The Pierre Hotel Affair

by Daniel Simone

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “Defendants, how you plead?” the judge asked in a slight black American accent, which he made an effort at minimizing.

  Greenspan, a conservative lawyer, his hairline ebbing, wore black-rimmed glasses, and a plain but creased gray suit. “Not guilty on all counts, Your Honor,” he responded in a stentorian voice that was not representative of his physique. Greenspan’s spine was curved, and his neck leaned forward, the skin on it loose and droopy.

  Pope stood. “The People recommend no bail.”

  “And why is that?” Judge Tyler asked in a vein that said, You’d better have a damn good reason, son.

  “The defendants are presumed to have stolen five to fifteen million dollars in gems and cash. And in possession of such valuable assets, they are a flight risk. They could flee the country and have the means to vanish and live the rest of their lives anonymously. Not to mention that one of the defendants, Mr. Comfort, has a criminal record dating back to his adolescence.” Pope, too, spoke in an almost imperceptible Southern accent.

  Judge Tyler replaced the glasses on his nose and perused a stack of documents. He skimmed over that material, and the courtroom vaporized into a stillness of silence save for His Honor’s shuffling and leafing of papers.

  Comfort covered his mouth and whispered to Greenspan, “Tell the judge the DA doesn’t have any proof that we stole anything. His allegations are nothing but pure conjecture.”

  Greenspan upped off his chair and cleared his throat to get the judge’s attention. “Your Honor, my clients have been committed without reasonable probable cause.” He outstretched his arm to the right, in Pope’s direction. “At this hearing, so far, the esteemed Mr. Pope has failed to proffer any evidence, material or circumstantial, in support of his contentions. And that’s all they are, his contentions.”

  Judge Tyler didn’t as much as lift an eye off his stack of paperwork, turning pages as if he were hearing nothing. Thirty seconds into this, he finally acknowledged Greenspan’s rebuttal to Pope’s no bail recommendation. His Honor looked at the elderly defense counsel, though a second or two too long, as if waiting for him to expound why the defendants should be granted bail. When Greenspan said nothing else, Judge Tyler pronounced, “At this time, bail is denied.” He swept the courtroom with an unyielding glare. “I’ll set a pretrial hearing for Tuesday, January 18, at 9:30.” He then asked Greenspan, “Counselor, you plan to file any motions before the pretrial hearing?”

  “Yes, it is likely I’ll be filing a motion,” Greenspan affirmed.

  “Court is adjourned.” Tyler rapped his gavel, and two bailiffs, who had been standing directly behind Comfort and Nalo as if they were serial killers, guided the prisoners through a rear door twenty feet from the judge’s bench.

  Greenspan winked at his clients, “I’ll be visiting you tomorrow. We’ll chat then.” And the hobbling commotion of people rising and gathering belongings shattered the complacency in the courtroom.

  Two more deputy sheriffs moved in front of the defendants as they walked through the head-spinning maze of corridors down into the Tombs. Comfort and Nalo, still uninformed about what Paolino and Stern might’ve spilled to O’Neil’s minions, were stressed and wired, anxious for tomorrow’s consultation with Greenspan. Was the counselor of the opinion that Pope’s charges were unsubstantiated and warranted filing a Motion to Dismiss? Bobby Comfort thought so, but his point of view was subjective.

  As the next dawn glowed to a purple-gray, again the gigantic black correction officer woke Comfort and Nalo. “What now?” Comfort said in a sleepy voice, his eyes squinting in the bright, yellow beam of the guard’s flashlight.

  “Git up and git ready. You’re goin’ in a lineup.”

  “A lineup! My lawyer is supposed to be notified, and I know he wasn’t.”

  “Das none o’ mah damn business, Comfort. Mah job’s to git you up and goin’. Das awl. The rest’s yoh problem.”

  The guard then went to Nalo’s cell and banged on the steel bars. “Git ready, you’re goin’ to a lineup.”

  “What the fuck is this?” he said to the correction officer. “My lawyer don’t know nothin’ about a lineup.” Wonder if the DA is tryin’ to pull some shit.

  CHAPTER 54

  The New York State Court Center at Foley Square in lower Manhattan is in itself a landmark. The limestone-veneered front elevation of the courthouse is an architectural wonder, an impressive façade. The design comprises a 110-foot triangular arch atop a colonnade of columns five feet in diameter, projecting the aura of authority, power, and strength of American justice. On the ledge of the arch are three statues, symbols of judicial impartiality, fairness, and equality for all. Behind that magnificent arcade, inside that stately edifice on the seventh floor was the lineup facility, a stark room that did not correspond to the nobleness of the building’s exterior. The walls were a drab gray, and the peeling paint was marred with cartoonish drawings and graffiti. The subjects of the lineup sat on a wooden bench as they waited for the viewing process to begin.

  Comfort, Nalo, Stern, and Paolino, all in handcuffs and each displaying a numbered tag pinned on the front of their prison garb—which covered the suspects’ stenciled names—sat side by side on the bench, three uniformed police officers hovering in vigilance. None of the prisoners’ lawyers were present, and that might be an advantage; later if convicted, this could be another basis for an appeal.

  This was the first time Comfort and Nalo had seen Paolino since this ordeal had begun. But talking was not permitted, though they communicated sneakily, eye signaling and mouthing words. And Paolino’s message was clear: he had said “nothing about nothing” to any of the investigators. Now that Paolino had lived up to Comfort’s unwavering confidence in him, the consternations of any possible evidence that could’ve been in the hands of O’Neil or the FBI were no longer wrenching Comfort and Nalo. And they huffed sighs of relief. But one liability was still outstanding; the chance that one or more of the Pierre hostages might’ve recalled Comfort and Nalo’s faces. At the moment, however, why fret over a setback that hasn’t yet presented itself? If it did, Comfort would meet it head on. This was his axiom in life, but not Nalo’s. He avoided confronting and tangling with a dilemma; no, he’d run from a crisis and hope against hope it’d somehow pass over and land elsewhere.

  “Okay, we’re gonna get the show goin’ in a few minutes,” joked a cop who coordinated the lineup. “If anyone of you ever dreamed of doin’ a tap dance on a Broadway stage, well ours here may not be a Broadway stage, but it’s a start for you actors.” The clownish policeman laughed mischievously as if he believed he was blessed with comedic talents. “Soon, you’ll be under the spotlights. And remember to smile.”

  “Fuckin’ jerk,” Nalo mumbled in disdain.

  The cop had heard him and locked his gaze on him as if daring him to repeat it.

  “What’s your problem?” Nalo asked rebelliously.

  Comfort elbowed his codefendant in the ribs. “Sammy, knock it off.” He flicked his eyes at the cop and said to Nalo, “If he wants to be an asshole, it’s a free country.”

  His ego shredded in the presence of his colleagues, the comic police officer blushed. “Both of you shut the fuck up.” Bitterness in his voice, he pointed at Comfort and Nalo. “I don’t wanna hear another word from you two.”

  Nalo stared coldly at him without blinking.

  Just then, Pope trudged clumsily into the room breathing heavily, cheeks moistened from perspiration, and melting snow under his galoshes. His 1964 Plymouth Belvedere wouldn’t start on this twenty-eight-degree morning, and knowing he’d be delayed he had phoned in with instructions not to begin the lineup without him.

  “Mornin’, Mr. Pope,” said the caustic cop.

  “Sorry I’m late. Everybody here?” Pope shed his overcoat, an army-green, full-length fake Burberry, and draped it on the backrest of a chair.

  “Yeah, here are the stars of the show,” the police officer said,
indicating the four sitting on the bench. “The witnesses are in the waiting room.”

  “I guess we’re ready to go.” Pope blew his nose and coughed, the symptoms of a festering cold, and went into the reception hall to prepare the witnesses.

  One of the walls in the lineup room served as the “exhibit stage.” It was brightly lighted and the markings of a height chart were painted on it. There, when called, the accused would be in full view. On the opposite wall, was a three-foot-by-two-foot one-way window, through which the witnesses in the viewing room could look at the suspects in question, though they couldn’t see them.

  One by one, Pope called the willing though reluctant eyewitnesses from the waiting room. The hostages whom Pope had persuaded to participate were only eight. The first six hadn’t recognized Comfort, Nalo, Paolino, or Stern. The seventh, Elijah Weathersby, the black elevator operator, was regretting having agreed to cooperate, and was reneging on even looking at the alleged perpetrators. He lowered his head, eyes glued to the floor. “I ain’t messin’ with them boys. They be Mahfeea people. I know they are, and you know it, too. I be gittin’ killed.”

  “No, no, no, Elijah,” Pope said as if he were speaking in kindness from brother to brother, reversing his educated vernacular to the Black English that Weathersby could relate to. The assistant DA tenderly rested his hand on the elevator operator’s shoulder. “They be nothin’ but street punks, bro. They ain’t no Mahfeea. Believe you me, Elijah.”

  Weathersby’s eyelids opened to the maximum, and the whites of his eyes enlarged in disbelief, seeming even whiter in contrast to his dark brown skin. “They ain’t no Mahfeea?!” He sucked on his teeth to stress that nothing could be further from the truth. “If yoh beeleeve dat, yoh a fooh. No street punks are gonna try to pull off that kinda job.” Weathersby pecked his temple. “Unless they be crazy. They’s professionals, and professionals got the backin’ of the Mahfeea. I know dat!”

  “I can promise you that no matter what, I got yoh back, Elijah,” Pope said as though he had the wherewithal to provide Weathersby round-the-clock protection.

  “And another tang,” Weathersby added, “Why should I help the powleece? You know damn well theys always against us blacks.”

  “Yoh right, Elijah, but in this case everyone o’ them thugs are whites.” Pope moved in closer to Weathersby as if he were foregoing all formalities. “Here’s your shot at gittin’ back at Whitey. See?”

  “I doun know . . . I doun know, Mr. Pope.” The witness shook his head ever so slowly to mean, I ain’t buyin’ it.

  “Awl righ, forget everythin’ else. Don’t you wanna help a brother?” Pope had played his last card, the Black card.

  Weathersby, head bowed, droplets of sweat glistening on his scalp, didn’t speak.

  Again, Pope placed his hand on the brother’s shoulder and came in to him eye-to-eye in an overture for solidarity. “I don’t get no bonuses if I win a trial, but I move up the ladder. And the higher I go, the more I can help us black folks. Know what I sayin’?”

  Weathersby, arms dangling by the waist, entwined his fingers of one hand in with those of the other. He stared at his shoes, mulling those last sentences the assistant DA had spoken, and Pope felt he had softened him. “Elijah, why don’t you have a look at these criminals. C’mon, do it fer me.”

  “Awl righ.” Weathersby waggled a forefinger at Pope. “But nothin’ better happen to me.” As if he were taking his final steps to the gallows, he walked slowly toward the one-way window, and said in a whisper, “They can’t see me, righ?”

  “No, they can’t see you,” Pope said, nodding in assurance.

  In the lineup were Comfort, Nalo, Paolino, Stern, and two detectives posing as suspects. Weathersby, his inflated, balloon-like face now inches from the viewing window, peered through it. Fifteen seconds clicked on, he stepped back from the glass, and turned to Pope. “Number five and number six,” he said in a hushed voice.

  The number five tag was pinned on Stern, and Comfort wore the number six. Weathersby had been fifty percent correct; Stern hadn’t been one of the stickup men. But for Comfort, this was a bloodcurdling moment. The reality of a conviction and a long prison stretch would take him from his wife and daughter, and he couldn’t conceive how he’d cope with that unthinkable outcome. The pragmatic gene in him, though, alleviated his acidy stomach. At times, Comfort mused, a lawyer can challenge an eyewitness’s testimony and dilute it to merely an unconvincing conjecture, especially if the person is an unwilling witness in the first place. And on cross-examination, if harried by a defense attorney a hostile witness becomes unsure and hazy, more often contradicting himself or herself. And Comfort, an informal scholar of jurisprudence, was well aware that such incidents were an ordinary occurrence.

  A ray of hope shone as he thought about Millie and Nicole.

  Pope summoned another Pierre employee from the waiting room, the overweight Louis Rabon, who wheezed as he talked. Rabon’s occupation, a bellman, was not only his job title but also the shape of the man’s body, the silhouette of a church bell. And as Rabon laughed he bellowed loudly. Speaking about his encounter with Nalo at the Pierre, he said to Pope, “See, I never had a look at him. He come up on me from behind and said, ‘Don’t move a muscle, and put your hands up. And don’t even think about gettin’ a look at me’. So I didn’t make a move.”

  “Mr. Rabon,” Pope said, “I want you to concentrate on the one with the number four tag.” The fourth man in the lineup was Nalo. “Was he the gunman you’re talking about?”

  “I . . . I don’t know, sir. Like I said, I never got a look at him.” Rabon answered in a sorrowful lilt as if he wanted nothing more than to be helpful. “But . . . but, if I hear his voice, I’ll recognize it right away. Can you let him say what he said to me that night?”

  Pope knew that intercepting one’s voice is a gray method of identification. A defense lawyer could argue that it isn’t uncommon for two or more people to have the identical tonality, more so if they are of the same ethnicity. Every nationality has a prevailing phonation, and a phonetician can detect an individual’s background by the phonetic sound his or her vocal cords strike. Therefore, identifying someone by his or her voice isn’t legally conclusive.

  Pope’s strategy, though, was that if Rabon could distinguish Nalo’s speech, however inadmissible that would be, it might tempt Nalo to confess. But that was wishful thinking on the part of the assistant DA Nalo couldn’t be bluffed and seldom panicked; he was the epitome of coolness; so much so that he seemed to have the enthusiasm of a hippopotamus. And although his knowledge in law was limited, he had acute reasoning aptitude, and understood that in a courtroom voice identification testimonies would be struck off the record. But Pope was only slightly acquainted with Sammy “the Arab” Nalo, and thought that by applying pressure on him he might fold. Pope picked up the intercom handset and said into it, “Lieutenant O’Neil, have suspect number four say, ‘Don’t move a muscle, and put your hands up.’”

  Nalo refused to speak, and at the same time he was in a heated argument with O’Neil, who was making him wear one of the wigs that had been confiscated from his Bronx apartment. Nalo, recalcitrant, snatched the poodle-like curly wig from the lieutenant, and threw it on the floor. “I ain’t puttin’ on no wig, and I ain’t sayin’ shit. I know my goddamn rights,” Nalo said, white, foamy spittle bubbling on the corners of his mouth.

  The much taller O’Neil bent into Nalo’s face and prodded a finger too close to his nose. “You listen to me and listen good, you Turk. If you keep on being an uncooperative punk . . .”

  “I ain’t no punk, you shanty mick.”

  O’Neil grabbed a handful of Nalo’s jumpsuit below his neck and growled, “Keep on doing what you’re doing, and here’s what’s gonna happen.” He paused, thumbing at the one-way window. “The DA on the other side of that glass has been watching your antics. And I can tell you that no way in hell he’s ever gonna give you a plea deal. That’s the first thing.”
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br />   Nalo cut him off and said, “I ain’t lookin’ for any plea deals. I’ll go to trial if I have to.” He jutted his chin at the others in the lineup. “You ain’t got nothin’ on any of us. Why the fuck would I cop a plea?”

  O’Neil motioned in the direction of the viewing room. “Those witnesses out there already picked out your buddy, Mr. Comfort. And you’re next. But that’s not all. One thing is for sure: you’re not gettin’ bail, and you’ll rot in the Tombs ’til you come up for trial. And guess what, you Arab worm, the DA will pull strings to put off the goddamn trial for the next eighteen months.” The lieutenant leaned into Nalo’s right ear and uttered in a hush for no one else to hear, “Who knows, maybe I got someone down in the Tombs who’ll cut your jugular vein and let you bleed to death. All it’d take is a book of stamps and a dime of pot. And you know that.” O’Neil paused for this to sink. “Now are you gonna put on that black rug and speak what I want you to say loud and clear?”

  Comfort nodded dimly at Nalo, urging him to give in. And the Turk bent his head forward, allowing the lieutenant to affix the wig onto his dome. “So what is it you want me to say?”

  “Now we’re getting somewhere, Mr. Nalo. Just say, ‘Don’t move a muscle, and put your hands up.’ That’s all.”

  In a vain attempt at masking his voice, Nalo garbled out that sentence.

  “Yeah, that’s him,” Rabon said, a tinge of remorse biting him.

  “Are you sure?” asked Pope, a tingling sensation lightening his burdens.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  Elijah Weathersby and Louis Rabon had deflated Comfort and Nalo’s upbeat moods.

  CHAPTER 55

  The results of the lineup amounted to a dismal obstacle for Comfort and Nalo; two of the victims had singled them out. This eliminated the possibility of filing a Motion to Dismiss. And as matters now stood, Weathersby and Rabon would testify to the effect that Comfort and Nalo were two of the stickup men of that unforgettable night of January 2, 1972. But Counselor Leon Greenspan, across the table from his clients in the lawyers’ conference pen at the Tombs, wasn’t too pessimistic. “Don’t lose any sleep over it. Look, anytime an eyewitness identifies you it’s not necessarily a slam dunk for the prosecution.”