First degree - By David Rosenfelt Page 0,24

look at my watch. "I'm due back in high school in twenty minutes."

Paterson Eastside is the high school from which I graduated. The school's claim to fame is that it was the subject and setting of the movie Lean on Me, starring Morgan Freeman. It told the story of the then principal, Joe Clark, and his heavy-handed method of getting the chaotic inner-city school under control.

My high school career could best be described as undistinguished, at least in the things important to me: girls and sports. My sports mediocrity was the more painful of the two, because at least with girls I had the good sense to give up trying early on. In sports I had perseverance, a trait that is not all it's cracked up to be.

Eastside's football field, adjacent to the school, was actually placed on an old cemetery, after the graves had allegedly been moved. Thus the school had two nicknames, the Ghosts and the Undertakers. It was on that field that I suffered my greatest indignity. As I sat on the bench, the starters were out on the field making awful play after awful play. The coach turned to me and said, "Can you imagine how bad you are if you're playing behind them?"

But I've returned to Eastside today in triumph. I'm endowing the school with a yearly scholarship, given in the name of my father. An assembly has been called to commemorate the occasion, and the principal tells me that my recent media exposure has actually created some student interest in the event.

My speech is a combination of self-deprecating humor and sincere exhortation to the students to make their lives productive. I don't build myself up too much, because even though I'm a pretty good lawyer, the truth is that the only reason I'm standing here today is that my father died and left me a truckload of money.

When I mention my father's nonfinancial influence on me, I get a little choked up. It's been happening a lot lately. I've noticed that as I get older, I get more and more, sentimental. I also notice some other things as I age, like a couple of hairs growing on each of my ears. Now that I think about it, there could be a cause-and-effect relationship at work here. Maybe I should fund some medical research into studying the effect of ear hair on human emotional response.

The question-and-answer session afterward is surprisingly lively. Most of the students want to know about the Willie Miller case, though their interest seems centered on what it was like to visit Willie on death row.

The Garcia case is of less interest. Some of them know Oscar or know of him from the neighborhood, and to know Oscar is to be unconcerned about his fate.

But a decent round of applause sends me off, and I head down to the jail to meet with my client. He's agitated and somewhat scared; for some reason his appearance in court this morning provided a sense of reality to his situation that the arrest and incarceration did not.

Oscar is not the type you make small talk with, so I ask him if he has any questions about, what took place in court today.

"That guy Campbell, he seemed out to get me."

It wasn't a question, but it's close enough. "He wants to send you to prison for the rest of your life."

"Son of a bitch ..."

"You've obviously met him before," I say. "Now, tell me everything you did the night of the murder, minute by minute, as best as you can remember. Don't leave out a thing, no matter how small or unimportant it might seem."

The sullen Oscar becomes even more so. "I hung out," he mutters.

"That's not quite the detail I need."

"Hey, what do you want me to say, man?" he asks, clearly annoyed with my persistence.

"I want you to tell me where you were that night. Because if you don't cooperate with me, I can tell you where you're going to spend every night for the rest of your life."

"I was doing business," he mutters.

"Where? In the park?"

"No."

It's my turn to get annoyed. "Dammit, Oscar, where the hell were you?"

He proceeds to tell me a rather uneventful tale of retail drug peddling in and around the park, with a little pimping thrown in. All of this took place until about one A.M., and he claims that some of the people he mentions would testify if called upon, but even without meeting them I can safely