A Cure for Night (15 page)

21

I
'D GONE
looking for Myra as soon as Delaney had left, but she was over at the Appellate Division, arguing the Gibbons appeal. I finally tracked her down in her office first thing on Friday morning and related what Chris Delaney had told me about Seth Lipton. I'd expected some show of enthusiasm, congratulations, something, but Myra just looked at me.

"You should've been in touch with me the second this kid said Lipton's name," she said at last.
"I'm the first chair on this case. No offense, Joel, but you're still a rookie
at this. There're some potential conflict issues that need to be addressed."

"Meaning?"

"You're proposing that this Delaney testify about his knowledge of
criminal activity, right?"

"Not his criminal activity, but yeah."

"And you found out about his knowledge of this activity while
representing him, right?"

"Yes."

"Do you think you are in any position to objectively counsel
Delaney about whether he should testify on matters where he may incriminate
himself on behalf of another defendant who you represent?"

"He brought it up," I said. "I just wanted to find out what he
knew."

"I get that," Myra said. "Which is why you should've found me
right away."

"You weren't here," I said testily. "So I did the best I could in
your absence. I'm sorry for not being you."

"Okay, so that wasn't fair on my part," Myra said after a moment.
"Now can we move on?"

"Did you just apologize to me?"

"Don't get used to it."

"So what do we do?" I asked.

"First off is, we need to figure out whether we'd even really want
to use his testimony. Assuming it's all true, what does the fact that Seth
Lipton dealt drugs actually get us?"

"It makes the jury hate him, one," I said, leaning forward slightly in my chair.
"And it makes him a more plausible target as the intended victim, two."

"Okay. So you'd want to put Delaney on?"

"I think so," I said, hesitant after her rebuke. "Wouldn't you?"

"Probably."

"So what do we do?"

"We'd better get Delaney a new lawyer. We'll have to 18-B him, to
be on the safe side. I can walk you through that. Then it'll be up to his new
lawyer whether Chris takes the Fifth on some things. He does too much of that,
all his testimony is likely to be tossed, but you can't really unring the bell
with the jury, so I think it's probably a chance worth taking."

"So," I said, still wanting some acknowledgment for this new evidence, even if it had just fallen into my lap,
"how significant do you think this is?"

Myra shrugged. She was clearly still thinking it through, but I didn't get the sense of excitement from her that I'd been expecting. I wondered if it was because I was the source of the information. I didn't like the disconnect between how we talked away from the office and times like this, when she acted like my boss, but I decided not to say anything about it now.
"It doesn't do anything to rebut Yo-Yo's testimony. But we do need to ask our
client again what he knows about Lipton, given this new info. Let's see if we
can come up with a credible theory whereby Lipton was somebody's intended
target."

"I'm on it," I said.

"What's your, you know, actual plan?"

"I was thinking this new angle meant I should go back and have another talk with Lipton's roommate," I said.
"Amin would be a better witness to use to get this stuff in than Delaney,
assuming he knows anything and will talk."

Myra nodded. "There's no more important skill in what we do than in taking advantage of your occasional lucky breaks," she said.
"Maybe we can play this one out into something."

"I've got another idea with that. I think I should at least bring
it up."

"What're you thinking?" Myra asked.

"That we should leak it to that reporter guy, Berman," I said. I hadn't been sure whether to raise this or not, worried that Myra would be offended by it, like I was suggesting that we cheat.
"Change the focus of the story out there a little bit."

"How does that actually change the focus?" Myra asked. "The fact
that Lipton was involved with drugs doesn't change that he was murdered."

"Not literally it doesn't, of course," I replied. I'd expected her to say something like this, and I felt sure it wasn't a sufficient objection. After all, she'd been the one to tell me that our job here wasn't to help find the truth.
"But I think people's sympathy for Seth Lipton, drug dealer, will be different
than it is for Seth Lipton, college student."

"I try cases in the courtroom, not in the tabloids," Myra said.

"Our jury pool reads the
Journal
. It gives us a leg up to
have this out there."

"It's just not my style," Myra said. "But if you think it really might change the balance, I guess I'll let you take your shot." She reached into her purse, took out her wallet, and handed me the reporter's card.

"Why me?" I said.

"Why not you?" Myra said. "It was your grubby little idea."

"Fair enough," I said. "So how did the Gibbons argument go?"

Myra's face scrunched up like she was sucking on a lemon. "They
asked me one fucking question."

"Just one question the whole time?"

Myra nodded.

"You never know," I said. "That might not mean anything."

"It might not," Myra said. "But as signs go, I wouldn't exactly
call it good."

22

I
 
HADN'T BEEN
able to reach Seth Lipton's former roommate on Friday. So on Saturday morning, figuring that no self-respecting male college student got out of bed before noon on a weekend, I just showed up at his apartment.

A groggy Amin opened his door, dressed in sweatpants and a school T-shirt. I hadn't buzzed his apartment; instead I'd walked into the building when a young woman on her way out for a morning jog had left. I was wearing a suit despite the summer heat, largely in hopes of intimidating Amin; it also didn't hurt when it came to getting into apartment buildings.

I began introducing myself again when Amin interrupted, saying he remembered who I was. Amin stood in the doorway, not making any move to let me in.
"Some new information has come to light regarding Seth Lipton," I said. "I need
to ask you about it."

"What does anything to do with Seth have to do with anything else?" Amin asked.
"He was hit by a stray bullet."

"You can't think of anything that would suggest Mr. Lipton might
have been the intended target?"

"Look, you woke me up—"

"When I subpoena you to testify in this trial, are you really going to deny knowing that your roommate was dealing?" I interrupted.
"Because you'll be under oath, and I assume a college student like you needs no
introduction to the concept of perjury."

"What're you talking about?" Amin said, taking a step back, allowing me to step into the apartment as he did so.

"Which came first," I said, ignoring his question. My adrenaline was flowing, so strong and sudden that it caught me off guard. I'd prepared myself for a confrontation, and now I was acting out my part in one before Amin even understood why I was there.
"Seth's sociological interest in drug dealers, or his professional interest in
dealing drugs?"

"It wasn't like that."

"I already have a witness," I said. "Someone with firsthand knowledge that Seth was dealing right out of this apartment." This last part wasn't true—Chris Delaney hadn't said anything about dealing inside the apartment, but I wanted to make Amin feel that he too might be implicated. It wasn't entirely ethical, but I considered it necessary. I was here to break Amin, and I intended to do so. He knew something that might help my client, and I couldn't concern myself with the fact that it would also hurt Amin's dead friend.

"That's a lie, man. There was never any dealing here—"

"So you don't deny the dealing, just where it took place?"

"I wasn't involved." Amin was pleading now, maybe forgetting that I was only a defense attorney, not law enforcement.
"And I told Seth, never out of our place."

"So you knew Seth was dealing to other students?"

Amin nodded miserably, then turned and collapsed onto the futon that served as their couch. I followed him in, propping myself on the armrest of the room's sole chair.
"And you never told this to anyone after he was murdered?"

"They were trying to kill the other guy," Amin said. "What does it
matter why Seth was up there?"

"It might matter quite a bit if the reason he was standing there
was to buy a large quantity of drugs."

"Whatever he was doing there, he didn't deserve to get shot," Amin said.
"I've met Seth's family. This comes out, it's going to be all anybody ever
remembers about Seth. It's not fair."

"That's not your call," I said, lowering my voice, trying to take the confrontation down a notch.
"I don't want to drag Seth's name through the mud. But I don't understand. This
is an honors student we're talking about—how'd he ever end up in this?"

"You gotta understand, Seth was a guy who totally didn't think the
rules applied to him. He didn't set out to do this. It was originally just the
sociology project. I mean, sure, he got off on it, I guess—hanging with the
homeys on the corner. I think the reason he got involved with the other thing,
really, was to show them that he didn't think he was better than they were just
because he was white."

"So you're saying Seth started dealing drugs so that the drug dealers would think he was down," I said.

"I know that whatever I say is going to sound like a lame-ass excuse," Amin said.
"There's no good reason for someone like Seth to risk throwing his whole life
away like that. I'm just explaining it to you as best as I understand it."

"Okay, sorry," I said. "I know this guy was your friend; I don't
mean to disrespect his memory. I'm just trying to understand. So what you're
saying is, it really all started as a legitimate sociology project?"

"He
cared
about those people, man," Amin said. "Whatever you think of that, he did care. He was trying to do something
real.
"

"So with all that, how did he end up dealing?"

"I don't know all the details," Amin said. "Seth was doing his own
thing mostly. What I do know is, he got pretty tight with this one dude in
particular. It was that other dude who got shot."

"Devin Wallace."

"Right," Amin said. "Devin let his crew talk to Seth; that was how Seth was getting a lot of his material. And he and Devin were spending a lot of time together. They hit it off in some weird way. Seth's from this pretty conservative Jewish community out on Staten Island—most of his family is Orthodox; they're pretty uptight about stuff. I think the only reason they let him leave home for school was because this area's so Jewish too. You should have seen the look on his mother's face the first time she met me. But, you know, coming here was his chance to become his own person. Same as it was for me, I guess." Amin shook his head, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.
"So anyway, from what Seth told me, it was Devin who came up with the idea of
having a white college kid pitching to the other white college kids. The idea
was that there was this untapped market at the school, you know, white boys
who'd be happy to score if you offered them a comfortable way, but who weren't
ever going to head down to the projects on their own and cop from some
brothers."

"So Devin proposed that Seth sell for him on the campus?" I asked.
"Be the go-between?" The fact was that I understood Seth Lipton a lot better than I was letting on. I knew what it was to be selfinvented. I knew the thrill of seeing the line you weren't supposed to cross in your rearview mirror. I also knew about the lure of drugs, not just their high but also how they set you apart, allowed you to view yourself as outside of the normal life that surrounded you. Perhaps I was being a hypocrite; there was certainly something a little perverse in my pretending to be shocked by what he'd done. But I wasn't there to express my own views or to show my understanding; I was there to try to get as much information out of Amin about his roommate as I could.

"I didn't know anything about this shit when Seth was first getting involved," Amin said.
"It's not like he ran it by me, asked if I thought it was a good idea."

"So how did you learn about it, then?"

"When I found, like, a whole mess of fucking coke chillin' out in our freezer," Amin said.
"I like freaked the fuck out, you know?"

"I would think so," I said. "So you confronted Seth?"

"Fuckin' A," Amin said. "He made it sound like it was some perfectly natural arrangement he'd reached with Devin—like,
'You help me with my senior thesis, I'll help you move drugs on campus.' The thing was, Seth was the kind of guy who
could
make that sound normal—like that was how the world worked, a deal like that, and
if you thought otherwise, it was just you being naive."

"So he was running drugs for Devin?"

"Well, I mean, you know, Seth wasn't exactly your typical corner
boy. I don't really know the details of what they worked out."

"Okay, sure, but essentially Seth was working for Devin, right?"

"They were doing this together, sure," Amin said. "But I don't think Seth was, like, Devin's
employee
."

"Fair enough," I said. "So what else should I know?"

"What else should you know?" Amin asked incredulously. "Man, you
shouldn't even know what you already do."

23

I
T'S REALLY
pretty simple," I said to ADA Narducci.
"In order to convict Shawne Flynt of a crime, you need to have some evidence
that he actually committed one."

Narducci had been blowing me off for a couple of weeks, clearly stalling, hoping something would turn up that would allow him to proceed with his case. I'd finally resorted to threats to get him to meet, telling him that I would be recommending that my client file a civil suit for malicious prosecution if the DA's office took it to the grand jury.

"Your client runs that corner," Narducci insisted. We were in a conference room at the DA's office, glare from the window behind Narducci causing me to squint.
"This is the second time he's been picked up on the block in the last couple of
months. What do you think he was doing there?"

"Standing on a corner isn't a crime," I replied. "Not even on
Grand Avenue."

"We made a buy and bust from a guy who was standing five feet away
from your client."

"Has the dealer on the buy and bust identified my client?"

"Just because he hasn't flipped yet doesn't mean shit."

"Actually, what it means is you don't have any evidence. You've
got a possession-with-intent charge on a guy who didn't possess anything; you've
got a conspiracy charge without any conspirators. Look, I understand the police
sometimes feel the need to clear a corner, send a message by pulling everybody
in. You stip to dismissal, then this is on them. You try to go forward here, the
grand jury's nobill goes down as a loss on your stat sheet. Why should you take
the heat for the fact that they didn't make a case?"

"You really think my decision making about whether to go forward with a case is that cynical?" Narducci asked.

I smiled at this. "I don't think of it as cynical," I replied, meaning it.
"I know your boss keeps track of your win-loss record, and I know you'd better
be winning a fuck of a lot more than you lose if you want to be considered a
player. And a no-true-bill isn't just a loss; it's an embarrassment. Especially
if it's followed by a civil suit. So you tell me how you think you can make a
case here."

"Your guy's just going to go right back out on the corner," Narducci said.
"Shoveling poison to his own community."

After my last conversation with Shawne, I wasn't overly anxious to have him free and clear myself. I still had no idea why he'd been toying with me, or what, if anything, he actually wanted, but I had the feeling I hadn't heard the last of it. I didn't need Narducci to tell me that Shawne Flynt was bad news. But I couldn't let that get in the way of doing my job.

"What do you want me to do, let you put him in jail because he's a corner kid?" I said, hearing the frustration in my voice.
"I'm not saying he's some kind of humanitarian; I'm just saying you don't have
anything on him."

"He'll be back in the system next month, the month after that.
It'll just keep happening until we do have enough to put him away."

"I know that," I said. "Hell, he knows that. But that doesn't
change anything about the present. You gonna drop this one?"

Narducci sighed heavily, not looking at me. "Congratulations, Counselor," he finally said.
"You've put another drug dealer back out on the street."

"SO, JOEL,"
Adam Berman said, "what can
I do for you?"

We'd met at O'Connor's, a dive bar a block away from my apartment. O'Connor's was a relic of an earlier, dingier era in the life of the neighborhood, but its dark and gloomy interior had been adopted by the local hipsters, without displacing the seedy old barflies who made up the bulk of the clientele in the early evening of a weekday. I'd chosen it because I wanted to meet a good distance from the courthouse. There wasn't a gag order in place in the Tate case, so there was nothing preventing me from talking to Berman or any other reporter. Nevertheless, I didn't want what I was about to tell him ever being directly traced back to us. I wasn't here to tell him my client had an airtight alibi, or that we had proof a witness was lying. I was here to throw mud at the dead.

"Actually, Adam," I replied, "I'm here to do something for you."

"I'd imagine both of those things are true," Berman replied. "They
usually are. What do you want to tell me that will do something for the both of
us?"

"First of all, this whole thing has to be off the record," I said.
"You can use it, but can't attribute it to me personally or Tate's defense
generally."

"Done," Adam said immediately.

"We've come across some interesting information about Seth Lipton," I said.
"It might make a good story."

"You're giving me dirt on Lipton?" Berman asked.

"I guess that's one way to put it," I answered. "I'm going to get
a beer. You want anything?"

"I don't drink while I'm on the job," Berman said. "But I'll be
happy to buy you a beer."

"This is on the job?" I said, gesturing at our surroundings.

"Of course it is. But I got no problem with my sources drinking
while they talk to me. On the contrary. You want I'll buy you a shot. I can
expense it."

Adam went to fetch me a beer. I found myself enjoying him without actually liking him. And although I supposed he was right that what we were doing here now constituted work, the fact was, I could use a beer. I'd never been a source for a reporter before, and while I was relatively at ease with Berman, I nevertheless felt exquisitely uncomfortable with what I was about to do.

"So," Adam said, placing a bottle of Sam Adams before me. "What is
it you want me to know?"

I found myself hesitating, feeling for a moment as though I were about to commit some sort of betrayal.
"The police have always said that Lipton was at the Gardens that night because
he was doing his senior thesis about the projects."

"Wasn't he?"

"He was."

"Can I assume there's a 'but'?"

"But that wasn't the only thing he was doing at the Gardens."

"He scored drugs?"

"Yes," I replied. "But he took it up a level from there. He bought
drugs in the Gardens and dealt them at the college."

"Lipton was dealing?"

"He was in business with Devin Wallace."

"What's your sourcing on this?"

"One that I can't tell you; the other is Lipton's former
roommate."

"Why can't you tell me who your other source is?"

"I can't tell you that either."

"A client?" Berman asked. "I'll take anything other than an
outright denial as a confirmation it's a client."

"It's like I said."

"You think the roommate will talk to me?"

"He doesn't want this to come out," I said. "So I doubt he's going
to be eager to talk to a reporter."

"I can't run with this unless somebody who actually knows it firsthand will talk to me," Berman said.
"But I'll look into it."

"It'd be worth printing, wouldn't it?"

"If I can flesh it out, sure. It'd be a big enough story,
especially given that Lipton's been played up in the press like he has. But
that's going to depend on whether I can get anyone to talk. You sure you can't
give me anything on your secret source? I can keep him off the record."

"I'll ask," I said. "But that's all I can do."