That got his attention. And mine. What the hell was I thinking? I proceeded to pretend for several months that nothing had happened, while I tried to sort out my feelings. Larry was nothing like any guy I’d been involved with in the past. For one thing, I liked him. For another, he was a short, scrappy, eager-to-please guy with big blue eyes, a big grin, and exceedingly big hair. I had deigned to sleep only with tall, exotically handsome narcissists in the past. I didn’t particularly want to date a man, and this man wasn’t even my type!
Except that he was. Larry was completely my type. Even after the weirdness of our barroom kiss, we were still inseparable, although he was understandably confused. But he didn’t push, he didn’t demand answers or clarity, he just waited. When I remembered that pretzel, I realized that Larry had been in love with me back then, and I was in love with him. Within months we were a real, official couple, much to the shock of our skeptical friends.
In fact, it was the easiest relationship I had ever been in, by far. Being with him made me undeniably happy, so when Larry came to me, conflicted and confused, to tell me that he had been offered a great magazine job back east, it didn’t really disturb my equilibrium. My next step seemed so obvious, so natural, that the decision practically made itself. I quit my beloved job to move back east with him-by far the best risk I have ever taken.
LARRY AND I landed in New York in 1998-he was an editor at a men’s magazine, I worked as a freelance producer-and settled in a West Village walk-up. One warm May afternoon the doorbell rang. I was working at home, still in my pajamas.
“Who is it?” I asked over the intercom.
“Miss Kerman? It’s Officers Maloney and Wong.”
“Yes?” I wondered what the local cops wanted in the building.
“Can we speak with you a moment?”
“What is this about?” I was suddenly suspicious.
“Miss Kerman, I think it would be better if we spoke face-to-face.”
Maloney and Wong, large men dressed in street clothes, walked up five flights of stairs and sat themselves down in the living room. Maloney did all the talking while Wong looked at me impassively. “Miss Kerman, we are U.S. Customs officers. We are here to notify you that you’ve been indicted in federal court in Chicago, on charges of drug smuggling and money laundering.” He handed me a sheet of paper. “You need to appear in court on that date, at that place. If you do not appear, you will be taken into custody.”
I blinked at him silently, and the veins in my temples suddenly pounded as if I had run miles at top speed. The noise in my head scared me. I had put my past behind me, had kept it secret from just about everyone, even Larry. But that was over. I was shocked at how physical my fear was.
Maloney took out a pad and paper and conversationally asked, “Would you like to make a statement, Miss Kerman?”
“I think I’d better speak with a lawyer, don’t you, Officer Maloney?”
I staggered uptown to Larry’s office, barely remembering to change out of my pajamas. Babbling, I pulled him out onto West Twenty-second Street.
“What’s wrong? Are you mad at me?” he asked.
I drew a deep breath, because I couldn’t talk otherwise. “I’ve been indicted in federal court for money laundering and drug trafficking.”
“What?” He was amused. He looked around, as if perhaps we were participating in some secret street theater.
“It’s true. I’m not making it up. I just came from the house. The feds were there. I need to use a phone. I need a lawyer. Can I use a phone?”
Wait, maybe I couldn’t use the phone. Maybe all the phones remotely associated with me, including all of Larry’s office phones, were tapped. Every crazy, paranoid thing that Nora had ever told me was screaming for attention inside my head. Larry was looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
“I need to use someone else’s cell phone! Whose phone can I use??”
Minutes later I was on the fire escape outside Larry’s office, using Larry’s coworker’s phone to call a friend in San Francisco who was the biggest big-shot lawyer I knew. He got on the line.
“Wallace, it’s Piper. Two federal agents just came to my door and told me that I’ve been indicted for money laundering and drug trafficking.”
Wallace laughed. This was a reaction I would eventually get used to when friends first learned of my predicament.
“Wallace, I’m totally fucking serious. I have no idea what to do. I’m freaking out!! You have to help me.”
“Where are you calling me from?”
“The fire escape.”
“Go find a pay phone.”
I walked back into Larry’s office. “I need to find a pay phone.”
“Honey, what the hell is going on?” he said. He looked exasperated, worried, and a little annoyed.
“I really don’t know. I gotta go make this call. I’ll come back and find you.”
Later, when he heard a condensed (and probably less than coherent) explanation of the situation, Larry was uncharacteristically quiet. He didn’t yell at me for not telling him I was a former criminal before we combined our lives. He didn’t chastise me for being a reckless, thoughtless, selfish idiot. As I emptied my savings account for lawyer’s fees and bond money, he didn’t suggest that perhaps I had ruined my life and his too. He said, “We’ll figure it out.” He said, “It will all work out. Because I love you.”
THAT DAY was the beginning of a long, torturous expedition through the labyrinth of the U.S. criminal justice system. Wallace helped me find a lawyer. Confronted with the end of my life as I knew it, I adopted my standard pose when in over my head and scared: I closed myself off, telling myself that I had gotten into this mess and it was no one’s fault but my own. I would have to figure out a solution on my own.
But I wasn’t in this alone-my family and my unsuspecting boyfriend came along for the miserable ride. Larry, my parents, my brother, my grandparents-they all stood by me the entire way, though they were appalled and ashamed by my heretofore hidden criminal past. My father came to New York, and we spent an excruciating four hours driving up to New England, where my grandparents were spending the summer. I wasn’t feeling hip, cool, adventurous, counterculture, or rebellious. All I felt was that I had willfully hurt and disappointed everyone I loved most and carelessly thrown my life away. What I had done was beyond their comprehension, and I sat in my grandparents’ living room rigid with shame at the emergency family meeting, while they questioned me for hours, trying to make some sort of sense of what was happening. “What on earth did you do with the money?” my grandmother asked me finally, mystified.
“Well, Grandmother, I wasn’t really in it for money,” I answered lamely.
“Oh, Piper, for heaven’s sake!” she snapped. Not only was I a shame and a disappointment, I was an idiot too.
She didn’t say I was an idiot. No one actually said I was a shame or a disappointment either. They didn’t have to. I knew it. Incredibly, my mother, my father, and my grandparents-all my family-said they loved me. They were worried for me. They would help me. When I left, my grandmother hugged me hard, her tiny arms circling my rib cage.
Although my family and the few friends I told took my situation seriously, they doubted that a “nice blond lady” like me could ever end up in prison, but my lawyer quickly impressed upon me the severity of my situation. My indictment in federal court for criminal conspiracy had been triggered by the collapse of my ex-lover’s drug-smuggling operation. Nora, Jack, and thirteen others (some of whom I knew and some I did not), including African drug lord Alaji, shared my indictment. Nora and Jack were both in custody, and someone was pointing fingers and naming names.
No matter how badly things had ended between us, I never dreamed that Nora would turn me in to try to save her own skin. But when my lawyer sent me the prosecutor’s discovery materials-the evidence the government had gathered against me-it included a detailed statement from her that described me carrying cash to Europe. I was in a whole new world, one where “conspiracy charges” and “mandatory minimum sentencing” would determine my fate.