Stanley Alpert - The Birthday Party

 

 

It was January 21st, 1998, an ice-cold New York night. But I was feeling great. I was on my way downtown on the number 4 train. I met a girl, I walked her to her apartment at 6th Avenue and 10th Street. We traded business cards, and I walked down the street feeling good. I was going to go home, eat my favorite chocolate chip cookies, drink a cup of tea, read a book. I was in a great mood. [audience laughter] 

 

It was cold out, nobody was on the street. As I got to the corner of 10th Street and 5th Avenue in the Village, suddenly from out of nowhere, I felt a tug on my elbow from behind. I spun around, and there’s an automatic machine gun sticking in my gut. Two guys behind me, “Move, motherfucker. Get in the fucking car.” They had a car waiting in the street, which they shoved me to, put me in the backseat. Three guys in the car, another guy with a pistol in my face. 

 

The leader of the gang was called Lucky. He said, “Stanley, let me tell you what we’re going to do. We’re taking you to the bank. Give us your wallet,” which I did. “What’s your PIN number to your cash machine card?” which I gave him immediately. “We’re going to take you to the bank, you’re going to help us withdraw your money. And if you don’t do it, we’re going to kill you.” 

 

So they drove to the corner of 6th Avenue and 23rd Street. Lucky went inside, got some money, came back out. He wanted to know how much money I had in my savings account, and I told him I had $110,000. They were impressed. [audience laughter] “What do you do for a living, Stanley?” [audience laughter] “Well, I’m a lawyer.” And I said, “You picked up the wrong guy, I’m an Assistant US Attorney.” 

 

At first, they didn’t get what that meant. They said, “Oh, you’re an attorney. Wow.” They’re really impressed. So, then they drove down 23rd Street. Lucky explained that now the plan had changed. They decided to keep me. So, he said he was going to take me to a place, and in the morning, they were going to take me to the bank and have me withdraw $50,000. And if I didn’t do it, they were going to kill me. So, they drove down 23rd Street to the West Side Highway, all the way down through that tunnel at the bottom.

 

Now, Lucky ordered one of his henchmen, the guy who had the machine gun on me on the street, to blindfold me, and he took my own scarf off and blindfolded me with it. So, I’m just hearing what I’m describing to you. We went through that tunnel at the bottom of Manhattan that comes up on the other side by the FDR Drive. And a minute later, I could hear the sound of rubber tires going over the metal of one of the East River bridges. As we got into Brooklyn, Lucky said, “Stanley, you ever been on the BQE?” [audience laughter] And of course, I had, because I grew up in Brooklyn. 

 

And then, they talked amongst themselves and they decided to stop at a gas station to buy duct tape for this little caper, which they did. And then, we drove. A little while later, they stopped the car, hustled me out across the street, up three stairs, through one door, up three more stairs, through another door. 

 

Now, the blindfold wasn’t perfect, I could see out the bottom and I could see the pattern on the tiles, sort of a typical pattern of a tenement building in New York City. In fact, my grandmother that had lived in one of those when I was growing up on the Lower East Side. It had that particular greasy, cooking, old-building smell of a tenement building. They sent me up two flights of stairs, I memorized the number of stairs and they put me in an apartment. I could hear that we were in a narrow hallway. They shoved me all the way down to the end, put me down on a mattress, took off my trench coat and there I sat. 

 

Now, when we first got in there, this was a very exciting moment for them. They had just brought home a really important catch. And they discussed, well, how were they going to make this thing happen? They had my wallet, and unfortunately, my wallet had in it my father’s business card. My father was a cantor. That’s the guy who sings in the synagogue. He was retired, but he kept his business card with his home address on it in case somebody needed him at the last minute to officiate at a wedding or a funeral.

 

I kept that card in my wallet with the sense in my head that somehow threw a level of spiritual protection around him. [audience laughter] Well, now, what I had intended well was leading me to a very bad place, because they wanted to know where my father lived, and what was I going to say. So, I gave the real address, I lied about the apartment number. And they said, “Stanley, tomorrow morning, if you don’t cooperate with us at the bank, not only will we kill you, we’ll kill your father by breaking every bone in his body.” And in fact, they made a call, and they were sending a guy to go watch him overnight while we waited for the morning. 

 

As it went on, they kept coming over to me, they kept cocking and uncocking their guns. And he said, “Stanley, have you ever seen one of these things?” He waved it in front of my face, I could literally feel it. He says, “All I got to do is pull this trigger, it’ll go bam, bam, bam and your brains will be all over that wall.” And he said, “But you got nothing to worry about. Rich guy like you, you got your fine education. I got nothing. You’ll make the money back. I got a right to something.” 

 

Lucky left. That’s the leader, he left. So, the other guys are talking and they’re saying, “You know what? This thing’s not going to work in the morning.” This is them talking. So, they said, when Lucky comes back, they’re going to try to convince him not to do it.

 

Now, there were some other people who had entered. Okay. There were three girls, they were prostitutes. Lucky was the pimp, he was the leader of the gang, he used the other two guys as heat to protect his prostitution ring. So, the girls show up. So, first, they smoke weed, and then they have sex with the girls. This is the point at which I thank God for my blindfold. [audience laughter] And then, it’s over, and everybody’s feeling good, you know, a little weed, a little sex, you feel good. [audience laughter] 

 

So, they decide to play with me. “Stanley, what would you be doing right now if we hadn’t picked you up on the street?” I said, “Well, actually, later on today is my birthday. I’d be meeting friends later today for my birthday.” They thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. “Oh, shit, we kidnapped the motherfucker on his birthday!” [audience chuckle] This was just amazing news.

 

So they offered me some weed. [audience laughter] The thing is, I’ve always been uncool, even before I became a federal prosecutor, [audience laughter] I could lose my job. Then they kept having fun. They’re like, “You know, Stanley, you should join our gang. You can make more money with us than you’re making as a lawyer. You can recommend friends for us to kidnap. Oh, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on. Not friends, enemies, okay? Oh, and by the way, let’s see if we can figure out how else we can get money out of you. You got a car?” “No, I live in Manhattan.” “You got a wife?” “No.” “You got any kids?” “No.” “You got a girlfriend?” “No.” “Stanley, let me see if I get this straight. You got $110,000 in the bank. You ain’t got no wife, you ain’t got no kids, you ain’t got no car. What the hell have you been doing, man?” I said, “You should ask my parents. They’ve been wondering the same thing.” [audience laughter] 

 

The guy sitting to my right, the guy who had the machine gun on me on the street, he gets a brilliant idea. He says, “What’s going on here? We give you food, we offer you weed, what robbery is this, anyway?” [audience laughter] So, the plan had changed and time went on. I was there for almost 24 hours when Lucky comes back. They’ve told me that they’re going to take me back to where they picked me up in the Village. So, they race me downstairs, I’m still blindfolded, they put me in the backseat of the car, I’m on the hump. 

 

Between the two thugs, I can feel their legs pressing up against me. Lucky’s in the front seat, and they sit for a pregnant pause, and nobody says a word and then Lucky drives. Now, I know it’s going to take about 25 minutes for us to get back to where they picked me up if they really mean to drop me back off in the Village. About 10 minutes into it, without saying a word, Lucky pulled the car off to the side and stopped it. He killed the ignition. He opened the car door, stepped outside. I can hear him walking around to the back. He opened the trunk. The next thing I heard was the sound of duct tape being pulled from a roll. 

 

I was positive in that moment that my life was over. I was positive that I’ll never get to call my mother on the phone again, or go on a date, or pay my American Express bill, or eat a box of chocolate chip cookies, or read a good book. All of that adventure that made up my life was done. And this is a very sad moment. But I was wrong, because what happens is, someone had broken the window on his passenger side and there was plastic covering it and it was making too much noise in the wind. [audience laughter] So, all he was doing was taping the plastic. He gets back in the car and he drives again. 

 

But they stop the car, they take me outside and they tell me to walk. And I walk. I’m still blindfolded. They say, “Put up your hands and walk.” I walk, one step after the other. I think I can hear the car pulling off, but I’m really not sure. I didn’t hear the door close. I thought the guy might still be there on me with the gun. But I walked several steps and I thought I might fall into a ravine or the river. I didn’t know where we were. So, finally, I say, “Are you there?” And nobody answered. I ripped off my blindfold, and I spun around and they were gone. I had my life back. 

 

So I was in Prospect Park. I could have got mugged in that park. [audience laughter] I raced to 7th Avenue, I called my father to see if he was okay. He told me to call home. The NYPD and the FBI were already in my apartment. It was a crime scene. They were already referring to me as “the body.” They interviewed me for four hours that night. 

 

I had so many clues. I had the pattern on the tiles. I could tell you exactly what floor it was on. I knew that seagulls had flown overhead at night, so I thought we were near one of the water bodies near one of the airports. I knew that we were near the Command bus line, because they talked about a $3.50 fare to get there. I knew one of the girls was due in court that next morning on a prostitution charge and had to pay either a fine or spend 30 days in jail. I knew the street names of the girls, and I knew the full name of one of the guys and I knew the first few numbers of the leader of the gang’s cell phone. Within 48 hours, the FBI and the NYPD rounded them up. The girls did very short sentences. The guys were in prison for a very long time. 

 

Now, they hurt me, they traumatized me, they shocked me and they definitely caused me pain. But at the end of the day, they also gave me a gift. I don’t go into a sushi restaurant anymore and order the sushi special, because it’s a little cheaper and get a couple of things on that plate that I don’t like the looks of. [audience laughter] Now, I order exactly what I want. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]

 

Even though he’s awfully annoying, I still call my brother all the time now, okay? And I enjoy that. The first day of spring, and I’m able to live my life in a fuller way. I’ve got a dog now. [audience laughter] It took me a long time after the kidnapping, but I finally met a wonderful woman and we’re married. And with God's blessing, we've got a baby on the way.