Asked & Answered

By R. J. Confair, JD

No Further Questions is the story of one who attained the unfathomable in a live-fast, die-young life, only to succumb to the ravages of addiction. The story is a brutally honest personal recollection of riches to rags and high-stakes litigation to the Miami drug world. This tell-all reenacts the words of Coldplay in "Viva La Vida," where the protagonist transgresses from a lifestyle of Ferraris and private yachts to living in the Salvation Army, working for subminimal wages, and sweeping the streets he used to own.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Newman Springs Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Sep 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798890611895

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Author's Note

Preface

Prologue

Aye Matey'! Riss's Story

Who Exactly Is Richard Confair?

Ambulance Chasing

Runners

The Sport of Kings

Fox Hunt Hollow

Stadium Jumping

Porsche

Tyson vs. Spinks

Motorcycle Man

Practicing Law?

Lifestyles of the Rich and Dysfunctional

Good Ole' Danny Boy

Looking for Clarence Darrow

The Lawyer from God

Facts of the Case

Tedious Dissection

Dog and Pony Show

The Aftermath

The Rehabilitation of Richard

The Twilight Zone

Skydiving

Live Fast and Die Young

Clearbrook

Heading South

Miami, Miami

Mariposa

The Day the Music Died

Bonnie and Clyde

Destitution

Conolly Drive

Rehabilitation Saturation

Stinkin' Thinkin'

Ginny

Salvation Army

Mariella

The Curse of Menial Labor

Sober Houses

My Doctor

You Died

The Denial of Denial

My Greatest Admission

Chaos

You Belong to Me

Collateral Damage

The Road to Hell

Puff the Magic Dragon

The Nine Circles of Hell

Mother Theresa

Rip Van Winkle

Snow from the Heavens

About the Author

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Asked and Answered

R. J. Confair, JD

Copyright © 2024 R. J. Confair, JD

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2024

ISBN 979-8-89061-188-8 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-89061-189-5 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to the survivors of addiction, the victims, and their families. It is hoped that, in some small way, this painful recollection may bring understanding to those both directly and indirectly touched by the flames of this devastating disease, including the members of my own family, who remain standing but not unscathed.

Author's Note

This book is my recollection of various events in my life. Some events and facts may be marginally inaccurate due to the flawed thinking of untreated alcoholism. People's names and identifying characteristics have been recreated in some situations to maintain privacy and anonymity. Events and periods have been rearranged or compressed for narrative purposes, and dialogue is recited to the best of my knowledge. Otherwise, this is a reminiscence of my life as an untreated high-functioning alcoholic. Any negative references to Pennsylvania State Police Officers are limited to a situational occurrence with several corrupt individuals and is not in any way a reflection on the courageous work of State Police Officers in general.

Preface

Viva La Vida

I used to rule the world.

Seas would rise when I gave the word.

Now in the morning I sleep alone:

Sweep the streets I used to own.

I used to roll the dice:

Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes.

Listen as the crowd would sing:

Now the old King is dead, long live the King.

One minute I held the key.

Next the walls were closed on me.

And I discovered that my castles stand upon pillars of sand.

It was a wicked and wild wind.

Blew down the doors that let me in.

Shattered windows and the sound of drums.

People couldn't believe what I'd become.

Revolutionaries wait

For my head on a silver plate.

Just a puppet on a lonely string.

Oh, who would ever want to be King?

Lyrics by Chris Martin

Performed by Coldplay

Prologue

Suddenly, the cashmere-wrapped universe of pills and alcohol that constructed a space between where I existed and the brickwork reality of life horribly stopped. I needed to deal with life on life's terms. This stonelike reality was new and perplexing, and I didn't like it. After seventy years of handcrafting my reality, creating my glitter-embossed, make-believe world, and living in it, the party was over. The music had finally died! I was devastated, leaving the dream world of Ferraris and yachts and entering the nightmare of sober houses, Salvation Army clothing, and public transportation. Throughout my journey into hell and by the grace of the fire and flames, the words to the song Viva La Vida played repeatedly in my mind.

This short story discusses how that came about, where the journey began, some aspects of the once-glamorous ride, and segments of the catastrophic end. I reference the song Viva La Vida by Coldplay in the preface because of its similarity to my life. The title Viva La Vida, sometimes referenced as Death and All His Friends, was the fourth studio album of the British rock band Coldplay and was released in 2008. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates into English as "Long live life." The song was originally written as a tribute to the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo's last painting before her death.

The power held by the song's protagonist is in the words: "Seas would rise when I gave the word. That power is lost, and the once powerful is no more: Now in the morning I sleep alone. The loss to the protagonist is pervasive and tantamount to total failure in every regard: I sweep the streets I used to own. The sweeping of streets" whispers of subservience, the performance of an act beneath the once-powerful protagonist. In this story, I will speak of the kingdom I built from nothing and its destruction because of the disease of untreated alcoholism.

Aye Matey'! Riss's Story

I struggled with the beginning of this story and asked my daughter for advice. My daughter, Marissa (Rissy), and my son, RJ, are the most important people in my life. They remain the only people in my life today. I have no friends, significant other, extended family, or tangential social acquaintances. Addiction removed all of that from me. There are no contacts in my cell phone other than Rissy and RJ. The word alone does not approximate my station in life.

When asked, Rissy suggested beginning with the story of the pirate, as she calls it. She felt that using her story of the pirate might best display the insanity of the later chapters.

It was March of 2004, and I lived in Coral Gables, Miami, Florida. Rissy, then nineteen, had come to visit and was partying the evening away in the South Beach Clubs with a friend. She had taken my Mercedes Benz CL coupe for the evening, sparing my new Mercedes SL from further abuse during her visit.

The time was about 4:30 a.m., and I was home with my beautiful Venezuelan girlfriend, Elle, both of us functionally incoherent from our ingestion of some fine imported products regularly kept in the house: Patron tequila from sunny Mexico and Peruvian flake cocaine from mountainous Peru. It was just a typical night in Miami for us when, abruptly, the door flew open and in walked Rissy. We hadn't even noticed her absence: She recalls,

I stormed into the house after having been in the hospital for hours after a serious car accident. I totaled the MB and was unable to reach my dad by phone. Upon arrival, I screamed: Where have you been, Dad? I've been calling you for hours? in a frantic state. Dad responded, Aih, Lasse, in his pirate persona. He reverted to the rhetoric, accent, and persona of a pirate character when he was in his inebriated state, or should I say normal state. He would intersperse pirate singing with the pirate talk and usually sing his favorite pirate song, The Song of the Idiot, representing his senseless composition.

I looked into his expressionless face and said: Did you get my messages? He continued singing: Dee, dee, dee, dee—da-da—dee, dee, dee…

It was utter madness at this point with him in Florida. My father had somehow left the prestigious practice of trial law in Pennsylvania. He entered the Land of Oz in Miami, Florida. He ventured down the proverbial rabbit hole and seemed to like the darkened subterranean world. The man I loved and emulated had become something I could no longer recognize, let alone describe in any understandable way.

I demanded again: Did you get the messages? I was in a horrible accident. Cait went through the windshield, and the car is totally demolished. It's irreparably damaged. The song got louder, and he began the words to the verse: Dee, dee, dee—da-da—dee, dee, dee… oh hello there, mate! No reply to my question, as he leaned back with one leg crossed over the other as if sitting on a park bench, in his oversized leather club chair, with a massive snifter of Patron unsteadily in his hand and a hefty dusting of white powder around his nose. He said, Shiver me timbers, lasse, why didn't you say so. Lucidity was nowhere in the equation. Avast ye matey became my father's anthem, and Hi, honey was no more. Wrapped around his neck was a studio input cable for his bass guitar with the input plug prominently positioned in his mouth, like a cigar in the mouth of Winston Churchill.

His girlfriend, Elle, then came into the den and sheepishly admitted that he had received the messages but could not quite decipher them or for that matter, decide upon the action needed for the messages. I screamed: What should we do? Duh! You've got to be kidding me? She was only slightly more coherent than him. My tolerance for her was evaporating by the minute, as did it with every one of his many female acquaintances in Miami, most of whom were my age or younger, none of which spoke English. The two of them were two peas in a pod. One was just as bad as the other, enabling each other day in and day out while living in a world of insipid, phantasmic co-dependence.

My friend Cait was still at the hospital, and I needed to return there to check on her. I could see that I was getting nowhere with either of the two zombies, who had been feeding off one another in a drug-induced, coma-like state of chaos for some time, a matter of constant distress to me and other members of the family. We woefully awaited tragic news every day.

Who Exactly Is Richard Confair?

I will begin by assuring you that I was not born a pirate; instead, I metamorphosed into one in my late forties when I became captain of my fictitious ship, The Dysfunctional Pirate. Before that time, I was a successful and high-functioning member of society. I believed I was a born winner, and my record of accomplishments at the time proved that to be correct.

In relaying my version of the pertinent facts, I apologize if I sometimes appear supercilious; however, those essential personality traits permit better insight into the depths of my depravity.

I will present the dichotomous mutating of me, the successful high-functioning trial lawyer living in mansions and driving Ferraris, into me, the drug-addled loser dying of overdoses and entering homelessness.

The tragedy began in June of 1952, at my birth. I was immediately abandoned through adoption, never knowing my birth mother, nor anything about her or my father, other than the connection between fetus and birth mother, which was never able to be explored. As this narrative suggests, this early separation impacted my sense of self, later manifested throughout my alcoholic life as a sense of loss, behavioral problems, rudimentary mistrust, relationship difficulties, depression, and anxiety.

I was placed into a middle-class family and integrated into middle-class society, developing middle-class values. I endured Catholic school, or should I say, the viciousness of Roman rule, until I escaped to college, ending my puritanical existence, by running from it with my hair on fire.

College was a significant change for me. I quickly shed the mediocrity of average student status and entered the exclusiveness of honors status, a transition from which I empirically ascended into the hierarchy of academic life, social life, self-importance, confidence, and pride.

I attended law school in Delaware, the corporate state. It bears that designation because most US corporations are incorporated there to achieve favorable treatment under the state's corporate-friendly laws. Delaware lawyers specialize in corporate law, later becoming judges sympathetic to corporations.

While attending law school, I achieved the much-respected position of Editor-In-Chief of the law review The Delaware Journal of Corporate Law. Doors open for law students serving as Editors-In-Chief of a law review.

After graduation, I interviewed for jobs, including Justice William Brennan of the SCOTUS, and with many of the most prestigious law firms in the nation, including Richard Nixon's firm, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie, Nixon & Mitchell, Williams & Connolly, and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meager & From of New York City, together with the office of the General Counsel for General Motors Corporation (located in Detroit, Michigan). After months of interviews, I accepted a position with a large firm in Pennsylvania, near my hometown, Hourigan, Kluger & Spohrer (H, K& S).

As a youth, I lived a simple life and was married to my high-school girlfriend, who remained with me throughout college and law school. The simple life lasted for many years, uncomplicated and familiar while lacking novelty or excitement. Law school altered that.

Upon graduation, I purchased a new Corvette for my law school graduation present. Within two years, I was lucky enough to acquire a beautiful home in a great residential area, Forty Fort, Pennsylvania. Life was filled with positivity, challenging work, and big goals. I had friends, socialized, and did the kinds of things that ordinary working-class people did. The problem was that I wanted more. Unsure of what that was, I sought it in any and every conceivable way. As others bathed in the sun, I desired to touch it.

Phil Knight says in Shoe Dog,

I'd always suspected, the essence of beauty or truth, or all we ever need to know of either, lay somewhere in that moment when the ball is in midair, when boxers sense the approach of the bell when runners near the finish line and the crowd raises as one. There is an exuberant clarity in that pulsing half a second before winning and losing are decided.

I wanted to feel that moment, but it was light years away from my existence in Small Town, USA.

H, K & S placed me in the corporate department because of my background in corporate law. It was enjoyable academically. However, in Small Town, USA, it was paperwork for mom-and-pop businesses, not derivative suits against General Motors or IPOs for hedge funds, to which I aspired. Most importantly, it was boring and not glamorous! At this point in my life, I published articles in a nationally recognized law review and several corporate journals. As such, I was a published author in corporate law at a young age.

I was soon introduced to litigation law, which was appealing to me because it was exciting and glamorous. I was more than comfortable in public arenas, standing in front of large audiences and talking about complex legal theories. The fact that litigation was the money train of legal specialties bolstered my interest. The competition in trial work excited me even more, and the drama hypnotized me. The litigation department of H, K & S opened its doors for me within several months of joining the firm, releasing me from the struggle of the corporate department.

I strived to get it all in life. I wanted to taste different foods, learn other languages, and experience varied cultures. I yearned for what the Chinese call Tao, the Hindus call Jnana. The Buddhists call it Dharma, Christians call it Spirit, and the Greeks call it Logos. I wanted to feel snow from the heavens and touch the face of God.

As a child of the fifties, I experienced the world on a different tangent: men were traveling to the outer reaches of our atmosphere, people were frightened of space and technology, the nation was at war, and the average person had never flown in an airplane.

Politics were straightforward and had a scintilla of honesty, telephone service was provided by home lines frequently shared by multiple families, and idealism-infused positivity was alive and prospering. I was a product of that environment and proudly shared its aspirations. One of my favorite quotes of the time was from Buddha, and it guided me for years: "You cannot travel the path until you have become the path yourself."

The field of medical malpractice litigation presented itself to me like a mirage in the desert. It enticed me from day one. It was an intellectual pursuit, and I was an academic. Complicated medical principles, misunderstood by many lawyers, intrigued me and the injuries litigated were exponentially more extensive than in other areas of litigation. The cast of characters engaged in medical malpractice litigation was of a higher intellectual caliber than in automobile accidents, slip-and-fall, dog-bite litigation, and almost every other area of law.

Simple matters were mundane, even banal to me. Medical malpractice and personal injury litigation became my aspiration as it intrigued, fascinated, and stimulated me as an academic and intellectual. I took pride in calling myself a medical malpractice lawyer, teaching the subject at the bachelor's, master's, and doctorate levels at Wilkes University and Hahnemann Medical School.

The H, K& S firm was my home for three and a half years, after which I entered the firm of Dougherty & Confair with an ex-partner. That firm was next to the local courthouse in Courthouse Square Towers. The firm lasted for about two years, after which I burned through a few other partnerships like wildfire, my personality being overly aggressive, selfish, and intolerable to those with whom I practiced.

In 1981, I began the law firm of Confair & Associates, conducting business in my own office building in Kingston, Pennsylvania. That firm lasted most of my years of practice.

Rumors began spreading at the time that, despite my early success and level of intelligence, my lifestyle was leading to an early demise. Even my isolated mother began hearing gossip stories about drinking, drugs, and womanizing. I wrote it off as mere hyperbole, while others did not. Those who did not include the FBI, DEA, police, and fellow lawyers.

Ambulance Chasing

The legal profession prohibits attorneys from soliciting clientele. It violates the legal cannons of ethics to approach prospective clients to obtain legal work. As a result of those restrictions, many attorneys violate the rule by various creative forms of solicitation and by using runners/ambulance chasers to maintain a profitable business.

As a new player in the legal profession, I discovered that cases do not walk in the front door on their own. It is difficult, if not impossible, to generate a volume sufficient to sustain one's practice without some ingenuity. Advertising became permitted in the legal profession but was exceptionally expensive. I looked into potential options for client acquisition. I discovered several possibilities, and one of the most appealing to me was ambulance chasing.

I searched for litigable accidents. Once discovered, I began acquiring needed information about the accident victim (future plaintiff); after which, contact with the victim or their family became necessary. That is where it got interesting.

Hospitals frown upon ambulance chasing within their corridors. It is improper for a lawyer to cold-call a victim to solicit business. Approaching patients/clients to obtain cases in hospital settings was impossible.

Using my creative mind, I decided that entry into hospital settings was easy as a doctor, so I obtained a stethoscope, placed it around my neck, and became a doctor. I thereby met family members in the communal areas of hospitals without difficulty as well as patients in their rooms. It worked well considering the demeaning nature of the whole show.

I remembered a guy that one of my old partners knew, the Prince. He was a full-time "runner" of accident cases. I met the Prince one weekend in Newport, Rhode Island, during the America's Cup.

My old partner and I were sailing enthusiasts, co-owning a boat together. The Prince owned a beautiful fifty-two-foot Irwin yacht, which he had taken to Newport to watch the race from the water. We visited the Prince only to find the enormous yacht filled with drunken sailors and no one watching the races. If I recall correctly, that was the year Ted Turner captained the boat America to win the Cup for the United States. It was one of the best Cup races of all time, with us seeing nothing of the race, remaining below deck, and drinking alcohol day and night like it was oxygen.

After missing the race, everyone decided to sail to Block Island for sightseeing. The waters were rough, and everyone got sick on the journey. The trip to Block Island was three to four hours, filled with violent swells. We drank and vomited over the rails for the entire trip.

The Prince was the "captain," shouting orders to his crew of drunks throughout the journey. He knew nothing about sailing and came close to running aground, but owned the boat, so he gave orders. He possessed but didn't utilize depth sounders simply because he was unfamiliar with their complexities. Charts and soundings were not within his sailing vocabulary, so it was a journey of dead reckoning or chance. The Prince owned the yacht as an occasional place to drink, a way to get out of the confines of the city, and as a tax write-off, in the glorious eighties when such items were deductible.

The Prince was a true runner of accident cases. He attended law school but chose not to engage in the actual practice of law. Instead, he solicited accident cases and referred them to other law firms, who, in return, paid him 25 to 30 percent of their legal fees. He was making close to a quarter million dollars a year and had no office expenses.

The Prince was like the Lincoln lawyer, except he didn't have a Lincoln, and he didn't practice law. After meeting the Prince, I decided to incorporate runners into my practice, except they were not getting paid as much as the Prince.

Runners

Runners come in various shapes and sizes, using different methods to secure desired cases. The runner receives a portion of the attorney's fee upon conclusion of the solicited case. The runner appears nowhere on the surface of the case and is usually paid in cash or under some fictitious business entity. Their compensation differs from one arrangement to the other and from one firm to another.

The use of runners is a customary practice in litigation, as anyone who has suffered a well-publicized accident can attest, having been burdened by solicitation in the form of phone harassment or in-person contact. Many runners pester accident victims with spam calls. Others are more subtle and remain unidentifiable, while others favor the direct approach.

Some very qualified and competent lawyers see the justification for violation of this disciplinary rule by the engagement of runners, rationalizing that injustices frequently occur when injured accident victims fall into the hands of incompetent attorneys, looking for huge fees. Often, inexperienced and unqualified lawyers advertise as specialists in trial law when they have not gone to court to try a lawsuit. This practice is a travesty on the justice system and the reason that many attorneys justify solicitation by competent trial specialists.

Medical malpractice cases provide hefty legal fees, requiring considerable experience and specialization. I had experience in the field, was a professor of medical malpractice law at Wilkes University and Hahnemann Medical School, and a published author. My firm frequently went to trial on malpractice cases generating favorable results. I was a trial lawyer in the true sense of the word.

In the preliminary stages of my practice, I realized the convolutions of litigation law. Business success necessitated using runners, in conjunction with advertising and word of mouth. Workers' compensation and product liability cases and automobile accident cases had always been a large part of my practice experience.

Automobile accident litigation was my initial area of interest. In processing such cases, the first person at the scene of the automobile accident is usually a police officer. Police arrive at the accident scene as first responders, having initial contact with accident victims and their families at later times.

An old friend of mine was a state police officer, so I decided to contact him about generating auto accident cases. It was a casual conversation, including small talk about old times. When an opening presented itself, the use of police as runners arose. He advised that he was a ranking officer in the state police and unable to help personally. He recommended that I speak to a state police officer named Dan, who could assist. I now think of that simple event like a rat facilitating the introduction of the plague.

I saw Dan as a shady character, but I wasn't looking for a babysitter for my children. We agreed to meet at a little bar on Harvey's Lake called Rich and Charlottes. The place was unfamiliar to me, creating the initial impression that everyone in there, when clothes shopping, opted for practical over fashionable and tended toward polyester and leather. It was a hillbilly bar; and Dan, a regular hillbilly from hat to boots, was right at home. People chewed tobacco, and shuffleboard and cowboy boots were the fashion. Dan Kocher fit right in, and I did not. The jukebox exclusively contained country songs. Yee-haa!

The season was early spring, and color was returning to the world. Trees of dull browns and