Critics — mainly defense attorneys — argued that the government had the cart before the horse: stripping assets from a defendant before he had been convicted of anything seemed to shrink the presumption of innocence to the vanishing point. The problem was that the profits of crime were real — you could touch the money — but the presumption of innocence was a legal fiction, and ninety-nine percent of the time it was just that, fiction. The defendant was guilty and everybody knew it except the jurors. So the government grabbed the bucks.
Liarakos, of course, had been expecting just such a motion. The only question was when. The arguments pro and con he knew well, for he had fought these motions in other cases. Some he won, some he lost.
He cleared his throat. “I might as well tell you now, my client has engaged another firm to represent him in any civil confiscation action. Off the record, no doubt you’ll get some assets. But you’ll not get them all.”
“Every little bit helps,” Bader said grinning. “What with the deficit and all, it’s nice to see guys like Aldana contributing their mite. We’ll be serving interrogatories next week, and maybe depositions the following week?”
“Not up to me. Serve them on him and he’ll send them to the firm he’s hired.”
If Chano Aldana thought he had problems now, Liarakos told himself, wait until he read the interrogatories. Any answer he supplied could be used against him in the criminal trial. Most of these asset confiscation actions went uncontested for this very good reason. Regardless of how the criminal action went, Aldana was going to return to Colombia a much poorer man.
Which somehow didn’t break Liarakos’ heart.
Jack Yocke stood against the back wall of the courtroom shoulder to shoulder with three dozen other reporters and made notes on his steno pad. “Courtroom packed … crowd hushed, expectant …”
Defense attorney Thanos Liarakos’ assistant, Judith Lewis, was already at the defense table, which was marked with a small sign. To her far right, with an empty chair between them, sat a man in a brown sports coat and slacks. Yocke murmured to the man beside him and pointed.
“The interpreter.”
At the prosecutor’s table sat another woman, whom Yocke assumed was an assistant. He whispered another question to the man beside him. Wilda Rodriguez-Herrera. The man spelled the name as Yocke wrote it down. Why is it, the Post reporter wondered, that most high-powered lawyers these days have female factotums? Both women were in their middle-to-late twenties or perhaps early thirties — it was impossible to tell at this distance — and were dressed for success in conservative getups that must have set each of them back a week’s pay. Yocke jotted another note.
Aldana entered in company with two U.S. marshals. He was wearing a dark suit and a deep maroon tie. His hands were cuffed in front of him. As one of the marshals took the cuffs off, Aldana looked quickly around the room, scanning each face. Every eye in the room was on him. The room was so quiet Yocke could hear the clink of metal as the cuffs were removed from Aldana’s wrists.
The defendant sat down at the defense table between Judith Lewis and the interpreter. One of the marshals took a chair immediately behind him, inside the barricade, while the other moved to a chair against the wall where he could watch the defendant and the crowd without turning his head.
Lewis whispered something to Aldana. He made no reply, didn’t look at her, kept his face impassive. Now the interpreter whispered in his ear. Aldana replied, a few phrases only, and didn’t look at him. He surveyed the bailiff, who averted his eyes; then Aldana turned his head, leaned forward slightly in his chair, and stared for several seconds at Assistant Prosecutor Rodriguez-Herrera, who was busy with a sheet of paper that lay on the table in front of her.
Now his eye caught the Post courtroom artist in the far corner, who was studying him through a pair of opera glasses mounted on a tripod. For the first time Aldana’s features moved — the upper lip rose into a slight sneer and his eyes became mere slits.
The moment passed and the face resumed its impassive calm. Aldana looked back toward the front of the room, at the magistrate’s bench with the flags behind it. He leaned back in his chair, sat loosely, comfortably, staring at the flags. He crossed his legs. In a moment he uncrossed them.
He’s nervous, Yocke decided, and scribbled some more in his notebook. He’s trying not to show it, but he is nervous. Maybe he’s human after all.
Minutes passed. Coughs and hacks and muttered comments from the audience. Aldana poured himself a cup of water from the pitcher on the table and spilled some. He ignored the spill. After several sips he placed the cup on the table in front of him and didn’t touch it again.
As he stared at Aldana, Jack Yocke reviewed what he had heard about the defendant. A barrio brat from Medellín, Chano Aldana reputedly had worked his way to the top of the local cocaine industry by outthinking and murdering his rivals. He was smarter than the average sewer rat and twice as ruthless. Rumor had it he had personally executed over two dozen men and had ordered the murders of hundreds more by name, including a candidate for president of Colombia. A vicious enemy of the law-and-order forces battling the cartels for control of Colombia, he had ordered airliners and department stores bombed, judges murdered, and policemen tortured.
Yet this monster had a human side: he liked soccer and controlled several teams in the central Colombian league. Referees and star players on rival teams had been assassinated on his order. Finally the government had suspended league play because of organized crime’s corrosive influence on the games.
The last two years Aldana had allegedly spent hiding somewhere in the Amazon. He had been captured by the Colombian government when he decided in a weak moment to visit a prostitute of whom he was fond. Somehow he had survived the ensuing shootout, although six of his bodyguards hadn’t. Sewer rat’s luck.
By all accounts Aldana was an amazing man, a Latin Al Capone with several of Hitler’s worst traits thrown in for seasoning. Yet staring at this slightly overweight, middle-aged Latin male with the black curly hair and the modest thin mustache, Jack Yocke found this tale of unadulterated evil hard to believe. It was incredible, really. Even Aldana’s performance at yesterday’s news conference couldn’t overcome one’s natural inclination to accept the man as a fellow human being. Yocke tried to picture him eating snake and monkey meat in the jungle — and gave up.
U.S. Attorney William Bader had a herculean task ahead of him to convince twelve working-class Americans that Chano Aldana was el padrino, the godfather.
Yocke was furiously scribbling notes when the door to the hallway opened and a man entered, a man wearing a naval officer’s blue uniform. Captain Jake Grafton. His ribbons and wings made a splotch of color on his left breast. Those and the four gold rings on each sleeve looked strangely out of place among all these civilians.
Jack Yocke stared as Grafton surveyed the seating arrangements, apparently concluded the place was full, and took up a station against the wall, near the door. His eyes met those of the reporter. He nodded once, then his gaze settled on Chano Aldana, who had turned to examine the newcomer. Aldana turned back toward the bench.