Criminal That I Am (22 page)

I look over at the set and see Emeril Lagasse's
Emeril Live.
“Do you like Emeril?” I ask my aunt.

She shakes her head. “I don't like his food. It just too
too
much.”

This doesn't surprise me. I have learned the hard way that Iraqi cooking requires a delicate touch. On the television screen, Emeril is
dousing sautéed pineapple in thick whole cream with reckless abandon and yelling
“BAM!”
while the audience cheers. I look over at my aunt, who takes a drag of her cigarette and shakes her head again.

“See?” she says.

I've finished my plate, but my aunt has already brought me another. At some point,
Emeril Live
goes to commercial, and my aunt is assessing upcoming programming.

She nods toward the screen. “Now her,” she says with admiration, “I like. Everything she does is so nice.”

I turn my head toward the television set, but I already know who I will see. It is Martha. She is in a commercial promoting her television program
Martha Bakes
, standing against a robin's egg blue background, an exquisitely decorated cake before her. My aunt is rapt with her description of what the next thirteen episodes of the program will bring.

I watch my aunt for a moment. “You know,” I say, “that woman Martha went to prison.”

She turns her attention away from Martha to me. She waits for me to explain.

“She sold stock based on a secret tip,” I divulge. I don't even know why I am telling the story as though it's salacious. Martha's crimes obviously do not bother me one whit. But I nonetheless continue: “Then when the police asked her about it, she lied about it. And that's against the law. So she had to go to jail. Can you believe that?”

I'm begging her to be disgusted with Martha. Terrible Martha. You think you like her, but wait until you hear. She should have known better, done better, but she didn't. She had everything going for her, and then she threw it all away.

I'm leaned over the kitchen table waiting for her response. My aunt lights another cigarette and then shrugs her shoulders. “Eh,” she says. “So many people like to say the bad things other people do. We all make mistakes, do bad things. She did a bad thing. So what?”

I get up to take my plate to the sink. Then I walk over to my aunt and put my arms around her small frame, hugging her tight.

She is not expecting this. “What's wrong?” she asks.

At first I say nothing, but then I notice she is trying to wriggle the hand with her cigarette free.

“You are just such a good person,” I say.

My aunt takes a drag from her cigarette and looks at me intently. “Jennie,” she admonishes me. “It is only for God to judge.” She adds, in Arabic, “Isn't that true?”

“It's true,” I tell her. She eyes me suspiciously for a moment. She knows something is up with me but does not press. Instead, she gives my cheek a big Iraqi kiss, picks up her cigarette, and resumes stuffing eggplants.

After we feast on the fruits of her labor; after my mother calls and tells me that she is certain that everything is going to work out; after I receive an e-mail from my lawyer explaining that the
Giglio
information will be made public only if there is a trial, I do feel better. But when I go to sleep, I realize that it isn't my lawyer or my mother or even the delicious lunch that has put my mind at ease. It is my aunt's mercy toward Martha, a woman whom she does not and will not know, that makes me believe that I can return to New York and face what awaits me.

M
y departure from Iraq is bittersweet. I'm relieved to return to a country that enjoys uninterrupted air-conditioning and political stability. But I will miss my family, and for all of its blown-out buildings and beat-up streets, Baghdad, too.

Access at the airport is restricted, so my family can't accompany me. My aunt is worried about whether I can make it on my own. I laugh and tell her I have been to dozens of foreign airports by myself, that I will be fine.

When I arrive, the protocol appears to be more or less what it is at every other airport. I hurl my two suitcases on a luggage cart and make my way to airport security.

A security officer is scrutinizing one of my suitcases. He places it back through the X-ray machine and gestures to another official to take a look. Together they appear to be studying something they see in the bag. They decide to place it through the X-ray machine once more. They look at the screen again and nod their heads. Then they look at me.

“Open the suitcase, please.”

Mildly annoyed, I unlock the suitcase and pull the zipper. From the
way they are looking at my bag, I can't discern the offending item. Soon, however, one of the guards points to a copper jug that I purchased at an outdoor market, reminiscent of the one that resides in my childhood home, which in turn was brought by my mother from Baghdad on a trip she took three decades earlier. The man says something that I am unable to fully decipher, and I ask if he would please tell me in English.

“You cannot have this,” he says, referring to the jug. “You cannot take anything out of the country that is more than fifty years old. No. You cannot have it.”

I'm aware of this rule, enacted to stop the bleeding of Iraqi antiquities out of the country in the wake of the looting of the Museum of Iraq. But while my jug is vintage, given the provenance of my mother's jug, it can't possibly be more than fifty years old.

“But how do you know this is more than fifty years old?” I ask.

He doesn't address my question. “You cannot have this.”

“But how do you know it's fifty years old? There is nothing that makes that clear.”

He shakes his head. “No. You cannot have this.”

He still will not look me in the eye and this, combined with his staunch refusal to even discuss the matter, makes me angry. I move my head so that my eyes are in his line of sight. “Hello?” I say with not a little obnoxiousness. “Can you please explain to me how you are certain that this is more than fifty years old?”

Two other security guards appear from nowhere and join the chorus. “You cannot have this. It is more than fifty years old.”

“Yes, I understand the rule,” I say. I can hear the volume of my voice rising. “But how do you know this is more than fifty years old?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “You cannot have it.”

This entire exchange has drawn a bit of an audience. While there is another security line that is moving, a fair number of passengers seem content to stop and watch.

I hear my cell phone ring. It is my aunt, thank goodness. I pick up the phone. “Auntie,” I tell her with dramatic desperation. “They are saying I can't take the copper jug with me.”

“What? Let me talk to them.”

I hand my cell phone to one of the guards. The guard is telling her to
come back to the airport to retrieve the jug. I can hear my aunt on the other end of the line saying she will do no such thing.

The audience grows in size. The guard with my phone moves a few feet away from the security station and I walk with him so I can continue to follow what is being discussed.

After a few moments, I think to look over at my suitcase, which is lying open at the security station. A security guard, his hands ungloved, begins lifting various of my belongings in order to remove the jug from the suitcase. I'm watching it in slow motion, his bare hands wading through T-shirts and pajamas and underpants in order to root out the jug from its home.

I don't believe what I am seeing. I run over to the suitcase and bellow,
“Do not touch my things!”

Up to his elbows in my unmentionables, the man looks at me with genuine confusion.

“Put that down,” I say, pointing to his hands.

He ignores me. The audience is now the size of an off-Broadway show. As he pulls the jug from its secure place in my bag, various pieces of clothing spill onto the floor. He does not make any attempt to clean up the mess that he has made, he only walks away, my sentimental souvenir in hand.

The guard who has been speaking to my aunt hands my phone back to me. “Jennie,” my aunt says with angry resignation. “I am so sorry, but you have to give them the jug.”

“But why?”

“You just have to.”

I say nothing.

“Please, Jennie. You have to do what they say. They can really hurt you.”

“They can't hurt me,” I say, based on nothing.

“Please, I will never forgive myself if something bad happens.” She sounds scared. It's unclear if she is afraid of them or of me.

“But—”

“Please!”

“Okay,” I say begrudgingly. “This is such bullshit.”

I walk back over to pull my belongings together. I crouch down
on the ground and pick them up off of the floor. Then I bunch these together and shove them into the gap in my suitcase where the jug once was. Just observing its absence makes me seethe.

As I am still on the floor, trying to rearrange my toiletries, a man in a suit accompanied by a member of airport security approaches me.

“I need to see your passport, please.” He holds out his hand.

“Why?”

“We need to return the jug to an address in Baghdad.”

“What?”

“You can't just leave it at the airport. It is against policy.”

I am incredulous at the stupidity of what this man is saying. I look up from my luggage and glare at both men. “Well, it sounds like you should send the jug to the Museum of Iraq, since it's such a precious relic.”

At first they don't understand. When they realize that I am being sarcastic, they say, “Please, miss, your passport.”

I zip up the suitcase and place it on the luggage cart. “No,” I hear myself say.

“What do you mean?” The look of shock on the men's faces gives me a sick sense of satisfaction that only eggs me on further.

“I mean no, I will not show you my passport.”

“You have to.”

“No. I don't.”

“Please, miss. I need it for the paperwork.”

“Sorry,” I say. I relish parroting his words back to him. “You cannot have it.”

I expect that in the face of such open belligerence the men will be angry. Instead, their faces display confusion. I suspect they are not used to encountering someone so obstinate, so uncouth. I don't care. I grip the handles of my luggage cart and then make my way toward airport check-in.

When I'm standing in line, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see approximately twelve men in suits surrounding me. They don't appear to be particularly pleased.

One of the men at the front of the procession believes that my refusal to provide my passport must be based on some confusion. “Miss, we
need to see your passport only to complete the paperwork. It will just take a moment.”

“No,” I say.

“You cannot say no,” he says.

“I'm not going to show you my passport.”

Various passengers who are standing in the line are pleading with me to just do what the man says. I ignore all of them. A now-familiar indignation washes over me, and reasonableness is beyond my reach. I can only see the stupidity of the rule that is being imposed and my unfettered need to break it.

The man takes out his cell phone. “If you are not going to show us your passport, we will have to take action.”

“Fine,” I say. I'm going to go to Abu Ghraib over this stupid copper jug, but I still can't bring myself to acquiesce.

He's still on the phone when I call over to him. “Make sure you call the U.S. Embassy as well,” I say. “You are required to advise them of any U.S. citizens that you detain.” I make this up, but it sounds like it could be real.

While I assert this with confidence, I do internally consider the possibility that he will actually follow my directive, that the U.S. Embassy will determine my criminal background and fly in Some Prosecutor to personally prosecute me.

But it doesn't come to this. After a moment, the sea of suits disperses. There is no explanation, but the matter appears to be dropped, and I am left to proceed with check-in.

I should be relieved that my obnoxious behavior did not culminate in further action. But I am overcome with anger, incensed that I have been forced to leave behind my cultural heirloom, livid that my only memento of this city is a series of senseless dictatorial directives, irate that my family is forced to endure such nonsense every day. The fury courses through my veins, causing my whole body to shake. As I rifle through my carry-on for my antianxiety medication, as I pretend to ignore the looks of disbelief from my fellow passengers, as I consider what I've observed on this trip in the way of justice, I want only to personally bring down this corrupt excuse for a democracy and the overpaid hacks who service it. I long to storm the walls of the Green Zone
and oust this regime in favor of one that actually respects its citizenry. I am consumed with the desire to illicitly provide the people of Iraq with the sociopolitical equivalent of Xanax.

I
t isn't until later that I will look back on this incident and reflect on the fact that I have not learned anything from what I've done. That mere weeks after my charges are dropped, I can't keep myself from defying rules that do not meet my personal standards. That I cannot seem to fall in line. That there may very well be something profoundly wrong with me.

CHAPTER 9

Persona Non Bra-ta

U
pon my return to New York, I have reached a point in my work obligations where I must pull myself away from the Esca­leras' case as much as I can. It's now early fall 2011. Woefully behind on my article, I frantically attempt to throw something together that will look decent enough to prospective law schools. With my impending participation in the law school job fair, I must also pull together materials for eleven tenure-track interviews I have scheduled two weeks from now.

I have not done myself any favors by pushing everything to the last minute. The week before the job fair, I am slated to present a draft of my paper to the full faculty. My intention is to compensate for its dismal state with a dynamic presentation of my findings.

I am preparing for this presentation at home when I receive a call from my lawyer. He tells me that the Escaleras have made a successful motion to sever their trials into two. David Escalera's trial is slated to begin on Monday, the day of my presentation. Eduardo Escalera's trial is to start two weeks later.

My lawyer confirms that Cameron will serve as the key witness in both trials. There are now two opportunities for my crimes to be made public.

“But the cases could still plead out, right?” I ask.

“I would have to think so, yes,” my lawyer says.

This is all I need to hear to get back to work. “Okay,” I say. “Thank you for letting me know.”

“But there's one more thing,” my lawyer says.

There is always one more thing.

“David Escalera's lawyer called me.”

“You? Why?”

“He says that he plans on subpoenaing you as a witness for the defense and wanted to know if you would appear voluntarily.”

“You mean take the stand? In open court?”

“Yes.”

“You've got to be fucking kidding me.”

My lawyer indicates that he is not, in fact, fucking kidding me. Apparently, David Escalera's lawyer, presumably wanting to cast doubt on Cameron's testimony about his client, would like me to testify about what I did on Cameron's behalf. I suspect the thought is that this would make Cameron look like shit. It, of course, would make me look like shit, too.

This is probably not a valid basis to subpoena my testimony. If they file the subpoena, my attorney says, we will move the court to ask that it be quashed.

This plan gives me little comfort. Getting into a paper war with David Escalera will only increase the likelihood of press attention. I wish I had remained in Baghdad, outside the subpoena power of the court.

I think for a moment. “Please call him back,” I say. “Tell him that if I take the stand, I will tell the jury that I think his client is guilty.”

My lawyer is silent. Usually his silence indicates to me that I have said something that possibly reflects a relative level of mental instability.

I don't really care. I'm not getting on that stand. “I'm telling you right now,” I say. “If I get on that stand, I will answer every question by telling the jury that I believe David Escalera is guilty of drug conspiracy.”

I don't know if my lawyer ever relays my manifesto. A few days later, he does call me to say that David Escalera no longer wishes to call me as a witness. Relieved, I turn back to my presentation. I'm pleased with myself, pleased with the outcome. It does not strike me that there seems to be every indication that the trial is moving forward.

MONDAY

Monday is a big day. I am driving to school. I am mentally repeating my academic presentation in my head. I am nervous. I am excited.

Today is the day of my presentation. It's also the day that David Escalera is scheduled to go to trial. As of close of business on Friday, no plea agreement has been reached.

“Prepare yourself,” my attorney tells me on Friday. “This looks like it might be happening.”

But a wave of calm has come over me. I know I have logic on my side. For all of the posturing by the Escaleras over the past year, nothing can change the fact that (1) the vast majority of cases plead out, (2) many plead out on the eve of trial, and (3) no rational human being would risk years of his life behind bars when he can guarantee release in a matter of months.

They can't go to trial, I decide. They simply can't.

I look out the window. The sun so permeates my car that I must squint to see what's ahead. I feel as though I am driving into the light.

And so, today is very important. It proclaims both the end of the Escalera saga and the beginning of my academic career. I'm standing on the precipice of a whole new life.

I look out the window and smile. It is a crisp October day. A Monday. A big day.

I
'm in my office, putting some final touches on my presentation. It's close to lunchtime. My cell phone rings, displaying the office phone number of my attorney. This is already a good sign. He is at the office, not at the courthouse, where he said he might be in order to observe testimony.

“Are you busy?” he asks.

“I have a few minutes,” I say. “I have my presentation in a little bit.” I don't take my eyes off my written remarks on the computer screen.

“That's okay. I just wanted to let you know that they have completed jury selection.”

I look away from the computer screen. “What do you mean, they ‘completed' it?”

“They've selected a jury.”

“For the trial?” It's an inane question, but I hold out hope that I don't understand.

“Yes, for the trial.”

I swallow hard. “This is really happening.”

“This is really happening. I'll call you later when I know more. Good luck with your presentation.”

When we hang up, I remain frozen in my seat. After a few moments, I try to drag myself back to my presentation. But when I turn to the computer, something is wrong. The screen is blurry, the words seem to bleed into one another. I try to adjust the monitor and then realize that the problem is me, that I am looking at the screen through thick tears. My presentation is reduced to garble. I have otherwise forgotten what I was going to say.

I
remember little about my faculty presentation except this: it was an unmitigated disaster.

I will later describe it without exaggeration or embellishment as “the worst thing I've ever attempted in my life.” This is a competitive category. It includes a failed keg stand during college that culminated in a bruised butt bone, a misguided effort to win an argument with a DMV employee that ended with me being escorted out of the building, and an ill-fated attempt on an airplane to practice my fledgling Moroccan Arabic that resulted in an inadvertent promise to marry my seatmate's son.

But those failures are fleeting. My presentation is almost certainly recorded somewhere as the worst in history.

In an act of self-preservation, my memory has erased most of the details, leaving me only with bits and pieces. I remember being in my office, wiping my tears. I remember walking down to the faculty library. I remember taking my place at the podium. I remember sounding out sentences, taking long pauses, trying to come to a point. I remember looks of disappointment, confusion, and sympathy.

I know it is awful even as it is happening. But it's the comment of one of my colleagues afterward that confirms to me that I have failed.

“Try not to fidget next time,” she says. “It was a little distracting the way you kept playing with your bra strap.”

When it's over, I go to my office, grab my purse, and run out of the building. As I drive home, I can barely hold my head up. The sun glares at me with disappointment.

But I don't know that the worst is yet to arrive. That all of it: the disapproval, the humiliation, even the exposure of my bra strap, are all harbingers of what's about to come.

S
hortly after I return home, my attorney calls me. Luckily, there is too much at issue for him to ask me how my presentation went. I listen in silent despair.

“Opening arguments were this afternoon,” he tells me. David Esca­lera's attorney has told the jury that the government's case should not be believed because Cameron Douglas cannot be believed and this is because he convinced a female attorney to bring him contraband.

I say nothing.

“Cameron will be sworn in as a witness tomorrow.”

My lawyer has convinced the parties not to use my name in open court. While this is helpful, the comfort that it offers is still cold. A person of even mild intelligence could figure out my name in approximately three minutes by searching the court docket.

He offers other glimmers of hope. Cameron is going to have to explain other incidents that reflect on his credibility, and so my crimes may not get much play. The press will likely be more interested in what he has to say about his drug-dealing activities and anything having to do with his father than it will about me. It is possible, my lawyer says, that though the incident is mentioned in open court, it will never be reported.

I thank him, hang up, and promptly crawl into bed. Not to sleep—although if that were within the realm of choices, it would be my first—but because the physical exertion required of sitting seems too much.

It is still daylight out, and the sun is now smirking at me through my bedroom window. I pull down the shade.

I lie in bed, stare at the ceiling. I think of Cameron, probably doing the same. Here is the moment he has always dreaded. Now it is my moment, too.

And so things are as they always were: his suffering my suffering, his fears my fears. Separated only by space, there is nothing we can do but wait to see what happens next.

LATE MONDAY, EARLY TUESDAY

Overnight, an article appears on the
New York Post
's website.

The drug-dealing son of actor Michael Douglas got caught with “contraband” in the slammer. . . .

But “most shocking of all,” Douglas also got an unidentified female lawyer to smuggle him forbidden goodies while he was awaiting sentencing, defense lawyer Louis Aidala said.

Aidala didn't identify the woman or specify any of the contraband.

TUESDAY
*

MR. ANDERSON: Your Honor, the government calls Cameron Douglas.

CAMERON MORRELL DOUGLAS, called as a witness by the Government, having been duly sworn, testified as follows:

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. ANDERSON:

Q. Good afternoon, Mr. Douglas. How old are you?

A. I'm 32 years old.

Q. Where did you grow up?

A. I grew up between New York and California.

Q. Where do you live now?

A. Right now I'm housed in the MCC prison.

Q. The MCC is a prison?

A. Yes.

Q. How long have you been in prison?

A. Two years, three months, something like that.

Q. What did you do that caused you to end up in prison?

A. I was involved in a conspiracy, drug conspiracy.

*

Q. After you were sentenced, did you engage in any additional misconduct?

A. Yes.

Q. What did you do?

A. I—I got into a relationship with a—my defense—one of the defense attorneys on my case, and she—she was bringing me Xanax because it's something that we'd been trying to do through the court and BOP, but it was just—was proving to be really difficult, so she was bringing that for me.

Q. What is the Xanax for?

A. For anxiety.

Q. How many times did your attorney bring you Xanax?

A. I would say maybe three times.

Q. How many pills in total approximately?

A. I'd say 30 or so.

Q. Did you use them all yourself?

A. No.

Q. Did you share them with other people?

A. Yes.

Q. Who? With other inmates?

A. With other inmates, yup.

*

Q. You also mentioned you had a romantic relationship with this attorney?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you kiss?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you do anything more than that?

A. No.

*

MR. ANDERSON: Your Honor, may I have just one moment?

THE COURT: Sure.

MR. ANDERSON: No further questions, Your Honor.

*

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. AIDALA:

Q. Good afternoon. My name is Mr. Aidala. We have never met, have we?

A. No.

Q. We have never seen each other, have we?

A. No.

Q. We have never spoken to each other, have we?

A. No.

*

Q. Isn't it a fact that you were able to convince a young lady who was an attorney to smuggle drugs into a federal prison?

A. I asked her to.

Q. It was your idea, not hers, isn't that correct?

A. That's correct.

Q. You knew at the time it was a crime, didn't you?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And you knew she was a lawyer, correct?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. You knew she had to go to high school, college, law school, take the bar exam, sweat out the possible results, get admitted, go through the character committee, you knew all that, didn't you?

A. If I sat down and thought about it, yes.

*

Q. You didn't give a damn about her, did you?

A. I don't think that's accurate.

Q. You cared about her to get her to smuggle in drugs to a federal prison to commit a crime and to risk her attorney's license?

A. I didn't—you know, I didn't look that far. I didn't look that far ahead when I asked her to do that for me.

Q. All you cared about was yourself, right?

A. I guess so. When I was asking her to do that, yes.

Q. You know so, don't you? You know so, don't you?

A. I don't really know what my state of mind was back then. I was a little out of it.

*

Q. Had you regaled her with alleged feelings of affection for her?

A. I don't believe so. I—

Q. Well, had you kissed and were you able to not be seen?