by Ron Liebman
“Over to you, Counsel,” the magistrate told me.
And so I made my argument for bail based on what Geraldo had told me when I’d visited with him in lockup earlier in the day. He was a naturalized U.S. citizen and had no prior convictions. Yeah, okay, he’d had twelve or so arrests.
All but one set of charges had been dropped when witnesses had either had a change of heart about what they saw and knew or had died before trial in a variety of ways (run over by a car, shot in the back of the head while waiting for a bus, etc., etc.). His one and only prior trial resulted in an acquittal on all charges. His mother living with him was the necessary ties-to-the-community part of my argument.
When I finished, the prosecutor slowly read off a list of names, pausing for dramatic effect after each one.
Juan Ortiz
Jamie Acosta
Consuelo Suarez
And so on.
When she finally got to the last one, she told the magistrate those were the names of witnesses against the defendant in prior cases, each and every one of whom had either come down with terminal amnesia or died under suspicious circumstances before they could give testimony.
“This man, Your Honor,” she repeated, “is a danger to the community.”
The magistrate looked back over to me.
“Counsel,” he said. “Under the Bail Reform Act, do I not have the power to deny someone bail if I determine he is a danger to the community?”
“You do, Your Honor,” I said. “But unsupported allegations from the prosecutor”—here I did glance over at her and smile as coldly as possible—“are not sufficient. There needs to be more before you can make such a finding.”
The magistrate turned to the prosecutor.
“Counsel, what say you?” he asked her.
“Your Honor, the government has given you more than enough information for you to deny bail.”
(Translation: that was all she had.)
We stood waiting as the magistrate made up his mind.
Then he threw me a bone, maybe because of the good-natured way I took his ribbing. More likely because I had made the better argument.
“The court will set bail in this case at five million dollars. The defendant is ordered to surrender his passport and the U.S. Marshals are instructed to provide an electronic ankle bracelet that the defendant is to wear at all times. It is further ordered that the defendant will be confined to his home and may not leave said premises unless and until he gets permission from this court, which permission will not be freely given.”
The magistrate then turned his attention to Geraldo, who had just given me a little hip bump, pleased as he was with the court’s decision. A five-million-dollar bond would be issued by a bail-bonding company upon the payment by Geraldo of a 10-percent premium. The 10 percent for Geraldo, five hundred thousand in cold, hard cash? No problema.
“Mr. Alvarez,” the magistrate said. “Do you understand these conditions?”
“Yeah.”
This time a hip bump from me.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Geraldo quickly added.
“Will you abide by them?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Next case,” the magistrate then said as the marshals took Geraldo away for processing and release once bail was posted. The prosecutor and I left the well of the court, still without a word between us.
I left the courtroom, walked down the hall, and took the elevator back down to the lobby and security, where I’d had to leave my cell phone as the rules of this court required. I handed the chit I’d been given earlier back to the guard, who then searched the wall of cubbies for the matching number and my phone. Once it and I were reunited, I took the revolving doors out to Pearl Street and powered up my cell.
As I waited for it to return to life, I must say I felt a sense of accomplishment. I know that sounds weird given the dangerous person I’d just helped to gain some temporary freedom, a guy who was undeniably a threat to the community. But that’s the system. Better ten guilty go free than one innocent unjustly convicted. The presumption of innocence. All of that. The prosecutor hadn’t done her job. I had done mine. That’s what I was paid to do. Okay, not in this case, but that’s not the point. I had lawyered. And lawyered well.
My phone lit up and pinged. There was a voice-mail message waiting. The number on my screen was the main number for Dunn & Sullivan. I tapped LISTEN and listened.
The message was from Carl Smith’s secretary. It told me that I was to go to Mr. Smith’s office immediately upon hearing this message. I called her and gave her my ETA, then flagged a cab. Riding uptown, I silently replayed the scene in the courtroom.
Once back at Times Square, I entered our building, quickly dropped off my papers in my office, and headed for Carl’s.
“Mr. Smith and Ms. Stankowski are in there waiting for you,” the secretary told me.
Anka? In there? Had the firm learned I hadn’t opened a new client file? Was that it? Couldn’t be, not yet. Then what?
The minute I walked in and saw their faces, I knew.
48.
Sit down.”
Carl pointed to one of the two chairs at the foot of his desk.
As I took the seat, I got a glimpse of Anka seated to the side over in the sofa-and-chairs portion of Carl’s office. Once I was seated, she would be out of my line of sight. She could see me—and Carl—but I couldn’t see her. Instinctively, I smiled at her before sitting down. She didn’t return it. Just stared.
“This is going to be very difficult for me,” Carl said, his demeanor consistent with that being nowhere near the case. He was speaking for the record, his words carefully chosen so they could be repeated more or less verbatim at some later point. (Which in fact they were.)
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told Smith.
(Though I did.)
“Of course you do,” he said with a quick glance over at Anka.
I was about to turn my head back to Anka when Carl continued.
“The FBI has been here, did you know that?”
“What?”
“Come on, Blake, don’t act so stupid.”
To say I was uncomfortable was an understatement. What could I say? Or do?
“Okay, Blake. I’ll lay it out for you,” Carl added after an uncomfortable silence.
And he did, informing me that Dipak Singh, whom he described as my “colleague and foreign co-counsel,” had been arrested in India and charged with making illegal payments to the judge down there. It seems the judge had also been arrested and charged with corruption and graft. And Carl was telling me that I had discovered all the nasty shenanigans those two had engaged in and had run with the case anyway, making me an integral part of the criminal conspiracy to pervert justice.
Despite his assurances, Peter Moss did sell Dipak out after all. There had been a regime change in Dipak’s state, and the new government was much friendlier with worldwide conglomerates like GRE. Dipak and his family had lost their clout. That made him, and them, dead meat. And so to try to save his own skin, Dipak had given some visiting FBI agents a sworn statement implicating me with knowledge and participation in his criminal conduct.
No sooner had Carl finished, “That’s bullshit, and you know it,” I said.
Carl said nothing. His look said everything.
And what the hell was Anka doing here? And why wasn’t she coming to my defense?
Why?
Because Anka had been collaborating with Carl Smith all along, ever since I’d first approached her.
Carl had been using her to egg me on to keep the GRE case alive so it would remain on Dunn & Sullivan’s books as a major law-firm asset. She was the one slated to receive that big slice of extra stock (remember the blank stock-transfer agreement?) when the IPO went live. That was to be her payment for ass
isting Carl.
“Blake,” Carl said, “you are a bad apple. Dunn & Sullivan does not tolerate bad apples. You are hereby dismissed from this law firm.”
There was nothing more to say. I was about to get up when there was a knock on Carl’s door.
The three of us turned to see Smith’s secretary stick her head through the open crack.
“They’re here,” she said. And then stepped aside as three guys in dark suits walked in.
“Carney Blake,” one of them said.
“Yes.”
“I’m Special Agent Steven Daley. And I have a warrant for your arrest.”
The secretary had no doubt called them as instructed by Smith when I’d phoned in from downtown with my ETA.
Still seated, I watched as Special Agent Daley pulled a copy of my arrest warrant from his suit jacket and displayed it to me. Then he told me to stand up, turn around, and put my hands behind my back. I did as told, and he handcuffed me.
“Is this really necessary?” I asked, if not in actual shock, more or less stunned.
Agent Daley ignored my question.
“You have the right to remain silent,” he told me instead. “You also have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed. . . .”
The agents led me out of Carl’s office. As we passed the secretary’s outer desk, I heard her on the phone.
“No, I’m sorry, Mr. Moss,” she said to the caller. “Mr. Smith is indisposed right now and will have to call you back.”
What?
The FBI agents perp-walked me down the hall to the elevator bank. A thousand eyes were on me. Into the elevator we went, then down to the lobby and out to the sidewalk, where a small phalanx of reporters and camera crews were waiting.
I was led through them as they shouted questions my way. There was a black Chevy Tahoe at the curb. I was led there and guided onto the backseat.
As I looked through the side window, I could see a collection of microphones held in the direction of Carl Smith, who must have come down here on the next available elevator. With Anka at his side, he was making what was obviously a statement about my arrest and Dunn & Sullivan’s helpful assistance to the authorities.
Then the Tahoe left the curb, and with lights flashing I was driven to the Manhattan Correctional Center and a waiting jail cell.
And that was that.
TWO YEARS LATER
49.
Sean and I passed through security.
We had returned from Cahill’s Bar to the federal courthouse on Pearl Street after I’d gotten the call from my lawyer that the jury had reached a verdict. We walked through the metal detector, surrendered our cells as required, and then rode the elevator back up to the courtroom on the fifth floor.
We were the first to arrive. Sean and I took seats on the front bench just outside the rail. I could feel the anticipation of the jury’s verdict even though the courtroom was still empty. It electrified the air. Not long after, the judge’s bailiff entered by a side door and began setting things up. He had brought in some files that he placed on the judge’s bench, refilled the judge’s water glass from a silver pitcher, and so on.
He ignored us.
Then the lawyers started coming in. The two Assistant United States Attorneys who had prosecuted the case took their seats at the government’s table. A smattering of federal agents who had assisted them grabbed seats on the first-row bench across the aisle from Sean and me. One of them nodded to me. It was FBI Special Agent Steve Daley, the guy who had cuffed me and read me my rights in Carl Smith’s office. I nodded back. Then my lawyers came into the courtroom.
It had not been easy finding counsel. Several of the lawyers I approached had begged off. It was one thing to defend a lawyer accused of fraud and another to defend a lawyer accused of fraud when the defense was that an irreproachable powerhouse law firm like Dunn & Sullivan had set the lawyer up. Making the law firm the bad guy in a case like this was considered an unhelpful career move, one that could result in a slow professional death.
My lawyer did a better job than I thought he would have. Why? Because of Jeremy Lichtman.
Soon after my indictment and arrest, Jeremy quit the firm. So did Gloria Delarosa. By then I had been released on my own recognizance. We three met at my apartment.
“Unnecessary,” I told Jeremy.
He waved me away dismissively.
“Stay at that place without you?” Jeremy said. “Under circumstances like these? No fucking way.”
And Gloria? Well, she was part of the team. A good soldier. If the team moved, she moved with the team. I saw the way Jeremy looked at her as she told me that she, too, had quit. The guy was really in love. (It never went anywhere, not that Jeremy ever gave up trying.)
The three of us set up shop. The bar hadn’t yet disciplined me. The disbarment proceeding was held in abeyance pending the outcome of my criminal trial. That meant I could hold on to my license to practice in the interim period. But what law firm was going to hire me? So we started our own little firm. And thus was Blake and Lichtman born.
We had two clients. Me being the first.
Jeremy entered my criminal case as co–defense counsel. By pretrial motion the judge had ruled that Jeremy could act as co-counsel even though he had previously been employed at Dunn & Sullivan. The prosecutors, thinking Jeremy was just some wet-behind-the-ears kid lawyer not long out of law school, told the judge they had no objection. They obviously believed that having an inexperienced, bumbling young advocate on our side would, if anything, help their side score an easy conviction.
You won’t be surprised to learn that as the case progressed, Jeremy (with Gloria’s paralegal help) carried more than his share of the load. He wound up doing some of the most important cross-examination, and he made one of the best final arguments to the jury that I think I will ever hear.
Our second client?
Geraldo Alvarez.
So Geraldo had watched the tape of my arrest that afternoon two years ago on Time Warner Cable News (NY1) on the TV bolted up on the wall outside the holding tank. He decided not to post bail for himself immediately. That way he could remain in the holding cell when I got there and protect me from the other inmates in case I needed it.
“Hey,” he told me as we sat side by side on one of the cell’s long benches. “Ain’t this some shit, you and me in here together?”
Yeah, great.
I was released, and then Geraldo posted his bail. Unfortunately, not three days later he was rearrested on witness-intimidation charges, and this time he was held without bail. He also started paying us fees. I guess he took pity on us, since he was our law firm’s only outside client.
I heard the whoosh of the courtroom entrance doors swing open and turned around. My dad and Diane were there. Not together. You can be sure of that. Seamus’s racial-tolerance needle remained stuck, as it was, on zero. No, they only arrived at the same time, probably were on the same elevator up to the fifth floor. They ignored each other, yet each knew who the other was. (They’d both been at Rosy’s burial.)
My father had been in this courtroom every day of the trial.
I had moved back to the Hell’s Kitchen apartment while Sean was upstate at a rehab facility as part of his “one bite of the apple” plea deal. My dad’s bladder cancer seemed stable enough. Still, Sean and I felt he really should have someone at home with him. He did go to his periodic outpatient treatments, but—surprise, surprise—he wouldn’t quit drinking. To give him his due, though, he had cut back some.
The prosecutors had offered my lawyer a plea deal. Also called a plea bargain. This was some bargain.
I had to plead guilty to one of the four felony counts in the indictment that charged me with fraud and obstructing justice in my handling of the GRE case. If I did, the prosecution would then make a nonbinding recomme
ndation to the judge for one year in prison. “Nonbinding” meant that the judge was perfectly free to ignore this recommendation and throw the sentencing book at me. (Each count could land me in prison for up to five years, for a total of twenty, if I was convicted on all four of them. And, needless to say, I could kiss my law license good-bye.)
My lawyer urged me to take the deal, told me that juries hate lawyer defendants, especially lawyer defendants like me, who had so much and still broke the law to get even more. (Apparently he didn’t buy my insistence on innocence.) He said it was my best shot.
Since I was living at the Hell’s Kitchen apartment back then, sleeping in my old room, I told my dad about the deal offer. We were sitting at the dining-room table where that disastrous Thanksgiving dinner had taken place a couple of years earlier.
“Did you do it, boy?” he asked as he sipped his Jameson’s from a juice glass.
“No, Dad,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“Then tell those bloody bastards to take that deal and shove it up their arses.”
And that, more or less, is what I did.
As I’ve said, Seamus was in here on one of the benches every day that court was in session. Was he drunk? A little. But he never made a scene, didn’t speak to anyone. He was just there for me, his son.
I watched my father wait to see where Diane was going to sit, and then he sat elsewhere. Diane and I exchanged smiles. She herself had spent her days prosecuting cases in the nearby state courthouse and so hadn’t seen much of the trial. But she called me every night to let me know she was there for me, no matter what.
Jeremy and my lead lawyer and Gloria came through the swinging entrance doors and walked down the aisle to their own counsel table. Jeremy motioned for me to join them, and I did.
Then the bailiff reentered the courtroom.
“All rise,” he announced. “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez! The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is back in session, the Honorable Michael Fetterman presiding. God save the United States and this honorable court.”