I HURRY BACK to Columbia Heights and out onto the promenade to meet with a man who I refer to as Uncle Georges. He’s Lebanese, related to the man I spoke to in the real estate office in Southern New Hampshire, and well connected in Lebanon and in New England organized crime circles, specifically with the Patriarca Crime Family out of Providence, Rhode Island. We embrace, kiss three times Arab style, and walk.
“They have these microphones,” Georges says and waves an arm at the surrounding buildings. “Parabolic . . . or something like that. They can sit in a room somewhere a block or two away and pick up conversations.”
Even as we hugged, I could feel him frisk me to make certain I wasn’t wired. His caution, call it paranoia, is why he’s still out here walking around after a lifetime in the underworld. Georges looks well, tan and fit. He’s in his sixties and has a full head of iron-gray hair, thick black moustache, and bushy black eyebrows. He’s dressed in a tweed jacket, tan slacks, and a mock turtleneck sweater. He looks like a Middle Eastern version of Burt Lancaster and has the same masculine vitality.
“Pig!” Georges practically spits out the word when I mention Mohammed Bero. “It’s a trap. Don’t do it! They will lure you to Beirut and make you a hostage. They want the seven million they say you owe them. They will keep you until you pay the seven million, and then they will kill you. I know . . . I know; it’s that thief Alain who stole their load who owes them the money, not you. But they will always blame you because he used your name. You must find me that money, Richard. Or give me an address where I can locate this Alain whatever his name is. And your other friend, Ayla. He was a snake! Working for the DEA all along! You must be very careful, Richard. Trust no one. They have not finished with you.”
Georges goes on to say that the Middle East is overrun with undercover agents, narcotics merchants, CIA agents, professional informers, terrorists, former terrorists, and prisoners hoping to get out of jail, all claiming to have the connections to free American hostages. “For a price! But it’s all bullshit. The Americans know who has the power and how it has to be done. It’s all politics, Richard, and big business, bigger than you or I know. It will only happen when your lying government wants it to happen, and not before, and definitely not because of anything that fat meatball says or does. Let him rot in an Israeli prison.”
Georges hands me a business card with a company name, address, and phone number in Paris. “Have this Israeli lawyer call me. I will tell him what to do with Mohammed Bero. Skewer the fat fuck, and roast him on a spit like the pig he is!” He laughs. “And you! When do we get back to business?”
If Gloria Lawless could only see me now.
I HEAD TO the Mailers’ to meet with Norman and Norris for breakfast. Norman is my great, good, and helpful friend, full of cogent advice about my writing, about writing in general, and just as warm and intimate after all these years of our friendship, and even after being my friend brought him serious federal law enforcement heat. He suggests I read poetry to improve my prose style, to give new resonance to my sensibilities so long suppressed, beat down, and flattened of nuance by years of imprisonment. Norris comments that she loved Smack Goddess. Norman, perhaps recalling his own meteoric success upon publication of his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, at the tender age of twenty-five, warns me of the perils of public exposure that come with the published novelist’s life, particularly after such a long time as a polymorphous underground criminal, and then having endured the anonymous numbered half-life of the prisoner. He cautions that it may all be overwhelming. He speaks of the reviews that will upset and even anger me. And he encourages me never to sell out, not that anyone’s making me offers.
The Mailers are in town for a few days. Norman has at last delivered the edited manuscript of his long-anticipated CIA novel Harlot’s Ghost. He says that they will be back in time for the Smack Goddess book launch party in November.
“You’ve paid a dear price for this, Rick,” he says. “You deserve all you have coming with this book, and more.”
THE DAY TURNS into perhaps the happiest day of my life thus far—even happier than the day I walked out of the prison gates. I get a call from Fern at Birch Lane to tell me that they have received advance copies of the hardcover edition of Smack Goddess. I go by the office and pick up three copies. And what a beautiful sight it is! I present Ivan with my first autographed copy. Ivan hugs me, gives me a big kiss; he immediately sends out for bottles of Dom Pérignon and calls for a celebration. He gathers all the office personnel in his office to toast the author. Charlie Kelly, Ken Tuscillo, Ivan’s of counsel associate, Melissa, the receptionist, and Carmen, Ivan’s paralegal and Spanish interpreter. To make the day even better, Paloma shows up and joins the party.
TONY SUAREZ CALLS to tell me that he loves the treatment I wrote for the Chapin film, Listen to America. Better yet, he sent the treatment to Harry’s wife, Sandy Chapin, and she also liked it enough to want to meet me and discuss the treatment. I tell Suarez that Sandy and I have already spoken and made plans to meet. Suarez says he’s ready to pay me the $2,500 balance of the fee for the treatment, and, if all goes well with Sandy, to hire me to write the screenplay for an additional ten grand.
I take the train out to Huntington, Long Island. Sandy Chapin meets me at the station, and we go to dinner at a local restaurant. Sandy impresses me as one of the most intelligent, gracious women I have ever met. I am so taken by her, and so interested in all she has to tell me about her life with Harry, that I often find myself at a loss for words—something, I will learn over the coming years, that is an attribute in an interviewer. Allow the interviewee to talk. Prod them with the occasional observation, but never dominate the dialogue. People generally love to talk about themselves; all they need is to be asked the right questions. Sandy tells me that Harry often referred to himself as “a third-rate rock star” based on his record sales, and yet he sold millions of records. His favorite sayings were “No problem” and “Onwards and upwards.” He was, she says, perhaps the most positive person she ever knew, but hard on himself, constantly pushing himself to do more. It wasn’t ambition so much as a genuine desire to help others less fortunate. They met and fell in love when she hired Harry to teach her to play guitar. Later they collaborated on the lyrics of some of Harry’s most memorable songs, such as Cat’s in the Cradle. Harry was conflicted about the demands of his career and his commitment as a husband and father, which inspired the song. We sit talking until the restaurant staff tells us they want to go home. It’s nearly midnight when Sandy drops me at the train station. I thank her and head back to the city convinced that, with Sandy’s help, I have all I need to write a screenplay worthy of being produced.
Chapter Six
YOUR WHOLE TRIBE EATS DONUTS
IF EVER THERE were an unlikely client to be represented by my employer and dear friend, criminal defense attorney Ivan S. Fisher, it is none other than the infamous, imprisoned crack cocaine kingpin Howard “Pappy” Mason. Ivan shows up in my office and hands me the Mason file. “Richard,” he says, “please read this and give it your unique perspective. It’s . . . shall we say, it’s a challenge worthy of your expertise.”
Pappy’s attorney of record is a criminal defense lawyer named Harry Batchelder Jr., who came to represent Pappy under the Criminal Justice Act, whereby criminal defense attorneys are assigned a certain number of federal criminal cases and paid by the court to represent indigent defendants. How Batchelder managed to lure Ivan into the case is not immediately clear. It’s not about money, certainly not if Batchelder is paid by the court. Reading the file, I see where Pappy may have been a street drug boss at one time, and with of a crew of dealers called the Bebos that were said to be making upwards of $200,000 a week slinging crack in the Jamaica, Queens, neighborhood he ruled with his alleged former partner Lorenzo “Fat Cat” Nichols. But both Pappy and Fat Cat have been locked up for years by the time we get the case, and their drug enterprise is long since defunct, or it was taken over by a new
crew. Ivan may have agreed to come into the case to garner some of the extensive publicity it has attracted since Pappy, who was in prison at the time on gun charges, was charged and convicted of having ordered the brutal assassination of a twenty-two-year-old rookie New York City police officer named Edward Byrne.
I read how Officer Byrne was assigned to guard a witness to neighborhood drug activity whom the police were supposed to be protecting. On February 26, 1988, Byrne was shot in the head five times as he sat alone in a patrol car outside the witness’s home in Queens. Pappy is due in court to be sentenced after he was convicted in 1989 of racketeering and ordering the murder of Officer Byrne in furtherance of a racketeering enterprise. He’s facing life in prison with no possibility of parole. The lengthy delay in the sentencing phase is due mainly to issues of Pappy’s mental competency at the time of his trial.
Clearly Ivan did not join the defense to win favor with the Police Benevolent Association. Knowing Ivan as I do, I believe there has to be some legal conundrum, some cause or issue he believes in, or fascination with the client that attracts him and sparks his combative nature. Ivan is like an intellectual gladiator who thrives on the drama in a heated battle of wits and verbal warfare in the arena of the courtroom during a fiercely contested case. He shines on his feet in the heat of cross-examination. The rest is up to me: reading all the discovery; devising some workable theory of defense; doing the legal research on the issues; composing the motions, briefs, and tables of authorities and compiling the exhibits; and even finding issues the lawyers may have overlooked.
“Well,” Ivan asks when I return the file, “what’s your verdict?”
“Not guilty.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think he did it. I don’t believe he gave the order to kill Officer Byrne.”
“No? Why not?”
“Because I don’t think Pappy had the presence of mind or even the position of leadership in the gang to order anything—at least, not at that time. He’d been off the street for too long, he was out of touch with what was going on in the street, and there is every indication that the man is, and was then also, out of touch with reality—completely out of his mind. The government’s theory as to what supposedly motivated Pappy to order the killing also seems weak to me. They claim he ordered the killing to retaliate against the cops for his prior conviction in the weapons case. That strikes me as pretty far-fetched.
“The witness the police were supposed to be protecting was going to testify about ongoing drug-dealing activity in the neighborhood; that would have a direct impact on the crew’s current drug operation. To me, this looks like a classic instance of ratting down. He’s a fall guy. Pappy’s partner, Fat Cat Nichols, had a lot more to lose as a result of the witness’s information reaching the cops than Pappy did. So Fat Cat makes a deal to implicate Pappy for giving the order to kill Officer Byrne, knowing Pappy is so crazy he’s the ideal scapegoat. Fat Cat then uses this maneuver as a bargaining chip to manipulate the prosecutor and make a deal in his own case. During Pappy’s trial, his lawyer, Batchelder, told Judge Korman that Pappy refused to cooperate in his own defense. He said that Pappy was suffering from hallucinations, that he believed his mother was performing voodoo exercises on his head—which, given what I’ve been reading about Pappy’s mother, may not be incredible. She may have been the mastermind behind the whole operation. We should see if we can arrange to get Pappy a psychiatric evaluation, and, if he’s found to be as crazy as he appears to be, then move to get the conviction thrown out on the grounds that he was mentally incompetent to participate in his defense.”
“Very good.” Ivan has been nodding throughout my interpretation of the case. “I agree. Done,” he says. “Draft the motion. Find the forensic psychiatrist you want to use, and write him or her a letter. Let’s get the evaluation. Do it right away. The government is anxious to sentence Mr. Mason and get him out of MCC, where, apparently, he is hardly an ideal inmate. This is your case, Richard. I’m depending on you to run with it. Keep it up, you’ll be getting your thirty dollars an hour sooner than we imagined.”
INDEED, WE ARE on a roll. In the Operation Pyramid Overdrive case, Levy is offered ten years for a guilty plea after the prosecutor gets a look at our motion for an evidentiary hearing on the Group 33 matter. I reported on my meeting with Georges, and Ivan forwarded the information to the lawyer in Israel. All this encourages me to enroll in a class that will prepare me for the LSAT test. Shirley Ariker submits my degree program to the Empire State College degree evaluation board, and I am awarded a bachelor’s degree based on my credits from Arizona State University, the writing course I took at Harvard Summer School, credits I earned in classes I took at MCC, and through additional credits awarded for life experience, that is, my efforts and successes as a jailhouse lawyer.
I compose a letter to Dr. Abraham Halpern, a professor emeritus of psychiatry at New York Medical College and president at the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. Dr. Halpern is a champion of human rights, especially in matters of law and mental health, and he is one of the founding leaders of the psychiatric subspecialty of forensic psychiatry. Dr. Halpern agrees to consult on the case and examine Pappy. He visits with Pappy and presents us with his opinion.
Pappy, Dr. Halpern writes, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia with pronounced delusions of grandeur. In Halpern’s opinion, Pappy was at the time of his trial and is now mentally incompetent to assist in his own defense. Judge Korman orders a hearing. After weeks of reading about Pappy and the case, conferring with Dr. Halpern, and with co-counsel Harry Batchelder and Ivan, all of whom have met Pappy, at last I will have the opportunity to see him and witness his behavior in person.
I am not to be disappointed.
THROUGHOUT MY WORK on this case, I have come to view Pappy Mason as a living personification of the madness that is the government’s declared war on drugs. Just as crack cocaine was created as a product in response to the war, so Pappy is an embodiment of the damage the drug war is doing to communities all across America. Pappy, Fat Cat Nichols, and their entire street crew of dealers are financed, armed, emboldened, and called to battle by our government’s demand for a violent street war on what is clearly a medical problem. None of this would have happened: Officer Byrne would still be alive, and God only knows how many other souls might have been saved, had our politicians been honest in their approach to the issue of drugs and addiction.
Further, I see the way this case has played out up to this point, and the way it has been orchestrated both by the defense and by the prosecution as a clear picture of how the war on drugs is corrupting and perverting the criminal justice system from the streets to the upper echelons of the Justice Department. In the race to the witness stand to rat out others and save their own asses, savvy criminals and criminal defense lawyers are able to manipulate ambitious, naive prosecutors into making deals that have little to nothing to do with justice and everything to do with public perception, expenditure of tax dollars, prosecutorial overzealousness, expedience, and careerism.
On the day of the hearing, twenty-eight-year-old Pappy appears in the courtroom as the nightmare version of the spawn this insane war has birthed in our inner cities and in the outlaw nations financed by the illegal drug trade. Hustled into the courtroom in shackles and chains by a contingent of beefy deputy US marshals, Pappy reminds me physically of Bob Marley, with his waist-length dreadlocks and lithe, rail-thin body that seems to be in constant motion, animated by some inner rhythm that is part dance, part self-defense moves as well a need to release trapped manic energies. As soon as his restraints are removed, Pappy drops to the floor before Judge Korman’s bench and does twenty rapid-fire push-ups. The deputy marshals don’t even attempt to stop him. He leaps to his feet, hyperalert, his dreadlocks swirling, waving about his body like a cape. Pappy has the otherworldly presence of a mystic mad genius. Finished with his quick warm-up exercises, he faces the bench, then he looks around the courtroom warily,
and shouts, “What is this, a Klan meeting?”
When the court clerk asks him to state his name for the record, Pappy responds, “I’m the mayor of Brooklyn!” Judge Korman attempts to bring order to the court. Pappy chastises him. “You shut up!” he says. “I’ll kill you! You may be a boss, but I’m the boss of all bosses!”
The prosecutor, a young white woman assistant United States attorney who appears utterly bewildered, attempts to address the court. Pappy turns on her. “I’ll kill you too!” he says. “All you motherfuckers!” and he waves around the room, glaring at the spellbound audience. “Who are you? I didn’t ask for no Klan meeting up in here! I’m leaving.”
“Mr. Mason—” the judge says, trying to quiet Pappy down.
Pappy turns on him viciously. “I told you to shut up! No one wants to hear what you have to say!”
He drops to the floor and does another quick set of push-ups, then he announces he’s had enough. “I said take me away from this evil place!”
Judge Korman, however, is determined to get in the last word. He denies our motion to have the verdict thrown out and declares, “I believe he is competent to be sentenced at this time.” He then turns to Pappy. “Mr. Mason, I hereby commit you to the custody of the attorney general or his designated representative for a period of life without the possibility of parole.”
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