by Paul Levine
“So, if the sailing coach has twenty slots, and he comes to you and says, ‘Hey, I have a twenty-first person I want,’ you give it to him, don’t you?”
“Ordinarily, yes.”
“Therefore, this notion of a fixed number of admission slots is mythical, isn’t it?”
“I’d use the word ‘flexible.’”
“Fine. Where legacies, children of major donors, and athletes are concerned, the number of slots is flexible. Correct?”
“That would be a fair statement.”
“How many high school students were offered admission to Stanford last year?”
“Roughly two thousand.”
“And how many enrolled?”
“About 1,700. Perhaps a few more.”
“You’re saying ‘roughly’ and ‘about.’ So, it doesn’t make a lot of difference if you’ve enrolled 1,700 or 1,701, or 1,799, does it?
“There is room, if that’s what you mean.”
“Then, as a matter of simple arithmetic and logic, there’s no single person who’s deprived of an admissions slot because there’s always one more, correct?”
“I might quibble with the word ‘always.’ But yes, it’s a flexible number on general admissions, too.”
I ignored her quibble and plunged ahead. “If the Chinese family had simply paid five million dollars directly to the university as a contribution, would their daughter have been admitted based on her prior test scores and no claim of sailing ability?”
“It’s possible. But if I were to hazard a guess, I’d say probably not.”
“Why? Isn’t five million enough? What’s the price of an admissions slot, anyway?”
Her mouth tightened and she said, “Again, we don’t sell them.”
“Sure, you do. You’ve already admitted that. I’m just trying to establish the price.”
“Objection! Argumentative.” Bolden was on her feet, pointing at me. She seemed genuinely perturbed, not just lawyer-pretending-to-be perturbed.
“Sustained. Mr. Lassiter, please ask a question and don’t argue with the witness.”
“Ms. Suarez, isn’t the problem here that the Chinese family simply bribed the wrong person?”
Her eyes darted to Bolden, beseeching her help, but she got none. “No, I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Morally and ethically, what’s the difference between bribing the university directly or bribing a coach or bribing an exam proctor?”
“Objection! Irrelevant.” Still on her feet, Bolden was ready for battle. “The admissions system isn’t on trial here.”
“Sure it is!” I raised my voice, so the jury would take heed. “That’s exactly what’s on trial.”
“Sustained. Mr. Lassiter, rephrase your question.” He turned toward the jury box. “Please be advised that the court, not counsel, will tell you what’s on trial here.”
That rocked my boat, but I kept paddling. If there were a waterfall ahead, I didn’t want to know about it. “Let’s keep it simple. Isn’t a bribe a bribe?”
“I don’t know how to answer such a tautological question, Mr. Lassiter.”
“And I know don’t the meaning of ‘tautological,’ so I’ll move on. Instead of going through Max Ringle and the sailing coach, shouldn’t the family have just dealt with your admissions and development officers? Shouldn’t they have said, ‘C’mon, how much is this going to cost us?’”
“That’s not the way we do things!”
“No, that’s not the way you say you do things.”
“Mr. Lassiter,” the judge called out. “Would you like to rephrase that as a question?”
“No thanks, Your Honor. I think the jury’s already heard the answer.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Too Many Hocs
Melissa Gold . . .
Melissa carried two bags from Havana Harry’s down the walking path in South Pointe Park at the tip of South Beach. It was one of her favorite places, and she was meeting her two favorite men. It was Friday, and the judge had adjourned at lunchtime for the weekend break. Jake and Kip were already there, sitting on a bench, watching one of the cruise ships steam out Government Cut toward the islands. The ship was a mammoth boxy contraption that looked like a floating apartment building, and its horn wailed as it cleared the jetty into open water.
Jake had been in good spirits when he left for court in the morning. She had been checking his temperature, as he called it. Asking how he felt, monitoring his moods. He seemed to have gotten into a rhythm with the trial, sleeping better and showing less irritability. She was still worried about him, of course, especially since he’d quit the AY-70 experimental antibodies. But he seemed to be on an even keel, much like the cruise ship, now headed over a light chop in ocean waters.
Kip saw her first, stood, and raced toward her. “Melissa, you should have seen Uncle Jake!” Kip slid to a stop and made a motion as if firing a rifle into the sky. “He was savage! So mint. Totally brill.”
“Is that right, Jake?” Melissa asked, approaching the bench and handing him the bags. “Were you totally brill?”
“I did okay. Neutralized a government witness, which is about all I can ever do.”
“Neutralized?” Kip exclaimed. “I’ll bet the prosecutor wishes she never called that snooty Stanford bitch.”
“Hey! No misogynistic language, kiddo,” Jake said.
“Okay, sorry.” Kip dug into a bag and pulled out his vegetarian lunch of black beans and sautéed plantains.
Melissa studied her fiancé. He didn’t look tired. He didn’t look happy or sad. Or even hungry, for that matter. He simply wasn’t registering any emotion. “What is it, Jake?”
“Probably nothing. It’s just odd. Margaret Bolden really preps her witnesses well. But today, well, today was different. This admissions director from Stanford was fine on direct but totally unprepared for cross. As if Bolden didn’t have time to get her ready.”
“Maybe a late addition to the roster,” Kip said, between bites.
“Exactly what I’m thinking,” Jake said. “What’s odd is that a few nights ago, after you two were asleep, my pal Ray Pincher called, asking about the trial. I told him I was going to argue that the universities weren’t deprived of any property. Then, today, when Bolden leads me to believe that Ringle was going to testify, she brings in a surprise witness to talk all about the property interests that have been compromised. And, frankly, she wasn’t very good at it.”
“You don’t think Ray tipped off the prosecutor, do you?” Melissa asked.
He shook his head. “Why would he? He hates the feds.”
She spent another moment considering this man she loved. He wasn’t saying everything he was thinking. He also wasn’t eating, which wasn’t like him. “What else, Jake?”
“It’s just coincidental, I’m sure, but last year, before anyone was charged, Ray and I were talking. I said I didn’t see any federal crimes, even if Kip had taken those tests.”
“I remember. Ray told you a story about sending postcards from Hawaii,” she said. “Postcards with lies.”
“Right. In his scenario, which seemed like a joke at the time, the guy who writes the postcards gets charged with mail fraud, racketeering, and money laundering. Well, it turns out he was right. Those are the three felonies Kip is charged with.”
“And you think that’s a coincidence, too?” she asked.
“Yeah. Otherwise, we’re falling into that logical trap. Kip, what’s it called when you think one thing causes another because it happened first?”
Kip licked a bit of sweet plantain from his lips and said, “Post hoc ergo propter hoc. ‘After this, therefore, because of this.’”
“That’s the fallacy. Just because X happens and then Y happens, it doesn’t mean that X caused Y.”
Melissa watched Jake’s face. Even though he called it a fallacy, he wasn’t entirely sure that X didn’t cause Y. “There’s nothing else, is there Jake?”
“One more thing.” He unwrapped the grease-sli
cked paper and pulled out his Cuban sandwich but didn’t take a bite. “In that call the other night, I told Ray I was going to make a motion the next morning to get the names of the parents who were never charged. When I got into chambers, Bolden cited an Eleventh Circuit case that blew me out of the water. Judge Speidel made a big deal about her being more prepared to argue my motion than I was.”
“She’s a good lawyer and did her research,” Melissa said, not wanting to even contemplate the kind of betrayal Jake thought might have occurred. The two men squabbled endlessly, but more like highly competitive brothers than enemies.
“It was an oral motion,” he countered. “There was no time for research.”
“Then she knew the case off the top of her head.”
“That’s what I thought at the time. But thinking back, one of her assistants handed her a photocopy of the decision. Think about it. They had no advance notice of my motion. Even if one of her crew used Westlaw on a laptop while we were in chambers, they had no printer. They must have come to court with the case already printed out.” He closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose with a thumb and index finger. “Five years ago . . . hell, two years ago, I would have caught that at the time.”
They were all silent a moment. Jake exhaled a long breath, and a look of sadness swept over him.
Kip said, “Uncle Jake, do you really think Sugar Ray would sell you out?”
“The question is why. What could be so powerful a force that he had no choice?”
“Uncle Jake, it still could be post hoc ergo propter hoc.”
Jake seemed to think it over. “I’m afraid not, Kip. Too many hocs.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Human Nature
I sent Kip home with Melissa. Thirty minutes after leaving them, I walked through the metal detector into the James Lawrence King Federal Justice Building. I moseyed past two federal marshals sitting at desks and entered the front lobby of the U.S. Attorney’s Office. A young woman who sat behind bulletproof glass asked me if she could help. I gave her my name and told her I would like to see A.U.S.A. Margaret Bolden.
“Is she expecting you?”
“We’re in trial together. I just need to see her for a moment.”
“I’ll ring her office.”
“Before you do, could I make a call?” I gestured toward a wooden phone booth with a glass window. “My cell has died.”
“Dial nine to get an outside line,” she advised.
Once in the booth, I dialed a number from my cell phone’s contacts list. My well-charged cell phone, to tell the truth. I took a deep breath and exhaled, trying to relax. What I was doing might be legal, and then again, it might not. A gray area.
“Hello?” a woman answered, doubtless looking at Caller I.D., which would have read, “U.S. Attorney.”
“Dr. Pop-kin?” I said, disguising my voice with my best Southern drawl.
“Dr. Pincher-Popkin,” Paulette said. “Who is this?”
“Doctor, this is Jess Kalartie in the U.S. Attorney’s office.”
“Who?”
I added a little gravel to my drawl, sounding like a poor man’s Bear Bryant. “Jess Kalartie. Ah’m in trial with Margie Bolden in that college admissions case, and Ah’m wondering if ya’ll would come down to the office Monday after court adjourns.”
“Why?” A stiff and unfriendly question. But not, “Who’s Margie Bolden?” Or, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Ah’d rather not talk about it on the phone,” I said. “And could you bring your son with you? Moses, is it? Like in the Book of Deuteronomy?”
“No, I cannot.”
“Ah beg your pardon.”
“We’re not coming to your office. We’ve cooperated fully, and the non-prosecution agreement has been signed. My father handled everything. He’s Raymond Pincher. Do you know who that is?”
“Hell’s bells. Everybody in town knows the State Attorney.”
“Ms. Bolden told me personally that our family wouldn’t be bothered anymore. No subpoenas. No testimony. And, of course, no charges. We’ve lived up to our end, so please live up to yours. And that’s all I’m going to say.”
The phone clicked off. I sat there, still and quiet, paralyzed and mute. I don’t know how much time passed. Seconds. Minutes.
Oh, Sugar Ray! How could you have done this? To Kip? To me?
I had misjudged him so completely. Missed all the signs. His over-eagerness to pump me for information about the case. His pretending to give me information about the government’s case, which boiled down to their excessively large war room stocked with croissants and coffee. And his faux concern for my health, poured on thick and syrupy.
Ray Pincher pretended to be my friend, but he spied on me for the federal government.
Had I lost my instincts, honed in courtrooms and taprooms and locker rooms? I prided myself on my skill in discerning human nature. My peripheral vision, once sharp as a submarine’s periscope in discerning friend from foe, had grown cloudy. Childlike, I had picked up a rock, never dreaming there’d be a snake underneath.
I saw a shadow through the glass. Margaret Bolden was standing in front of the booth, appearing puzzled. I opened the door.
“What are you doing here, Jake?”
“I . . . I . . . uh. I had to use the restroom.”
She raised her eyebrows. “I hope you didn’t use it in there.”
I felt claustrophobic, as if the walls of the phone booth were closing in, about to crush me. I stood and exited the booth, my legs heavy, as if stuck in hot tar. It was a narrow space, and I stumbled and nearly fell.
Bolden reached out a hand and steadied me. “Are you okay, Jake?”
I pulled away. “Sure. Absolutely fine.”
She looked at me as if she cared. But she didn’t, I was certain. All those high-minded slogans carved in granite—“Equal Justice Under Law”—were just bullshit. Bolden didn’t play by the rules. Did Judge Speidel know that about his Margie? No, but I’m just the guy to tell him.
Everything was falling into place. The reason Bolden fought so hard to keep the uncharged parents’ names confidential had nothing to do with grand jury secrecy or the government’s work product. She had a dirty little secret to protect. Paulette Pincher-Popkin was one of those parents. There was a conspiracy of silence to keep Ray Pincher’s spying from becoming known.
How could I have not seen this coming? I remembered something Melissa had said the first day Pincher offered me a tidbit about the federal investigation.
“I don’t understand why the state attorney is going out of his way to help you.”
Her instincts were better than mine. But then, the fossilized remains of a woolly mammoth had better instincts. I felt a surge of heat run through me and started to sweat, misery flowing from every pore.
I realized that Margaret Bolden was speaking to me. “Do you know where you are, Jake?”
“Existentially or geographically?”
“Do you want me to call anyone?”
“Why would I?”
“Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because you look like you’ve been crying.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
A Long, Slow Guilty Plea
Ray Pincher lived just off Old Cutler Road in the Snapper Creek subdivision of Coral Gables. I gave my name to a uniformed security guy at the guardhouse, who acted as if he expected me. “Mr. Pincher is around back in the gazebo,” he said.
With my tinnitus clanging in my ears like a discordant brass section in a second-rate orchestra, I parked the Eldo in the front driveway. The house had belonged to Pincher’s in-laws, his wife’s parents having owned a chain of funeral homes catering to the African American community. It was a rambling one-story structure from the 1960s surrounded by a wooden deck with a koi pond running underneath. Tropical landscaping—red bougainvillea, white hibiscus, sweet jasmine—encircled the property, and two small w
aterfalls poured into the pond. I took a coral rock path around the house where the scent of jasmine gave way to cigar smoke. I followed the smoke to an eight-sided cedar gazebo sitting between two towering palm trees.
Pincher sat in a cushioned chair, a fat cigar in one hand, a tumbler of a dark liquid in the other. “Take a seat, Mr. Kalartie.” He motioned me toward a matching chair. “Cigar, rum? Or do we just start arm wrestling?”
I sat down, not because I wanted to, but because fatigue was setting in and my tinnitus had reached the decibel level of a Beaver Stadium whiteout. “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” I said.
“To the contrary. I thought you’d get suspicious of my pestering you about the case. Then I’d confess to you. Maybe you’d slug me or maybe not. In the end, we’d make peace, and I’d start being a double agent, feeding you info.”
I shook my head at his audacity. “Do you believe your own bullcrap, Ray?”
He sipped at his rum and said, “You’re right. Maybe it was a fantasy.”
“How the hell did you let Paulette get involved in Ringle’s scam?”
He barked a laugh. “Same way you let Kip. I didn’t know because she didn’t tell me. She didn’t even tell Barry. That sweet schlemiel son-in-law of mine wanted Moses to follow in his footsteps at Harvard. Thought the kid might be a basketball player, but that was never gonna happen. Barry didn’t have a clue when Paulette paid Ringle to pass off Moses as a tennis player and get him into Georgetown where Ringle had a connection. Fortunately, Paulette came to me when the FBI approached her.”
“And you called Margaret Bolden.”
“No, I called her boss. If it makes you feel any better about Margaret, she only went along because Juan Lucayo ordered her to.”
“You swapped favors with that son of a bitch. Quid pro friggin’ quo. He’d protect your daughter, you’d torpedo my nephew.”
“That’s pretty much it,” he admitted.
“The first day of trial, I ran into you on the plaza. You said you were seeing Lucayo about an opioid task force. That was bullshit.”