BOY ON TRIAL
*
Clifford Irving
*****
I asked for strength
and God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom
and God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity
and God gave me a brain and muscles to work.
I asked for courage
and God gave me dangers to overcome.
I asked for love
and God gave me people to help.
I asked for favors
and God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted.
I received everything I needed.
— Anon.
Chapter 1
Six years ago, I killed a man. I was twelve years old when it happened. He was the father of my best friend, Amy Bedford.
Did I murder him? That was for the judge to decide after the fact-finding inquiry, which is what they called a juvenile trial in the State of New York. It took place in the Family Court in the town of Riverhead, which is in Suffolk County on Eastern Long Island.
At the arraignment in Riverhead, I pled not guilty to the charges. The Honorable John T. Walsh was chief judge of the juvenile division. He peered down at me from the bench. He was a huge man with a face like an old brown leather bag. I wasn’t frightened, but I felt dwarfed.
He growled, “You’re William R. Braverman?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Usually called Billy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Says in these papers I’m holding here that you’re twelve years old. That a fact, or is someone playing games with me?”
“It’s a fact, your honor.”
Judge Walsh shook his head in disbelief, even though he knew I was telling the truth, and he cocked his head like some kind of dark, super-large, stressed-out bird.
“You’re not quite the youngest human being ever came before me in this court-room,” he said, “but you may be the smallest.”
He turned to his court reporter and quickly added: “Strike that.”
I was careful not to smile. My lawyer, Ginger Casey, had told me: “Billy, you nearly killed a man. Look penitent, even if you don’t feel that way.”
My family was there in the courtroom to offer me all the support they could muster. My mother, founder of a family of mutual funds, sat behind me in the first row. At her side was my father, senior partner in a New York law firm. Ginger Casey wasn’t a member of my dad’s firm—Ginger had a small law office next to a pickle factory on Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She was twenty-nine years old, curvy and provocative even in a high-necked black summer dress, and she smelled of vanilla and jasmine. She couldn’t help that any more than I could help being small.
My case had received national coverage, but Judge Walsh had barred the public and the media from the Family Court. Today the judge had to decide whether to send me to a detention center or let me go free until I was tried and he could figure out a proper long-term fate for me. The worst he could do, down the line, was sentence me to six years, which isn’t forever but it certainly seemed like a long time to me. Time enough, I figured, to ruin my life, if it wasn’t ruined already by what I’d done.
Judge Walsh had a loud voice, so that he always sounded as if he were talking to a packed courtroom.
“Mr. Braverman,” he boomed, “I’ve seen you on television commercials with your monkey, so I know you’re an achiever. This state prosecutor wants to send you to Spofford. That’s a juvenile reformatory, by the way, not a country club for children. No tennis courts like you’ve got out there in Amagansett, where you live. The prosecutor wants you to spend the full six years locked up for the purpose of rehabilitation. Mr. Braverman, do you agree with what your attorney, Ms. Casey, has done? She’s pled you not guilty to all charges.”
“Your honor,” I said, “I agree to the plea.”
The judge digested that pithy reply, and he accepted it.
“Within thirty days,” he roared on, “we’re going to have the fact-finding hearing. But first we have to deal with this question:—What do we do with you? A while ago you and young Amy Bedford ran away from home. Three days ago, when I sent you home with your parents, I didn’t know that fact. The record now informs me that earlier this summer, in Jamaica, in the borough of Queens, en route to Manhattan, you and Amy Bedford evaded the pursuit of two police officers on a railroad platform. Caused considerable commotion there in Jamaica. You have any comment?”
“No, sir,” I said.
He looked surprised at the fact that I didn’t want to discuss the matter, and he rustled the papers scattered on his desk.
“Here’s another report,” he said. “This one’s from Child Protective Services in New York County, author is a Mr. Siegel, stating that you escaped from his custody and that of two other police officers in some big midtown Manhattan hotel. Pretty aggressive behavior for a twelve year old. And, as we know, just a few days ago you nearly engineered an extraction of the Bedford girl from the locked premises of number One Jail Road here in Suffolk County. Do you dispute any of these facts?”
I raised my head a few inches higher.
I said, “Your honor, in the Mayflower Hotel I wasn’t in anybody’s custody. I fooled Mr. Siegel, that’s true. But I didn’t promise him anything except that I was going to wake Amy in the next room.”
“You’re splitting hairs, young man. I don’t like that. Furthermore, Billy Braverman, you’re an escape artist. Is that, or is it not, a fact?”
“Yes, sir, I’m good at escapes.”
Ginger and I had rehearsed what I was supposed to say, but now I couldn’t help myself. I veered off the track.
“I’ve watched a lot of escape movies,” I explained. “Cool Hand Luke—Escape from Alcatraz—The Shawshank Redemption. I figured out how they do it, and…”
Ginger coughed sharply. She meant: Back off, gunfighter.
So I didn’t finish my sentence.
Judge Walsh said, “If I let you stay free in the custody of your parents, what’s going to stop you from taking off again for parts unknown?”
I returned to the script. “Your honor, I’ve already given my parents enough grief. I want to clear up this whole thing as soon as possible. I want closure. I give you my word of honor that I’ll stay home except to go to the beach and run my lemonade business.”
The judge turned toward Ginger Casey. “A charming child. Charm will not get him through the judicial process. Nevertheless, I don’t like to put a twelve-year-old boy into detention when he hasn’t yet been convicted of anything and he’s pled not guilty.”
He sniffed a few times in Ginger’s direction, and I figured that some of her dangerous tropical aroma must have reached him. “What do you think, Ms. Casey?”
Ginger seized the moment. She straightened her back and said, “Your Honor, Billy Braverman’s word of honor is his bond. Ask anyone who knows him.”
“What say the People?” Judge Walsh inquired.
Mr. Hull, the balding, red-faced young prosecutor, argued that I’d proved myself to be what they called a runner, and so the State of New York didn’t accept the risk of my being on the loose. It didn’t matter that I was twelve years old and small for my age, I should be placed behind bars in a secure detention center. Given half an inch of squirm room, Mr. Hull said, I might fly off to Kalamazoo, Key West, or even Katmandu.
Judge Walsh thought it over. He groaned a little, in a baritone, to himself, as if he believed t
hat no one else could hear. Finally he declared to everyone:
“This boy, the respondent, is accused of serious crimes—second-degree murder and statutory rape—but I don’t believe that currently he presents a risk of flight. Because if he flees, the consequences will be grave, and he appears to understand that concept. Nor does society need to be protected from him. His father, Mr. Jacob Braverman, is a criminal defense attorney, a man of high professional stature. His mother, Dr. Diana Adler, is a well-known name is finance. It’s been three days since the alleged murder and the boy’s stayed home so far and hasn’t budged. Provided that he doesn’t leave the borders of Suffolk County, I’m going to rule that he can continue to remain under parental custody until the fact-finding inquiry.”
We all felt better, at least for the moment. The judge set a date for the inquiry. He then explained that another condition of my release into parental custody was that I not communicate with Amy Bedford. Not even by telephone. And I couldn’t approach her physically within a hundred yards.
Judge Walsh’s eyes snapped like logs burning in a grate. “Listen carefully, Billy Braverman. You gave your word of honor, now I give you mine. You reach out to that girl, in any way whatsoever, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
Chapter 2
We used to live in Manhattan. But then our apartment on Central Park West was burglarized, the one irreplaceable loss being a baseball autographed by Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, and Willie Mays, which a doting uncle had presented to my dad on the occasion of my dad’s bar mitzvah. A week after the burglary, my mom—a beautiful lady with big cheekbones and fuzzy black hair that looked like a mop fallen into a pot of India ink—left her brokerage office in the financial district and was mugged in the Goldman Sachs parking garage on Broad Street. They took her cash, credit cards, bracelets and wedding ring, and they scared her half out of her wits when one of the guys used a switchblade knife to cut the strand of pearls off her throat.
Not long after that mugging, my older brother Simon went roller-blading in Central Park, veered off the path into the bushes to take a leak, and got groped there by a pervert with a razor blade in one hand and his dick in the other. Simon was lucky, however; a border collie came loping by and jumped at the perp, who bolted. Simon ran screaming in the other direction and never knew how it turned out between the other two.
My mom was shaken by these events and took some time off from work. That weekend, over blueberries and Haägen-Daz vanilla, we sat down in the dining room for a family summit.
“Jack,” she said to my dad, “the universe is sending us a message.”
“And what is that message, Diana?”
“Leave the city.”
“To where, sweetheart?”
“Oak Lane.”
Oak Lane was what we called our country home in Amagansett, on Long Island, in Suffolk County, because it sat on a short, tree-lined street bearing that name. We’d owned it then for four years, and we went there every Memorial Day for most of the summer. All of us loved Oak Lane.
My dad said, “Year-round, Diana?”
“Jack, one door closes and the draft opens another one. Yes, year-round. I can do what I’ve always wanted to do”—and she raised her pinky and index finger, in the direction of Central park, to ward off the Evil Eye.
She meant Modern Age Green, whose name and purpose she had already registered with the Securities & Exchange Commission.
My dad asked, “And what do you suggest I do about my law practice?”
“Jack, you’re out half the week-nights anyway for drinks and dinner with clients. If not, you’re in Dixie holding the hand of some poor schlemiel on Death Row. Get a pied-à-terre on the East Side near the firm. Walk to work. Come out to Oak Lane for weekends and holidays. We’ll have quality time together.”
At the end of the discussion she turned to me and Simon. “How do you guys vote?”
We voted the way she wanted us to.
They sold the apartment for $2.5 million and we moved to Amagansett, whose name meant, in the old Algonquian language, “the place of good water.” Amagansett was located at the eastern end of Long Island, which on the map looks like an open-jawed alligator flopped out into the Atlantic Ocean from New York City. The lower jaw of the alligator is often called the South Fork, and its lanes and roads are lined by oak, elm, maple, flowering dogwood, and huckleberry. Sweet corn and good Katahdin potatoes grow; in summer the lawns are as green as English meadows. In those days Amagansett kids past elementary school level either biked or were bused to schools five miles west in East Hampton. My parents and quite a few other people didn’t lock their doors when they went out. On the South Fork, in that final decade of the last century, you could smell high taxes, salt air, and a sense of self-congratulation. People thought, and sometimes said, “This is the right way to live, and we are blessed.”
My mom bought a farmhouse outside the nearby village of Sag Harbor, converted it into an office complex, and started a mutual fund that refused to buy shares in companies that polluted the environment or the lungs. When Modern Age Green doubled in value its first year, Barrons called it “the tiny new superstar of ecologically-responsible no-load mutual funds.” My mom became a New Age hero: she lectured at womens’ clubs, was given an honorary Ph.D. by her alma mater, Brown University, and was invited by Hillary to the White House. The President joined them at tea.
Later, Oprah interviewed my mom, and asked, “Dr. Adler, what was your reaction to President Clinton?”
“Kinda cute,” my mom said, which brought the house down.
My dad, Jacob Braverman, Esq., a trim, fresh-faced, handsome man with feet so small you’d think his parents had bound them when he was a boy, was almost always called Jack. If he was at a party he seemed to vanish among the bigger people, but when he held forth in his mellow voice on subjects such as white-collar crime, opera at the Met, the current crisis in the Middle East, or the Yankees’ chances in the playoffs, people always clammed up and listened. His major passion, however, was defending convicted murderers on various death rows in the Deep South. He did it for free, flying to Florida or some other state once or twice a month, and he had a contract with a New York publisher to write a book about all the men and women in this country who had been convicted of murder, then executed, and later shown to have been innocent.
So we lived the good life, the honorable life, the purposeful life, the life that just about everybody in this country would want to live and profit by. And then I messed up big-time.
Early one Sunday morning in August I watched while my mom dove into the twenty-meter pool in the garden at Oak Lane. In swimming goggles and a black bikini, she always swam at least thirty laps, and when she finished she was never out of breath. She shook out a yoga mat, did half an hour of poses under an elm tree, chanted her oms, and then settled in the shade of the cabana to work her way through Barrons and the Monday Special edition of Investors Business Daily.
My dad was out biking, and my brother Simon was out eating pizza and yakking with his buddies about all the disgusting things they’d like to do to girls. I was still eleven years old at the time; I hated the thought of being a teen-ager and was trying to figure out a way to skip it.
I curled up in a deck chair next to my mom, and began reading another Horatio Hornblower sea story. I loved adventure books, except that the love parts bored me.
“Am I bothering you, Mom?”
“Oh, no, darling just the opposite. I adore it that you’re here. Come give me a hug.”
After the hug, she folded up her well-marked copy of IBD and said, “Billy darling, can I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure, Mom.”
“Are you ever lonely?”
“Why should I be lonely?”
“Because your dad’s in the city so much of the time, and down in Florida trying to keep people from being executed, and I work late in Sag Harbor, and I travel a lot, too—I have to, you understand, because I feel personally
responsible to everyone who buys a single share in any of my funds. But you’re alone so much. I know that you and your brother fight. So… I was just wondering if you were lonely.”
“No, Mom, I’m fine,” I said. “I read. I go online. I have e-mail pals in Buenos Aires and Paris. I’m going to find one in Rome, too, as soon as my Italian gets good enough. And I climb. I’d be climbing today, except the gym’s closed on Sundays.”
I was crazy about climbing. If you climb to the top of anything, even if it’s no more than the climbing wall at the high school gym, you feel as if you’re on top of the world. My mom often reminded me that even before I could crawl I climbed out of my crib, fell to the carpet, turned red, and later purple and blue, but didn’t cry. I’d climbed all the big elms and oaks on our property and I’d climbed all the rafters of the garage. I’d been punished for it often, but that never stopped me. Punishment, I figured, was part of a kid’s life.
This was my plan. Before I was eighteen I was going to climb Mount Everest, so that I’d be the youngest Western climber ever to do it. Our housekeeper Inez was teaching me Spanish, French, and Italian, and cuisine à la françaises. I intended to become a gourmet chef, cook a five-course amazing meal at base camp, carry it up to the summit of Everest, heat it and eat it, and broadcast the menu to the world in several languages. Then, after I graduated Harvard, I would start a chain of gourmet restaurants called Everest. This plan couldn’t miss, I thought.
When I first told it to my mom, she said, “Do you know how many people have died trying to climb Mt. Everest?”
“One hundred and sixty seven far in this century. But that won’t happen to me.”
“Billy, do you think you’re immortal? And that you can’t be hurt? Or crippled?”
“Sort of,” I admitted.
Another time, when she was talking to my dad outside the pool cabana, I was up a nearby tree and heard her say, “Jack, when he goes to the beach, the lifeguard has to whistle him back from the deep water. He plays with snakes in the garden. This passion for climbing frightens me. He’s got a reckless streak. And he’s still so small.”
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