The Good Rat Read Free Page B

Utrecht Avenue and rented an empty fruit store, and we took two-by-fours and crossed them, put some pipe on them and set up some racks for suits.
    We took the thousand suits there, and we started calling a lot of people. This was eight, nine in the morning, we started calling a lot of people we know, and wetold them we had swag suits and we wanted eighteen, twenty dollars for them, and by one o’clock we sold the thousand suits. And we went back and took another thousand, and by Sunday we had sold the three thousand suits, and I thought this was a very good business, and we decided to go into it.
Q: You used an expression, “swag.” What does that mean?
A: Swag is stolen merchandise.
Q: Okay. So with respect to your clothing business, did you always buy stolen merchandise and resell it, or did you occasionally buy nonstolen merchandise?
A: My clothing business was 100 percent legitimate clothing. The suits were legitimate.
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: They were bought from the factory. This guy was a legitimate guy who bought closeout goods from factories.
Q: And you just said—you used the expression “my clothing business was 100 percent legitimate.” Did you occasionally sell knockoffs?
A: Yes. When you take a label that a designer makes or a large company and you counterfeit it, you copy it. We bought sweatshirts from China, had them made to the exact specifications as Champion and put their labels on it.
Q: And just from 1975 until 1996 when you go to prison, do you pretty much stay in the clothing business?
A: I had some illegal affairs, too. I found a big warehouse in Staten Island, and I moved the business there.
Q: And, Mr. Kaplan, generally who were your customers for this clothing business?
A: When I got to Staten Island, my customers were Macy’s, Kmart, Dillard’s, Nordstrom, and a whole bunch of discount chains throughout the United States.
    Legal or illegal, Burt Kaplan did not discriminate. One was as good as the other as long as there was money in the end. There were times when business ventures started out as legit and then, only when that failed, turned shady.
Q: Was there a quaalude case that you went to prison for in approximately 1981?
A: I put up some money and rented a warehouse/loft, and originally we were going to make hair products to ship to Africa, and the chemist that was making the hair grease didn’t homogenize the product, and when it was shipped to Africa, it turned brown and we couldn’t sell it, and then we decided to try to recoup the money. The chemist said that he could make the formula for quaaludes, and we attempted to make them.
    Marvelous! He should be teaching at Harvard Business School, but instead these lessons come to us free of charge. And this is all mere warm-up to the stories he has come totell. Burt Kaplan saw into the shadows and understood what they were, for he had lived in them so many years. Now, after doing so much evil, he is at last committing what he believes is an atrocious, unforgivable act.
    Throughout the trial Kaplan refers to himself by various street names for an informer. He is asked what he means when he says this.
    “A stool pigeon is a rat. Just like me.”
    Burt Kaplan’s voice looses eagles that swoop and scream and slap against the walls. He carried his loyalty to the Mafia almost to the end, until he believed there were leopards about to pounce. At the last stroke of midnight he turned in his claws.
    Judd Burstein, one of Kaplan’s lawyers, says, “He is probably the last true believer in the code of the Mafia, the omertà. ” He is about to become what he despises.

CHAPTER 3
    Even before Burt Kaplan takes the stand, the trial has moments of wonder. They come in a ceremony out of sight and hearing of the public, the questioning of prospective jurors in a forum known as voir dire. This pretentious use of a French title is insulting, for in Brooklyn it is an issue too important for affectation.
    Potential jurors are interviewed in a