by Paul Batista
“These lists are always bullshit,” Raquel had said. “They’re meant to pull us off base. A distraction. They won’t call a fraction of them. They have no obligation to do them all. I did the same to Decker.”
Drily, Naomi Goldstein said, this time so that the jurors could hear, “Mr. Decker, your next witness, please.”
One of the seven Assistant U.S. Attorneys who were seated at Decker’s table walked briskly through the swinging doors that were part of the waist-high wall separating the packed gallery of observers and reporters from the courtroom well where the lawyers and the Senator sat with the rigid, silent Secret Service agents.
Slim and moving efficiently, the young woman reentered the courtroom with Leon Stanski, who, using a cane, walked slowly down the carpeted center aisle. This surprised Raquel, who was accustomed to surprises and spontaneity. But it shocked Angelina Baldesteri, even though she stayed motionless and, as Raquel sensed, disturbed, not as stone-cold as she usually was. Neither of them had actually expected Decker to call Leon Stanski as a witness. They thought that the appearance of his name on the witness list was a ruse.
Leon Stanski was well connected and sly. He was eighty-nine. As a young man, or at least investigative books and articles about the Jack Kennedy campaigns suggested, he had begun learning political craftsmanship by delivering cash to crucial local political leaders in states whose primaries Kennedy needed to win. He was known at one point as the “candy man.” To friends when he was recounting his life story, he proudly proclaimed, “I was the first bagman, the original one. The Pharaohs created my line of work.” Not once had he ever been indicted. By now, he had moved far beyond the cash-carrying era of his early education.
And he admired Angelina Baldesteri.
In a clear, commanding voice, Hunter Decker said, “The United States calls Leon Stanski.”
Stanski was small and very well dressed. Just at the moment he climbed to the witness stand, Naomi Goldstein stood and, as she had with thousands of witnesses in her career, said, “Sir, do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
With his right hand held aloft, Stanski said, “I do,” and sat down, so diminutive that he was almost hidden in the witness box.
“Mr. Stanski,” Hunter Decker said, “have we met before?”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Five times, I think. Something like that. You’d remember better than I can.”
“When was the last time?”
“Yesterday or was it the day before?”
“So, it’s fair to say you know who I am?”
“That’s fair to say.”
“How old are you, sir?”
“I was already an old man when you were born, Mr. Decker.” Leon Stanski believed he was funny, in the Rodney Dangerfield–Jackie Mason style. “I’m eighty-nine.”
“What was your occupation?”
“Was? I wish was.” He smiled. “I’m still a working man.”
“In fact, you worked early on for the Kennedy patriarch Joseph P. Kennedy?”
“No. I worked for Jack Kennedy.”
“All right,” Hunter Decker said. “Now you work on fund-raising for the defendant, Ms. Baldesteri, correct?”
“Senator Baldesteri. I sure do.”
“Are you paid for that?”
“Does the sun rise every morning in the east, or west, Mr. Decker?” He looked like he had wanted to say, “Do bears shit in the woods?”
“Are you paid for that?” Decker asked again.
“Sure, I’m paid. I’m bringing more than seventy years of experience to what I do. And to get to your next question, Mr. Decker, $20,000 each month. Seventy years of experience costs money.”
“How are you paid?”
“Eleven thousand in checks, nine thousand in cash.”
“Isn’t it true that those payments are structured that way to avoid your obligation and the defendant’s to file Currency Transaction Reports?”
“What in God’s name,” Stanski asked, “is a Currency Transaction Report?”
“You know, don’t you, that for twenty years there’s been a law that requires people who receive more than ten thousand in cash to file that information on a form with the IRS?”
“Don’t know. I’ve reported every dime I’ve ever been paid, by cash or check or Pony Express, on my income taxes for one hundred fifty years. That’s why I’m broke.”
“You’re not poor, Mr. Stanski, are you?”
When he was a boy, his parents, who lived in Jackson Heights in Queens, took him every summer to the Borscht Belt in the Catskills, that longtime but now almost defunct resort for working-class and middle-class Jewish families in New York City. It was in the summers in the Borscht Belt where he learned the faded art of one-line jokes from forgotten comedians. “No, broke is when you’re dead. I’m still alive, I think. At least I was when I woke up this morning.”
Hunter Decker, patrician and smooth, pretended to be impassive as he rearranged the yellow sheets of paper on the lawyer’s podium in front of him.
“Six months ago, you arranged to pay by wire transfer $500,000 to Ms. Rematti as a down payment for her work for Ms. Baldesteri, right?”
Raquel, given all the trial experience she had, did something she rarely did. Standing, she said, “Objection.”
Most experienced judges overruled objections. Naomi Goldstein was very experienced. But Raquel knew that most jurors in Manhattan, many of them retired men and women, would be overwhelmed and made jealous or disturbed by a number of that order of magnitude in legal fees. Besides, the amount of money a lawyer was paid was usually irrelevant, well beyond the boundaries of typical evidence.
“Overruled,” Naomi Goldstein quietly said.
Raquel sat down.
With a sly smile on his deeply creased face, Leon Stanski answered, “That’s the number. Five thousand C-notes.”
“Is a C-note one hundred dollars?”
“Sometimes they’re called Benjamins. That’s the face on the hundred-dollar bill.”
“How did Ms. Rematti get the money?”
“By a wire transfer, not a check. Wires,” he added, “are real money, not like checks. Those are just pieces of paper. They can bounce.”
“Who told Ms. Rematti she was going to get $500,000?”
“You’re looking at him. I did.”
“Did Ms. Baldesteri tell you to make that call?”
“No. Some guy at whatchama call it? A PAC man?”
“You mean a super PAC?”
“Maybe that’s it. A few years ago, I think, some court said you could have a Superman PAC, or is it a super PAC?”
“Was that the Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case?”
“Beats me. I never read Supreme Court cases. Not a hobby of mine.”
“What,” Hunter Decker asked, “is the name of the super PAC?”
“Not sure.”
“Is it America Renewed?”
“Rings a bell.”
“Aren’t you listed as the Chair of America Renewed?”
Stanski asked, “Does the chair come with a table, too?”
Sounding annoyed, Judge Goldstein said, “Mr. Stanski, just answer the question.”
“America Renewed? Sounds right. I’m the honorary chair of lots of organizations, I don’t run any of them.”
“Who told you to wire the $500,000 to Ms. Rematti?”
“Must have been the Senator, I think.”
“Do you know?”
Leon Stanski glanced around the large, ornate courtroom with the confused expression of an octogenarian wondering whether he’d taken his medications that morning. And then, his voice suddenly sounding far clearer, he said, “No, it wasn’t the Senator who told me to send the wire.”
“Who was it?”
“I’m not good with names anymore. But it was a guy with a name like Cantore, Conte, Valenti.”
“Wa
s the name Caliente?”
“Not sure. Could have been something else.”
“Was the name Robert Calvaro?”
“Like that, like I said, something like that. I knew that whoever he was, he was close to the Senator. And that the Senator needed a great lawyer. And that this guy, whoever he was with the Italian or Spanish name or whatever it was, had the Senator’s permission or approval or authority when it came to spending or sending money.”
“What,” Decker asked, “is the man’s first name?”
“How would I know? Like I said, I’m not even sure what his last name is.”
“Does the name Oscar ring a bell?”
“The only Oscar I ever heard of was Oscar and Felix. You know? The messy guy and the neat guy who were roommates in that movie by my old buddy Neil Simon.” He looked at the jurors, actually winking at them. “Neil was a really funny guy even when he wasn’t writing plays and movies. I told you that once upon a time I knew the first and last names of every alderman, selectman, county chairman, county commissioner, everybody in the country who could deliver votes. These days I have my name taped to the bathroom mirror so that when I wake up in the morning I can remember who I am.”
Some of the jurors laughed.
Hunter Decker rarely laughed. His grandfather had been a United States Senator from Connecticut, his father a Secretary of State. He asked, “You remembered the name Oscar Caliente when you spoke to me yesterday, didn’t you?”
Decker may have been the scion of a family of wealth and privilege but, as Raquel instinctively recognized, he had just made a potentially significant mistake. And, because of a slight change, a look of mild surprise in Naomi Goldstein’s expression, Raquel believed the judge, too, recognized the same mistake. By asking that question, Decker ran the risk of making himself a witness. Old Leon Stanski was not Decker’s client. Nothing they had ever said to each other was secret or privileged. And Decker had just put his own credibility on the line. He had opened the door to Raquel at some point calling him as a witness, if she decided to do that, to show he had unduly coaxed a witness, a form of subornation of perjury.
Looking puzzled, Leon Stanski answered, “Did you and me talk yesterday or the day before?” He hesitated again. “Or is it you and I? I don’t think my third-grade teacher knew the difference, so I never learned it.”
“Oscar Caliente, Mr. Stanski. Is that a name you ever heard?”
“You mean before today?”
“Before today.”
“Like I said, maybe.”
“Did you ever meet a man from South America who said he played polo?”
“I’ve met thousands of people. A lot of them said they did funny things, or things that were funny to me at least. Cricket players, guys who liked to swim the English Channel, people who were champions at chess. Funny stuff.”
“Let me ask you this, Mr. Stanski. You do know, don’t you, that it’s illegal, that it’s a crime, for a super PAC to take money from a foreign person or foreign company?”
“Somebody told me that. You gotta understand. I don’t read laws. I just get the people who write them elected.”
“And that it’s a crime for a candidate or her campaign to take money, directly or indirectly, from a foreign source through a super PAC?”
“I’ve heard that, too. The lawyers told me. Lawyers love to say no.”
Decker said, “Judge, can I ask Ms. Hooker to project Government Exhibit 673 on the computer screens?”
Janet Hooker was a technician responsible for displaying exhibits onto the computer screens.
“What,” Naomi Goldstein asked, “is 673?”
“It’s a photograph.”
“Show a copy of it to Ms. Rematti first.”
Decker handed the actual picture to Raquel, who glanced at it quickly and noticed only that Leon Stanski appeared in it. It would be futile to object. “No objection,” she said.
Naomi Goldstein said, “Exhibit 673 can be displayed.”
Every computer screen in the courtroom was instantly filled with a photograph at the center of which was Leon Stanski standing among other people at a crowded event.
Decker asked, “Do you see Government Exhibit 673?”
“Sure do.”
“Are you in that picture?”
“Sure am. Boy, could you have come up with a worse picture of me? I look like Mel Brooks playing Moses.”
“Are you talking to someone in that picture?”
“Sure looks that way. I talk too much.”
“Who is he?”
“Got no idea.”
“Did you ever meet a man who said he was a polo player?”
“There you go again.” He smiled. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? No. I’m not even sure what polo is. Is it guys on horses with sticks whacking a ball?”
“Do you see Ms. Baldesteri in that picture?”
“Sure.”
“Can you tell by looking at this picture whether you were at a fund-raiser?”
“Must have been. I don’t breathe without trying to raise money. If I run into somebody on the street, I’m at a fund-raiser. I may even ask you for a contribution.”
“Do you know when this picture was taken?”
“A year or so ago. I had that tie last year. I ruined it at an Italian restaurant. I liked it. The tie, I mean. The restaurant, too. And it bothered the hell out of me when I got pasta sauce all over the tie.”
“Who is the man you’re talking with?”
“Don’t know.”
“Is it Oscar Caliente?”
“Could be, might not be.”
“Did he have an accent?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Did you know him by the name Robert Calvaro?”
“Come on, will you? He coulda been James Bond.”
“Did he promise to give money to your super PAC?”
“I hope so. But I don’t remember.”
Raquel was puzzled. She wondered whether Hunter Decker was as smart or skillful as he thought he was. He had made a deliberate decision to put this sprightly, laughable old man on the stand as his second witness in the most widely reported trial of the steadily maturing twenty-first century. Distilled to its essence, all that Leon Stanski’s testimony had shown so far was that Angelina Baldesteri was apparently influential enough to act behind the scenes to have a somewhat senile jokester appointed as the chair of a powerful super PAC.
But, as Raquel knew, Leon Stanski’s cameo on the stand wasn’t over yet. “Your Honor,” Hunter Decker said, “I want to ask Mr. Stanski to look at an enhanced version of photo Exhibit 673 on the monitors.”
“Any objection, Ms. Rematti?”
Only a week earlier, Raquel had been given a computer disk containing proposed Government exhibits. It displayed thousands of sheets of paper, most of them facsimiles of indecipherable bank checking accounts. There were also hundreds of photos and hours of secretly taped conversations. With a normal client facing as many as twenty years in jail, Raquel would have expected the client to be in her office day and night reviewing the newly produced material and talking through the likely course of the trial.
But not Angelina Baldesteri. She was not a normal client. She had a long-planned trip to Iowa where the first nominating caucus would be held a year later and, on the Saturday and Sunday immediately before the trial’s start on Monday, Angelina had a series of lunches and dinners and “town hall” events in New Hampshire.
So, Raquel had found herself alone, sifting very late at night with no real assistance or sense of direction through thousands of pages of largely useless documents in the midst of which a jewel such as a crucial email, memo, or note could be embedded. She tried to listen to some but not all of the secretly recorded tapes that were filled with the everyday meaningless chatter in which anyone, including a United States Senator, engages. It was literally impossible to listen to every word of every tape or look at even a fraction of thousands-upon-thousands of pages of document
s.
And the Government had turned over at least three hundred photographs, in many of which Angelina Baldesteri did not even appear. Raquel couldn’t recall whether she had seen the photograph that was now Exhibit 673. She said, “No objection to the enhancement.”
“Do you or do you not see a hand on the man’s shoulder in the enhancement?”
“Looks that way, doesn’t it?”
“Let me try the question again, Mr. Stanski. Do you see a hand on the shoulder of the man you were speaking with, Mr. Stanski? Yes or no?”
“I do.”
“Whose hand is that?”
“Angelina’s. Senator Baldesteri’s hand.”
“She is standing behind him, correct?”
“Sure, you can see that.”
“Had you ever seen the defendant with this man before?”
“Maybe once or twice.”
“Where?”
“I can’t remember. New York? Washington? Places like that.”
“Did you ever hear what they said to each other?”
“Sure, I heard them talking. But specifically what about, beats me. Must have been money, campaign contributions.”
“Do you see in the enhancement that Ms. Baldesteri is also speaking to someone standing directly beside her?”
“It looks that way.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s a Hispanic guy with long black hair knotted into a ponytail. Very good-looking kid.”
Uneasily, unexpectedly, as she stared at the frozen image of the man with the ponytail, Raquel was overtaken by a sense that she was looking at Juan Suarez. The face of the man standing next to Angelina was somewhat altered, as if it had undergone skillful plastic surgery. But it was the face, she was virtually certain, of the charming Juan Suarez, The Blade of the Hamptons, as he was called by every media outlet in the world during the trial at which he was accused of murdering Brad Richardson in East Hampton.