Nor did he do any better when he tracked down the assistant whose case it had been, a young woman named Annie MacMurray. Who remembers? she told him. I get hundreds of these things. Were told to get rid of the misdemeanors as fast as we can and pay attention to the felonies. Im sure thats what I was doing.
But the guy was on parole.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, What can I tell you? I must not have noticed that. Or maybe he didnt have enough time left on his parole for it to matter.
In other words, Clarence Hightower had simply lucked out. Hed managed to slip through a small crack in a big system. It happened.
Still, Hightower was all Jaywalker had at this point. If Alonzo Barnett insisted on going to trial so that he could tell a jury hed done someone a favor, the least Jaywalker could do was locate the guy hed done the favor for, put him on the witness stand and have him corroborate the fact. It might not add up to a legal defense, but it might win some sympathy points with a jury. And from there, who knew? Stranger things had happened.
So Jaywalker put on his investigators hat and spent the next three days trying to find Clarence Hightower.
And struck out.
The address listed on the court papers turned out to be a nonexistent one. Ditto the one Hightower had given the Department of Corrections at Rikers Island. Jaywalker tried the phone book, the unlisted directory, Social Security, Internal Revenue, the Motor Vehicle Bureau, the Department of Social Services. He even checked to see if by any chance Hightower had applied for a barbers license, as Barnett had tried to do. He hadnt. As a last resort, using a public phone, Jaywalker called the Division of Parole up in Albany.
This is Detective Kelly, he told the woman who answered. Manhattan North Homicide Squad, shield 5620.
What can I do for you, Detective?
So far, so good.
I need to know whos supervising a particular parolee, he explained, furnishing her Hightowers full name and NYSIS number, which hed made a point of copying down from the court papers.
Hold, please.
It took a few minutes, during which Jaywalker kept an eye out. He knew all about call tracing and GPS technology, and he didnt want any real cops sneaking up on him and arresting him for criminal impersonation of a police officer. A felony was the last thing he needed on his record.
But no cops sneaked up.
That supervision has been terminated, the woman told him.
When?
December 12 of 1985. Last year.
Which struck Jaywalker as a bit strange. Hadnt Barnett told him that Hightower had been doing ten-to-twenty at Green Haven? Released in 1984, he would have still owed the state four or five years, at a minimum.
Can you give me the name of the last PO who supervised him? Jaywalker asked.
Im not supposed to, she told him. Not on a closed case.
Look, said Jaywalker gently, but not too gently. Ive got two dead kids Im working on here, a four-year-old and a one-year-old. Both of them mutilated. Hey, if you were going to lie, might as well make it a big one.
Anunziatta, she told him. Ralph Anunziatta.
Got a phone number, by any chance?
Try 212-555-2138.
Thank you.
I hope you find the perp. And, Detective?
Yes?
This conversation never happened.
Which was just fine with Jaywalker.
Not that Ralph Anunziatta turned out to be all that much help. Yeah, he said, I remember the guy. Sorta. I wanted to revoke him, but before I could do anything about it, theyd let him cop out to a disorderly conduct. Not even a crime. So the most I could do was to write him up for a technical violation and continue him on parole. Then, next thing I know, someone upstairs cuts him loose, fuckin terminates him.
Isnt that unusual?
A little, acknowledged Anunziatta. But they say they gotta cut the numbers. Anyway, one less case for me.
What had been one less case for Parole Officer Anunziatta was the source of one more concern for defense lawyer Jaywalker. His wife caught him staring off into space that evening at the dinner table. Not that Jaywalker was any stranger to staring off into space. But his wife had an uncanny way of knowing just how many galaxies away he was at any particular moment and asked him what the problem was.
I dont know, he said. Im representing this guy on a drug sale-several sales, in fact. And I dont know, Ive just got a funny feeling
Please dont tell me youve got another innocent defendant, his wife begged. Not too many years back, shed lived through one of those with him. Or if not exactly with him, under the same roof. Jaywalkers obsession with trying to extricate a young man mistakenly accused of a series of knifepoint rapes had taken a tremendous toll on their marriage, their daughter and their bank account.
No, he said. Actually, hes as guilty as sin. But still
His wife said nothing. Theyd been married long enough by that time for her to stay away from the but still part.
But still
Later that night, his wife and daughter tucked into bed, Jaywalker sat at the kitchen table, scribbling thoughts on the back of an envelope. By the time he was finished, it might not have been the Gettysburg Address hed composed, but he was looking at a fairly impressive list of pretty unusual developments in the way in which the criminal justice system had chosen to deal with Clarence Hightower.
First there was the fact that Hightower had never been charged in connection with the sales Alonzo Barnett had ended up making. According to Barnett, the guy hed introduced Hightower to would deal with Hightower and his customer only through Barnett. This was hardly unusual. After all, the guy knew Barnett, not them, and this had been his way of insulating himself. But the acting-in-concert law being as broad as it was, surely Hightower could have been accused of sale, too. Only all theyd charged him with had been possession. Then again, he hadnt actually been present at the sales, and perhaps the cops hadnt known the full extent of his involvement. Maybe hed just been lucky, was all.
Then thered been the fact that despite his having been on parole, Hightower hadnt had a detainer lodged against him following his arrest. But stuff like that happened all the time, Jaywalker knew. It was a big system, and people messed up.
Next was the fact that theyd let him plead down from a misdemeanor to a violation. Not that Jaywalker himself didnt get dispositions like that for his own clients every day. But usually not for those with horrendous records who owed parole time. Still, Jaywalkers conversations with the two assistant district attorneys whod been involved had been unremarkable and hadnt left him with the feeling that either of them had singled Hightower out for special treatment. Maybe the stars had just aligned favorably for Clarence Hightower in court.
A bit more interesting was the fact that Hightower had never had his parole revoked for the possession arrest. True, hed ended up pleading guilty to a violation, and a nondrug one at that. Which was exactly the sort of disposition Jaywalker would have tried to get him, had he been the lawyer. So once again, nothing too out of the ordinary.
A bit more interesting was the fact that Hightower had never had his parole revoked for the possession arrest. True, hed ended up pleading guilty to a violation, and a nondrug one at that. Which was exactly the sort of disposition Jaywalker would have tried to get him, had he been the lawyer. So once again, nothing too out of the ordinary.
But what about the early termination of Hightowers parole? Sure, Ralph Anunziatta had been happy to have one less guy to supervise. But hadnt he said hed wanted to revoke Hightower, only to be overruled by some superior? So Anunziatta had had to settle for writing it up as a technical violation and continuing parole. Okay up to that point, arguably. But then the guy gets terminated early? Sure, it was just before Christmas, but no one had ever accused the Division of Parole of playing Santa Claus. And on top of everything else, now it seemed that Hightower had disappeared off the face of the earth.
Why did any and all of this matter to Jaywalker? Well, back in his DEA days, thered been a couple of times when he and his team had arrested a midlevel dealer known to have an upper-level source of drugs. So what theyd done was offer the guy a deal right on the spot. You promise to cooperate with us and give us your connection, theyd tell him, and well cut you loose right now. If he agreed, theyd un-arrest him, a dubious enough legal procedure but a good way to enlist the guys help in making a case against a higher-up. You traded a relative nobody for a somebody. And the beauty of it was that by skipping the arrest, processing and court appearance, you never alerted the big fish to the fact that the minnow had been caught and turned into bait.
Had the cops done just that with Clarence Hightower? Arrested him, flipped him and let him stay out on the street so he could help them make a case against Alonzo Barnett? And had they then added the wrinkle of arresting him for possession later on, in order to cover their tracks? It could explain everything. The lenient treatment in court, the early termination of parole, even the disappearance.
And it mattered. It mattered tremendously.
Because if Clarence Hightower had indeed been working as an informant when he prevailed upon Alonzo Barnett to hook him up with somebody, Jaywalker had at least the makings of a theoretical defense for Barnett. He could claim entrapment, arguing that but for Hightowers overbearing persistence, Barnett never would have committed the crimes hed been arrested for. Criminals twist each others arms all the time, trying to get accomplices for some illegal venture or other. But unless the twisting rises to the level of real physical force or a credible threat to use it, the twistee who ends up going along, however reluctantly, has nothing to complain about. If you dont believe that, ask Patty Hearst. On the other hand, if the arm-twisting is done by the police or someone working for them, it becomes a different story altogether.
Not that entrapment defenses ever really succeed. And the reason is pretty simple. In suggesting that a jury should acquit on entrapment, the defense lawyer is conceding guilt while asking for an acquittal based upon something that sounds very much like a technicality. Hes essentially telling the jury, Sure, my client did exactly what the prosecutor claims. But he did it only because the cops asked him really hard to do it. Might as well blame the Tooth Fairy, or claim The Devil made me do it. In all the years hed practiced and would continue to practice, Jaywalker would read of exactly one entrapment acquittal. It involved a money-laundering case made against a man named John Z. DeLorean, perhaps best known for supplying the wheels Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd used to drive back to the future.