“I don’t think I understand.”
“Read the file, Jack. Then you will.”
Their eyes remained locked for several long moments. Then Jack reached for the dossier, and this time Pintado didn’t pull back. Jack took it from him and said, “All right. I’ll read it. With interest.”
47
A sly old trial lawyer from north Florida (the only part of Florida that was truly “the South”) once told Jack, “Catchin’ a gator is the easy part. It’s lettin’ him go that’ll cost you fingers and toes. If it ain’t the snapping jaws, it’s the swoosh of the tail that gets ya.” It was another way of saying to be careful what you wish for; you can wrestle a witness onto the stand, but once his mouth opens, it can be a buss or a bite. That old man’s words echoed in Jack’s mind as he prepared to do battle with Lieutenant Damont Johnson, knowing full well that this was one witness who’d be jamming him at every turn.
Jack had filled the morning session with other witnesses, most importantly an expert who testified that it wasn’t uncommon for a physically or psychologically abused wife to keep her suffering to herself, even deny it to authorities. A subpoena wasn’t slapped on Johnson till midmorning, and he was finally hauled into court as the last witness of the day.
“The defense calls Lieutenant Damont Johnson,” Jack announced.
It was as if the collective pulse of the courtroom had suddenly quickened, the excitement palpable. Spectators stirred in their seats, jurors straightened to attention, and the media reached for pen and paper. The courthouse artist worked furiously at the lieutenant’s likeness, as if utterly confident that this was evening-news material. For an instant, Jack had almost felt that it didn’t matter what Johnson said, that it was worth the dumbfounded expression on the prosecutor’s face just to bring Johnson into the courtroom. Soon enough, however, that initial excitement wore off.
“Lieutenant, was it you or Captain Pintado who drugged Lindsey Hart the first time you had sex with her?”
Johnson did a double take, but kept his composure. He was an imposing figure in his own right, dressed in the white uniform of an officer, his hat in his lap. It was hard to maintain a sense of dignity, given the nature of the questioning, but he was holding his own. “Excuse me, but neither one of us drugged her.”
“You’re saying she was a willing participant?”
“I’m saying it was her idea.”
The prosecutor smiled, and to say that Jack was headed down the wrong track would have been the trial’s grandest understatement. He knew better than to think that Johnson would admit to having forced Lindsey to have sex. He wasn’t going to break down on the witness stand and tearfully confess that he killed Oscar Pintado. That kind of drama happened on television every week, but rarely in a real courtroom. Jack had to score the sure points in his direct examination, let Torres have a shot on cross, and then hope for a few strategic openings that he might capitalize on through redirect. That was the plan, anyway.
Jack said, “Let’s see what we can agree on, shall we, Lieutenant?”
“Sure.”
“You had sex with Lindsey Hart, did you not?”
“Yes.”
“Oscar Pintado saw you have sex with his wife?”
“That’s true.”
“He even took photographs?”
Johnson shifted, as if slightly uncomfortable with that notion. “Yes. He did.”
“Do you also agree that this is something most husbands don’t do?”
“Not the ones I know.”
“Not even for their best friends?”
“Right again.”
“You were Oscar Pintado’s best friend, weren’t you?”
“Best friend on the base. I wouldn’t say I was his best friend in the world.”
“All right. Am I correct in assuming that having sex with Oscar’s wife wasn’t part of your friendship from day one?”
“That’s a fair assumption.”
“That’s something that developed after you two had been friends for a while, correct?”
“Right.”
Jack paused, debating how to proceed. He could launch into a series of questions about how the sex got started, who suggested it, that sort of thing. But that strategy was likely to elicit only lies, or at the very least answers Jack didn’t like. He took a safer approach.
“Oscar Pintado came from a very wealthy family, did he not?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“He’s not the kind of guy who would be tempted by an offer of money from one of his friends.”
“What are you trying to say?” he said, his eyes narrowing with suspicion.
“You didn’t give him money to have sex with his wife, did you?”
“Of course not. Like I said, it was Lindsey’s idea.”
Jack stepped closer, doing little to mask his skepticism. “Her idea, huh? Let me ask you something, Lieutenant. How many men are on the naval base in Guantánamo at any one time?”
“I don’t know. Several thousand, for sure.”
“Most of them between the age of twenty and thirty?”
“Most of them, yeah.”
“Most of them in pretty darn good shape? Physically, I mean.”
“Sure.”
“Most of them don’t have wives or girlfriends with them on the base, do they?”
“Relatively few do.”
“So, what you’re telling us is this,” said Jack as he walked toward his client, laying a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “While living on a Caribbean Island and surrounded by several thousand hard-bodied, twenty-something men-most of whom hadn’t been intimate with a woman in quite some time-my extremely attractive client decided that she needed to have sex with you while her husband watched and took pictures. This was her great idea; is that what you’re saying?”
A light chorus of chuckles emerged from the audience. Even one of the jurors smiled. The witness burrowed his tongue into his cheek, a sure sign that Jack was getting to him.
Jack said, “Is that what you’re saying, Lieutenant?”
“Look, all I know is that Oscar told me she-”
“Whoa, objection!” shouted Torres. “What Oscar told him is hearsay, Judge.”
“Sustained.”
Jack said, “But, Judge-”
“I sustained the objection, Mr. Swyteck. Move on.”
Jack could have argued about exceptions to the ruling, but it was clear that the judge had heard enough about sex, and he was in no mood to reconsider. Jack’s point was made, nonetheless. It was time to wrap up.
“Lieutenant, just a couple more questions. Obviously you’re an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.”
“That’s right.”
“If you wanted to know tomorrow’s patrol routes for Coast Guard vessels in the Florida Straits, you’d know how to get that information, wouldn’t you?”
“They don’t give me that information.”
“I didn’t ask that. I said, you’d know how to get it, wouldn’t you?”
“Just because I know how to get it doesn’t mean-”
“Lieutenant, please. Just answer my question. You’d know how to get that information, right?”
Johnson fell silent, as if trying to figure out a way to deny it. Finally, he said, “Yeah. I’d know how to get it.”
“Thank you. No further questions.”
Jack returned to his seat. He didn’t expect smiles from his client, but she looked positively ashen. It was understandable. They’d flirted with fire. But they’d come out ahead.
Thank God.
Torres approached the witness. “How nice to see you here today, Lieutenant.” His voice had just a hint of sarcasm.
“Nice to see you, too.”
All semblance of familiarity drained from Torres’s face. His voice had a definite edge to it, somewhere between a police interrogator and drill sergeant. “Lieutenant, I want to take you back to the morning of June seventeenth, the day Captain Pintado died.”
“All right.”
“We’ve heard testimony in this case that sometime before six A.M. you went to Captain Pintado’s house. Do you admit or deny you were there at that time?”