by Bill Mason
“Look,” Damore said, “we all know our case isn’t airtight.”
“That’s for damned sure,” I agreed.
“On the other hand, I’m betting you don’t have a very good explanation for those master keys.” He waited for us not to comment, then said to Zeidwig, “Your client and the cops may be at each other’s throats, but the fact of the matter is, my office doesn’t really give much of a shit about this case.”
“So drop the charges,” Zeidwig suggested glibly.
“Yeah, right. After all that publicity? We’re not about to end up looking like a bunch of assholes without a fight.”
“You’ll look like a bunch of assholes if you lose at trial,” I tossed in casually. Big mistake. Zeidwig had warned me to keep my mouth shut, and now he threw me a withering look.
Damore sneered at my naïveté, then explained what Zeidwig already knew. “If we lose,” he said with exaggerated patience, “we come out looking all grim and self-righteous and tell the papers how you snookered the dumb-ass jury with underhanded tactics, just another example of what happens when a knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal Supreme Court waters down the laws and coddles criminals, et cetera, et cetera.”
Zeidwig shrugged, totally unoffended. “That about sums it up.”
Now I was thinking, So why is Damore so reluctant to go to trial? Win or lose, he comes out okay.
He answered without my having to ask. “But we don’t want you getting away with all of it, Mason. We don’t want it seen that you walked on this. And you don’t want to go to trial, because if you lose, you’re going to do some very serious time. And you could lose. Your lawyer explain all of this to you already?”
He had. Somehow or other, Damore would see to it that the jury knew about all those scores I’d owned up to and gotten a walk on. That would turn them against me, and he’d also bring up to the sentencing judge that I had a criminal record stemming from the break-in at the garage. Put all of that together and I could get convicted and end up in prison for-damned-near-ever.
“So what’re you proposing?” Zeidwig asked. All the preliminaries had been for my benefit; he already knew all of it.
“Ninety days in jail, seven years probation. Hell, he could get five years on the burglary tools alone, plus whatever else the jury chooses to buy into.”
There was no need for him to go into sales overdrive. It was a tremendously generous deal, and Zeidwig and I both knew it. Nevertheless, Zeidwig said, “Give us the night to think it over.”
Damore said that was no problem, and we broke it up. On the way home in my car Zeidwig and I talked it over. The first thing he said was, “If you want this deal, and I think you do, we better get it done today.”
“How come?”
“Because it’s my guess the police don’t know about it. After what you put them through, if they find out about this offer they’re going to try to lynch Damore, and he might take it off the table.”
“After what I did to them? What about what they did to me!”
“They don’t care about what they did to you! They’re not on trial and they’re not facing prison!”
He was right, of course. And if nothing else, I didn’t want my family suffering any more embarrassing publicity. I dropped Zeidwig off and went home to talk it over with Barb, but it was just a formality. She figured she could live without me for three months but not five years or ten or twenty. There was also something about the finality of a deal that seemed to settle her down. I think it was mostly uncertainty that had been driving her up a wall. Same went for me. When I called Zeidwig back to tell him to accept, I suddenly felt a tremendous weight rise up off my chest that I hadn’t quite realized had been there.
Once we got that resolved, Barb’s biggest concern was the kids. Suzi was fifteen, Mark thirteen and Laura seven. Although not particularly worldly-wise, they were each smart as hell, intensely curious and savvier than most adults. They read the newspapers, too, even little Laura, and while I could pass off most of what they’d been reading about me as baloney, there was no way around the fact that their father was about to go to prison. I did my best to explain the situation, using all the standard euphemistic terminology about “mistakes” and “bad decisions,” and I also made sure they understood that the crime for which I was actually about to be punished had never occurred and that it was all a mistake. I could have saved my breath, though, because what I’d done or not done and whether I deserved the prison time was the last thing on their minds. All they cared about was that I’d be gone. The emotions shooting through me as they hung on to me like baby chimps and cried their eyes out are impossible to describe. Needless to say, I made a solemn vow never to do anything that would risk a repeat of that scene.
The next morning I went into court to plead guilty. It was supposed to be a formality, but at one point the judge, Robert Tyson, started reading something and went quiet for several uncomfortable minutes. Just as Zeidwig cleared his throat and got ready to ask him what was going on, Judge Tyson looked up at me and tapped his fingers on the papers in front of him. “Says here—”
“Where?” I asked, because my lawyer wasn’t about to.
“Police report,” the judge answered. “Says there’s a standing order in the police department never to arrest you unless at least four officers are present. Now why’s that?”
I knew why it was. Detective King had written up in his report that I could climb four stories up a rope, hand over hand, while carrying a fifty-pound backpack and without using my legs. There were probably very few officers in the Fort Lauderdale P.D. in that kind of condition.
I was struggling to frame an answer when Zeidwig jumped in. “With all due respect, your honor,” he said, all humble and subservient, “is the court really asking my client to explain something in a police report? He didn’t write it, nor does he agree with it. Mr. Mason has never had a single incident of violence, has never resisted arrest, hasn’t once in his entire life—”
“All right, all right,” Tyson said, waving Zeidwig down. The judge was a small, gray-haired mousy guy, a big boozer who always looked like the bench he’d rather be on was the one in a bar. “Guilty plea is entered, sentencing to be pronounced in thirty days.”
I was released on my own recognizance with no restrictions, as we’d arranged with Damore, and I took Barb and the kids on a weeklong cruise. We had a great time, the most relaxed and happy we’d all been in months. I prepared the kids for my impending absence, telling them again that the police had made a mistake but that I’d agreed to go to prison for a while in order not to risk it turning into a bigger mistake. Three months would pass like it was nothing, I assured them. By then they’d pretty much gotten used to the idea after the initial shock, and were so excited and agog and distracted at being on that giant ship that we managed to have one hell of a time together.
Two weeks after that I appeared in court again and was sentenced to twenty years, with all but ninety days of it suspended and seven years’ probation. As expected, the Fort Lauderdale police just exploded when they heard, but there wasn’t anything they could do about it except fume to the press. When they took out after Damore, he got his hackles up and lashed right back, letting them know in no uncertain terms that if they hadn’t fucked up the bust so badly, he could have put me away for the full twenty. He was right, so they backed off and got on with their business, without holding it against Damore.
And that’s how I came to be on the fifth floor of the Broward County Jail, answering the phones, bullshitting with the guards and playing nasty tricks on Steven Simonson, who I figured had screwed me by opting out of his trial and accepting a two-year stretch. If he’d gone along with Ray Sandstrom’s wildly creative strategy, neither of us might have ended up in there.
Howard Zeidwig kept his cordial relationship with the D.A.’s office and went on to become a judge.
Ray Sandstrom went on to become my lawyer.
11
The Storm After the Calm
THAT SEPTEMBER, because of good behavior (I didn’t kill anybody while inside), after seventy-seven days of my ninety-day sentence I was processed out of the Broward County Jail at a minute past midnight. Barbara was there to pick me up. I remember us hugging each other fiercely but don’t remember that we said much. At home Mark and Suzi had stayed up to greet me, and it was a joyous reunion. Looking at them, so innocent and so unaware of the real world, climbing all over me and not even wise enough to be angry at me for depriving them of their father for so long, I felt pangs of guilt so strong, it was all I could do to keep from breaking down on the spot. They were both teenagers, which would seem to put them beyond too many notions of “innocent,” but Barb was a strong and loving mother who made sure that family came first in their lives, and that seemed to be just fine with them. I promised them over and over that I’d never let it happen again, and I meant every word from the bottom of my heart. Barbara, standing nearby, joined in my reassurances to the kids. I wanted to stay up all night just holding them, but they started yawning and eventually dropped off to sleep. I carried them up to bed, and there was no doubt in my heart I was now a reformed jewel thief. “I mean it,” I said to Barb, many times.
After barely three hours of sleep, I went back downtown to meet with my probation officer. Walking past the jail, I thought I could actually smell the inside of the place from out there on the street. The building seemed to loom over me, threatening and forbidding, a dark and ominous fortress that was as much an ever-present warning as a place of punishment. I shuddered and turned away, quickening my steps.
My P.O. was a woman named Cheryl, and she was an absolute knockout. Though just in her mid-twenties, she was a thorough-going pro and was quite used to meeting men who were fresh out of jail and hadn’t had sex—at least not with a woman—for months or years. She made small talk and shuffled papers around until I managed to put my eyes back in my head, then we got down to business. I found her very easy to talk to, and she seemed to like me as well. After a while she said, “You need to start keeping your nose clean. You know that, right?”
I threw up my hands defensively. “I hear you,” I said with great conviction. “And believe me, I’m a changed man.”
“Yeah, right. Seen the light, have you?”
“I’m not going to kid you,” I replied. “It’s not about finding God or suddenly respecting the law. Thing is”—I pointed toward the bleak walls of the jail visible outside her window—“there’s no way in hell I ever want to go back in there.”
“Good,” Cheryl said. “But when I said to keep your nose clean, I don’t mean just burglary. I mean don’t let a parking meter expire on you. Don’t spit on the street, don’t even cross against a friggin’ light.”
Seemed a little strong to me, and I must have shrugged or something, because Cheryl leaned across her desk and said, “Listen. My boyfriend’s a criminal defense attorney here in town. He’s heard about you and said that every cop in the city is looking for an excuse to nail your ass to the nearest cross. You understand what I’m saying?”
I nodded dumbly. I should have known that anyway, but somehow, hearing it from a public official drove it home just a little deeper and it shook me.
Over time Cheryl and I became good friends. She’d drop by the house periodically and she and Barb hit it off real well. The three of us even went out for dinner or drinks once in a while, and to the Las Olas Art Festival. Obviously, she knew all about my background and would sometimes ask me to come to her condo to fix something. She came to trust me and would always give me permission to go back to Cleveland on business anytime I asked.
She never let us meet her boyfriend, though. We knew his name was Frank and that he was a top-notch defense attorney, but he was also married. Cheryl never mentioned it outright, but I had little doubt that Frank, aware of my criminal history, wasn’t about to let himself be put in a position where a known felon could blackmail him by threatening to tell his wife about his affair. Can’t say I blamed him one bit, even though blackmail wasn’t in my repertoire.
Cheryl wasn’t kidding about the cops having it in for me. Our street was still the best patrolled in all of Fort Lauderdale. I was the most cautious and law-abiding citizen you ever saw and wouldn’t so much as drop a toothpick on the street. I spent time managing the properties in Miami and my own building in Cleveland, and I got pretty good at knowing when I was being tailed. Of course, with something like that it was impossible to know how good, because there was no way to be sure nobody was following you at the moment.
A couple of months after I was released, I got a surprise phone call from Dave Damore, the guy who had prosecuted my case, inviting me out to lunch. Wondering what the hell that was all about, I agreed, and it really was a surprise.
“I quit the D.A.’s office,” Damore said. “Going into private practice.”
“Don’t tell me criminal defense,” I responded skeptically. I wasn’t aware at the time that this was a traditional career move for assistant D.A.s. They get tons of invaluable trial experience on the county’s nickel and make great contacts up and down the line, then let the private firms know they’re available and just wait for the best offer, which can be double what they’ve been making.
We chatted for a while, then Damore looked at his watch and said he had to get going to a meeting. He handed his business card across the table. “You ever need some help, give me a call.”
I took the card and grinned. “So what are you doing, trolling your old busts for future clients?”
He laughed. “If I’m ever going to be rich, it’ll be off habitual fuckups like you, Mason.”
I shook my head and told him he’d be wasting his time with me. “I’m out of it, Dave. Swear to God, I’ve had it.”
“Tell you the truth, I hope so. But you’d better watch your step; cops around here still don’t like you.”
I told him that I was doing just that, and there was no way the cops could pin anything on me.
He got up to leave. “You never know what can happen, Bill. Hell, one phone call to the IRS . . .”
“One phone call and what?”
“Who knows?” he said. “But if I were you, I’d make sure my financial affairs were all nice and tidy.”
I had the definite impression I’d just gotten an important warning, and that afternoon I asked Cheryl if she knew a good accountant. She recommended a tax lawyer instead, a guy named Peter Aiken, and offered to set up an appointment for me.
Aiken was a great guy. He had a big fish on his wall with a sign under it: “He wouldn’t have gotten caught if he’d just kept his mouth shut.” After I laid out my situation to him, Aiken advised me to put everything I owned in Barb’s name. Then he told me to move all my records to his office.
“What for?” I asked him. I wasn’t comfortable with someone else having them. What if he got squeezed himself and was forced to turn my papers over to the police?
“Because it’s a whole lot harder for the police to get a search warrant for my office than for your house. You can come down here anytime you need to work on them, but nobody else can get their hands on them.”
I must still have looked a little skeptical, because he added, “You do understand that attorney-client privilege applies to any attorney, right? Not just a criminal defense lawyer, but me, too.”
That hadn’t occurred to me. It made sense, and I did just as Aiken advised.
This is a good place to relate a little story that will give you some idea of what South Florida was like in the seventies.
With all of this extra time I had by not stealing jewelry, I decided to get serious about my real estate business. I thought it would be nice to have some income property in Florida that I actually owned rather than just managed for someone else.
I found a nice house in Lighthouse Point, just north of Pompano and close to the Hillsboro Inlet coming in off the Atlantic, a great place to watch ships of all sizes sail by. I got the house for a good pric
e because it needed a lot of work and had put it in Barb’s name, as Peter Aiken had advised me to do. I hoped to have it ready to rent by the start of the winter season. The house was originally two bedrooms and two baths, and I wanted to add a third bedroom and bath in addition to a new sixty-foot dock. With help from Barb’s brother Augie, I did all but the most specialized stuff myself.
When it was done I ran a rental ad in the paper, and it hadn’t been on the newsstands for two hours the next morning before our phone began ringing off the hook. The first guy I showed it to loved it but didn’t seem to be interested in much else besides the dock. Now, remember that I had put about a thousand backbreaking hours into this place, used quality materials and even partially furnished it, and was thrilled I could get it ready on time. I had no idea that none of that made any difference and I could have saved myself the trouble.
In the ad I’d said I wanted the first and last months’ rent and a security deposit, but this guy, who hadn’t been in the house ten minutes, offered to pay for six months in advance and started peeling hundred-dollar bills off a huge roll of money. Then he signed the lease without reading it. All this was pretty suspicious, but I didn’t see much basis to argue about it, so I handed him the keys, wished him good luck and left.
I didn’t hear a word out of him for nearly two weeks, which is awfully unusual for a new tenant, who usually has a list of things he wants fixed. I called information to get his number, but they didn’t have a listing, so I decided to go out there and check up on things, and would tell him I was just dropping by to see how he was doing. When I got there, the house looked exactly as it had when I’d last seen it. There was nothing at all on the lawn or the deck, no personal touches of any kind. I knocked on the door and got no answer, and the elderly lady who lived next door called out, “I don’t think anybody lives there.” I had said hello to her once or twice when I was working on the place, but now introduced myself more formally and explained that I’d just rented the place out. She said that she’d never seen anybody go in or out. I left her my phone number, then went to the mailbox to see if anything had been accumulating in there. I found the keys and a note. It said, “Decided not to take the house. Keep the money for your trouble,” and was unsigned. I knew right away that the guy was a drug smuggler and had used the house—and the dock—to bring in one big load and had then gotten out of Dodge.