Guilty As Sin

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Alonzo Barnett died last week.

There wasn’t any obituary announcement that ran in the Times, or even the Daily News or the Post. It seems the Alonzo Barnetts of the world don’t rate obituary announcements.

In fact, Jaywalker might never have found out, had he not gotten a phone call from a mutual acquaintance named Kenny Smith. Smith had originally met Barnett through Jaywalker, and had somehow gotten word on the street of Barnett’s death.

Not that the death was a particularly tragic one, as deaths go. Barnett was seventy-six, after all, and even though he’d spent a good portion of those years in state prison, seventy-six is still a pretty fair number, by any yardstick.

There was no funeral or memorial service held for Alonzo Barnett. Still, Jaywalker and Smith did get together to pay a brief condolence call. Though for Jaywalker, it felt like something much more than that. Because over the twenty-five years since their first meeting, he’d come to regard Barnett not just as a former client and a good friend but as a defendant sent his way by something very close to Providence. Not that Jaywalker would ever admit believing in that kind of stuff, not even if his life depended on it.

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