Bronx Justice

Bronx Justice
Joseph Teller

It is the late 1970s and criminal defense attorney Harrison J. Walker, better known as Jaywalker for his rebellious tactics, is struggling to build his own practice when he receives a call from a desperate mother. Her son, Darren Kingston, has been arrested for raping five white women in Castle Hill, an area of the Bronx long forgotten by the city. A young, goodlooking black man, Darren is positively identified by four of the victims as the fifth prepares to do the same.Everyone from the prosecution to the community at largesees this as an openandshut case with solid eyewitness testimony. Everyone, that is, except Jaywalker. The young attorney looks deep into the crimes, studying both the characters involved and the character of our society. What he finds will haunt him for the rest of his career.

BRONX JUSTICE

Also by

JOSEPH TELLER

THE TENTH CASE

Watch for

DEPRAVED INDIFFERENCE

Available November 2009

JOSEPH TELLER

BRONX JUSTICE

To Sheila, who put up with me back then, at a time

when I’m sure I was impossible to put up with.

And to my children, Wendy, Ron and Tracy,

who must have suffered mightily by having a father

absent in more ways than one, but never complained

about it, then or since.

CONTENTS

1: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

2: NO DOUBT WHATSOEVER

3: EIGHTY YEARS

4: HEDGING BETS

5: THE LITTLE BLACK BOX

6: LAST CHANCE

7: THE BRICK WALL

8: NIGHTS ON THE COUCH

9: THE FREE LOOK

10: A STUBBORN FOG

11: BOARD GAMES

12: DISCREPANCIES

13: THE CYCLONE

14: FAMILY AND FRIENDS

15: DARREN

16: THE OTHER MAN

17: LOW BLOWS

18: THREE PITIFUL WEAPONS

19: THE SHORTEST DAY

20: IN THIS HEART OF MINE

21: MURDER BURGERS

22: A NEW YEAR’S TOAST

23: NO PLACE TO BE

24: JAMMED UP PRETTY GOOD

25: THE NICEST THANK-YOU

26: ELEVEN POINTS

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

1

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT

Jaywalker is dreaming when the ringing of his phone jars him awake. Something about hiking with his wife in the Canadian Rockies. He understands right away it has to have been a dream, because his wife has been dead for nearly ten years now, and he hasn’t hiked the Rockies in twice that long.

Groping in the darkness for the phone, his first fear is for his daughter. Is she out driving? Riding with some pimply-faced boyfriend who’s had his learner’s permit for two weeks now and thinks of driving as some sort of video game? Then he remembers. His daughter is in her early thirties. She has a husband with no pimples, a child of her own, a career, and a house in New Jersey.