Blurred Memories...

As with most all traumatic events, my recollections are spotty. I can see some things with 100% crystal clarity while others jumble together in a mixed set of events that I can't seem to organize into a coherent timeline. For example, I remember getting into the DEA car and being driven off my driveway while the agent, Nick Aquino, began telling me how every day forward would be the worst of my life unless I cooperated. Do I remember arriving or checking into the Manhattan Correctional Center? Not with any clarity at all... Like I said earlier, that was a blur.

And it wasn't like this was a big surprise. We had been advised for more than a year that this was going to happen. I waited a few months too long before hiring a lawyer. The first one I went to was already in the case representing another defendant/friend of mine. He recommended another, Gerry Labush, who ultimately represented me through the entire nightmare. Gerry was an experienced criminal attorney and came with impeccable credentials. He had been a US Attorney before going into private practice. He had some very interesting clients, from the Mayflower Madame to Asian heroin smugglers to a wide range of people under investigation, under indictment, appealing convictions, etc. etc. This was a whole world that I knew pretty much nothing about.

Gerry, once he realized the scope of what I had done and had been doing, brought in a private investigator, Don Taylor. Taylor, a former treasury agent, was always on top of containment and keeping the other side from collecting more evidence. It turned out that the prosecutors didn't really have all that much evidence beyond the stories being told by convicted criminals. I was arrested as part of a sweep that took in at least two dozen people all up and down the east coast. Some were smugglers, some were couriers, some were distributors, some were simply co-conspirators in how things were stored, moved and sold. And it wasn't as though one of my people ratted me out. I was pulled into the situation by an employee of the smuggler who knew me only tangentially. And I hardly knew the guy... He hardly knew me. So while I'm sitting in jail that first week, the agents and prosecutors are trying to convince my attorney to get me to cooperate. He, on the other hand, is trying to figure out what they know and what they don't, what they believe and how much of that is bullshit.