“You can’t be serious. The man’s a stranger.”
“I’m not calling the police on Jerry. If you don’t want to come, you can get out at the next intersection.”
Her sigh is accusatory, yet she says, “Just keep driving.”
A fine mist starts falling—it’s January, after all—and the drizzle snarls the Hollywood Freeway. The forty-five minute drive takes us an hour and ten. Lovely spends the time on the phone with her office, talking to Lou Frantz about other cases, and all the while I grip the steering wheel and pray that she won’t tell him where we’re going, because he’ll certainly insist we call the police, and if we don’t, he’ll call them himself. Sure, it’s the rational thing to do. But I’m not about to lose the chance to get information that will save Ian. Carol Diaz told part of the truth. There’s more truth out there somewhere. I also meant what I said—Jerry is my uncle. He clearly still loves Ian, worships him, I suspect, and I’m Ian’s son, so I don’t believe he’d harm me or my loved ones. It’s a kind of trust I’ve felt with few people: Lovely Diamond; my mentor, Harmon Cherry; Deanna Poulos, my late friend and the founder of The Barrista.
I finally pull up to Dworsky’s building and park the car. You’d think the rain would’ve washed the stench away, but the place now smells of rotting fish laced with creosote. Lovely stumbles on the top step to the entrance, and I barely catch her arm before she falls forward. Her sharp look conveys her unhappiness. There’s water on the floor of the rickety elevator. I hope it’s condensation and not from a leak that might short out the electrical system.
The elevator makes it to the second floor, and when we step out into reception, we find Jerry Holzner dozing in one of the armchairs, a septuagenarian lump. He’s dressed in the same black San Francisco Giants windbreaker and cap that he was wearing when I saw him the day of the courthouse bombing. When I walk over and touch his elbow, he jumps, blinks his eyes twice, springs out of the chair, and removes his cap.
“Oh, thank God you’re here, Parker.” He nods at Lovely. “I know you, Ms. Diamond. I called your office. I trust you.” I twust you.
“What do you want to tell us, Jerry?” I ask.
He turns down his lips in a kind of dyspeptic frown. “I’m doing it because of Carol. She was brave. I want to be brave like she is. Even though Ian doesn’t want me to tell it.”
“I don’t want you to tell it, either, Jerry,” says a woman’s voice, and I look up to see Eleanor Dworsky emerging from the inner suite of offices. “So don’t say another word.”
Jerry’s eyes widen and almost distend like a child with the night terrors. “Waychil?”
It takes me a moment to realize that he’s called Eleanor Dworsky Rachel. But that’s not what frightens me. What terrifies me is that she’s holding a very large handgun. Her son, Brandon Soloway, is holding another.
I was wrong when I concluded that Eleanor Dworsky didn’t have cosmetic surgery. She’s clearly had more than one operation to hide the fact that she’s Rachel O’Brien—bone shaved in the nose to make it more beaklike; eye surgery to make them smaller, rounder; dental work that caused her chin to recede. Whatever she did to herself, the objective was to make her homelier, nondescript. That, along with her decision not to interfere with the natural aging process, and she concocted the perfect disguise.
“What, no doughnuts, Eleanor?” Lovely says. Why won’t Lovely keep quiet? Maybe it’s the fear, or maybe it’s some misguided belief that she can prolong our lives by causing them to drop their guard. She’s wrong. There’s nothing you can do to deter someone like O’Brien.
“Refined sugar and processed wheat are the megacorporations’ weapons against the masses,” Eleanor says. “You never noticed that I don’t touch those things? Keep eating that stuff and it’ll kill you, Lovely. Though I’m afraid you won’t live long enough for that to happen.”
Brandon chortles at that.
“Why did you order Moses to kill Sedgwick?” Lovely asks. “And another question—do you seriously think you’re John Brown?”
“I’m disappointed in you, Jerry,” Eleanor says. “You always obeyed Ian. Except for now, and look at the mess you’ve made.”
“You are evil, Rachel,” he says. “You always were. All the killing, and you let Ian and Charlie and Belinda take the blame. You killed them, didn’t you, Charlie and Belinda? After Charlie kept quiet for so long you killed him anyway. It’s not fair. You are evil.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Brandon says.
“Not here, Brandon. Think! Maybe Jerry, but if the other two are found dead here, who are they going to look for?”
Brandon’s hand starts trembling, and he waves the gun in the air, and for a moment I think he might shoot Eleanor, and then I fear he’ll shoot us, but he lowers the weapon.
“You know what sucks?” Eleanor says to me. “Because you showed up here, I think Ian might get off. This time. What do you think, Lovely?”
“If his lawyers disappear or are found dead during trial?” Lovely says. “A no-brainer mistrial.”
“But what I’m thinking,” Eleanor says, “is that the jury is already deliberating. So says the Internet. The fascists won’t want to pay for another trial, won’t let the Playa Delta Bomber stay out of prison for another day. And what’s left for you lawyers to do? Your boss Frantz can babysit Ian through sentencing. That’s good. I’ve been waiting almost forty years for that son of a bitch to pay for his betrayal, and now it’s going to happen, with a bonus—not one, but two sons dead. I only wish I could think of a way to get rid of the daughter so he could see it all go. As Fidel said, ‘No thieves, no traitors. This time the revolution is for real.’ Ian Holzner is a thief who robbed the masses of his talents, a traitor to the brave revolutionaries who followed him.”
Jerry stands to full height. For the first time I realize that he’s an imposing man. He holds his arms at his sides in an apelike arc and takes a step toward Eleanor and Brandon. “You are right, Rachel. You can’t do it here. Not even to me. Because it is your office. You will be the only suspect.”
“Stay back, Jerry,” Eleanor says. “You were never a fool.”
He keeps advancing, two steps, three steps, and after the fourth, Eleanor calmly shoots him in the gut.
Lovely shrieks.
“I could kill you quickly, Jerry,” Eleanor says. “But I want it to hurt.”
Jerry emits an animalistic grunt and his knees buckle, yet he keeps approaching like some wondrous gothic monster. When Brandon shoots him in the throat, he gurgles and falls to the floor, then convulses hideously and loses consciousness.
I rush over to Jerry, not even flinching when Brandon raises his gun and points it at me, but once again Eleanor stops him with a wave of the hand.
“What do we do?” Brandon asks.
She nods toward Jerry’s body. “Pick that up and get it to the van. I’ll move the other two.”
“You’re insane,” Lovely says.
“They said that about Lenin and Trotsky and Mao and Che,” Eleanor says. “They said that about John Brown.”
Brandon holsters his gun, bends over, and lifts Jerry onto his shoulders with surprising ease. Eleanor motions for us to go outside. We all pile into the elevator. I place myself between Lovely and the others. Over the creaking cables I listen for any sign that Jerry is alive—a groan, a shallow breath. Nothing.
The elevator descends, much too quickly this time. The door opens, and instead of an empty parking lot, there are cars and vans and a familiar face, and someone pulls Lovely one way and someone pulls me the other way. I go down, and my cheek is flat to the wet pavement, and there’s a shout of “FBI, drop your weapons,” but someone—maybe Brandon, maybe Eleanor, maybe one of the cops, maybe all at the same time—fires a shot, and Eleanor and Brandon crumple as one, and Jerry’s limp body makes a sickening thud when he tumbles from Brandon’s arms.
When I’m sure it’s all over, I scramble to my feet, then go and help Lovely up.
; Walking toward us and holding a badge in the air is Mariko Heim. “Are you two okay?”
“Fine,” Lovely says, though I’m not sure it’s true. “You? You’re FBI?”
“It looks that way.” Heim says. “Though I don’t know for how long. This mess just cost the Bureau six years of undercover work.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Rachel O’Brien—alias Eleanor Dworsky, among other names—her son Brandon Soloway, and my uncle, Jerry Holzner, are all dead. When I return home that afternoon and tell Ian what happened, he breaks down in tears. I don’t know what Jerry wanted to tell me, and Ian won’t say, instead withdrawing to his bedroom and leaving Emily and me desperately trying to figure out a way to get him to tell us the truth.
In a media blitz that evening, the Church of the Sanctified Assembly excoriates the United States government for permitting the FBI to infiltrate the inner sanctum of a religious organization. The Assembly’s spokesperson calls the government’s action a clear violation of the freedom of religion and threatens to bring a lawsuit for violation of the Assembly’s civil rights. For once, I agree with the Assembly. The church will never sue, however—Heim was investigating Ascending Sodality, a church-sanctioned practice of child abuse that supposedly ended when I left. Someone my age must have finally come forward. Heim, of course, will reveal nothing, not even that she saved our lives by returning fire at Brandon Soloway on the day he murdered Belinda Hayes and tried to kill Lovely and me. I also realize that when I first met with Hayes, it wasn’t Moses who frightened her—it was Eleanor, whom Hayes undoubtedly recognized as Rachel O’Brien.
I thought Jerry was being paranoid when he told me that the FBI had been listening in on his phone calls, but as it turns out, he was right. How else would they have known to come to Dworsky’s office?
A search of the Dworsky home reveals an underground bunker, in which the authorities find a weapons arsenal, bomb-making equipment, and a laptop computer containing draft versions of JB’s communiqués and something called “The Manifesto of the Harpers Ferry Liberation Front.” Not only did Brandon murder Belinda Hayes, but he also assembled the bomb that exploded at the federal courthouse. He left the bomb on the courthouse steps, but too near the building to cause the damage that they’d hoped. His mother must have truly believed he was the screw-up she kept saying he was. And why did Moses Dworsky go along with this? Maybe he was a true believer. Or maybe he loved Rachel O’Brien so much that he was willing to do whatever she asked of him.
The next morning, Lovely and I appear in court and ask Judge Gibson to declare a mistrial, or at least to reopen the evidence phase so we can tell the jury what happened last night. I’ve actually convinced myself that Marilee Reddick, as an officer of the court and a representative of the United States government, will agree to it.
“We object, Your Honor,” Reddick says. “There was nothing found at the Dworsky residence that implicates O’Brien in the Playa Delta bombing. The defendant is on trial for what happened in nineteen seventy-five, not for what’s happened during the past year. And who’s to say he wasn’t the mastermind of the recent crimes.”
“That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anyone utter in a courtroom,” I say. “O’Brien told me that her goal was to frame Holzner.”
“I’ve read the police report,” she says. “That’s not what she said at all. She talked about his betrayal, which could mean that he bombed the facility when she didn’t want him to.”
“Yeah, right,” I say. “That’s why she’s going around murdering people who could exonerate him. Marilee, Ian Holzner is a victim, and by persisting in this prosecution, you’re no better than a terrorist. Worse, because you’re doing it for self-aggrandizement.”
“Fuck you, Parker.” She’s looks as if she’s about to get out of her chair and attack me.
“Calm down, both of you,” the judge says.
“I won’t calm down, Your Honor,” I say. “They killed his brother yesterday, almost killed me twice over. For Marilee to feed you this crap with a straight face is disgusting.”
“These fanatics like Holzner will do anything for their cause,” she says. “They’ll kill their loved ones if they think they need to. Look at what O’Brien had her husband do. A suicide mission. We’ve had a trial, and we should finish it.”
“The truth is finally coming to light,” I say. “Carol Diaz, O’Brien as the perpetrator of the recent crimes. This is a death-penalty case, Your Honor. I appeal to your sense of justice. You cannot let this case go forward until the FBI and the police conduct a full investigation into the activities of Rachel O’Brien and Brandon Soloway.”
The judge leans back in his chair, looks up at the ceiling, and shuts his eyes. He drums his pen on the desk. “Let’s see what the jury comes back with,” he says. “If there’s a guilty verdict, we can take another look at it.”
He’s playing it safe, hoping that the jury will acquit so he doesn’t have to make the decision himself. I didn’t think octogenarian Carlton F. Gibson would care about what the media or the appellate court thinks of him, but I’m wrong—judges always care. I do take comfort in his statement that he’ll reconsider if there’s a guilty verdict. And with this new evidence, it’s highly unlikely that a conviction will survive an appeal. Still, the right-wing media pundits have already decided that the HFLF was merely the present-day name for the Holzner-O’Brien Gang, and that Holzner ordered the execution of his own brother because Jerry was going to implicate him. I don’t want just a high probability that the judge will dismiss the case, I want certainty, and I don’t have it.
As we leave the courtroom, the marshals are shepherding the jurors in to begin the morning’s deliberations. We lawyers stop, assume postures of respect, and let them pass. I spent the entire trial hoping that they heeded the judge’s admonition not to watch television or surf the Internet, and now I pray that at least one of them did the exact opposite. It’s not an ethical thought, to be sure, but sometimes ethics and justice diverge. My late mentor, Harmon Cherry, told us that such thinking was the gateway drug to corruption. But Harmon never represented his own father in a murder trial.
When the jurors are inside the deliberation room, the air between the US Attorney and us once again ignites with hostility, and we part ways without a word.
“I’ve got to get back to the office,” Lovely says. “Lou has three new cases for me. Including Carol Diaz. Are you going to The Barrista to wait?”
“No, I think I’ll stick around in case they come back.”
“It’s way too soon,” she says.
“I’ll wait anyway.”
She starts to walk away, but turns around, puts her arms around me, gives me a deep, courthouse-inappropriate kiss, turns back, and click-clacks toward the escalator.
The attorneys lounge is empty because this is a Thursday, a slow morning. The clerk has our cell-phone numbers and will call and text if the jury reaches a verdict. I go into a conference room—they’re all empty—and start reading a biography of the brilliant civil-trial lawyer Norman Roy Grutman, who represented clients as diverse as the Reverend Jerry Falwell and Penthouse magazine, and once represented Penthouse against Falwell. I’m a hundred and twenty pages and three hours in when the sliding door opens and a marshal walks in.
“The jury just passed us a note,” he says.
Reddick and her cohort are in the courtroom in a matter of minutes. It takes Lou Frantz and Lovely Diamond twenty-five minutes to arrive, and a full hour for the marshals to get Ian Holzner and Emily Lansing to the courtroom. During the wait I can’t keep still but don’t have enough equilibrium to pace. So I just sit in my chair at counsel table and grind my teeth and bounce my right leg at what must be a hundred and fifty pulses a minute, which is also the speed of my sledge-hammering heart. I continually wipe my sweaty palms with a paper towel, and when that’s soaked and torn, on my suit pants.
When Holzner is in his place, the judge brings the jury back. What will follow is
the torture of ritual. We stand as the jurors enter the room and sit down when Judge Gibson tells us to. He asks the members of the jury whether they’ve selected a foreperson. They have, and it’s the older man caring for his infirm wife. I try not to speculate about what his selection means, yet can’t help hoping that it means the jurors elected someone who was fair. The judge instructs the foreman to hand the note to the marshal who’s been attending to them. The marshal brings the form up to the judge’s bench, where Gibson fumbles for his glasses before reading the note with a neutral expression that doesn’t tip us off to its contents. When he’s finished, he beckons the court clerk, who rises out of her chair, retrieves the note, and sits down again. In a practiced flat tone of the bureaucrat, the clerk reads, “We, the jury, are hopelessly deadlocked.”
Judge Gibson looks at them in utter disbelief. “You haven’t been out long enough to be deadlocked.” He flings his pen on the desk, shuffles through a stack of papers, and reads them what’s called an Allen charge, after an 1896 case called Allen v. United States. He asks the jury to go back and deliberate further. He tells them that if they don’t reach a verdict, there will be another expensive trial and that they’re as competent to decide the case as any future jury. He concludes by instructing them that while they shouldn’t give up their honest beliefs, they have a duty to try to reach a verdict. “Now get back in there and do your jobs,” he says.
The jurors start to rise, but then grungy Joey raises his hand and starts talking without permission. “It’s not going to do any good, Judge. It’s eleven to one for conviction. I’m the one, and I’m not going to change my mind. I think there’s been juror misconduct here. The foreman, Mr. Rudolph, watched the news and talked about how there were these murders of Hayes and Sedgwick and how the media thinks Mr. Holzner is responsible. Your instructions said that we should look only at the evidence, and that’s not evidence.”
“Is that true, Mr. Rudolph?” the judge asks.
The old man’s face has turned almost neon red. “That’s not what happened at all. He’s making it up because he wants an acquittal.”
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