Gold Coast

by Nelson DeMille

  I paused at the bottom of the forty or fifty courthouse steps and contemplated the summit a moment, then took a deep breath and charged toward the colossal columned portico. I had a mental image of my passing out and of good samaritans crowding around me, loosening my Hermès tie, and relieving me of my five-million-dollar burden. Then I’d have to hitchhike to Rio.

  But the next thing I knew, I was inside the cooler lobby of the Federal Courthouse, walking purposefully across the elegant ivory-colored marble floor, then through a metal detector, which didn’t go off. But a U.S. Marshal, obviously intrigued by my disheveled appearance and huge briefcase, asked me to put the briefcase on a long table and open it. So, there I was, in this massive lobby amid the hustle and bustle of a courthouse at ten A . M ., opening a briefcase stuffed with wads of money. If you’ve ever emptied a bag of dirty underwear at Customs, you know the feeling.

  The marshal, an older man who probably thought all marshals should look and act like Wyatt Earp, stood there with his thumbs hooked in his belt, chewing a wad of something. Despite his cowboy pose, he was not wearing boots or spurs or anything like that. Instead, he was dressed in the standard marshal’s courthouse uniform, which consisted of gray slacks, white shirt, red tie, and a blue blazer with the U.S. Marshal’s service patch on the breast pocket. His shoes were penny loafers, and his six-gun was not strapped around his waist, but was somewhere else, probably in a shoulder holster. I was very disappointed in this outfit, but chose not to remark on it. Wyatt Earp inquired, “What’s that?”

  It’s money, you stupid ass. “It’s bail money, Marshal.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Yup. I have a client being arraigned this morning.”

  “Is that so?”

  “It is. And in fact, I don’t want to miss it, so—”

  “Why’re you all sweaty?”

  “I was actually running so as not to be late for the arraignment.”

  “You nervous about something?”

  “No. I was running.”

  “Yeah? You got some kind of identification?”

  “I believe I do.’’ I pulled my wallet out and showed him my driver’s license with my photo, and my bar association card. A few other marshals were standing around now, watching me and the money. Wyatt Earp passed my driver’s license around and everyone took a look. Needless to say, a crowd was gathering, enchanted by the green stuff, so I closed the briefcase.

  After my license made the rounds, including, I think, a passing janitor, I got my ID back. Earp asked me, “Who’s your client, Counselor?”

  I hesitated, then replied, “Bellarosa, Frank.”

  The marshal’s eyebrows arched. “Yeah? They got that sucker? When?”

  “He was arrested this morning. I really want to get to the courtroom before he comes before the judge.”

  “Take it easy. He’ll be lucky if he sees a judge by lunchtime. You new around here?”

  “Sort of.’’ I added, “I need to speak with my client before the arraignment. So I’ll just be on my way.’’ And I was.

  “Wait!”

  I stopped. The marshal moseyed over to me, sort of bowlegged as if he’d been on a horse all morning, or maybe he had hemorrhoids. He said, “You know where the lockup is?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “Well, I’ll tell ya. You go to the third floor—”

  “Thanks.”

  “Hold on. The lockup is between the marshal’s area where your guy is going to be fingerprinted and photographed, and . . .’’ He stopped talking and moved closer to me. “You gotta go to the bathroom or something?”

  I guess I seemed a little fidgety, and Wyatt could see it. He looked suspicious again, so I took the bull by the horns. “Look, Marshal, my client is going to be processed very quickly because of who he is. In fact, he’s already processed. I do not want to miss the arraignment because if I do, he will not be happy with me.’’ I almost added, “Capisce?’’ but the guy looked Irish.

  He grinned. “Yeah, you don’t want to miss that arraignment, Counselor. You know where to go?”

  “Third floor?”

  “Right you are. Your guy been indicted and arrested, or just arrested and waiting indictment?”

  “Indicted and arrested.”

  “Okay, then you don’t want the Magistrate, you want the District Judge, Part One.”

  Mamma mia, this guy was going to give me a course in the federal court system. In truth, I didn’t know any of this, but neither did I care. I just wanted to get to the third floor before it was too late. However, I didn’t want to look panicky, which would only cause him to be more helpful or more suspicious. I smiled. “Part One. Right.”

  “Yeah. Part One. Third floor.’’ He looked at his watch. “Hey, it’s after ten. You better get a move on.”

  “Yes, I’d better.’’ I walked, not ran, toward the elevators. I heard him call after me, “I hope you got enough money there.”

  I hope I have enough time, Wyatt. I took the elevators up to the third floor.

  As bad luck would have it, the elevator stopped outside the Magistrate’s Court, not Part One, so I was already lost. I picked a direction and walked. There were dozens of handcuffed prisoners in the corridors of justice with their arresting officers, U.S. Marshals, FBI men, attorneys for the government, attorneys for the accused, witnesses, and all sorts of people, none of whom looked happy to be there. There is something uniquely depressing about the hallways in any criminal court; the prisoners, the guards, the visible evidence of human frailty, misery, and evil.

  I picked a corridor and went down it. The federal courts are distinctly different from state or municipal courts in many respects. For one thing, you usually get a higher-quality criminal, such as Wall Street types and other white-collar rip-off artists who were stupid enough to use the U.S. mails for their schemes or to branch out across state lines. Occasionally, you get a spy or traitor, and now and then (but not often enough) you get a congressman or member of the Cabinet. But I’d heard, and now I saw with my own eyes, that with the increase in federal drug cases, the quality of federal defendants was somewhat lower than in years past. In fact, I saw men who looked as if they were definitely part of the international pharmaceutical trade, and I could see why Frank Bellarosa, tough guy that he was, would just as soon avoid trouble with these new guys.

  In fact, I didn’t even want to be in the same hallway as these dangerous felons, even if they were cuffed. For one thing, they smelled, and the stink was overpowering. I had smelled that odor in state criminal court once and knew it; it was the smell of the junkie, a sort of sugary-sweet smell at first whiff, but underlying it was a stench like a rotting animal. I almost gagged as I walked down the corridor. John Sutter, what are you doing here? Get back to Wall Street where you belong. No, damn it, see it through. Where’re your balls, you finicky twit? Push on.

  I pushed on, through the stinking corridor of Magistrate Court, and found Part One, where the defendants were uncuffed and smelled better.

  I asked a deputy marshal, “Has Frank Bellarosa come before a judge yet?”

  “Bellarosa? The Mafia guy? I didn’t even know he was here.”

  “He’s supposed to be here. I’m his attorney. Could he have been arraigned already?”

  He shrugged. “Maybe. Judge Rosen’s been doing arraignments for a while.”

  “Where is his courtroom?”

  “Her. Judge Rosen’s a woman.”

  “How many judges are arraigning this morning?”

  “One, same as every morning. You new here?”

  “I guess so. Where is Judge Rosen’s courtroom?”

  He told me and added, “She’s a bitch on bail, especially for wiseguy types.”

  So, with that encouraging news, I walked quickly but with no outward signs of the anxiety that was growing inside me to the door of the courtroom marked JUDGE SARAH ROSEN and opened it.

  Indeed, the court was in session, and two marshals eyed me as I entered. Sitting
in the benches where spectators normally sit at a trial were about thirty people, mostly men, and almost all, I suspected, were defense attorneys, though there might be some arresting officers as well, and perhaps a few defendants who were deemed not dangerous and thus were uncuffed. I looked for my client’s blue suit and for Mancuso’s distinctive pate among the heads and shoulders but did not see either.

  There was an arraignment in progress. A defendant and his attorney stood in front of Judge Sarah Rosen. To the right of the defendant was a young assistant U.S. Attorney, a woman of about twenty-five. She was in profile, and for some reason, she reminded me of my daughter, Carolyn. The courtroom was quiet, yet everyone up front was speaking so softly that I could catch only a word or two. The only thing I heard clearly was the defendant, a middle-aged, well-dressed man, say, “Not guilty,’’ as if he meant it and believed it.

  The criminal justice system in America is basically an eighteenth-century morality play that the actors try to adapt to twentieth-century society. The whole concept of arraignments, for instance, the public reading of the charges, the haggling over bail in open court, is somewhat archaic, I think. But I suppose it’s better than other systems where justice is done in dark, private places.

  One of the marshals was motioning me to sit down, so I sat.

  The arraignment in progress was finished, and the defendant was led away in cuffs, bail denied. Not good.

  The court officer called out the next case. “Johnson, Nigel!”

  Presently, a tall, thin black man wearing a white suit and dreadlocks was escorted into the courtroom through the side door, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. An attorney rose and made his way toward the judge’s bench. If I had to guess, I’d say the gentleman standing before Judge Rosen was a Jamaican and the charge probably had something to do with drug trafficking or illegal immigration or both. The arraignment could take as long as fifteen minutes if there was an argument over bail. Meanwhile, Ferragamo could have pulled a really neat trick, and my client could be standing in front of another judge in Brooklyn Federal Court, offering his Rolex watch for bail. The courtroom was cool, but I was still sweating. Think, Sutter.

  As I thought, I was aware that the door behind me had opened a few times, and I noticed that men and women were making their way to the front of the court and finding seats. I also noticed two men and one woman in the otherwise empty jury box. They were sketch artists, which I thought was unusual at an arraignment.

  Sitting a few feet to my left was an attorney doing some paperwork on his briefcase. I leaned toward him and asked, “Have you been here long?”

  He looked over at me. “Since nine.”

  “Have you heard Frank Bellarosa’s case called?”

  He shook his head. “No. Is he going to be arraigned here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m representing him, but I’m not familiar with the Federal Courts. How would I find—”

  “Quiet in the court!’’ bellowed the fat marshal, who probably saw me rather than heard me. These guys are power freaks, all full of themselves with their guns and badges and potbellies. I recalled that Mark Twain once observed, “If you want to see the dregs of humanity, go down to the jail and watch the changing of the guard.’’ I wish Uncle Walt had said that. Anyway, I settled back and considered my options.

  The arraignment of the tall fellow had begun, and indeed it was a drug charge. The U.S. Attorney, the defense attorney, and Judge Rosen were conferring. Apparently, the defense attorney wasn’t getting his point across, because the judge was shaking her head and the U.S. Attorney, still in profile, seemed smug, and the defendant was staring at his feet. Presently, a guard came, and the defendant became the prisoner again. She’s a bitch on bail. Yes, indeed. If, in fact, Frank Bellarosa came before her, I could think of no reason in the world why she would set bail for him on a murder charge.

  The longer I sat there, the more convinced I became that this whole thing had been stacked against me from the beginning. I was sure that my client was in Federal Court in Brooklyn right now. I could ask for a bail hearing, take an appeal, get a writ of habeas corpus, and try to get him sprung sometime in the near future. But that’s not what I was getting paid for, nor what he wanted. I got up, took my briefcase, and left.

  I went to the holding cells located in a far corner of the third floor and checked with the U.S. Marshal who was in charge of the cells. But my client had disappeared as surely as if he had been swallowed into the Gulag.

  I went to the public phone booths and called both my offices, but there was no message from my client. So, I sat there, contemplating my next move. Just then, the deputy marshal that I’d spoken to regarding the arraignments came up to me. He said, “Oh, I’m glad I found you, Counselor. Your guy, Bellarosa, is going to be arraigned at Brooklyn Federal Court.”

  I stood up. “Are you sure?”

  “That’s what I hear from my boss. Too bad. I wanted to see him.”

  “I’ll get you his autograph,’’ I said as I raced toward the elevators. I rode down to the lobby, rushed out the doors, down the steps, and hailed a cab in Foley Square. I could be across the Brooklyn Bridge and in Federal Court in about twenty minutes. A taxi stopped and I opened the door, but as I was getting in, I happened to notice an NBC news van. Then it hit me. That group of people who had walked into the courtroom, and the three sketch artists in the jury box. “Damn it!’’ I left the taxi door open and raced back toward the courthouse. “That bastard! That bastard Ferragamo! What a conniving son of a bitch!’’ I took a deep breath and charged back up the steps—there were forty-six of them, and the five million dollars was getting heavier.

  I passed through the metal detector again, smiled at Wyatt Earp, who gave me a surprised look as I walked in long strides toward the elevators. I watched Earp out of the corner of my eye until an elevator came. I got in and rode up to the third floor.

  I went directly to Part One and pulled open the door to Judge Rosen’s courtroom in time to hear the court officer bellow, “Bellarosa, Frank!”

  A murmur went up from the crowd, as they say, and people actually began to stand, then a few people moved into the aisle to get a better view, and I found myself pushing to get through.

  The courtroom deputy was shouting, “Order in the court! Sit down! Sit down!”

  Through the crowd, I caught a glimpse of Bellarosa as he was escorted in through the side door.

  As I made my way to the front, the courtroom deputy called out, “Is the attorney for Frank Bellarosa present?”

  I reached the spectator rail and said, “Here!”

  Bellarosa turned to me but did not smile, though he nodded to show he appreciated my resourcefulness in figuring out what had happened that morning. I actually felt very proud of myself despite the fact that what I was doing was not serving humanity or Western civilization in the least.

  I passed through the gate in the spectator rail and put the briefcase on the defense table. I glanced at Judge Rosen, who registered no surprise that I was there, and I deduced that she was not part of the setup. But the Assistant U.S. Attorney seemed rather surprised, and she couldn’t hide it. She looked around the courtroom as if she expected someone to come to her assistance.

  Judge Rosen said to me, “Counselor, have you entered your appearance in court?”

  “No, Your Honor. I just now arrived.”

  She looked at me, and I could tell she had seen me earlier. She shrugged. “Your name?”

  “John Sutter.”

  “Let the record show that the defendant is represented by counsel.’’ Judge Rosen then advised Frank Bellarosa of his right to remain silent and so forth. “Do you understand?’’ she asked him in a tone of voice that suggested she was unimpressed by his notoriety.

  “Yes, Your Honor,’’ replied Bellarosa in a pleasant voice.

  She looked down at the charge sheet that had been handed to her and scanned it for a minute, then read the charge of murder to Bellarosa and asked him, “D
o you understand the charge against you?”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “And have you seen a copy of the indictment?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Judge Rosen turned to me. “Have you been given a copy of the indictment, Mr. Sutter?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  Judge Rosen looked at the Assistant U.S. Attorney and addressed her by name. “Miss Larkin, why hasn’t the accused or defense counsel seen a copy of the indictment?”

  “I’m not sure why the accused hasn’t, Judge. But defense counsel was not present during the processing of the accused this morning.”

  Judge Rosen said, “He’s here now. Give him a copy of the indictment.”

  “Yes, Your Honor.”

  I went to the prosecution table, and Miss Larkin handed me a thick sheaf of papers. I made eye contact with her, and she said, “Perhaps you’d like a few hours to read that. I have no objection to a second call on this arraignment.”

  “I do.”

  Judge Rosen said, “Mr. Sutter, will you waive your client’s right to a public reading of the indictment?”

  I didn’t have to, of course, and I could have had the indictment read line by line for the next few hours. In the eighteenth century, when people had more time and indictments were handwritten and a lot shorter, part of the drama was the reading of the grand jury’s findings. But the fastest way to piss off Judge Rosen was to exercise any right that took more than two minutes of the court’s time. I said, therefore, “Though we have not had an opportunity to read the indictment, we waive a public reading of it.”

  She inquired of me, “Have you seen the arrest warrant, Mr. Sutter?”

  “I have.”

  “And you have heard the charge read by me in open court?”

  “We have.”

  She nodded and looked at Frank Bellarosa. “How do you plead to the charge?”

  “Not guilty!’’ he replied in a tone of voice that sounded almost aggrieved, as if a monumental injustice was being done.