The Hazards of Good Fortune

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The Hazards of Good Fortune Page 21

by Seth Greenland


  “You’re not serious.”

  “I was Esther and Jay was Haman.”

  “Okay, you’re kidding, right?” Marcy’s eyebrows, which could still move, had nearly reached the sunglasses on her forehead. “Tell me you didn’t wear Purim costumes.”

  “It’s not like we’re putting it on the Internet. What’s the problem?”

  “You’re married people.”

  “It’s not a sin.”

  “You had sex in Purim costumes?”

  “I can’t tell you everything.”

  “Nicole . . . that’s sacrilegious, isn’t it?”

  “Come on; it’s not like people in the Bible didn’t have a ton of sex. What do you think all that begat-begat-begat was?”

  “They didn’t tape themselves.”

  “Oh, touché, Marcy. You’re right about that.”

  “Tell the truth. Did you make a sex tape?”

  Early in their marriage she convinced Jay to make tapes of their lovemaking—the usual gymnastics as well as some light bondage that mostly involved the creative application of her pashmina collection—and in a postcoital haze watch them on her laptop. After they viewed the images (which did not include Purim costumes), the couple laughed with a freedom more satisfying than the actual sex. Jay always made sure she erased them promptly, but Nicole was not going to report any of this to Marcy.

  “You two should think about it,” Nicole said.

  “Making a tape?”

  “Ask your rabbi.”

  “I should ask Rabbi Nachman for permission to make a sex tape with Franklin?” Marcy hooted. “Have you met Franklin?”

  “Maybe he’d be into it,” Nicole said. “You’d probably feel better about yourself.”

  “I feel fine about myself.”

  “Then don’t do anything.”

  Nicole bared her teeth in what a passerby would swear was a smile. To deal with someone like Marcy, it’s sometimes necessary to move from a stance of receptivity to one of artfully couched aggression. Having done that, Nicole was now ready to finish the shopping.

  “I’ll see you at the Seder,” she said, and triumphantly thrust her cart down the aisle.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In the gray dawn light that filtered through the windows of the Crush It health club, a caffeinated Christine Lupo pumped iron in the company of other early risers. She intended to transform her pastry-craving middle-aged body into the kind of smoothly humming machine that could better withstand the rigors of a political campaign. To this end, she rolled out of bed each day at five-thirty, was picked up by Sean Purcell (more than happy to book the additional overtime), and was driven to the gym where she stretched, jogged on a treadmill, and lifted weights for an hour.

  As the perspiring district attorney worked out, her uneasy consciousness invariably wandered to the guilt she felt over her divorce, although why she felt guilty mystified her since the whole thing was Dominic’s fault. Together they had told the kids, and neither had taken it well. Dominic Jr. stared at the floor and, when his sister’s crying jag subsided, asked if he could live with his father. Dominic Sr., to his credit, said that would not be possible. The scene played on an endless loop in her head, and she had to concentrate to think clearly and consistently about her nascent campaign and the duties of her current office.

  Through the murk and mist of her professional quandaries (staffing, budgets, trials), the one that kept surfacing and submerging then surfacing again like a mutant swamp goblin was the question of whether or not to convene a grand jury in the shooting of the unarmed civilian John Eagle by Police Officer Russell Plesko.

  The shooting had predictably generated a great deal of local media attention, but after an initial press conference (carried by all the local network affiliates), Christine had kept a low profile. How she proceeded would have ramifications for her political career and, while it was important to serve justice, she was intent on handling the situation in a way that would redound to her benefit. But the more she pondered her options, the knottier the problem seemed. To not convene a grand jury would send the message that she was insensitive to the needs of the community. Arrange for one and the police would hate her. Somehow, she believed Obama was responsible for the position she was in.

  Rain threatened as the district attorney walked from the parking lot to her office accompanied by her vigilant driver, Sean. She noticed a bus from the County Department of Corrections parked at the side of the building. A daisy chain of shackled prisoners plodded into a side entrance supervised by several armed guards. Christine stopped and watched this motley array of pimps, drug dealers, armed robbers, check kiters, serial shoplifters, deadbeat dads, and sex offenders as they shuffled into the building and imagined Russell Plesko in their ragged midst. The easiest choice would be to bring the case to a grand jury. The DA could control the entire process, and she would never have to see the unlucky officer in one of her courtrooms. But things did not always go as planned. There was a slim possibility, however remote that the grand jury would recommend an indictment and then she would be—

  This thought was disrupted when she observed one of the prisoners, a hulking white man in his thirties, glaring at her. She met his rage-filled eyes.

  “HEY LUPO, FUUUUCCCKKK YOOOOUUURR AAASSSS!!!”

  The man’s voice resonated against the building and into the trees. Most prisoners had no idea who the district attorney was, saved their fury for the judges, and rarely expressed it out loud. This criminal was obviously someone who watched local television. A breach of decorum that involved verbal abuse was highly unusual. Visibly provoked by the prisoner’s insolence, Sean asked if she would like him to talk to the guards. She motioned for him not to move and waited for the officers to take control. When the procession continued to snake into the building the district attorney lowered her voice an octave and commanded:

  “HALT!”

  The guards and prisoners ceased moving because they were accustomed to following orders.

  Christine marched over to the prisoners, heels sparking off the pavement.

  “Guard!” she barked at the one nearest her, a crew-cut young white guy shaped like a fire hydrant. “What’s your name?”

  “Officer Kimble,” he said in a voice suddenly flush with authority. He seemed to know who she was.

  “What’s the name of the prisoner who shouted that obscenity at me, Kimble?”

  Kimble looked up and down the hapless row. Some stared at nothing, submitting meekly to their fate, others eyed the DA with a mixture of fear and contempt.

  “Dunno,” he admitted. There were fourteen inmates in this human bracelet of unlucky charms. “Could’ve been any of them.”

  It was rare that Christine made a move not knowing where it would lead. But now she stood in front of the prisoners unsure what to say. To turn and walk away was not an option. She had chosen to confront the loudmouth who had yelled the insult, and so she approached him. The man gathered over her like a storm. There were several murky tattoos on his neck. He sucked on large teeth. If he was intimidated by the presence of the district attorney his behavior did not reflect it. All eyes were on them.

  “The reason you’re locked up,” she began, “is that you think the laws don’t apply to you.” Her tone was merciless. “Because of the way you choose to act, you’ll be in front of a judge today. I’ll find that judge’s name. The judge is going to know what you said to me, and he or she will enter it on your record. I’m not going to ask you to apologize because if you had the brains to do that, you probably wouldn’t be here today.” The prisoner regarded her from his lofty height with what looked to Christine like indifference. She wondered if he would seize this chance to clean up his mess. He did not. “Enjoy your day,” she said.

  When the DA walked away, she repressed the urge to stick her middle finger over her shoulder and flip off the whole group,
including the guards. Sean Purcell increased the length of his strides to keep up with her.

  In the office, she pulled up the day’s docket on her computer and quickly determined the name of the belligerent prisoner, then dashed off an email to the trial judge reporting what had just occurred. A nerve-jangling telephone conversation with her divorce lawyer took up most of the next hour. There were meetings until lunch, which she ate at her desk while reviewing the various prosecutors’ reports on trials currently underway. When she found herself reading the same document for the third time, it occurred to her that the decision regarding the Plesko situation was having a greater effect on her ability to concentrate than she had realized. Why was the decision to convene a grand jury proving such a challenge? Had the bombastic O’Rourke, the head of the police union, intimidated her? That couldn’t be possible. She had faced him down, put him in his place, just like she did that obstreperous prisoner earlier in the day. What, then? She told her assistant Kelly to find Lou Pagano.

  Ten minutes later he was seated on her office couch, drinking a can of diet soda.

  “No grand jury,” he said. “What good could come of it?”

  “It would be unusual.”

  “I talked to the witnesses myself, Christine. They all said the same thing. I saw the video the maintenance guy took with his phone. It’s a terrible thing that happened, but the cop shot a mentally ill individual who was attacking him. Plesko is clean. He had rotten luck. And I’ll tell you something else—he’s a nice kid, married with a baby, spotless department record, youth league coach. In this environment, you and I both know what can happen, and if it goes in front of a Bronx jury—”

  “Why would we get a Bronx jury in White Plains?” Pagano snorted. He recognized her message. She knew what Bronx jury meant.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “So give the cops exactly what they want,” she said.

  “Police violence is a problem, but this is the wrong defendant,” Pagano said. He drained his soda and crumpled the can. “This guy goes to trial, anything can happen, and if he winds up in jail, I’m not gonna sleep well for a while.”

  Elbows on her desk, Christine made a steeple with her hands and inserted her face. The DA would have more challenging problems than this when she became governor.

  “I don’t see how we can avoid a grand jury.”

  Late that afternoon the district attorney looked up from a trial report she was notating to see the jittery Kelly.

  “That imam?” Kelly said, “He’s back.” Her tone was apologetic as if Ibrahim Muhammad’s presence was her fault.

  “What do you mean, he’s back? In the office?”

  “No, out front. With some friends.”

  Christine rose from her chair, crossed to the window, and looked toward the plaza in front of the building. Seventeen stories below, the imam, situated behind a police barricade, led a group of protestors, several of whom held signs she could not make out. A group of police officers observed them from a distance.

  “They have a right to be there if that’s what they want.”

  “Should I have Sean bring the car around the back of the building?”

  “I’m not scared of them,” the DA said.

  Against her better judgment, she took a call from her husband, who let her know that he had no intention of taking a beating in the division of their assets. As his agitation intensified and became personal (Him: “Why are you being such a bitch?”), she resisted the urge to return fire (Her: “I only said you’ll regret your behavior.”), but her lack of aggressive pushback only seemed to embolden Dominic Lupo who, by his account, anticipated being subjected to a brand of torment not meted out since the Spanish Inquisition. By the time she hung up on him, the window in which she could accomplish anything having to do with her actual job had slammed shut. She locked her office door and for five minutes sat in her chair and stared at the framed picture of her children that she kept on her desk. Somehow, the district attorney managed not to weep.

  Forty-five minutes later, briefcase packed with work, Christine Lupo left the building with Sean at her side and headed across the plaza toward the parking lot. Government employees moved through the twilight in groups of twos and threes toward their cars. All of them were ignoring Imam Ibrahim Muhammad and his band of demonstrators, who stood quietly holding signs that said INDICT PLESKO, JUSTICE FOR JOHN, and ALLAH WILL JUDGE. A mixture of men and women, black and white, some in Muslim garb others in street clothes, stood on the sidewalk at the edge of the plaza and Christine had to walk past them to access the parking lot. Unafraid of the sidewalk foot soldiers or the judgment of their god, she set her shoulders, quickened her step, and nodded to the police officers. They saluted her.

  When the protesters recognized the district attorney, the whole scene sprang to life and Ibrahim Muhammad shouted into a bullhorn, “What do we want?” His enthusiastic flock yelled back, “Justice for John!” “When do we want it?” Muhammad loudly asked. The reply: “Now!”

  One of the police officers, an imposing black woman, detached from the group of cops and appeared at the DA’s side. Her nameplate read “Malone.”

  “I’m going to walk you to your car if you don’t mind, m’am,” said Officer Malone.

  “I got this, Officer,” Sean informed the cop.

  Christine told Sean to let the policewoman do her job, and the three of them continued past the chanting protesters, across the street, and into the parking lot where the DA thanked the officer again. Sean held the door open and the DA climbed into the town car.

  As Sean backed out of the parking space, turned the wheel, and made for the exit, her mind strayed back to the upsetting conversation with her husband, and it took her a moment to realize that a wedge of activists had broken from the group and swarmed across the street toward her car. Police officers sprinted from the plaza to chase them down.

  She watched with increasing concern as Sean calculated whether he had enough time to floor the gas pedal and, with a hard twist of the steering wheel, skirt the protesters and get away before anything could happen or whether he was going to be forced, by the presence of human beings in front of the vehicle, to come to a complete stop. Instead, he did neither, and while two young protesters, a white man and a black woman, threw themselves in front of the car, Sean let the vehicle roll forward. The white man jumped out of the way, but the black woman did not move quickly enough. She lost her footing and the car knocked her to the ground. Sean jammed the brakes as the cops corralled the unruly mob.

  The DA jumped out of the car and kneeled by the woman. Several demonstrators surrounded the victim, including Imam Ibrahim Muhammad. Sean stood at his boss’s side, alert and prepared to deflect anything incoming.

  To Christine’s immense relief, the woman did not appear to be badly hurt or hurt at all. Putting the humanitarian concern aside, running over a pedestrian was not the best way to kick off a political campaign. Christine asked the woman if she was all right.

  “I think so.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tamika Crawford.”

  Christine noticed her left leg had begun to shake. She made an effort to control the timbre of her voice.

  “I’m so sorry, Ms. Crawford.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Sean said, teeth clenched.

  Ibrahim Muhammad asked if she wanted an ambulance and Tamika Crawford said no, I didn’t hit my head, so let’s just get on with it. She climbed to her feet, brushed her jeans off, and trained her gaze on the DA. Christine noticed the woman had unusually long eyelashes.

  “You need to serve justice,” Tamika said.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Officer Malone asked the protester, who was examining a scrape on her elbow.

  “I think so,” she said.

  “Then you’re under arrest,” Malone said, brandishing handcuf
fs.

  This turn came as a surprise to Tamika and she looked at the DA, who understood that an escalation would not be helpful.

  “Let’s forget it,” Christine said to Officer Malone. “Just let her go.”

  While this was going on several security guards poured out of the building and with their assistance the police detail herded the protesters back across the street.

  It occurred to Christine, while the event unfolded, that this would be an extraordinary moment to announce that she was convening a grand jury in the Russell Plesko case. The drama would leap out of news accounts, and cement her reputation as a woman of both compassion and principle. Instead, she wished Tamika Crawford well, expressed her gratitude to the police, and asked Sean to take her to the Parkway Diner. She was meeting with a political consultant and did not want any county officials who frequented the usual watering holes to see her.

  When he was in high school and wanted to drink somewhere the management didn’t check IDs, Russell Plesko and his friends went to the Fenian in Port Chester. A brackish dive near the train station with a jukebox and cheap drinks, most nights back then it was packed with high school athletes. Russell lettered in three sports, and he and his teammates were regulars. They drank tequila sunrises, ate beer nuts or pickled eggs, then drove back to their family homes careful to go just under the speed limit. He went less regularly now but could usually count on seeing a friendly face. In the early evening on this weeknight, he sat alone at the bar sipping his second beer. A couple of dull-faced commuters nursed restorative cocktails nearby.

  The bartender approached him, wiping a glass. A robust woman in her sixties with an unlit cigarette dangling from thin lips, Mrs. Costello was married to the owner. Russell had known her since he was sixteen and he had never called her anything other than Mrs. Costello.

 

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