Confessions of a Master Jewel Thief

by Bill Mason

  Fred had gotten to the courtroom early, too. He and the judge were having a private conversation, and then Fred came over and sat down.

  “A little problem,” he said, “and I don’t want you to panic, Bill.”

  I started to panic.

  “What’s up?” Ray asked him.

  Fred jerked a thumb toward the rear doors, indicating the press in the hallway outside. “The judge doesn’t like all this publicity. Doesn’t want to be pressured by a bunch of ambitious reporters into doing something that’ll satisfy them, and he’s too rattled to listen to Billy D and me debate the merits.”

  Sounded reasonable, but it didn’t speak to my most immediate concern. “Why’d you tell me not to panic?”

  Fred leaned in close and spoke in a hoarse whisper. “He’s going to put you back inside and let things cool down for a few days.” When I jerked upright on hearing that, Fred put a restraining hand on my arm. “It’s okay. Thing is, if he’s got reporters watching, they’ll crucify him unless he throws the book at you, on account of what the police have led them to believe.”

  Ray nodded his agreement. “But if we can do this quietly, there’s a better chance of getting him to be reasonable.”

  “Exactly,” Fred said.

  But all I heard was that I was going back to jail, and I guess it must have showed.

  “It’s only to save face,” Fred went on soothingly. “He can’t let you just walk out of here when there’s a warrant out for you. This way he looks tough, which means he doesn’t have to be tough when we get down to the important stuff.”

  “When?”

  “When what?”

  “When do I go back in?”

  Fred shifted around uncomfortably on the already uncomfortable wooden bench. “Now.”

  The only thing I could think about was Barbara. It had never occurred to me that I wouldn’t be going home that evening. I hadn’t said good-bye to her in any meaningful way when I’d left that morning, or to my kids, either, and I didn’t want to do it with Barb now because of the reporters looking on. So far they hadn’t really discovered her, but if I gave them anything to look at, they’d swarm her like maggots over a newly dead carcass. As for the kids, I may not have been the most attentive father for the last half year, but at least I was there. Now I wouldn’t be coming home again, and they’d read about it in the papers.

  But I didn’t have a choice, so I thought I might as well be a man about it. We went before Judge Price, some important-sounding words were mumbled, then the bailiff came and handcuffed me. No photographs were allowed in court and so there were no popping flashbulbs or strobes, but some of the reporters shouted questions as I was led away, before the judge gaveled them into silence and threatened to ban them from his courtroom forever.

  I can’t bring myself to try to conjure up in words what it was like to hear a cell door slamming behind me yet again.

  14

  Been There . . .

  THE FEW days Fred had spoken of turned into over three weeks. By this time I was too cynical to be surprised and didn’t even bother to mention to my lawyers their gross misestimate when they came to see me.

  It had been like homecoming when I went back into the Broward County Jail. A lot of the guards went out of their way to come by and say hello and offer me good luck. I suppose it could have been worse, and I tried to make the best of it.

  Ray and Fred bombarded the court with motions, and we finally got another hearing scheduled for April 5, at five o’clock in the afternoon. The guards who came by to get me teased me about the late hour, pretending to ask for my autograph and offering to press my suit, since I must be some kind of celebrity. When we got down to the first-floor holding area, where I was to wait until called up to court, they left without putting me in a cell. I heard a lot of noise from behind a door leading to a hallway but didn’t think much about it.

  Ray was waiting for me, and I said hello.

  “How you doing?” he asked back.

  I told him I was okay. He nodded but didn’t say anything more than that. This was pretty unusual, and then I noticed that he was inside one of the holding cells and the door was locked. “How come you’re in there?” I asked him.

  “I’m in jail,” he replied.

  “I know we’re in jail, but what are you—?”

  “No, no. I mean, I’m in jail.”

  When I figured out what he was talking about, I started laughing. It was probably cruel, but I just couldn’t help it. My lawyer was in custody! “What the hell for?” I finally managed to ask him.

  He began smiling himself. “Contempt. What the fuck else?”

  It seemed Ray had gotten into some kind of heated argument with a judge over not wearing a tie, and Ray—big surprise—hadn’t handled it well.

  There was still a lot of noise coming from the outside hallway, and I asked Ray if he knew what was going on. “Reporters,” he said.

  This was after normal court hours, and since the court’s daily schedule was posted on a preprinted form that didn’t have any space for that time, our hearing hadn’t appeared on it. Somehow, probably through their various informants inside the system, the press had found out about it anyway. This was bad news for me. Very bad. I’d just spent three weeks cooling my heels in jail because of the papers getting wind of my being scheduled for a hearing, and here it was happening again. “Goddamnit . . .” I choked out.

  “Take it easy,” Ray warned me. “Just take it easy, okay?”

  A different door opened. A big, burly cop walked in, nodded at Ray, then noticed me. “How the fuck did you get in here!” he demanded angrily. “Alla you are supposed to stay out in the hall!”

  I started to explain, but he pulled out a set of keys and stuck one in a steel door I hadn’t noticed before. He unlocked it and kicked it open. Bright sunlight streamed in, and as I blinked against it, I saw some steps leading right down to the parking lot behind the courthouse.

  “Get your ass outta here!” the cop snarled, motioning toward the steps.

  “Listen—” Ray started to say, but the cop shouted him down.

  “You shut the fuck up!” He yanked his nightstick from his belt and pointed it at me. “Don’t make me tell you twice!”

  As my eyes got used to the outside light, I saw grass and cars just a few feet away and people walking casually on the other side of the street. Trees, too, and a kid on a bicycle. I thought about my van, just a short cab ride away.

  “Don’t do it,” Ray warned, but was careful not to use my name.

  “Don’t do what!” the cop snapped.

  My lawyer was right. “I’m waiting for a hearing,” I finally said.

  “Bullshit! It’s five o’clock. Ain’t no hearings at—”

  “I’m in custody, you dumb fuck!” I was emboldened because this cop wasn’t about to mess with me once he realized the awful, career-ending mistake he’d almost made. He needed me to stay quiet about it.

  “Fuck’s he talking about?” the cop asked Ray.

  “He’s my client,” Ray answered, trying to stifle a laugh. “We got a hearing at five, like he said.”

  The cop looked back and forth from one of us to the other about a dozen times before deciding we were telling the truth. “Shit,” he muttered as he quickly pulled the outside door closed and relocked it. By then Ray and I were cracking up and the cop left without another word.

  “By the way,” Ray said when he’d managed to get hold of himself, “Fred found out something interesting. All those motions we been filing?”

  I sat down on the bench in the holding area. “What about them?”

  Ray said that Fred had gone through the original police reports and come across one describing a potential witness, a woman from Connecticut who’d been registered in the room I was caught in at the Ramada.

  “Jean Tierney,” I said. Hard to forget a name like that.

  “Fred wanted the judge to subpoena her for a deposition,” Ray went on, “but he refused, bec
ause as far as he was concerned, there was no case pending. You’d already pleaded guilty.”

  “Then what’s so interesting?”

  “Fred went into his usual outrage dance. It’s a good one; you should see it.”

  “I think I have. And . . . ?”

  “He yells and screams about how this is all a conspiracy to keep you locked up, a violation of due process, and just about the time he gets to the very death of democracy itself, one of the detectives gets up and tells the judge there’s no reason to subpoena the woman because she won’t come down and testify anyway. The judge asks him why and the detective gives Fred this long look and says, ‘Because somebody phoned her up and threatened her, that’s why.’ ”

  I couldn’t believe this. “Are you telling me Fred—?”

  “Hell, no. Are you kidding? We didn’t even know who she was until that morning.” Ray stopped and scratched at his chin. “On the other hand, what we were wondering . . .”

  I knew exactly where he was going with this and headed it off. “Don’t look at me. I never even knew what city she lived in. All I saw was the same report as you.”

  Ray knew I’d tell him if I’d done it, so he believed me, and it was true. “So who do you suppose . . . ?”

  “Nobody, that’s who,” I answered. “You ask me, she never existed.” But now the judge thought I was the type of creep who threatened potential witnesses. Wonderful.

  Shortly after that two other cops came by to take us upstairs, but first they handcuffed us together. It took a few seconds for the reporters out in the hall to figure out what the hell was going on when they saw us, or maybe they didn’t catch on at all, but either way they started snapping pictures like mad, all the way up to the courtroom. They even tried to get shots of us inside by holding up their cameras and shooting away every time the rear doors opened. It must have been quite a sight, the two of us cuffed together in front of the judge as Ray pleaded my case.

  It was useless. Judge Price, a tall, slim, refined-looking patrician type, was constantly eyeing the rear doors, apparently reminding himself of the reporters who were behind them. He wasn’t interested in the detailed arguments and refused to make any decision except revoking my bail. Barbara was there as usual and sat in shocked silence, watching Fred screaming bloody murder as Ray and I were taken off to the jail, me back to my cell, Ray to a holding area.

  When the evening guard shift came on, I cajoled a couple of them into letting the trustees take all kinds of stuff to Ray, like doughnuts, fresh coffee, cigarettes and, for all I know, a beer or two. The next morning I asked one of the guards to take me down to see him. Along the way a couple of trustees stopped us to tell me how well they’d taken care of Ray and all the great stuff they’d brought him.

  When we got to the holding area, Ray wasn’t there. There was just one old man, smiling and seemingly quite content. “What’s he so happy about?” my guard asked the one in charge of the holding pen.

  “You kidding?” the other guard answered. “Guys have been bringing him all kinds of shit all night. Doughnuts, coffee, smokes . . .”

  “Where’s Ray Sandstrom?” I asked.

  “Sandstrom . . . you mean that lawyer?”

  “Yeah.”

  The guard checked his log sheets. “Somebody named Haddad got him out. Emergency appeal, I think.”

  I asked him when.

  “Little before eight last night.”

  I looked inside the holding pen again. There were crumbs and cigarette butts on the floor and a couple of crushed paper coffee cups in the sink. I wondered if the old guy thought jail was going to be like this every night.

  Four days later we finally got the “quiet hearing” the judge wanted. The highlight was when Ray called to the stand Judge Tyson, who’d sentenced me on the original charge.

  “Nothing compelled Mr. Mason to admit the truth of the charges against him,” the eminent jurist sniffed imperiously.

  “Oh, yeah?” Ray shot back. “What about the fact that a prosecutor told him a witness was going to fabricate evidence against him?”

  “So you say,” the judge replied evenly.

  After he left the witness box, Price said, “Anything else, counselor?”

  “One thing,” Ray answered. “We asked for the official record of the original sentencing.”

  “And I ordered it turned over,” the judge said with a shrug.

  “Well, we didn’t get it.”

  Price frowned. “Why not?”

  This time Ray shrugged. “Seems it’s been lost.”

  “Lost.” Price seemed to need a second or two to process that. “What do you mean, it’s lost?”

  “That’s what the clerk of the court told us.”

  “But . . .” Price bit his lower lip. There was no sense interrogating Ray, who was under no obligation to account for missing court records.

  Then the judge looked at me, but there was nothing on my face to read. I was as surprised as he was. He turned away and picked up a phone, and as he dialed, Ray came over to talk to me.

  “What the hell—?” I started to say. I remembered the story about how Ray once pinched a gun right off a courtroom desk.

  We stared at each other for a few seconds. Then I said, “Are you telling me you swiped the official court record?”

  I thought Ray was going to fall over. “Me!” he nearly shouted. “I thought it was you!”

  But it wasn’t me. I wouldn’t even know where to look for a document like that. Ray turned away and started to laugh and shake his head. “Jesus H. Christ!” he choked. “It’s really gone!” He sobered up when we heard the sound of the judge hanging up the phone.

  “Seems you’re right, Mr. Sandstrom. It’s lost.” Price scratched the side of his head. “This has never happened before in my memory.” He picked up his gavel and said, “Defendant is released on seventeen thousand dollars’ bond.”

  In the news the next day, a veteran court observer echoed the judge’s comment when he said, “It’s never happened before. Something could be misplaced but never lost.”

  There was another hearing two weeks later, on some technical matters. I wasn’t required to be present and didn’t go. The question of my bail being continued didn’t even come up, which got my lawyers debating when I met them later that evening about our next move. Given Judge Price’s lack of concern about my not being in custody, Ray was confident that we could drag this out forever without worrying about me being remanded. “He’s stayed put,” Ray said to Fred, referring to me. “They set him up and busted him and still he didn’t run. The judge won’t bother him.”

  Fred didn’t buy it. “Maybe not now, or next week, but when Joe Gerwens and his TAC boys see that we’re stalling? They’re convinced one of us swiped the court record, and they’ll convince the judge as well. They’ll rain hell down on Billy D and start pressuring him to get bail revoked, and the judge will agree.”

  “But what grounds will he have?” Ray argued. “What evidence? Nothing’s changed; the case is moving ahead. . . . What kind of reason would the court have to revoke bail?”

  This went on for a little while, and then they turned to me; it was really my decision after all, and it was an easy call. As far as Ray and Fred were concerned, every day that I was out was a gift, another excuse to party and taunt the police, and they saw no downside to delaying things as long as possible. To me, though, every day that passed without final resolution of everything I was facing was another day of unbearable tension and uncertainty. I couldn’t work, I couldn’t get to sleep without numbing myself with alcohol, my marriage was disintegrating and my kids could barely make it through a night without crying. Worse still, we were pressing ahead with the harassment suit against the police that had been filed in Barbara’s name, and from what I was hearing, this was making the police completely nuts. Add to that the suspicion that I’d stolen a court record and I thought I was in very real danger of being set up for a bogus arrest again.

  This was no
way to live, and I knew I couldn’t take much more of it. “We need to end it,” I told my lawyers, “one way or the other.” I knew I had a constitutional right to a speedy trial, a right that was routinely waived by defendants, especially those out on bail, because it gave their attorneys more time to get ready. But I wanted a trial on the prowling and weapon charges from the Jolly Roger to start not one day later than the statutes allowed, and earlier if the county was agreeable.

  Ray and Fred understood without my having to elaborate any further and agreed to press forward as fast as the law allowed.

  Ray went into court without me and informed the judge that we wanted a jury trial on the Jolly Roger matter. That afternoon he told Fred and me how it went. As the judge started leafing through his calendar, Ray threw in, “We want it in six weeks.” The judge looked up, incredulous, and asked him what he was talking about. Ray repeated his request, and the judge started to get angry and called him up to the bench but waved Billy D back, a clear breach of procedure: Judges aren’t supposed to have “ex parte” conversations, speaking to one side without the other present, but Dimitrouleas didn’t object. And Ray was about to see another side of the normally patrician Judge Joseph L. Price.

  As Ray told it, “The judge leans down over the bench and says to me, ‘What the fuck is wrong with you, Sandstorm?’ Sand-storm, he calls me! ‘I let your guy out, so why are you busting balls on a trial that quick? You got any idea how full our calendar is?’ And I told him, real polite, I said, ‘My client wishes to invoke his right to a speedy trial, your honor,’ and he says, ‘Fuck you and your client!’ I kept my cool, didn’t raise my voice, didn’t interrupt him. . . .”

  “How come?” I asked. That wasn’t Ray’s style.

  “I’ll tell you why,” Fred ventured. “Because it probably pissed him off worse than anything else Ray’s ever pulled in his court, that’s why.”