by Jack Kelleher
The following is a fictionalized telling of a true story from my one-time practice of law.
So, it all started when I got a phone call from Iggy Siegel at 9:30 on a Wednesday evening. I’d been reading a novel and sipping John Jameson’s finest but dozed off. Sunny too was sleeping in front of the television and we both jumped awake with that just busted feeling you get when you’re caught sleeping in your living room. Sunny answered the telephone with her best ‘I’m wide awake’ voice but made a face when she handed me the telephone. Covering the receiver, she whispered ‘It’s somebody named Isadore Siegel, calling from Minnesota, collect,’ and went right back to sleep on the couch.
I used to represent Iggy off and on after I left the D.A.’s office and was trying to build a law practice. He was a good client, paid my fee up front, didn’t expect miracles, and referred other business to me for years. You could say Iggy helped me put the kids through college. The truth is, he and I became friends in spite of my efforts to keep a professional distance. Any criminal lawyer will tell you that an attorney-client relationship lasts longer than most marriages, so it didn’t surprise me to hear from Iggy. I wondered how he was jammed up now and whether I could turn him down. My investments had paid off. I don’t go to court anymore. By this time next year, God and the IRS willing, I’ll be retired. Sunny and I want to travel and visit our grandchildren.
Iggy Siegel is a small-time criminal, always grazing around the edges of organized crime. He usually has lawful employment as a salesman, at which he’s very good, but likes to live just a little better than his earned income. Actually, Iggy likes the life; Las Vegas, big cars, and flashy women. Over the years I’ve gotten a kick out of his legal indiscretions because they always showed so much humor and imagination.
Once Isadore got free use of a warehouse in Jersey for a couple of weeks and let it be known in certain circles that he’d fence stolen clothing. With a warehouse full of very hot fashions, Iggy advertised a ‘Two Day Only Inventory Liquidation Sale’ in the New York papers and netted couple hundred thousand dollars. Then, he left town. Since Iggy’s victims were thieves themselves, he never got into my kind of legal trouble over this scam, but he made a few enemies in Jersey and the five boroughs. However, just to show you what kind of class the little guy had, he donated ten thousand dollars of his Jersey take to charity. I know because that year I was fund raising for Ireland’s Children and he gave them five thousand cash. Iggy didn’t want a record or any recognition; couldn’t tax deduct it anyway.
Another year, Iggy claimed to be an authorized agent of The Sammy Davis, Jr., Kentucky Stud Farm, a place I think he invented in his mind. The stock certificates he printed had a likeness of the then popular African American entertainer standing next to a well-endowed race horse. All four corners of the certificates were embellished with bosomy maidens in jockey uniform. Across the top the certificate read “Sammy Davis, Jr., Stud.” I know Iggy admired Sammy Davis, Jr., so in his own unique way, Iggy was paying tribute to the Las Vegas star. At any rate, Iggy sold the stock certificates at Belmont Park, usually to winners who were flush and probably half drunk. He didn’t make much money, but if what Iggy said is half true, Sammy Davis, Jr., got a tremendous kick out of the scam. Iggy, who I never caught in a lie, told me he met the star backstage in Vegas and the two of them had a good laugh. He had one of his stock certificates autographed across the face by Sammy Davis, Jr. It read, ‘To my pal, Iggy, from one stud to another, Sammy Davis, Jr.’
Anyhow, before I go any further, there’s something else you should know about Isadore Siegel. He never hurt anyone. He was a little guy, exactly the same size as his idol, Sammy Davis, Jr. People had picked on Iggy all his life, but he wouldn’t strike anyone and didn’t carry a gun, even when some mobbed-up hoodlums were looking for him over that Jersey Warehouse scam. My pal Iggy was a gentle, gentle man.
* * *
So, when Sunny handed me the phone, I accepted the reverse charge and waited for Iggy to speak. If he addressed me by Joe, my given name, or Jack, what the guys used to call me on the corner, I’d know the call was social. Iggy had what gamblers call a ‘tell.’ When the call was business, whether he was in custody, Iggy always called me Mr. Dempsey.
I tired sounding voice whispered, ‘Mr. Dempsey, this is Iggy Siegel. How are you and Mrs. Dempsey?’
‘Were fine, Iggy. Both the kids are married. We’re grandparents if you can feature that,’ I said. ‘It’s been a long time since I’ve heard from you. What, maybe five years?’
‘Longer, Mr. Dempsey, I’ve been in Allentown for parole violation. Mazel tov about being a grandfather. My daughter is still playing the field, which I think is French for ‘playing around’ and worrying me to death. Girls wait too long to get married nowadays and drive their parents nuts.
‘I didn’t call you before because I violated parole on purpose. I have cancer and I thought I’d do just as well in federal custody as on the street, maybe better. You know, I don’t have any family except my daughter, you, and other convicts. You and my kid have lives of your own to live, so I thought I go home to the cons.
‘I was right too, Mr. Dempsey,’ Iggy continued, ‘The prison system has taken good care of me. They treated my cancer and it was in remission for quite a while. Right now I’m in the Mayo Clinic courtesy of your taxes. But the bad news is, Joe, I’m terminal. The doctors say I don’t have more than a few weeks to live. I got good pain medication, but no future.’
‘Jesus, Iggy, I’m so sorry to hear that. Can I do anything for you? Would you like me to come up and visit, maybe do up a will? You have anything you want to leave to your daughter?’
‘Well, Joe,’ Iggy signalled that his request was personal, ‘that’s kind of why I called. You see, there’s this hard-on judge in Manhattan who is insisting that I be transported to New York just so he can sentence me on an old chicken-shit bunco rap I copped to years ago. I don’t give a shit, you understand, ’cause I’m a dead man, but I was hoping you’d appear with me for old times’ sake. The Manhattan corrections guys were always okay. We’d get a chance to talk.’
‘Wouldn’t you like me to tie up the extradition; screw them around for a few months so you can die in peace, Ig?’
‘It’s okay, Joe. Actually, I called you kind of late on purpose. My appearance is this Friday at 10:00 o’clock. I figured this way we could see each other and save you the time away from home.’
We talked some more, but not for long because of prisoner regulations at Mayo Clinic. I told Iggy I’d see him on Friday. By the time I got off the telephone Sunny had gone to bed. I finished my whiskey and joined her.
* * *
I got to Part 1-A before they brought Iggy down, so I watched some arraignments, bail applications, and sentencings. The judge was fairly new to the bench, but not to me. The privileged son of a Long Island Assemblyman, at 39 years old the Hon. Roger Dick was already busy maintaining his reputation as the judge who lived up to his name. He badgered lawyers, abused court personnel, and unloaded vilification at sentencing as if each petty thief, whore, and bookmaker were the worst criminal since Al Capone. Rog Dick is one of the more notable disasters of New York’s judicial selection process; a naive, arrogant, self-centred, corrupt son-of-a-bitch. I don’t like his father either. One of them will no doubt be governor someday. God willing, I’ll be retired somewhere in West Cork.
If the judge was new, the courtroom wasn’t. I’d practiced in 1-A as a rookie thirty-five years ago and nothing had changed but the players. The wooden railing, floors, and benches were black with grime. Dim yellowed light filtered through windows which hadn’t been washed since Tom Dewey was District Attorney. And, my favorite, the capital ‘T’ in word Trust had fallen off so long ago that you couldn’t even see a dirt shadow where it had been. On the wall high above the Hon. Dick, above the Great Seal of the State of New York, framed by two ancient flags, brass lettering proclaimed “In God We rust.”
Dana Drew, the Assistant Public Defender on duty was another notable train wreck. Instead of making that bastard Dick earn his pay, she kowtowed, cringed, whined, and wheedled while her clients were packed off to Rikers Island wholesale. Once, she actually thanked the Hon. Dick for maxing out a nineteen-year-old black pickpocket who’d copped to Jostling. I listened carefully for sarcasm but heard not a touch. Dana Drew practically moaned as she kissed his arse.
Ms. Drew’s physical appearance added bathos to the tableau. Obese to the degree that she’d given up all hope, Attorney Drew wore a cotton dress which, although down to her ankles in front, rode across too many miles of hams and buttocks to perform similar service behind. With insufficient yardage for modesty, Ms. Drew’s hemline rose dramatically from stem to stern. When she was standing, the courtroom audience of lawyers, felons, and other layabouts was treated to a panorama of Ms. Drew’s heroic chicken fat legs and thighs. Each time she reached down to pick up a new file, we all saw, as Iggy remarked sotto voce when he sat down next to me, ‘all the way to China.’
Poor Iggy was a mess. Through some prison system screw-up or malice, he’d been transported without his pain medication. A kindly corrections officer had slipped him two contraband Motrins, but, as anybody knows, when you’re dying of cancer nothing sold over-the-counter begins to touch the pain. Iggy was doubled over and, probably because I’d asked for a couple of minutes to speak with him, the Hon. Dick called Iggy’s case immediately, out of its order on the daily Court Calendar. I pretended to ransack my briefcase and beneath my breath asked Iggy if he had anything special he wanted me to say on his behalf. Iggy replied, too loudly I fear, ‘Tell that pencil peckered asshole to fuck himself with his gavel.’
The outcome of Iggy’s sentencing was as immutable as his future. So, I stood up, omitted the proforma argument in mitigation, and, careful to do so in a fashion which would not be coherent from a printed transcript, briefly and succinctly followed my client’s instructions to the letter. I thought the Hon. Dick would soil himself he was so out of control as he sentenced Iggy and heaped counter-abuse on me. Finally, his limited powers of expression exhausted, the Hon. Dick stormed from the bench. Since a secondary goal of my argument was to buy a few precious moments for me to say goodbye to Iggy, I felt briefly elated by this small victory.
Still agonizing, Iggy wasn’t able to say much. He squeezed my hand and forced out one his famous ‘Fake as Falsies’ salesman’s smiles. I’d like to say we shed manly tears, but the truth is Iggy and I cried like two old tarts watching soap operas in a 43d Street bar. The Corrections Officers just let us sit there and pretended to be interested in something happening outside the window.
Finally, I pulled myself together and Iggy, still in manacles, stood up to go. I said, ‘Jesus Christ, Iggy, I don’t know how things could be worse.’ Just as I spoke, as if on cue, the toothsome Ms. Dana Drew bent down to counsel table again displaying her fulsome charms to the now sparsely populated courtroom.
Iggy smiled broadly, gestured toward Attorney Drew with his right thumb, and croaked, ‘I do! That broad coulda been my lawyer!’ God forgive us, but we both laughed out loud until the once padded leather doors closed behind Iggy on his way to the holding tank behind 1-A.
* * *
And that’s the last time I saw Iggy Siegel. He died in The Tombs at 100 Center Street before they could transport him. God rest his soul.
