Irish Whiskey

by Andrew M. Greeley

  US: You made money on your client’s money, did you not?

  DMC: No, ma’am. I made money on my own stupid mistake. If the market had gone up instead of down, I would have had to pay my client back, probably for the rest of my life.

  US: That’s a very charming story, Mr. Coyne. You might write a novel about it someday. But you can’t expect the grand jury to believe it, can you? I’m sure that, like me, they will think you cheated your client.

  DMC: He didn’t think so. As he said in his testimony to the CFTC …

  US: We’re not interested in that right now, Mr. Coyne. DMC: Yes, ma’am.

  US: Are you acquainted with a certain Jared Kennedy.

  DMC: I went to school with him.

  US: Did you not have a recent conversation with him?

  DMC: Yes, ma’am.

  US: Do you happen to remember when and where that conversation was?

  DMC: Yes, ma’am.

  US: When and where was it?

  DMC: At Grand Beach on the Labor Day weekend. On the beach itself in the afternoon.

  US: You discussed this trading incident with him at that time?

  DMC: No, ma’am.

  US: Then you discussed it with him on August 27 at the Trader’s Inn, did you not?

  DMC: No, ma’am. I haven’t been in the Trader’s Inn in years.

  US: Then when did you discuss this trade with Mr. Kennedy?

  DMC: Never.

  US: You can’t expect us to believe that, Mr. Coyne?

  DMC: I have no expectations at all about what you might believe, Ms. Quade. However, I repeat what I have said: I never discussed the trade with Mr. Kennedy.

  US: You realize that you are under oath?

  DMC: Yes, ma’am.

  US: You realize that you could be charged with perjury for lying under oath?

  DMC: Yes, ma’am.

  US: I would like you to listen to this tape of a conversation between you and Mr. Kennedy.

  (Conversation is played.)

  US: Now, I ask you, Mr. Coyne, did you not admit to Mr. Kennedy that you cheated your client?

  DMC: No, ma’am.

  US: How can you say that, Mr. Coyne, when we just heard you admit it on tape?

  DMC: That is not my voice on tape, Ms. Quade. I never had that conversation with Jarry Kennedy or anyone else.

  “How did she react when you denied the voice on the tape was yours?” Cindy asked me.

  “She laughed and then warned me again about perjury.”

  “Did it sound like your voice?”

  “I don’t think so. It sounded like someone doing a bad job of trying to imitate me. But I’m not sure what my voice sounds like.”

  “During discovery we will get a chance to listen to that tape. We’ll get someone to do voice analysis, and we’ll blast them out of the water. They’ll try to deny us a copy of the tape, but they’ll have to turn it over eventually … She didn’t seem shaken by your denial.”

  “Not in the least.”

  “I don’t get it, Dermot. I just don’t get it. She assumes we’ll plead and the tape won’t be an issue. But if we insist on proceeding with discovery, she’ll have to turn it over to us. She should at least wonder about her informant.”

  “Unless she’s really over the top.”

  “Which she might be. I can’t help but feel sorry for her in a way. Her husband and those damn … You look like hell, but it sounds like you did a good job … How did the jury react?”

  “She only needs a majority, right?”

  “That’s all.”

  “She’ll certainly get that. There were enough people in there who were envious of my unmerited success and some who slept through the whole thing. But some of them don’t like her and some of them seemed to like me.”

  “She’ll browbeat them into handing down a true bill … Tomorrow morning she’ll ask you about other traders that Jarry has picked up on wire. This is a signal about the people against whom you’ll have to testify if we want to plea bargain with her.”

  “Perjure myself?”

  “Certainly. That’s what immunized witnesses are expected to do. First she’ll ask if you are familiar with them. If you are, you admit it. If she asks questions about specific misdeeds on their part, you cannot recall. If she persists, you come out and see me and I’ll tell you not to answer those questions. Got it?”

  Another admonitory jab of her finger.

  “Yeah, Cindy. I got it.”

  “Do you think it might be a good idea to postpone the marriage a couple of weeks, Derm?” she asked hesitantly. “At the present indecent haste, you’re likely to be arraigned on Wednesday, the day Nuala’s parents arrive.”

  “It might well be an excellent idea,” I replied. “There is no way herself will agree with it.”

  She nodded.

  “That doesn’t surprise me … Traci has begun our media counteroffensive. May Rosen is helping her again. We’ll be getting some good coverage in a day or two.”

  The media were waiting for me when I left the waiting room.

  “How did it feel, Dermot?” one sweet-faced young woman asked me.

  “Like five hours in Mother Superior’s office!”

  They had the decency to laugh.

  22

  Conversation Overheard in Lunchroom of Chicago Bar Association

  First Woman: I hear they’re going to hand down the indictment of this Coyne kid today, Cindy Coyne’s brother.

  First Man: Poor kid. Who’s the judge?

  First Woman: Evil Elvira.

  Second Woman: He’s dead.

  Second Man: Sounds like a pretty weak case to me. I don’t think he did it.

  First Man: Get real. Who cares whether he did it or not? Cindy’s only hope is to get a dismissal of the charges. She won’t get that from Elvira. No way.

  First Woman: Either he pleads or they’ll suck all his money on legal fees. Even if Cindy isn’t billing him now, old W. W. Winthrop won’t put up with that for long.

  Second Man: They’re vampires.

  Second Woman: You got it. I shiver every time I think of them going after me, particularly Daffy Dale. Our money for the kids’ college would go down the drain and they might still get me.

  First Man: O.J. walks and Danny Rostenkowski is in jail. Figures.

  Second Woman: Cindy may have something up her sleeve. Those complaints against the media sound tough.

  Second Man: Look, even if she proves absolutely that the conversation with her brother never occurred, Daffy Dale will never move to quash. The kid is dead meat.

  First Woman: They should lock her up.

  Second Woman: Oh, they will eventually. Too late for this kid though. He’d better forget about getting married next week.

  Second Man: You ask me, it all stinks.

  Second Woman: Sure it stinks, but that’s the way they play the game these days. Still, I bet Cindy’s got something up her sleeve.

  First Man: What in the world is the matter with Elvira?

  Second Woman: Poor Dale is brilliant but a little crazy now. Elvira is an incompetent idiot who never tried a case in her life, knows no law, got the appointment because of political clout and thinks she’s God. She’s not the first federal Judge of that kind, as I need not remind any of you.

  First Woman: There ought to be a law …

  COYNE INDICTED

  A federal grand jury today handed down an indictment charging that novelist and commodity trader Michael Coyne engaged in multiple acts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud during his days on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. If convicted on these charges Coyne could spend twenty years in a federal prison.

  Coyne’s first novel, Irish Love, described by its publisher as “an erotic Irish romance,” is expected to debut on the national best-seller lists next week.

  (City News Bureau)

  FIVE O’CLOCK NEWS

  Anchor: We have a late-breaking story. The Federal grand jury which is hearing evidence in the Oper
ation Full Platter investigation has handed down its first indictment. As expected, the indictment is directed at commodity trader-turned-novelist, Dermot Coyne. Our Laverne Meyer has the story from the Dirksen Federal Building. Laverne?

  LM: That’s right, Michelle. Just minutes ago, Assistant United States Attorney Dale Quade announced that the grand jury has leveled seven charges of fraud, intent to commit fraud, and conspiracy to commit fraud against Dermot Coyne.

  (Cut to Quade, looking like a furiously angry novice mistress.)

  DQ: The United States intends to prove that Mr. Coyne violated Federal law on the floor of the Mercantile Exchange. In a complex scam he earned illegally more than three million dollars. Moreover, he admitted this fraud and bragged about it to a government witness. We intend to make Mr. Coyne an example to all the young fast-living high-rollers in the commodity markets. This government will not tolerate your get-rich-quick schemes. If you try to become wealthy by cheating your clients, you will do time in prison at hard labor.

  LM: We asked Coyne’s lawyer, Cynthia Hurley, for her reaction.

  CH: I have yet to see the indictment. It does, however, seem to me that it has been handed down with indecent haste. The Internal Revenue Service and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission reviewed my client’s records in detail for months and found nothing illegal. Ms. Quade glances at them for a couple of days and seeks a solemn high indictment. We will reserve the right to charge false and malicious prosecution at a later day.

  LM: It has been assumed around the Dirksen Federal Building that Coyne will plea bargain and testify against bigger fish who are allegedly caught in Full Platter’s net. However, his lawyer’s feisty response to the indictment suggests that there might yet be an explosive trial. Back to you, Michelle.

  Anchor: Do you think Hurley is bluffing, Laverne?

  LM: (with some hesitation) She may have a point when she says the indictment seems to be hasty. Around here they say that Hurley is the best poker player in the Chicago Bar.

  COYNE LAWYER PROMISES “BIG SURPRISE”

  Cynthia Hurley, lead lawyer for her brother, novelist Dermot Michael Coyne, said today that the office of the United States Attorney is in for a big surprise if it brings Coyne to trial. “The U.S. Attorney and Ms. Quade are in for a very unpleasant surprise if they pursue this hasty and sloppy indictment of my client,” Hurley said. “They have pushed the envelope of conviction by leak and indictment pretty far, but this time they’ve gone over the line. When we are finished with them, they’ll be lucky if they still have their jobs. Indeed they’ll be lucky not to be in jail themselves. It’s time that this charade come to an end.”

  Asked if Coyne might plea bargain for the lesser charge of simple fraud, Hurley laughed. “Not a chance,” she said. “If anyone has to plead to avoid a jail sentence for criminal conspiracy it will be certain people at the office of the United States Attorney.”

  TV COMMENTARY

  It seems to this commentator that Assistant United States Attorney Dale Quade, called by many the Wicked Witch of the Dirksen Building, is acting with unseemly haste in her feud with Chicago novelist Dermot Coyne. Just last week she subpoenaed Coyne’s papers. Normally months are spent combing through a target’s papers. But Quade subpoenaed Coyne himself with hardly any time to examine the papers and obtained an indictment yesterday afternoon. Why this unseemly haste? One theory is that Coyne is scheduled to be married a week from Friday and that Quade, out of pure spite, wants to block the wedding. Another theory is that she is worried that Coyne’s lawyer, Cindy Hurley, might have a point when she says that the tape obtained by a federal informant is a fake. Whatever the reason, many Chicago lawyers are wondering whether the cause of justice is served by a high-profile legal crusader like Quade who turns every case into a personal vendetta. Moreover, if the tape is a fake, the lawyers of several Chicago media outlets, including this one, will have severe attacks of apoplexy.

  23

  IT WAS appropriately a cold and wet day when I was formally charged in the court of Judge Elvira Crawford with seven counts of fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud.

  “Our luck has been terrible,” Cindy whispered to me in the corridor outside of the courtroom. “Evil Elvira, as they call her, is incompetent, dumb, and arrogant. She doesn’t do her homework. She had practically no trial experience before she was appointed and thinks her own personal opinions as a judge are law. She gets overruled and reprimanded routinely by the Seventh Circuit, but she doesn’t care. She’s only forty-five and is a judge for life.”

  “We can get another judge, can’t we?”

  “Eventually, but not today.”

  Nuala was with us, the only one in the clan whom I had not persuaded to stay home. She was wearing a black suit, appropriate for a wake. Her hair was tied back into a bun. She was grim and somber. Her greeting to me when we had met in front of the Federal Building was blunt, “There’ll be no talk of postponing the wedding, do you hear, me bucko? If you try it, won’t I be finding meself another man?”

  “Clear enough warning,” I said with a forced laugh.

  Joe Hurley, my accountant, and an expensively dressed bail bondsman met us in the corridor and we entered the courtroom.

  “I think we should get a release on his own recognizance,” Cindy explained to us. “Dermot has never been charged with anything before, not even a traffic violation, and is a responsible citizen. Daffy Dale will probably insist on some bond. Maybe we settle for a hundred thousand or so.”

  “With Daffy Dale and Evil Elvira isn’t anything possible?”

  Cindy frowned uneasily. “You got it, little bro.”

  The courtroom filled up quickly with media types, scavengers closing in for raw meat.

  Judge Crawford bustled into her courtroom twenty minutes late, glanced around the courtroom, and shouted, “This is a courtroom and I want respect! If I hear any more noise I will expel all of you.”

  It was, I thought, going to be a long, hard day. I didn’t know the half of it.

  The judge was a short, ponderously overweight woman with darting eyes and a perpetual frown. Not Mother Superior anymore, but now Mother General.

  THAT’S UNFAIR TO THE NUNS, the Adversary warned me.

  “OK,” I told him. “Now go away; this is bad enough without you hounding me.”

  I was numb, befuddled, in a stupor like I had been drugged. How could this nightmare be happening? I had done nothing wrong. Yet I was being subjected to malicious prosecution by the government of my own country. Land of the free and home of the brave indeed.

  I promised myself that when it was all over I would destroy these people with my pen. Well, with my computer. They would never do something like this to anyone again. It is not a promise that I have withdrawn.

  I was so distraught that I did not even feel erotic longings for the silent, implacable woman next to me. What would she do before the court session was over? I could not imagine her accepting it all quietly.

  If we ever escaped from the purgatorio of this courtroom, we would go up to O’Hare to greet her parents who were to arrive at 4:55 on Aer Lingus flight 125. Hi, Ma and Da, me darlin’ man was arraigned in a Federal courtroom this morning.

  There were three arraignments before mine, two on drug charges and one on smuggling. The judge shouted at the men and berated their lawyers. In her view, it seemed, the accused men had already been convicted.

  We waited patiently for our turn. The proceedings at the bench dragged on as the judge delivered angry lectures to her browbeaten victims.

  Nuala took my hand.

  “In the matter of the United States of America versus Dermot Michael Coyne,” the bailiff intoned solemnly.

  “Where is this Dermot Michael Coyne?” the judge demanded as we walked to the bench, as though she suspected I had fled to Tierra del Fuego.

  “We’re present, Your Honor,” Cindy said easily.

  “Hurry up, Counselor. You know I don’t like to be kept waiting.”


  Dale Quade, dressed in a severe black dress with a white collar, read the charges against me in a flat monotone. Her narrow face was twisted in righteous rage. Once she turned on me her look of pure venom. I smiled back at her: my standard response to her venom.

  She looks like a grand inquisitor, I thought. Dominican Mother General.

  CUT THAT OUT! the Adversary demanded.

  I saw behind the U.S. Attorney’s chairs a child, perhaps third grade, dressed in crisp designer clothes and looking like a solemn and carefully burnished doll. What kind of crazy woman would bring a little girl into a situation like this?

  “Well, Mr. Coyne,” the judge screeched, “are you too busy planning your next novel to enter a plea?”

  “Not guilty,” Cindy nudged me.

  “Not guilty,” I said in a loud and firm voice.

  “You may be a famous novelist outside this courtroom, young man. But in here you’re a criminal before the bar of justice and I expect you to attend to my questions and answer promptly.”

  “I thought I was not a criminal until I was proven guilty, Your Honor,” I said mildly.

  Gasp from the courtroom. Next to me Cindy cringed. I thought the judge would fly through the roof.

  “In this courtroom, young man, I am the law. You’d better remember that.”

  “And the Constitution of the United States doesn’t apply?”

  “One more smart remark out of you and I’ll hold you in contempt of court. Do you understand?”

  As well to be damned as a goat as to be damned as a sheep.

  I didn’t answer.

  “Answer me young man.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I said with my most charming grin.

  “Do you understand the rules of this court?”

  “I think so, Your Honor,” I said. “I’m kind of new in this situation.”

  A titter of laughter swept the courtroom and was quickly silenced by the judge’s banging gavel.