“Mr. Wright,” the judge continued, leaning forward, “you swore falsely before the court. A most, I repeat, a most serious offense.”
He really means it, J.T. thought in disbelief.
“You and I may have known each other for a long time, Mr. Wright, but there is something far more sacred than past experiences.”
This son of a bitch really believes that horse crap, J.T. thought.
“The sanctity of the law is the foundation stone of our civilization. In days gone by, simple perjury, such as you’ve apparently just committed, was punishable by death.”
J.T. looked at his watch. He had an appointment at “21” for lunch.
“I hope I’m not detaining you, Mr. Wright,” the judge said caustically. His face grew darkly serious. J.T. could see a door closing in the judge’s eyes, a door closing off old days and past things.
“This is a most serious situation, Mr. Wright,” the judge repeated.
“Your Honor, I can explain—”
“You’re going to have to explain, Mr. Wright, because I am scheduling a contempt hearing for you, where you will have every opportunity to explain. And if the United States attorney participates, which I will ask him to do, you may very well also have the opportunity to explain to a jury during a trial for perjury.”
“Your Honor—” J.T. was stunned at the rapidity of the judge’s condemnation, the coldness of the treatment.
“Yes, Mr. Wright?”
“Your Honor, I think, most respectfully, that you have reacted a mite too harshly to an unintended oversight. You’ve known me a long time, judge. You know that I wouldn’t purposely—”
“Mr. Wright, before you go any further, please do not bring up the fact that I’ve known you a long time, as if that could in some way mitigate your actions. You are indeed, and I have always thought so, a calculating individual. With you, nothing is an accident. Everything you do is thought out carefully. And yes, I do believe you could do this purposefully and willfully.” The judge rose. “Now let’s go out on the record again, gentlemen.”
By this time the courtroom buffs had sent word to their friends in other courtrooms. They all convened in Judge Wynans’s court now, buzzing in conversation as the judge and two lawyers reentered the courtroom.
The judge gaveled the courtroom to silence. J.T. sat at his counsel table, Briggs at his.
“Let the record show that I have two documents signed by George DeValen, the chief operating officer of the defendant corporation, made out to the Rand Paper Company at the time of acquisition. The actual substance of these documents is of no moment. What is significant at this time is that Mr. Wright, representing the defendant corporation, swore under oath that these documents did not exist, that there was no such agreement in existence, never was. Obviously that is not correct, unless, of course, these documents are forged. Is that your claim, Mr. Wright?” The judge looked down at J.T. “No, don’t say anything at this time. Save your comments for the contempt proceeding that I am about to schedule. Where’s my diary?”
The courtroom buzzed wildly as everyone looked at J.T., then at one another.
The judge was handed his diary.
“May twenty-first seems like as good a day as any, Mr. Wright. Is there any conflict in your schedule for that day?”
“I do have a meeting out of the country on that day, Your Honor,” J.T. said, subdued.
“I could wait until the twenty-sixth. Is that preferable? One or the other.”
“I can make the twenty-sixth,” J.T. said.
“And Mr. Briggs, although you will not be a party to the proceedings, I will expect you to be in court as a witness on that day. Is that a convenient day for you?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll make it,” Briggs said.
“We’ll stand adjourned, then,” the judge said, turning back to his robing room. “Perhaps you’ll want to retain counsel for yourself, Mr. Wright,” the judge added acidly.
J.T. stood at his table, staring at the now unoccupied judge’s bench. He shoved his papers into his briefcase, keenly aware of the noise and chatter from behind him.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Briggs, coming over to J.T. “If there’s anything I can do, just ask.”
“Thanks. But I don’t think there’s anything you can do. It’ll be all right. He must have had a bug up his nose today.”
When J.T. turned, he saw the crowd. They seemed a different crowd from those he was used to, with a different look. They were looking at him with that curiosity he had often seen courtroom spectators display toward his infamous clients. They were gawking at him, not admiring him. He felt quite alone. Where was Levine, he wondered. Where was Marty? Where was DeValen?
The people in the crowd didn’t speak to him as he walked through the courtroom to the corridor. They hung back, wanting to see his reactions, his fear sticking out all over him like porcupine quills. Bullshit, he thought. He waited alone for the elevator. The goddamn thing took forever.
May 25, 1972
Sunlight streamed through the large window onto J.T.’s bed. The door to his cell was open. Beyond the door he could see men in red, blue, or gold coveralls gathered in conversation. Others were pacing around the recreation room.
“I had sold my interests in the corporations and had been living in Cuba for five or six years. When Castro came in, I moved to Brazil. That was where I was when the New York DA had me indicted in absentia,” said Augustus Rector. J.T.’s eyes turned from the men outside his room. Flector was an old man with pale skin and puffy, alcoholic eyes. His hands shook when he raised them to make a point in conversation. Flector’s coveralls were gold-colored.
“You hadn’t controlled the corporations for several years and were still indicted?” J.T. asked skeptically.
“Not a single share of stock,” Flector emphasized with a shaking hand. “Not the bottling companies, not the automobile companies, nothing.”
“What the heck were you indicted for?” J.T.’s coveralls were red.
“You tell me. If I could get my hands on my books—fifty-two filing cabinets filled with all my papers and files were just seized out in Westbury by the FBI in 1966, and they’re still under lock and key in a room in the Southern District Courthouse—if I had those books, I could prove I didn’t take a red cent.”
J.T. and Flector were both in “West Street” (the federal detection facility), where federal prisoners are detained while awaiting trial or further proceedings in their cases. J.T. was serving a sixty-day sentence for contempt, imposed by the Honorable Gerald Wynans in connection with the Rand Paper proceedings. The judge could have sentenced him for perjury and given him years in the can, but he’d said on the record that a sixty-day sentence should be sufficient to bring the point home to J.T.—this time.
Flector presently stood indicted for falsely submitting an affidavit claiming that he was indigent, without funds to pay a lawyer to defend him on a previous indictment for mail fraud. The government was contending that Flector had been collecting a two-hundred-dollar weekly stipend from a printing concern in Westchester when he submitted the affidavit of indigence. The printing company did pay Flector the stipend because the president of that company still admired Flector from the days when he was known as the corporate wizard of the twentieth century.
“Heck,” said Flector, “I was disbarred in absentia, too, while I was in Brazil.”
“How did they do that?”
“You keep asking the very same question I’ve been asking myself for over ten years. But they did it.”
The coveralls were government issue for inmates. J.T. wore a pair of white sneakers and white socks—his own, but the mandatory footwear.
“What did you do in Brazil?” J.T. asked. There was nothing for him to do for the next fifty-five days except talk. He found Flector pleasant company. He was an intelligent man, with a wealth of stories about every industrialist, American or foreign, of whom J.T. had ever heard.
“After I escaped from Cuba—
Castro had put a price on my head; I was a capitalist enemy of the state—I lived in Brazil until I came home voluntarily to face the charges, to clear my name and my family’s.”
If you didn’t know who Flector was, you’d think he was the biggest liar in the world. But he had done it all, had made it all, and when the American government had attempted to extradite the ex-lawyer, it discovered there was no extradition treaty with Brazil. The American press carried stories that Flector had paid the Brazilian government off with part of the hoard of millions he had allegedly embezzled before fleeing the United States.
“But if you had sold the stock in all those corporations years before, what money were you charged with embezzling?”
“Beats me. Some of those companies are still in business. Heck, I didn’t steal a dime. All I did was confuse them. You know, if you make too much dough just using your head, people who haven’t any brains figure you’re doing something illegal. Damn fools.”
The only other conversations that J.T. might have would be with other inmates indicted for all sorts of crimes, hardened street people who would have liked to hobnob with him, pick his brains for their legal writs, get legal opinions they could bounce off their own lawyers. J.T. didn’t want any of that; he just wanted to be left alone, get his time over, and get back in action.
“You mind if I ask why, when you came back here, you had to get court-appointed counsel?”
“There’s no secret to that, J.T. I sank all my dough, a hundred and fifty million, in Cuba. And when Castro came in, I was lucky I escaped with my skin.”
“How could you have put all your money in Cuba?” J.T. asked incredulously.
“You can ask that question now, J.T. But in those days, well, it would be like saying why did you put a hundred fifty million in Florida. Who the hell could ever have imagined that the United States would let Cuba, with billions of dollars in American assets sunk in there, ninety miles off the coast—who the hell would ever even have conceived that the United States would just let it go by default to the Communists?” Flector still was sadly befuddled by that. He shook his head hopelessly.
“I guess that’s right.”
“Hey, did you see the news on television?” Myron Weiss asked, coming into J.T.’s cell. Weiss was another inmate, whose coveralls were blue. On the outside, he was a theater producer, a financial investor who’d been extremely helpful to several mobsters with cash to launder.
“No, what’s on?” asked Flector. He was a sort of Papa Bear to all the other inmates. He had been successful; he had been indicted; he had beaten three of his own cases; he was willing to help them with their legal papers. So they all trusted him.
“Your client, J.T., that guy DeValen, is being indicted for stock manipulation,” said Weiss.
“What?” J.T. literally jumped off his bed to go into the recreation room, where the television was.
“It’s off now,” Weiss said, following J.T. Flector was third in line. “Probably it’ll be on another newscast later. He’s going to be arraigned on Friday.”
“Jesus, I’d better give him a call,” said J.T. He glanced over at the phones. They were all being used. He paced.
“Take it easy, J.T.,” said Flector. “Take it easy. Don’t work yourself up,” Weiss said. “He isn’t being arraigned until Friday.”
A phone became free. J.T. dashed to it. Flector and Weiss hovered nearby.
“Is Mr. DeValen in?” J.T. asked when DeValen’s office answered. “This is J.T. Wright.” Pause. “He’s coming here to see me?” J.T. asked. “Today? If he calls in, meanwhile, tell him I called. I’m waiting for him.” J.T. hung up the phone.
“That’s a twist,” said Weiss. “The client is coming to jail to see the lawyer.”
“That is kind of ridiculous, isn’t it?” said J.T. as he and Flector went back to his cell. Weiss hadn’t been admitted to J.T.’s inner circle yet.
There were several hours each day when the inmates were let out into the recreation area where they could skylark with each other.
“What are you going to do when you get out of here?” J.T. asked Flector absently.
“Get some import/export thing going with Brazil. That’s a country, J.T. Just bursting with money. And they need everything. Everything! I’ll make a million in the first six months I’m out, several million, just selling the Brazilians things they need down there that we have plenty of right here.”
“No kidding?” said J.T., intrigued.
“Sure. Making a million is a lead-pipe cinch down there.”
J.T. was impressed. He recalled that DeValen had once said something like that to him. “What do you have to do to get all this done?” J.T. asked.
“I just need someone to stake me to some walking-around money for about two months, a thousand a week, ten thousand altogether, and we’ll make millions. I’ve got the people down there all set to buy whatever we can get them.”
“You have the people down there ready to buy?”
“Sure.”
J.T. nodded and thought.
“You know, J.T., just because I’ve lost my shingle doesn’t mean I’ve lost my touch. I can still write a mean brief, do legal research, run an office. I might be an asset to your office while I’m setting this stuff up in Brazil. I just need a place to hang my hat.”
“You fascinate me, Gus.”
“Well, if you have any doubts, you know all the people I know. They’ll tell you I’m the real goods. I was quite a lawyer in my day, before I stopped working for other people and made some real money for myself.”
“Mr. Wright,” said the prison officer in charge of their section. He wore a yellow shirt and gray pants. “You have a visitor waiting for you in the visitors’ room.”
J.T. stood up, straightening out his coveralls. “I’ll see you in a bit,” he said to Flector.
“If it’s George DeValen, tell him hello for me.”
“Okay, I will.” J.T. followed the guard to a corridor that led to a locked metal door. The guard unlocked it and J.T. entered a narrow corridor which had seats and compartments on one side. These seats faced thick glass windows looking out to the visitors’ area. Each compartment had a phone that the inmate and his visitor could use to talk to each other.
J.T. walked from one compartment to the next. He only saw other prisoners visiting with their families and friends. He didn’t see DeValen. Suddenly he saw a woman, sitting alone, smiling at him. It was Dana Reynolds.
J.T. picked up the phone. “Dana? What are you doing here?” J.T. was quite surprised. They looked through the glass into each other’s eyes, then looked away, then looked at each other again. They smiled again.
“I came to see you, of course,” she said into the hollow sounding phone.
“I’m shocked. Delighted, believe me. But nonetheless shocked. You look great.” She really did, J.T. thought. She was so distinguished-looking, so well dressed. She was still statuesque. “Gee, it’s great seeing you, Dana.”
“It’s good seeing you too, J.T. Even if it’s here.” Her eyes were warm and smiling at him. Her mouth was soft and glistening.
“What a genuine, delightful surprise,” J.T. repeated. “How’ve you been?”
“I’m excellent,” she replied. “But are you all right?”
“Oh, sure, real fine. This’ll be over in a bit. I’ll be out of here and on top of the world in a few weeks. Mean-while, I have time to write my memoirs.”
“Are you really writing?”
“No, just kidding. Some newspaper people asked me to do some articles, but I couldn’t put anything I know into writing.”
“Probably not,” she smiled.
“How’s the family? Uncle Chauncey? Your father?”
“Father’s had a stroke.”
“I’m really sorry to hear that.”
“It’s been a while now. He’s coming along. Can’t keep Dad down for very long. Right now he’s walking with a brace on one leg, but the doctor thinks he’ll be right as rai
n in a little. Uncle Chauncey is the same Uncle Chauncey.”
“I’ll bet.”
“And that’s about everything. I’m very involved in the business, as you can imagine, now that father is somewhat disabled. I’m doing all the things that he can’t—meetings, conferences, travel.”
“That’s an enormous undertaking, a worldwide business on your shoulders. Incredible,” J.T. marveled. “And you took time out to see me!”
“Why not, dear boy? You are still that to me, you know, dear. And, in a very cherished way, a boy—childlike, not childish.” His eyes were captured by hers. They were so warm, so welcoming. Dana brought back memories of all sorts of things. He wished he didn’t have the glass between them.
“It’s great seeing you,” J.T. said sincerely. “Not too many people come to see me here. The atmosphere must be too cold and damp for them.”
A guard came up behind J.T. “You have another visitor downstairs, Mr. Wright,” he said. The guards showed J.T. great respect and deference, particularly in front of his VIP visitors.
“Excuse me a minute, Dana,” J.T. said, turning.
“I have to get going anyway,” she said, looking at her watch. “I’ve got a tight schedule.”
“Stay another minute or two,” he asked into the phone.
“Of course.”
J.T. asked the guard, “Who is the visitor, do you know?”
“Let me ask on the phone, Mr. Wright.”
The guard locked the steel door and went to the phone on the desk. J.T. watched him talk. He couldn’t hear what the guard said.
The guard opened the steel door again.
“It’s Mr. George DeValen.”
“Can you have him wait until Miss Reynolds goes down? A couple of minutes?”
“That’s the way it has to be anyway, Mr. Wright,” said the guard. “They won’t let nobody up until this lady goes down.”
“Thanks.”
J.T. Page 34
