Longhorn gave me a pained look. “Miss Fox,” he said sternly, “let me tell you a bit about the kind of animal we’re dealing with here. But first, I need you to promise what we say in this room stays in this room, because I’m going to share bureau intel with you. You okay with that?”
“Of course.”
“In 1975, a well-known drug dealer in the town of Medellín, Colombia, was murdered by his up-and-coming rival, Manuel Rodriquez. We believe Rodriquez is slowly taking control of all drug trafficking in Colombia and is hoping to form a cartel to distribute cocaine inside the United States.”
He handed me a file marked FBI/INTEL. “Take a few moments and read this,” he suggested.
The file contained a detailed report about Rodriquez and how he was smuggling thousands of pounds of cocaine from Colombia into southern Florida via Panama. He had a fleet of planes and helicopters at his disposal. The report described Rodriquez as a ruthless smuggler who was known to either bribe or murder anyone who got in his way, whether they were police officers, judges, or politicians.
Longhorn said, “Our sources have told us that Rodriquez wants to expand into New York. We know that Carlos Gonzales was selling cocaine out of his jewelry shop. If we can show that Gonzales was in cahoots with Rodriquez, well, that would make our case against Mr. Gonzales rather important now, wouldn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, we wouldn’t just be dealing with a little old neighborhood drug pusher now, would we? We’d be dealing with a possible New York City cocaine connection right to the Colombian cartel of Manuel Rodriquez.”
“So how do you want to proceed? How can we both go after Carlos Gonzales without stepping on each other’s toes?”
Leaning forward, Longhorn asked, “Miss Fox, you ever heard ‘You can’t make cookies if you don’t have the dough’? We’re still piecing together our cases, still collecting the dough, so if you want to hold Carlos Gonzales’s feet to the fire, then light your match. You take that slick bastard down and then we’ll come in and finish him off.”
At this point, Longhorn actually winked at me. It wasn’t a sexual wink. It was more like the sort of wink that fraternity brothers might give each other because they both knew a secret handshake. I interpreted his wink to mean: You can trust me and I can trust you, Miss Fox. We’re on the same team.
Still, I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what he was saying. “If I move forward with my case, you won’t object to Gonzales being tried in White Plains before your try him here in federal court?”
Longhorn placed his coffee mug down on his desk. “My fellow agents make fun of me because of my homespun sayings, but, I swear, I can’t help myself sometimes. Miss Fox, an old horse gets you where you’re going, only the ride takes longer.”
I gave him a puzzled look.
“What that means is that you go ahead, and after you get him convicted, we’ll prosecute him in federal court.”
He’d just given me what I wanted—the first shot at Gonzales.
“That sounds great!” I said, beaming.
Longhorn stood up, stuck out his hand, and gave me a firm shake. “Glad we’re together on this, young lady. I’m sorry but I have another appointment, but if you need anything from my office, anything at all, why, you just give me a holler.”
O’Brien didn’t say a word as we rode down the elevator and exited the Manhattan skyscraper. As we walked toward a parking garage on Broadway, I asked him why he was so quiet.
“I don’t trust Longhorn.”
“Why not?”
“Dani, I’ve been dealing with these Hoover boys for a long time, and I’m telling you, they come at you with big smiles, big ‘happy to meet you’ grins—but you can’t trust them. It’s not until after they slap you on the back, you realize they’ve just stuck a knife in you.”
“What about that INTEL file he showed me that says Rodriquez might be moving into New York? You don’t believe Gonzales could be the cartel’s contact here?”
“It could all be bullshit,” he said. “I told you that Agent Longhorn was on the hot seat to come up with a big case to impress the brass in Washington. Did anything in that INTEL report actually say the Colombian cartel was moving into New York?”
Now that he mentioned it, there wasn’t any specific mention in the report about Rodriquez moving drugs into the city. Only Longhorn had suggested that connection.
“I got friends at the NYPD,” O’Brien continued, “and they tell me that the mob still controls all the drugs moving in and out of this city. Rodriquez and his cartel may be big in Miami, but if they want to do business here, they’re either going to have to cut a deal with the five families, in which case the NYPD Organized Crime Task Force would know about it, or they’re going to have to muscle in. And if that were to happen, we’d all know about it because we’d have a bunch of dead Colombians and Italians showing up on the streets.”
“You think Longhorn just lied to us?”
“I’ll play nice, okay? I’ll just say he might have been exaggerating. He might be hoping to make Carlos Gonzales into a big witness, a huge catch, just to impress his new bosses.”
The idea that an FBI agent would exaggerate the importance of a case to win political favor with his bosses seemed completely foreign to me. Prosecuting criminals was supposed to be about justice, not promotions.
“Personally,” O’Brien said, “I hope he was full of bullshit.”
“Why?” I asked, surprised.
“Because one thing that INTEL report said that was accurate is that Manuel Rodriquez is a stone-cold killer. He doesn’t care who he murders—cops, judges, prosecutors—and if Carlos Gonzales is in bed with the Colombian cartel, then he could be much more than a pervert who rapes his own kid. He could have important and very dangerous connections.”
30
I thought District Attorney Whitaker was going to have an orgasm when O’Brien and I briefed him about Carlos Gonzales. His face lit up as soon as I explained that Carmen was a sixteen-year-old beauty whose father had beaten her, repeatedly raped her, and then dressed her in her dead stepmother’s clothing and paraded her around Manhattan nightclubs as his girlfriend. Whitaker knew that Carlos Gonzales had been a mover and shaker in the White Plains Hispanic community up until his arrest on drug-smuggling charges. The additional charges of sexual depravity that we planned to file against him were sure to make this case—as only O’Brien could put it—a “tabloid editor’s wet dream.”
Whitaker had Steinberg begin contacting news outlets. Usually, Steinberg notified only local television, radio, and newspaper reporters in Westchester County when we were about to announce a big indictment. But Steinberg sent word to the New York Post, Daily News, all the supermarket tabloids, and even the Old Gray Lady herself—the New York Times.
The day before the press conference, Steinberg held a practice dress rehearsal with Hillary Potts playing the role of a reporter asking questions.
When Whitaker’s big moment arrived, he handled the media masterfully, hitting all the right points, delivering clever thirty-second sound bites that were sure to make the evening broadcast. As for me, I stood quietly behind him watching five TV news crews jockeying for the best angle. Strangely, Paul Pisani was nowhere to be seen, which was a huge relief to me. Given his massive ego and “Mr. Invincible” reputation, I’d expected him to muscle into the case.
The indictment did not identify the teenage victim by name, and because state law prohibits publication of either the name or a picture of a rape victim, she was never identified in the papers.
Everyone in my office gathered together at five o’clock to watch the local news broadcast, and when I appeared on the screen, all the girls and even O’Brien cheered. The room became quiet when the anchorman announced that Gonzales had hired a defense attorney. Alexander Dominic’s fat face suddenly appeared on the screen. “My client is innocent,” Dominic declared.
I couldn’t believe that Gonzales had hir
ed the same bottom-feeding lawyer who had represented Rudy Hitchins as his defense attorney. My only guess was that no one else in White Plains would defend him.
“I’ll be damned,” O’Brien said, breaking into a smile. “This should be a cakewalk against a putz like Dominic.”
The next morning, Gonzales was brought to the Westchester courthouse for the first of numerous court appearances and I got to lay my eyes on him for the first time. I half expected him to look like a Hollywood gangster. In the movies evil people look evil. But the Carlos Gonzales who strutted into court was a handsome, articulate, well-groomed, physically fit, middle-aged man with a charming dimple in his chin and a quick smile. He came across as a confident businessman, and I could tell from his cocky attitude that he wasn’t worried about his daughter’s accusations—nor was he afraid of me.
In the coming weeks, O’Brien and I worked furiously to prepare Carmen and our other witnesses. We wanted our case to be airtight. Even though Carmen was a teenager, she was amazingly poised. The only witness who made us nervous was Yolanda Torres. When I first met her, Torres reeked of alcohol and the first question out of her mouth was whether I was going to pay her for testifying and for letting Carmen and her brother stay in her apartment.
As we got closer and closer to a trial date, I began feeling a funny vibe. Dominic wasn’t filing the sort of pretrial motions that defense lawyers generally filed; in fact, he wasn’t really doing anything to help his client. There were no endless motions seeking delays, no requests for a change of venue because of pretrial publicity, and when O’Brien checked the jail logs, he discovered that Dominic was not even visiting his client. Something was up.
I became even more suspicious when Dominic didn’t make any effort to contact me about a possible plea deal. Even for a lawyer as inept as Dominic, this was simply weird.
Three days before the trial, my suspicions proved true.
During what was supposed to be a routine hearing, Dominic suddenly announced that he was withdrawing as the lead defense attorney. As I watched in disbelief, Neal Kent, a well-known defense attorney from the Manhattan firm of Hart, Hammerman and Kent, approached the court and announced that he would defend Gonzales.
Kent was one of the best criminal defense attorneys in New York. New York magazine also had identified him as one of the city’s most eligible bachelors. He had an impeccable legal background, having graduated from Columbia University Law School and gone directly to work in the New York County District Attorney’s Office. After handling a series of sensational prosecutions, Kent had jumped sides by becoming a defense attorney. His clientele came exclusively from Wall Street and Park Avenue. If a trophy wife was accused of murdering her elderly rich husband, Kent got a call. If an investment banker got drunk in the Hamptons and drove his Lincoln into a local kid riding a bicycle, killing him, Kent got a call.
The stakes in the Gonzales case suddenly were raised. Rather than facing a pushover, I would now be going against one of Manhattan’s shrewdest attorneys.
This was no longer a “cakewalk.”
31
I felt a butterfly rush when the trial of Carlos Gonzales finally began. On the morning when I was scheduled to give my opening statement, I arrived several hours early and went to sit alone in the courtroom. I wanted to practice without anyone hearing me. I imagined what it would be like in a few hours, the drama and the horror that would unfold in that courtroom.
This was where I had always wanted to be.
I looked at where the judge would be seated. The words In God We Trust were etched on the wall. The judge would be seated behind a raised desk, known as the bench, made of highly polished rosewood. The New York State and County of Westchester flags were on the left of the judge’s chair. Old Glory was hanging, slightly higher, from a pole on the right. The Great Seal of New York was bolted on the wall directly behind the bench. Its dark blue seal had a shield in its center being supported on each side by a female. One of the women was Liberty and her left foot was firmly planted on a gold crown, a symbolic act that showed New Yorkers had freed themselves from British rule. The other woman was Justice, a symbol of impartiality and fairness. Her eyes were covered with a blindfold and she held a sword in one hand and a scale in the other. Beneath the two women’s feet was a white slash with the state motto: Excelsior, Latin for Ever Upward.
As I gazed at the great seal, I felt a sense of irony and destiny. Liberty and Justice were both represented in the courtroom by women. Yet there was not a single woman judge in the entire courthouse. Not one, and I was the only woman prosecutor trying cases. Good enough for display on the great seal, but not yet equal for an actual courtroom.
The witness stand was next to the bench and there were desks for the court clerk and court reporter directly in front of it. The jury box was on the judge’s left.
A waist-high barrier called “the bar” divided the room into two parts. The spectators sat in the gallery. The other side was where the judge, court officials, jurors, the prosecution, the defense, and the accused were seated. This was known as “the well.” It was extremely disrespectful for anyone who was not a court employee to “traverse the well” without the judge’s permission. What that meant was that you were not allowed to walk around the well and especially not permitted to approach the judge without being invited. The judge and court officials entered directly into the well through a separate door. The jurors entered through a completely different door near the jury box. And the attorneys came into the courtroom along with everyone else through a door that led into the gallery. The term “passing the bar” literally meant that the attorneys had to pass through the bar to enter the well and do business before the judge.
The prosecutor’s table faced the judge and was closest to the jury box on my right. The defense sat to my left. I walked to the podium where I would be delivering my statement, took a deep breath, and began reciting it. I had memorized it the night before. When I finished, I took a deep breath and left the room. I was ready for combat.
At precisely nine a.m., the bailiff Ronald Maselli announced in a booming voice that the County Court for the County of Westchester for the State of New York was now in session with the Honorable Sheldon Williams presiding. Everyone rose from the room’s hard wooden benches. His honor entered wearing a heavy black robe.
My mom was sitting directly behind me in the gallery, having come to watch her daughter’s first big trial. I spotted Will Harris among a cadre of news reporters seated on the benches. Because of the notoriety of the trial, the bailiff had held a lottery for the other seats. Courthouses attract an odd menagerie. I’d spotted two regulars who’d won coveted seats. One was a middle-aged gentleman dressed elegantly in a white linen suit. In court, he could be seen taking copious notes, and when he had first appeared, a rumor spread through the building that he was a famed New York writer doing research for a new book. But he wasn’t and no one had a clue why he was such a prodigious notetaker. The other regular was known simply as the “knitting lady.” She would sit in court with a bag of yarn and nickel-plated knitting needles. While keeping her eyes focused on the real-life melodrama unfolding before her, her fingers would furiously twist, spinning out untold numbers of brightly colored sweaters and scarves.
I’d sequestered Carmen and my other witnesses down the hallway from the courtroom.
“Please be seated,” Bailiff Maselli declared after Judge Williams had entered and plopped into his chair. Williams had not looked at any of us, but had instead immediately gone to work on a stack of official-looking papers that his court clerk had carefully left on the bench before he’d entered. With a fountain pen, he began signing them. Out of the corner of his mouth, he said, “Representing the People of the State of New York is Assistant District Attorney Dani Fox.” That was my cue to stand and face the gallery, as was the custom in New York. I immediately heard several whispers. Spectators were both unaccustomed and surprised to see a woman prosecutor. Without looking up, Judge Williams sa
id, “Representing the defendant is Mr. Neal Kent.” The handsome Kent stood and turned to face the spectators.
The court clerk read the charges against Gonzales, and after she finished, Judge Williams finally took his nose out of his papers and asked, “Miss Fox, are the People ready?”
Rising to my feet, I replied, “The People are ready.” I walked to the podium that faced the jury box. I was wearing one of my new conservative pinstriped navy suits and had my hair pulled back. I had chosen the black pumps that accentuated my legs and made me appear taller and more imposing. Or at least I thought so.
Although Gonzales was in jail facing drug-trafficking charges, he appeared before jurors dressed in a tailored three-piece suit and crisp white shirt. I was not permitted to tell jurors anything about the U.S. Attorney’s pending charges because that would have unfairly prejudiced the defendant. The only crime that mattered was the one for which Gonzales was on trial. For all they knew, the accused was a churchgoing, apple-pie-eating, naturalized citizen who had come here to claim his piece of the American dream.
My job was to crack that facade and expose him as the monster he was.
“It is my obligation to make an opening statement to you. I welcome the opportunity to describe for you what facts the People intend to elicit in this case. An opening statement is like the table of contents of a book. The state uses it to outline the substance of the case in its skeletal form. The actual pages of this book will be written by the various witnesses who take the stand and testify and by the exhibits which are introduced into evidence.”
I paused to catch my breath and then continued. “There are many kinds of betrayal. A citizen can betray his country. A husband can betray his marriage vows by committing adultery. A businessman can defraud his partners. A friend can lie to a friend. But there is no betrayal as ugly, cruel, and vicious as a father raping his daughter. That is the ultimate betrayal. The defendant in this case, Carlos Gonzales, sexually abused his daughter beginning at the tender age of fourteen for his own perverse sexual pleasure. The evidence will show that he routinely and regularly beat her with his belt until her skin was broken and bleeding. Then he raped and sodomized her. He did not do this once, or twice, or even three times. It became a sadistic nightly ritual, an exercise in cruelty.”
Sly Fox: A Dani Fox Novel Page 17