'One false move and we will shoot you'

US attorney Stanley Alpert was on his way home in New York when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by a gang of thieves. How would he survive the next 25 hours?

It was close to 11 o'clock and I was heading home. I was happy. The next day was my birthday, and a group of us were going to see one of my favourite guitarists, Freedy Johnston at the Bottom Line. Because it was late and cold, I didn't notice that there was not another soul on the street. As I approached Fifth Avenue on Tenth Street, without warning I felt a tug on my right elbow. Facing me was a short, stocky, black male - from under his long coat he pointed at me the barrel of an automatic machine gun.

"Don't say a word. Just get in the fuckin' car, motherfucker."

There was another shadowy figure rammed against my back. "Move, move," he cried. Stabs of fear shot through me as they swept me toward the car. A third black male in the front passenger seat turned and stuck a pistol in my face. The car, a Lexus, began to roll.

I was trapped: a prisoner, five blocks from home, in tight, cold space, two to three guns poised to blow my head off. At the same time, mere inches away, were the familiar and ordinarily welcoming brownstones of my home town. The contrast was so absurd that I almost wanted to let out a huge laugh.

The man in the front passenger seat, a tall, meaty presence who immediately emerged as the meanest of the three, flatly demanded: "Give me your wallet." I handed it to him naturally and without question, as though I were handing my passport to a customs agent.

The man in the driver's seat now took control. "Sen, you got his cash machine card?"

"Right here, Lucky," said Sen.

Lucky, obviously the leader of the gang, was cool and businesslike: "What's your name? Stanley? All right, Stanley, let me explain to you what is about to happen. We are going to drive you to a cash machine and you are going to help us remove your money. My associates here will be very unhappy if you do anything stupid. Do you understand? They will kill you if you open your mouth or if you do anything stupid."

"Don't worry," I said. "I'll do whatever you ask." I kept my eyes down. It was a bad idea to look at anyone - they would think I was challenging them or trying to recognise their faces so I could identify them. "Keep your eye on him, Ren," Lucky said to the man sitting quietly to my right with his gun aimed at me - the one who first grabbed me.

Fear flooded my brain. A U-turn brought us up, double-parked by a cash machine.

"Stanley," asked Lucky, "How much do you have in your checking?"

"I don't know. Maybe $2,000."

"Do you have a savings account?"

"Yes."

"How much is in there?"

"About $110,000."

Lucky practically turned around in his seat. "What do you do for a living, Stanley?"

I answered, almost apologetic. "Well... uh... I'm an assistant US attorney."

The debate rages as to whether a prosecutor who is the victim of a crime is better off telling them what he does or not. For me, no debate was necessary. In my wallet was a stack of Department of Justice business cards.

But they didn't quite get it. Sen, acting impressed, said, "Ohhh... you an attorney."

Lucky demanded my social security number and my mother's maiden name, then picked up his cell phone and called my bank in his best corporate speak. "This is Mr Alpert..." My social security number followed. "Robins... I want you to transfer $50,000 from savings to checking... Right... Thank you very much... Right, have a good night.

"All right, we're all set. You all wait for me here. I'll be back soon."

In a minute, my savings from my three years in private practice would all be gone. And I didn't care. Take the fucking money. My life is more important.

Lucky jumped back in the car: "Stanley, do you have a limit on your cash card?"

"I really don't know."

"It seems to be limited to $1,000."

Lucky was stymied and we sat there while he thought over his dilemma.

"Do you have a car?"

"No."

"What is wrong with you?" Lucky chortled incredulously. "Do you have a girlfriend?" With that information he could get more leverage by threatening to go after her.

"No."

"How old are you?"

"Thirty-eight."

"Any kids?"

"No."

They all shook their heads in disbelief.

"Stanley, man... What the hell have you been doing?" asked Lucky with derisive incredulity.

"You should talk to my parents," I said. "They're wondering, too." Maybe bringing in my family would humanise me in their eyes.

The Lexus eased forward toward the west side of Manhattan. Lucky had a plan. "Stanley, we're going to take you to a place we have to crash at and keep you there overnight. Tomorrow morning we will take you to a drive-through bank and you will withdraw $50,000 from your account. Do you understand?"

My stomach sank as I absorbed this sickening blow. "Yes."

"If you pull one false move, we will shoot you, Stanley. Understand?"

"Yes."

Sen stared back at me from the front passenger seat. My mistake; our eyes met again. He screamed: "This motherfucker got big eyes! I should kill you for those fuckin' big eyes!" I was frozen in fear - there was no doubt in my mind that Sen could shoot me as easily as I might scratch an itch.

Lucky ordered backseat Ren to take my scarf and use it to blindfold me. He shoved me down in the seat next to him. It was intimate, my head practically in his lap, my body curled in a foetal position.

I could hear and feel the car descend into a tunnel. I thought it might be the Holland Tunnel. Maybe Lucky's out-of-town crib was a crash pad in Jersey on the other side of the Hudson. But as we rolled out of the tunnel, I could feel us ascend a hill that gave off the familiar whirr of rubber on metal of the East River bridges. We were heading for Brooklyn, where I'd been brought up and where I now practised law.

A few minutes later, the Lexus pulled to a halt. Two flights up and I was introduced to my new prison. Sen shoved me down on to a mattress. Minutes later, someone by the name of "D" called in on the cell phone. She was out on the street working for a living.

"Yo, D, what's happenin'?" Sen exclaimed. "Where you girls at? Downtown? You had a good night? Made much? What? Pay your taxi to get over here? How much? About $16? Sure, no problem."

I was blindfolded and helpless and I was scared shit. But my prosecutor's instincts took over. Downtown meant either downtown Brooklyn, or downtown Manhattan just across the river. More likely Manhattan for prostitution, I thought. The likelihood of my ever making use of the information was not great.

The boys began planning tomorrow morning's trip to the bank. Sen was not convinced - "Man, Lux, what if he pulls somethin' at the bank, yo? This shit ain't gonna work."

Lucky pondered silently. "If he tries anything, we'll kill his father." There was a pregnant pause in the room, as the horror of this threat hit me.

"Where does your father live?" Sen asked.

"In Brooklyn."

"What's his address?"

Fuck. My dad was a cantor. That's the guy who sings the prayers in the synagogue. Now he was retired, but he maintained a business card just in case. The card was sitting right there in my wallet. One false move and the atmosphere would turn grim. On the other hand, if I told the truth, the probability of them actually succeeding in going to Ocean Parkway and killing him was much lower than the probability of them killing me. In a bitter calculus, I chose the truth.

"772 Ocean Parkway," I answered Sen.

I seemed to have miscalculated. "I think one of my homeboys should be in that area. I'm gonna send him over to check it out. You hear that, motherfucker?" he screamed at me. "We'll break every bone in his fuckin' body." Tears of desperation filled my eyes.

Sen dialled his cellular phone. "Yo, B, whussup? We need you to do somethin'. Where you at? Oh, good, you're pretty near to where we need you to go. The guy's name is Benjamin Alpert. He's at 772 Ocean Parkway. I want you to go there and check out this motherfucker. What? Oh, right... Yo, Stanley, what apartment is your father in?"

That was more than I could take. My father had Parkinson's disease. He was also 77 years old. "4N," I lied. He really lived in apartment 3N. I purposely crafted my lie to be off by only one number so that if they did discover it, I could claim that I had made an honest mistake.

"Yo, Stanley, you're not gonna fuck with us, are you? Don't make us waste your father."

I could hear Sen cocking and uncocking his gun. "You ever try one of these, Stanley?" he asked. "All you got to do is give it a little squeeze and it puts out 10 bullets in a second. Bam! Bam! There's nothin' left of you except pickin' up the pieces."

A few minutes later, Sen was back on the phone with his man. "All right, Stanley, we got your father covered," he said. It seemed to me that the calls were probably a ruse - one came too soon after the other to be credible. The problem was I couldn't be sure.

The intercom buzzer suddenly rang. A hubbub erupted and the girls entered the room. "Hi, D. Whussup, Mystic?" Sen greeted them with lusty good humour.

Before they noticed me, one of the girls said, "It was $16.40. You gonna pay?"

Apparently, these chicks were lousy tippers, but I logged the clue.

"What the hell have you dragged in here?" exclaimed one of the girls in apparent disbelief, upon spotting the suit.

"We found him on the street, D. We just got a little business to do with him."

My little lawyer brain ticked over. The girls had been out turning tricks "downtown". Lucky was their pimp, and Ren and Sen were friends, lovers, business associates, and muscle in a loosely-knit clique of criminal associates.

"Stanley, man, we gettin' McDonald's," said Sen. "You want something?"

I was worried that the food might be drugged. "No, thanks," I replied. "I'm not too hungry at the moment."

"Why don't you take off your shoes?" Lucky asked. "Make yourself comfortable."

Taking them off would have made me feel too vulnerable. Shoes on my feet also preserved some hope that the opportunity might arise for me to walk out the door. "No, thanks. I'm fine," I said, cheery, as though he had made a kind offer.

"All right, Stanley," he responded. "I'm getting out of here. Goin' to see my fiancee." A fiancee! How lovely! I could only hope to be invited to the wedding.

With Lucky gone, the room grew quiet. The sound of a match striking was followed by the sickly sweet smell of marijuana. I could feel the tension dissipate.

Ren felt friendly. "How 'bout some weed, Stanley?"

Sen liked the idea. "Yeah, how 'bout some smoke with us, Stanley?"

I didn't even smoke pot when I wasn't being kidnapped. "Thank you very much, but I'll pass."

"Why don't you bring some of that sweet stuff over here, Mercedes?" Sen commanded. Mercedes was evidently D's real name.

"We need condoms," said Mystic.

On the mattress next to me, a foot or two away, I could hear that another body came over and was lying on top of Ren. Across from me, on the other mattress, more gurgling told me that Sen was occupied. The blindfold was turning into a blessing.

It was getting really late, maybe 3am, and I wished I could sleep. "Lucky should be back soon," said Sen.

"Have you prayed yet, Stanley?" he wanted to know.

"No." I hadn't had time to think of it.

"You believe in God?" asked Ren.

"Yes, I do," I said.

"You Jewish, Stanley?" asked Sen.

Now I was in big trouble. The relationship between Jews and blacks was a complicated and troubled one, as I was painfully aware. There was no point in denying the obvious, however, so with dread rising in my heart, I replied, "Yes, I am Jewish."

There was a brief silence. Mystic, like a cute little schoolgirl, asked: "Do Jews believe in God?"

"Yes, they do," I replied, professorially.

I waited for Sen's violent outburst. Finally, he surprised me. "That's cool," Sen said. "I like Jews. Jews and blacks is the same. You shoulda told us you was Jewish. If we'da known you was Jewish, we wouldn'ta grabbed your ass on the street. Oh, well."

Ren jumped in. "Steven, where were you going when we picked you up?"

"My name isn't Steven. It's Stanley. I was on my way home."

"Oh, shit... Stanley," Ren said with emphasis. "I'm sorry. Steven is the guy we did this to last night."

"What would you be doin' right now if we didn't get you?" Sen asked.

"I guess I'd be home sleeping."

"What about later on today?"

"Well, I would be at work today. I have a meeting first thing that people expect me at." I thought I should let them know that people would start looking for me. "Also, today is my birthday."

"It's your birthday?" Sen responded. "Oh, shit. We grabbed the motherfucker on his birthday!" Everybody burst into uproarious laughter.

"Happy birthday, Stanley," Sen said. "Man, you need a present. How 'bout a blow job for your birthday, man?" Sen generously offered the services of his colleagues.

Somehow the offer just didn't seem all that attractive to me. But I could see right away I had a problem. If I said no, they might think that I didn't respect their women. That the white lawyer didn't like black girls. With all the cheer I could muster, I answered Sen, "Thank you so much, but I'd rather not."

"C'mon, Stanley. It's your birthday. You deserve somethin' nice for your birthday."

I knew that if I crossed that line, the whole thing would spin out of control. A blow job in this macabre comedy of a room would violate me and the ability to defend myself. As long as I sat there dressed, I retained some element of dignity. A blow job would bring me down to a base level. I would be just another fucking john, which would make it a lot easier for them to put a bullet through my head.

I politely declined again.

As the night went on, Lucky returned and the plan changed again. The gang decided that three African-Americans driving up to a bank with a Caucasian who then asked to withdraw $50,000 in cash wouldn't look right.

"Stanley, I got good news for you," Lucky said. "I'm gonna come back here at 7am, and we will drive you back to your neighbourhood and drop you off."

"Thank you," I responded.

With Lucky gone, I could hear the rhythmic breathing of people sleeping. Around six in the morning, there was the wail of a police siren, maybe a block or two away. "I'm in here! Come get me," I screamed silently.

An hour or so later Lucky came barging in. They weren't going to take me back just yet because someone had smashed the window of the Lexus and stolen the radio. Lucky needed to get the glass replaced. He'd be back in a couple of hours.

But by 9am Lucky had failed to reappear. Ren and Sen called in Ramos from the other room - it was his apartment - handed him a gun and left. Where were they going? They could be young enough to be going to high school.

Without food or sleep, I weakened. Finally, around 11am, I slipped mercifully into sleep.

Hours passed and still no sign of Lucky. Mystic took lunch orders. "I'm not watchin' this guy all day," grumbled Ramos. "This motherfucker is probably gonna go to the cops. You gonna go to the cops, Stanley?"

Even though I was in law enforcement, perhaps I might have considered not going to the cops, if they let me go unharmed and if it was just about me. But I knew full well that if these loose cannons didn't kill me, in short order they'd whack somebody else.

I managed to speak soothingly to Ramos, but I was starting to lose it. Sweat blanketed my face. My breathing was shallow and too quick. My head buzzed with faintness. As the hours ticked by, I pondered my fate as a second night with my captors loomed.

At approximately 5pm, the buzzer rang from downstairs. It was Lucky's fiancee, asking for my social security number. Now at least I understood something. They were using the extra time to commit additional crimes against me. Eventually, the front door opened and in walked Sen and Ren, returning home for the evening like two regular working stiffs.

"Yo, Ramos. Whussup, mah man?" intoned Sen, cheery.

"Whussup? I been stuck here with this guy all day. Where you been and what the hell is goin' on?"

"Aw, don't worry, man," Sen said. "We just had a little change of plans here for our man Stanley."

"What change of plans?" Ramos asked.

"We gonna keep him till midnight so we can get one last $1,000 off of his ATM card."

Sen had been thinking. "Stanley, can I ask you something? You a lawyer, right?"

"Sure."

"It's like this. I got arrested in DC, right? That shit was false, man, I didn't do it. So I got me a lawyer in DC to sue the cops for false arrest. My question is, all right... so the problem is when they arrested me I gave them a fake name. Can I still sue the police?"

"Why did you give a fake name?"I treated Sen with the same seriousness that I would treat any client.

"Look, these motherfucker cops pick me up for somethin' I didn't do. I was scared. Why they have to pick me up for nuthin'?"

"Well, I suppose you could argue that the reason you gave the fake name was because you were falsely arrested in the first place. That you believed the police officers who arrested you falsely were capable of doing anything to you and that you were afraid to give them your real name because they would have used it against you."

This was not one of my proudest moments.

"Hmm..." Sen pondered my words. "So you think I could sue."

"It might work."

"Thanks a lot, man."

Not only was I a cash cow, I was a fount of free legal advice, too.

"Yo, Stanley, you should join our gang," Sen gushed. "You could recommend friends that we could kidnap." Then he realised I probably wouldn't want to recommend friends for kidnapping. "Naw, I mean you could recommend your enemies for us to kidnap. We could make you a lot more money than you makin' as a lawyer." Sen laughed at his own suggestion.

How was I to respond? It wouldn't be credible for me to agree to join a criminal gang. On the other hand, I certainly didn't want to defy Sen by saying no. I smiled and said nothing.

"Yo, Stanley, man, it's a shame we had to meet under these circumstances," Sen waxed philosophic. "We could have been friends."

I heard a match strike, and even before I could smell it I knew it was weed time again. Ren's affection for me seemed to be growing. "Sta-a-a-nley. Stan the ma-a-a-n. Sta-a-a-nley. Stan the ma-a-a-n."

Suddenly he had a revelation: "What's goin' on here? We give you food. We offer you weed. We offer you a blow job," he deadpanned.

He delivered the punch line with rising volume and squeaky pitch: "What kind of robbery is this anyway?"

Ren's own reptilian snicker was overwhelmed by the eruptions of laughter from his appreciative audience. Even I had to laugh genuinely, as he was pretty damn funny.

Suddenly, the front door opened. Footsteps sounded down the hall, and Lucky's commanding business twang demanded, "Whus goin' on?"

Everybody shut up immediately.

"All right," Lucky announced. "I'm gonna drop off the girls and pick up the last $1,000. When I get back, it'll be a little after 12, and I want Stanley to be ready to go. Understand?"

His footsteps moved toward the door. Then they slowed. Lucky had been thinking. "Yo, Stanley, let me ask you something. If you had the chance to put me away for life, would you do it?"

My head buzzed with alarm. Think fast, boy. If I say yes, I'm dead. If I say no, this guy is no fool and he'll know damn well that I'm lying and I'm dead. I took a deep breath and then I spoke slowly, deliberately. "You already told me you know where I live... You know where my father lives." I dragged it out as though I was pondering. "...I don't know who you are. I don't know where we are. You haven't hurt me so far, and you say you're going to release me unharmed."

I hesitated some more and seemed to give it more thought. Then, with the best nonchalance I could muster, I finished the pitch, flat-voiced. "I don't think this has to go any further."

Lucky gave a grunt of satisfaction. "Well, all right, then. Let's go, girls - move." They walked out, leaving me with the other two desperadoes. A sombre mood permeated the room.

Sen told me, "Stanley, man, put ya coat on." He knelt behind me, slipped the scarf off my face and swiftly replaced it with a sleep mask, and on top of it a pair of plastic sunglasses. We sat in silence waiting for Lucky.

It must have been 20 minutes more before we heard the door. "Let's go," commanded Lucky's voice. Ren and Sen pounced on me, shoving me toward the door. Scared but alert, I counted the number of steps down to the front door. They rushed me across the sidewalk and into the back seat of the now familiar Lexus. We drove in complete silence.

Suddenly Lucky swerved the car into a turnoff. He stopped and killed the ignition. No one said a word. What the hell was going on? My heart raced as I contemplated the unthinkable. We had driven only 10 minutes and were nowhere near Manhattan, where they had promised to drop me. I said nothing and neither did they.

Lucky swung open the car door and slammed it behind him. I could hear the trunk opening and items rattling around as he fiddled for something. Next I heard the sound of tape being stripped off a roll - it sounded like thick, heavy, industrial-use duct tape.

My life was over. I was positive that they were about to tape my mouth shut, take me outside and shoot me dead. Fear hit me like a sledgehammer. For a moment I felt the blackness of fainting. Still not saying a word, I braced myself. If they took me out of the car, I would try to make a run for it.

Then, as quickly as I thought I had lost my life, things changed. I could hear Lucky applying the tape to the plastic that was covering the front passenger window broken overnight. He got back into the driving seat and pulled the Lexus out of the turnoff without comment.

Ten minutes or so passed and we were still nowhere near Manhattan. The car slowly rolled to a halt. Lucky broke the silence. "OK, this is it for our friend Stanley."

A voice to my right said, "Should we give him $20 to take a cab?"

"Who's going to give him $20?" Lucky demanded.

"We got $20 left over after the split of the last of the money," said the voice.

"But I didn't get us the last $1,000 yet," Lucky countered.

"Tch," complained the voice. I could feel a body shift against my leg as he dug into his own pants pocket. "Here," he said disgustedly, as he handed me a $20 bill out of his own stash.

"Thanks," I said meekly.

"Get out of the car," he growled. He opened the right-side passenger door, stepped out, and I followed. "Don't say a word. Put your hands up over your head. Just start walking, straight, and don't stop."

Hands in the air, I took a faltering step forward. They still had me blindfolded with Ren's sleep mask and Sen's sunglasses. To me that was a negative sign. It seemed to me that youngsters like these like to keep their few possessions and they would want their sleep mask and sunglasses back. They could easily collect them after shooting me. I took another blind step forward. I heard the sound of the Lexus gently pulling away, but I never heard the door slam. Was Sen still standing there behind me while I walked, preparing to put a bullet in my back? I continued.

Finally I felt I had gone far enough. I stopped. I stood. Hands still up in the air, I sang out: "Are you the-e-ere?" My voice rang out against the silence of the cold winter's night.

Within a week all the teenage kidnappers were arrested and in custody, thanks mainly to Alpert's prodigious memory for detail. Ren, Sen, Lucky and Ramos each received 15-20 years, Mercedes (D) less than two years; Mystic went free. Stanley Alpert went back to work as a lawyer.

· This is an edited extract from Surprise Party: A Memoir Of Survival by Stanley N. Alpert, published by Hutchinson at £11.99. Copyright Stanley N. Alpert 2007. To order a copy for £10.99, including p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

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