Losing Faith

by Adam Mitzner

  Faced with the likelihood that he might well be convicted and sentenced to serious jail time—something that Peter Hahn has been soft-selling—Malone’s barely keeping it together, which is exactly what Rachel had hoped this tête-à-tête with Aaron Littman would produce: abject fear. When Rachel previously tried to articulate the risk Malone faced by going to trial, Hahn belittled her concerns, at one point actually calling her a nervous Nelly. But when Aaron Litt­man tells you there’s a very real possibility of conviction and a long prison term, that means in no uncertain terms that you have every right to be afraid. Very afraid.

  “Now I’m going to tell you something else, which hits home for me,” Aaron continues. “I’m sure you’ve heard, I just lost a very big trial for Eric Matthews, and he’s now serving fourteen years. That was twice the sentence we thought he’d get. And I’m telling you that so you can see that no one has a crystal ball on these sorts of things. But to me, when it comes right down to it, this decision that you have to make—whether to plead guilty or go to trial—is likely the most important decision you’ll ever make. For you and your family. And like any decision of that magnitude, you need to have all the available information. And part of that information is whether a guilty plea means five years or three years or, maybe, something less. That’s just plain common sense, Joe.”

  Two knocks on the door and Diane steps inside. “Mr. Littman,” she says, “I’m so sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone here to see you.”

  “I’m very sorry that I have to go,” Aaron says, “but let me make one last point. There’s one thing I never say to my clients: that I’m with them all the way. The reason I don’t is that I know it’s just not true. The truth is that I’m with them until the verdict. If after that they go to prison . . . that’s something they have to do on their own. Which is why only you can make this decision. But I’ll tell you this—if someone offered me three years in jail to eliminate the risk of serving ten or fifteen, I’d think very hard about it. And whether or not I was innocent or guilty wouldn’t be the only consideration, because the sad truth is that innocent men do get convicted.” Aaron smiles at Malone and extends his hand. “It was very nice seeing you again, Joe. I know you’ll make the right choice.”

  Malone shakes Aaron’s hand and then puts his other hand on top, forming a handshake sandwich. “Thank you so much, Mr. Littman,” he says.

  Over Malone’s shoulder, and out of Hahn’s still-infuriated sight line, Rachel mouths: “Thank you.”

  4

  When Aaron steps outside the conference room, he says, “Thanks for getting me, Diane. Right on time, too.”

  “You’re welcome,” she replies, “but there really is someone here to see you. Roy Sabato. He doesn’t have an appointment, but he says it’s a matter of some urgency.”

  At its highest echelon, the criminal defense bar in New York is fairly small and divided into factions. Roy Sabato and Aaron Littman are not members of the same clique, not by a long shot. Aaron and his ilk represent multinational corporations and CEOs involved in complex securities crimes, while Sabato’s clients are by and large mobsters, drug dealers, and other allegedly misunderstood, albeit very wealthy, citizens from the lowest strata of society.

  In the same way that owners sometimes end up looking like their dogs, from appearances alone you’d assume Roy Sabato was a client. Everything from his stocky build to his shiny suits to his pinky ring suggests he’s a made man.

  It’s Aaron’s usual practice to hold introductory meetings in the conference room. But something tells him maintaining a power advantage will be to his benefit, and so he directs Sabato into his office.

  Sabato looks around the room. The chairman’s office at Cromwell Altman Rosenthal and White isn’t the Oval Office, but for lawyers it’s a seat of power like no other. Floor-to-ceiling windows frame Central Park on two sides, while the main wall is blanketed with pictures of Aaron with A-list movie stars, national political figures, and corporate chieftains.

  Aaron takes his position behind a desk that costs as much as a Mercedes. It’s more than three feet long, entirely made of stone, and held upright by a single pedestal positioned so far to one end that it creates something of an optical illusion that the structure is about to topple over.

  After they’re both seated, Aaron waits a beat, then two, assuming Sabato will come right out and state the reason for his visit. Sabato seems ill at ease, however; it’s as if he’s not looking forward to saying why he’s here. It’s the demeanor clients have when they fire you, but Aaron hasn’t even been hired yet, and so he’s at a loss as to the reason behind Sabato’s hesitancy.

  Finally, Aaron says, “So, Roy, what can I do for you?”

  “I have a client who wants to retain your services.”

  “And who might that be?”

  Sabato exhales and says: “Nicolai Garkov.”

  Now Sabato’s hesitancy makes more sense. He’s the one being fired.

  Aaron was surprised when he first heard Garkov retained Sabato. He assumed Sabato got the nod because he was one of the few lawyers willing to take on Garkov at all.

  Garkov’s conduct had created a perfect storm of problems for most lawyers. Nearly every bank on Wall Street was a counterparty to his securities trading, which means that those firms are now at least six counselors deep in civil lawsuits. Although that type of conflict of interest didn’t ethically prohibit the representation, it was disastrous for the bottom line. The big banks could be counted on to pull their corporate work from any law firm giving Garkov aid and comfort. Any lawyers of the first rank for whom that wasn’t a problem—because they either were at smaller firms or, like Sabato, practiced alone—would have thought twice about taking on the case when the very-public terrorism angle surfaced.

  “You looking for co-counsel?” Aaron asks.

  “No. Garkov wants a straight substitution.”

  “Pretty late in the game for that. Isn’t the trial coming up?”

  “Next month. April fourteen. But I don’t know if that date will hold. You may not have heard, but Judge Mendelsohn lost his ­marbles. He’s out, and the lovely Judge Faith Nichols is in.”

  Aaron tries to mask his panic. He heard about Mendelsohn’s meltdown, and so he knew that his days on the bench were numbered, but he hadn’t heard that Mendelsohn had officially withdrawn from the Garkov case.

  Things are happening too fast for his liking. He needs to slow it all down, plan some kind of strategy here.

  “Roy, my corporate group does a lot of work for . . . well, for ­everyone on the Street. That’s going to tie my hands.”

  Sabato sighs. “Garkov’s got his heart set on you, Aaron. So much so that he’s willing to pay you a hundred grand just for the initial meeting.”

  Aaron charges fifteen hundred dollars an hour. Clients have flown him around the world for an initial meeting, but no one has ever agreed to pay more than his hourly rate without any strings attached. Bonuses for good results, maybe. But never just for him to grant them an audience.

  “Why the hell would he agree to do that?”

  “Because he knows you won’t meet with him if he doesn’t.”

  “Is that your way of saying that you don’t know why? Or are you just not willing to tell me?”

  “Look, he didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask. But, even if he had, I would have assumed it was a lie. I’ve been representing the guy for months now, and the only thing I know for sure is that it’s never clear if what he’s saying is actually the truth.”

  “That’s hardly a reason for me to take him on as a client, now, is it?”

  “I imagine that’s why he’s offering you the other hundred thousand reasons to meet with him.”

  Aaron wonders if Sabato is being straight with him. Lawyers lying to other lawyers is hardly unprecedented, after all.

  “Even though that’s a lot of money,
Roy, I’m still going to decline. Please tell Mr. Garkov that I’m sorry and I wish him the best of luck at trial.”

  Aaron rises, the universal signal that this meeting is now over. Rather than getting to his feet, however, Sabato instead lets out another sigh. A moment later he stands, but his posture leaves no doubt that he’s not going anywhere just yet.

  He presses a piece of paper into Aaron’s hand.

  “Aaron. You need to listen to me,” Sabato quietly says. “My marching orders are to get you to Garkov’s apartment right now.”

  Aaron takes a moment to study what Sabato has given him. As promised, it’s a cashier’s check in his name for one hundred thousand dollars.

  “I’m not sure if you’re bribing me or threatening me at this point, Roy.”

  “Aaron, believe me when I tell you that I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but Garkov told me that . . . if the check wasn’t enough to convince you . . . then I should tell you he has some very damaging information you do not want to find its way to the press . . .”

  Sabato comes to a stop and shakes his head mournfully before continuing. “Please listen to me about this. I’ve represented some real animals in my time, but I’ve never met anybody who comes close to this guy. If I were you, I’d be at his place, pronto. Go tell him to fuck himself if he’s bluffing, but, seriously, it would be a huge mistake to risk that he’s not.”

  Roy Sabato’s usual press conference–slash–courtroom tough-guy swagger is nowhere to be seen. To the contrary, he actually looks frightened.

  Aaron has played this out long enough. He’s known for the last five minutes that he is ultimately going to meet with Nicolai Garkov. Ever since Sabato uttered the name Faith Nichols.

  5

  Rachel London’s office is one of the small partner ones, sandwiched between two associate offices on the building’s south side. The office décor captures the conflicted nature of its ­occupant—the sleek furniture shows that she’s serious about work, but her niece’s crayoned artwork taped to the walls suggests there’s more she wants out of life than her career.

  Her office was one of the few things that changed when Rachel made partner. Well, that and her compensation. But the hours continued to be just as crushing and the work was largely the same, second-seating someone more senior, which more often than not amounted to taking notes in the important meetings and supervising the grunt work done by the associates.

  Rachel joined Cromwell Altman seven years earlier, when she was an idealistic twenty-six-year-old, ready to save the world, which made her just like the fifty-nine other lawyers in the incoming Cromwell Altman class. Back then, the firm distributed a book with head shots of the new attorneys, with a short narrative indicating the department to which they were assigned, where they hailed from, and the schools they’d attended. Picture after picture of fresh-faced overachievers, all of whom graduated at the top of their class at a first-tier law school.

  Fast-forward a decade and she’s the only one left. The big-law equivalent of The Hunger Games.

  To survive, Rachel has worked nonstop, missing more birthday dinners and holidays than she could count. And while the financial rewards are plentiful, she has little on which to spend her mid-six-figure income. Her two-bedroom apartment has one more bedroom than she actually needs, and she wouldn’t know what to do with a home in the Hamptons or a Porsche. She’d like to travel, but putting aside the problem of not having anyone to go with, the partners never take vacations because God forbid a client needs to reach them when they’re not in the office.

  So for better or worse, for the past decade, Cromwell Altman has been her entire life. At least she’s good at it. Her gambit of bringing Aaron in to talk some sense into Joe Malone is a case in point. Sure, Peter Hahn read her the riot act after Aaron left, telling her in no uncertain terms that he’d never work with her again, but to Rachel that was more of a prize than a punishment. Besides, so long as Aaron has her back, she isn’t concerned that Peter Hahn can inflict any damage to her career.

  True to form, Hahn was still being something of a passive-aggressive jerk about it, making her call the prosecutor to discuss the plea, so that he could, in his words, “wash his hands of the whole debacle.” Once again, however, Hahn was actually doing Rachel a favor. At least this way, the negotiations might actually end up getting somewhere.

  “Assistant United States Attorney Stephanie Kessler,” comes the voice on the line.

  “Stephanie, Rachel London here, over at Cromwell Altman. I’m working with Peter Hahn on the Joseph Malone case.”

  “Yes, hi. What can I do for you, Rachel?”

  “Well, I’m a little out on a limb here,” Rachel says, “because the client is adamant about going to trial, but between you and me, I really think that everybody is better off if this ends in a plea, and so I was wondering if we could talk a little about where the floor is on this one.”

  “I already told Peter that we’re willing to be reasonable. Mr. Attias is in his mid-eighties, and we’d rather not put him through the trial if we can get a fair result. But that requires that your guy be reasonable, too.”

  This is the first Rachel’s heard about any flexibility by the prosecutors. Of course, she’s not all that surprised that Peter Hahn kept this nugget to himself.

  “Here’s my problem, Stephanie. Peter’s all gung-ho to try the case, and the client won’t budge on admitting he did anything wrong. So between them, there’s very little interest in our side making an offer . . . but I think I have a way that you and I can break through that.”

  “Go on. I’m listening.”

  So far, so good, Rachel thinks. “I’m not going to argue the merits with you,” Rachel says, “because this is a classic he-said-he-said situation, and so how can anyone know what went on between my guy and Mr. Attias, right?”

  “I thought you just said you weren’t going to argue the merits.”

  “Fair enough. I’m just looking for some middle ground here. What if . . . I can get him to make total restitution? Mr. Attias gets back the art, and the buyers are made whole. Everybody wins. Does that earn my guy a get-out-of-jail-free card?”

  “Sorry, no way. Jail time is a deal-breaker for us. Probation sends the message that if you’re a purse snatcher, you go to jail, but when it’s a few million dollars in art, you get a pass.”

  No surprise there. Rachel knew jail time was going to be non-negotiable. The issue is how long.

  “But in a purse-snatching case, you know there’s a crime,” Rachel counters. “Here, that’s still a very open question. Like you said, Mr. Attias is in his eighties. Who’s to say what he remembers about gifts of relatively insignificant works he made years ago? Not to mention that I hear his health isn’t very good. If he dies before trial, which might still be six months or more away if we try to delay, your case dies with him.”

  “Come on, Rachel. I know you’re repping your client, but jail time is a must for us. Period.”

  “Will six months do it?”

  “Nope. We’re not letting this go for less than a year.”

  Rachel smiles. That’s exactly what she wanted to hear. “Does that mean a year might do it?”

  “A year, plus a complete allocution of guilt, and he makes full restitution.”

  Rachel wants to jump through the phone and shout Yes! but she’s got to play this out. “I don’t want to mislead you, Stephanie, because that is still going to be something of a sell on my end. But, here’s what I want to do. If you’re willing to put that on the table, I’ll go back to my client and tell him that it’s my proposal—so then we’ll make that offer to you, and do it on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. What I’m afraid of is that if you made the offer, he’s going to want to see how much better than that he can do.”

  There’s a pause on the other end. For a second, Rachel fears that she’s overplayed her hand, and now that s
he’s opened the door to a guilty plea, the prosecutor will demand more jail time. But then she hears, “I’m going to take you at your word on this, Rachel. It’s a year. Not a day less. You understand?”

  “How about if I want a day more?” Rachel says.

  “Hah. Sure,” Kessler says with a chuckle. It’s a quirk of the federal sentencing system that inmates sentenced to more than a year get to serve the last six months in a halfway house. “A year and a day. Final offer.”

  “Thanks, Stephanie,” Rachel says. “I’ll get back to you later today, but I’m going to beat the hell out of Malone on this end so he takes the deal.”

  6

  There was a time when the tourists lined up in front of Tiffany on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, muffins in hand, to re-create Audrey Hepburn’s famous pose from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Now they’re much more likely to photograph themselves in front of its neighbor, Trump Tower, pretending to be fired contestants from The Apprentice.

  Judge Mendelsohn had granted Nicolai Garkov’s bail request that he be confined to his home as he awaited trial. There was quite a lot of outrage over that at the time, with every TV news report about the case shot in front of Trump Tower and making repeated references to Garkov’s twenty-thousand-square-foot apartment’s being the only five-star prison in the world. Now there’s speculation in the press that Mendelsohn’s Alzheimer’s had something to do with the tone-deafness of his ruling.

  Trump Tower’s public spaces are clad in Breccia Pernice, a pink, white-veined marble, and mirrors are seemingly everywhere. The five-level atrium has a waterfall, various shops, at least three cafés, and a pedestrian bridge that crosses over the waterfall’s pool. This morning it is also teeming with people, most of whom are speaking a language other than English.