“He came on the Jew boats. He was fished out of the hahbah.” Bobbie Flynn, a corrections officer, came from the same Charlestown project as Connery. “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 Hahbah. This must be one big tough Israeli Jew boy.
“Your lawyer’s here to see you. Come with me,” Flynn said to Mandelbaum.
Flynn 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, writing platforms on the right armrests. Years of initials and obscenities, from bored high school students and terrified jail inmates, covered the writing platforms. Ben Shapiro sat in the other chair, his briefcase open.
“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 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 a case without a jerkball client. Hundreds of clients, and still barely a handful I’d invite for dinner. And here was jerkball number 1,001.
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 his papers. “This is the charge—actually one of ten charges, all the same, one for each dead Coast Guardsman.”
Shapiro read from the document 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 wit 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 Mandelbaum appreciated that he’d come to a fork in the road of his life and 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 four thousand 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 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, you moved to Israel 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 in the airplane crash. 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 paced 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, 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. 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 moments 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. Let’s get to work.”
Within minutes of leaving the jailhouse, Shapiro was confronted by eager news reporters. Shapiro didn’t mind; in fact he reveled in the attention. News coverage was good for business, and certainly for his ego.
“Mr. Shapiro, do you have any personal hesitation about defending a foreign national who killed American servicemen on American soil?” The reporter attempted to inject a sense of righteousness into her questions about Shapiro’s representation of the only person—so far— arrested for escaping from the two ships.
“It has not been established that my client killed anybody.” Shapiro looked directly at the camera, not at the reporter holding the microphone in his face. He knew to look directly at the camera; the camera was the audience, not the interviewer.
That evening at dinner, Sally Spofford Shapiro turned off the TV. She usually liked her husband’s celebrity, but not this time. America was threatened by intruders, by murderers of the ten coastguardsmen and her husband was representing the worst of them.
“Please, Ben, please. Can’t you skip this one, just once, for me? I’ve never asked this before.”
“I don’t see why this case is any different,” he said. “I’ve represented unpleasant folks before. What’s the big deal this time? What I said on TV was true. I’m a lawyer. Sometimes I represent people who have done bad things. That’s my job. It gives me the greatest stories to tell at parties.” He smiled at her.
Sally stood, looking down at him. “This is different,” she whispered. “Different. It feels un-American. Yes, un-American, Ben. I’ve never asked you this before but… but this time this is important to me. Please, once, this time, let another knight slay this dragon.”
She sighed, exhaling like a balloon deflating. Those were her best shots, and they’d missed.
Ben looked at his plate, chasing cherry tomatoes with his fork while he searched for the right words. Or for the right effect. Sally knew her husband, knew he was always performing. In the midst of a fight with a courtroom opponent. In the midst of a fight with her. He lived his life onstage—at least, in his mind he did.
“You’re right,” he finally said, speaking without raising his head from the plate. “This one is different. This one I can’t refuse.”
“Because they are Jews?” she whispered.
He looked up. “Because I’m a Jew,” he said. He stood up and held both hands out to her. Reluctantly, she played her part, held her own hands out to him, then leaned her head against his chest, feeling his arms wrap around her, feeling one hand slide down to her buttock and squeeze. It had been a while. Her head dropped to his shoulder. He pushed her out at arm’s length.
“Let me tell you about the SS St. Louis,” Shapiro said slowly. “You know about Kristallnacht?”