After the Fall
A Forum for Stories of Incarceration, Justice, and Redemption
AFTER THE FALL
An excerpt from my memoir-in-progress, this piece recounts the day I appeared in federal court for sentencing, later published by Minutes Before Six, a literary journal that publishes writing by incarcerated and formerly incarcerated writers.
I’d be standing on the sidewalk outside my office, traffic teeming with cars, trucks, vans, and cycles, moving from lane to lane, fighting for position, left and right and ahead. You could feel the rush and the urgency. I’d stand there watching the walkway and the light flashing to summon me across, while planning my jump in the lane, when the biggest, fastest, most out-of-control vehicle would tempt me. I don’t remember when I first started thinking about it, but over time, it became a real possibility. Then, it became the only option until it became no option, but I knew I didn’t have the courage to do it, even though I knew it was the best option.
After years of concealing the dire financial status of my real estate investment company, my partners finally figured it out, confronted me, and forced me to resign. It was a humiliating end after years of success. Warren Buffett says it takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it. My five minutes had come, and the word spread quickly to a long list of investors, vendors, lenders, and eventually to the Department of Justice.
After the outing, Dave Brenner, a long-standing investor and business associate, called to meet me for lunch. In the mid-sixties, with full black hair parted perfectly, Dave usually had a humorous irony about all things. But there was none of that this day. Dave suffered through a difficult upbringing that still haunted him: poorly matched parents bickering constantly, and the only Jewish family in an unfriendly Philadelphia neighborhood. But he overcame those things: an officer in the Navy, a successful career, a solid marriage, three children, and managed his parents’ final days despite the rancor between them.
We first connected after the 1987 Wall Street crash. Both of us were scarred by the real estate debacle that followed, but survived, recovered, and reinvented ourselves. We lost each other while battling creditors and financial Armageddon, and the market collapse unfolded. We reconnected in 1992, and he financed most of our early deals, deftly managing the personalities of my two partners, Tom Riley and Bill Watson. An enthusiastic supporter, he encouraged my growth and invested aggressively in our deals. Though a one-man shop, he was respected and successful. When considering investments, I sought him out.
He suggested an Irish pub, sandwiched between empty storefronts on a deteriorating main drag in Norwalk, CT. I’d passed it hundreds of times without notice. It wouldn’t matter, neither of us brought an appetite. Inside, the décor was more mish-mosh than Irish tchotchkes everywhere. I’d been outed and forced to resign. Dave heard the news second-hand. He insisted on a face-to-face. He greeted me coldly. No man hug, our normal greeting, nor shaking hands. I arrived before him. He carried a briefcase—a departure for him. I stood to greet him. He looked at me directly for a moment, then shook his head and sat down without a word.
“Please tell me the money is still in St John’s.”
St John’s Towers was a new development project. I transferred the invested funds to other company projects. Dave had made a large, recent investment in St John’s Towers, a redevelopment of three apartment buildings in downtown Stamford, CT. The project remained in contract, and the closing had been delayed.
“No. Well, some of it. But, uhh, most of it’s been transferred to fund some of our other buildings.” After the outing, I committed to being transparent about everything, but the tendency to prevaricate and equivocate dies hard.
He shook his head again, his greatest fear realized. It’s not customary, nor is it legal in most cases, for a real estate investment company to commingle funds, because each property is comprised of a separate investment group. There is some overlap, but they are never exactly the same. It was a gray area in our company documents. Technically, it may have been legal, but it was not sound business practice. When a property experienced cash flow issues, I began to transfer funds between entities. Small amounts at first. But over time, the transfers increased, became more complicated, and by the period of my resignation, the balance sheets of the various projects were almost impossible to reconcile. The bottom line for Dave was that the funds were not in St. Johns and were spread among other projects.
“You resigned now?” he asked. But not like he didn’t know it.
“Yeah.”
“So, Riley and Watson run the company now.”
Tom Riley and Bill Watson were my business partners who forced me out and were running our real estate company in my absence.
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t invest with them. I invested with you.” He was angry, yet controlled, torn between being friendly and confrontational. He kept turning his head from side to side. There were many long pauses. Someone came to take our order. I don’t remember what we ordered. Dave ordered something, and I ordered the same thing. I can’t remember eating anything that day.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked
I hated that question. My wife asked me that question. Everyone asked me that question. He wanted to know how I could do it. Everyone wanted to know how I could do it. What was going through my head, what coursed through me while I wrote one forged signature after the next, the door of my office closed while I put pages on the windows tracing signatures with trembling hands, shaking with fear so I’d have to do it over and over again, hating myself, but I had to keep doing it to avoid the revelation and the disgrace lurking, and script lies so carefully that I was an actor reading them, the self-loathing growing with every fraudulent act but I couldn’t stop them and in fact had to keep repeating them and each one requiring another one, one worse than the last until the self-loathing morphed to denial which became, over time, as much a part of me as the color of my eyes.
He changed the subject.
“You know,” he continued. “I don’t think you realize what a great tragedy this is. What a fall this is. I mean, you were The Man.” Then he paused, shaking his head again. Looking to the side as if too painful to look at me. I knew he was angry. But he was more sad than angry, and sorry for both of us.
“Our friendship was exceptional. You know that?” he said, signaling that it was past. But I had hoped, probably only agreed to meet for lunch, because I thought he might still be a friend of mine. But it was clear he couldn’t be. Just more denial on my part. I got lost for a moment. The reality is overwhelming. My mind went loco. I got lost in the word exceptional. Maybe our friendship was exceptional, or perhaps it wasn’t, because it included the phrase 'ex,' which was what I had become to everyone, and I kept repeating the word in my head, trying to decide if it was a positive or a negative. And these were my thoughts as I stopped listening to Dave. When I recovered, I didn’t remember where the conversation had landed.
“How is Barbara doing?” I asked. Barbara was his wife.
“She’s depressed.”
“Will this impact your financials?” I asked, but hated asking.
“I’ll have to wear a different pair of sneakers,” he answered. It was a dark joke, but he wasn’t smiling.
We ate something and we talked some more, but I can’t remember any of it, only that we departed without any conclusion or resolution. No harsh words or accusations, but no physical contact either—no handshake or man-hug. I sensed he wanted to say more. I can only recall the empty feeling. The both of us broken. I never saw Dave again. He didn’t even attend my sentencing. I was grateful for that.
For the complete essay, initially published in Minutes Before Six, you can read it here:
👉 After the Fall
If this story resonates with you, or if you’ve wrestled with your own origin myths, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.
John DiMenna is a member of the White Collar Support Group, a non-profit organization that supports those impacted by the criminal justice system.
Up Next on White Collar Journal:
Wednesday (Justice Notes): Legacy
Thursday (Notes from Exisle): Log/Verse reflections
Sunday (Prison Camp): More from the early years