by Teri Woods
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1986
Bamboozled
The State of Pennsylvania v. Bernard Guess
Day One
Nard used all of his man power to contain himself as he sat pensive and breathless, the inside walls of the courtroom spinning emotionlessly. His mind was racing a thousand miles a minute as he saw his life flash in front of him. No way, this isn’t happening. What is she doing? I’ll go to jail for the rest of my life. It was all he could think as he locked his eyes down on the witness, Daisy Mae Fothergill. She was sitting calmly on the stand, nodding ever so slightly as she leaned into the microphone giving answer after answer.
“Ms. Fothergill, you say today that you never saw my client, Bernard Guess, before, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“However, this is your signature, is that correct?” Bobby DeSimone asked as he swiftly walked back over to his table, picked up an investigative report he had marked as Exhibit A.
“Yes,” Daisy Mae calmly responded.
“Your Honor, I would like this to be marked as Exhibit A,” he said, handing the document over to the judge.
“In this document you state that the defendant was with you on the night in question, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“So, now today you’ve changed your mind and you want us to believe that you were lying then?” He arched his eyebrows and gaped at her. Then he purposely faced the jury, still waiting for her answer.
“I was paid to say what I said.”
“So you can be bought, is that your answer, Ms. Fothergill?”
“Objection, Your Honor, completely inappropriate,” said the district attorney as he quickly stood up and faced the court.
“Sustained, watch it, DeSimone!”
“For the record, just one more question, Your Honor?” DeSimone interjected, asking the court’s permission in a single breath. He cleared his throat and then began where he had just left off. “Why should we believe you now?”
“I’ve told the truth here today.”
“Are you sure no one paid you, Ms. Fothergill?”
“Objection, Your Honor.”
“Sustained.”
“No more questions, Your Honor,” said DeSimone, strolling over to his chair and seating himself behind the table next to Nard.
Even with DeSimone’s tricky and clever line of questioning, Nard’s heart continued to sink along with his fate as he bent his head and stared into his lap. She didn’t do it. She didn’t give me the alibi. His eyes were piercing as he pondered choking the daylights out of her. He looked at DeSimone.
I thought she had me covered. Sticks said she had me covered. What the fuck am I going to do now?
“Will you be re-examining, Mr. Zone?”
“Yes, thank you, Your Honor.”
“Ms. Fothergill, you said that you were paid to make the statements you formerly made to the private investigator hired on behalf of the defendant, correct?”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone bribe you or pay you today?”
“No.”
“The statements that you have made today, you’ve made of your own free will.”
“Yes, that is correct.”
“Are you absolutely positive the defendant was not with you on the night in question?”
“I’m positive. He was not with me on the night in question.”
“No more questions, Your Honor.”
“You may step down, Ms. Fothergill,” the judge ordered as Daisy stood up and stepped down three stairs to the floor level of the courtroom.
She glanced at Nard’s face. God, he looks so mad, she thought as Detective Tommy Delgado and his partner, Merva Ross, took her by the arm and led her out the courtroom.
Inside the courtroom, Nard could be heard screaming at the top of his lungs.
“That’s it? She just gets to leave?” said Nard, loudly enough for the entire courtroom to hear.
DeSimone looked over at the jury. Their expressions said a thousand words. Daisy Mae Fothergill had just shot a missile into his battleship, and now, thanks to his client’s outburst, it was sinking.
Seated four rows behind Nard and his lawyer, a family was rejoicing and a woman’s voice could be heard.
“That’s what you get! That’s just what you get for killing my brother! You know you was up in that house and you the one that killed him!” the girl shouted, now standing on her feet, ready to jump the four pews and pounce on Nard for the death of her brother, Jeremy Tyler.
“Who the fuck is you talking to?” Nard barked at the girl, ready to jump back at her, her family, and anybody else who had something slick to say out their mouth.
“Counsel, control your client!” ordered Judge Means, banging his gavel on a solid, round wooden plate.
“I’m talking to you. You know you killed my brother,” the girl screamed back, tears streaming down her face. Her mother, sister, and two brothers held her back. Her oldest brother, Wink, put his arms around her, holding her firmly to his side.
“Be easy, Leslee. You whylin’, man, relax. I’m gonna get the boy, him and his whole fucking family,” whispered Wink in his sister’s ear as he gripped her by her arm, letting her know to check herself.
“I don’t need any more attention drawn to this courtroom.” The judge was banging his gavel, calling for order. The jurors were completely caught up in the courtroom soap opera. The entire case was already a fiasco with the media, cameras and news reporters looking for a story to headline the nightly news every day. “Young lady, do I need to have you removed from this court?”
“Naw, we sorry, Your Honor,” said her brother Wink as he flagged the judge to continue. “She good, she not gonna say nothing else,” he added, as the courtroom turned and looked at Wink and the other members of the Tyler family.
“Any more outbursts made in this court by anyone and you will be removed.” Then the judge looked at the jury. “You are to disregard the outbursts and opinions of third parties in this court and the outburst of the defendant as well,” he said.
“I can’t believe this bitch just hung me,” Nard whispered while the judge was still directing the jury.
“Nard, calm down, you don’t want to do this, not here, not now!” said DeSimone, looking at him as if he was his father.
“She just hung me!” he hissed through his teeth for DeSimone’s ears.
“Look at me!” DeSimone ordered. “I said, not here, not now. You got that, kid? Not now!” DeSimone gripped his shoulders with both hands.
“Get hold of your client, counsel, or I’ll remove him indefinitely from the hearing proceedings. Do you understand?” bellowed the judge.
“Yes, Your Honor, I understand,” said DeSimone, turning to face the court. He could feel Nard’s muscles begin to relax. “Come on, trust me, you gotta trust me.”
Nard’s mother, Beverly, looked at him. She gave him a look that said, “Knock it off, boy, or so help me God.” She had a way of piercing him with her eyes as a look of discontent crossed her face, and no matter how old Nard got, that look always said, “It’s about to be your ass,” and he calmed himself as his eyes met his mother’s. Beverly simply was tired of Nard getting in trouble. It was hard raising him without a fa
ther. He had a man in his life, his uncle Ray Ray, who had lived with Nard and Beverly for the past twelve years, but still, here he was in the most unimaginable trouble he could ever be in. And she was there every day in that courtroom with him, fighting for his life. Beverly didn’t want to see her son imprisoned like a caged animal. She didn’t care what or who, how or when, she wanted her baby home, and deep down inside that was all she was praying for.
“Court is adjourned till tomorrow at nine o’clock in the morning.” The judge banged his gavel, the bailiff instructed the courtroom to stand, and the judge removed himself.
Barry Zone, the district attorney prosecuting Nard, simply looked over at DeSimone, smiling like a sly fox at the thought of DeSimone and his criminal-minded client being scolded by the judge. You should have taken my plea offer when you had the chance. Yeah, you really should have taken that plea. He couldn’t help but think that, and he knew DeSimone had to be thinking the same thing at that very moment. Of course Barry Zone didn’t say a word. Instead, he bent his head and pretended to be sorting through his day planner.
Who the fuck does this asshole think he’s looking at? DeSimone thought as he looked over to his right at Zone playing with his court documents. He grabbed his briefcase and walked out of the courtroom. What a day, he thought as he answered his cell phone. Just as he answered his phone, a voice from behind him called out his name. He heard another person shouting in his direction. And he could also hear his fiancée demanding he respond to her on the other end of his oversized cell phone.
“Excuse me, Mr. DeSimone, one quick question?” said the voluptuous, blonde, and very attractive Gina Davenworth, hustling for her next paycheck as she quickly approached him.
“Hey, DeSimone, your client has no alibi, what do you think his outcome will be?” shouted another reporter from his left.
“Babe, I’ll call you right back.” DeSimone disconnected the call that Davenworth’s voice had interrupted.
“Do you guys mind? That was my girlfriend?” he said as he stared at Gina Davenworth’s breasts. If not for that one tiny button on her blouse, her perfect size Cs would pop right out of her shirt and say hello to him personally. As other reporters hovered and pushed one another, Davenworth’s body pressed up against Bobby DeSimone’s as she closed in on him, her pen and paper still in hand.
“Do you think your client will accept District Attorney Barry Zone’s plea in light of today’s testimony?” she asked from her soft butter-pink lips as she batted her aquamarine baby blues at him.
“No comment,” he huffed at her, rolling his eyes, before busting through the pack of thirsty reporters, out the double glass doors of the courthouse, and onto the courthouse steps. She wants me, he thought to himself as he picked up his phone and dialed his fiancée back. He stood on the corner of Thirteenth Street. He looked up at the sky as he heard her answer.
“Hey, babe, I think I just had the worst day of my life. You’re not going to believe it. If I don’t come up with a master plan, I’m gonna lose. I’m really gonna lose…big, and I never lose, Jo. You know I never lose.”
“I know, Bobby, I know,” was all she could say. Joanne offered a sympathetic ear and listened carefully to his every word, and she was of course genuinely interested, but Bobby made the final call on everything, including her.
“I’ve got to get home and go back through this case. There has to be a way to get this kid off, there’s got to be.”
I Spy
Across from the courthouse in a parking lot sat an old rusty navy blue van with black-tinted windows. Liddles, the owner and driver of the van, sat parked all the way in the back of the lot where no one would pay him any mind. He had a pair of binoculars sitting on the seat next to him, and a McDonald’s bag filled with the leftovers and garbage from lunch. The van was thirteen years old, the heat and air were on the brink, and he didn’t have a radio. However, he was riding around with a tiny boom box the size of a sneaker box in the backseat, minus the batteries. Liddles had been sitting in the back of the lot inconspicuously for the past five hours, from 10:00 a.m. to 3:12 in the afternoon. He was patient and had been ever since the death of his brother, Poncho. Don’t worry, Poncho, they will all get what they deserve. Every day he sat parked in the same spot, watching and waiting.
A young woman, dressed casually in a pair of dark brown slacks, lightweight jacket, and a tan button-down blouse, walked across the street and through the parking lot and hopped into the van.
“Damn, my head is itching,” she said, pulling the passenger door closed and taking a brown, curly wig off her head as she began to scratch her scalp. “I don’t know how them girls be wearing these things. This damn wig was tearing my head up in that courtroom.”
“Put that back on, I don’t want you recognized,” he said, not wanting to put her in harm’s way. “What happened today?”
“Oh, boy, it was a mess in there today,” she said, following his instructions and putting the wig back on her head.
“What, what happened?” Liddles asked, as if the two of them were staring at a soap opera.
Karla-Jae, Liddles’s little sister, gave him the 411 and lowdown on all the courtroom drama.
“Well, first of all the flower girl didn’t give Nard the alibi like she was supposed to.”
“What the fuck you mean, she didn’t give him the alibi? He’s going to jail?”
“Yup, it looks bad,” she said, moving the story forward. “No, I swear to God, then some girl jumped up in the back of the courtroom and started screaming at Nard that he killed her brother. It was terrible,” the girl said, eyes wider than Betty Boop’s and just as serious as a heart attack as she patted her head, which was still itching.
“So, you mean to tell me, the girl said Nard wasn’t with her? And some other girl was screaming Nard killed her brother?” asked Liddles, putting two and two together.
“Yup,” said Karla-Jae, thinking back to the look on Nard’s face before all the commotion. “Nard couldn’t believe it. I thought he was going to jump over the table and rip the girl’s heart out or something when she got on the stand. You should have seen the look on his face. Nard is bent right now, believe that, real bent.”
“Wow,” said Liddles, unable to believe a word his sister was saying. He kept trying to fathom the meaning of it all. He just couldn’t believe that Nard’s alibi had turned stale. “And who was the girl again? The one saying Nard killed her brother?” asked Liddles.
“How would I know?” asked Karla-Jae, frowning at Liddles, not understanding why he was making her sit in the courtroom every day anyway. “Oou, look! There she go, with her crazy family, right there,” said Karla-Jae. “Look at him. He was in there, too, right next to her. All of them be in there every day,” she said, giving up more information for Liddles to register.
Karla-Jae looked over at her brother, who watched the family through his binoculars, an older woman accompanied by two guys and three young women walking down the steps of the courthouse.
“You know you is crazy, right?” Karla-Jae asked, patting her head, then ruffling her shoulder-length mane, as she swung her hair from side to side, like the girls in the shampoo commercials.
Liddles paid his sister no mind and watched as the family made their way across the street and walked into the parking lot to where the attendant’s booth was located. He watched through the binoculars as one of the guys pulled a thick wad of cash out of his front pocket and paid for his ticket. Within a few minutes a gray Oldsmobile was brought to them. He looked at the Pennsylvania tag on the vehicle.
“Kay-Jae, write down this number…PDA-31K,” said Liddles as he watched the Oldsmobile turn out of the parking lot. He started the van and followed the car as it turned onto Twelfth Street.
“Where we going?” asked Karla-Jae.
“Write down that tag,” he bossed with authority as she searched the van’s middle armrest console for a pen. She did as he told her, just as his oversized cell phone rang.
&n
bsp; Wink and his family had no idea they were being followed home. The thought never hit Wink. His mind was too focused on Nard, who was on trial for killing his brother, Jeremy Tyler. Wink and his mother sat in the front of the car while Leslee, Linda, Joan, and Miles had all piled into the back.
“Did you see his face when that girl got up there?” asked Leslee, laughing at Nard.
“God don’t like ugly,” said Mom Tyler.
“Oh, no, he gonna get his for what he did,” said Wink, certain of that. He already had scoped out Nard’s mother. He planned on giving Nard a dose of reality. He wanted to let Nard know that he could get at him, through his family, never thinking that someone wanted to get at his.
“He can forget it now,” said Mom Tyler. “I don’t think that boy stands much of a chance after what happened today. He’s going to jail and that’s just what he deserves,” the woman said as she wiped a tear from her eye.
“Mom, don’t cry,” said Wink as he slowed the car just a bit, extending his arm and patting his mother’s back.
“I’m all right, I just miss my baby,” she said, thinking of her second-born child, Jeremy. “I sure do miss my son,” she said, wishing her son were still alive and wanting nothing more than to see his killer spend the rest of his life behind bars.
“Look, they turning, fool,” said Karla-Jae, pointing at the Oldsmobile turning the corner.
“Damn, why you ain’t say nothing?” he fussed back at her, missing the turn the Oldsmobile had just made.
“Let me call you back,” said Liddles as he hung up on Cassie, his daughter’s mom. He dropped the phone, quickly banged the next right, and tried to double back to see if he could catch them. He couldn’t, though, because the car was nowhere in sight.
He looked at his sister as if she were at fault. Liddles was so heated that he had lost the Oldsmobile, he banged the side of his fist down on the steering wheel, causing the horn to blow.
“Don’t be mad at me. You the one that can’t follow a car that’s right in front of you,” Karla-Jae said, hoping she could go home now. She had a date with her boyfriend Dalvin and didn’t have time to be on no I Spy mission with her brother.