Personal injuries

CHAPTER 43

Although he is only a few years older than I am, Sandy Stern has always been something of my hero. I met him immediately after law school. We were two Easton graduates practicing as defense lawyers in the inferno of the North End courthouse, and I was instructed by Stem's example. He showed me that no matter what the crime or the client, an advocate could remain an emblem of dignity. He is not much to look at, portly, bald, dark, with a face whose small features are engrossed by too much flesh. But his presence is imposing. He is Argentine by birth, his family the wandering Jews of the saying. A muted Hispanic lilt sings its own rhythm in his careful speech, in which the central cadence is always one of a precisely balanced intelligence. Much like me, he can be remote and chary of feeling. Our friendship has its tidy boundaries that are never crossed. But I came of age here thinking of him as the best lawyer I knew, and for that reason I'd never resented the fact that, in informed minds, he remained, more than me, Kindle County's lawyer of choice in delicate criminal matters. Besides, whatever the wounds to my pride, they were salved by his generous referrals. I was the first outlet for the overflow.

Sitting that evening in a comer, amid the precise Chippendale surroundings of Stern's club atop the Morgan Towers, he told me a disturbing story. One night last June, Stan Sennett and three agents of the Internal Revenue Service had appeared at Mort's home. Sennett claimed to have reliable information-from Moreland's records, as it turned out-that Dinnerstein had a pattern of remarkable success in the Common Law Claims Division, over which his uncle, Brendan Tuohey, presided. Sennett was going to find out why, one way or the other. Here and now, Mr. Dinnerstein could receive complete immunity and speak with total candor. The alternative was to watch the government wreak havoc in his life, issuing grand jury subpoenas to his bank, his accountant, his clients, his employees, even his neighbors. When Stan found what he expected, Mr. Dinnerstein wouldd be sitting in a federal penitentiary long after both his children had finished college, assuming they'd received scholarships, since Sennett would use the racketeering statute to forfeit every penny Mort had made practicing law.

Dinnerstein begged time to speak to an attorney, who turned out to be Stern. Fully briefed by his client, Sandy knew two things with reasonable confidence. The first was that Sennett had nothing concrete at the moment; immunity wouldn't have been offered otherwise. The second was that as soon as Stan reached Mort and Robbie's secret checking account at River National, he'd have a good foothold on proving what Mort had acknowledged to Sandy, namely, that under his uncle's guidance, Dinnerstein and his partner, Robbie Feaver, had been paying off judges of the Common Law Claims Division for years.

What Stem offered, therefore, and what Sennett ultimately accepted, was that Dinnerstein would become a true confidential informant, and only that. Dinnerstein would fully and truthfully answer any questions Sennett asked. None of the information he gave, and nothing that came from it, could ever be used in any way against Dinnerstein, and he would never be called to the witness stand. His identity as an informant would be revealed only if Dinnerstein chose, an unlikely event given the tumult the news that he'd turned on his uncle would cause in his family. In the best case, if Sennett's investigation foundered, Dinnerstein would suffer no disadvantage at all. In the worst, if the full truth about him emerged from other sources, Dinnerstein would resign his law license and attribute escaping prosecution to his attorney's sly manipulations of various legal technicalities arising from the fact that Mort had never actually had the stomach to deliver any money.

And my client? I asked. On his own?

Stem allowed his eyes to slowly close, then open.

"Just so," he said. "It was quite painful."

Quite, I thought, reflecting almost against my will on the lies Robbie had blithely told to save Mort.

The only consolation Stern had offered Mort was that Feaver was likely to negotiate an arrangement to guarantee his freedom. Since Robbie alone had had the fortitude to actually make the drops, he was an indispensable witness for Sennett. Stern suspected that Feaver's deal might include an undercover role, but they knew nothing for certain until mid-April. At that point, Sennett had been forced to tell them because of Dinnerstein's relentless pursuit of the settlement money due poor Peter Petros-and his lawyers-for Peter's fall from the stadium balcony. To keep Feaver in the dark, Mort had agreed to a ruse in which he, like Robbie, immediately recycled his portion of the settlement check which the government briefly advanced.

"Our agreement with the government," said Stern, "is quite clear that Dinnerstein need only answer questions, not volunteer information. But Sennett is a treacherous fellow and I warned my client from the start that sooner or later the U.S. Attorney would utilize even the most paltry inaccuracy so he could renegotiate. And, natura4Jy, that came to pass." Stem eyed me across the top of his drink, scotch neat in a short tumbler etched with the club's crest. "Your client's phantom law license," he said.

As I'd surmised last month, Mort had known about that since law school. A few months ago the IRS agents who'd remained Mort's keepers, much in the way the FBI Special Agents worked with Feaver, had noticed something in the financial information Mort gave the firm's CPA every year. He listed only his own annual dues to Bar Admissions and Discipline as a deductible partnership expense, never Feaver's. By then, Morton had referred a hundred times to Robbie as an attorney, to having practiced law together. Sennett regarded this as a critical deception rather than a figure of speech.

"You can imagine the back-and-forth. But it gave Sennett the opening he wanted. On Monday of this week, three days ago, he informed me that all could be forgiven if my client agreed to play a speaking part in the elaborate drama in which your client was involved. There was again quite a bit of to'ing and fro'ing. But it was less, frankly, than my worst fears. He simply wanted Morton to tell his uncle that Feaver was going to join hands with the government and turn on all of them. I took this as some complicated strategic gambit, part of an endgame. At some point in the future, we'll have a number of brandies and you'll tell me how it fit in. I was puzzled, and had some dark thoughts. But I have never really followed the tortuous path traveled by Sennett's mind."

Several years ago, I was one of the lawyers who assisted Stern when Stan Sennett was threatening to jail him for contempt. Despite my all-night work on a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Sandy, his formal manner prevented me from ever learning-or even asking-precisely how the matter was resolved. Stem was free but somber in the aftermath and more inclined to speak kindly of vermin than Sennett. I usually tried to avoid any mention of Stan in conversation. A waiter in a green frogged coat approached and fulsomely inquired whether either gentleman wished another cocktail. Another unemployed thespian, he was heavily committed to his role as a servant and actually backed off three steps before turning about.

Sennett had wanted recording devices and testimony about Mort's encounter with his uncle, all of which Stern stoutly refused. Dinnerstein had bargained to remain forever in the background; he would be a messenger and no more. Proof was Sennett's concern. But Sennett was resourceful. After years of surveillance, the government knew a great deal about the cast of characters at Paddywacks. On Monday evening, the Immigration and Naturalization Service paid a visit to one of the busboys, who held a counterfeit green card. At five o'clock on Tuesday morning, a local IRS agent named Ramos presented himself at the back door of the restaurant to fill in for his cousin, the busboy, who'd purportedly taken ill. An hour later, Mort joined his uncle for breakfast.

Mort had been instructed to withhold his revelation about Robbie until the agent playing the busboy was close enough to overhear it. Dinnerstein had barely been able to keep his eyes off the fellow as he circled the tables in his checked pants and white tunic. Finally, when Ramos began swabbing the adjoining four-top, Mort blurted out his news to his uncle and his cronies. Not long after Evon had stormed into the office on Monday, announcing she was an FBI agent, Feaver's secretary had supposedly approached Dinnerstein, mortified by a phone conversation she'd overheard: Robbie had just called a lawyer and told him to cut a deal with the government under which Feaver would turn and testify against everyone-the judges, Kosic, Tuohey, even Mort.

It seemed at first that the agent would have no more to report. Tuohey said absolutely nothing. Milacki uttered a variety of curse words, but Brendan had reached immediately for Sig's hand to still him. Instead the three men watched as Tuohey deliberated. They were drinking coffee out of the heavy, crash-proof crockery at Paddywacks, and Brendan picked one of the plastic stirrers up off the table and fiddled with it at length, occupying himself. Then Brendan Tuohey, Presiding Judge of the Common Law Claims Division, had held up the brown stirrer by the very end and Mort had seen what his uncle had fashioned: a noose. Brendan had tied a noose. He twirled it for just a second between his fingers so that Kosic and Milacki could view it, then let it fall to the table. Special Agent Ramos picked it up as he cleared the breakfast dishes, dropping the stirrer in his pocket.

A noose? I asked.

"In the eyes of a prosecutor. Or a best friend. Sennett appeared ebullient. But perhaps it was the letter `b.' Or `R,' for Robbie. Or simply a nervous gesture. A matter of opinion, no? And at any rate, it might be passed off as table talk, an impulse. Without some subsequent act to make the meaning more specific, it's worth very little as evidence. No?" Stem swirled down the last of his scotch and held it in his mouth a moment to enrich the descent.

"Those are the major details. My client instructed me to report them, for whatever they might be worth. Your discretion, as always, George, is depended upon and appreciated." He took my hand then and squared himself to seek my eyes. "There is deep feeling between these men," he said. "Your client has already heard this directly from Dinnerstein, amid a predictable flurry of tears."

And how had Robbie reacted? I preferred not to touch tissue so raw with my client. But these were the imperial moments of the criminal lawyer's life. What did humanity say and do in extremis, when a death sentence was pronounced, when a jury set a guilty man free, when a fellow found that the dearest friend of a lifetime had betrayed him? How could the impoverished gestures of daily existence accommodate such a momentous change in understanding? Stem needed no explanation why I wanted to know. Instead, he let his eyes go to the oak beams crossing the ceiling, sharpening his recall of the answer to the question he, too, had asked.

"I am told," he said, "that Feaver said, `What else could you do? With the kids? With Joan? What else could you do?"' Stem brought his small alert eyes back to mine. "Interesting fellow," he added.