Free Guilty as Sin by Joseph Teller

“No,” or some more profane form of it. But Pulaski surprised him. “Only for you, Jaywalker,” he said. And got up, walked across the room and pulled a file out from under a stack of others.
    â€œWhy? Because I’m such a prince?”
    â€œNo,” said Pulaski. “Because you’re such a pain in the ass. And I know if I don’t do it, you’ll go over my head to my boss, or to the judge, or to the fucking mayor.”
    Which Jaywalker took as a compliment, or at least as much of a compliment as the man was capable of delivering. He sat and waited while Pulaski thumbed through the contents of the file.
    â€œOkay, here we are,” he said after a moment. “You’re right.” Then, reading from the file, “‘Hightower, Clarence. Companion case. Misdemeanor possession of heroin.’ No disposition shown.”
    â€œPled to a discon,” Jaywalker told him. “Time served. Never violated on his parole. Terminated early, in fact. And now he seems to have disappeared.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œSo I want to know if he’s a CI,” said Jaywalker. “Or was on this case.” Purposely using the same initials that cops and prosecutors did for a confidential informer.
    Pulaski searched the file further, until he found a pink sheet of paper. He pulled it out and studied it. Then he said, “Nope.” And when Jaywalker said nothing, Pulaski slid the sheet across the desk that separated them.
    Jaywalker looked at it. There was a heading, a casenumber and the names of the officers involved, some of them detectives, others federal agents or state police investigators. Halfway down the page was a printed item that read “Confidential Informant,” followed by a blank. The blank had been filled in in ink, in capital letters: NONE.
    So much for grasping at straws.
    If Hightower hadn’t been an informant, linking his high-pressure tactics to law enforcement, then Alonzo Barnett’s entrapment defense had just gone down the toilet.

6
    The red-faced, two-fisted Irishman
    W ith Alonzo Barnett stripped of his only plausible defense, Jaywalker could easily have considered himself off the hook. Here was a defendant, after all, who continued to insist upon a trial in spite of the overwhelming odds against him. And the irony of the situation was hardly lost on Jaywalker. Last time out he’d brushed aside a client’s hesitation at rolling the dice, only to come up snake eyes. This time it was the client who was being reckless, not Jaywalker.
    And the way the system was set up to work, it was Barnett’s decision to make, not Jaywalker’s. Every defendant, no matter how demonstrably guilty he may be, has an absolute right to a trial, guaranteed by the constitutions of both the United States and the State of New York. And Alonzo Barnett had made it clear that he intended to avail himself of that right. But it would be a trial in name only, an exercise in going through the motions. A charade of a trial. Over in civil court they actually have a term for it that they use when the defense literally doesn’t show up and the plaintiff’s case is permitted to come in unopposed.
    An inquest, they call it.
    Which is pretty much what Barnett’s trial would have been, had Jaywalker not been the lawyer for the defense. Because going through the motions was something he simply didn’t know how to do. In his world, there were no charades, no inquests. He would continue to treat Barnett’s case as an absolutely must-win trial. The actual chances of winning were irrelevant. Even the fact that there was no chance of winning was irrelevant.
    â€œWhy?” his dumbfounded listener would ask him. “Why knock yourself out on behalf of some career criminal who’s admitted his guilt, has absolutely no defense, but wants to go through with a trial out of nothing but sheer stubbornness?”
    By way of an answer, Jaywalker would