Twisted

witness delivered his lines like a bad actor in a dinner-theater play.
    “Now you heard the prosecution witness say that Mr. Hartman was going to quote ‘get’ the victim and that would take care of all his problems.”
    “Yessir, I did.”
    “You were near the defendant and that witness when this conversation supposedly took place, is that right?”
    “Yessir.”
    “Where was that?”
    “Cibella’s restaurant on Washington Boulevard, sir.”
    “And was the conversation the same as the witness described?”
    “No, it wasn’t,” the man answered the defense lawyer. “The prosecution witness, he misunderstood. See, I was sitting at the next table and I heard Mr. Hartman say, ‘I’m going to get Valdez to take care of some problems I’ve been having in the Latino community.’ I guess that witness didn’t hear right or something.”
    “I see,” the lawyer summarized in a slick voice. “He was going to get Valdez to take care of some problems?”
    “Yessir. Then Mr. Hartman said, ‘That Jose Valdez is a good man and I respect him. I’d like him to explain to the community that I’m concerned for their welfare.’ ”
    Chuck Wu mouthed a silent obscenity.
    The lawyer pushed his point home. “So Mr. Hartman was concerned for the welfare of the Latino community?”
    “Yes, very much so. Mr. Hartman was really patient with him. Even though Valdez started all those rumors, you know.”
    “What rumors?” the lawyer asked.
    “About Mr. Hartman and Valdez’s wife.”
    Behind him Tribow heard the man’s widow inhale in shock.
    “What were those rumors?”
    “Valdez got it into his head that Mr. Hartman’d been seeing his wife. I know he wasn’t, but Valdezwas convinced of it. The guy was a little, you know, nuts in the head. He thought a lot of guys were, you know, seeing his wife.”
    “Objection,” Tribow snapped.
    “Let me rephrase. What did Mr. Valdez ever say to you about Mr. Hartman and his wife?”
    “He said he was going to get even with Hartman because of the affair—I mean, the supposed affair.”
    “Objection,” Tribow called again.
    “Hearsay exception,” the judge called. “I’ll let it stand.”
    Tribow glanced at the face of Valdez’s widow, shaking her head slowly, tears running down her cheeks.
    The defense lawyer said to Tribow, “Your witness.”
    The prosecutor did his best to punch holes in the man’s story. He thought he did a pretty good job. But much of the testimony had been speculation and opinion—the rumors of the affair, for instance—and there was little he could do to discredit him. He returned to his chair.
    Relax, Tribow told himself and set down the pen he’d been playing with compulsively. The murder-two charge was still alive and well. All they’d have to find was that Hartman had in fact killed Valdez—as Tribow had already proven—and that he’d decided at the last minute to murder him.
    The defense lawyer called another witness.
    He was a Latino—a grandfatherly sort of man, balding, round. A friendly face. His name was Cristos Abrego and he described himself as a good friend of the defendant’s.
    Tribow considered this and concluded that thejury’s concerns about Abrego’s potential bias were outweighed by the fact that the suspect, it seemed, had “good friends” in the minority community (a complete lie, of course; Hartman, Anglo, saw minorities not as friends but only as golden opportunities for his extortion and loan-sharking operations).
    “Now you heard the prosecution witness say that Mr. Hartman went looking for Mr. Valdez the day of the tragic shooting?”
    “Tragic?” Wu whispered. “He’s making it sound like an accident.”
    “Yessir,” the witness answered the lawyer’s question.
    “Can you confirm that Mr. Hartman went looking for Mr. Valdez on the day of the shooting?”
    “Yessir, it is true. Mr. Hartman did go looking for him.”
    Tribow leaned forward. Where was this going?
    “Could you explain what happened and what you observed?”
    “Yessir. I’d been in church with Mr. Hartman—”
    “Excuse me,” the lawyer said. “Church?”
    “Yeah, him and me, we went to the same church. Well, he went more than me. He went at least twice a week. Sometimes three.”
    “Brother,” an exasperated Adele Viamonte said.
    Tribow counted four crucifixes hanging from the necks of the jury, and not a single eyebrow among these men and women rose in irony at this gratuitous mention of the defendant’s