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we’ll cut you loose right now.” If he agreed,they’d un-arrest him, a dubious enough legal procedure but a good way to enlist the guy’s help in making a case against a higher-up. You traded a relative nobody for a somebody. And the beauty of it was that by skipping the arrest, processing and court appearance, you never alerted the big fish to the fact that the minnow had been caught and turned into bait.
    Had the cops done just that with Clarence Hightower? Arrested him, “flipped” him and let him stay out on the street so he could help them make a case against Alonzo Barnett? And had they then added the wrinkle of arresting him for possession later on, in order to cover their tracks? It could explain everything. The lenient treatment in court, the early termination of parole, even the disappearance.
    And it mattered. It mattered tremendously.
    Because if Clarence Hightower had indeed been working as an informant when he prevailed upon Alonzo Barnett to hook him up with somebody, Jaywalker had at least the makings of a theoretical defense for Barnett. He could claim entrapment, arguing that but for Hightower’s overbearing persistence, Barnett never would have committed the crimes he’d been arrested for. Criminals twist each other’s arms all the time, trying to get accomplices for some illegal venture or other. But unless the twisting rises to the level of real physical force or a credible threat to use it, the twistee who ends up going along, however reluctantly, has nothing to complain about. If you don’t believe that, ask Patty Hearst. On the other hand, if the arm-twisting is done by the police or someone working for them, it becomes a different story altogether.
    Not that entrapment defenses ever really succeed. And the reason is pretty simple. In suggesting that a jury should acquit on entrapment, the defense lawyer isconceding guilt while asking for an acquittal based upon something that sounds very much like a technicality. He’s essentially telling the jury, “Sure, my client did exactly what the prosecutor claims. But he did it only because the cops asked him really hard to do it.” Might as well blame the Tooth Fairy, or claim “The Devil made me do it.” In all the years he’d practiced and would continue to practice, Jaywalker would read of exactly one entrapment acquittal. It involved a money-laundering case made against a man named John Z. DeLorean, perhaps best known for supplying the wheels Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd used to drive back to the future.
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    When a man’s drowning, he’s desperate enough to grab at any straw that comes drifting his way, however unlikely it is to keep him afloat. So as much as he hated to do it, the following day Jaywalker made it his business to pay another call on Daniel Pulaski, the assistant district attorney on Barnett’s case. He did so unannounced, to make sure Pulaski wouldn’t have time to prepare himself for whatever it was Jaywalker wanted. It was the same reason he went there in person, rather than making his request over the phone. He wanted to see Pulaski’s reaction when he popped the question.
    Pulaski rewarded him by making him wait forty-five minutes before seeing him. “So,” he said, after they’d exchanged semipleasantries. “What can I do for you?”
    â€œYou can tell me,” said Jaywalker, “what you know about Clarence Hightower.”
    â€œWho?”
    If it wasn’t a genuine expression of complete ignorance of the name, it sure came off as a damned good imitation of one.
    â€œClarence Hightower,” Jaywalker repeated. “He wasarrested at the same time and place as Alonzo Barnett, and by the same cops.”
    â€œNever heard of him,” said Pulaski.
    â€œDo me a favor and check your file.”
    Pulaski looked at him as though he’d been asked for a personal loan. Jaywalker readied himself to hear