'Third floor?'
'Right you are. Your guy been indicted and arrested, or just arrested and waiting indictment?'
'Indicted and arrested.'
'Okay, then you don't want the Magistrate, you want the District Judge, Part One.'
Mamma mia, this guy was going to give me a course in the Federal court system. In truth, I didn't know any of this, but neither did I care. I just wanted to get to the third floor before it was too late. However, I didn't want to look panicky, which would only cause him to be more helpful or more suspicious. I smiled. 'Part One. Right.'
'Yeah. Part One. Third floor.' He looked at this watch. 'Hey, it's after ten.
You better get a move on.'
'Yes, I'd better.' I walked, not ran, toward the elevators. I heard him call after me, 'I hope you got enough money there.'
I hope I have enough time, Wyatt. I took the elevators up to the third floor. As bad luck would have it, the elevator stopped outside the Magistrate's Court, not Part One, so I was already lost. I picked a direction and walked. There were dozens of handcuffed prisoners in the corridors of justice with their arresting officers, U.S. Marshals, FBI men, attorneys for the government, attorneys for the accused, witnesses, and all sorts of people, none of whom looked happy to be there. There is something uniquely depressing about the hallways in any criminal court; the prisoners, the guards, the visible evidence of human frailty, misery, and evil.
I picked a corridor and went down it. The Federal courts are distinctly different from state or municipal courts in many respects. For one thing, you usually get a higher-quality criminal, such as Wall Street types and other white-collar rip-off artists who were stupid enough to use the U.S. mails for their schemes or to branch out across state lines. Occasionally, you get a spy or traitor, and now and then (but not often enough) you get a congressman or member of the Cabinet. But I'd heard, and now I saw with my own eyes, that with the increase in federal drug cases, the quality of federal defendants was somewhat lower than in years past. In fact, I saw men who looked as if they were definitely part of the international pharmaceutical trade, and I could see why Frank Bellarosa, tough guy that he was, would just as soon avoid trouble with these new guys.
In fact, I didn't even want to be in the same hallway as these dangerous felons, even if they were cuffed. For one thing, they smelled, and the stink was overpowering. I had smelled that odour in state criminal court once and knew it; it was the smell of the junkie, a sort of sugary-sweet smell at first whiff, but underlying it was a stench like a rotting animal. I almost gagged as I walked down the corridor. John Sutter, what are you doing here? Get back to Wall Street where you belong. No, damn it, see it through. Where're your balls, you finicky twit? Push on.
I pushed on, through the stinking corridor of Magistrate Court, and found Part One, where the defendants were uncuffed and smelled better. I asked a deputy marshal, 'Has Frank Bellarosa come before a judge yet?'
'Bellarosa? The Mafia guy? I didn't even know he was here.' 'He's supposed to be here. I'm his attorney. Could he have been arraigned already?'
He shrugged. 'Maybe. Judge Rosen's been doing arraignments for a while.'
'Where is his courtroom?'
'Her. Judge Rosen's a woman.'
'How many judges are arraigning this morning?'
'One, same as every morning. You new here?'
'I guess so. Where is Judge Rosen's courtroom?' He told me and added, 'She's a bitch on bail, especially for wiseguy types.'
So, with that encouraging news, I walked quickly but with no outward signs of the anxiety that was growing inside me to the door of the courtroom marked JUDGE SARAH ROSEN and opened it.
Indeed, the court was in session, and two marshals eyed me as I entered. Sitting in the benches where spectators normally sit at a trial were about thirty people, mostly men, and almost all, I suspected, were defence attorneys, though there might be some arresting officers as well, and perhaps a few defendants who were deemed not dangerous and thus were uncuffed. I looked for my client's blue suit and for Mancuso's distinctive pate among the heads and shoulders but did not see either. There was an arraignment in progress. A defendant and his attorney stood in front of Judge Sarah Rosen. To the right of the defendant was a young assistant U.S. Attorney, a woman of about twenty-five. She was in profile, and for some reason, she reminded me of my daughter, Carolyn. The courtroom was quiet, yet everyone up front was speaking so softly that I could catch only a word or two. The only thing I heard clearly was the defendant, a middle-aged, well-dressed man, say, 'Not guilty,' as if he meant it and believed it.
The criminal justice system in America is basically an eighteenth-century morality play that the actors try to adapt to twentieth-century society. The whole concept of arraignments, for instance, the public reading of the charges, the haggling over bail in open court, is somewhat archaic, I think. But I suppose it's better than other systems where justice is done in dark, private places.
One of the marshals was motioning me to sit down, so I sat. The arraignment in progress was finished, and the defendant was led away in cuffs, bail denied. Not good. The court officer called out the next case. 'Johnson, Nigel!' Presently, a tall, thin black man wearing a white suit and dreadlocks was escorted into the courtroom through the side door, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had been. An attorney rose and made his way toward the judge's bench. If I had to guess, I'd say the gentleman standing before Judge Rosen was a Jamaican and the charge probably had something to do with drug trafficking or illegal immigration or both. The arraignment could take as long as fifteen minutes if there was an argument over bail. Meanwhile, Ferragamo could have pulled a really neat trick, and my client could be standing in front of another judge in Brooklyn Federal Court, offering his Rolex watch for bail. The courtroom was cool, but I was still sweating. Think, Sutter.
As I thought, I was aware that the door behind me had opened a few times, and I noticed that men and women were making their way to the front of the court and finding seats. I also noticed two men and one woman in the otherwise empty jury box. They were sketch artists, which I thought was unusual at an arraignment. Sitting a few feet to my left was an attorney doing some paperwork on his briefcase. I leaned toward him and asked, 'Have you been here long?' He looked over at me. 'Since nine.'
'Have you heard Frank Bellarosa's case called?'
He shook his head. 'No. Is he going to be arraigned here?' 'I don't know. I'm representing him, but I'm not familiar with the Federal Courts. How would I find -' 'Quiet in the court!' bellowed the fat marshal, who probably saw me rather than heard me. These guys are power freaks, all full of themselves with their guns and badges and potbellies. I recalled that Mark Twain once observed, 'If you want to see the dregs of humanity, go down to the jail and watch the changing of the guard.' I wish Uncle Walt had said that. Anyway, I settled back and considered my options.
The arraignment of the tall fellow had begun, and indeed it was a drug charge.
The U.S. Attorney, the defence attorney, and Judge Rosen were conferring. Apparently, the defence attorney wasn't getting his point across, because the judge was shaking her head and the U.S. Attorney, still in profile, seemed smug, and the defendant was staring at his feet. Presently, a guard came, and the defendant became the prisoner again. She's a bitch on bail. Yes, indeed. If, in fact, Frank Bellarosa came before her, I could think of no reason in the world why she would set bail for him on a murder charge.
The longer I sat there, the more convinced I became that this whole thing had been stacked against me from the beginning. I was sure that my client was in Federal Court in Brooklyn right now. I could ask for a bail hearing, take an appeal, get a writ of habeas corpus, and try to get him sprung sometime in the near future. But that's not what I was getting paid for, nor what he wanted. I got up, took my briefcase, and left.
I went to the holding cells located in a far corner of the third floor and checked with the U.S. Marshal who was in charge of the cells. But my client had disappeared as surely as if he had been swallowed into the Gulag. I went to the public phone booths and called both my offices, but there was no message from my client. So, I sat there, contemplating my next move. Just then, the deputy marshal that I'd spoken to regarding the arraignments came up to me. He said, 'Oh, I'm glad I found you, Counsellor. Your guy, Bellarosa, is going to be arraigned at Brooklyn Federal Court.'
I stood up. 'Are you sure?'
That's what I hear from my boss. Too bad. I wanted to see him.' 'I'll get you his autograph,' I said as I raced toward the elevators. I rode down to the lobby, rushed out the doors, down the steps, and hailed a cab in Foley Square. I could be across the Brooklyn Bridge and in Federal Court in about twenty minutes. A taxi stopped and I
