Next, Shapiro dialed Aaron Hocksber. Hocksberg was an attorney with a large Boston firm known as much for its political connections and lucrative public-bond-offering representation as it was for the opulence of its new offices on the continually developing South Boston waterfront. Hocksberg was the fundraising chair for the Anti-Defamation League. He and Shapiro had served in the district attorney’s office together. While they weren’t close friends—moving in decidedly different legal circles in their careers— they got together for lunch every few months.
Hocksberg had recently urged Shapiro to take more of a role—actually, to take any role at all—in the ADL. Shapiro begged off, claiming that his involvement with the ACLU took up all the time he was willing to devote to such cases, which usually took on lives of their own, lives that went largely uncompensated. If anybody was wired into this whole refugee business, Shapiro knew it would be Aaron Hocksberg.
Rose Hocksberg, Aaron’s wife, answered the phone on the first ring.
“Hello, Rose, this is Ben Shapiro. Sorry to call you so early, but I need to speak with Aaron. Has he left for work yet?” Shapiro said into his car’s speakerphone.
“Oh, Ben, I’ve been trying to reach Aaron’s law partners all night but the phone was broken and it just started working a few minutes ago.” Her voice, while not quite hysterical, was well down that road. “Ben, you have to help us. They took Aaron away last night. Two men came and took him. I don’t know where he is. I haven’t heard from him, and it’s been hours and the phone hasn’t worked all night.”
“Calm down, Rose. Who took Aaron? Did they say who they were?” Shapiro asked calmly.
“They wore suits. They had some legal papers. They knew his name. They knew my name. They took those Israeli people who were in the boys’room. They left me and our girls at home. And the phone has been dead all night. I didn’t know what to do. Will you find Aaron and get him back to me, please, Ben?”
“I’ll do everything I can, Rose, I promise,” Shapiro said. “Stay home. I’ll call as soon as I know anything. Stay in the house. I promise I’ll call.”
Shapiro pressed the steering wheel button that terminated the call. He had not expected to get his first new client that quickly.
Ben Shapiro also had not expected to have so much difficulty locating his new client, Aaron Hocksberg. He got nowhere with state authorities, calling district attorneys’offices for counties around Boston. All he’d learned was that whatever happened the prior night in the suburbs north of Boston, it was entirely federal. No state prosecutors involved.
At nine thirty in the morning, nobody who was anybody at the United States Attorneys Boston office was there. They were, he was told, universally “unavailable,” probably meaning the entire crew was awake through the night and were all home sleeping.
“I don’t think any of the assistants are in yet,” the phone receptionist said. “Oh, wait just a second.”
The voice on the phone became muffled. Shapiro could barely make out what was said.
The secretary came back on the line.
“Assistant United States Attorney Judith Katz just came in. She said she can speak with you. I’ll put her right on.”
Shapiro had never met Judy Katz, although he’d read about her in the newspapers. Shapiro intentionally avoided representing the kind of persons Katz was building a career prosecuting. Nonetheless, Shapiro expected Katz had heard about him.
“Mr. Shapiro, this is Judy Katz. How can I help you?”
“Ben, call me Ben, please, Judy,” Shapiro said, trying to balance between sounding firm, sounding friendly, and sounding like a “senior” member of the bar due some deference by a young Assistant US Attorney. “Judy, I have a client who was taken into custody last night by federal agents for some unknown reason and I’m trying to locate him and return him to his moderately hysterical wife. Do you suppose you could punch his name into whatever computer system you folks have for locating missing arrestees? I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“You’ve reached the wrong person. I’m just about the only one around the office right now, and I’m also probably just about the only one in the office who has absolutely no idea about what seems to have happened last night.” The exasperation in Katz’s voice was obvious. “Um, maybe you could tell me what you know about it. I went to bed early last night, worked at home for a few hours this morning and just walked in the door here myself, and half the support staff and almost all the attorneys are not around. I’m sort of wandering around right now.”
Judy Katz had a strong suspicion that whatever was keeping people away from the office had something to do with the Queen’s visit the previous day.
“Judy, I’ll be blunt with you,” Shapiro said into the telephone. “I’ve been retained by Aaron Hocksberg. Do you know him, from Rudnick, Fierstein? No? Well, actually by his wife. It seems he was arrested last night, or at least that he was taken into custody.”
“What makes you think my office has anything to do with it?” Katz asked. “Do you know what he was charged with?”
“Well, Judy, I suspect that he was part of that thing last night, that roundup thing that is all over the news,” Shapiro said.
Katz was puzzled.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ben. I haven’t listened to the news today.”
“Judy, my understanding is that the Department of Justice took hundreds of people into custody last night from homes all around communities north of Boston. My further understanding, from what his wife told me, is that Attorney Aaron Hocksberg is among those taken into custody. I’ve been trying to locate him all morning. Obviously he’s being held somewhere, but everybody who is around this morning knows nothing about it, and the people who do know, people I expect work in your office, are, I’m told, universally unavailable.
“I have to tell you, Judy, that I am having considerable difficulty believing that somebody who is the head of a criminal division in the US Attorneys office is totally unaware of a major criminal operation conducted by that office.”
He waited for a reaction. Hearing none, he continued.
“Look, Ms. Katz, I realize we’ve never had a case against one another before, but as you know, Boston is an extremely small town and what goes round in the legal community comes round someday. I don’t take well to being fed a bowl of bullshit by another attorney. I have a client to represent and I want to know where he is, right now.”
“Look yourself, Mr. Shapiro. I am not feeding you bullshit, or feeding you anything at all. You seem to know a lot more than I do about what might or might not have gone on last night. I don’t know anything about any sort of roundup of criminals by my office, and I can assure you that as the head of the Organized Crime Strike Force in the office of the United States Attorney, I would have been told about any such major operation.”
She decided to try the silent treatment herself, but after hardly more than a moment she relented, feeling guilty that her first conversation with a lawyer she respected, from a distance, had gone badly so quickly.
“Ben, really and truly, I don’t know anything about what you’re speaking about. Tell me what you know.”
“Okay, Judy, I’ll accept what you’re saying, although I’ve gotta tell you, I’m surprised.” Shapiro’s tone, too, was conciliatory. He didn’t enjoy hearing himself speaking sternly to a young lawyer, especially a young woman lawyer. “Judy, I didn’t say there was a roundup of criminals last night.”
“Well, if they weren’t criminals, Ben, who were they? Who else but criminals would be rounded up by the government?”
“I’m shocked that you, you of all people at that office, don’t know about this. And, come to think of it, the fact that you don’t know anything about this is damned frightening to me.”