just about everyone else who wore a badge and carried a gun. But they lied selectively. They lied about their own conduct, where they’d cut corners to make a collar stick or a search hold up, or where a case came down to a defendant’s word against one of their own. In those instances, an us-against-them mentality immediately kicked in, and truth became an early casualty. But in cases involving civilian complainants, where the role of law enforcement was more peripheral, lying on the part of the police was the exception, not the rule. Besides, Detective Rendell had impressed Jaywalker as being fair. “She IDs him or she doesn’t,” he’d said the morning they were waiting in court for Joanna Kenarden to show up and have a look at Darren. “If he’s not the guy, I don’t want him.”

      No, if the victims were saying the rapist had stuttered, Jaywalker was willing to believe them. Which could mean only one thing, he knew.

      Again, the pendulum had swung. Jaywalker had done it again. He’d allowed himself to be taken in, to be completely won over by Darren’s I didn’t do it, by his tears and open palms. Would he never learn? Just when he thought himself too hardened and cynical to be conned, along comes this twenty-two-year-old kid who can’t even pass a polygraph, and he turns Jaywalker into the easiest mark in town.

      He felt like a total jerk.

      

      John McCarthy called three days later. He’d succeeded in interviewing two of the victims, Eleanor Cerami and Elvira Caldwell. He’d been refused by one, Joanne Kenarden. Tania Maldonado was out of town, but would be back in a day or two. As for the fourteen-year-old, Maria Sanchez, her parents wouldn’t let her talk to anybody.

      “Both of these girls, Cerami