She was, in a word, wasting, w asting 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 de laying 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 seam lessly 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.
"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 imme diately 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 ha rassment 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 over sight group, separate and apart from the corrections de partment, 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 im possible 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 selfinflicted 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 in credulous. "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."
"This is a murder case," Burke repeated. "I've got a DNA match. You can't go and set bail."
It was the wrong thing to say.
Turning to Burke, Judge Sobel spoke as calmly as ever.
But it was clear from his words that he hadn't particularly cared for being told what he could and couldn't do. "Tell me," he said. "If this were any other kind of case, would we be arguing that this defendant presents a particularly significant flight risk?"
Burke hesitated for just a moment. Jaywalker could imagine the struggle going on within him. A less honest prosecutor would have immediately answered "Yes" without blinking. Burke was trapped by his own decency. "The point is," he said, trying to address the question with out quite answering it, "the murder charge is what gives her the incentive to flee."
"That's a bit circular," Sobel observed, "isn't it? I mean, if the seriousness of the charge were the only considera tion, judges would have to deny bail in all serious cases. But we don't. As a matter of fact, we set bail in murder cases from time to time, if the circumstances are unusual. I myself remember setting bail in a murder case of yours, Mr. Burke, as well as in one of Mr. Jaywalker's. And nei ther of those defendants fled, as I recall."
"But what are the unusual circumstances here, judge?" An edginess was beginning to appear in Burke's voice that sounded very much like the beginning of panic.
"Take a good look at the defendant for a moment, why don't you? Tell me that's not unusual."
Burke looked, said nothing.
Jaywalker didn't say anything, either. He'd long ago learned what most lawyers never do, to quit when you're ahead.
It took the better part of the week, what with getting Judge Berman's order modified once again, tracking down the title to Samara's town house, and dealing with the bank where her account was. Banks, it seems, like to dot all the i' s and cross all the t' s before coughing up a hundred thousand dollars. Then there was the matter of surrender ing Samara's passport, and the necessity of getting her fitted with what one corrections official quaintly referred to as a "Martha Stewart bracelet, only in petite."
But that Friday afternoon, when Jaywalker walked out of the courthouse and into the early November chill, Samara Tannenbaum was at his side. This time the media were there in all their glory, video cameras running, still cameras clicking, furry microphones extended. Samara, who actually looked a bit better than she had three days earlier, forced a half smile but didn't speak. But Jaywalker, forsaking his usual silent treatment of the press, was posi tively expansive.
"Samara's going home to rest and recuperate," he told them. "We wish you all a very pleasant weekend."
12
In terms of trial preparation, the difference between having a client in jail and having one out on bail is all the differ ence in the world. Conversations that would otherwise have to be conducted in whispers through bars or wire mesh, or over antique telephones, can suddenly be held in normal tones, unimpeded by physical barriers. Documents that would have to be copied and mailed, or slid through security slits, can instead be studied shoulder to shoulder. Friendly witnesses can be approached as a unified team, rather than by a solitary stranger bearing a dubious letter of introduc tion scribbled on a square of jailhouse toilet paper.
The very act of getting a client out of jail also tends to win the trust of that client in a way that little else can, short of actually winning an acquittal. Especially when the charge is murder, and the odds against getting bail set had seemed almost as prohibitive as those that it was someone else's blood besides Barry's on the items found in Samara's town house.
It was Jaywalker's hope, and in fact his honest expec tation, that he would be able to parlay that newly earned trust into getting Samara to level with him, to finally tell him the truth about what had happened the evening of Barry's death. While the terms of her release kept her largely confined to her home, they allowed her to travel to and from the courthouse, her lawyer's office and a short list of stores, so long as she phoned ahead to announce her intention, and received permission to come and go. The least infraction would land her back on Rikers Island, Judge Sobel had promised her. And should she attempt to remove the electronic monitoring device, or cut the bracelet that fastened it to her ankle, a signal would be automati cally transmitted to the corrections department, and she could expect to be apprehended within thirty minutes. Still, it was a lot of freedom, compared to the conditions she'd lived under for the previous month.