13 – Boston
Howie Mandelbaum could not think of himself as a violent criminal. Neither did his fellow residents of the Charles Street Jail, a Dickensian building leaning against one of the outbuildings of the Massachusetts General Hospital. The jail was a model penal institution when it was opened in 1857, shaped, as were classic cathedrals, like a cross. The central vault was an open space 100 feet on a side, five stories tall. The four stubby arms of the cross were short U-shaped hallways open to the central vault. In turn, the hallways were lined with row after row of steel bars separating the hallways from the cells.
The benevolent theory, at least in 1857, was that each cell was open to the central vault so that every guard could see into every cell and every prisoner had the benefit of the light and fresh air from the central vault. What that also meant was that every inmate could see every other inmate, that no cell was separated from any other cell by anything but steel bars and open air. All that prevented any of the 687 inmates of the jail from speaking with any other inmate was the strength of his lungs and his ability to make himself heard over the roaring that reverberated through the central vault like the sound of Niagara Falls played back through an echo chamber. On top of the inmates’ shouting were the shouts of guards telling prisoners to shut up, and radios and televisions turned to maximum volume to be heard over the roar.
The cells were meant to hold one inmate. Despite the order of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts enforcing that intention, Mandelbaum shared his accommodations. His roommate found Mandelbaum’s whimpering funny.
“Never heard of a Jew being anything but a bookie, Jew Boy,” Sean Connery - “like James Bond” - snarled. “And you don’t look like no bookie. What happened, pretty boy, get caught with some coke on the front seat of your Bimmer when you ran a red light?”
Connery was interrupted by a banging on the cell bars.
“He came on the Jew boat. He was fished out of the harbor.” Bobbie Flynn, a correction officer, came from the same project as Connery. He knew Connery’s father and he did not hold it against young Sean that he was facing a few years in Cedar Junction State Prison.
“But leave him be, lad. This here is a foreign agent who came to our country and is committing crimes, serious crimes, before he even steps foot on American soil. He’s facing murder charges, ten murder charges. Ten dead Coasties in Boston Harbor. This must be one big tough Israeli Jew boy.
“Your lawyer’s here to see you. Come with me,” Flynn said to Mandelbaum.
Flynn unlocked the cell door and escorted Mandelbaum to a small room on the ground floor. The young man sat in one of two chairs in the room, chairs abandoned from some Boston public school, with writing platforms on the right armrests. Years of initials and obscenities, whether from bored high school students or terrified jail inmates, covered the writing platforms. Ben Shapiro sat in the other chair, his briefcase open on the writing platform.
“If you are the court appointed lawyer the judge said I’d get you might as well leave,” Mandelbaum told Shapiro, speaking in the same tone he’d use with a surly waiter. “My father is hiring me the best lawyer money can buy.”
Shapiro looked up slowly, then held his hand out without rising from the chair.
“I was hired by your father,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m the best. I’ll tell you one thing though. I’m not bought by anybody. And I’ll tell you another thing. You better understand that you are in the deepest hole of your lifetime, and it goes downhill from here. I’m walking out in an hour and going home to my wife and my son. You are going to be behind bars tonight. You are most likely going to be behind bars when you are sixty years old.”
Another one, Shapiro thought. If only I could have cases without jerkball clients. Hundreds, a thousand clients, and still barely a handful he’d think to invite over to the house for dinner. And here was jerkball number one-thousand-and-one.
Mandelbaum sat facing Shapiro.
“What is this shit case? I didn’t kill anybody. All I did was jump off that stinking boat when they told me to jump. How can they charge me with killing anybody?”
“What you are charged with, sir, is conspiracy to commit murder.” Shapiro looked through the papers in his briefcase. “This is the charge, actually one of ten charges, all the same, one for each dead Coast Guardsman.”
Shapiro held the document and read from it in the sing-song rhythm legal pleadings seemed to call for.
“You have been charged with conspiring with other unknown persons to illegally enter the United States and in furtherance of that conspiracy to commit acts of violence, to whit murder and assault with intent to commit murder and that in furtherance of this conspiracy you or others with whom you acted in concert did commit acts of violence including assault with intent to murder and murder in the first degree.”
He looked up at his new client, searching for any sign on the young man’s face that he appreciated that he’d come to a fork in the road of his life, and that he was heading down the wrong path.
“You had the misfortune, Mr. Mandelbaum, of being the only person from either ship who Boston police managed to retrieve from the harbor. I expect that the other 4,000 people will be difficult to hide for very long and that you will soon have company. But for today at least, you are the test case.
“Tell me, Mr. Mandelbaum, how did you come to be on that ship?”
“I didn’t come to be on the ship,” the young man said softly, angrily. “I got on that ship to stay alive. The fucking Arabs were killing people all over the place. I was lucky as hell to get on that boat.
“Wait, before I answer your questions you tell me first how can they do this to me? I’m an American. Why didn’t the Marines come to save me? Why did I have to spend three weeks on that ship like some kind of refugee?”
“From what your father told me,” Shapiro said, this time glancing at a yellow pad he’d removed from his briefcase. “From what your father told me you moved to Israel a year ago and you became an Israeli citizen. And you were in the import-export business there? Is that correct?”
“Sure I moved there, but I was born here. I’m an American, dammit, I went to school here, I watched Sesame Street as a kid, I know all about Homer and Bart, I cried when John Kennedy, Jr. got killed. I saw all those dumb Disney movies when I was a kid. My dad even voted for Reagan once. Listen to me, don’t I sound like an American? Look, I grew up in Fair Lawn, fucking New Jersey. What is this foreigner crap they keep calling me?”
The young man stood and began pacing around the small room, working himself into a rage. “I’m as American as you are, right?”
He stopped talking and sat in the chair facing Shapiro, all evidence of cockiness evaporated, the enormity of his situation slowly sinking in.
“They’ll kill me in this jail. Get me out of here. I was never even sent to the principal’s office. Get me out of here before they kill me. Or worse.”
His head fell to the armrest. Shapiro watched the young man’s body shaking, heard him crying, gave him a few minutes to regain control, placed his hand on the young man’s shoulder and shook him gently.
“I only have an hour with you. We have a lot of ground to cover. Lets get to work.”