by Ron Liebman
“Fair enough,” I said, “but, Dipak, we need to get into the weeds with you.”
“Into the what?”
He knew goddamn well what I meant.
I nodded to Jeremy, who pulled out a sheaf of papers. He handed them to Dipak, who took them and didn’t so much as glance at them before trying to hand them back to Jeremy.
“Hold on to them please, Dipak,” I told him.
“Yes, okay,” he said as Jeremy pushed them back toward him.
I watched Dipak shoot his cuffs. His wrists and the backs of his hands were matted with dark hair. Was that a nervous tic in his right eye? He still wouldn’t look at the papers now resting by his forearm.
Jeremy and I exchanged glances.
“We got that stuff from your files,” Jeremy told him. “They’re drafts of the expert’s report. Written by you, I think. The one on top of the pile is word-for-word identical to the official expert report you submitted to the judge in the case.”
“No, I assure you,” Dipak said, his gaze flicking between Jeremy and me. “That is not so.”
“It sure looks like it to me,” Jeremy said. I watched Jeremy’s eyes drill into Dipak. This kid will be some trial lawyer when he gets more experience. You could just see it.
Dipak then rambled on about how what Jeremy had shown him wasn’t his attempt to write the entire report for his expert. What he was saying was pure gibberish.
Quite frankly, a good answer would have been along the lines of Dipak’s having presented a draft report to his expert, who then openly accepted it as representative of what he was going to tell the court anyway, and so he had adopted it as his own. But Dipak didn’t say that.
Jeremy reached back into his briefcase and removed copies of some pages from Dipak’s law-firm ledger, which he and Gloria had gotten on their visit to his offices.
With a quick glance my way. Okay to go on?
Go, I signaled.
“Mr. Singh,” Jeremy said. “Take a look at these ledger pages. They seem to show that you presented several checks for rather large sums of cash just days before the GRE case was set to begin. What did you need all that cash for?”
“You are asking me for such detail, Mr. . . . ?”
“Lichtman.”
“Lichtman. You cannot expect me to recall such detail, but I assure you that the transactions in question can be explained by my bookkeeper.” Here he grimaced, clucked his tongue. “I do not know such detail.”
“Was it for the judge?”
“The judge?”
“The judge.”
“Certainly not.”
“You sure?”
“Quite.”
Dipak’s eyes were now ricocheting between me and Jeremy. We watched as he removed his napkin from his lap and very carefully folded it into quarters. He told us he needed to make a quick trip to “the gents’,” as he put it. He stood and headed for the restrooms out in the hotel lobby.
Jeremy and I waited.
And waited.
Once it was clear that Dipak wasn’t coming back, I called for the check. When it arrived, I asked the waiter to put the charge to Mr. Singh’s room. He left with the bill, then quickly returned to tell us that our luncheon host was not registered as a guest at the hotel.
And so it was back onto the Heathrow Express and the airport.
I sent Anka a text before boarding our flight, asking if we could meet first thing the next morning.
27.
Anka had her meaty fist around one of those thirty-one-ounce Starbucks Trenta iced coffees.
She heard me out about the London trip. I told her Jeremy and I came back with no real proof of fraud but that, to put it mildly, Dipak was evasive. And then there was his disappearing act.
I fully expected Anka to confirm my thinking. To say, That’s it. Time to shit-can the case. With or without Carl Smith’s consent. But that’s not what she said.
Instead she asked, “How confident are you about the underlying case? Was the plant explosion badly handled? Did those Indian workers and their families really suffer?”
“It was, and they did,” I told her. “And yeah, I’m confident.”
Anka picked up her Trenta. I watched her drain it, then search for a remaining drop or two in the cup’s bottom. Nothing. She had this profound look of disappointment as she dropped the cup into her trash basket.
“Then you gotta do what you gotta do,” she said as she removed a vending-machine pastry from a desk drawer, delicately unwrapped the cellophane, and ate it in two humongous bites.
“Meaning?” I asked as Anka stifled a delicate burp.
“Come on, Carney. Do you represent that fancy-pants Indian kid lawyer or the people whose lives were fucked beyond repair by this mega-company’s gross negligence and complete disregard for its workers and their families?”
Anka was right. The underlying case—no matter what happened at trial—was airtight. Worthy of redress, as we lawyers say.
But I was stumped.
“How do I do that?”
“You tell the New York judge you don’t give a rat’s ass about the Indian judgment. Fuck that. You’ll ignore it. Instead you’ll file a whole new case in her court. And you’ll try it in front of her. Let her be the judge. Let her decide for herself if GRE ruined your clients’ lives. Put it on her. She’ll like that.”
I shook my head no. Won’t work.
“That tells the judge we had to know the Indian judgment was bad. And yet we relied on it in our asset-seizure case before her. That’s what Peter Moss has sued our law firm”—I decided not to add and me personally—“for doing. We’d be handing Moss a judgment against us on a silver platter.”
Anka thought for a moment.
“You’re right,” she said, stifling another belch. I pretended not to notice.
We sat and stared at each other. Anka’s phone rang. She let it go to voice mail. Anka drumming those bratwurst fingers on her desk. Thinking. Then the gleam in her eye. Smiling and nodding.
“A shadow case,” she said.
“A what?”
“A shadow case. You don’t file a new case. You ignore the Indian judgment. You put on the case you can’t bring in the case you are bringing. Even though you haven’t pled it. Do you see?”
“Not yet.”
Anka didn’t seem impatient with me. She waited a beat for my thinking to catch up with hers. Then she continued.
“In the asset-seizure case you’re trying, you put on the other case. You show the judge exactly what GRE did and didn’t do and how that harmed your clients. She sees that the case is good. Is righteous. No matter what your dandy disappearing lawyer did or didn’t do in India. Get your own fresh experts to look at the case. Get their reports. Show the judge she doesn’t need to rely on anything put into evidence in the Indian case.”
“Right, right. And so she sees she can comfortably order the asset seizures.”
Anka still nodding. Animated. Exuberant. Really into it, I thought.
“Yeah. She does the needful. Rights a wrong. Then you’ve got your U.S. court precedent. Then you can use that in other jurisdictions to get more seizure orders. Relying on her. Fuck whatever happened in India. You’re protecting your injured clients. Getting them what they’re entitled to and never impugning the integrity of Singh.”
I liked this. It was squarely in line with what I had decided that Sunday morning at Diane’s. My job was those injured people. No soapbox necessary. I was their lawyer. It was my duty to protect them. Simple as that.
Back at my own desk, I turned to my laptop and began pecking away at an outline of how to put the shadow case together. I had barely started when a new e-mail came in. It was the latest from something called Law360, one of several subscription law newsletters the firm gives all its lawyers access to.
; I casually read through the printed list of news items and then stopped. Third item down.
Dunn & Sullivan’s entire antitrust section had defected. And to where?
Mason Rose. Peter Moss’s law firm. At first that made no sense. Peter Moss had sued our firm for fraud. And now he was stealing away our entire antitrust section?
This was like a corporate raid, I was thinking. No, wait. This wasn’t like a corporate raid. This was a corporate raid.
Another penny dropped.
I’m pretty sure I would have run with that. Trying to see what Peter Moss was really up to, but I sensed someone standing in my open doorway. I looked up. It was my brother, Sean.
“How’d you get in?” I asked, surprised. “Reception didn’t stop you?”
I saw the look on his face.
He shut the door.
28.
I looked down into the open grave at my father.
He was frantically trying to crawl out after he had drunkenly fallen in, a gash visible in his forehead where he hit the coffin on his way down.
“Bluddy hell, get me the fook outta here!” he screamed as I and a few other mourners knelt at the grave site and pulled my father back to the land of the living. Blood was cascading down his face.
My brother didn’t move. He was in a trance.
Rosy was inside that coffin.
She had promised to stay away from the heroin dealer. But she was an addict, so she didn’t. Maybe the dealer had kept his word to me. Maybe he hadn’t. Who knows? Addicts are resourceful when it comes to their next fix. Rosy copped. From him or some other dealer. Didn’t matter now. Sean had cut off what money there was. So Rosy hit the streets. Turned tricks. And that, not the drug itself, was what had killed her.
My father was back on dry land. He was still wobbly. Someone had given him a hankie he now had pressed to his forehead. He kept removing it and examining the bloodstains.
Just a few moments earlier, as the priest was sprinkling holy water and saying the blessing over Rosy’s coffin, my dad, who had come late—and very drunk—started wailing. His hands in the air, his legs wobbling, he ranted on about poor Rosy. Not making any sense, really. Just going on like the drunk he was. He took one step too many toward the open grave, twisted around, and in he went.
Rosy’s death was gruesome. She had gotten into the wrong car. The john had driven her out to Brooklyn’s Sheepshead Bay area, not far from run-down Coney Island. After Rosy did what he wanted, the guy took out his wallet to pay. Rosy drew a knife on him, told the guy to hand over the wallet. They fought, struggling over the knife. It wound up stuck in Rosy’s neck. She bled to death as the guy sat next to her in the car, paralyzed with fear and remorse.
He was a middle-class family man. Lived in Scarsdale and worked at some boring job in the city. He sat in the car panicked as Rosy bled out. Eventually a passing patrol car came upon them. The cop at the wheel shone his flashlight into his car. And that was that.
I looked at my brother. Our eyes met, and then he abruptly looked away. I kept my eyes on him. Saw his hurt. He was crushed. But he was also in a rage. Not good, I remember thinking.
Not good at all.
29.
Back in court.
But that afternoon I was the spectator watching Diane in criminal court at 100 Centre Street, a downtown stone’s throw from the federal court where I’d spent the morning. I had slipped unnoticed into the back row of the courtroom. Scattered around the spectators’ section were several young black men, a heavyset black woman, and in the front row a skinny white guy in a cheap suit. He had to be from the pretrial-services office, waiting for the case to end with its inevitable conviction of the two defendants for a drug-related murder.
One of the defendants was on the stand, testifying in his own defense, contrary, no doubt to strongly worded advice from his defense lawyer not to do this. Diane was in the middle of her cross-examination. It was late afternoon, not long, I figured, before the judge would bring the proceedings to a close for the day.
“So let me see if I’ve got this right,” Diane was saying as she stood at the podium located in the space between the two counsel tables. “You’re saying you can’t be held responsible for the death of Evander Washington because you were there at the time of his murder, but just as a . . . what? A spectator?”
I watched the defendant, trying unsuccessfully for sage, nodding in agreement. (He also seemed incapable of suppressing his appreciation for Diane and so was very visibly clocking her. You could see it even with his wandering left eye weirdly pointing to where the jury was seated. This was not lost on the jury.)
This twenty-something street tough, dressed in going-to-court civvies rather than the orange jumpsuit with “DOC” (Department of Corrections) stenciled on the back that he no doubt had worn over here from the Tombs, where he’d most probably spent the better part of a year waiting for his case to be heard. He was dark-skinned and sinewy, with thick, bulging veins on his forearms. His hair was tight and sharply razored in a precise arc on his forehead and down his tiny arrowhead sideburns.
“Yeah, yeah,” he told Diane (still one-eyeing her), nodding. “I be like there, know what I’m sayin’? But I dint do nothin’.”
“Uh-huh,” Diane said. I saw her glance over at the jury. Giving them the look. One of the jurors in the back row, an elderly Asian man, smiled at her, having a good time watching these two moron defendants take themselves down for the count.
“So you admit that you and Mr. Carter, the other defendant, sitting over there”—pointing—“met with Evander Washington in that deserted playground off 187th Street on the night in question?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Me and him was there.”
“And you were there to assist Mr. Carter in selling drugs to Evander Washington.”
I watched the defendant vigorously shake his head no.
“Na, na. Now, that ain’t right. I wasn’t sellin’ no drugs.”
“Mr. Carter was.”
“I don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”
“But you were there?”
“Yeah, lady. I already said I was.”
“You saw Mr. Carter hand several vials filled with a white powdery substance to Evander Washington and then get some money back from him. Right?”
The defendant shrugged. Getting bored with this. Losing interest.
“Maybe I seen that. But like I said, I don’t know nothin’ ’bout no drugs. Anythin’ coulda been in them whatchoucallits. . . .”
“Vials.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. But you were standing there when Mr. Carter and Evander Washington had words.”
“Had what?”
“When Mr. Carter and Evander Washington had words. You know, an argument.”
“Yeah, I seen that.”
“And they were arguing about the quality and quantity of the drugs Mr. Carter had just sold to Evander Washington.”
“Like I said, lady. Don’t know nothin’ ’bout that.”
“Well, you were there and saw Mr. Carter take out his pistol and bash Evander Washington repeatedly on his head and face? Even after Evander fell to the ground.”
“I seen it. But I dint do it.”
“You were standing pretty close, weren’t you?”
Now really bored.
A shrug. Nothing more.
“You need to answer verbally, so the court reporter can get down what you’re saying.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, you were close?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh.”
“Close enough to have Evander Washington’s blood sprayed all over you. Your face. Your clothes, as Mr. Carter beat him to death.”
The defendant seemingly thinking back on that. I saw him grimace.
“Yeah,” he said. “Ruined my damn shirt. Brand-new, too.�
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I saw one of the jurors shake her head in disbelief that this was what upset him. The judge shot her an admonishing look.
“And when you were arrested a short time later, there were some bills found in your pocket that had Evander’s blood on them, too.”
Another shrug. So what?
The judge then imposed himself, telling the defendant, “Answer out loud.”
I watched the defendant look up and over to the judge. Glared at him. Wordlessly warning, You best watch what you sayin’ to me, Old School.
The judge outglared him. Years of practice, no doubt. The defendant looked away.
“Yeah,” the defendant then told Diane. “Yeah. But see.” Now he was pointing at the other defendant sitting half asleep at counsel’s table. “He owe me money. Know what I’m sayin’? But that ain’t got nothin’ to do with all this. That personal ’tween me and him. Got nothin’ to do with no drugs.”
“No further questions,” Diane told the judge. No need for anything more.
The judge turned to the public defender. “Redirect?” he asked.
The public defender didn’t even bother to rise. “No, Your Honor,” he said with a futile wave of his hand. What’s the point?
So the judge then turned to the jury and told them they were excused for the day. Adding that they shouldn’t discuss the case with anyone and shouldn’t read about it in the papers or watch anything about it on TV.
The bailiff told all to rise, and when they did, the judge left the bench, and as the two defendants, now reshackled, were led away, Diane turned to go back to her table for her case file. That’s when she noticed me standing in the back row. She rolled her eyes at me with a Can you believe this? look.
As I waited for Diane to get her stuff, I couldn’t help but think what a messy mix of the needless and the necessary happens in courtrooms day in and day out. Unless there was a loony on Diane’s jury who refused to convict for reasons completely divorced from reality, a guilty verdict was a sure thing. So was all this just going through the motions? Superfluous? A waste of time and money?