Being Oscar (10 page)

“After receiving Mister Baker’s permission, we opened the bag and saw what looked like over $150,000 in twenty-dollar bills. We placed him under arrest.”

Next witness. A second fat redneck took the stand, and by God, his testimony was virtually verbatim of what the first witness had said.

“They lyin’, Mister Goodman,” Manny said once again.

Next witness, a third fat redneck, told the same story all over again.

Finally, I looked at Manny and said, “Three white cops swearing to tell the truth against a black heroin dealer. Who’s going to believe you?”

The fourth cop came in and offered more of the same testimony.

“They all lyin’,” Manny said. “The people in the van will tell you.”

“What van, Manny?” I said.

“You know, the one that picks up the pilot and crew after the plane lands.”

“You saw them?” I asked.

“Yeah. And I’m sure they saw what happened.”

With that, I asked the judge for a two-day continuance. He wanted to know why. I said I wanted time to research something that my client had come up with that might be very important. The judge granted the request, but only until the following afternoon.

There was an audible groan from the courtroom. The prosecutor had stacked the room with people from his office. This was a tactic I’ve seen often at hearings. It’s a not-so-subtle way to put the judge on notice, an attempt to intimidate him. But Judge Hunt wasn’t the kind of guy to be intimidated by that kind of petty ruse.

I rushed back to my office and called Vinnie Montalto, who worked on wiretap cases for me and who listened to the tapes. I asked him to find out the airline, the flight number, and the name of the pilot whose plane Manny was waiting for at the Texarkana Airport. About an hour later, Vinnie reported back: mission accomplished.

The airline was Golden Eagle. I called the pilot, who lived in San Francisco. I introduced myself and asked him if he had seen what had happened. He said he had and told me the story. I told him to fly to Vegas and charge his ticket to me. I would get him a room and if he brought a friend with him, I’d buy them dinner at one of the best restaurants in town. The next day, the pilot joined me in court.

I put him on the stand. He took the same oath the cops had. After some preliminary questions, I said, “Tell the judge what you saw.”

“It was like
Miami Vice
,” he said. “These four cops stormed the guy over there,” he continued, pointing to Manny. “They ran
with their guns drawn, ripped him out of his car, threw him on the ground, cuffed him, put guns to his head. One of them kicked him while he was on the ground.

“Then another one took the keys out of the car ignition and opened the trunk. He pulled out a valise, which he opened and then screamed, ‘Jackpot!’ It was like the Gestapo. I never saw anybody brutalized that way.”

Judge Hunt looked at the prosecutor, expecting him to do the right thing, to concede my motion to suppress. But all the prosecutor said was that his office intended “to investigate Mister Goodman for bribing this witness.”

With that, Judge Hunt threw out the evidence.

A technicality? No. It was the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Manny Baker was right. They were lying pieces of shit. Was anything ever done to those cops to deter that from ever happening again? You probably know the answer to that question.

T
he waiting room in my law office had become a legalistic melting pot. Clients from many different backgrounds would spend time there waiting to speak with me. Some were alleged Mafia bosses and capos. There was also an oral surgeon indicted for sexually molesting seven patients while they were under the influence of an anesthetic “cocktail,” a federal judge accused of accepting a bribe from a pimp and whoremonger, and a suspected drug dealer charged with having a judge in Texas assassinated.

Then there was Bobby Kay, perhaps my smallest client. Bobby was a little person, but he was a big player in the gambling world. He used to hang outside one of the bookie joints in town and transmit information about betting lines and wagers to gamblers throughout the country. He used a pay phone outside one of the betting parlors. He was so short, he had to jump up to drop a dime in the slot before he could make the call.

He was a real operator with a great sense of humor. He would often joke about his stature. One of his favorite lines was that while many of the guys he knew took the fifth (the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination) and refused to testify when called before a federal grand jury, because of his size, he couldn’t do that.

When I asked why, he replied, “I had to take the two and a half.”

I guess you could say I had it all—the short and tall, the alpha and omega of criminal jurisprudence.

I never had a problem accepting these cases. We had a saying in my office, “Where there’s a fee, there’s a remedy.” There was more to practicing law than that, of course, but my practice was also my business. It was the way I supported my family. I didn’t bring moral judgments into my decisions about accepting cases or defending clients. I was providing a service, and they were willing to pay for it. I was also honoring the Constitution. For me, it was a win-win.

These were all high-profile cases. They kept me busy and, unfortunately, often kept me away from home. Carolyn and I had developed a routine, however, that seemed to work.

Growing up, I don’t think our kids had any real concept of what kind of criminal law I was practicing. And that’s probably as it should be. When I had a big case out of town, I would usually leave on a Sunday night and return Friday evening. For my kids, that was just Daddy’s job.

On Sundays Carolyn would cook breakfast, and everyone got their favorite. Pancakes. Eggs. Cereal. Even hot dogs and spaghetti, which was Eric’s choice. I’d be gone all week, so Carolyn had the responsibility for the kids. I’ve said this before, but I can’t say it enough: she did an outstanding job. I would convince myself that I was providing quality time with my family, rather than quantitative time. That was the reality of my work schedule.

I’d come back home on Friday nights and Carolyn would pick me up at the airport. She’d have a babysitter at the house and we’d go out to dinner, usually to The Bootlegger, a local pizzeria. It was a date night for us, and in some ways that hectic schedule kept the spark going in our marriage. We made the best of the time we had together.

Saturdays were always devoted to the kids. I went to soccer games, viola recitals, plays, whatever they had going. Then we’d all go out to dinner together. Even when they were young, we took them out. They were all well behaved—again, thanks to their mother’s influence—and we never hesitated to bring them to a nice restaurant, never worried about them acting up or causing problems that might upset other customers.

After dinner on Saturday night we’d head home, put the kids to bed, and just relax. I’d usually have a martini or two. Carolyn might join me. Then Sunday morning we’d get up and start the routine all over again.

Sometimes the kids might meet one of my clients, and without exception, the clients always went out of their way to make the kids feel comfortable. I think they got a kick out of them. My clients were seeing a different side of me, and I think it made my job easier. They knew I was more than just a mouthpiece looking for a legal fee.

Chris Petti, supposedly the mob’s guy in San Diego, used to refer to the boys as “Huey, Louie, and Dewey,” the Disney duck characters. Kansas City mob boss Nick Civella called Oscar Jr. “Grunt” because the first time he met my oldest son, he was just a baby. We were at the Venetian restaurant eating dinner and Oscar was napping. He was grunting as he slept, and Nick always remembered that.

Joe Blasko, a rogue Metropolitan police officer in Las Vegas who got tied up with the mob, taught my son Ross how to pitch. Joe had played minor league baseball before taking his life in another direction. Jack Binion, the son of legendary casino owner Benny Binion, once took my son Eric on a three-day ski trip.

All my clients and friends were great with my children, and I think they and the kids all benefited from the relationship. I had
degrees and higher education, but I still learned a lot from my clients.

Prosecutors and FBI agents might label them criminals.

I saw them as people.

There was one client, however, who had an influence on me like no other—Tony Spilotro.

Talk to the feds and they’ll tell you “Tony the Ant” was sent to Las Vegas by the guys who run the Chicago Outfit. He was there to look out for their interests. His background, from the resume the FBI put together, included nearly two dozen murders. One particularly gruesome killing allegedly involved placing his victim’s head in a vise and tightened it until the guy’s eye popped out, not to mention part of his brain matter.

That was Tony’s rep, although I didn’t know any of that when he walked into my office one day and asked me to go over one of his contracts. Tony had purchased a gift shop at Circus Circus from a guy named Willie Cohen. Willie was friends with Jack Gordon, who later married La Toya Jackson, Michael Jackson’s sister. I have her photograph in my office, autographed “La Toya Gordon.”

I had represented Jack Gordon in a prostitution case in California. He had some massage parlors there, and he also had one of those shops where you could get a quick oil change for your car. Turns out if you used your credit card at the massage parlor, it would show up as an oil change. I guess that gave new meaning to the term “lube job.”

When Spilotro took over the gift shop, he changed its name to “Anthony Stuart’s.” Stuart was his wife Nancy’s maiden name. It was a legitimate business as far as I could tell, and the contract was strictly on the up-and-up.

Tony showed up at my office dressed very professionally in a jacket and tie. I looked over his paperwork. The meeting only lasted fifteen minutes. To me it was not a big deal, but people in law enforcement were watching Tony’s every move. This was just the start of a ten-year run where it seemed like every day I was fighting some battle on his behalf.

The gaming regulators were putting pressure on Jay Sarno, the owner of Circus Circus. They told him he had to get Spilotro out of the place or Sarno would lose his casino license.

Sarno was a visionary. Prior to Circus Circus, he created Caesars Palace, and probably had as much to do with shaping the modern theme-oriented Las Vegas as Steve Wynn or Howard Hughes. But he also was a libertine in his tastes and habits. He was a gourmand. He ate, womanized, and gambled to excess. He always wanted more. And as a client, he wouldn’t listen.

I had represented Sarno in a bribery case that was a clear case of entrapment by the IRS. We beat it, but it was a struggle—not because of the evidence, but because of my client. He and I were constantly banging heads during the trial. He tried to tell me what questions to ask and how to cross-examine witnesses. I guess he was just used to being in charge. He would get angry and red in the face and start to sweat, and when he did, his toupee would start to slide off his head. Several jurors noticed and couldn’t help themselves. They started to laugh. Maybe that helped us in deliberations; you never know. Maybe they felt sorry for him.

Because of his experience in that case, I knew that Sarno was leery of law enforcement. It’s a shame that an individual has to feel that way. Most citizens never come in contact with the law, and they have this image of G-men as upstanding, honest, and all for God and country. A lot of agents are like that, I’m sure. But many of the ones I had to deal with were cut from a different cloth.

Sarno was a creative genius, but he still had to deal with the pettiness of the state gaming regulators. When they threatened his license because of Tony Spilotro’s gift shop, Sarno had no choice but to buy him out. I think Tony paid $70,000 for the gift shop, and I believe Sarno had to pay $700,000 to buy him out. Not a bad profit for Tony. For me, it was the start of a fascinating relationship.

While I was representing Tony, he was a target of the Federal Organized Crime Strike Force, the Justice Department, the FBI, the IRS, the Metropolitan Police Department, Nevada gaming regulators, and the media. It seemed to be a tacit conspiracy in which they literally “created” this nefarious organized crime figure, this hit man and extortionist who wielded unbelievable power in an underworld that stretched from Chicago to Las Vegas. At least that was their version of who Tony was. That they couldn’t prove any of this didn’t seem to matter. As a result, Tony’s problems became a big part of my criminal practice. Indictments, grand jury appearances, Gaming Control Board and Commission hearings, searches and seizures gave me a forum to litigate serious constitutional issues in courts and other legal forums.