Ordinary Heroes (2005)

by Scott Turow

  "You know, Stewart, I think you mean to honor your father's memory, but I would be remiss if I didn't issue a caveat. If you go forward, you could very well discover things that a loyal son might not enjoy finding out. I've always believed there is great wisdom in the saying that one must be careful what to wish for."

  I assured him I had reflected about this. After hanging around courtrooms for a couple of decades, I knew that the odds were that my father had been convicted of a serious crime for a reason.

  "Well, that's a good start," Leach said. "But the particulars are always worse than the general idea. And that assumes you even have a general idea. You may find, Stewart, you've been running headlong with blinders."

  I told him I was resolute. Whatever happened, I wanted to know.

  "Well, that's one problem," said Leach.

  "What are the others, Justice?"

  "Bear' is fine." I was never sure if the nickname had to do with his physique as a young man--he was anything but bearlike now--or, more likely, was merely a convenient shortening of his given name, adopted in an era when being 'Bare' would have been too risque. "I confess that I've spent quite a bit of time, Stewart, since you contacted me, wondering what call I have to tell you any of this. I feel a good deal of fondness for David, even today. He was a fine young man, articulate, thoughtful. And it was his wish not to speak about this with anyone, a wish he apparently maintained throughout his life.

  Furthermore, wholly aside from personal loyalties, I was his attorney, bound by law to keep his secrets.

  "On the other hand, I have things of your father's, Stewart, a document of his, as I've mentioned, that belongs to you as his heir. I have no right to withhold it from you, and therefore, as to the matters disclosed there, I believe I am free to speak. That, at any rate, will be my defense when the disbarment proceedings begin." He had a prominent cataract in one eye, large enough to be clearly visible, but it could not obscure the light that always arose there with a joke. "But you and I must reach an understanding to start. I can't go beyond the compass of what's written. You'll find me able to answer most of your questions, but not all. Understood?"

  I readily agreed. We both took a breath then before I asked what seemed like the logical first question, how Leach had been assigned my father's case.

  "It was roundabout," he answered. "Throughout the war, I had been in the sanctuary of Eisenhower's headquarters, first in Bushy Park outside London, and then later in 1944 at Versailles. These days, I'd be referred to as a 'policy maker.' I had been the District Attorney here in Hartford and certainly knew my way around a courtroom, but my exposure to court-martials was limited to reviewing a few trial records that came up to Eisenhower for final decision, hanging cases most of them. However, your father's commanding officer, Halley Maples, knew my older brother at Princeton, and Maples made a personal appeal to my superiors to appoint me as defense counsel. I had very little choice, not that I ever regretted it, although your father as a client came with his share of challenges." That remark was punctuated with a craggy laugh.

  At ninety-six, Bear Leach had been what we call an old man for a long time, at least twenty years, and he had grown practiced with some of the privileges and demands of age. He had been asked about his memories of one thing or another so often that, as I sometimes joked with him, his memoirs were essentially composed in his head. He spoke in flowing paragraphs. As we grew friendlier over the next several months, I brought him a tape recorder in the hope he would use it to preserve prominent stories of his life. But he was too humble to think he'd been much more than a minor figure, and the project didn't interest him. He was, as he always said, a trial lawyer. He preferred a live audience, which I was only too happy to provide.

  "It was late April 1945 when I first came to Regensburg, Germany, to meet your father. Officers facing court-martial were traditionally held under house arrest pending trial, and your father was in the Regensburg Castle, where the Third Army was now permanently headquartered. This was a massive Schloss occupied for centuries by the Thurn and Taxis family, a palace as Americans think of palaces, occupying several city blocks. Its interior was somewhat baroque, with pillars of colored marble, Roman arches with lovely inlaid mosaics, and classical statuary. I walked nearly twenty minutes through the castle before getting to your father, who was restricted to a suite the size of this sitting room, perhaps larger, and full of marvelous antiques. In this splendor your father was going to remain jailed until the Army got around to shooting him. If you have a taste for irony, you can't do better than the United States military, let me tell you that." Leach smiled then in his way, a gesture restricted by age and disease, so that his jaw slid to the side.

  "Your father was an impeccable man, nearly six feet as I recall, and the very image of an officer and a gentleman. He had a perfectly trimmed line mustache above his lip, like the film star William Powell, whom he resembled. From my initial sight of him, the notion that David Dubin had actually engaged in any willful disobedience of his orders, as was charged, seemed preposterous. But establishing that proved one of the most difficult propositions of my career.

  "Because?"

  "Because the man insisted on pleading guilty. Nothing unusual in that, of course. There are persons charged with crimes who understand they've done wrong. But your father would not explain anything beyond that. Any questions about the events leading up to his apparent decision to release Major Martin were met only with his declaration that it served no point to elaborate. He was very courteous about it, but absolutely adamant. It was a bit like representing Bartleby the Scrivener, except your father said solely 'I am guilty,' rather than 'I would prefer not to,' in response to any request for more information. I was forced to investigate the matter entirely without his cooperation. I learned quite a bit about your father's wartime experiences, but next to nothing about what had gone on between Martin and him.

  "Eventually, I had an inspiration and suggested to your father that if what had transpired was so difficult to speak about, he at least ought to make an effort to write it all down, while matters were fresh. If he chose not to show the resulting document to me, so be it, but in the event he changed his mind, I would have a convenient means of briefing myself. He did not warm to the proposal when I made it, but, of course, he had little to do with his days. He enjoyed reading--he soon had me bringing him novels by the armful--but I took it that he, like many other soldiers, had been an inveterate writer of letters and that that outlet was no longer very rewarding for him. As I recollect, he had disappointed his fiancee, and had then horrified his family with the news of his current predicament. Apparently, producing a written account of what had led to these charges provided an agreeable substitute, and after his initial reluctance, he took up the task with ardor. Whenever I visited him in quarters he was chopping away on a little Remington typewriting machine which sat on a Louis XIV desk, yet another priceless antique, that wobbled with his pounding. About a month along, during a visit, I pointed to the sheaf of pages stacked at his elbow. It was over an inch by now.

  "That's getting to be quite a magnum opus,' I said. 'Are you considering showing any of it to me?' I had been waiting for him to reveal the material in his own time, but with the hearing coming closer, I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to assimilate what clearly was turning into an imposing volume, especially if it opened up new avenues for investigation.

  "Some days I think yes, Colonel,' he said to me, `and some days I think no.'

  "And why "no"?'

  "I don't believe it's going to help me.'

  "Because I'd think poorly of you? Or accept your judgment of your guilt? You know well enough, Dubin, that nothing would prevent me from making a defense for you.' .

  "I do. Reading this, Colonel, might satisfy your curiosity. And it will prove I'm right to plead guilty. But it won't change the result. Or make things any easier for you. More the opposite.'

  "In weaker moments, I sometimes considered sneaking in and stealing t
he pages, but he was right that it was his ship to sink. But I kept after him about letting me see it. Each time he seemed to give full consideration to my points, and then, after due reflection, rejected them. And so we went to trial. David tendered a plea of guilty at the start. The trial judge advocate, the prosecutor, had agreed to drop the most serious charge in exchange, but he still went on to prove his case, which was commonplace in serious court-martials. This, of course, was a decided contrast to the usual criminal matter, where a guilty plea avoids a trial, and I couldn't quite accommodate myself to the difference. I cross-examined with a fury, because none of the accounts were consistent in any way with a soldier who would willfully abandon his duties. Very often, I retired for the night, thinking how well I had done, only to recall that my client had already conceded the validity of the charges.

  "The Manual for Courts-Martial at that time--and now, for all I know--gave the accused the right to make an uncross-examined statement to the panel, immediately preceding closing arguments. The night before the hearing came to an end, I made my last effort to get your father to share his written account, urging him to consider submitting his memoir, or portions of it, to the court. My heart leaped when he came to the proceedings the next morning with what I judged to be the manuscript under his arm in two portfolios, but he kept them to himself. He made a brief statement to the court, saying simply that in releasing Martin he had meant no harm to the United States, whose service remained the greatest honor of his life. Only when the evidence was closed did he turn the folders over to me. It was meant as a generosity on his part, I think, to repay me for my efforts on his behalf, so that I could accept the result with peace of mind. He told me to read it all, if that was what I liked, and when I was done to return it to him. He said forthrightly that he was then going to set fire to the whole thing.

  "Even at that stage, I remained hopeful that I'd find something recorded there that I might use to reopen the case. The court was recessed on Sunday. I spent the whole day reading, morning to night, and finished only instants before I arrived for court at eight a. M. on Monday,"

  "And what did it say?" I was like a child listening to campfire tales, who wanted only to know what children always do: the end of the story.

  Bear gave a dry laugh in response.

  "Well, Stewart, there aren't many tales worth telling that can be boiled down to a sentence or two, are there?"

  "But did you use it?"

  Most assuredly not."

  "Because?"

  "Because your father was right. He was a good lawyer. A very good lawyer. And his judgment was correct. If the court-martial members knew the whole tale, it would only have made matters worse. Possibly far worse."

  "How so?"

  "There were many complications," he said, many concerns. As I say, I was fond of your father. That's not just prattle. But a trial lawyer learns to be cold-blooded about the facts. And I looked at this as trial lawyers do, the best case that could be made and the worst, and I realized that nothing good was going to come from revealing this to the court. Your father's cause, in fact, could have been gravely prejudiced."

  "You're not being very specific, Justice. What was so bad?"

  Bear Leach, not often short of words, took a second to fiddle with his vintage necktie, swinging like a pendant from the collar of his old shirt, which, these days, gapped a good two inches from his wattled neck.

  "When I read your father's account, I realized he had been the beneficiary of an assumption that the trial judge advocate might well regard as ill founded, once the underlying facts were better known."

  I tumbled my hand forward. "You're being delicate, Justice."

  "Well, it requires delicacy, Stewart, no doubt of that. I'm speaking to a son about his father."

  "So you warned me. I want to know."

  Leach went through the extended effort it required to reposition the oxygen in his nose.

  "Stewart, your father was charged with willfully suffering a prisoner to escape. The evidence, in sum, was that Robert Martin had last been seen by several troops of the 406th Armored Cavalry in your father's custody. Your father admitted he had allowed Martin to go, freed him from his manacles and leg irons and saw him out of the bivouac. The escape charge took it for granted that Martin had fled from there. But what your father had written suggested a far more disturbing possibility, one whose likelihood was enhanced, at least in my mind, by your father's rigorous silence."

  "-What possibility?"

  "Now, Stewart, let me caution that this was merely a thought."

  "Please, Bear. What possibility?"

  Leach finally brought himself to a small nod. "That your father," he said, "had murdered Robert Martin."

  Chapter 8.

  DAVID: TEEM'S SECRETS

  By the time Biddy and I had returned to the 18th from the Comtesse de Lemolland's, we found no one in General Teedle's tent. The MP outside said that both orderlies were off duty, and Teedle was surveying battalions. With time, I wandered down to the enlisted men's area again. The bombing at the Comtesse's had revived my curiosity about Billy Bonner's remark that I was investigating the wrong man.

  The skies had closed in once more, leaving no chance for further air traffic. Freed from blackout restrictions, the men had built fires and were enjoying themselves amid the usual barroom atmosphere. Somebody had run Armed Forces Radio through a loudspeaker. Harry James was on Command Performance, and I stopped to listen as he blew his way majestically through "Cherry." It suddenly hit me how much I missed music, for which I'd once felt a yearning as keen as hunger. These days, that longing was dampened under piles of law books and by the frantic concentration required for seven-day weeks in court. Closing my eyes, for just one second, I caught the sure feel of Grace's waist beneath my hand while we were dancing.

  I ran across Biddy unexpectedly. He was standing back with his camera, taking snaps of four men playing cards by lantern in a mess tent. They'd come inside to keep the invasion currency they were gambling with, French francs that had been printed in the U. S., from blowing off in the wind. Each man was straddling an empty cartridge case, while they used a crate emptied of bazooka rounds for a table.

  "Jesus God almighty," one said. "Play a fucking card, won't you, Mickey. You're gonna be dead this time next month, and still wondering what you should have led for trump.), "Mortenson, don't talk like that."

  "You think the Krauts are listenin?"

  "No, but it's kind of like you're putting the evil , eye on me.

  "Oh, shut your damn swill hole, Krautbait, will you, and play a card."

  "Don't be a sorehead, Witkins."

  "Yeah, take a bite of this."

  "Several soldiers in line in front of me for that pleasure."

  "Fuckin Mickey still ain't recovered from striking out with that Frenchy. Only because half the platoon had some ass with her and she still wouldn't come across for him."

  "Half the platoon are doggone liars. That girl was a nice girl. I just wanted to buy her a Coke." "Coke ain't what you wanted her to swallow." "Geez, Mort, what kind of pervert are you?"

  "Listen, kiddo, these French girls use their mouths.), "Not on me. That's strictly perverted."

  "Would youse guys shut the fuck up. It's gonna be fuckin reveille by the time this slowpoke plays a card."

  I enjoyed Tony Eisley, but there was none of this raw camaraderie among JAG Department officers. Not that I shared in it here. Twenty-nine was old to most of these boys, and the presence of an officer was unsettling, even resented. My visits to the enlisted men's quarters reminded me of coming home to DuSable from Easton, when neighbors asked about the "college man" in a tone that was not altogether admiring. I was going to make money, they thought. I was going to move away from there, and them. In the enlisted ranks these days, there were a fair number of college boys because early this year Congress had put an end to the Army Specialized Training Program that had sent recruits to college classes full-time. On the other end, a few enl
isted men from the premobilization Army had been commissioned. For the most part, though, you might as well have put up signs over the enlisted men's and the officers' sides of camp that said POOR and RICH. I had not figured out yet why the Army thought discipline or any other military purpose was advanced by these disparities. Yet I knew, much as I had in basic, that here I was among the real soldiers. The generals' names might be remembered by historians, but it was these men who would fight the true war.

  Emerging from the tent, I wandered for some time before I caught sight of Billy Bonner around a fire with several other soldiers, each of them holding a dark bottle of wine. Bonner clearly regarded me as the law and stopped with his arm in midair, causing two or three of his buddies to turn away, until I said, At ease."

  We strolled off a few paces and I explained to Bonner that Teedle appeared to be gone.

  "Oh, he'll be back. General likes his nights in his own tent." One of Bonner's smart-aleck looks accompanied the remark.

  "Bonner, you don't seem to hold the General in high esteem."

  "No, sir," he said. "He's as good a brass hat as this Army's got."

  "But?"

  Bonner shook his head and rolled his lips into his mouth, but I was persistent tonight. After quite a bit of cajoling, he finally motioned me farther from his companions.

  "You didn't hear this here," said Bonner. He lifted the wine bottle again to stick his courage. "The bastard's a nelly."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Teedle's a fruit, damn it.), "In what way?"