It still gave me a jolt to see Ron’s basketball player’s body folded like a carpenter’s rule into the ugly hunk of metal that made his life possible. I pasted on a smile and tried to act as if meeting my brother in federal court were an everyday occurrence.
I knelt next to the rubber wheels and said the first words that entered my head. “You could’ve stayed in Cleveland and fought extradition. You didn’t have to make it easy for them.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” Ron said with a wry smile. I put my arms around his shoulders and hugged hard, steeling myself against the realization that he wouldn’t hug back.
He leaned down and brushed his lips against my cheek. His beard tickled my face.
“Cass, it was nice of you to come,” Ron said, “but Harve Sobel is my lawyer.”
“Not anymore he isn’t,” I retorted. “Haven’t you ever heard of conflict of interest?” Without waiting for an answer, I went on. “Maybe it was okay for you both to have the same lawyer back in ’82, but with Jan facing new charges, Harve should keep Jan and I’ll represent you.”
“The reason I waived extradition and had Zack drive me here from Cleveland,” Ron said, replying to the question I’d all but forgotten I’d asked, “is that they’d have won eventually, so why drag it out? Besides,” he added in a tone just a shade too firm, “I wanted to be here for Jan.”
“Jan!” All the pent-up rage I’d been feeling since I first saw her on the news exploded. “I can’t believe she talked you into this in the first place, let alone running away when things got heavy. I can’t believe she used you. I—”
“Cass.” Ron’s tone was commanding. “If you don’t stop talking about Jan like that, I’ll get another lawyer. Maybe it won’t be Harve, but it won’t be you either unless you shut up. Got that?”
Ron’s face was red, blood pounding to his head. He strained forward in his chair, chest pressing against the strap that held him in place. His hands made claw motions that didn’t seem entirely planned.
There were a number of things I would have liked to say, starting with the fact that I for one had been hoping Jan had overdosed years ago and lay buried in an unmarked grave instead of popping up like a zombie in Night of the Living Dead, dragging Ron and me back to Toledo and all of us back into the sixties.
I didn’t say it. I thought about Ron and Jan the way they were in the summer of ’69 and I said nothing. If Jan still had the power to bring out a protective masculinity in my brother, so be it. So be it as long as it didn’t get in the way of what I had to do in court, which was to put as much distance as possible between Ron and what Jan had done.
“Did they let you see her?”
“No,” he replied. “Not yet. But Dana said Harve saw her and that she was ready to face whatever happens in court today.”
“She’d better be,” I muttered. I had no doubt that the court was prepared to take a hard line against a woman who’d killed a federal law enforcement officer and then gone underground. My only concern was that whatever anger the prosecutor and judge had toward Jan wouldn’t spill over onto Ron. It was my job to make sure that didn’t happen.
A burly man in a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and black jeans stepped up to Ron’s chair. He was carrying a cardboard tray of cellophane-wrapped pastries and three cups of steaming coffee.
I guessed he was the latest and best in a long line of home attendants. Stories about him had filled Ron’s letters for almost a year, although we’d never met. I tended to blitz in to Cleveland every Christmas, bearing a Jon Vie chocolate cake and presents from the Museum of Modern Art. I knew only as much about my brother’s life as I could learn in three or four days.
Fortunately, Ron’s letters prepared me for the burly man who extended a beefy hand connected to a tattooed arm. “John Zachowicz,” he said. “But call me Zack, okay?”
I let my hand be swallowed in the big man’s grasp, trying not to stare at the tattoo on the hairy arm: a devil’s face superimposed with the words “Born to Raise Hell.” Wasn’t that the sentiment Richard Speck had on his arm when he murdered eight nurses in Chicago? I consoled myself with the knowledge that the other arm read “Jesus Saves.”
Like Ron, Zack was a Vietnam vet. Unlike Ron, he’d been a “lurp,” a long-range reconnaissance patrol sniper who’d spent too much time in what Ron called “the bad boonies.” He’d gone from the jungle to a biker gang, from a perpetual marijuana haze to a hard-core heroin habit, from drug rehab to born-again Christianity.
“Bought some sweet rolls,” Zack said. He set the cardboard tray on a wooden bench next to Ron’s chair. I was back in the Midwest; Danishes were sweet rolls, soda was pop, and I’d better not ask for an egg cream. I sat down on the bench and opened one of the coffees.
Zack opened a pastry and cut it with a plastic knife. When he had a pile of kid-sized pieces on the cellophane, he set them on Ron’s lap. My brother moved his hand slowly toward the pieces, took one, dropped it, picked it up and finally succeeded in conveying it to his mouth. I could have eaten a whole Danish in the time it took him to take one bite.
Zack opened a straw and placed it into one of the coffees. He held the coffee under Ron’s chin and Ron took a sip. “Hot,” he said. “Let it sit a minute, okay?” Zack set the cup on the bench next to me.
“Look in the bag,” Ron said, tilting his head to the right. I focused on the canvas book bag I’d given him five Christmases ago. I leaned down and pulled out a manila envelope. “You mean this?”
Ron nodded, a barely concealed grin of anticipation on his face.
Even before I opened it, I knew what it was. A photograph. I steeled myself to look into faces from the past.
But the picture wasn’t a snapshot of old buddies. I held the eight-by-ten black-and-white glossy on my lap, taking care to keep my fingers at the edges so I wouldn’t smudge the shiny surface.
It was a typical northwest Ohio landscape. Rows and rows of beet greens, as straight and narrow as a Presbyterian conscience, being hoed by hunched-over migrant workers wearing big straw hats. A short distance away, under an elm tree, stood a rickety baby carriage. Next to the carriage, her round face beaming, stood four-year-old Belita Navarro.
The picture was hand-printed and dried far too hastily on an ancient print-dryer. I knew because I’d printed it, back in the summer of ’69. Printed it and given a copy to Ted Havlicek, who managed to get it published in the local section of the Blade.
“You kept it.” My voice was a whisper, barely there at all.
“Hey, it was my sister’s first published photograph.”
“It was your sister’s only published photograph.”
“I didn’t know that then, did I?” Ron’s voice was lazy, teasing. “The way you carried that camera everywhere you went, I thought you were going to be the next—I don’t know who. But famous.”
“Imogen Cunningham,” I murmured, “or Margaret Bourke-White. Every photo a masterpiece of social significance. The downtrodden as Art with a capital—”
“There’s something else in the bag,” Ron said.
I reached in, digging to the bottom before my fingers grasped an envelope. It was business-size, with no return address.
The handwriting was large, the letters round and childlike, yet written shakily, as though the writer were an elderly woman with the soul of a ten-year-old.
I glanced at my brother. His face wore an expectant look, but it wasn’t the pleased anticipation he’d shown when I’d looked at the photograph. Instead, he seemed tense, ready for trouble.
Inside the envelope were four sheets of typing paper written in the same awkward script.
“Dear Ron,” the letter began. “Thank you for writing to me. Your letters meant a lot. I feel like I’m starting my life all over again. I have a lot of things to make up for.
“In the Program, we have this thing called the Ninth Step. You have to make a list of people you’ve harmed and then try to make amends. When I did my Ninth Step, I closed my eyes
and remembered all the faces of people I’d hurt when I was drinking. One of those faces was yours. And one was Kenny’s.”
I stopped reading. “God,” I murmured. “That’s a hell of a thing to do. Think of all the people you’ve harmed. And what does she mean”—I stared directly into my brother’s eyes—“when she says she harmed you?”
Ron looked away, his cheeks reddening. “That’s another story. Keep reading.”
“I mean, I remember you and she were—”
“Keep reading, Cass.” I opened my mouth, then shut it as I caught a glimpse of something in his eyes that told me to quit while I was ahead.
I kept reading. “I can’t make amends to Kenny because he’s dead. I can’t tell him I was wrong, that I know he wasn’t the one who sold us out to the cops back in ’69. We all thought he was the traitor who got us busted, but the truth is that the FBI had an informer in our group.”
The letter fell from my hands. “What is this woman smoking? Is she serious? Does she really believe this crap?”
Ron nodded. He leaned down and sipped the coffee Zack held under his chin. “Keep—”
“I know, keep reading.” I suited action to words.
“Kenny didn’t sell us out, Ron. The cops knew everything before we got to the county fair, but it wasn’t from him. One of us was working for the feds all along, and I’m going to tell everything when I turn myself in.”
A wave of nausea hit me. I felt hot and cold, sweaty and chilled. Sick to my soul.
The guilt flu. I had only been three years older than Kenny when I’d looked at him after the arrest with cold, rock-hard eyes and said, “I don’t talk to traitors.” Then I’d walked away, my head held high with righteous fervor. I had no idea he’d take our rejection so hard, that he’d poison himself with the very pesticide we were protesting.
I was a child. A dangerous child.
“Cass?” Ron’s concerned voice broke in. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. My teeth were chattering. “I got a little drunk on the plane is all.” A little drunk, a little maudlin, a little guilty. Some people do the Ninth Step sober, some have to drink in order to remember.
The letter ended with a signature. No truly, no sincerely, and no love.
“God, Ron,” I began, “I already felt rotten about Kenny, and now—if he didn’t even sell us out, then—”
“Then we’re even more guilty than we were before,” he finished. “We jumped on that kid so fast.” He shook his head. “I mean, I never even thought of anyone else. As soon as the bust went down, I said to myself, ‘Kenny, you little fuck. You’re going to pay for this.’ And then he did pay for it.”
I looked at the wheelchair. “So did you, Ron. So did you.”
“Yeah, well, sort of.”
“Sort of, my ass. It was because of the arrests that you got sent to ’Nam.”
“What do you think of the letter?”
I let Ron change the subject. “She sounds pretty flaky. And besides, she just got sober. Does that sound to you like somebody with her head on straight?”
“Does to me,” Zack said. I looked across Ron at the wild black hair and shaggy beard, the tattooed arms and studded wristband, the leather vest with the motorcycle patches. His huge face glowed with joy. “Kicking juice and shit and coming home to Jesus was the best medicine I ever took, praise the Lord.”
“Well, maybe for some people,” I muttered, aware of Ron’s suppressed laughter.
A hand tapped my shoulder. I jumped. A uniformed officer said, “Court’s in session, Counselor. Better get inside. Judge Noble’s a stickler for punctuality.”
I nodded and rose from the bench. Zack took the handles of Ron’s chair and wheeled him toward the courtroom, where I came face to face with a piece of my past. Dana Sobel Rapaport, Harve’s daughter and Rap’s ex-wife, stood waiting outside the big double doors. She wore a navy blue suit that cried out for brass buttons and epaulets, flat shoes, and an Oxford cloth shirt with a straight gold pin through the collar.
I knew it was her by the shiny, straight black hair. Indian hair, I’d always thought, particularly in the old days when it hung down to her butt. Now it was short-cropped and gray-streaked, but it was still the hair of a Native American princess.
“Cassie, is that you?” she asked. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Me? What’s different about me? You’re the one who got old, who cut her hair and put on forty pounds and started dressing out of a Land’s End catalogue. I’m still the same—
“Dana,” I said, forcing enthusiasm into my tone. Pretending this was a reunion, not a court appearance that might end with my brother in custody, awaiting trial as an accessory to murder.
“Where’s Harve?” I asked. “I wanted to talk to him for a minute or two before the case was called.”
“He’ll be here,” Dana replied. “He had a case in Common Pleas, but he’ll be here by the time our case is called.”
This was the Harve Sobel I remembered, always running late, always dashing into court at the last minute with a breezy apology, always having to cool out the judge before getting down to business. I’d hoped having the first two rows of the courtroom packed with media people would have been reason enough to adjourn his other cases by phone and show up on time.
“He’s going to piss off the judge before we even open our mouths on bail.”
Before Dana could reply, an ebony-black man with a shiny shaved head stepped up and said, “We have to talk.”
“Do we?” I answered, raising an eyebrow. “And you are…?”
“Luke Stoddard,” he replied, “assistant United States attorney.”
The enemy. The man trying to put my brother in jail. But if he was ready to talk, that meant what he really wanted was a deal. A deal that would cut Ron loose, in return for … what?
I nodded my willingness to discuss the matter and followed him down the corridor to a spot where the others couldn’t hear.
I jumped the gun, letting my opponent know I intended to control the situation. “What do you want?”
A small smile crossed Stoddard’s smooth face. “I want Jan Gebhardt.”
Not a news flash. “In return for what?”
He shrugged. “A clean walk for your brother.”
I refused to make the obvious remark. “All charges dismissed? He leaves town and forgets the whole thing?”
“Not exactly,” the prosecutor replied. “There’s the little matter of his testimony at trial.” His smile grew broader. I was reminded of a poem from my childhood, about the fish with the deep-sea smile. The smile of the big fish who always eludes the hook, who swallows up the smaller fish.
“Ron can’t add anything to your case,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “He was a passenger in the van.” A mere passenger was the way I intended to phrase it when addressing the judge. “He didn’t know the other passengers were illegals.”
“It was his van, Counselor,” Stoddard reminded me. “That makes him a little more than a passenger. Besides,” he went on, “those original charges of smuggling illegals pale beside the murder of a federal officer.”
“Ron was nowhere near the scene of the crime,” I pointed out. “Jan was on her own during the whole thing.”
“But he was waiting for her back at the church. It’s my guess he knew exactly where she was and what she was doing.”
My face reflected my complete astonishment. Stoddard smiled his deep-sea smile and said, “It seems your client hasn’t told you everything.” He put the slightest possible emphasis on the word “client,” managing to needle me not only for walking into court unprepared but for being the kind of sister whose brother hadn’t seen fit to tell her the whole story.
Before I could reply, the prosecutor said, “Think about it, Ms. Jameson. We’ll talk again after the arraignment. You and your client may see things a little bit differently then.”
He strode down the hall and into the courtroom. I followed, thin
king as I walked. Would a deal be so bad? All Ron had to do was deny any knowledge of Jan’s intent. Whatever went wrong was her fault, not his, so why should he suffer?
The first two rows of the courtroom were filled with reporters. I scanned them, hoping to recognize Ted Havlicek. It would be nice to have a friendly ear into which I could drop pro-defense tidbits.
Ron’s chair sat at the defense table. I had barely reached my seat when the cell door opened and out came a phalanx of guards, all surrounding a prisoner in a faded print dress.
I stared frankly and openly at the woman whose untimely return from the dead had caused all this trouble.
Thin, tense, her mouth working and her fingers idly twisting a hank of stringy hair, she looked like a haggard prostitute emerging from the drunk tank. Her face was pale as oatmeal and there were old track marks on her skinny arms. A fine shiver ran through her body as I watched her; it was as if my eyes had somehow touched her in a sensitive place.
Her face lit up as she caught a glimpse of Ron; the smile took twenty years off her face.
Breaking from the guards, she rushed toward the chair. Before they could stop her, she threw her arms around his torso and kissed him. It was a long, deep kiss with plenty of tongue.
I had never thought to see a woman kiss my brother that way again.
Luke Stoddard wanted Ron to testify against Jan.
It was my job to sell betrayal as a viable option.
But how could I ask Ron to betray a woman who kissed him as though he were still a whole man?
CHAPTER SIX
July 15, 1982
It was like being on speed. Black beauties with a hit or two of grass to fuzz the hard edges. Jan gunned the motor as the van sped along the black-topped T-square road toward Lake Erie. The summer wind licked her face, swished her long fine hair into her eyes, her mouth. She leaned back and laughed. This was alive—the most alive she’d felt since the day she stopped drinking and doping seventy-nine days ago. Seventy-nine long days without a high, gray days in spite of golden summer sun, days as flat as the farmland on either side of the blacktop. The danger only heightened the high. Was this what Harriet Tubman felt leading slaves to freedom? Was this what Raoul Wallenberg felt smuggling Jews out of Hitler’s Reich? Were all heroes danger junkies at heart?
Troubled Waters Page 5
