The Fence - Dick Lehr [114]
Finally, when Holliday was asked to describe what Smut was wearing, Holliday answered a tan Pele jacket—Pele being “the name of the jacket that was written on the back.”
Sheketoff was quick to interrupt. “What was the answer to that?” Smut was not wearing a tan coat inscribed with the soccer star’s name. He had been wearing a brown leather jacket the night Lyle was killed.
Holliday tried to take it back, saying he actually wasn’t sure what Smut wore. But the damage was done. Sheketoff had emphasized the discrepancy for the jury.
Sheketoff sat listening intently as Holliday finished and, standing to cross-examine him, felt the testimony from the government’s single witness against his client had turned out to be “manna from heaven.” He challenged Holliday’s math on his drinking. “One or two?” Was that credible for Hip-Hop Night at the Cortee’s when he was on the prowl for girls? He asked Holliday more questions about the “Pele” jacket to further drive home the witness’s foul-up. Most important, Sheketoff pounced on the word Holliday had chosen to describe Smut talking to the Evans brothers: whisper. Walaikum’s was packed that night. Even if Smut had whispered something, how could Holliday have gotten it right with all the noise? In relatively quick fashion, Sheketoff showed the jury Marcello Holliday’s testimony was not evidence it should rely on.
In presenting his case, the prosecutor called eleven Boston police officers to the witness stand—officers like Jimmy Rattigan, who described crashing his cruiser to avoid colliding head-on with the fast-moving Lexus, and officers like Roy Frederick, the off-duty cop who retrieved one of the weapons near his front yard. Critical in any murder prosecution was calling the arresting officers to the stand. The jury therefore heard Craig Jones testify about capturing Tiny Evans on the left side of Woodruff Way. Richie Walker took honors for Smut Brown, even though, in fact, Kenny Conley had caught Smut. But because of flawed police reports crediting him, Richie Walker was the cop who took the stand and promised to tell the truth. He told the jury how he ran between the Lexus and a police cruiser, stepping over two fallen suspects, Boogie-Down and Marquis, and then hustled through a hole in the fence to take up after the fleeing Smut Brown.
Jimmy Burgio was the officer who took credit for arresting Boogie-Down, but he was nowhere to be found. Burgio, due to the Cox investigation and the fact he’d taken the Fifth, was off-limits. The prosecutor therefore summoned Dave Williams to speak for his partner, Burgio, and about the arrest he’d taken credit for—Marquis Evans.
It was late in the day. Smut sat at the defense table next to Bob Sheketoff. Williams was the last of a string of officers called to testify. Dressed in uniform, Williams strode into the courtroom and made his way toward the witness stand. Smut watched the tall, broadly built cop with the mustache settling into his chair. His mind began spinning. Smut instantly recognized Williams from the fence. Williams was one of the cops he’d watched haul Mike Cox down and beat him. Smut couldn’t hear Dave Williams’s voice answering the prosecutor’s questions—it was all white noise. His mind was in a paroxysm, crazy with the recognition. He leaned into Sheketoff.
“That’s the guy,” he said. “That’s the guy.”
But Sheketoff didn’t hear his client. He was listening to Williams testify—and was in the midst of his own epiphany. “I’m thinking I know who beat up Mike Cox.”
He found unbelievable Williams’s account of him and Burgio apprehending two suspects in front of the Lexus. For one, it was contradicted by Richie Walker, who said he’d stepped over Boogie-Down and Marquis lying facedown between the Lexus and Williams’s cruiser. Then Williams went on to say he’d chased Marquis fifteen to twenty yards and never knew about a fence with