"Rikers isn't so bad," Myra said. "Compared to the real prisons upstate—Green Haven, Sing Sing—it's a weekend in the Hamptons. There're bad guys there who couldn't make bail on a hard-core felony, but they're heading to trial and they've got an incentive to behave. Everybody else who's there has been sentenced to under a year, meaning they're unlikely to be violent."
"I'm sure you get used to hanging out in jail," I said. "I just haven't had the opportunity to do so."
"It's bullshit that Lorenzo's being held on a case this thin," Myra said as she pulled onto I-278, which would take us out of Brooklyn, through Queens, and into the Bronx. "The judge wouldn't grant bail because of all the reporters in the courtroom, didn't want to see himself on the front page for letting loose the college-student killer. His only hook was that the police didn't find Lorenzo for a few days after they'd issued an arrest warrant, which he took to mean flight risk. How's that make him a fucking flight risk? He had four days to get out of town and they arrest him going into his apartment. If anything, he's proven he won't leave, even when given motive and opportunity."
"Did you argue that?"
"I thought about it," Myra said. "So, no offense, but I really don't get why Isaac decided to put you on a murder case. I'd been working as a PD for over three years before I had my first murder. I spent my first eighteen months doing nothing but juvie-court delinquent proceedings. Where'd you go to law school?"
"Why?"
"I bet you went to an Ivy League, didn't you?"
"What does it matter?"
"Harvard?"
"Columbia, actually. Why?"
"I knew it!" Myra exclaimed. "That explains why Isaac is putting you on this case. Even though he's a socialist, he's also such a total Ivy League snob. I mean, how fucked-up is that?"
"Every socialist I've ever met has also been an Ivy League snob," I replied.
"I'm just saying that guys like you don't necessarily pay your full dues. I went to Brooklyn Law School. People hear I'm a public defender, they assume it's because I couldn't get a real job. People hear you're a public defender and they assume you've got the world's greatest soul."
"I was a lawyer for four and a half years before I became a public defender," I protested, although my license had actually been suspended for those final six months. "Isaac told me when I started that I'd probably be able to move on to more serious cases after six months or so."
"So you go from arraignments to a murder case," Myra said. "Whatever. It's Isaac's call."
"Is there some reason you don't want me on this case?"
"I haven't had a second chair on any of my cases. Why is Isaac giving me one now?"
"So you can mentor me?" I said, which got me a quick sardonic look.
"It's because he thinks I'm rattled by the Gibbons case. He thinks my focus isn't there. Essentially you are a no-confidence vote in me."
"You don't really know that."
"Yes, I do."
"What Isaac told me is that it's a high-profile case, given the victim. I don't see why that's not a good enough reason to have me on board."
"I have my way of doing things. I'm not a supervisor, I'm not a trainer, I'm a trial lawyer. I run on instincts, and can't always explain why I do what I do, and don't have the time or inclination to try."
"Look, I'm just happy to be on the team, okay?"
"But that's the point," Myra said. "There is no team. This is my case."
WE DIDN'T talk much on the rest of the drive. As we finally approached the bridge that led to the jail we pulled into a parking lot and went to a wooden trailer, where we got our passes for entering Rikers. It looked to me like a border checkpoint between third-world countries. I felt a sort of joy at the sordidness of it all, that part of me that responded to being a criminal defense lawyer in a way I had no interest in analyzing.
We got back into the car and drove over the bridge, planes taking off from LaGuardia on our right side. Rikers wasn't what I had expected: the Los Angeles of jails, it was sprawling, disconnected, a bunch of buildings spread out haphazardly across a moody landscape.
We parked in a crowded lot and entered the squat control center. The room was crowded with people trying to get in to see prisoners. I followed Myra to the window for attorneys, where she handed over our passes and filled out a visitation card. The guard stamped our hands and gave us plastic tokens identifying us as lawyers.
Myra led the way out of the main building and back outside. There were seagulls everywhere, used to humans and ignoring our presence. We waited for a bus that took us to the facility where Lorenzo was being held.
Finally we ended up in an interview room, waiting for Lorenzo to be brought in. The room was small, drastically overheated, two chairs on one side of a metal desk, one chair on the other. One wall was a window, two court officers dimly visible on the other side—one had maybe just told the punch line to a joke; both were laughing.
Myra and I waited in near silence for ten minutes. I felt my nerves clutch; looking at Myra I could tell she felt it too, even with her experience. I supposed you never got completely used to sitting in the hostile space of a jail, waiting for a man accused of murder.
Myra filled the time reviewing the papers that made up our initial file; not knowing what else to do, I did the same. Finally the door behind us opened with a protracted metallic screech, and we turned to face our client.
I didn't know what exactly I'd been expecting, but Lorenzo Tate was not it. Perhaps more than anything I'd expected someone intimidating, and Lorenzo certainly wasn't that. He was relatively short, for one thing, under five-eight, and was smiling at us boyishly, looking more like a salesman than an accused murderer. He had fairly light skin, with a noticeable birthmark, a dark bruise-colored discoloration on the upper edge of his face, just above and to the side of his right eye.
Myra introduced me to Lorenzo and we all shook hands. She then launched into a brief overview of how having a public defender worked. The small, stuffy room was even more uncomfortable with Lorenzo in it; I felt myself starting to sweat. Myra asked Lorenzo if he could afford to retain a lawyer.
"How much would I be paying?" Lorenzo asked.
"Prices vary pretty widely. But for a murder case, if it actually goes to trial, I would think even the cheap side's going to be around fifty thousand," Myra said.
Lorenzo looked disappointed by this answer. He glanced down and shook his head. "No disrespect to you all, but do I need to be getting the money for a real lawyer?"
"To be honest, Mr. Tate, fifty thousand dollars wouldn't buy you a lawyer that's half as good as we are," Myra said, no hint of bragging in her voice. "Obviously this is a big decision, and you should do what you feel comfortable with. I'm not trying to sell you anything—I get paid the same whether you become my client or not. But don't hire a lawyer just because you've heard generally bad things about public defenders. Because we, in particular, are good."
Lorenzo was watching Myra carefully as she spoke. When she was done Lorenzo looked over to me, which made me aware that I was smiling slightly. I decided to let myself smile. I was enjoying this. After a long moment Lorenzo nodded.
"That's all right then," Lorenzo said. "I'm gonna be with you all."
"Then before we get started, I want to tell you two things," Myra said. "First, you should tell us everything you know, bad or good, that the DA's likely to know or find out. Anything they know that we don't is going to put us at a big disadvantage. We're here to help you, not to judge you, and we can't do that if we don't know what we need to know.
"Second, we're the only people you should talk to about this case. And I mean the only people, and I mean anything about this case. Someone here asks you what you're in for, you tell them traffic tickets. Anything you say to anybody who isn't in this room right now can come back to haunt us. You understand?"
"I feel you," Lorenzo said.
"Okay. I'd like to start just by getting a little background about who you are, before we get i
nto the case itself," Myra said. "Were you born in New York?"
"I was raised up in the Gardens," Lorenzo said. "You know Glenwood Gardens? Off of Avenue I out in Midwood?"
"I don't," Myra said.
"We the old-school kinda project," Lorenzo said. "A big old compound of high-rises. Ain't no garden there neither."
Myra nodded. "And is that where you still live?"
"I'm up out of the project now," Lorenzo said. "Got me a place on the avenue."
"Did you finish high school, Mr. Tate?"
"No, ma'am," Lorenzo said. I couldn't believe my ears: an accused murderer from the projects had just called Myra "ma'am." I was taking notes while Myra asked the questions, and I wrote that down.
"Do you have a job?"
Lorenzo smiled a little, his head bobbing and weaving slightly. "Do you want to know what I do for green, even if I don't pay no taxes on it, you know what I'm saying?"
I did, and a quick glance told me that Myra did too. "You mean if you make money doing something that isn't legal, should you admit that to us?" she asked.
Lorenzo again with his boyish smile. I guessed that our client did all right with the ladies. "I know you can't turn me in or nothin'," Lorenzo said. "I just don't know if you want to know."
"Everything you tell us is privileged," Myra said. "Meaning exactly, we can't be forced to turn you in—unless you tell us about a crime you are planning to commit in the future. The other factor, though, is we pretty much can't let you say something on the witness stand that we know not to be true. So, for example, if you confess that you committed the murder in this case, we'd be limited in how we could let you testify in court that you didn't do it. Understand?"
"You don't have to worry about me confessing to no murder," Lorenzo said. "'Cause I sure enough didn't cap no mother's son. I ain't never shot me no gun in my life."
"Good," Myra said, although I could tell that our client's protestations of innocence didn't mean much to her. Defendants almost always insisted on their innocence to their lawyers, even when doing so was both laughable and unnecessary. The standard office theory was that clients assumed a PD wouldn't work as hard for someone we knew was guilty. What the clients failed to reckon with was that all PDs knew that the vast majority of our clients were, in fact, guilty. "In terms of how you made money, I think it's important enough that we know that you should tell us, even if it means admitting to something illegal."
"You can't come up through the Gardens and not be in the life. And when I was coming up the life meant slinging rock. Wasn't like you could come up through the Gardens and not sling some rock. But I got that shit behind me, and I ain't never looked back at it."
"Okay," Myra said. "You ever get busted?"
Lorenzo shook his head.
"Never?" Myra said, not trying to hide her skepticism.
"When I was out on the street, nobody cared about making no busts up in the Gardens. I got off the street soon as I was able, and I stayed off. I'm, like, all deep in the background now. Plus, these days I just be involved with the chronic. Ain't nowhere near the same green, but motherfuckers ain't getting capped over no Buddha."
"You're saying you're just involved with pot?" I asked.
Lorenzo nodded. "Got me this fine hydro shit, don't even have to bring it in from outside the city. It's like a bud grows in Brooklyn, know what I'm saying?"
"Well," Myra said, "it will certainly be helpful that you don't have a criminal record."
Lorenzo grinned his charmer's grin. "Knew there must be some reason I be keeping myself clean all this time," he said.
We all smiled at this. I found myself liking Lorenzo.
"Do you remember where you were on the night of April 6?" Myra asked.
Lorenzo nodded and leaned forward. "I been thinking on that. I was chillin' with my boy Marcus—I was at his crib until two in the morning or thereabouts."
"What were you two doing?"
There was a pause, and Lorenzo looked away. "Marcus and me, we're, like, on the same team, you know what I'm saying?"
Myra narrowed her eyes a little. "I'm not sure I do," she said after a moment. I didn't either: I wasn't sure if Lorenzo was revealing Marcus to be a fellow dealer or a boyfriend, but guessed the former was the more likely. "Do you mean you work together?"
Lorenzo smiled and nodded.
"That may mean he's not our ideal alibi witness," Myra deadpanned. "Do you know if Marcus has ever been busted?"
"Marcus just ain't as lucky as I am," Lorenzo said. "He's gone down a couple of times."
Myra didn't try to hide her disappointment. "A good alibi isn't necessary, although it certainly never hurts," she said.
"I was with Marcus till late that night," Lorenzo insisted.
"It's not that I don't believe you," Myra said. "But if we put Marcus on the stand and his record comes up, stuff about drug dealing, it doesn't make you look very good by association."
"I got you," Lorenzo said after a moment. "But it's still the truth."
"Okay," Myra said. "The police didn't arrest you until four days after the shooting. Did you know they were looking for you?"
"I'd heard about how the five-oh be looking to snatch me up on that," Lorenzo said. "So I kept myself on the low."
"How did they come to arrest you?"
"I finally go by my crib, see if I can get me some clothes, the po-po be watching my place; next thing is I'm in the system. Wouldn't never have happened that way if that white boy hadn't been capped."
"Do you know Devin Wallace?"
"Devin and I go back a ways, sure."
"And had you ever met the deceased?" Myra asked.
"The white boy?"
"His name was Seth Lipton," Myra said, a little coldly. She clearly thought Lorenzo should bother to remember the name of the person he was accused of killing.
"Never met the man," Lorenzo said. "He must've been copping."
"Why do you say that?" Myra said.
Lorenzo smiled. "He gonna have some other reason for being up in the Gardens?"
Myra responded with a noncommittal nod. "So you and Devin, you were friends?"
"We was all right."
"Not friends, but friendly?"
"Yeah," Lorenzo said. "Like that."
"Is that accurate?"
"We was all right," Lorenzo said again.
"How did you know Devin?"
Lorenzo fixed Myra with a careful look, then looked over at me. "How come you let her do all the talking?" he asked.
"I'm the second chair," I said. "It's Myra's case."
"That right," Lorenzo said, a slight skepticism creeping into his look now. I guessed that Lorenzo's opinion of my stature as a man had just plummeted.
"That's the way we work it," I said, feeling that I needed to cut this boys-against-girls crap off at the pass. "I'll be involved with every aspect of your case, but Myra's in charge. I think the question she asked you was how you knew Devin."
Lorenzo smiled at this. "We did some business together. I keep Devin hooked up with the chronic. I'm all out of the on-the-street shit, but I know people. I bring things together like. That's how come I'm still alive and never went to the joint: I ain't about declaring war and shit, getting all up in other people's business. I go along to get along."
"So you supplied Devin with drugs," Myra said evenly.
"Just with the chronic, though. I ain't touchin' that serious shit."
Myra leaned back in her seat and let a moment pass. There was only so much admitting to criminal activity we wanted from our client right off the bat. "Okay," Myra said. "How about this woman who said she saw you at the shooting? Do you know her?"
"Yo-Yo?" Lorenzo said. "I know who she is from around the Gardens and what-all, but I don't think we ever talked none."
"You don't think you've ever actually spoken with her?" Myra said, leaning forward slightly. "Not once?"
Lorenzo shook his head. "She and I never said word one."
"But it wo
uldn't surprise you that she knew who you were?"
"Course she'd know who I was if I know who she was. People know me up there."
Myra took a beat, clearly wondering if she wanted to follow up on that. It profited a defense lawyer nothing to hear the bad news from the prosecution, or worse still, in court, rather than from our client, where there might still be time to blunt the damage. On the other hand, knowing too much of the truth could limit our options. "When you say people know you up there, what do you mean?"
Perhaps realizing he'd gone further then he intended to, Lorenzo retreated back to his boyish charm. "I was around, is all," Lorenzo said. "The Gardens is where I come up."
"Do you think someone like Yolanda would know that you were in business with Devin?"
"Yo-Yo knew that, sure. Shorty was with Devin, at least from time to time."
Myra frowned at this, locking eye contact with Lorenzo. "Are you saying that Devin and Yolanda were a couple?"
"I don't know about no couple, but yeah, they was together."
Myra shut her eyes for a second, taking this in. "The eyewitness was dating the intended victim?" she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.
Lorenzo noticed her reaction. "That some kind of shit for you to work with?" he asked.
Myra nodded slowly. "It changes things. The bad side is, the jury might be likely to pay more attention to someone who was emotionally affected by the shootings. It probably also changes how aggressively we can cross her. The good news is, it potentially gives her a reason to lie, or at least to try and seem more certain than she otherwise would, that a complete stranger wouldn't have."
"Why does being Devin's shorty give Yo-Yo a reason to lie?" Lorenzo asked.
"It doesn't, necessarily," Myra said. "But it gives us something to investigate. Maybe she knows who really did the shooting and she's lying to protect him. Hell, maybe she did it. The thing is, with a complete stranger, there'd be no way to really claim that she was lying, because there's no reason why she would."
Lorenzo considered this. "So it helps us or it don't?" he asked.
"Too soon to say," Myra said. "But it certainly changes things. Tell me more about their relationship."
A Cure for Night Page 4