Authors: Stephen Solomita
“There were times when I actually decided to hand the coke over to the first cop I saw. I thought, Fuck it, I’ll just do the time, whatever it is. At least, I’ll survive.
“But I didn’t have the courage. Or maybe I thought Byron would straighten out. Sometimes, when he was really behind with the money, he’d talk about taking treatment, about how he fucked up his life, about how he was gonna change, get himself together. Then he’d cry those crocodile tears, turn to me for comfort.
“I’ll tell you this, whenever Byron left the apartment carrying drugs, I prayed for him to get busted. I’m talking about on-my-knees, hands-folded prayer. And the funny part is that I should have done it myself, should have turned rat, set Byron up for a long bit. But I couldn’t make the phone call and God wasn’t listening, either, so, in the end …”
“The final beating came on a Sunday, when the television went out in the middle of a football game. Byron ordered me to fix it and when I couldn’t, he slapped me a few times, kicked me in the ass when I turned away. I fell down and started crying.
“He said, ‘You think you’ve got something to cry about? That what you think?’
“It went on for a long time. In fits and starts. I tried to get away to the bedroom, but he dragged me back. Finally, I lost consciousness.
“I spent the next two days in bed; I couldn’t move and didn’t want to. When I finally came out, Byron was sitting in the chair like a cat at a mouse hole. He was smoking a cigarette and he held it up, blew on the coal.
“He said, “Got about a bellyful of your bitchin’. Think I’ll make a fire.’
“I knew where he kept the gun in the bookcase and I picked it up without thinking much about what I was gonna do with it. Then I pushed the little lever on the side, figuring it was some kind of safety, and the cylinder popped out. Byron started laughing, but I shoved it back and pointed the barrel at his chest.
“He said, ‘When a
man
pulls a weapon, he knows he’s got to use it. Too bad you’re a bitch. Too bad you gotta pay the price.’
“What he was doing was giving me a choice. I could either shoot him or let him kill me. Maybe he didn’t care which way it went, maybe he was that stoned. I know I stood there, holding the gun for what seemed like an hour. Then he started to get up out of the chair and I pulled the trigger.
“Byron fell back into the chair, put his hands over the hole in his shirt as if he could hold the blood inside. Then he came forward, dropped onto his knees, and started to crawl away from me. I remember expecting him to say something, I don’t know exactly what, but he finally collapsed onto the carpet.
“I didn’t think about calling for help, because I knew Byron was dead. And don’t ask me
how
I knew. The way he went down, there wasn’t any doubt. I remember putting the gun on the table and waiting for the cops to show. I didn’t have any doubt about that, either.”
It would play. That was my first thought. I didn’t judge her story, didn’t subject the narrative to any test of truth. Priscilla had touched all the bases, delivering her story in soft, almost wistful tones. She’d seemed smaller, her hands folded on crossed knees, her downcast eyes dropping the occasional tear, the nape of her neck exposed and vulnerable. If the jurors believed her, they would have to acquit. And I wouldn’t need to spell it out (though I would, again and again). After closing arguments, when the judge instructed the jurors on the statutory requirements for the defense of self-defense, Priscilla’s tale would conform to every demand of the law.
She looked up at me, her brimming gray eyes as lustrous as pearls. For a moment we were absolutely silent, as if the courtroom had been removed to a museum and we were an exhibit. Then she reached up, stroked the side of my face and kissed me on the mouth. It was a short kiss, over almost before it began.
“All right, let’s wrap this up.” The court officer’s gravelly voice didn’t exactly inspire debate. Nevertheless, I put up a token defense for the sake of my client.
“Seems a bit arbitrary, sergeant.”
“A half hour, counselor. That’s what I was told.” He turned to Priscilla, snapped the word, “Up!”
Priscilla’s mouth curled into a sardonic smile even as she obeyed. I watched her walk toward the holding pens alongside the courtroom, head erect, stride loose and natural. Even after the door snapped shut, I stood there for a moment. As if she’d simply gone into another room to retrieve her purse. Then I picked up my briefcase and walked out.
W
HEN I STRODE INTO
Judge Winokur’s packed courtroom a little before two o’clock every head swiveled in my direction. I stopped in the doorway, swept the room with imperious eyes, carefully repressed the smirk pulling at the corners of my lips. Thelma Barrow was there, sitting on the left side of the room next to Julie and Caleb. She was wearing a navy dress, its long sleeves and throat-high collar trimmed with lace. Over her left breast, an enormous scarlet pin shouted:
FREE PRISCILLA SWEET
.
Yes, fine, I remember thinking, but not for a while.
I was on the comeback trail, an aging actor handed a juicy role, and I didn’t want my part left on the cutting room floor. After all, the quality of my performance would not only serve to restore my celebrity status, it would also be my revenge on those who’d written me off when I was on the downside.
A few minutes later, Priscilla was standing next to me, shoulders squared, chin up. “Not guilty, your honor,” she declared in the firm voice I’d suggested.
Winokur accepted the plea, then asked for bail applications. Buscetta, with a sly glance at the spectators, fairly shouted, “Ms. Sweet failed to make an appearance on April 15, 1990 in the misdemeanor part. A bench warrant was issued and served on April 17. For this reason, and in light of the seriousness of the charges, the state requests that Ms. Sweet be remanded without bail.”
I managed to accept the news without flinching, reminding myself that clients like Priscilla Sweet, who’d sworn to me that she’d made her appearances, always lie, often for no discernible reason.
“Bail denied.”
Winokur was about to bang the gavel, when, in my best oratorical tones, I moved for an immediate dismissal on the grounds that my client’s right to a fair trial had been irreparably damaged by the state’s willful failure to allow her to be examined by a physician of her choice. As I wound it up, I pointed to the fading bruises on Priscilla’s face and throat. “Perhaps the prosecution, in its wisdom, hoped any evidence of my client’s state prior to the events of January 16th would simply vanish. And if her arraignment had been postponed over the weekend, they would have gotten their wish.”
Buscetta started to speak, but Winokur silenced him with a wave. “I now order that the accused be examined by physicians at the Rikers Island clinic and that the results, including laboratory and X-ray results, be turned over to the defense and to the court. Today, Mr. Buscetta.”
Buscetta nodded glumly. I suspect he was already formulating a defense of his actions for the media. “I’ll contact the Department of Corrections as soon as I leave the courtroom.”
“Good. Now, gentlemen, let’s go to the wheel, see if we can find a trial judge.” He nodded to the court clerk. “Mr. Fariello?”
The clerk produced an object that looked like a bird cage mounted on a cross bar. He placed it on his desk, handling it with the reverence due a Vatican relic, then gave it a spin. When it settled down, he unfastened a little door, reached inside, withdrew a card. “Trial Part 71,” he announced. “Judge Thomas Delaney.”
Carlo and I glanced at each other, exchanged the barest of smiles. Tommy Delaney was a holdover from the days when the Irish ran New York, a lawyer out of the Democratic clubhouses who’d been rewarded with a judgeship in the last days of Mayor Wagner’s reign. He was pro-prosecution on motions to exclude evidence (routine in New York where judges have to ask a technicality-hating citizenry to reelect them), but once the trial began, he usually gave both sides as much leeway as possible.
“I do love a battle, boyo,” he’d once told me over a shooter of Wild Turkey. “It’s in me blood.”
I marched out of the courthouse, into blinding winter sunlight, to face the guardians of the public’s right to know. I stood before a forest of microphones attached to a metal stand. The microphones were tipped in my direction like sky rockets about to launch.
Thirty minutes later, it was all over, the cameras and microphones packed away, the reporters already composing their stories. I watched them for a moment, feeling a mix of regret and relief, then strolled over to where Caleb and Julie stood on the sidewalk beside a middle-aged woman in a belted, red coat. The woman, shorter than Julie, and a good deal heavier, had a thick head of nearly white hair that fell in a smooth line to the wide collar of her coat.
“Sid,” Julie said, “this is Rebecca Barthelme. From the New York Women’s Council.”
The woman turned, extended a gloved hand. She had an oval face, well-lined, with large brown eyes over a thin nose. Her smiling mouth was generous to a fault, dominating a button of a chin.
We cut a deal over lunch, Ms. Barthelme and I: In addition to a spousal abuse expert, Dr. Elizabeth Howe, the Women’s Council would supply an experienced attorney to sit in the second chair. That attorney was Rebecca Barthelme. In return, the Council would get to associate their organization with Priscilla Sweet,
cause celebre,
and the right to use that association in their various fund drives.
“Most of my experience is in civil law,” Rebecca explained, “but I’ve been a litigator throughout my career. I know how to examine, and how to cross-examine, a witness.”
Buoyed no doubt by my earlier triumphs, I was very nice to Rebecca, and very charming, until we were well into dessert and coffee. Until I got to the bottom line.
“Priscilla and I share a single agenda,” I explained. “She wants out and I want her out. I see no reason to confuse the issue with the Council’s politics. We don’t need an overview.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that you sit in the second chair. Which means that you’re my assistant and I’m your boss. Which means that you don’t approach Priscilla Sweet without my permission.”
To my surprise, Rebecca began to laugh. “Don’t bullshit me, Sid. You’re afraid I’ll steal your client.”
“Well,” I admitted, after my rat partners, Julie and Caleb, joined in the merriment, “there’s that, too.”
I woke up the next day riding the manic end of my bipolar personality like a bobcat on the back of a raging timber wolf. I felt on-target, as if life had a purpose (which I didn’t believe, not even at the time) and I’d hooked myself into its central energy. Losing seemed less than a possibility, as remote as one of those galaxies that can only be seen with an orbiting telescope. Looking back, I realize that what I needed was grounding, but for then, and for the six weeks that followed, I was having much too much fun. I was winning.
By ten o’clock, Byron’s phony passport had passed into the greedy hands of Phoebe Morris. Within three days of receiving it, she’d secured the original application, wheedled a handwriting sample in the form of a prison letter from Byron to his brother, William, and verified Byron’s handwriting on the application and passport with a recognized handwriting expert. Then she managed to convince her editors at
Newsday
to run Byron’s passport photo on the first page.
A day later, when Carlo Buscetta demanded that the passport, as evidence, be turned over to the state, Phoebe met him on the courthouse steps with a
Newsday
photographer and a camera crew from CBS.
“How,” she asked him as she handed over the document in question, “does this passport bear on the case against Priscilla Sweet? Does it mean the drug charges against her will be dropped?”
Phoebe’s efforts that week were neatly balanced by a salvo from the other side. Jay Harrison ran a column in which an unnamed drug dealer from the Lower East Side declared that he’d done business with Priscilla Sweet and didn’t even know that she was married. “She was in charge, all right. She was definitely running the show. Her and that .38 she carried.”
Though Caleb, Julie, and I enjoyed the media attention, not least because we knew it would be good for business, we were far too busy to give the various stories much attention. Earlier that week I’d sent Carlo a letter outlining the material I wanted on discovery, including all police reports, autopsy reports, lab analyses, and ballistic test results related to the death of Byron Sweet. He’d responded, as he was bound to do before Friday’s scheduling conference in Judge Delaney’s chambers, agreeing to provide the data as it became available to him. In fact, he would put my request to one side, figuring to stall until the start of Priscilla’s trial or until Delaney got in his face, whichever came first.
In the course of our pre-trial conferences, I would demand to receive the material as soon as possible. Maybe I’d get it, maybe not, but those conferences were still in the future and there was a second group of documents to be secured in the here and now, documents crucial to Priscilla’s claim of self-defense, documents that could be secured with a simple subpoena. There were twenty different items in this group, everything from my client’s probation reports to her hospital records to the results of her drug tests.
The downside was that each subpoena would have to be individually prepared (with every
i
dotted, every
t
crossed), then served on the proper agency. It would take weeks to accomplish, even if there weren’t other tasks, like finding and interviewing witnesses, requiring immediate attention. Still, there was one piece of paper I wanted right away, mostly because I wasn’t sure it existed. I drew up that subpoena first, then dragged Caleb with me to the 107th Precinct where we confronted the officer who’d taken Thelma Barrow’s complaint after the attack on Priscilla at the Barrow house a year before. We had a date, but no complaint number, and I was afraid that the original report (assuming Thelma had actually made it) had either vanished into a central warehouse for unverified civilian complaints or never been filed at all.