And you think you’ve got a cutthroat job.
A lawyer for an accused killer told a Brooklyn jury yesterday that his client shot his boss to death because it was his only way to quit the drug-smuggling business.
Walter Portes, 28, is on trial for the murder of Edward Tse, 33, in December 2008 in Tse’s Bushwick home.
“Walter Portes and Edward Tse were business partners — and when you leave their business there is no gold watch or retirement parties,” said defense attorney Kleon Andreadis in his opening statement.
“Walter wanted out.”
Tse, who went by the nickname “Chino,” employed Portes as “muscle” at Guppies, a Brooklyn gambling joint. The two men smuggled cocaine from the Dominican Republic, splitting the drug profits 50-50, Portes told detectives in a videotaped 2010 interrogation shown in court yesterday.
But Portes said that when he tried to resign, Tse wouldn’t let him.
“I didn’t want to do any more drug trafficking or be involved in that world,” Portes told the detectives. “I just wanted out.”
Prosecutors don’t buy Portes’ claims of trapped self-defense.
“The statement he gave does not agree with the evidence,” said Assistant District Attorney James Leeper.
Authorities questioned Portes in 2008 but released him after he denied being at Tse’s house that night, and Portes left for the Dominican Republic in June 2009. When he returned from the Dominican Republic in November 2010, police arrested him.
In the taped interrogation shown to jurors yesterday, Portes gave his account of what happened that December night.
Portes said he brought a gun but said that after taking off his jacket in Tse’s home he set the weapon on a table.
After Tse showed him a $30,000 stack of bills he was bringing to the Dominican Republic, Portes announced he wanted out.
“I no longer want to be a part of that life,” he told detectives.
He told cops that Tse picked up the gun and a pillow — to use as a silencer — and told him that if he wanted out, “You’re really out.”
Portes said Tse then tried to shoot him but the two men began to struggle — and the gun went off, shooting Tse several times.
“We were both holding the gun when it went off,” the 6-foot Portes told cops.
Portes re-enacted the fight with one of the detectives. After Tse was hit, Portes said he accidentally shot his old boss once more as he fled the man’s home.
“If I had never fought for my life, I would be dead,” Portes told cops.
If convicted, Portes faces 15 years to life in prison.
The trial continues today.