No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart

No One Rides For Free

Larry Beinhart
1986

TO MITCHELL WOOD & VALERIE KOOYKER
Now
that I can stand on my own two feet again and am alive,
it
seems faraway and melodramatic to say thank you for
keeping
me alive, and I could not have made it without you.
But
that does seem to have been the case, so thank you for
that
and this book as well.

CONTENTS

1. Attica
2. Squash
3. Shuttle
4. The Line
5.
Cowboys
6. Six
7. XJ-12 .
8. Patchen
9. Lightnin
'-Struck Tree
10. Owsley Lives
11. Cappuccino
12. Trading
Up
13. A Body of Water
14. Home
15. Tail
16. Judge
17. Pasta Fazool
18. Reopen
19. Pigeons
20. The Late
Show
21. The Today Show
22. Liar
23. Love in Pain
24.
The Man Himself
25. Hungary
26. Love in Vain
27. Blast
from the Past
28. Family
29. Rockefeller Lookout
30. The
Ingrate Dead
31. Naked
 
 

1
ATTICA

FOR THE DEFENSE
: Paul Dean
Whitney, Harvard 1940, number three in his class and Law Review.
Assisted by Paul C. Chillgren III, Harvard '49, number five, Law
Review; and Andrew Lande Depue, Yale '73, number seven, Law Review.
As strong and classy a defense as any guy could ask for.

The team from the Manhattan D.A.'s office, the
world's most prestigious place to public prosecute, was headed by
Franco DeMattresse (Columbia '69, number fourteen), backed by Leonard
Ginsberg (N.Y.U. '79, number four, Law Review) and Roosevelt Long (N
.Y.U.'82, number twenty-seven). What they lacked in class and
connections, they made up for in raw aggressiveness.

On the bench: His Honor Paul Stewart McCarthy,
Brooklyn Law School. Night.

The client was clearly guilty. But the court world
reflects the real world through doubled lenses that concentrate and
distort with equal intensity. The rules of society, faults in the
fate line, random events, skill and incompetence, precedent and the
sins of omission all collide with anxious irrationality to produce
nothing consistent. There was no reason, therefore, to expect or
predict a verdict of guilty.

In spite of that, the verdict was "Guilty."

His Honor P. S. McCarthy pronounced sentence: "Three
to five. Attica."

The entire defense team went into a state of shock
even deeper than that day in 1957 when the first Jew had been
admitted to the firm of Whitney, Whitney, Stanley and White. You
could have heard a pin-stripe drop.

The prosecutors with their street smarts, wise-guy
ways and ugly urban accents, already elated over victory, were
shocked. Even the courthouse spectators, aficionados of aberration,
were shocked.

But most deeply shocked of all was the defendant.

Attica. A nightmare. Attica. Why not say hell? Why
not say Auschwitz? He was sixty. Was that old enough to save his pale
white ass from rape? Big black street-lighting bodies were going to
slam his office-pale, office-soft body against tiled walls in naked
showers. Big fat fists. Heavy feet. Vindictive laughter as they bent
him over to violate him and make him vile. Giggling and guffawing
with the Joy of Destruction (fifth sequel to
Joy
of Sex
, sixteen weeks
N.
Y. Times
best-seller list). Attica.
Nightmare. Bedspring knives in the hands of P.R. punks. "Gimme
yo' cig'rettes, gimme yo' money. I pop yo' eyeballs, pop."

This was a white-collar crime. First offense. This
was a lawyer. Upper-middle-class, middle-aged attorneys do not go to
Attica. Did John Mitchell go to Attica? Dean? Haldeman? Erlichman?
Attica was for the animals. The judge, he crazy, putting the pigeon
in the cat cage. The Jungle Bunnies gonna eat him alive. Tear him up.
Suck his blood. Then pluck his feathers, just for the fun of it.

"At-ti-ca! At-ti-ca! At-ti-ca!"

"Never. No. I'm not going to go!" the
defendant yelled.

He looked over at his former partners, they who had
instigated this barbarity. "I'll get you all for this. I'l1 take
you down, and that cock-sucker Charlie too!"

His Honor P. S. McCarthy banged his gavel. The
defense restrained the defendant. When the court quieted, the judge
continued to expound, as is the judge's privilege and duty, on the
ratiocination that had led him to this particular judgment. His logic
was clear and precise. His reasoning was cogent and comprehensible.
That too was unusual.

His Honor said: "I send guys up the river for
stealing a fifteen-dollar radio. This guy stole eight million
dollars. He's going to Attica. "

The defendant's mind was screaming with rage and
fear. The defendant Edgar Wood (an Ellis Island variant on
Woiczkowsky) had been the attorney for Over & East, Inc. , the
giant conglomerate nicknamed "Takeover & Eat" on Wall
Street.

The chairman of the board was Charles Goreman. This
inspired more nicknames, for preppies thrive on nicknames, and every
Wall Streeter is a prep school boy, none moreso than the alumni of
DeWitt Clinton in the Bronx or Franklin Roosevelt High in Detroit.
Thus: "Gore & Glory: The Takeover Trail of Over &
East,"
1
"'Takeover & Eat, Still The Same Old Gory,"
2
 
"Charles 'Blood & Gore' Goreman—Swashbuckling King of
Speculators,"
3
"Mergers & Manipulations—The Whole Gory Story,"
4
"Captain Gore—The Last Pirate,"
5
"Gore Among the Bluebloods: A Social Takeover in the East."
6
('Forume: S. l7 '73. 'Forbes: Ja. 8 '79. 'Wall
St. Jrn1.: ll/6/75. 'Barrons: Jn. 6 '77. 'People: F. l7 *79. °Women's
Wear Daily: 3/5/Sl. )

The world sucked Wood down, and the hand that should
have saved him, the hand of Charles Goreman, did not reach out. They
had been together since before the beginning. Wood was Goreman's
personal attorney, as well as counsel to Over & East. He was on
the board. He was on the boards of several subsidiaries. Together
they had built an empire. Together, like Don Quixote and Sancho
Panza, like Roy Rogers and Trigger, like Sergeant Preston and his
lead dog King, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto. Now the white man had
come for Tonto, and the Lone Ranger said, "It's every Indian for
himself. Got it, Tonto?"

Wood saw, as in a vision, like a man going down for
the third time, the road to salvation. The paving stones of the path
were carved from vengeance, which made it sweeter still.

"Call the SEC," Wood told Whitney.

"What?"

"The SEC," Wood repeated. "Tell them
I'm ready to deal. Tell them to keep me out of Attica and I will tell
them everything that I and 'Gory' Charlie the Goreman did to turn
Over & East into Takeover and Eat."

"Edgar, we have not exhausted by any means our
normal, legal options." Whitney was somewhat patronizing.
Patronization is an attorney-client privilege. "We can appeal
both the sentence and the verdict."

"Listen to me, Whitney. " Wood spoke like a
man whose balls were being shaved by a burred blade. "Do it my
way. The SEC has been after our ass for years."

"Listen to me," patronizing and patient,
Whitney went on, "this is New York State Criminal Court. The key
words are Criminal and State. The Security and Exchange Commission is
not a judicial agency; it is a regulatory body of the federal
government."

"No. You listen. We're going my way."

"I know you're upset; you're shocked by the
verdict and even more by this obscene and unprecedented sentence. You
are an excellent attorney, Edgar, but you are not a criminal
attorney. We are. That's why you hired us. And we will go into
Appeals Court with both guns blazing and we will knock the heck out
of this business. Just you wait and see."

The bile churned upward like oil in a cracking plant;
his blood pounded with neon Broadway rhythms: "At-ti-ca!
Re-venge! At-ti-ca! Re-venge! At-ti-ca!"

"Whitney, go suck your own ivy-league,
blue-blooded dick."

"What!" said Whitney. Only colored
defendants and fellow Groton alumnae ever spoke to him like that.
Even then, only if they had graduated in the same class and said it
with a smile.

"This is what you are going to do. You will call
the SEC. You will tell the SEC that I will testify to every dirty
deed, every back-door deal. I will show them where the bodies are
buried and the closets to open to find the skeletons. They will be
delirious with joy. The first SEC investigation of Over & East
was in '63. I stopped them. They've come back at us almost every
goddamn year since, and every goddamn time I stopped them. Believe
me, Whitney, bet your D.A.R. membership on it, those boys are going
to sit up and beg."

"You're upset, Edgar. You don't really mean
this."

"You can also tell them that I will give them,
as a special bonus, Charlie 'Gory' Goreman on a big silver platter.
With an apple in his mouth and subpoenas up the ass."

"Edgar, take a couple of days to think about
this. We have a lot of alternatives. Believe me, I can get you out of
this. At least keep you out of Attica."

"Yes, you probably can . . ." Wood was
almost dreamy now; his mind had come through a climax; he was
post-orgasmic and his words came Boating to Whitney, ". . . yes,
you probably can. But it won't hurt Charlie at the same time . . .
that's the beauty of my way. Don't you see the beauty of it?"

"There is no rush on this. I'm sure the judge
will grant a continuance of bail while we appeal .... " Whitney
regarded Wood critically while he spoke. His client looked calm and
something close to content. Whitney wondered if he'd gone over the
edge, and, if so, how long it would be before he returned.

"Not necessary, " Wood's voice floated.
"Call them after lunch, and they'll be on the two-thirty
shuttle, plenty of time before the court closes. They will say:
'Please, please, Your Honor, this man is oh so very important to us.
Please let him come and visit our Nation's Capital instead of that
awful place upstate. We would like him to come and chat for a year or
two or three."

"I'm not sure," said Whitney like a
Cardinal gently chiding a subtle heresy, "that the SEC is
qualified to plead as
amicus curae
in New York Criminal Court."

"Paul, my boy . . ." And hearing his
Christian name Whitney understood it was irrevocable. When a patient
calls his doctor by his first name, or the defendant the attorney, it
means the dependent has taken his destiny out of the hands of those
gods and into his own.". . . do what I say. It's simpler than
dismissing you and finding other counsel just to make one call."

Paul Dean Whitney was upset. He hated it when a
client made decisions. Hated it even more than riding the subway. He
was so upset that he began to search his pockets for change before he
realized that Washington would be a credit-card call.
 

2
SQUASH

CHARLES 'CHIP' FORTE RIGGINS
,
a Yalie from his sideburnless cheeks to his Pumas with custom insoles
and back to his square jaw, was born to sail, play squash and work
for a Wall Street law firm. All of which he did. He was a young
associate at Choate, Winkler, Higgiston, Hahn & Moore, all of
whose names are on the masthead with "d'csd" next to them.
You know you're in the presence of real class when every single name
in the name is dead. It means the firm itself is so revered that the
mention of a living attorney can only demean it.

No one has ever come to any firm conclusion about
what I was born to do. I started playing squash because it was free.
A friend at N.Y.U. taught me the game and fixed me up with a fake ID
card. By the time he was thrown off the faculty, for reasons he never
coherently explained, and my free-play days were gone, I was strung
out on the game. . . It always gave me a special glow and left Chip
feeling disoriented when I beat him.

I beat him and he left his clothes in a sullen heap
in the locker room and went into the steam room wearing only a huff.

"What kind of cases do you really handle?"
he asked me. He spoke without looking in my direction in case his
eyes should accidentally drift to my genitalia.