The Best Friend

by Adam Mitzner

  6.

  I hadn’t been back at the office since I got Nicky’s call that Carolyn was dead. But when I returned the next Monday, it was as I’d left it. If any clients—or, more importantly, prospective clients—had called while I was away, they hadn’t left a message.

  Even without any new messages or clients, I had a full slate of after-hours events scheduled. Two bar committee meetings, a memorial service for a recently departed judge I’d never heard of, and drinks with a law school classmate who’d been promoted to deputy counsel at a small brokerage firm, making him ripe for future business. As Anne had predicted, I was back to living my life as if Carolyn had never died.

  My one paying client at the moment was Ruth Lewis, a woman who had been indicted for writing checks made out to cash and forging her boss’s name. She had come to me in the circuitous way that I got most of my clients in the early part of my career—by referral from another lawyer. In her case, a lawyer who handled the divorce of the friend of a friend of Mrs. Lewis and gave her my name because he owed me a favor on account of my helping his nephew with a DUI.

  A less likely looking felon than Ruth Lewis would have been hard to imagine. A flea of a woman, with an old-fashioned bouffant hairstyle and even more dated eyeglasses, she was sixty-eight years old and unwed, although she had been married briefly in her early twenties. She had adamantly refused to discuss the circumstances that led to her being not married, and given how many years had passed, I didn’t think it would be relevant. I did ask her to confirm that her husband hadn’t died under mysterious circumstances, which she did with an “Oh my, no.”

  This was our second meeting. Our first was at her arraignment, two weeks earlier, where I got her released on her own recognizance.

  “I graduated from high school in 1939,” Mrs. Lewis had told me in the courthouse hallway. “My senior year, I won a statewide competition for typing. Ninety-seven words per minute without a mistake. And that was on an old manual machine. Some of the girls were a bit faster, but if you made a mistake, they deducted it from your score. After graduation, I started to work for these three men. Mr. Goldenstein was the man who actually hired me. He was an older man, although I assume now that he probably wasn’t much older than fifty. There was another man who was older still, a Mr. . . . I don’t remember his name right now, but it’ll come to me. And Mr. Harris. He was the youngest of the three by far, but still older than me, of course. The three of them weren’t partners, but I worked for all three. On Fridays, I’d go to them one at a time, and each would give me four dollars. They didn’t even just hand me an envelope with the twelve dollars. I actually had to go into their offices separately. Each one would reach into his pocket to pay me for the week. Sometimes, one of them didn’t have the cash. When that happened, I’d have to go back to his office on Monday and ask again.

  “Anyway, Mr. Harris left that office a few years later and asked me to come with him. After another move or two, we ended up at BBDO, which back then was the biggest advertising agency in the world. Mr. Harris had a corner office high above Madison Avenue. He used to say to me, ‘Remember when we were in that dump on Seventh Avenue with those old codgers?’ A few years after that, he left BBDO to go out on his own, and I followed him again.”

  She had the wistful sound of someone recounting her first love. Of course, if she was in love with him, it was unrequited, as Mr. Harris had filed a criminal complaint accusing her of embezzlement.

  “I’m telling you this,” she continued, “so you’ll understand that Mr. Harris was family to me. I would never steal from him. Not in a million years. I swear on my life.”

  I told her that I believed her. Then I sent the copies of the allegedly forged checks to an expert for a handwriting analysis. He confirmed the checks were definitely not signed by Mr. Harris. He also told me that the forgeries were good—very good, in fact. “Someone took a lot of time practicing,” was the way he put it.

  My modus operandi, then and now, was to lay out the facts for the client. Then I’d say that it was my job to explain how the prosecutor would view those facts and, if it came to that, the conclusion a jury would reach if asked to render a verdict. That way, I could stay in the client’s good graces by claiming that I believed in their innocence, but my advice was based on the likelihood that others might not. I maintained that position right up until the moment they confessed their guilt.

  It was my hope that Mrs. Lewis would reach that point in the next five minutes.

  She sat in my office, her hands knitted together, resting atop the purse that sat on her lap. She declined my offer of water, coffee, or tea. From the look on her face, she seemed to be expecting me to share good news.

  “I have some hard facts we need to discuss,” I said. “As you know, the prosecution has a handwriting expert who will testify that Mr. Harris did not write the checks made out to cash. To rebut that, I needed to get an expert who would testify that he did. Unfortunately, my expert also told me that there’s no way Mr. Harris wrote those checks. That’s just science. Which means we have to accept as a fact that someone was forging his name.”

  If Mrs. Lewis sensed that the walls were closing in on her, she didn’t show it. In fact, she displayed no expression whatsoever.

  “Our expert also told me that whoever forged Mr. Harris’s signature had seen it enough times to be able to make a pretty convincing copy. On top of which, it had to be someone who had ready access to his checkbook. In light of the fact that Mr. Harris is unmarried and without family, and you had the responsibility of paying his bills, we can expect the prosecution to claim that only you had that type of access.”

  I paused to see if this was enough to elicit a response. Perhaps she’d tell me about others with equal access. But Mrs. Lewis remained still, staring at me as if waiting for me to get to the point.

  “The police already know that your fingerprints are on each of those checks. As we discussed, that’s not incriminating in and of itself because you handled Mr. Harris’s finances. However, they must have already reviewed your bank records, and that means that any deposits there that match up against the check amounts will be powerful evidence against you. I suspect that they’re also checking surveillance footage at the banks, to match it against the timestamp for the deposit of the checks. Even if the person who made the deposits was careful enough to avoid the cameras, the tellers might be able to make a positive ID based on a photo array.”

  I thought the circumstantial case I’d presented would be enough to convince Mrs. Lewis that this was her last opportunity to take responsibility before the evidence made her guilt a foregone conclusion. But she didn’t budge. Instead, she looked at me through her cat’s-eye glasses with a challenge in her gaze.

  “I can probably get the DA to consider a suspended sentence,” I continued. “Your age, and the fact that I’m certain Mr. Harris doesn’t want this incident to become public, would push them in that direction. They’re only going to go for it, though, if you also pay full restitution. And the window on that type of deal will close quickly. When it does, they’re going to insist on jail time.”

  Some clients confess at this point, realizing their lie has been revealed. Others double down. They swear that the evidence must have been planted or that there’s proof still to be uncovered that will exonerate them.

  Mrs. Lewis was quiet for a good minute. Then she said, “I have two questions, Mr. Broden. The first question I have is how much would the restitution be?”

  The indictment claimed that Mrs. Lewis had written $38,000 in forged checks, a fact of which she was well aware. Her question told me that she likely had stolen far more. Rarely do the police figure out the full extent of anyone’s crime, which puts the lie to the idea that crime doesn’t pay. My guess was that she had been forging Mr. Harris’s name on checks for years—maybe since 1939—making the grand total of her ill-gotten gains possibly in the mid–six figures, if not more.

  “A little under forty thousand,” I said. “
We can try to negotiate the number based on your financial circumstances.”

  She nodded and continued to show me a world-class poker face. “Second, if I plead guilty, will you refund some of the retainer I paid you? I only gave you the five thousand dollars because I assumed I’d be going to trial. If I knew I was going to plead guilty after meeting you only twice, I wouldn’t have paid you that much.”

  She said this with a straight face too. As if the fact that she had lied to me about her guilt should be held against me and not her. I was about to tell her that the retainer was nonrefundable, and that it was fine by me if she wanted to go to trial and risk a prison sentence so that she could get her $5,000 worth in legal fees, when my phone rang.

  Normally I wouldn’t answer during a client meeting. However, it was now obvious that Mrs. Lewis would be a former client soon.

  The caller was Nicky.

  From the way he said my name, I knew he was in distress. My mind flashed to his call of a week ago, when he’d sounded much the same before telling me that his wife was dead.

  “I’ve been arrested,” he said. “They think I killed Carolyn.”

  7.

  My legal practice was exclusively New York City–based. I handled both federal and state matters, but I never ventured outside the five boroughs to do it. I hadn’t even considered that the police and forensic people who occupied Nicky’s home after Carolyn’s death were Westchester County employees, not NYPD. It was a stupid thing not to register, as I’m certain their identity was emblazoned on every windbreaker, bag, and patrol car I saw that day.

  But when Nicky said he’d been arrested, he told me he was being held in the Westchester County jail. It was in Valhalla, northern Westchester, nearly two hours outside Manhattan.

  There was no mistaking the building for anything other than a jail, but it was still a step up from the MCC—the Manhattan Correctional Center—where those awaiting trial in Manhattan were held. For one thing, it didn’t stink. This facility was also clean and extremely well lit. The visitors’ room reminded me of a high school cafeteria, with rows of Formica tables filling the room.

  I explained to the guard that I was an attorney, here for a legal visit. He escorted me to a private room without windows that was the size of a broom closet.

  It took another hour for Nicky to arrive. I feared the worst—that he had been involved in an altercation with a hardened criminal and been hurt. But when my friend appeared at the door, he didn’t look any worse for wear. In fact, considering that my recent interactions with him had been in equally dire circumstances, I might have said that he looked good. He was clean-shaven and smiled when our eyes met. I instinctively extended my hand to greet him. It was only when Nicky didn’t reciprocate that I realized his hands were cuffed behind his back.

  “Are the handcuffs really necessary, officer?” I asked.

  “Protocol,” the guard said, not the least bit sympathetic to Nicky’s plight.

  Nicky wriggled into the seat, his arms dangling over the back of the wooden chair uncomfortably.

  “I’m going to need him to use his hands to communicate certain things with me,” I said to the guard. “How about if we meet in the middle? Cuff one hand—his left, preferably—to the chair. That way I don’t have to report to the judge that I was unable to deliver effective counsel to my client before his arraignment because of protocol.”

  Without further discussion, the guard did as I requested, securing Nicky’s left wrist to the chair, then leaving without another word.

  “How are you holding up?” I asked Nicky.

  “I’ve been better. Not going to lie about that. How could they think I killed Carolyn?”

  Because twenty-seven-year-old women are not supposed to drown in the bathtub.

  “I don’t know anything about their evidence,” I said instead. “But right now, that’s of secondary importance to getting you out of here. The arraignment is at four. I don’t want to sugarcoat things. This is a murder charge. The bail demand is going to be high.”

  “How high?”

  “Could be a million dollars. And bail may not be on the table at all.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Assuming the judge sets a bail amount that you don’t have in cash, you can post a bond that’s backed by something of that value. So the immediate question is what kind of assets you can pull together.”

  “I’ve got nothing, Clinton. We used all our savings to buy the house.”

  “How much did you put down?”

  “Ten percent. Something like twenty thousand.”

  That obviously wasn’t going to do it.

  “What about your parents? Do they own their home without a mortgage?”

  Nicky’s parents still lived in the same brick-front home where he’d grown up. When my parents died, I sold our home for about $150,000. Even with the red-hot real estate market since then, I couldn’t imagine the Zamoras’ house was worth more than $250,000.

  “I think so.”

  “And your dad’s store? Does he own the building it’s in?”

  Nicky nodded.

  “Anything else? Stocks, bonds, retirement funds? For either you or your parents?”

  This time a headshake.

  I made a quick estimate and concluded that his total assets might enable him to pledge $500,000 or more. Hopefully that would be enough to satisfy the judge that he wasn’t a flight risk.

  “Okay. After we’re done in here, I’m going to call your father. I’ll ask him to meet us at the courthouse and to bring the paperwork showing ownership of the house and the store.”

  I was asking Nicky for permission, but he didn’t seem to understand. Rather than offer his assent, he said, “I don’t understand why this is happening.”

  This time I said it aloud. “Twenty-seven-year-old women are not supposed to drown in their bathtub, Nicky. The prosecution is looking for a reason that Carolyn died. Clearly, they have some evidence that suggests that you—or somebody—killed her.”

  He didn’t utter a word of protest. Instead he asked, “What’s going to happen next?”

  “I’m not going to see you again until you’re brought into the courtroom to be arraigned. Until then, you don’t say anything to anyone. If anyone approaches you, tell them that you invoke your right to counsel. When I see you in court, I’ll waive reading of the indictment, and then the judge will ask you to enter a plea. That’s when you say, ‘Not guilty, Your Honor.’ And that’s all you say. Say it strongly, but don’t shout. Then the judge will ask the prosecutor for his position on bail, and we’ll argue it out. You were born in Queens, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Aunts and uncles live there too?”

  “Yeah. My mother’s two sisters. My father’s sister too.”

  “Good. That’ll help. It gives you ties to the community.”

  Nicky adjusted his position, and the handcuff clanked against the metal chair leg.

  “Anything you need to discuss with me before I reach out to your dad?”

  He didn’t hesitate. “I didn’t kill Carolyn.”

  I smiled. “Nicky, that was the last thing you needed to tell me. I know you didn’t.”

  The courthouse was in Mount Pleasant, a location chosen apparently without irony. It was housed in a two-story cement structure with a dome and two oversize windows that looked out on the street like giant eyes. In addition to housing the courtroom where Nicky would be arraigned, all town business took place in this building, from getting a marriage license to recording real estate deeds.

  The courtroom looked nothing like the baronial chambers in which Manhattan judges presided. The room was carpeted, a dingy, gray, industrial weave. The courtrooms in the city had stationary wooden benches for the spectators, but here I sat in an actual chair that was not bolted to the floor.

  All but a few of the twenty or so chairs were occupied, but none by anyone who appeared to have business before the court. That meant they were reporters, which prompt
ed my first realization that Nicky’s arrest was going to make the news. It should have occurred to me before. Everything about the crime was tailor-made for the tabloids: successful, well-educated, young, Caucasian couple who had it all until the husband murdered his wife.

  Nicky’s parents sat beside me in the gallery’s third row. The fragility I had observed at Carolyn’s funeral now seemed to consume them. They were proud people, and the specter of their son being under arrest for murder seemed more than they could handle.

  “He’s innocent, Andres,” I said. “There’s nothing anyone can do about being wrongly accused.”

  Nicky’s father couldn’t even meet my eyes to answer. Instead, his mother said, “Thank you, Clinton. Thank you for being his friend.”

  At twenty minutes after two, the judge entered the courtroom. Despite the modest surroundings, the judge’s arrival came with the same pomp of every courtroom I’d ever been in: the clerk banging on the door, ordering all to rise, and announcing His Honor.

  Judge Raymond T. Carson was in his midfifties. His dark hair was slicked straight back, and he wore black plastic eyeglasses that gave him a bit of a Clark Kent quality, at least based on the George Reeves version that had played on WPIX 11 when I was in elementary school. After taking his seat, Judge Carson smiled, apparently pleased to be working to a full house.

  “Welcome, everyone,” Judge Carson said. “Please, be seated.”

  He nodded at the court officer, who must have doubled as a local cop, because he was wearing a policeman’s uniform. “The People of the State of New York versus Nicholas J. Zamora. Case Number 86 CR 113101. Top count of the indictment is section 125.25 of the New York Criminal Penal Law, murder in the second degree.”

  The charge was not a surprise, but hearing it still caught me off-balance. Nicky had now been formally charged with murdering his wife.