“Are you busy?” he asks.
“I have a few minutes,” I say. “I have my presentation in a little bit.” I don’t take my eyes off my written remarks on the computer screen.
“That’s okay. I just wanted to let you know that they have completed jury selection.”
I look away from the computer screen. “What do you mean, they ‘completed’ it?”
“They’ve selected a jury.”
“For the trial?” It’s an inane question, but I hold out hope that I don’t understand.
“Yes, for the trial.”
I swallow hard. “This is really happening.”
“This is really happening. I’ll call you later when I know more. Good luck with your presentation.”
When we hang up, I remain frozen in my seat. After a few moments, I try to drag myself back to my presentation. But when I turn to the computer, something is wrong. The screen is blurry, the words seem to bleed into one another. I try to adjust the monitor and then realize that the problem is me, that I am looking at the screen through thick tears. My presentation is reduced to garble. I have otherwise forgotten what I was going to say.
I remember little about my faculty presentation except this: it was an unmitigated disaster.
I will later describe it without exaggeration or embellishment as “the worst thing I’ve ever attempted in my life.” This is a competitive category. It includes a failed keg stand during college that culminated in a bruised butt bone, a misguided effort to win an argument with a DMV employee that ended with me being escorted out of the building, and an ill-fated attempt on an airplane to practice my fledgling Moroccan Arabic that resulted in an inadvertent promise to marry my seatmate’s son.
But those failures are fleeting. My presentation is almost certainly recorded somewhere as the worst in history.
In an act of self-preservation, my memory has erased most of the details, leaving me only with bits and pieces. I remember being in my office, wiping my tears. I remember walking down to the faculty library. I remember taking my place at the podium. I remember sounding out sentences, taking long pauses, trying to come to a point. I remember looks of disappointment, confusion, and sympathy.
I know it is awful even as it is happening. But it’s the comment of one of my colleagues afterward that confirms to me that I have failed.
“Try not to fidget next time,” she says. “It was a little distracting the way you kept playing with your bra strap.”
When it’s over, I go to my office, grab my purse, and run out of the building. As I drive home, I can barely hold my head up. The sun glares at me with disappointment.
But I don’t know that the worst is yet to arrive. That all of it: the disapproval, the humiliation, even the exposure of my bra strap, are all harbingers of what’s about to come.
Shortly after I return home, my attorney calls me. Luckily, there is too much at issue for him to ask me how my presentation went. I listen in silent despair.
“Opening arguments were this afternoon,” he tells me. David Escalera’s attorney has told the jury that the government’s case should not be believed because Cameron Douglas cannot be believed and this is because he convinced a female attorney to bring him contraband.
I say nothing.
“Cameron will be sworn in as a witness tomorrow.”
My lawyer has convinced the parties not to use my name in open court. While this is helpful, the comfort that it offers is still cold. A person of even mild intelligence could figure out my name in approximately three minutes by searching the court docket.
He offers other glimmers of hope. Cameron is going to have to explain other incidents that reflect on his credibility, and so my crimes may not get much play. The press will likely be more interested in what he has to say about his drug-dealing activities and anything having to do with his father than it will about me. It is possible, my lawyer says, that though the incident is mentioned in open court, it will never be reported.
I thank him, hang up, and promptly crawl into bed. Not to sleep—although if that were within the realm of choices, it would be my first—but because the physical exertion required of sitting seems too much.
It is still daylight out, and the sun is now smirking at me through my bedroom window. I pull down the shade.
I lie in bed, stare at the ceiling. I think of Cameron, probably doing the same. Here is the moment he has always dreaded. Now it is my moment, too.
And so things are as they always were: his suffering my suffering, his fears my fears. Separated only by space, there is nothing we can do but wait to see what happens next.
LATE MONDAY, EARLY TUESDAY
Overnight, an article appears on the New York Post’s website.
The drug-dealing son of actor Michael Douglas got caught with “contraband” in the slammer. . . .
But “most shocking of all,” Douglas also got an unidentified female lawyer to smuggle him forbidden goodies while he was awaiting sentencing, defense lawyer Louis Aidala said.
Aidala didn’t identify the woman or specify any of the contraband.
TUESDAY*
MR. ANDERSON: Your Honor, the government calls Cameron Douglas.
CAMERON MORRELL DOUGLAS, called as a witness by the Government, having been duly sworn, testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. ANDERSON:
Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Douglas. How old are you?
A. I’m 32 years old.
Q. Where did you grow up?
A. I grew up between New York and California.
Q. Where do you live now?
A. Right now I’m housed in the MCC prison.
Q. The MCC is a prison?
A. Yes.
Q. How long have you been in prison?
A. Two years, three months, something like that.
Q. What did you do that caused you to end up in prison?
A. I was involved in a conspiracy, drug conspiracy.
*
Q. After you were sentenced, did you engage in any additional misconduct?
A. Yes.
Q. What did you do?
A. I—I got into a relationship with a—my defense—one of the defense attorneys on my case, and she—she was bringing me Xanax because it’s something that we’d been trying to do through the court and BOP, but it was just—was proving to be really difficult, so she was bringing that for me.
Q. What is the Xanax for?
A. For anxiety.
Q. How many times did your attorney bring you Xanax?
A. I would say maybe three times.
Q. How many pills in total approximately?
A. I’d say 30 or so.
Q. Did you use them all yourself?
A. No.
Q. Did you share them with other people?
A. Yes.
Q. Who? With other inmates?
A. With other inmates, yup.
*
Q. You also mentioned you had a romantic relationship with this attorney?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you kiss?
A. Yes.
Q. Did you do anything more than that?
A. No.
*
MR. ANDERSON: Your Honor, may I have just one moment?
THE COURT: Sure.
MR. ANDERSON: No further questions, Your Honor.
*
CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. AIDALA:
Q. Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Aidala. We have never met, have we?
A. No.
Q. We have never seen each other, have we?
A. No.
Q. We have never spoken to each other, have we?
A. No.
*
Q. Isn’t it a fact that you were able to convince a young lady who was an attorney to s
muggle drugs into a federal prison?
A. I asked her to.
Q. It was your idea, not hers, isn’t that correct?
A. That’s correct.
Q. You knew at the time it was a crime, didn’t you?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. And you knew she was a lawyer, correct?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You knew she had to go to high school, college, law school, take the bar exam, sweat out the possible results, get admitted, go through the character committee, you knew all that, didn’t you?
A. If I sat down and thought about it, yes.
*
Q. You didn’t give a damn about her, did you?
A. I don’t think that’s accurate.
Q. You cared about her to get her to smuggle in drugs to a federal prison to commit a crime and to risk her attorney’s license?
A. I didn’t—you know, I didn’t look that far. I didn’t look that far ahead when I asked her to do that for me.
Q. All you cared about was yourself, right?
A. I guess so. When I was asking her to do that, yes.
Q. You know so, don’t you? You know so, don’t you?
A. I don’t really know what my state of mind was back then. I was a little out of it.
*
Q. Had you regaled her with alleged feelings of affection for her?
A. I don’t believe so. I—
Q. Well, had you kissed and were you able to not be seen?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. As a matter of fact, after you were sent to Pennsylvania, didn’t she continue to visit you there?
A. Yes, sir.
*
Q. You were able to manipulate her, isn’t that right?
A. I just, I asked her. I didn’t, I didn’t convince her.
Q. Well, she just, it was like, Oh, that would be a great idea, I’ll do it? Is that what you’re trying to tell us?
MR. ANDERSON: Objection.
THE COURT: Sustained.
Q. You manipulated her in such a way that she did something that was a crime?
MR. ANDERSON: Objection.
THE COURT: Overruled.
A. No, I just asked her.
Q. And she just agreed, right? Right away?
A. I certainly didn’t press her to do it.
*
Q. As a matter of fact, sometimes you don’t know what’s truth and what’s fantasy, correct?
A. No, I think I know the difference between truth and fantasy.
Q. But you do lie, correct?
A. I try not to.
Q. And you tell lies to accomplish something you want for your own selfish self, correct?
A. No, I wouldn’t agree with that.
Q. So the incident with the lawyer, that isn’t something that you did to help yourself, is that what you are saying?
A. There was no lying or dishonesty involved in that.
Q. So if you expressed feelings of affection towards her, that was the truth? You felt that way about her, is that correct?
A. That’s correct.
*
Q. Tell us what you told her to do.
A. She was involved in trying to get the medication for me through—
Q. Did you hear my question? Listen to my question.
THE COURT: He’s answering your question. You may not like the answer, but he’s answering your question.
Q. I’m asking, tell us what you told her to do with respect to smuggling in drugs?
A. I asked her to put Xanax in a balloon and to give it to me during our lawyer visits. That is what I asked her to do.
*
Q. Where did you tell her to put the balloon with the drugs?
A. I didn’t specify anything specific on that.
Q. Where did she put it?
A. I don’t know, sir. I don’t remember.
*
Q. Well, she gave it to you, didn’t she?
A. Yes.
Q. You were in a room where attorneys meet with their clients?
A. Right.
*
Q. She took it out from some part of her body, didn’t she?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. You know so, don’t you?
A. Yes, sir.
*
Q. Did she take it out of one of her body orifices? Do you know what that means?
A. I do. No, I believe from what I can remember I believe she took it out of, I saw her take it out of her bra.
I hear a sound from the living room that is familiar and disquieting. I am in my bedroom, ignoring it. I have just hung up with my lawyer, whose associate has been sitting in the courtroom watching Cameron’s testimony unfold. He has been using the courthouse pay phone to update my lawyer, who in turn has been updating me.
When my attorney relays to me Cameron’s testimony I politely explain to him that his associate must not have been hearing Cameron right. There is no way Cameron would share the medication that he so badly needed, I say. How is it that his visible symptoms vanished? And what purpose could it serve him to disclose my identity? No, there is no way.
As to the mention of my undergarments, I am particularly incredulous. Why would he say this? I remind my attorney of how I placed the pills in a bag of pretzels before Cameron even arrived in the attorney room. I explain that nothing could possibly be served by my harboring something in my bra, that its underwire caused additional scrutiny, that I’m not even sure how one could remove something from a bra in an attorney room without partially undressing.
“There must be some misunderstanding,” I say. “That just can’t be Cameron’s testimony.”
My lawyer says nothing. I think I can hear him shrug.
It is a heavy slap to the face, learning that everything in Cameron’s testimony is exactly as my lawyer has recounted it to be. I want to reconvene the jury and explain. Explain to them that today is the first time that I’ve learned that these pills were being distributed to others, that I was supplying currency to men whom I do not know but who somehow know me. That the pills that I brought for Cameron were prescribed for a condition that I personally observed him experience. That Cameron can’t speak to how I brought in the pills. That the contortion involved in removing a balloon of pills from one’s bra while seated in a room with a glass door is beyond my physical capability. That due to the circumstances of our acquaintance, Cameron could not possibly see me take anything out of my bra, that he has never seen my bra, he has never seen anything at all that resides below my neck or above my knees.
That this has all gone so terribly wrong.
But the jury has been dismissed for the day. As I craft my explanation, they are probably at home eating dinner with their families, possibly, against the judge’s orders, mentioning in passing the events of the day, about the celebrity drug dealer, about his attorney accomplice, about said attorney’s underthings.
It is too late.
But correcting my attorney, reconvening the jury, these are just sideshows. Underneath my disbelief and defensiveness is the crushing realization that I have been betrayed. Cameron did not only break his promises about keeping his mouth shut, taking the fall. He did not only lie and mislead. He actively, willingly, placed me directly in harm’s way. But even this is not the worst part. No, the worst part is me. I had taken an inordinate risk on behalf of someone who clearly did not care what happened to me. No, wait, that isn’t the worst part. The worst part is that I acted out of love for someone who could not possibly have loved me in return. Nope, there is something still worse. The absolute worst part of all of this is that the entirety of what transpired has been captured by a court reporter. My love-starved stupidity is recorded in history.
The sound from the living room has grown loud enough to shake me from my thought
s. As I make my way into the living room, I immediately place it: the doorbell is ringing. Over and over and over again, in a manner not unlike that employed by Burly Man so many months before, the rapid presses composing an uninterrupted siren.
This can mean only one thing. And so I freeze. I stop so abruptly that I grab onto a piece of furniture for balance, knocking over a pile of books and papers on a nearby end table. They crash to the ground.
As soon as they do, the ringing stops. I hear movement on the other side of the door, as though the person behind it is deciding her next move. She knows that I’m inside, and I know that she’s outside, but neither of us says a word.
I remain completely still. I am breathing so loudly I think she might hear.
Suddenly, the stranger begins ringing the bells of all of my surrounding neighbors, all of them elderly, each of them easy to scare. I can hear the symphony of bells through my door. She seems to be making a ruckus in the hopes that it will rouse me from my apartment.
The stranger does not know me, does not know that I am fully capable of cowardice when it serves my own interests. And so, while I feel awful for their intrusion, I selfishly remain where I am. It continues for several moments. Finally, a door opens. I can hear her demanding of my neighbor Rosie where I might be.
“I don’t think she’s at home.” Rosie trembles. “Otherwise she would open the door.”
“Well, do you know when she’ll be back?”
“I’m sure she’ll be home later today,” Rosie says obliquely. “Maybe you can leave her a note.”
The stranger is silent for a moment. Then she thanks Rosie and says that she will.
I continue to remain within earshot of the door, careful not to make a sound. I see a small piece of paper slip under the door. I hear Rosie’s door close.
I wait for a moment. It is silent.
I start to take a deep breath, thinking that this is over. But as soon as I start to relax, my body stiffens at a thought.
The elevator did not make a sound. The stranger must still be outside my door.
I don’t wait to see how long she remains. I quietly tiptoe to my bedroom. I will not return to my living room for two days. And by that time, everything that is going to happen will have already happened.
Criminal That I Am Page 21