Men at Work

The high road or the low road, the path of righteousness or the path of perdition, the fork in the road, and on and on the cliché s go, some of them as ancient as humanity because since there was such thing as humanity, its members had found the way to screw up their lives by making the wrong decisions at those points in their lives when making a different decision would have meant a good or a bad life. Here is the rub though, that good and bad distinction; who can tell one from the other? Monday quarterbacks can look on Sunday’ s game and explain blow by blow what went wrong or right, but at that point, who cares? The game is over, finito, done with.

Has my life been good or bad? God damned if I know. After my arrest In ever flew an airplane again… On the other hand, neither my family nor I have ever been hungry either, and we have a decent roof over our heads, and clothes, and health. So I fucked up big time and it bit me in the ass, but my life was not over with and I got my shit together and now I own a landscaping business and a few rental properties and can afford to live the American dream, even if it is in installments.

Dwelling on what it could have been breeds bitterness. Dwelling on my mistakes feeds my self pity. Playing the blame game exhausts my mind and such obsession won’ t let me see what needs to be done to continue on living. These things I learned right after my passage through the Department of Justice and the Florida halls of justice. It was a swift passage, but not uneventful.

From Vegas they hauled me to Jacksonville, Florida. Here I sat in a cell, waiting for the big foot of the Federal government to come down on me and squash me like a roach. It’ s funny how people make jokes about lawyers, how they mock them, that is, until they are in the hole and need somebody to pull them out. The joke turns on you and the despicable lawyer becomes a white knight, for a handsome fee, that’ s true, but a knight nevertheless. Nobody else is going to stand up for you, by you.

My knight for hire was Adrian Rubenstein, a rotund Jew whose bald head and droopy face made him look like a man with the social skills of a loner living with his mother. His clear baritone voice articulating flawless legal arguments dispelled such erroneous first impression and left not doubt about his brilliant legal mind. Besides a good brain for legal matters I believe that a good lawyer has an attribute that cannot be learn in law school. That attribute is the ability to deal, and to deal hard and long for his client, to deal until the prosecution gives up, to be stubborn and play the other side until the best deal possible is on the table, and then know when it’ s time to lay the cards down, call the game off and take the deal. That kind of eager stubbornness and good timing doesn’ t come from the classroom, I know that much. I’ m sure that Mr. Rubenstein would have made a successful career of selling used cars.

“ I need a lawyer, ” I told Agent Ramirez as they hauled me into the Jacksonville Federal building. “ Do you know any good ones?” I had asked as a joke because I figured that Federal agents were not in the habit of telling criminals where to get a good lawyer. Agent Ramirez didn’ t look surprised at all by my question.

“ Call Rubenstein, Rubenstein and Cohen. He’ s in the book.”

So Mr. Rubenstein ended up on my side. I doubt that Agent Ramirezever collected a referral fee. It is amazing how after all these years his name is the only one I remember of all the agents involved in my case. Another quality of a good lawyer is the ability to gauge how much the client is worth and to get every penny of that worth out of the client. If the client has a half million dollars, the defense will cost half a million dollars. If the client has a million dollars, the same defense will cost a million dollars. Again, such uncanny ability didn’ t come from a classroom but perhaps from working on a used car lot.

I paid without complaining; after all, it was blood money, you know, the one that easy comes and easy goes. There was too much at stake to try to be cheap. Sitting in a cell, I rotted alone because I knew too much and Ortega would put a price on my head if I were to be housed with the rest of the criminal population. From my confinement I deducted that the Feds wanted me for what I knew, not for what I have done.

Crime doesn’ t pay but punishment can be bargained with, and at this bargaining game Rubenstein excelled. Many times I sat at the table across the D.O.J’ s minions who spoke of nothing but the evil that would fell me if I didn’ t bend over and let them stick it to me. I said nothing, as instructed, and let Rubenstein argue with the Justice men, and argue they did, with me as a bargain chip. On one side of the table were the years of imprisonment that for sure were mine to suffer; on the other side was what I knew about Ortega and his business. I was just a gofer; it was Ortega whom the Justice men wanted. Rubenstein job was to see with how much I could get away with in exchange for what I knew.

At the end all came down to Sonia’ s murder. A good chunk of her body had washed out on the shore, half eaten by sea creatures but still identifiable, so the State of Florida had a corpse to argue for murder. I was the witness they needed to have Ortega tried for first degree murder in state court. The state would prosecute because then Ortega would face the chance of sitting on Ol’ Sparky, which was a lot more colorful that just a plain lethal injection if he were convicted in Federal court. Frying somebody alive is always more spectacular than putting them to sleep, and is more apt to loose tight tongues when used as a threat.

I ended up with a twelve year suspended sentence with no time to serve, ready to testify in court, the State of Florida vs. Raú l Ortega in the murder of a Sonia Aguilar. This meant having to enter the witness protection program after taking the stand against Ortega, and ending up like a washed out mobster living in Arizona and working in a car wash. I wouldn’ t be able to contact my dad, and that was the hardest part of the deal.

While it was true that my plans to become a hot shot airline pilot had fallen apart, the lesson learned about how the best laid plans can go to shit repeated itself right in front of my eyes when the grand plan of the Feds to nail Ortega blew to pieces with him. A bomb went off in his car and bits of Ortega blew all over Hialeah… Bang!There goes the whole enchilada. I don’ t know why Ortega got whacked but I surmise that he knew more than I knew and powerful associates got wind of what was coming to him and wanted him to be quiet, for good.

Rubenstein, being a smart cookie, had already gotten the deal approved by a judge and in writing, so the Feds couldn’ t go back on their deal and sock it to me thus I got off the hook by a stroke of luck, good for me and bad for Ortega. Again, what is good or bad depends on where you are standing at the time, or in the case of Ortega, sitting.

Still, I got a felony conviction on my record, and that meant the end of my flying career. I would never be able to pass a security check and as per FAA regulations, I wasn’ t a man of good moral character so I could never qualify for an ATP rating. Being a convicted felon is not small peanuts; even when filling a job application at McDonald’ s the impertinent questions, “ have you ever being convicted of a crime?” and “ If yes, please explain” appear. Good luck explaining in a couple of sentences that you are a reformed drug smuggler, the type that used to smuggle coke by the ton.

I ended up on the street, a free but poor man who got to keep his original name, a convicted felon, and off the hook for the Atlanta incident; the Feds never connected the dots that would have put me in that mess. Debbie probably died of an overdose before she had the chance to get into trouble with the law and use me as a bargaining chip in her own deal.