The Tenth Case. Joseph Teller

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      Come to think of it, she belonged in an old black-and-white movie from the forties.

      “I only know one thing,” she added.

      “What’s that?”

      “I didn’t do it. You gotta believe me.”

      “I do,” Jaywalker lied.

      9

      NICKY LEGS

      That had been ten months ago, that first sit-down in which Samara had protested her innocence and Jaywalker had mumbled his “I do” with all the conviction of a shotgun groom. It had been two weeks before his appearance before the judges of the disciplinary committee, when he’d learned of his three-year suspension and begged to be permitted to complete work on his pending cases. He’d countered their offer to let him “dispose of” five with a list of seventeen, which they’d then pared down to ten.

      Now, in June, with nine of those ten disposed of, Jaywalker found himself in the strangest of all positions, a criminal defense lawyer with only one criminal left to defend.

      Why had he included Samara Tannenbaum in his must-keep list, when her case was barely two weeks old at that point and he had dozens of others in which he’d invested far more time, effort and emotion? To put it into the vernacular of modern mallspeak, it had been a no-brainer. First off, Samara’s was a murder case. Jaywalker had once heard a colleague refer to a murder charge as nothing but an assault case in which you knew the complainant wasn’t going to show up in court to testify against your client. Either the lawyer was joking, or he was a total jerk. Murder was like no other crime. There were longer trials, to be sure, and more complicated ones, and ones with lots more witnesses and paper and hearings and tape recordings and exhibits. There were crimes that carried equally severe sentences. Arson, for example, or kidnapping, or selling a couple of ounces of heroin or cocaine. Still, murder stood apart. Judges knew that, juries knew that and Jaywalker knew that. A life had been taken, the most important of the holy commandments had been broken, and the passion play that followed was almost biblical in its proportions. If for no other reason than that it was a murder charge, Samara’s case deserved to be on Jaywalker’s short list.

      But there’d been other reasons, too.

      By holding on to the case, Jaywalker knew that he would be able to keep the wolf from the door for as long as possible. With Samara insisting on her innocence, however ludicrously, came the promise of months of investigation, motions and preparation, followed by a trial and then, if she was convicted, a sentencing. If he strung it all out, it might even be long enough for his final act. He was tired, Jaywalker was. Twenty years of defending criminals might not seem like much to an outsider, but to Jaywalker, it had felt like an eternity. The thing about it was, you were always fighting. You fought prosecutors, cops and witnesses. You fought judges. You fought court officers and corrections officers. You fought your own clients, and your clients’ family and friends. And if you had your own family and friends—which Jaywalker, perhaps tellingly, had precious few of—you got around to fighting them, too, sooner or later.

      There’d been a time when he’d laughed at the word burnout. Like when his daughter had called from college two months into her freshman year to report that she was burned out from all the stress and needed plane fare to come home over Thanksgiving. He’d sent her a check, of course, but he’d had a good laugh at her complaint. Now, after twenty years of almost ceaseless fighting, Jaywalker knew there was indeed such a thing as burnout.

      If he played his cards right, he figured, he could ride this hand for a year or more, maybe even two or three, before they began his actual suspension. That would be enough. No reapplying, no promises to the Character and Fitness Committee to behave himself better next time around. They could pull his ticket and do whatever they wanted to with it at that point. He’d get a job, write a book, drive a cab, go on welfare, get food stamps, rob a bank. Whatever. So simply in terms of forestalling the inevitable for as long as possible, Samara’s case, coupled with her denial of her guilt, was an ideal one.

      But if Jaywalker really wanted to be honest with himself, he knew there was more to it even than that. There was Samara herself.

      From the moment he’d first seen her six years ago, when she’d come in on that drunk driving charge, he’d been swallowed whole by her dark eyes and pouting lower lip. Even as he’d fought to play the mature, steady defender to her reckless, impulsive child, from the beginning it had been she who’d owned him. Owned him in the sense that, try as he might, he could never take his eyes off her when he was in her presence. He’d dreamed of her at night and fantasized about her by day. Sexual fantasies, to be sure. But life-altering ones, as well. In one of his darker reveries, it had been the sudden, unexplained death of Samara’s older husband that had driven her headlong into Jaywalker’s comforting arms. So real and so elaborate had that particular scenario been that years later, when he first heard that Samara had been arrested for Barry’s murder, Jaywalker had been forced to wonder if he himself weren’t somehow complicit in the crime.

      So the reasons were many why he’d hung on to her case, even at seventy-five dollars an hour. And now, as June gave way to July, it was all he had left, the only thing that stood between practicing his craft and being put out to pasture. And it represented his one last grand chance to overcome the impossible odds, slay the dragon, and win the dark-haired, dark-eyed princess of his dreams.

      Why impossible odds?

      Because in the ten months since he’d first sat down across from Samara in the counsel room to hear her say she hadn’t killed her husband, things had indeed gone as Jaywalker had suspected they would—from bad to worse to downright dreadful.

      The progression had begun almost immediately. From the twelfth-floor counsel visit room, Jaywalker had ridden the elevator down to the seventh floor, where he’d paid a visit to Tom Burke.

      “Hey, Jay. Howyadoon?”

      A lot of people called him Jay. Not having a first name kind of limited their options.

      “Okay, I guess,” said Jaywalker. “I’ve just spent the last three hours with Samara Tannenbaum.” It was true. After Samara’s denial of her guilt and his own assurance that he believed her, they’d talked for another hour and a half. If he’d been impressed with her willingness to miss the one o’clock bus back to Rikers, he was somewhat troubled by her evident need to keep the meeting going as long as possible.

      “From what I hear,” said Burke, “people have paid good money to spend thirty minutes with her. But I’ll say this. She sure is good to look at.”

      “That she is,” Jaywalker agreed.

      “It’s a shame she’s a cold-blooded killer.”

      Jaywalker said nothing. He was there to listen and, hopefully, to learn a thing or two, not to posture about his client’s innocence. Particularly when he himself was having trouble buying it.

      “Did you read the stuff I gave you Friday?” Burke asked him.

      “Yeah. And I appreciate your generosity.” Jaywalker wasn’t being facetious. They both knew Burke had handed over much more than the law required at such an early stage of the proceedings.

      “Hey,” said Burke. “I got nothing to hide on this one. In my office, it’s what we call a slam dunk.”

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