Troubled Waters

by Carolyn Wheat

  It was Father Jerry Kujawa, pastor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The Radical Preacher we’d all met in the summer of ’69, the man who’d declared his church a sanctuary for the fleeing Central American refugees during the summer of ’82.

  What the hell was he doing here? Didn’t he realize that his presence would only serve to remind everyone, the judge included, of those radical years when civil disobedience seemed as American as apple pie? Didn’t he know he was doing more harm than good by striding up to the third row and squeezing himself into the seat next to one of the law students?

  Luke Stoddard’s voice rumbled like the Mississippi in flood as he summarized the charges. “On July 15, 1982, these two defendants were arrested for transporting illegal aliens,” he began. “And a scant three days later, Ms. Gebhardt was once again engaging in illegal activities along the same lines, showing a complete and total disregard of the laws of the United States.” I jotted a note to myself to remind the court that Ron, in contrast, had done nothing beyond the original charge.

  “On July 18, 1982, Ms. Gebhardt was stopped while transporting yet another illegal immigrant, as a result of which she shot and killed Agent Dale Krepke.”

  “Agent Dale Krepke of the Drug Enforcement Administration,” Harve interjected in a booming voice. The judge gave him a withering stare, but I was grateful for, yet puzzled by, this new information. In all the press accounts, Krepke had simply been identified as a federal agent. I’d assumed he was Border Patrol, like Walt Koeppler. What was a DEA agent doing making an arrest for immigration violations?

  “He was an agent of federal law enforcement,” Stoddard said in a firm tone, “and he was shot and killed while performing his duty. It makes no difference which agency he—”

  “He was shot and killed,” Harve repeated in a voice that overrode the prosecutor, “but not by Janice Gebhardt. The truth is, Your Honor, that Agent Krepke had no business being where he was at the time he was shot. He was in fact specifically ordered by his superiors not to follow or harass any member of the so-called sanctuary movement. He disregarded those orders and he died because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He interrupted something far more serious than the crime he thought he was pursuing.”

  “Mr. Sobel,” the judge said, hammering the desk with his ebony gavel, “I insist that you hold your arguments until it is your turn to address the court on bail. Kindly permit the United States attorney to continue.”

  And continue Stoddard did. A sucker for deep male voices, I found myself lulled by the man’s delivery. It was smoother and more sophisticated than the old-time preacher style, but it had some of the same cadences and all of the same passion. A passion that was being directed toward one end: holding Jan without bail.

  To hear him, you never would have suspected that he’d just offered one of the defendants a deal. I gave him full marks for strategy; he was showing me just how bad things could get should Ron refuse his offer and insist upon going to trial.

  Old Lefties have better faces, I thought as I watched the old warhorse, the Bill Kunstler of northwest Ohio, rise to his full height. Harve Sobel had to be seventy-five, but his eyes still burned and his voice still choked with a passion for justice that made me wonder where my youthful passion had gone. How had he managed to keep his rage and his love alive all these years?

  “My client,” he began, placing a huge hand on Jan’s thin shoulder, “ran away when Agent Krepke was shot to death in front of her eyes. She ran away not because she shot him, but because she was afraid that those who killed Agent Krepke could and would kill her. The identity of the actual murderers of Agent Krepke will be revealed in due course, Your Honor, but it will have to be revealed very, very carefully, since I assure this court that the ramifications will reach far beyond this courtroom.”

  Stoddard jumped to his feet, but before the words left his mouth, Jan spoke up. “I want to say something, Your Honor,” she announced. “There were a lot of things going on that summer. Illegal things. The sanctuary stuff was the tip of the iceberg. I came back to tell the whole truth about all of it.”

  Harve touched Jan’s arm and she fell silent. “What my client means,” he said, “is that a number of illegal activities were going on around her—none of which she was involved in herself. But her contention is that the government of the United States not only knew about these activities, but covered up for them and in some cases actively supported them. In fact,” he went on, lowering his voice to a confidential tone that had the first row of reporters leaning forward in their seats, “the defense intends to prove that the government of the United States violated my client’s most basic civil rights by planting not only an informer but an agent provocateur in the sanctuary movement.”

  “Your Honor, this is outrageous,” the prosecutor interjected. His voice was steady, but a vein in his temple throbbed. The man was reining in a gigantic rage.

  “Counselor,” Judge Noble said, his tone heavy with disapproval, “are you asking this court to believe that the government of the United States would engage in the kind of illegal conspiracy you’re alleging here?”

  Harve smiled his own deep-sea smile and reached into the open briefcase on the defense table. He took his time in pulling out a sheaf of photocopied cases, the names of which he proceeded to recite for the record. I recognized them after the fourth name: each case involved FBI illegalities, ranging from the planting of illegal wiretaps to the use of agents provocateurs, and each case involved left-wing organizations. Each case also ended in a dismissal of all charges against the defendants.

  Harve made his point. Judge Noble cut him off with a wave of his long-fingered hand. “Lawyer Sobel, this court sees where you are going with this. And I must agree that the government of this country has at times overstepped its bounds in enforcing the law. But a mere recitation of case law does nothing to prove your assertion that the government did any such thing in this case.”

  Harve smiled, as if the judge had said exactly the words he wanted to hear. “Which is why, Your Honor, my client wishes to speak openly and frankly, under oath and on the record, about what she knows, at the earliest possible opportunity. She seeks a public forum because she fears, even now, that there are agents of the government who would silence her if they could.”

  Luke Stoddard had heard all he could stand. “Your Honor,” he broke in, his voice cracking with outrage, “can’t you see what’s happening here? This defendant is the one charged with the murder of a federal agent, and she’s trying to put the government of the United States on trial instead of herself. There is absolutely no foundation for her statements, and I move that they be stricken from the record.”

  “These allegations are too serious to be dismissed, Mr. Stoddard,” Judge Noble said. “I will hear the defense out on this matter and make my decision accordingly.”

  I had the feeling I ought to stop this runaway train, at least long enough to find out what was going on and how it could affect Ron. But the look on Stoddard’s face kept me in my seat; the fact that he was openly upset by this turn of events led me to believe it could only do us good in the long run.

  The long run. The trouble with that thinking was that I hadn’t intended to be here for the long run. Hadn’t I promised Harry the Toop—and, far more importantly, old Pops—that I’d be back in Brooklyn in three days? A hearing like the one Harve was proposing could last weeks, with the government pulling out all the stops to keep the truth from coming out.

  And when had I decided that what Jan was saying was the truth?

  It was too paranoid not to be true.

  “My client wishes to make a formal statement, Your Honor,” Harve said.

  Jan stood and read from a sheet of spiral notebook paper that shook ever so slightly in her hand.

  “I’ve been running too long,” she began, her whisky-and-cigarette voice ragged. “Living a life off the books, working for minimum wage, using someone else’s name, and moving to another shit job after a year or t
wo because I was afraid somebody would recognize me and turn me in.” Her voice dwindled as she spoke; I craned my neck around Ron’s chair for a glimpse of her wan face.

  “That was a joke, wasn’t it?” Her eyes rose from the paper and engaged the judge with a bitter honesty. “Because nobody would have recognized me, nobody cared anymore. When I first ran away, I thought I’d be living underground, like those Weathermen. Only there wasn’t any underground, not really. Just a few people who got me phony ID, slipped me a little cash, told me to keep the faith, and then went home to their little sellout lives.” The paper in her hand fluttered to the defense table, forgotten.

  “That’s what I thought then, Your Honor. Sellout lives. But after a few years, I realized they were the ones who had a life. I had nothing. So I started drinking again, and then I really had a shit life. Excuse me, Your Honor, but that was the truth. My life was shit, and I didn’t see it until I started in the Program again, started to get sober for the second time. I was afraid,” she confided, dropping her eyes and lowering her head. “I was honestly afraid to go to meetings, afraid the government would find me through the Program. But that was just another excuse to keep drinking.” She stopped and drew a long, ragged breath, steadying herself against the table edge.

  “That’s when I realized I had to come back. I had to tell the truth. The whole truth. No matter who it hurts.”

  “I move,” Harve said, “for full disclosure of any and all government documents related to the surveillance of the sanctuary movement in northwest Ohio for the years 1981 and 1982,” Harve said. “I request in particular the name of the undercover informant used by the government to obtain its search warrants and the names of any and all witnesses, informants, or undercover operatives, along with full, unredacted copies of any statements made by them.”

  All Stoddard had to do was deny that any such statements existed. All he had to do was say that he couldn’t turn over names of informants because there were no informants.

  But that wasn’t what he said.

  “The prosecution will present all relevant discovery material at the proper time,” the U.S. attorney replied.

  I sucked in my breath. Unless I was missing something, Stoddard had just confirmed Jan’s suspicion that someone had tipped off the cops. If there’d been absolutely nothing in the allegation that someone tipped off Walt Koeppler, Stoddard would have worded his denial very differently. Jan was right; someone in the sanctuary movement had been working for the feds.

  Another triumph for good old sixties paranoia.

  It was time to move on to the bail application. Stoddard cited all the reasons why Jan needed to be locked up. They were pretty convincing; if I’d been on the bench, I wasn’t sure I’d have let Jan walk out of the courtroom.

  But then Harve weighed in.

  “Your Honor, my client was safe from the law. She was working in a Wal-Mart in Kansas under another name. No one there, or anywhere else for that matter, had the slightest clue who she was or that she was wanted by the police. She could have stayed there another twenty years. She could have died and been buried under that phony name. But”—he held up a finger made crooked by arthritis and fixed his burning eyes on the judge’s impassive face—“but, Your Honor, my client felt guilt. My client felt a need to return to this court and set the record straight. My client walked into a federal office building and turned herself in. And she did it without making a deal in advance, the way some other fugitives have done. She took her chances. She announced her willingness to submit to the justice system. And that, Your Honor, makes her an outstanding bail risk.”

  Stoddard snorted audibly, but said nothing. I held my breath; was it possible that Harve Sobel could actually secure the release on bail of a woman charged with the murder of a federal agent? A woman who’d eluded capture for fourteen years?

  Then I found out why Father Jerry was in the courtroom. Harve called him to the defense table and asked the judge to release Jan into Father Jerry’s custody. It seemed there were small cottages behind Our Lady of Guadalupe church, cottages used to house battered women and their children. Jan could stay in one of them pending the hearing. She would be under house arrest, Harve explained, permitted to leave the cottage only to attend Mass and AA meetings held in the church basement. For no other reason would she be allowed to leave her private prison.

  The judge bought it. He set bail at one hundred thousand dollars, under the conditions Harve set forth. My co-counsel gave a satisfied nod; Jan could make bail. I wondered who was footing the bill. Surely Jan hadn’t saved a hundred thou working at Wal-Mart.

  I winced as the bailiff read the next case into the record. “United States of America against Ronald Douglas Jameson” sounded as if the whole country stood arrayed against one man in a wheelchair.

  “… permission to amend the indictment to include a violation of Title 18 United States Code section 3 in that the aforesaid Ronald Douglas Jameson did act as an accessory after the fact in that, knowing that Janice Gebhardt had committed a federal offense, he did offer comfort and assistance to her in order to hinder prosecution.”

  What was Stoddard talking about? What did he mean, Ron offered comfort and assistance? How in hell could a man confined to a wheelchair aid and abet a fugitive?

  I found out soon enough.

  It was the Internet. I raised my eyes to the ceiling. It was for this that Ron had studied computers at Kent State’s program for the disabled? He and Jan had communicated by email, with her using a phony identity.

  And then there was the letter Ron had shown me, in which Jan told him she was going to turn herself in.

  Ron had known where Jan was and he had known she was going to return from the dead. He had known, and he hadn’t told me.

  What other secrets had my brother chosen to keep from me?

  I got Ron released. There had never really been any doubt in my mind that I’d do that. But I’d hoped the old charges would be so remote in time, so minor compared to Jan’s, that the court would either dismiss outright or send strong signals that a dismissal was inevitable. Instead my brother was facing charges for crimes he’d committed within the past week.

  We were mobbed as soon as the judge left the bench. Every reporter rushed toward Harve or me, begging for a statement. Harve promised to answer questions on the courthouse steps. I made no such promises, but I’d learned a thing or two about high-profile criminal trials, and I knew it would be in Ron’s interest for me to say something as well.

  When bail was posted and we were free to go, Harve strode toward the gaggle of reporters and news cameras at the courthouse entrance. He positioned himself directly in front of the columns, where the minicam operators shooting stock footage for the B reel couldn’t miss him. He spoke into the fuzzy mikes that dangled from long booms like huge dusters. His white hair was a flowing mane; his voice already lifted in indignation even before he reached the waiting newspeople. “… an outrage,” I heard him say, and then caught the words “physically challenged veteran.”

  The combination of blatant pathos and political correctness was pure Harve. He couldn’t say “helpless cripple,” yet if the disabled were fully equal with everyone else, why shouldn’t the government prosecute Ron? And what was he doing talking about my client when he was Jan’s lawyer?

  I turned to Dana, ready to tell her that her father had better confine his remarks to his own case from now on. But instead of Dana, her ex-husband Rap stood at my shoulder.

  I’d have known him anywhere. That lean body, the faded Antioch sweatshirt, a Toledo Mud Hens cap over his eyes. Rap always wore hats, always shaded his eyes from the sun, or from human scrutiny. As though to glimpse his eyes full-front would be too much for frail humanity.

  “Can’t you do anything to shut her up?” he asked. His gray eyes bored into mine. “I mean, I enjoy a good pig roast as much as the next guy, but doesn’t anybody notice that Jan’s a flake and a half? All that bullshit about an informer. Who knows what the h
ell she’s going to tell the court?”

  “She always was a nut case,” Dana remarked. “Remember what a nervous wreck she was? Always chewing on her hair, her fingernails? Taking every drug that came her way? She’s out to wreck our lives because she screwed up her own. We’d be a lot better off if she’d never come back. Why the hell didn’t she choke on her own vomit and do us all a favor?”

  Dana’s words were extremely close to the thought I’d had when Jan first surfaced. Why didn’t she die of an overdose and leave us all alone? Cold, brutal words that sounded a lot colder when someone else said them.

  “Your old man’s her lawyer,” Rap pointed out. “If anyone can convince her to shut up, he can. You could talk to him.”

  “Harve doesn’t listen to me,” Dana said, her tone bitter. “He’s on his high horse, he’s riding the sixties again. Happy as a pig in you-know-what. He doesn’t give a damn about what all this could do to me, to Dylan. His own grandson, but Harve doesn’t care. All he can see is the Big Case, the headlines, him saving the fucking world. That’s all it’s ever been about for him.”

  Rap looked at me, calculation lighting his cold gray eyes. “You’re part of the defense team,” he said. “You can shut her up. Cut a deal. Tell Harve to cut a deal.”

  “I am not part of a team, Rap,” I said, making my voice as cold as his eyes. “You watched too much O.J. There is no team. There is Harve, representing Jan the way he sees fit, and there is me, trying to get Ron out of the whole mess. There is no team.”

  “There better be some teamwork, Mama Cass. If all the dirt gets dug up, it’s going to stick on all of us—including your precious brother. Got that?”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “If it has to be.”

  He strode through the crowd before I could reply. Always an exit line. I wondered how serious his threat was—and what exactly he was afraid of. Even a million-dollar drug deal from twelve years ago couldn’t hurt him now. In fact there was only one crime he could still be worried about: murder.