The jury had already been selected. I found myself breathless in my office, running a last-minute check of the VCR machine to make sure the film was queued up to the right moment. I couldn’t permit technical difficulties in a high-profile homicide courtroom crawling with reporters.

The sharpied title of the tape, Tour of the Uffizi, flashed before my eyes as I fed it into the mouth of the machine, which emitted a thankful series of mechanical clicks as it unwound and digested the mylar tape. In return, the screen buzzed from black to technicolor, beginning its work reanimating a grainy image of the deceased.

In the liminal static between the unblinking blackness of ‘off’ and the fully assembled picture, I saw my reflection: a shadow of the fearless prosecutor I had been. My ordinary swagger, gone. My extraordinary fiancée, gone. Unnamed uncertainties stabbed the inside of my skull. I adjusted the volume and focused on the bright image inside the TV screen.

A man stood before a packed classroom, backlit by an Elmo projector. He wasn’t a big man—slender, not more than five-nine, dressed in an unassuming fashion—but he commanded the room to the last row of combination desks.

“Imagine it’s 1743, and you’re the wealthiest woman in Italy, the last of a dynasty. You’re on your deathbed, and you’ve gotta decide what to do with your fortune….”

His deep voice, silky-smooth and self-reliant, held the attention of his students expertly. With just an Elmo projection and an old textbook, he transported his students from the umbra of a dilapidated classroom to the bright statuary of a world-famous art museum, telling of how a Lady Medici had given her wealth to build the world-famous Uffizi Gallery. If you ain’t giving, you ain’t living! Bradford was a giver and a believer; that’s what made him legendary in the D.C. school system.

Despite my endless case prepping, I still was helpless to understand why one of those students had wanted him dead.

The pupils were transfixed by the meticulously hand-painted Perseus Frees Andromeda on the projector screen before them, and they whispered about the creature in the center. Art was Bradford’s medium for arming high school students against the sinister beasts and unique horrors endemic to poverty.

“Dragons are everywhere in this world. In our community, in our school…even in our own hearts. We’ve gotta decide for ourselves whether or not we’re gonna rise to the occasion and face them. Are you all ready for that?”

I hit stop. The tape sputtered stiffly from the player. That was just the part that I would need the jurors to see: Bradford’s selflessness, his charisma, and his talents as a philosopher disguised as an art historian. And then, just after playing the tape for them, I would tell the jury how someone shot Bradford Slater in cold blood. What I wouldn’t tell them is that my star witness, a carnivorous Russian ballerina, may or may not show up, or that if she did, she would most likely reek of vodka and cigarettes—things I shouldn’t know. What I wouldn’t tell them was that the person who meant the most to me had suddenly disappeared. I could barely admit that to myself. While putting on my polished show for the jury, I would be doing my best to hide my utter desolation. Because even if I won this unwinnable case against the best criminal defense attorney in D.C., I wouldn’t be able to undo the destruction that I had wreaked on my own life.

I slipped through the back door of the office just after seven. This was my favorite hour, juicing up on caffeine as I looked at my file, knowing I was about to pick a jury. A rare hour of pure, undiluted thought. With over a hundred and fifty prosecutors and a city filled with gun lovers that don’t hunt, office pandemonium usually broke out by eight o’clock. Silence segued into ringing phones, slamming doors, rising voices, then Scott Cook’s voice, and, finally, Alexandra Baker’s voice. Once my office brother and sister had arrived, I felt more secure. Our triumvirate was unassailable. We had a pact: anything could be said between us. No secrets. In an office of friends, enemies, and frenemies, we stuck beside each other. And beyond our friendship, we had complete professional trust in each other. I could ask either one to cover me at work and know that whatever needed to be done would be done my way, or better.

Scott was my height and bald by choice. Like me, he was thirty-three and one of the few born-and-raised Washingtonians in the office. We were both retired from the D.A.’s basketball team, now too busy and too slow. Professionally, Scott was freak-show smart. He could pick up a murder file and determine in five minutes whether the jury would do murder one, murder two, or manslaughter. His mother taught music; his father was a postal worker by day and a jazz musician by night. Scott himself was artistically talented, and before catching the trial bug, he’d won awards for realism. If he hadn’t been so smart, he’d have made a fantastic composite sketch artist. Now, he was a tremendous trial lawyer, husband, and father. He taunted me relentlessly about my quest for the perfect girl.

Like his parents, Scott was educated at Spelman in Atlanta and went on to Howard University School of Law. He was raised to do the right thing and championed education over ignorance, fidelity over being a player, and faith over drugs. He said he hoped I would evolve into a father so that I could visit him at home more often. (His wife generally disapproved of me. She’d never seen me bring the same girl to Sunday potluck dinners twice.) Although a family man, Scott had a sick sense of humor and energy to burn.

Alexandra was exuberant. With her long dirty-blonde tresses and towering five-foot-nine frame, she would punctuate her cutting remarks with a laugh that quickly dispelled any feelings of ill will. When she smiled, men died; when they found out she preferred women, they died again. She had come up the ranks with Scott and me, wading through minor traffic violations, drunk driving, misdemeanors, juvenile crimes, minor felonies, appeals, major felonies, and grand jury, until finally arriving in the world of high-profile trials. She declined her first assignment to the drug unit; we all knew that the war on drugs was just a war on poor people. Alexandra, smarter than anyone in the office, chose the sex crimes unit over homicide. While I was the product of bad parenting and an education I had ignored, Alexandra came from a great family and phenomenal schooling. She did not forget her roots and even displayed a few pieces of antique New England furniture in her office. Born and raised in Connecticut (her father was into investment banking, and her faultless mother was always throwing herself at one philanthropic cause or another), she had prepped at Concord Academy in Massachusetts with the Kennedy clan, did her undergrad at Wellesley, and her law work at Columbia. She discovered her love of criminal law after a stint in private practice (the Waspy firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, of course) doing international and communications law. But it wasn’t about her golden resume. It was about her attitude and patience with all the yahoos, psycho witnesses, dysfunctional staff, half-cocked, dingy lawyers, out-to-lunch judges, and their fussy courtroom staff. She effortlessly made them feel great with only crumbs of her affection. If you were a close friend, you were blessed to have her in your life. If you were her girlfriend and she withdrew her affection: ouch. (Last year she had an affair with a pretty office law clerk and aspiring lawyer, one Rachael Cohen. When her clerkship ended, so did the affair. Alexandra dumped her, and Rachael melted down. I had to warn her that one more uninvited trip to the office and we would indict her for stalking.) Alexandra had what I love in a woman: zoom. She was always ready to go to the jail and talk to witnesses, go out to eat or drink, dance or work out, sneak out and go to the movies, smile, or crack a ridiculously funny joke without smiling. The joke this morning, however, was me wondering whether or not my star witness would show up. Knowing Alexandra was slammed with work, I thought I’d go bother Scott.

“Top of the morning,” I grinned, grabbing a yellow tennis ball from his shelf and bouncing it off his desk. “Finally, the NBA season’s here and we have something to talk about.”

“What’s got you so cranked? Did you sneak into the evidence locker again?” Scott eyed me suspiciously before cracking a smirk. “A-hah, I see it’s not a ‘what’ but a ‘who.’ Have a seat, my boy.”

Scott was usually in my office, or I was in his. “No details until you answer my questions first. Quid pro quo.” I tossed the tennis ball against the beige wall and watched it land back in my palm with a muted thump. “What’s your idea of the perfect girl? What do you look for in a woman?”

“It’s too early to answer your stupid questions, Cassius Clay,” Scott said, standing up with a Manila file in one hand and java in the other. This morning, I was the people’s champion. God only knows what he would call me tomorrow. “What do I look for in a woman? I’m married; I look not to get hit by my wife.”

“Stop talking like you don’t love Pam,” I persisted.

“The only reason you’re asking this shit is you inevitably had another inconsequential date with another woman suffering from No Personality Disorder. I’m just hoping she was fine and you got a Polaroid. Or a video, for once.”

I gasped with mock indignation. “A video! You’ve got some nerve, Scott Cook. You know as well as I do that filming video without consent is a violation of the U.S. Code and will often result in a period of incarceration.”

Scott scooped the tennis ball off the desk and aimed it at me. “I answered your question. Your end of the deal?”

“Actually, you didn’t really answer,” I said, locking the door, “but there was an adrenaline-infused romantic interlude that I will share with you because you're my brother from another mother.”

I slipped my hand into the breast pocket of my jacket, pulled out a few white-bordered Polaroids, and held up a close-up of a smiling woman where Scott could see it. “Meet Gloria, George Washington University’s finest philosophy PhD. And she is fine.”

“Philosophy? Tell her I have studied Sexistentialism,” Scott mused.

“I am going to pretend you didn’t say that, Monsieur Camus,” I fired back as Scott took the Polaroids and began flipping through them.

“That’s one fine woman, on the dance floor too…” Scott brought the small photo closer. “How’d you meet her? What bar is this?”

“I met her at a charity event near DuPont Circle. Invited her to have a nightcap in Adams Morgan. Took her dancing—Madame’s Organ, of course—hoping that would set the mood. She noticed the camera in my backpack and wanted to give it some use. I obliged.”

“Well, last night I fixed a broken clothes dryer. Aren’t you jealous?”

“Please try not to drool on those,” I continued to torture him. “The right song came on, and puffer jackets came flying off.”

Scott flipped to another photo of Gloria, this one taken from farther away in my apartment.

“Digging her…style, digging those long legs. How tall is she? She looks very intelligent,” Scott said facetiously.

“She’s five-ten. Loves to run.” He ignored me and held a photo of Gloria preening for the camera, radiant smile, wearing only her Brittany-ripped jeans in my living room. “Bless her heart, look at that.”

Scott placed the photo on the desk next to the others, like cards laid out in a game of solitaire.

“How’d you wind up in your apartment? You just met?”

“Shots. Tequila. She practically dragged me back there.” I deadpanned to hide my smugness.

“Sure she did.”

“I detect cynicism in your voice. Not my fault you had to fix the dryer last night. Was it a heating element or perhaps a drive belt?”

“Fuck you,” Scott whispered.

We were interrupted by two sharp knocks at the door.

I slid the photos off the desk and into my suit jacket in a single, reflexive gesture. Scott sat down and propped one leg up on his desk, spilling the dregs of his java in the process. Smiles were instantly wiped off our faces, papers and pens pulled out.

It was Alexandra.

“How dare you leave me out of a lunch break gossip session?” she chided as I let her in. “I can tell you’ve been up to no good. Are you discussing you-know-who?” Like Scott, she was always up-to-date on my romantic escapades.

I shook my head. “New woman with an old-school, rock-and-roll name: Gloria.”

“Like I care about her name. If you have snapshots, let me look.”

I stacked them on the desk, and Alexandra picked them up with her well-manicured hands. She smiled and examined each photo for a few long seconds. “Undeniably attractive. Oh, look at this picture; she has beautiful breasts. Too bad she’s straight,” she said nonchalantly, then put them down and got serious. “Well, this was a fun way to start the day, but Clay has to go see Tommy Monroe. Right now. A student just shot a teacher at Carver High School. About seventy square blocks of D.C. are closed.”

“Time to get back to work. Better you than me,” Scott snarked.

“The teacher was Bradford Slater, some Super Teacher. He received every teaching award ever given. The Washington Post did a long piece on him last year. It’s your case, Clay. Tommy’s waiting.” She handed me the photos before bolting back to whatever emergency she had been dealing with.

“Since you're busy, I’ll hold on to those Polaroids,” Scott urged. “I’ll get them back to you later.”

“Get a grip on yourself; you sound desperate,” I uttered, tucking the polaroids back into my pocket.

My cell phone went off as I headed down the hall to Tommy Monroe’s office. My witnesses had arrived.

Tommy was on the phone but nodded for me to enter. He was a compact unit of a man on the shorter side, but he worked the phone like a giant. Covering the mouthpiece with one hand, he waved me into his office and began his pitch.

“Clay, you gotta work your magic and win this one. This murder is huge, and we’re gonna get it from both ends. The president and the secretary of education already called a press conference condemning school violence. Problem is, the kid who killed the teacher is the son of one of our police officers. So you know that motherfucker Steve Duncan of the Fraternal Order of Police is going to go after me. Right or wrong, if I prosecute a police officer or his family, he’s in our face. Get ready for that—no matter what the defense is, Duncan is going to do anything to help the cop and his son.” Tommy began talking into the phone again and held up his index finger, American Business Sign Language for “I’ll be off the phone in a minute.”

Tommy Monroe and Steve Duncan hated each other. Duncan was formerly a narcotics detective who was born pissed. He was never really satisfied with the D.A.’s office, especially when he was always about a freckle away from a perjury indictment. “What time do you need me to testi-lie?” he would joke with the greener D.A.s. I could never figure out who was worse, the D.A.s that laughed with him (and allowed themselves to be turned into coconspirators) or Duncan for saying whatever needed to be said at trial instead of what really happened. Since Duncan felt destined for bigger and better things, he reinvented himself as a political activist, becoming president of the D.C. police union. Whenever Tommy indicted a police officer for domestic violence or a police brutality assault, Duncan would be here, there, and everywhere heckling and mocking. The press loved their feud. It was tabloid gold: a marital split between the police and prosecutors.

I regarded Tommy with an unconvinced shrug. “I have to begin a murder trial in thirty minutes. Besides, I don’t even want this teacher case. I’m sick of high-profile. I’m burned out, plus these cases ruin my social life. I’ll cover the bond hearing, but give the case to someone else.” I sighed defeatedly. “Now tell me what happened in thirty seconds or less.” I owned Tommy and could talk to him how I pleased. He may have been the ultimate politician, but he was a clueless trial lawyer. Without me getting him good press and winning cases, the office would appear inept. “This case meant a lot to Mr. Monroe, personally,” I routinely told reporters to get his name in the paper. As the son of a hard-drinking reporter, I knew what to say and what not to say. It was a lawyer’s job to keep secrets and a reporter’s job to publish them. My father had taught me all about this strange dance between reporters and their sources.

We were interrupted by Tommy’s voluptuous secretary sauntering into the office. She handed him a note and whispered the word “urgent.” With pictures of his wife and children silently looking on, Tommy sized her up and down like a soldier on furlough. Their little affair was an open secret. Naturally, Tommy never gave me a hard time about my debauchery. He knew I cruised the courthouse like it was a Vegas hotel. But while I never touched our office’s employees, Tommy had no problem shitting in his own nest. Nonetheless, his legal heart was in the right place. He once told me that he gave me the high-profile cases because he knew I would win without hiding evidence. He feared that type of scandal, and with good reason. Some of the more desperate and insecure prosecutors routinely hid the goods from the defense.

“I know you better than you know yourself, Clay—you’ll end up taking the case. Meanwhile, let me tell you what I know: there’s a performance at Carver High School, a teacher goes downstairs to get some computer equipment, and this little fucker has his father’s gun. The teacher is killed in the basement, and the kid starts running. So, the teacher comes in alive and leaves dead. But it wasn’t any teacher, mind you; it was Bradford Slater. He’s a legend. If you had gone to a Black high school instead of that fancy St. Albans private school, you’d know that name.”

“Don’t play the if-card on me. If you were taller, you’d get more women. We are what we are,” I puffed, but I knew that Tommy was more adept at dating than me. And he was married.

Tommy smiled for a second, and then a hint of sadness suffused his face—unusual for a guy who dealt with homicide on a daily basis, sometimes two or three in a single day. “This guy Bradford Slater was a maverick. To many families he was Martin Luther King. He got kids to ignore the poverty and drugs. Bradford helped those kids find the musician, dancer, painter, whatever, within themselves. I know. I had relatives that were taught by him. Even if they weren’t the artsy kind, they respected him. Lot of the kids in that school come from broken homes, so he was like a parent to them. I bet if we put that little punk shooter back in school tomorrow, he wouldn’t make it through the day.” Tommy instructed me to get on the Slater murder as soon as I finished my trial, adding, “People will want the father indicted for letting a minor have access to a gun, but you need to find a way to avoid that. One sacrificial lamb is all we need.” I began walking away, refusing to commit. If I found evidence proving that the father lent the gun to his minor son, then I would have to indict, prosecute, and orange-jumpsuit his ass. It didn’t make any difference to me that he was a cop. And what was really up with the son? Sex and drugs between the teacher and the student? As I wondered, my cell phone went off again. Annette, my secretary, was on the line to tell me that Tomar, the witness I had been looking for, had arrived. “I can’t talk. I’m in trial, and I have to meet with a witness,” I said six times as six people tried to stop me on the way to the interview room. Four out of the six people told me the high school shooting was my case and to get right over there. Typical. How the fuck was I supposed to try today’s murder case and run over to the Carver High crime scene at the same time? I earned one-tenth the salary paid to D.C. lawyers in big law firms, yet the government demanded ten times the effort of private practice. The government could be such an easy place to hide from work, but when done right it was sheer toil. “‘Sup,” I said, opening the interview room door to reveal the charming Tomar McKee, wearing only a black t-shirt despite the wintery conditions outside. My star witness. “What’s up with you, trial dog? How you be?” Tomar smiled as I shook his tattooed hand. Everything was tattooed on Tomar. He was an ageless man with high cheekbones and the face of a choirboy; his tats showed up quite well against his light brown skin. Some were pictures, some were symbols I did not understand, and others, like the one that said “Bad Influence” on the inside of his wrist, fell into the Department of You’ve Got to Be Kidding. I’d previously inquired about the small Chinese calligraphy symbol on his left cheek, and he’d said it meant inner strength. We had met once before when the case had been continued. Despite hitting it off, he’d been pretty cagey. He’d promised to help me prepare and then disappeared, effortlessly eluding the detective I sent to find and interview him. As we walked back to my office, the ever-charismatic Tomar made polite conversation. “Did you hear about that teacher getting shot? One of my half-brothers used to hang around the Shrimp Boat, sell drugs.” I assumed Tomar was referring to a large fast-food joint shaped like an Atlantic trawler, located in a gritty northeast neighborhood at the corner of Benning Road and East Capitol Street. “He took Bradford Slater’s class. That boy changed. Now he up at some acting school in New York City, Jewel-yard.” Tomar suppressed a proud smile. “He’s doin’ Def Jam Comedy and shit, all ‘cause of that teacher. Everybody liked that Slater, and now some little nigga put a cap in him. I’ve been shot. It ain’t no fun… I tell you that right now, Clay, I’m gonna kill these motherfuckers that shot me.” “Keep your voice down,” I said, shutting the door to my office. “There are people here that take threats seriously.” Perhaps I had an ethical duty to report my knowledge of a potential murder, or at least to put a memo in the file, but there wasn’t enough time. I had to do this murder trial, there was this new high-profile teacher homicide to avoid, and then there were my own goddamn sex life to worry about. There was never enough time. “I’m serious as a heart attack. Them low-level niggas is dead.” I knew Tomar was not simply venting. He meant it, and he didn’t care what I heard. He was the walking definition of “What difference does it make?” Tomar had been shot three times; if he killed the two people being tried for the murder of his friend, Pookie, everyone would know who did the shooting anyway.

There was a knock at the door. It was my secretary, Annette. “Hey, sweetness. You better get going on that teacher case,” she whispered to me before greeting Tomar, whom she had met once before.

“Annette, I say this with love: I’m going to kill you if you don’t get out of my office. You know I have to pick a jury on this Novak and Joyner murder case in twenty minutes. The detectives will have to gather the information on the Slater case themselves. Now get out of here and put a yellow sticky do-not-disturb on my door, would you?”

“Just because you got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, don’t take it out on me, Franklin-stein. I also have to tell you that judge’s chambers called, and you’re next in line to pick a jury.” Annette snapped, slamming the door. Then she reopened the door, called me a monster again, told me to do my own yellow sticky, and slammed the door once more, this time with even more passion. Once was enough, I thought. A moment later, a new D.A. knocked on the door to ask a trial strategy question. I told her I was jammed up. (Everyone came to Alexandra, Scott, and me for trial strategy questions.)

I explained to Tomar it was impossible to get anything done during business hours. I wrote “Do Not Disturb” on a yellow sticky and placed it on the grainy wood of my office door. I continued to prepare him for the witness stand.

“I’m going to ask you to step down out of the witness box and show the jury where you got shot. Take off your shirt and show them. The judge will allow it, and don’t rush it. Walk close to the jury box and make sure each juror gets a look at each wound,” I instructed. He began rehearsing.

“After Novak killed Pookie, that nigga capped me here and here and here.” He lifted up his shirt and twisted his body around to show me his gunshot wounds.

“But the answer is still the answer, and them low-level niggas is dead. I’m sorry to tell you, but I’m gonna kill them niggas first motherfucking chance I get. They shot me three times.”

“Just calm down; you don’t want to do that.” I attempted to assuage him. “Listen, let me put them in jail. Let me do your dirty work for you. Your tax dollars pay my salary. We don’t have the death penalty in D.C., but we have life without parole.”

“Hey trial dog, I am the death penalty,” Tomar shot back.

“Stop talking about killing Novak and Joyner, and start helping me prepare. You seem like a good guy; you don’t really want to shoot them and go to jail.” I said. “Just between you and me, I’d rather be dead than spend my life in jail.”

Tomar sighed and leaned back in his seat, thinking. “I hear that.” His pager went off.

“Help me convict them—that’s the way we get even. I need total honesty from you. This isn’t the drug unit, and I don’t care about that shit. If this was a drug deal that went bad or a drug debt or something, then I need to know, my friend, because their lawyers are going to have every little detail about what went on between you guys—and I don’t want them to have more information than me. Without your help, they have the upper hand. Now what’s this about? We don’t have long. We’re going to pick our jury in half an hour, and you never even returned my letter or phone calls to talk about the case.”

Tomar’s intentions gave the case a new sense of urgency. I knew Tomar would kill them if the jury came back with a not guilty. His pager went off again. I knew what he was up to; his rap sheet was an inch thick. Perhaps his tax dollars weren’t paying my salary after all.

“Here, use my phone. I have to check in with the jury commissioner and see if the other witnesses are here. Dial nine to get an outside line, think about what I said, and I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

I did my patented courthouse lap, walking as fast as I could without running. Several secretary-paralegal types were crying in the hallway because Bradford Slater had been their high school teacher; I overheard their laments as I blew by them. Note to the courtroom clerk, witness room intros, judge’s chambers. Half the job of district attorney was being a producer-director. As for the jury, that was an ad campaign: selling guilt to a small but distrustful demographic. My mind wandered back to Tomar, to how much money he was making during my brief absence. Easily more than anyone in the office. It was not hard to beat the anemic D.A. salaries, forty percent of which went to Visa and my law school loan. (Dad could’ve afforded it, but he thought law school loans would build my character.) My cell phone started buzzing. It was a detective who reported that he was standing near the dead body of Bradford Slater. I told him to process the crime scene carefully. “Dude, you have been doing this long enough to know that the plea offer will be a million years, so you know this is going to trial. That means you know everyone will be heavily cross-examined about everything. Take all the usual precautions: don’t walk in the blood, don’t move the body until all the photos are taken, save the clothes for gunshot residue, interview everyone you can, et cetera, et cetera. I’m turning my cell phone off now, you all good to go?” The detective said the killer kiddie was still on the run, but everything was under control. I doubted that but turned my cell off.

I opened the door to my office as Tomar finished up his conversation on the phone. “I’ll hit your pager back when I’m done here. I got court today, and you know how that goes… Yeah, I’m not deaf; I heard you the first time. If you want that much, you better do what you need to do, ‘cause I ain’t goin’ there but once, and I ain’t spotting nobody… Okay, later.” He hung up my glossy black office phone. I had received awards in the past; maybe I’d get a new one: “First District Attorney to Have Drug Deals Conducted from Inside the Homicide Unit.” It could hang next to last year’s Outstanding Achievement as a Prosecutor plaque—all things in moderation.

Since Tomar was comfortable dealing in front of me, I felt confident he was finally going to give me the details I needed. I pulled out a pad of yellow paper and said, “Go.”

“It wasn’t over drugs, Clay. Novak thinks I set him up to get jacked, robbed... I used to sell over in the Heights ‘hood,” he began, referring to one of D.C.’s notoriously dilapidated areas that included the Capitol Heights neighborhood, right across the D.C. border in Maryland’s Prince George’s County. D.C. and Prince George’s County shared six hundred homicides a year—the highest murder rate in the United States of Gun Violence.

“I made good money too, three thousand dollars a week. I would get ten thousand dollars’ worth of crack up front, sell it, give my supplier seven thousand cash, and keep the rest. I did it for the money. I don’t smoke cigarettes or marijuana. I don’t even drink, and I wouldn’t dream of doing crack—it was for the money. But those days are gone. Now I work for the D.C. government as an electrician’s helper. I got a health plan for my baby and my baby mama; I be working every day now.” Tomar nodded vigorously, proud of his transformation.

“All right, all right, I don’t need to hear how much more money you have than me. Get to the shooting; I had to pick a jury five minutes ago,” I said.

“I thought you lawyers s’posed to make big money, Clay.”

“Not when you work for the government. After taxes, this cheap-ass D.A.’s office pays about eight hundred dollars a week,” I confessed.

“God damn, that’s all? Damn… that ain’t much at all. Why don’t you go private or some shit? Them private lawyers make a whole lot more than your minimum-wage ass.”

Tomar bragged that he’d been arrested and jailed twenty-five times but never once convicted. His arrest record was as thick as the Sunday New York Times. Tomar, avatar of Street Smart, held nothing back. In that moment, I knew that he would run circles around defense attorneys Jack Shane and Mark Lodge during cross-examination. Shane was smart, but not that smart. Lodge was a goof.

“This is what happened, Clay. You see, I love to gamble. It’s my hobby,” he began. I came from a family of alcoholics and doubted it was a hobby, but I held my tongue. “We were over at this dude’s house playing Nintendo for money, and I lost a couple hundred to Novak. Later that night he gets robbed, see, then Novak, simple nigga that he is, thinks I set him up. Which is silly. I never sent anyone to rob him. And for a couple hundred dollars—no way! That ain’t shit to me. Anyway, he sees me and Pookie a few weeks later when he’s with Joyner. They tell us they know of a gambling party near Georgia Avenue. I say, ‘Fine, let’s go.’ So we drivin’ along, I’m in the front seat, and we get lost—at least that is what I’m s’pose to think, if you know what I mean. Then Novak says, ‘Hey, Tomar, roll down your window so I can read that sign, brother.’ I roll down the window, and he pulls a gun out and shoots me in the head. But it only grazes the back of my head. I hear a second shot, which is when he shot Pookie in the head, except that one wasn’t no graze. I jump on him, screaming, ‘Nigga, the fuck you doin’?’ That’s when his partner, Joyner, he gets me in a headlock and they get me out of the car, and Novak’s yellin’, ‘Hold him so I can shoot him,’ and Joyner’s holdin’ me down. I hear the gun go off two times. They shoot me in the chest and in the back, then push me into those woods at the back of Rock Creek Park. Pookie died right away. When Novak capped him in the face, he just slumped over, right there in the back seat.” Tomar fell silent and bowed his head, revealing a jagged scar adorning the base of his skull.

“That’s what happened?” I asked.

“For real,” he nodded.

“Did Novak have the gun the whole time?” I asked.

“Seemed like it, but I passed out after the third shot on me.”

“Tomar, how’d you get out of the woods?”

“I was lying there thinkin’ about my baby, thinkin’, ‘I don’t want to die yet.’ Next thing I know, I was up on the road and flagged down the five-o.”

“Flagged down the what?”

“The police, Clay. The police.”

“You’re probably going to be a little nervous when you testify because you’ll have to look at the killers. I just want you to relax. Do you understand what I’m saying?” I tried to comfort him.

“Understand, overstand—you wrong ‘bout that. They’s the ones who gotta be nervous. You watch ‘em niggas when I take the stand, you watch ‘em. I already saw Joyner out in the hall, he wouldn’t even look at me. He know he’s dead. How’d he make bond? Probably had his lawyer set the bond motion in front of a soft judge. His lawyer’s probably friends with the judge too. I don’t care. He’s dead.”

Tomar had a preternatural sense for the flow of the courthouse. His little bond scenario had indeed played out. Defense attorney Jack Shane was friends with Judge Watson.

“Let’s just focus on the trial. I’m going to go through the questions I’ll ask you on the stand, and then I’ll ask you what I think the lawyers will ask on cross-examination. And trust me, Tomar, after a hundred jury trials, I have a pretty good idea of what they’re going to ask you on cross-examination.”

“Okay, trial dog, I’m with you. What’s their defense? Can’t be an accident. Can’t be self-defense. Gotta be: ‘I wasn’t there.’ That’s my bet.” Tomar thought like a trial lawyer. No doubt he would have crushed it in court had he had the opportunity.

“You win that bet. Their alibi will definitely be that they weren’t there. But don’t worry, I already had a detective interview the two witnesses they named in their pretrial motions, and he made sure to tape-record the interviews. I had to ask the detective thirty fucking times to go interview them, but he finally did it.”