My Beloved World (39 page)

Theresa, thank heaven, overcame her fear, and she has since accompanied me on every step of my career. She remains my right hand and protector, the dearest of friends. When I miss something, she’s the one who sees it. She’s the one who holds a mirror up when she notices me getting intimidating or too abrupt, an effect only amplified by the trappings of my current office. When I am too wrapped up in something, she pulls me up for air and reminds me to be kind.

AS IT HAPPENED
, the case I argued against the big retailer was settled mid-trial, but I would continue working closely with Fran Bernstein on intellectual property cases for the Fendis, as well as other clients. Litigation, however, was not an effective remedy to the problem of counterfeit goods sold on the street and in Chinatown; there was no point bringing petty vendors to trial. Instead, trademark owners decided to join forces in applying for a court order permitting us to confiscate the goods and the records related to their production and distribution. In building the case for a seizure order, we worked with private investigators to track down the suppliers funneling knockoffs into New York from several manufacturing points in Asia as well as moonlighting craftsmen in Italy. Investigators would purchase items from vendors at different locations, and we could map connections by matching hardware or fabrics from different lots. Keeping an area under surveillance, they could often identify a warehouse by spotting the runners who moved between that location and the vendors. If we could intercept the contraband at that distribution point, we might even find customs and shipping documents that would lead further up the supply chain.

I showed Fran how to work up an affidavit. She wrote most of the briefs. I loved the investigative work, the challenge of the puzzle, and
the thrill ride of the seizure operations. Together we were Cagney and Lacey.

Dempster Leech, our private investigator, had a rumpled little absentminded-professor aspect and hesitant way of speaking that belied his own love of the chase. Through the pungent streets of Chinatown, he led a posse of burly sidekicks, most of them retired or off-duty police officers from beyond the five boroughs. They had to be armed: the street trade in knockoffs was controlled by gangs who, in addition to dealing drugs and whatever else, extorted protection money from the vendors. At a seizure, lawyers for each of the trademark holders were needed on hand to monitor the operation. It was our job to examine the goods and ensure that only counterfeits were taken, that papers were served properly, and that receipts were given for inventory seized. Normally, anyone involved vanished the instant our presence was detected. At the slightest hint of trouble, the glint of a weapon, Dempster would evacuate us quickly. No one wanted heroics. But a few times we brushed too close for comfort.

I was the lead lawyer one afternoon when I saw Dempster running toward me in the hubbub of Canal Street. His lookout had spotted someone leaving a building, pushing a hand truck loaded with boxes. One had fallen off the hand truck, spilling what looked like Fendis. Dempster’s men were staking out the building. No windows, but he put his nose to the ground on a loading dock and peeked under the rolling gate that was left open a crack. In the shadows of the room, strewn all over, were hundreds and hundreds of counterfeit handbags. I phoned the judge, and minutes later we had a seizure order.

The place was so full of fake Fendis that after loading up all of Dempster’s jeeps, we still had to bring in a trailer truck. Each time we thought we’d cleared the whole lot, another trail of stray bags would lead like bread crumbs to a further stash. The interior of the building, like that of many in Chinatown, was a labyrinthine warren of rooms that connected behind several separate storefronts. What had from the outside looked to be a small stand-alone structure actually stretched across most of the block.

Typically, a few days after a seizure, I would have been back at the courthouse to file an affidavit for the inventory. But on this occasion
I had to be elsewhere, and so I sent a young associate who had been with us on the raid. When Tony walked out of the subway stop at Centre Street, a circle of young Asian guys with ominous tattoos closed in around him. “Where’s the black-hair lady? Tell her we’re looking for her. Tell her we know who she is.” Tony wasn’t the only one shaken that day. The entire litigation department at Pavia & Harcourt was called to a meeting, the partners aghast. The judge, when informed, was no less horrified, and marshals were dispatched to accompany me whenever I came to the courthouse …

The irony was not lost on me: I was now apparently in greater danger representing luxury brands at a genteel law firm than I had ever been prosecuting armed thieves and murderers. Dave Botwinik and some of the other partners argued that we should quit the seizures entirely, and right away. I, like Tony, understood that the risks were very well managed and that the value to our clients was huge. Perhaps we were also enthralled by the excitement: I wasn’t ready to retire my bulletproof vest just yet. The debate within the firm was resolved with a lawyerly compromise that made explicit the full extent of risks on any specific operation and ensured there’d be no pressure to participate on anyone who might not care to take them.

WITHIN TWO YEARS
of recruiting me to the work on intellectual property, Fran suffered a recurrence of the breast cancer that she had beaten into remission a few years before. The news weighed heavily: her mother, sister, grandmother—virtually every female in her family—had succumbed to the same disease. As her treatment, and the illness itself, progressed, she was less and less present. For a time, I depended on her guidance over the phone and tried to cheer her on through that same thin connection, but she was failing rapidly.

When I was up for partner in my fourth year at the end of 1988, she came into the office for the first time in months to cast her vote. She had lost a lot of weight and was very frail, but her spark was still there. That night, she and her husband, Bob, took me to dinner at La Côte Basque. It was my first time at a restaurant of such stellar opulence, and I was thrilled by the experience, though sad to see that Fran could
barely eat. The outcome of the partnership vote was still under wraps, so it wasn’t obvious yet that there was reason to party, but Fran couldn’t wait. “You’ll have to pretend that you don’t know what I’m going to tell you, but tonight we celebrate!”

Later, as we stood at the curb while Bob was getting the car, Fran looked me up and down. “If you’re going to become a partner, you’ll have to dress the part. Fendi is your client now. You should represent them appropriately. You need to buy a Fendi fur coat.”

“Fran, I don’t want a fur coat!” She sounded like my mother complaining about the way I dressed. I already had a wonderful relationship with the Fendi family, and it didn’t depend on my wearing haute couture. Alessandro, the young lawyer who was apprenticing to the family business, had become a good friend over months of daily phone calls between New York and Rome, at all hours, irrespective of my time zone or his. Eventually, I helped to smooth the way for him and his wife, Fe, to move to the United States, and after some initial reluctance they would become confirmed New Yorkers, deeply in love with their adopted home and passionate in their support of its cultural life.

It was Alessandro’s grandmother Adele who, with her husband, had established the Fendi name as the epitome of Italian luxury, quality, and design. It was she too who had groomed each of her five daughters to assume a different facet of the financial or creative management, their husbands in turn also drawn into the family business. Alessandro was therefore perfectly at ease working with assertive women, and I instinctively warmed to a business environment bound together by strong family ties. It was a natural collaboration.

Princeton and Yale had furnished me my first glimpses of how the extremely privileged lived. Working at Pavia & Harcourt would give me an even better look, with invitations to social events hosted by wealthy clients, where a kid from the Bronx would incredulously find herself rubbing shoulders with the likes of Raquel Welch and Luciano Pavarotti. Still, I felt much more like an observer than a participant in the splendor. The Fendis’ friendship pulled back the curtain onto a more private world of luxury and exquisite taste. When I visited their place in Rome and vacationed with them across Europe, my eyes were opened not only to the finest of modern Italian design and a glorious classical
legacy but to an entirely different sensibility. Spirited through celebrations of theatrical enchantment, I collected dreams to last a lifetime. Perhaps also a certain understanding, and with it the confidence that comes of having seen life from all sides.

What mattered most of all, though, was that they became family. Alessandro is a brother to me. He’ll jump to my defense ferociously—I daresay he’d offer to meet you with pistols at dawn if my honor was at stake. I, in turn, wouldn’t pause to draw breath before boarding the next flight to be by his side in a moment of need. Just as I never hesitated to invite his parents, Paola and Ciro, to Co-op City for Thanksgiving dinner at my mother’s.

A
COUPLE OF WEEKS
after my celebratory dinner with Fran and her husband, George Pavia called me into his office so he and Dave Botwinik could tell me, this time officially, that the firm’s partners had elected me to membership. The good news came with a curious proviso, words that have stuck in my mind. “It’s clear that you won’t stay in private practice forever,” George said. “We know you’re destined for the bench someday. Dave is even convinced you’ll go all the way to the Supreme Court. But with this offer, we ask only that you remain with us as long as you continue in private practice.”

To offer a partnership to someone not planning to stick around was unusually generous, especially in a firm so small that each partner is an integral part of the team. I accepted with enormous gratitude but also obvious mortification at Dave’s fantastical prophecy. If he could have known that I’d dreamed of becoming a judge since childhood, I might have taken it as an affectionate but overheated compliment. In fact, though, I had long refrained from verbalizing the ambition, understanding that any federal judgeship would require a rare alignment of political forces, as well as no small bit of luck. Dave may have intuited the direction of my dreams—as I would soon see, there was at least one other thing I kept mum about that was more obvious than I’d imagined—but even so, his talking about the Supreme Court like that made me wince, the way you might when an uncle exaggerates your accomplishments. It was awkward to hear such a naive thought from
someone I respected so deeply, and I felt embarrassed for my Rabbi. I also felt strangely exposed standing there as colleagues alluded casually to my secret pipe dream in the same breath they were marking the professional milestone of my making partner, and even more so with the shadow of Fran’s death looming.

When she finally lost her fight the following spring, the loss devastated everyone. Each death of someone close to me has come as a slap, reminding me again of my own mortality, compelling me to ask: What am I accomplishing? Is my life meaningful? When Abuelita died, I felt spurred to study even harder in college. When it was Nelson’s time, I could no longer put off thinking about life beyond the DA’s Office. Fran had entrusted me with the groundbreaking work in intellectual property that would become her legacy, and when she died, I threw myself into it with my best single-mindedness. Still, to see her go at fifty-seven, only one year younger than I am now, fired my habitual sense that I might not have enough time to make a real run at my ultimate goal.

I’ve lived most of my life inescapably aware that it is precious and finite. The reality of diabetes always lurked in the back of my mind, and early on I accepted the probability that I would die young. There was no point fretting about it; I have never worried about what I can’t control. But nor could I waste what time I had; some inner metronome has continued to set a beat I am unable to refuse. Now diabetes has become more manageable, and I no longer fear falling short in the tally of years. But the habit of living as if in the shadow of death has remained with me, and I consider that, too, a gift.

ON A GLORIOUS DAY
at the end of June, a group of friends were celebrating my thirty-seventh birthday with a barbecue in my backyard. I was lucky to have stumbled on the apartment right down the block from my old place and Dawn’s, lucky to have grabbed it at a discount before the co-op conversion was even concluded, and luckier still that Dave Botwinik helped me find an unusually affordable loan for the down payment. Best of all, the backyard was perfect for parties.

Everyone was taken care of. All their glasses were filled. Let them dance, I thought. Exhausted, I needed to lie down for a few minutes. I
didn’t feel right, light-headed, but once supine I couldn’t get my body to move. Eventually, I managed to drag myself off the bed, opening the screen door to the backyard. But that was as far as I could get. I needed to sit down right there. Fortunately, there was a step. And there was Theresa. She was talking to me, but I couldn’t make out the words. She came closer, still talking gibberish. There was something in her hand that I wanted badly. I needed it. I grabbed for it, but my aim was shaky. I smashed the piece of birthday cake into my mouth. Theresa stood there with her own mouth open in shock. I must have looked pretty disconcerting with frosting smeared all over my face.

When I recovered and we talked about what had happened, Theresa told me that although she was vaguely aware that I was diabetic, she had no knowledge of what a sugar low looked like. Friends who saw me lie down just assumed that I’d had a few too many. But I was so busy playing host that I hadn’t had even one yet. The card I’d been given as a child was still in my wallet, carried around for all these years. I’d made it to my thirty-seventh birthday with no occasion for someone to pull it out. It said: