Sebastian moved for a change of venue. The hearing took two days and the courtroom was crowded. The motion was denied. Sebastian filed a notice of a claim of self-defense, and Mancini offered his thoughts to a reporter. Sebastian moved for a gag order in an effort to stifle the prosecutor, but the judge said no.

The pretrial maneuverings were intense as the clock ticked. Through it all, Sebastian skillfully eliminated a few crucial elements of the State’s theory. For example, the press had labeled Tee Ray a drug dealer, but there was no proof of this. He had not been in possession of anything when he was arrested. He had admitted nothing. He was not known to the police to be involved with trafficking. Simply walking down a street at night near the Flea Market was not evidence of guilt. His gun, the alleged murder weapon, was indeed an illegal firearm. It was unregistered and its serial number had long since disappeared. However, and much to the surprise of everyone, the Beretta 9-millimeter fired by Buck Lester was also unregistered. Apparently, it was a leftover from his Marine days and he preferred it over the 9-millimeter Colts issued by the city police. Sebastian doubted the prosecution would get near the topic of illegal firearms. The jury might expect a guy like Tee Ray to carry one, same as everyone else in Little Angola, but not one of the city’s finest young policemen.

The cops and Max Mancini had failed in their efforts to create testimony. Sebastian had succeeded in keeping Tee Ray in protective custody, in a cell by himself, and had thus prevented the involvement of any of the prosecution’s web of snitches. They were career deadbeats, most of them druggies, and they were always in jail for small-time felonies. The cops would feed them the details of a crime, stick them in the cell with the accused, and-presto!-get a new witness who’d heard a full confession. After the snitches lied under oath to the jury, the charges against them would be either reduced or lost in the paperwork.

Just for the hell of it, Sebastian filed a formal motion that he labeled “Motion to Prevent the Police and the Prosecutor from Employing the Use of Jailhouse Snitches to Attempt to Elicit Fabricated Testimony from the Defendant.” The motion was deemed out of order and overruled, but the point was made.

10.

Two weeks before the trial, Rufus was pulled over for allegedly driving through a stop sign without making a complete stop. He argued with the officer, who called for backup. Two other patrol cars arrived and Rufus was handcuffed. In his rear floorboard, a policeman found a shipping carton with a pound of crack.

Rufus swore he’d never seen it before, swore it was planted by the cops.

Sebastian visited him in jail and told him he was lucky he hadn’t been shot. He wasn’t sure if Rufus would now be useful at trial. Sebastian would make a decision in a day or so. Meanwhile, he would speak with Bradley, the financier, and try to arrange bail. Rufus asked if he would be safer in jail than out. Sebastian wasn’t sure.

As he was leaving the jail and crossing the street back to his office, a young man in a rumpled suit caught up to him and said, “You’re Sebastian Rudd, right?”

“I am.”

“I’m Walter Branch, a new lawyer in town. Just down the street.”

Sebastian stopped, smiled, offered a hand, and said, “Yes, I think I’ve seen you around.”

“A pleasure. Look, we need to talk, and soon. Like right now. Preferably in a room with complete privacy.”

“My office is right here.”

“How about the coffee shop around the corner.”

“And this is urgent?”

“Trust me.”

Branch paid for two espressos and they huddled in a corner, as far away from the other three customers as possible. As Branch spooned in some sugar, he glanced around, and in a low voice began, “I have this client, kid’s a real mess. Twenty years old, part-time college student, full-time crackhead. He’s been through every rehab clinic this side of Betty Ford. Nothing sticks. They lock him up for two months, he stays clean for a week, then back on the crack. Very sad. Pathetic really. Family has a ton of money, so they keep shucking out big bucks, hoping some clinic somewhere can find the magic cure. Not likely to happen. Anyway, the kid knows what happened when the cop got shot.”

Sebastian stared out the front window and watched the pedestrians hurry by. “And how does he know this?”

“He was there. In a parked car with a buddy, both stoned to hell and back. In fact his friend, still unnamed, had passed out in the driver’s seat. My client was on the passenger’s side, the sidewalk right beside him. He says he saw the black guy, Mr. Cardell, walk by him, headed west, and the cop came out of nowhere, yelling and then firing. Says your guy hit his knees, threw up his hands, and the cop kept shooting. Finally, your guy got hit, sort of rolled to one side, and whipped out a gun. A helluva shot.”

Sebastian sipped his espresso. “That’s identical to Cardell’s version.”