The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez (24 page)
Read The Short Sweet Dream of Eduardo Gutierrez Online
Authors: Jimmy Breslin
Tags: #Social Science, #General
At the ruins of the last site, the one that was going to be numbered 50 Middleton, he went up the ladder. For so many nights and days in San Matías he tried to imagine this place. But now there was only a pile of cinder blocks and bricks and twisted metal that has an evil shine.
The sound of a bus idling comes from Middleton Street.
Suddenly, and in a quiet voice, Daniel says that he can see Eduardo at work. “He is talking to the other workers,” Daniel says. “He is happy and young.”
Now he steps up to the vision that has dissolved. He sees the pile of bricks at the place where the floors caved and his son dropped face first into a lake of concrete covering the basement.
The father’s face does not change. He does not talk. The moment causes tongue and face to be frozen. This is where his first-born son died. Walk up to the place and look at it. Then call the boy’s mother in Mexico and tell her what it looked like. What else is there to do? It is your life as a Mexican.
Now tears finally run from the corners of his eyes.
He stays only for a few minutes. Leaving the street, they drive him up a few blocks to Woodhull Hospital, which sits under the el.
“This is where they took Eduardo,” somebody told Daniel.
Immediately he twisted to see the building. He took a pencil out of his pocket and tried to write the name down on a scrap of paper. The driver, Awilda Cordero, stopped the car and printed it in large letters.
“Woodhull,” he said, reading it.
He put the piece of paper into his breast pocket. “For the mother,” he said. The hospital made him cry.
He had six days left in Brooklyn before flying back to San Matías. He was staying in a blue frame house on a small crooked street in Brighton Beach with Mariano and three others from San Matías, who had moved a few blocks from the one room where everybody slept on the floor.
At 11 A.M. on a Thursday, he was watching an animal show on the Discovery Channel. He was fascinated by a large python at work. The el train ran almost directly over the house, and the noise kept filling the room.
He had no way of knowing that suddenly on this day a year and a half of frustration was coming to an end a few miles away, in downtown Brooklyn, where the clerk in the fourth floor federal courtroom of Judge Leo Glasser called out, “United States of America versus Ostreicher, Criminal Information 01CR717.”
Eugene Ostreicher, blocky and decisive of step, walked up to the bench. He had on a black yarmulke and a black suit with a white shirt open at the collar. His beard was two large white puffs coming from his cheeks. He had sharp dark eyebrows over pale blue eyes. He stood motionless.
“Frank Mandel for Eugene Ostreicher,” his lawyer, a thin man, said.
“Assistant United States Attorney Richard Faughnan for the government.”
Ostreicher was sworn in. He was here to plead guilty to a criminal information. This is different from a grand jury indictment, which causes a full jury trial. A criminal information gives a defendant the chance to slither out of deepest trouble with a plea.
The judge said, “Do you realize that you must tell the truth, that it is a crime to tell a lie after you swear to tell the truth?”
“Yes,” Ostreicher said.
Glasser then asked him if he was under any medication that would interfere with his ability to understand what he was doing. Then he asked him to read a copy of the charge against him. The judge then said that rather than plead guilty right here he could stand on his constitutional right to a grand jury. He told Ostreicher that a grand jury is made of between sixteen and twenty-three people, and if at least twelve say there is a probable cause that a crime has been committed, there will be an indictment. Did Ostreicher understand?
He understood too well. For eighteen months he had been twisting and ducking the chances of such a thing, for he understood that the indictment inevitably leads to a trial and the chances for imprisonment would be high.
Now Glasser read the charge. “On March 14, 1996, in the Eastern District of New York you knowingly made a false statement to an OSHA officer by stating that at buildings number 25–49 Lorimer Street there had been no collapse.”
Glasser pressed Ostreicher. “You have a right to say not guilty. In that case there will be a public jury trial.”
Ostreicher showed no anxiety.
“I do not accept a guilty plea from an innocent man,” Glasser said.
(The last time I saw Glasser, he took a guilty plea from Sammy Gravano, not quite an innocent.)
“How do you plead?” Ostreicher was asked.
“Guilty.”
After a year and a half of investigations by one agency after another, Ostreicher convicted himself of spitting on the sidewalk.
Right to the end, most thought that the plea agreement was supposed to be for an OSHA civil case only, and therefore there would be no prison time. However, the Labor Department agent, James Vanderberg, had never quit pressing for a felony criminal charge and won out in the back rooms of justice. The civil charge was replaced by a criminal felony charge. It included what Vanderberg wanted: a fine of a million dollars so at least the victims could get something. Usually there is nothing for them.
In court, the judge gave him one part of the sentence. He would never be allowed to build again, which was something the Fire Department’s Blaich had called for at least three years ago. Then a million-dollar fine was to be paid to the victims of Middleton Street. He was not charged with the deadly collapse, but he was fined for it because on a plea, you can put in almost anything—write down “Rome burning.” There was no way anybody was going to let Ostreicher walk away from Eduardo Daniel Gutiérrez’s death with no penalty at all. Glasser said the additional sentencing date would be in October. Ostreicher faced anything from zero to five years, the judge said. The chances were that there would be no prison time. That was to happen.
When the guilty plea was over, Mandel stood in the aisle and said to somebody, “Where did you get the police badge from?”
“From the guys he showed it to.”
“Who showed it?”
“Richie the Rabbi.”
“Who? There is no such person.” Mandel playfully punched one of the people with him. “He says there is a Richie the Rabbi in the family.”
Mandel laughed and the guy laughed. Ostreicher shrugged. He was not going to say anything to anybody, because that was what had gotten him in trouble. Of course there is a Richie the Rabbi, proper name Chaim. Only this time there was no federal guy asking an official question.
Richie the Rabbi went to Belgium after the collapse. One day he called Captain Bill Gorta at police headquarters in Manhattan and said, Gorta remembers, “I just had a baby. I have to go to City Hall in Brussels to register him. Do you think you could call them and ask them as a courtesy to the NYPD to let me go right through without having to wait on line?”
Later in the day, Daniel stood on the street outside the house in Brighton Beach. The two hundred American had lasted only a couple of days. Mariano, from the house, had found a temporary job for him, installing floors in a supermarket around the corner. Daniel worked ten hours for $50. He hated it. He realized this was how his son had started here. He wasn’t going back to the job. He would sit here until he had to get his plane.
“A million,” he was told. “For all the victims.”
“All the victims.”
“Yes, but your son died so that should be the largest amount.”
That was a wrong estimate. The Russian, Hurshed, would have to live with his permanent damages and would need every dollar. He would get the most, $800,000. As Eduardo was gone, his father would receive $100,000.
But now, not knowing this, he shrugged. “I only stayed here to see where the accident was. If they give me something, fine. But I’m going back on Thursday. I don’t like it here.”
He held up four fingers. “I have four more.”
“José is the oldest?” he was asked.
“He is married. I just have my first grandson.”
“Who carries the bricks in the yard now?”
“I do. With Miguel. You saw him when he was young. He is grown up.”
“Then who are the little ones at the end of the line?”
“The girls. Maria Cruz. Zenaida.”
He looked down at the sidewalk. Then he took out a pack of Marlboros. When he lit one, it was the end of his conversation. He had lost too much around here, in Brooklyn, in America, and he wanted to get home.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
J
IMMY
B
RESLIN
has been writing a syndicated newspaper column for more than forty years. He is at
Newsday
and is the author of
The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight
and, most recently, the novel
I Don’t Want to Go to Jail
. He lives in New York City.
Copyright © 2002 by Jimmy Breslin
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Three Rivers Press, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2002.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Breslin, Jimmy.
The short sweet dream of Eduardo Gutiérrez / Jimmy Breslin.
1. Gutiérrez, Eduardo, 1978–1999. 2. Alien labor, Mexican—New York—New York—Biography. 3. Illegal aliens—New York—New York—Biography. I. Title.
HD8085.N53 B74 2002
331.6’272’07471092—dc21 2001047283
eISBN: 978-0-30755963-0
v3.0
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