Thursday, Capital Grille; Friday, Federal Court

Lorusso brokered several deals with Jemal's company starting in 2001 that prosecutors allege involved criminal activity. In one of them, they say, Lorusso pushed the city to rent an impoundment lot on Addison Road in Prince George's County for $998,000 a year. Jemal owned the lot.

Lorusso also allegedly tried to get the city to sign off on a deal to pay Jemal's company $12.5 million for the impoundment lot even after an appraiser told him it was worth much less, prosecutors say. Another part of the deal involved selling a historic city firehouse on Massachusetts Avenue NW to Jemal's company.

In another case, Lorusso pushed the city to enter into leases for more than $100 million over 10 years to rent space for offices at 77 P St. NE, an old brick building near New York and Florida avenues NE that Jemal renovated. Prosecutors say Lorusso arranged for the city to pay Jemal's company $1.5 million in unwarranted invoices.

"I take no glee in another person's misfortune, but I know I did my job in uncovering this scandal," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who held 63 hours of hearings on Jemal's ties to Lorusso. "What we now have is a whole different realm. All of the civil issues are resolved. You can commit a wrongdoing and that doesn't constitute a crime. This is up to the jury and the judge to decide."

Jemal has paid to resolve his financial disagreements with the city over leases at 77 P St. NE, according to Graham.

Jemal's Projects

Far from slowing down after his indictment, Jemal has been working as hard as ever, building on his early business -- when he made money off hundreds of little properties that people drive by every day -- to more upscale projects.

Even as he is getting ready for trial, he has been quietly negotiating to form a partnership with Bob Carr, his complete opposite. Carr is one of the top executives at the well-established development company his father started, CarrAmerica Realty Corp., which has large, prominent office buildings in downtown. The company recently finished constructing, with Jemal as its partner, the Atlantic building at 9th and F streets NW. Jemal's partnership with Carr, who is likely to bring 20 associates with him, is expected to bring order, credibility and more of an institutional approach to Jemal's sometimes disheveled operations.

"Douglas provides a creative genius and patient money that, when you couple it with Bob's development discipline, it's the perfect marriage," said Raymond A. Ritchey, a major developer and executive vice president of Boston Properties Inc. "The two together may be the odd couple, but it will be an extremely formidable factor in the D.C. development community."

The son of Sephardic Jewish immigrants -- his father was an Egyptian who imported and exported linens and his mother was Syrian -- Jemal left school at 15. He worked as a busboy at a seafood restaurant in Long Branch, N.J., and unloaded trucks at a store that sold beach towels and sandals along the Asbury Park Boardwalk in New Jersey.

He came to Washington in 1966, two years after he got married, and opened Bargaintown D.C., a five-and-dime store where the Verizon Center now sits. Jemal had to close that store to make way for the Metro, he said, and later he opened his own electronics and records stores in the District. He then got into his family's New York-based electronics business, The Wiz -- known for its slogan, "Nobody Beats the Wiz." Jemal ran about a dozen stores in the Washington area and sold his part of the business shortly before the chain went bankrupt. He got his start in real estate in the early 1980s.

Jemal didn't shun rundown properties. "I was in Shaw when the devil wouldn't even pray in church basements there," he said.

He bought the former Wonder Bread Bakery on Georgia Avenue NW, turned it into office and retail space, and sold it a few years later to Howard University for $18 million. When few others were gambling on downtown, Jemal bought rundown storefronts near the Verizon Center site and renovated them. Although his critics complain about the quality of the restaurants, he got major national chains and office tenants to sign leases for the space.

"I have one word when I think of his name: guts," said Monty Hoffman, a major D.C. developer. "He went into areas nobody else would. He didn't overanalyze anything. He treats real estate like a commodity. He'd go forward with deals and figure the rest out later because he's got a maverick style. He continues to roll again and again."

Jemal drives a black Ford F-350 pickup truck to his office in a building he renovated on H Street NW near the Verizon Center. Nearly every inch of wall space in his office is plastered with old black-and-white pictures of the city, antiques and parts he's pulled from old buildings.

He is partial to his Harley, fast cars and a boat that he keeps at his house in Annapolis on the Severn River. He also keeps an apartment in one of his historically renovated buildings downtown. His wife, Joyce, lives in New York and New Jersey, according to his friends, who say the two have an understanding to live apart.

They have four daughters and two sons, aged 40 to 19. Most Friday nights, friends say, he drives his truck to spend the weekend with his wife and have Sabbath dinner, returning to Washington Sunday night or Monday morning.

At his "clubhouse," as he calls the Capital Grille, Jemal contemplated his trial.

"Getting indicted is an education," Jemal said. "It's the ultimate, ultimate shooting-it-all."