“The first thing we do is, let’s kill all the lawyers.” — William Shakespeare

It’s hard to accept that Truth in its many forms was more available in prison than on the street. However, when it comes to reality my experience has been that after having lived through the vagaries of justice the responsibility of the Press to expose the Truth and the role of both Prosecutors and Lawyers who supposedly negotiate freedom and punishment — honesty does not play any part in the mix.

Subsequent to my conviction for, essentially, providing affordable housing for immigrants, thie D.A., Speaker of the Assembly, several of my lawyers, and several Long Island politicians –were convicted of crimes and were imprisoned. So, it certainly gave me something to think about. Here’s some verbatim dialog from my four years — wasting time in prison so that my financial, social, family and emotional life could be destroyed for writing about the real criminals who continued their work while I was behind bars.

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“Guy I know in the Gym just threw paint thinner on the ground and lit it. He’s got a bid for Arson. All he did was throw it on the ground.”

“Don’t matter. Dey won’ give’im Parole. Dat’s arson. Anythin’ wid lightin’ a fire, ya done. No parole fa  dat shit.”

No wonder Al was so negative. His second arson bid would fuck him.

“Y’know all I did was trow some paint thinna ona groun’,” Al had said. “Da guy dat hadda bar only had it fa two weeks. So’s he callsa cops. Y’know I trew da thinna ona groun’ an’ den I dropped a cigarette onid an’ it din’ light So, I coun’ figa why, so’s I bens down an’ lights it wid my lighta, an POOF, flames up’n almos’ burns my shoes. Din’ cause no harm, tho’. “

“So, what was your other bid for, Al?” I said, as we had been sitting in the Gym. He’d just told me that I wouldn’t  make my first Board.

“Didn’t you burn something before?” Shades of Goodfellas.

“Oh, dat was wen I burned my truck. I jes filled it wid gas an’ dropped a match in it. Piece a shit truck. Bud ya know th’ insurance paid off. Got $4400 fa it.”

“So, that was arson too?”

“Yeah, whateva, din’ hurt nobody. Lissen, I got 23 arrests an’ only been in fa 3 bids. I’m gonna C.R. nex’ year. But, you’ll probly get hit at ya firs’ Board.”

Al was apparently not aware that it was the act. Two arson attempts. A serial burner like Tony the Torch in the South Bronx, circa 1970. Burning things and the potential effect on everything around it.

Driving around drunk and hitting people, murder — or like Animal who chopped up his girlfriend and sent the pieces to her family — were crimes for which they would likely not cut you a break.

But, was there hope for someone who wrote about political corruption?

Since this was not Russia and for the D.A. who had not yet morphed into something like soylent green, there was hope.

Problems at home were weighing on me. There was not enough money. Of course, that was predictable. In fact, I HAD predicted it. There was nothing I could do, or could have done to avoid it. When you can’t work, do anything about resolving assets that might be of value, or, for that matter, work on making sure that I even had life insurance, what was there to be done?

Get  depressed.  That was easy.

In fact, as I walked  along towards the Law Library I truly wished that I could NOT EXIST. It was a strange feeling. I’d put up with the mindless bullshit for over three years now, wending my way towards four with no certain prospects of getting out, and just the mundane, repetitious life that had no meaning — was hollowing  out my core.

I wondered again if Camus or Sartre knew the feeling. I wondered if they’d ever done time, not just palavering about it in a salon after writing about some “deep” thoughts. I felt that I truly was an Existentialist. Funny, after all of those college years, to feel something instead of having to learn something philosophically relevant.

I’d gone back to the dorm after working the morning weekend shift at the Law Library and found Domo, the psycho ghost, unpacking a Tyvek bag. Apparently, he’d not appeared at work for three straight days and his C.O. at work sent him back to the dorm and wanted to send him to the Box. For some unknown reason, they decided not to send him. I asked him what had happened while in the Rec room, where you CAN talk and he just stared at me. So, I just walked away. I went into the dorm and he followed me in and came up to me at my locker and started to tell me. In full view of the C.O. in the dorm, I  put my finger to my lips and said, “Shh,” as the C.O. watched and Domo walked away.

Brilliant.

Who was it that said, “Timing  is everything?”

I got on the phone to talk to my family. My oldest son, who’d just returned from his first solo trip — to Buffalo, which was near me, to bowl with his high school coach as a senior — was too tired to talk to me. My wife then informed me that they were considering postponing the visit by a week or two. 

My daughter, who now only briefly spoke to me when she wasn’t sleeping or out with friends, wasn’t in. SHE had requested the visit  be postponed, I had no problem with it. Obviously I was just REALLY starting to be little more than a pain in the ass.  I wanted contact with the outside world. Away from stupid people. But, the outside world was beginning to show that I was gone. And, not far from forgotten,

I thought that NOT EXISTING was a good solution, not acted upon or ushered along, but, as a mindset. Or, perhaps, a mindless set. 

Another year or two of this and my so-called contribution to Freedom of Speech, would be about as meaningful as Franklin’s little gem, “He who lives on hope, dies farting,” 

I was beginning to feel that my journalistic efforts and  my SoHo Journal Magazine had been little more than an exercise in mental masturbation. There certainly was an argument that my exposing of corruption in the District Attorney’s office in  the Hamptons, regardless of the veracity of my reporting, was a sign of a mental condition. As Barbara, the secretary for my attorney Tom McVann said, after reading one of my articles on the Pay-to-play criminal enterprise in the D.A.’s office, said to me, “Are you crazy?”

She had a point. No one had EVER written anything about political corruption in the Hamptons before. 

There were only a few publications, Newsday, Dan’s Paper, the Independent, The Southampton Press — the latter NEVER stepped out of line and none wrote about real political news then. It was an “after-the-fact” pimp show, as opposed to ACTUAL journalism that Hunter Thompson would have glibly identified. It was the Emperor’s New Clothes in spades. 

People worked  hard in the Hamptons to suppress the truth in print. Rampant racism, therefore, didn’t exist, political corruption was a fairytale, and Freedom of Expression, Freedom of the Press and Speech were all First Amendment fantasies and abstractions. There were only payoffs from attorneys looking for good decisions from judges who were appointed once they were “vetted,” and “grants” that were pocketed by the D.A.’s office from insurance companies seeking newsworthy convictions.

I was the lonely sucker.

The W.C. Fields of journalism. The idiot who pointed out that the Emperor was naked. Or, as the man said in Goodfellas, I was the “Schmuck on wheels.”  Because nothing would change. I was like Khodorkovsky without the cash or assets, not to mention  the intelligence.

Yet, there  was something  about  ‘Being Here,’ not the odd Peter Sellers movie, that had some value. As my·wife had said to me during one of my many pitiful telephone talks, “You ARE getting something out of it.” My writing of course. Where else would I meet people like Chauty.

“Ma nam  ees Chauty,” said the guy who looked just like ‘G’ from my previous dorm, before moving to ASAT dorm for my “Recovery.”

He was about 5’5″ tall, a strip of a beard that started at his sideburns and wrapped around under his chin and up the other side to the other sideburn. It was a sartorial mystery to me that anyone would bother spending so much time on such a pencil thin line, pretending  to be a beard. But, of course, as with most guys here,  he had the time.

“He’s a major trafficker for the Latin Kings, bro,” said Cuba, “I’d  be careful about him.”

“You think I’m  putting in an order?” I replied  sardonically.

“No, bro’ you hang in’ wid  him puts you in the scope.”

“What scope? I thought he was someone else and tie asked question  on the walkway. What are  you talking about?

Then I remembered the scopes that were always trained on us in the Yard, on high-powered rifles.

“Dese cops watch eveyone you hang wid  bro’,” he said. 

“You hang wid the Latin Kings, you on the radar. Don’ ged on the radar.”

“I got it. But, what kind of a name is Chauty? 

“Shorty, bro’, his name is Shorty.”

“You’ve got to teach me Spanish,” I said to Cuba. 

“You a funny guy, bro’,” he said,

This was not reality, though. Well, it WAS my reality, just not the reality of a Life.  I lived with real people but there was something wrong with all of them. It wasn’t just that they were criminals. That was easy to accept. After all, everyone I did business with before going to prison was a criminal, including the attorneys and the politicians. Including the D.A. and his personal criminals like Stavrides the prosecutor and Miceli, the cop who threatened people to lie about me.

The politicians were not only politicians but attorneys as well. So, they were in, like, the 9th Circle of criminal Hell. Shelley Silver, the Speaker of the New York Assembly was a top politician, for example, AND an attorney. His Chief of Staff was Judy Rapfogel, wife of the guy convicted of bilking his Jewish Non-Profit in order to give money to politicians, including Shelley Silver. So, where does that put HIM, and HER, who claimed that she didn’t know about the $400,000 in cash in their apartment closet? Is that even possible?  How do you hide $400,000 in cash and, supposedly, another million from your wife? Certainly, it would be laughed at in the Borscht Belt. I don’t think it’s even possible. 

The Scots are notoriously “parsimonious” and  there’s no way that my wife in the normal course of life that $400,000 in cash would remain undiscovered in one of our closets.

I’d met Shelley Silver in an elevator at a political club meeting.and Rapfogel was with him. I felt like a bug on the wall when I asked for his card. And, when she gave me an old used card, it had Shelley’s laundry list on the back  of it. Or, maybe it was her husband’s list for the Chinese laundry on the corner. Who knew?

But, now I was meeting  a better class of criminal. 

People with a more direct approach. Guy fucks with you, you hit him with a pipe. That was the Hernandez  method. Guy fucks with you and takes off, you follow him and pump 5 bullets into him. He won’t do THAT again. That’s Hayes. Guy fucks your wife? You shoot her and throw her into the river, that’s what Charlie in the Law Library did.

None of this namby-pamby lame ass shit. Like taking bribes or money to fix criminal cases to screw enemies or journalists using judges who take orders from the party apparatus. Or, using D.A. detectives who threatened little old ladies and forced confessions for the banks. Why prosecute guys who are cops or prosecutors.

Or like the criminals on Wall Street who paid off the politicians and walked away after stealing billions.

After all prisoners are not like prosecutors in the Town of Southampton and Village of Westihampton where all the criminals have immunity for their crimes.

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