Stew Leonard's judgment day is set for October 20 in Federal District Court in New Haven, where Fairfield County's big butter and egg man (now the heavy in a light opera bouffe Gotterdammerrung) will learn his fate. On advice of counsel—Watergate prosecutor James Neal—Leonard copped a plea of 'conspiring to defraud the Federal Government of taxes on $17.5 million' that he and three Norwalk co-defendants skimmed from the World's Largest Dairy Store. Guidelines call for up to five years of jail time on top of an already levied $15 million fine. In the absence of divine intervention, Leonard will be trading down his Holstein glad rags for Danbury pin stripes. Old MacDonald never had days like this.
I remember him once telling me to lay off a certain person who, he said quoting Graham Greene, was a member of the "non-torturable class." Noel and I were members of the same generation of aspirers who invaded New York in the sixties hell-bent on making a name for ourselves.
There was a business element in Noel's and my relationship, of course. Sooner or later, he would dangle an article idea before me like a lion tamer waving a steak before one of his charges. Noel knew what he was doing. He was a pro and a helluva writer.
What did we talk about? Probably gossip about doings at the Nation and literary matters in general. Noel was well-read.
Collection
[
|
...
]