The Tenth Case

11

DID YOU SAY BAIL?

“Samara Tannenbaum,” read the clerk, “you have been indicted for the crime of murder, and other crimes. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”

“Not guilty,” said Samara.

This was the moment when Jaywalker would normally ask the judge for bail. But they were in front of Carolyn Berman again. She was the one who’d frozen Samara’s bank account last month, then modified it only to the extent of allowing her to retain counsel at the rate of seventy-five dollars an hour. Besides, she was a woman, and experience had taught Jaywalker that, as a rule, women judges were tougher on women defendants than male judges were. It was a rule that took on even more meaning when the defendant happened to be not only a woman, but a young, pretty woman, and one of immense privilege.

So Jaywalker said nothing.

He liked saying nothing, another fact that set him apart from every other lawyer he knew. He especially liked saying nothing at a time like this, when the media were assembled in the audience behind him—the print reporters, the gossip columnists, the entertainment-show beauties and the sketch artists peering over their pads in their bifocals. Afterward, outside the courtroom, when they would follow him, train their floodlights on him and poke their microphones in his face, he would elaborate on saying nothing and tell them, “No comment.”

“Part 51,” said the clerk. “Judge Sobel.”

At last they’d caught a break of sorts. Matthew Sobel was a gentle person, a judge who wore his robe with modesty, and treated lawyers and defendants with respect. While he was no “Cut-’em-loose” Bruce Wright, or Murray “Why-are-you-bringing-me-this-piece-of-shit-case?” Mogel from the old days, you could count on getting a fair trial in front of him, and ending up with a reasonable sentence even if you lost. What’s more, he was open-minded on the issue of bail. And he was a man.

“Judge Sobel asks that you pick a Tuesday,” said Judge Berman.

“How’s tomorrow?” Jaywalker asked.

“Too soon.”

Again that old problem of papers having to make their way from one courtroom to another, in this case from the eleventh floor all the way up to the thirteenth.

“A week from tomorrow?”

“Fine,” said Judge Berman. “Next case.”

Afterward Jaywalker met with Samara. This time, however, they enjoyed the semiprivacy of a holding pen, a close cousin of a feeder pen. Since Samara was the only woman who’d been brought down for court so far that morning, she had the pen to herself, and they spoke through the bars, close enough to touch—a fact that Jaywalker was acutely aware of.

After hearing the conditions of his suspension, the weekend had rejuvenated him somewhat. It had also given him a chance to get over his annoyance at Samara’s apparent lack of concern over Barry’s blood having been found on the items hidden in her town house. He leaned forward against the bars and spoke to her in hushed tones. She, the better part of a foot shorter than he, listened intently, her face turned upward, her eyes meeting his, her lips silently mouthing his words as if to commit them to memory.

They spoke for twenty minutes like that, until a corrections officer interrupted them to explain that he had to bring Samara back upstairs, so they could use the holding pen for an “obso,” a mental case, someone who had to be segregated from the general population and kept under observation.

Riding down the elevator and walking out into the mid-morning daylight, all Jaywalker could think of was Lynne Stewart, the lawyer who’d made news by getting caught on tape and sent off to federal prison for things she’d said to her client during a jailhouse visit.

What am I doing? he asked himself.

Talk about an obso.

A week went by. Jaywalker managed to dispose of the first case on his list of ten and dutifully reported the fact to the disciplinary committee judge monitoring his progress. Outdoors, there was a noticeable chill in the air each morning, prompting him to put away his two summer suits for warmer ones, and the October evenings seemed to settle in earlier and earlier with each passing day. At home alone in his apartment, Jaywalker found he was filling his tumbler of Kahlúa a little fuller each night, and draining it a little more quickly.

A copy of the DNA report arrived in the mail from Tom Burke, confirming the fact that the blood found on the knife, the blouse and the towel found in Samara Tannenbaum’s town house had indeed been her late husband’s, to a certainty factor of 12,652,189,412 to 1.

Samara continued to be brought over from Rikers Island each morning and returned each evening. In between her bus trips, Jaywalker saw her each day in the twelfth-floor counsel visit room. They talked very little about her case, even less about her chances of being granted bail on her next appearance. But he could see she was doing her homework, holding up her end of the bargain. The shadows beneath her eyes had darkened and widened into deep hollows. Her hair had taken on an unwashed, dead quality. Her lips had dried and cracked, and the lower one had shrunk visibly, until it was now almost normal in size.

She was, in a word, wasting, wasting away before his eyes, like some third-world refugee from a famine or a plague.

“Perfect,” he told her.

They made their first appearance before Judge Sobel the following Tuesday. The media was barely in evidence this time. Jaywalker’s strategy of keeping their courtroom sessions as brief as possible and saying nothing quotable afterward had evidently had its desired effect. And by delaying his arrival to the late afternoon, daring those who’d showed up early to wait around all day, he’d managed to thin their ranks even more.

A judge’s courage tends to grow, Jaywalker had learned, in inverse proportion to the size of his audience. Fill a courtroom with spectators and press, and even the best judge, even a Matthew Sobel, will posture and play to them, however subtly and even unconsciously. Wait until the end of the day, when the rows of benches have emptied, and your chances of getting what you need for your client multiply almost exponentially.

“Is your client all right?”

Those were literally the first words out of the judge’s mouth, upon seeing Samara brought into the courtroom.

“No,” said Jaywalker. “Actually, she’s not.”

Samara was permitted to sit at the defense table, facing the judge. Sobel had no doubt seen photographs of her; everyone had. But the photographs unfailingly depicted a stunningly beautiful woman, a diminutive version of the trophy wife in every respect except for her hair, which was dark and straight, instead of the expected bimbo blond.

The woman Judge Sobel was staring at now looked like an advanced-stage AIDS patient who’d survived a train wreck. In addition to the wasted look she’d developed over the month of her incarceration, she sported a gash across her forehead and a black left eye, noticeable not so much because of its discoloration, which blended almost seamlessly into the dark hollow beneath it, but because the eye itself was swollen nearly shut and tearing visibly. Tufts of her hair appeared to have been pulled out, and she reached for the side of her head repeatedly, a gesture that only served to draw attention to the large white bandage that covered her hand.

“Is this in honor of Halloween?” Tom Burke asked, perhaps in the hope that a bit of levity might break the silence that had enveloped the courtroom.

Jaywalker turned in Burke’s direction, fixing him with a hard stare but saying nothing, choosing instead to let the remark twist in the air.

Judge Sobel finally found his voice. “Come up,” he motioned the lawyers, “and tell me what’s going on.”

At the bench, with the court reporter taking down every word but the spectators unable to hear, Jaywalker spoke softly. “Not surprisingly,” he explained, “my client immediately became a target on Rikers Island. She’s white, she’s rich, she’s small and she’s pretty. Was pretty, at least. Anyway, she tried to be a trooper, putting up with the harassment as long as she could. The breaking point came when she was sexually assaulted. That’s when she finally reached out for help. The problem was, she didn’t know whom to reach out to. Instead of calling me or asking to see a captain, she phoned the corrections commission.”

“Those clowns?” said Burke.

It was true. The commissioners belonged to an oversight group, separate and apart from the corrections department, and were loathed as meddlers by everyone in the prison hierarchy.

“How was she supposed to know?” asked Jaywalker. “Anyway, they began investigating. I’ve got one of the commissioners here in court, if you want verification. They interviewed officers, lieutenants, even a captain or two. Or at least tried to. Needless to say, that only made things worse. Now my client gets attacked by inmates on an hourly basis, and the C.O.s not only look the other way, they write her up for instigating. She’s been put in an impossible position.”

“She’s put herself in it,” said Burke.

Sobel ignored the remark. “Okay,” he said, “the first thing she needs is medical attention.”

“With all due respect,” said Jaywalker, sensing his opening, “the first thing she needs is to get out of there.”

“Maybe my office could get her transferred to Bedford Hills,” said Burke. “Or a federal prison.”

“There’s a problem with that,” said Sobel. “As soon as I do it with one, I set a precedent. Next thing you know, we’ll have busloads of inmates showing up with self-inflicted wounds, looking to get transferred out.”

Jaywalker bit down on the inside of his cheek, willing any thoughts of self-inflicted wounds to evaporate from the judge’s mind. “Is there any chance you’d consider some kind of bail?” he asked. “I’m afraid that if she doesn’t get out, we’re going to have another death on our hands.”

“Did you say bail?” yelped Burke. For someone who should have seen where this was going, he seemed incredulous. “This is a murder case.”

Sobel held up his hand, but Jaywalker decided it wasn’t meant for him. “Look,” he said, “she’s not going anywhere. Take her passport, strap an ankle bracelet on her, lock her up in her house.”