"And he got in your pants."
"That was my choice."
"And if you said no?"
"Believe it or not, if I wanted nothing to do with him I bet he would have done everything the same. When he pulled me out of that house he didn't know me from Eve, all he knew was that I was in trouble and needed help."
"And pretty as hell."
"Well, maybe yes, but I had been pretty for a long time and in trouble for a long time and only Jimmy stepped up to take care of me."
"And for that you owe him the occasional roll in the hay."
"No, Victor. For that I owe him everything."
28
"I HAD KNOWN THE COUNCILMAN as a friend and customer for many years," said Michael Ruffing from the witness stand. "About twice a month him and his party would come into my club and order drinks and food. He was a very good customer."
"Did he spend a lot of money?" asked Eggert. He stood behind the podium, his body still, his voice calm, his questions short and non-leading. Eggert was a good enough lawyer not to steal the spotlight from his star witness.
"He was a very good customer, like I said. He never bought the cheaper wines. He always ordered the Dom, every time he came in. No matter how many were with him, that's what he would order. Bottle after bottle."
"What is 'Dom'?"
"Dom Perignon, one of the finest champagnes made. It's like drinking love, or at least that's what I would tell the customers."
"Is it expensive?"
"The price depends on the year. The 'seventy-eight you can't even get, the 'eighty-five is about one-fifty a bottle, sure, but worth it."
"And that's what the councilman would order?"
"Nothing but the best, he told me. 'Mikey,' he used to say, 'you're either class or you're shit.' That's what he used to say, and then to prove he was class he'd order another four bottles of the Dom." Ruffing looked at the jury and gave a little wise smile and whatever that smile was saying it looked like the jury agreed with him. The jurors had already heard the tapes, they had already heard a series of witnesses testifying about the waterfront deal and the City Council's involvement, and now they were hearing the story of a shabby shakedown straight from the victim, a law abiding Center City businessman.
Michael Ruffing was a short, energetic man with thick hands and curly gray hair. He was one of the guys who grew up in the neighborhood and kept his neighborhood ways, his Philly accent, his rough talk, his way of shooting his cuffs and fixing his tie between questions. He had grown rich in real estate and lost everything in the bust and grown rich again with a series of nightclubs, the last and largest of which was Bissonette's, which made him a name in the city. He was one of those developers who believed he could build anything he could envision, and he had envisioned a hotel and shopping complex on the waterfront that would draw tourists from five states and would be riverboat-ready when the governor, the only remaining obstacle to legalized gambling on the river, left office. But more than one visionary developer had run aground on the shoals of the Philadelphia waterfront, a cement-encased stretch between the Delaware River and I-95 that had defied commercial development on a grand scale. Ruffing was now testifying as to how his vision died and the part Jimmy Moore and Chet Concannon had played in its death.
"Now on these expensive outings of his at your club," continued Eggert, "how did the councilman pay?"
"Cash. Sometimes he would put it on a tab when he was short, which was okay by us because he was in about twice a month like I said, and if he was short one visit he would make up for it the next. Actually it wasn't the councilman that paid, it was Chet."
"You mean Mr. Concannon."
"That's right. It was Chet who carried the money. Or if not Chet then it was the councilman's media guy, Chuckie Lamb."
"And he tipped well?"
"The councilman, sure. Chet too. But Chuckie wasn't a great tipper. Whenever the councilman would catch him shorting one of the servers he'd give Chuckie hell, call him the cheapest bastard this side of Trenton."
Everyone laughed at that and I did too. I turned around. Chuckie was sitting in the back of the courtroom. Well, almost everyone was laughing.
"Now, Mr. Ruffing, did there come a time when you entered into business discussions with Councilman Moore?"
"Yes."
"And how did that come about?"
"One night, when Jimmy was in with his girlfriend and Chet…"
"Objection," shouted Prescott from his seat.
I turned around again, quickly. In the row behind Jimmy sat his wife, Leslie. Her eyes were closed, her face tense, she was breathing deeply. Then she opened her eyes again and looked forward calmly. Chuckie had been right, Leslie Moore had known about Veronica all along.
"I ask that the answer be stricken," said Prescott.
"I'll so order," said the judge. "Now, Mr. Ruffing, try only to answer my question. How did you enter into business discussions with Councilman Moore?"
"He was at the club one night and he called me over and made room for me to sit down next to him. I was actually busy and I tried to beg off but he insisted, so I sat."
"And what did he say, Mr. Ruffing?" asked Eggert.
"He was angry. He told me he had heard I was setting up plans for the waterfront development and was seeking help in the council but that I didn't talk to him first. He told me he had been a good customer for a long time and that I had insulted him by not going through him to get approval for my plan. I told him I didn't mean to insult him and that, sure, I'd love his help. So he said if we worked together he could be the best friend I ever had and that I should call him and I did. That's when he told me he thought my plan would take off like a rocket ship and I thought that was great, that got me all excited. It was a good plan, it would have been good for the city, and I thought that Councilman Moore saw that too. So he told me to set up a meeting with Chet Concannon and I did."
"When was that meeting?"
"A few days later. Chet sat down with me on a bench at Penn's Landing and told how the legislative process worked with the council and how the councilman would propose the enabling legislation I needed for the development and shepherd it through a political obstacle course to get the legislation approved."
"What did you say?"
"I told him I was excited about his help and was very optimistic. Then Chet started talking about CUP, that's the councilman's political action committee, and about all the good work it was doing, sponsoring drug treatment facilities, registering voters, organizing neighborhoods, general political stuff, you know. Now I'm no young kid from the suburbs, I knew what he wanted. So I told him, I said sure, how much do you want? That's when he flabbergasted me."
"What did he say?"
"He said one percent of the cost for the entire project. The thing was budgeted at one hundred and forty mil, if we got both the hotels we wanted and the shopping strip. So what he was demanding was a million four."
"Did you agree?"
"Not at first. I couldn't. How was I going to come up with a million four right off the books? I wasn't making enough on the club to cover it all and the financing was too tight to work with, really. The banks had it down to the penny. But Chet told me that I had to think of the future, how much could be realized if the waterfront plan went through. How much money I would make. And he said the councilman didn't expect it all at once, he'd take it over time, which would make it easier. I still didn't figure I could make it. But then he told me that the councilman had a lot of power on the zoning committee and would be looking very carefully at the plans and he told me that unless the councilman was certain of my commitment to help all the neighborhoods of the city he would kill the plan and any bills introduced to get it done."
"How did you take that?"
"As a threat, sure. He was telling me I pay a million four or the plan was dead. I had been in real estate a long time, I knew the shakedown when I saw it, but I had already invested over a million in the design and initial purch
asing of lots and I had mortgage commitments with penalties that I had signed personally, options that were costing me a fortune to keep up. I couldn't afford to let it die."
"So what did you do?"
"What could I do? I paid."
"How much?"
"Chet said he would take a hundred grand to start, and then the same amount each month or so. And then he said the councilman would like a large part of it in cash so he could pay it out to the neighborhood organizers that were instrumental in running the programs."
"How did you pay?"
"About once a month the councilman would call and give me an update on the project, how the bills were progressing through City Council. And then he would set up a meeting for me with Concannon. I would meet Concannon at various places around the city. We'd talk about the deal, sometimes we'd have lunch. Everything was very friendly, you know. And then I'd pay him."
"What would you give him?"
"A check made out to CUP for fifty thousand and the rest of that payment in cash in a manila envelope. What I did was set up a credit account at a couple of the casinos in Atlantic City and take out enough chips in bits and pieces over an evening to make up the fifty thousand. Then I'd cash out, asking for hundreds. Concannon told us the councilman liked the cash to be in hundreds and cleaned through the casinos."
"To pay the neighborhood activists?" asked Eggert with a wry smile.
"That's what Chet said."
"And what happened in Council?"
"Oh, the councilman was true to his word. The project was moving through the system. It got stalled here and there, which you got to expect, it's the city after all. And I was already running short of cash because of the delays, but the councilman was doing his part. But then, along with my money problems, Zack found out about the payments."
"You mean Mr. Bissonette?" asked Eggert.
"Yeah, right. I had given him a small piece of the club in exchange for his name and every now and then he'd take a look at the books. When he saw these payments to the casinos and CUP he went crazy. He was a good guy, Zack, and I couldn't really blame him. Said he wouldn't be involved in anything that wasn't completely legal, said he wouldn't let profits from his club be used to bribe a councilman."
"Objection," said Prescott. "We don't need to hear Mr. Bissonette's interpretation of the legality of Mr. Ruffing's campaign contributions to CUP. In any event, it's hearsay."
"Sustained," said the judge.
"Fine," said Eggert. "Did Mr. Bissonette get involved in the waterfront deal?"
"Yes," said Ruffing. "When I told him I needed to keep paying Concannon because I couldn't afford any more delays he said he could raise all the bucks I needed as long as I stopped giving any payments to the councilman. I was running out of cash for development. It didn't help that I was dishing out about a hundred grand a month to Moore and Concannon. I needed a partner, so I said sure."
"And he came up with the money."
"Surprised the hell out of me, don't know how he did it, but yes, he did. Enough to keep the options alive and the mortgage commitments going, which was what I needed. So I agreed to stop paying the money demanded by Moore and Concannon."
"By that time, how much had you paid?"
"I had given CUP half a million dollars, exactly."
"How did you stop making the payments?"
"I called up Moore and told him it was over."
"What was his reaction?"
"He was apoplectic, what do you think? He told me he would send Chet over to talk with me."
"Did you talk to Chet?"
"Sure, I told him I had no choice. I explained the thing with Bissonette. Chet told me if I stopped paying the deal was dead and that was just the start of it. He told me to think of the poor and the underprivileged, the drug addicted youth who had begun to rely on my payments. And then he told me if I stopped paying it wasn't only the deal that would be dead. He told me the club could have licensing problems and other problems. He told me the councilman could no longer guarantee my safety. When he left, I was shaking I was so scared."
"What did you do?"
"I didn't have no choice. I had sunk everything I had into the development project and the only way it could go forward was with the money Bissonette brought in and Bissonette said no more payments to Moore. So I stopped paying. I thought maybe they was bluffing. Boy, was I ever wrong about that."
"Objection," said Prescott.
"Sustained," said the judge. "Just tell us what happened after you stopped the payments, Mr. Ruffing."
"One night, about two weeks after I stopped paying, in the club, we were closed then, it was after two and we were closed, I saw the councilman's limo pull up and it looked like Moore and Concannon getting out. Bissonette was still there. I told Bissonette that I was getting out of there, but he said he'd stay and talk to them. As they approached the back door I got out the front. My car was in the back but I didn't dare go back there. I took a cab home. Later that night I was called by the police and told that Bissonette had been beaten to near death and was in a coma. Just a few days ago he died, poor guy."
"Anything else?"
"Yeah. A month later my club burned down. Arson."
"And what happened to the waterfront development deal, Mr. Ruffing?"
"It's gone, like the club. With Bissonette in the hospital and the plan delayed in Council I ran out of money. It would have been beautiful, but it all turned to crap. So I ended up with nothing, which is what I got right now, a lot of nothing. You know, when the councilman called me over, told me to sit with him, and said he could be the best friend I ever had, I was on top of the world. I had a hot club, I had a partner I admired and trusted in Zack Bissonette, you know how hard it is to find a partner you can trust? I had a waterfront deal in the works that was going to make me a name as big as Rouse, as big as Levitt. I had everything going for me. Nine months after getting the councilman on my side I'm broke, the club is gone, the development deal has disappeared, and Bissonette is dead. With friends like that, Jesus."
29
THE NIGHT BEFORE RUFFING'S cross-examination I was in the offices of Talbott, Kittredge and Chase, sitting at the long marble conference table, drinking one of those free Cokes, enjoying the luxury of it all. But I wasn't there to work on the Concannon case. The Bishop brothers had insisted we spend that very evening going over the paperwork for their Valley Hunt Estates deal, so I was once again reviewing the documents that we would be putting into the prospectus, spreadsheets, pro forma projections, performance data on prior Bishop Brothers deals, a list of limited partners who had already committed to purchasing shares. I was sitting there alone at that conference table, drinking my Cokes, when a secretary opened the door and ushered Beth into the room.
She looked around. "Fancy," she said. "Like a mausoleum."
"Never been here before?" I asked when the secretary had left. "Look at all this stuff. Pens with Talbott, Kittredge and Chase embossed in gold, all the yellow pads you could ever want. Why don't you take some back to the office in your briefcase? You want a soda?"
"No, thank you," she said.
"It's free. Come on, have one. Diet Coke?"
"Doesn't this place give you the creeps, Victor?" she asked. "How many trees had to die to panel these walls? How many deserving plaintiffs were screwed to pay for all this? I don't like it here." She shivered. "I feel like I'm in a wax museum after hours."
"We should get ourselves a marble conference table," I said. I pointed to the antique prints of Philadelphia landmarks, City Hall when it was still young and clean, Independence Hall, the Second Bank of the United States. "And some artwork just like this. What do you say?"
She sighed. "I have enough faith in you, Victor, that if you ever got any of this you'd hate it all too much to keep it. Rita told me you were here. I came over because I thought I could help you prepare for Ruffing tomorrow."
"That's not what I'm working on. It's this Valley Hunt Estates prospectus."
&
nbsp; "What about Ruffing?" she asked.
"I have my instructions, and my instructions are to do nothing. How can I justify billing for preparing to do nothing?"
She sat down across from me and sighed again. I was beginning to fear her sighs. She looked around. "Is this place bugged?"
I shrugged. "Probably."
"Well, screw it," she said. "Victor, if Prescott is going to point the finger of blame on Chester he's going to do it tomorrow."
"He won't," I said. "He told me he was going to get Chet off."
"Like his old boss Nixon said he wasn't a crook. You should be preparing just in case. Prescott's whole defense is based on the legality of asking for political money, right? If he tries to distinguish Concannon's meetings with Ruffing from the phone conversations between Ruffing and Moore, Chester could be in serious trouble. Prescott could claim that what Moore was doing was perfectly legal but that Concannon extended it to the illegal."
"Concannon was Moore's top aide. No one would believe that."
"Remember about the missing money? A quarter of a million that never ended up at CUP? Money like that can erode anyone's loyalty and don't think the jury won't believe it. If Prescott can pin the missing money on Concannon, then Chester is going to take the fall for his boss."
I took a sip from my Coke. It was in a tall glass, filled with ice cubes I had lifted with pewter tongs from the ice bucket sitting on the marble credenza. "There is no missing money," I said. "Ruffing's lying about the numbers to get a bigger tax deduction."
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