The Final Testament of the Holy Bible (35 page)

Looking at Ben’s file, I knew he wasn’t going anywhere. He had been charged with the attempted murder of his brother. The prosecutor claimed that he had also burned down a church and had charged him with arson. He had jumped bail on a long list of federal charges. I remembered reading about the federal case in the newspapers. Some kind of heavily armed apocalyptic cult in the subway tunnels. A large number of arrests. The leader of the cult had been killed in prison while awaiting trial, after supposedly attacking a guard. There were a number of questions surrounding the death, including whether he had actually attacked anyone, and even if he had, whether the force used in subduing him, which killed him, had been justified. Ben was facing life sentences in both the state and federal cases. He was considered violent, and an obvious flight risk. There was mention in the file of potential mental instability. He had been booked in Queens, but transferred for three days of treatment to a local hospital that had a secure wing. He had been taken into custody with severe facial swelling, multiple facial lacerations, nine broken ribs, a punctured lung, and a broken arm. Normally I would have assumed that the police had administered the beating. The file, however, said that he had been taken into custody in that condition, and that he had been injured by witnesses trying to subdue him after his alleged offenses. I saw him as I was walking to the interview. Needless to say, his appearance was startling. He was sitting in a hospital robe, chained to a chair. He was absolutely still, motionless. And
he looked like he was in bad shape. Stitched gashes across one of his cheeks. Black eyes. A nose that had clearly been broken. One arm in a cast. And if he hadn’t had his ass beaten recently, he would still have been startling. He had jet black hair and marble white skin. He was covered with the most severe scars I had ever seen, and I had seen plenty of them. He was extremely thin, though he did not look unhealthy. Actually, despite his wounds, quite the opposite. He looked like he was glowing in the way people sometimes describe pregnant women as glowing. He was staring straight ahead. Did not acknowledge anyone or anything around him. As I got closer, he started following me with his eyes, though he did not move in any other way. It was unnerving. Like I was being stared down by a statue. I sat down across from him. I set the open file down on my lap.

I spoke.

Hello.

He smiled.

Hello.

I’ve been assigned to be your public defender.

Thank you.

You’ve been charged with attempted murder, assault and battery, and five counts of arson. Do you understand these charges?

Yes.

Do you want to tell me what happened?

It doesn’t matter.

If you want to try to stay out of prison it does.

What happens to me at this point is beyond anything you can do.

You’re facing a life sentence. I’d like to try to help you avoid it.

Do you know why I’m really here?

I don’t know anything except what’s in this file, which is very basic information, and lays out some very serious charges.

Whatever’s in that file is meaningless to me. And it doesn’t actually have anything to do with me.

It has absolutely everything to do with why you’re in court today.

I don’t recognize that this court has any authority over me.

Unfortunately, you’re going to have to.

No, I’m not.

I need you to work with me on this, Mr. Avrohom. He didn’t respond. He just sat there, staring straight ahead. It isn’t unusual to have a client who won’t speak. Or a client who has no respect for the legal system. There are times, quite often, that I too don’t have any respect for the system, which is one of the reasons I do the job. Unlike other offenders I’d encountered who didn’t speak, or seemed potentially belligerent, though, he didn’t have a perp stare. A perp stare is an offender’s attempt to appear strong, intimidating, and fearless in the face of their charges, in the face of the system aligned against them, a system that often destroys them. There is always fear in a perp stare. That’s actually all that it is. Fear. An attempt to control fear. His stare was quite the opposite. It was soft. Almost gentle. If I had seen him sitting somewhere other than where he was, I might have thought he had just received good news. He
seemed happy. And calm. Remarkably still. He, and his expression, were absolutely devoid of any fear. I believed, in that moment, and still do, that if I had put a gun in his face, he would not have moved. If I had told him there was an electric chair in the room next to us and it was being prepped for him, he would not have moved. If I had told him he was going to be burned at the stake or crucified, he would not have moved. He was beyond it. He was the first and only person I’ve ever seen or met who was truly beyond fear. I literally did not know what to say.

We sat there for a minute. Maybe two. We did not have much time. We should have been talking. I knew, though, that regardless of what I said, he was not going to cooperate with me. He smiled at me and lifted his hand. He placed it on the glass partition and held it there. He stared at me. Looked directly into my eyes and held his hand on the partition. Although I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, I raised my hand and placed it directly opposite his. And I don’t know how it happened, but I knew absolutely and unequivocally that he was innocent. I knew it as much as I had ever known anything in my life.

You didn’t do it.

Does it matter?

What happened?

I was brought here.

I don’t think I’m going to be able to get you bail.

I don’t need bail.

You’ll probably be sent to Rikers.

I’ll be safe there.

Nobody’s safe there.

They don’t want me in prison.

What are you talking about?

Do what you can to stop them.

He took his hand down. His name was called, and we went into the courtroom. It was a large venue. Very busy. People were, rightfully, concerned about themselves. They rarely, if ever, paid attention to anyone else. Ben silenced the room when he walked into it. Everyone turned and stared. The glow I had seen at the interview seemed brighter, more real. His skin was whiter. His scars more visible. And his presence. The presence beyond the physical. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. Before or since. Hardened lawyers, hardened criminals, bailiffs, and cops. They were all silenced. By his calm and stillness. By the glow.

When the judge entered, Ben refused to stand. He refused to acknowledge the court in any way. He just stared straight ahead and smiled. The judge threatened him with contempt. He just kept smiling. A pure, simple smile. Mouth closed and cheeks drawn. Staring straight at her. She asked him to stand again. He slowly and calmly shook his head. Normally she would have charged him immediately with contempt of court, but she didn’t. She turned to me and asked if I was willing to waive the reading of the rights and charges, and I said yes. She turned to the prosecutor who gave grand jury notice, which meant that he would take the case to a grand jury for an indictment, which is required by law in New York.
The prosecutor then asked for denial of bail based on the seriousness of the crime and the defendant’s background. I requested bail of ten thousand dollars. She looked again at Ben. He was still staring at her, and she was clearly unnerved. Most offenders are either deferential to the judge or belligerent towards her. He just stared and smiled. She asked him one more time to stand. He did not move. She denied bail. When the bailiff came towards him, Ben stood and allowed himself to be led away.

I had a full day, with a number of other cases. I took Ben’s file with me when I left. I started reading it on the subway home. It seemed fairly simple. His brother was a pastor at a church in Queens. When Ben was incarcerated on the federal charges, his brother had put up both his home and his church as collateral for Ben’s bail. Ben had disappeared shortly after being released, though how he had disabled his ankle bracelet was unknown. No one had heard from him for seven months. He had reappeared at his brother’s home four nights earlier. He had a rabbi with him. They had dinner together, and the next morning went to services at the brother’s church. The brother claimed they were going to the service so that Ben could repent before turning himself back over to federal authorities. There was some type of altercation at the church. Ben was beaten and taken to the office of the church. He was locked inside while they waited for the police. While in the office, he lit it on fire. When Jacob, his brother, came to the office after smelling smoke, Ben attacked him and said he was
going to kill him. Once again Ben was beaten and subdued, and shortly thereafter, he was taken into custody.

There was nothing to indicate that anything was wrong with the case. It seemed airtight. Multiple witnesses. Physical evidence. The officers at the scene followed proper procedure. When I first get a case, I always look for holes in it. Look for spaces of doubt where I can move in and create openings. Look for small cracks that I can turn into fucking canyons. There were none in Ben’s file. Nothing even close. Granted, sometimes it takes time to find them. Sometimes a witness will change their story. Or the evidence will prove to be something other than what it initially looks like. But Ben seemed to indicate, for whatever the reasons, that there weren’t going to be any this time. And given how he made me feel, and what he made me feel, I believed him.

I thought about him at Rikers. Wondered what he was going through. A thin white man in his condition. He was out of medical and in general population. For the hardest men, the conditions are brutal. There’s violence and rape. There are gangs, almost always divided by race, and if you’re not affiliated with one, you’re a target. People go in as petty criminals and come out as vicious predators. I doubted he would last long. Or if he did, he would be beaten and raped. Essentially enslaved. I stayed up with the file. Read it over and over again until my eyes hurt. Until I literally fell asleep with it in my arms.

I woke up. Got dressed. Went back to the courthouse, where I had a number of hearings scheduled. I kept thinking about Ben. About Rikers. About what I imagined was happening there. Midway through the morning, my phone rang. The prison’s phone number showed on my caller
ID
. I took the call, expecting bad news. It was the warden of the prison. I was shocked. I had never spoken to him or had any contact with him. It was extraordinary to hear from him directly. He told me there was a problem. Asked if I could come to speak to him. I asked what the problem was, and he said he’d speak to me about it when I got there.

I took the subway to the bus and went over the Rikers bridge. I got through security and went to admin. The warden was waiting for me. I sat across from him. He spoke.

What do you know about your client?

Only what’s in the file.

You ever hear of Yahya?

Heard of. Yes.

Know anything about him?

Very little.

He was a murderer. Killed his foster father when he was a kid. Disappeared for thirty years. Started some religious group in the subway tunnels. Preached about the evils of government and organized religion. Typical wacko shit. Scarred his followers, most of whom were drug addicts and petty criminals. Said the scars liberated them from society, freed them from its laws and obligations. They had their own
little world down there. Electricity, water. They did drugs and had orgies. Really fucked up. Near the end of their time, they built up a huge cache of weapons. Yahya said the apocalypse was coming. That the Messiah would arrive, heralding the end of the world. And when it came, he and his followers would be safe in the subways. I know all of this, more or less. They all got arrested. They were all held at the
MCC
. Yahya refused to acknowledge the authority of the court. Tried to reorganize his followers in prison. Got sent to solitary. Went on a hunger strike. Prosecutors got an order to feed him intravenously. When the guards opened his cell, he attacked them. As he was being subdued, he hit his head on the floor. His brain bled and he died. His followers went fucking crazy, and all of them ended up in solitary. Some got sent to other institutions, including this one. Everywhere they went, they preached the gospel of Yahya. And they preached the gospel of Yahya’s Messiah, who had indeed arrived, and was the one member of his group who got bail and immediately disappeared.

My client.

Yes.

He’s the Messiah.

He’s a fucking lunatic that thinks he’s the Messiah, and that some other lunatics think is the Messiah.

Anything happened since he arrived?

It took a day or so for people to figure out who he was when he got to our medical facility. As soon as they did, the inmates started talking. We had him isolated so there were no problems, though we tried to listen to the chatter. When he came back yesterday, he
entered general pop. I was watching when he went to the yard, where a group of inmates were waiting for him, which usually means someone’s gonna get fucked up. As he walked out, they all stared at him. No one moved. The ones who weren’t waiting for him stopped whatever they were doing and turned towards him. He went straight into the middle of the yard and sat down. First ones over to him were the ones who’d scarred themselves like Yahya. There are four or five of them. They have a few who follow them, who were all part of the initial group waiting for him. They followed. And then everyone in the yard, black, white, Hispanic, Blood, Crip, Latin King,
DDP
, Trinitario, fucking Hells Angels and mobsters, all walked over and sat down around him. I’ve never seen the yard so quiet, so still. Usually when it gets quiet it means there’s gonna be a fucking war. It’s the calm that descends before the killing starts. But not this time. Somehow he made men who literally spend most of their time trying to figure out how to murder each other sit around in a big circle. He started talking. We don’t know what he said, and no one will tell us. We wanted to go in and break it up, but they weren’t violating any of our regs, so we couldn’t do a thing. He spoke for ten or fifteen minutes. At the end of it he stood up and walked around and put his hand on people’s heads. Didn’t say a word. Just put his hand on their foreheads and smiled. He walked back to where he had been and sat back down. Almost immediately, he had some kind of seizure. A fucking crazy, body-shaking, spitting, eyes-rolled-up-in-his-head seizure. Normally we would go in immediately
and get the prisoner and take him back to medical. There was no fucking way this time. I knew absolutely, without any shred of doubt, if we had tried there would have been a riot. And men on both sides would have died, and this prison would have fucking exploded. So we left him there, left all of them there, and let him have his seizure. And waited for it to end. Ten minutes later it was still happening. Twenty minutes. Forty minutes. He just kept seizing. And the men stood up and started mixing with each other. All over the yard, men who a couple hours earlier were deadly enemies were talking, laughing, shaking hands. And Avrohom was still in the middle of the yard, having his seizure. And even though everyone had seemingly left him alone, it felt like they were all still watching him, watching everything he did, and waiting for it to end. The time passed when we would have normally brought everyone inside. We weren’t sure what to do, so we left them out there. Two hours later the seizure stopped. Quickly as it started, it just stopped. He was still for a minute or two, looked dead. Then he stood up and walked towards the gate back inside. We opened it and he came in, and everyone else followed him. He went back to his cell, where he is right now.