Troubled Waters

by Carolyn Wheat

  While Wes strolled over to the picnic table to press the flesh, Tarky sidled up to me and said in a low voice, “Why now?”

  Even when I’d been young and in love with Wes, it had been Tarky whose opinion really mattered. He was the one who when you made a joke or said something really radical, you kind of peeked over to see how he reacted. If he laughed, you’d been funny; if he said “right on,” you’d been politically out there. I’d wanted Wes’s body, but when it came to approval, Tark the Shark was the arbiter of all I’d said and done.

  So I wanted to answer his question with something so clever, so intelligent, that he would know once and for all that I was now a grownup, not to be patronized.

  But what the hell did he mean, Why now?

  At least the cigar he held wasn’t lit. It reeked anyway, but it would have been far worse with smoke emanating from it.

  An impatient frown knotted the bushy black eyebrows. “Why now?” he repeated. “Why did Jan come back three weeks before Election Day?”

  “You think this whole thing is about you and Wes? My brother’s facing jail time and all you care about is the election?”

  “Cassie, I get paid to worry about the election.” He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth.

  I turned and walked toward the others without a word.

  Wes leaned on the edge of the picnic table. “We can’t stay long,” he said. “We can’t eat anything either. When on the campaign trail, the candidate eats nothing that isn’t provided by a constituent. One of the basic rules of American politics.”

  “It is not enough to eat,” Tarky intoned, “one must be seen to eat.”

  He settled himself on one of the benches, his ample rear end sagging like a beanbag. I sat next to him, as far away as possible from the mixture of cigar, aftershave, and male sweat.

  He fixed his penetrating eyes on Jan and said, “I’ll repeat the question I just asked Mama Cass: Why now?”

  Jan stood next to Ron’s chair, as if gathering strength from his nearness. Her fingers twisted together as though to remove an invisible pair of gloves.

  “It started out as a feeling,” she explained. I sat forward, elbows on the picnic table, listening to a voice from the past.

  “I mean, the arrests came out of the blue. There was no reason for anybody to be following us on that road.”

  “Which arrests?” Tarky cut in. “What year are you in?”

  She dropped her eyes, her hair falling over her forehead. “Eighty-two,” she murmured. “And I guess I’m talking about both times. The time Miguel died and the night the whole thing fell apart. We were set up. Somebody who knew about the sanctuary movement tipped off Walt Koeppler and that’s how Ron and I got busted. There was an informer in the group, just like in ’69.”

  “Of course there was an informant in ’69,” Rap said, “and his name was Kenny Gebhardt. If you weren’t obsessed, you’d see that as clearly as any of us. That stupid little fuckup ratted on us and that’s why we got arrested. No mystery, Jan.”

  “And I suppose Kenny dropped a dime from the grave and tipped Walt Koeppler that we’d be on the dune road in ’82?” Ron retorted.

  I stared at my brother. Could he really believe all this nonsense about informers and Kenny being murdered?

  “Of course it’s completely impossible that two people fourteen years apart are capable of betrayal,” Tarky replied. He stared at the tree behind the sagging wire fence, as if his remark were totally academic, addressed to no one in particular.

  Wes raised his hands in a peacemaking gesture; his wedding band caught the light and glared into my eyes.

  “Look, this may sound monumentally selfish, but all I want,” he said, “is for all of you to keep me out of this. This sixties bullshit isn’t going to help the campaign one bit. I had nothing to do with the sanctuary thing anyway,” he pointed out in a persuasive tone that edged a little too close to a self-serving whine for my taste. “Which is something my opponent isn’t going to give a damn about, by the way. If my name pops up in this mess, I’m going down with the voters of this state, even if I get a clean bill at the end of it.” He looked at me. “I’m counting on you for this, Cassie.”

  Why did everyone suddenly seem to think I had the power to make all this go away? Anyone who thought I could talk Ron into keeping Jan quiet didn’t know either of them very well.

  At least Wes and Tarky weren’t making honest-to-God threats, I told myself, remembering Rap’s words in front of the courthouse.

  “I’m on it, Wes,” Tarky said. “You know as well as I do that the public has the attention span of a flea. The day after the hearing, there’ll be a new scandal. This thing’s a three-day story at best.”

  “That’s three more days than I want to spend wandering down memory lane, Tark,” Wes replied evenly.

  “I think Kenny found out who the real informer was and that’s why he was killed.” Jan’s soft voice was stubborn.

  “Jan, he wasn’t killed.” I spoke slowly, as if to a child or a foreigner. “He killed himself.”

  “Just listen, Cass,” my brother said.

  “I kept having this dream after Kenny died,” she began, her voice thin and childlike. “His body was all full of worms. They were white, but kind of greenish, like they’d glow in the dark, you know? They were going in and out of these holes in his body, but the real bad part was, he wasn’t dead. He was alive, in that horrible narrow box, and the worms were going in and out and he was begging me to come get him out before they ate him up. I used to wake up shaking and sobbing from that dream—and then I’d have to take a drink to warm me up, I was so cold.”

  She rubbed her arms with her nervous hands, as if chilled by too-strong air conditioning.

  There was a terrible honesty about her. I didn’t believe a word she was saying, yet I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She fumbled in her jeans pocket for a cigarette. Dana handed her a lit one from which to get a light. She handed Dana back the butt and held her own cigarette between two fingers, as if it were a joint.

  “He was trying to tell me he didn’t kill himself,” Jan said.

  She looked older than her years. Her teeth were yellow and chipped; the translucency of her skin spoke of the damage done to her body by the years of abuse.

  It was then that I had my epiphany: If Kenny was murdered, then I was innocent. If he hadn’t killed himself, then my harsh rejection of him hadn’t caused his death. I could lay down at least one of the guilt burdens I’d been carrying since that summer.

  If I believed Jan.

  It was like asking me to believe in healing crystals or tarot cards. A pretty fantasy, even an elegant system of thought. But not reality.

  Reality was Kenny’s white face as he begged me to believe him. “It wasn’t me,” he’d said. “I didn’t call the cops. Honest.”

  “I don’t talk to traitors,” I’d replied, my face a stone. Nineteen years old and hard as nails. No forgiveness for betrayal.

  Reality was Kenny’s twisted, still body under the weeping beech.

  If I accepted Jan’s assertion that Kenny was murdered, would it be for his sake, or for my own?

  My voice was more vehement than I intended. “Bullshit. Sheer, unadulterated bullshit.”

  “You don’t think Jan could be right?” Ron’s voice was carefully neutral.

  “Oh, well, dreams are good solid evidence, everyone knows that. Anyone appears in a dream and says he didn’t kill himself, you can take that to the bank.” I was hitting my stride now, sarcasm protecting me as always. “The worms are a wonderful touch.”

  A hand touched my shoulder. “Easy, Cass,” a man’s voice said. But all the men at the table were within my line of sight, so who—

  I turned my head and looked up at the face of Ted Havlicek, the man I’d searched for in vain among the press people in the courtroom.

  He was the same old Ted, Midwestern-bland in looks and manner. Glasses instead of contact lenses, a haircut at least ten ye
ars out of date, slacks and a sport shirt instead of shorts and T-shirt.

  “So the circle is unbroken,” Rap said. “We’re all together again, one big happy family. Except of course for Kenny. Maybe Jan can hold a séance and bring him back.”

  “Shut up, Rap,” Dana said through a mouthful of smoke. She gave Ted a look that held no friendliness. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”

  “I asked him,” Wes replied. “Since this mess is bound to end up in the newspapers, I thought it made sense to give Ted an exclusive in return for the opportunity to, shall we say, shape the story?”

  “There’s another reason he’s here,” Jan added. She gave Ted an intense stare and said, “Tell them, Ted.”

  “Wait a minute.” I held up a warning hand. “I have a client to protect here. Maybe Jan doesn’t mind talking to the press without her attorney present, but I’m not letting Ron make statements without a clear understanding about how they’re going to be used.”

  I looked up at Ted, willing away memories of his hand grasping mine as we walked through the little park behind the art museum. “First of all, will you please sit down before I get a crick in my neck. And second, who are you working for?”

  Ted smiled and walked around the picnic table, settling himself next to Dana. “I’m with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I’ve been covering the campaign, and this looks like it might have some repercussions. But I’m here on deep background. No quotes, no attributions. Nothing said here will find its way into the paper, believe me.”

  “Now that we have all that settled,” Rap said, “let’s get back to ‘Tell them, Ted.’” He waved a hand in Ted’s direction and said, “Go ahead, tell us, Ted.”

  Ted cleared his throat. “I made some inquiries.” He looked at me. “Under the Freedom of Information Act,” he explained. I nodded. I could deal with this. We were talking law now, not dead teenagers.

  “And the feds admitted there was an informer?” Dana’s voice was sharp with skepticism.

  “No, of course not,” Ted replied. “But a lot of the documents were blacked out.”

  “Redacted,” I murmured, using the legal term.

  “Which means,” Ted went on, “that they have something to hide. And some of the entries don’t make any sense unless they were getting information from somewhere.”

  “Yeah,” Tarky cut in, moving his unlit cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, “they were getting it from Kenny. He was a sad little twerp who killed himself because we didn’t like him anymore. And we didn’t like him because he called the cops on us. It’s that simple. It’s a fucking shame the kid’s dead, but it’s no mystery.”

  “Do you really think the feds would rely on a sixteen-year-old to play undercover cop?” Ron asked.

  “But we were working for the government,” I protested. “Why would they spy on us?”

  Rap’s answering grin was one of pure malicious pleasure. “Maybe we weren’t all working for the same government.”

  Tarky lifted his bulk from the table and began to pace. “Why,” he asked the maple tree, “do all paranoids think they’re the center of the goddamn universe? Every nut who believes in reincarnation thinks she was Cleopatra, and everybody who was remotely on the Left in the sixties thinks the FBI has a file on them.”

  Suddenly he wheeled around and thrust his cigar at Jan. “Do you really think we were that important? That a bunch of half-assed kids playing revolutionary posed such a threat to national security that the feds would bother paying somebody to keep an eye on us? Get real, Jan.”

  The Jan of twenty-five years ago would have ducked her head, hidden behind a curtain of hair, grabbed a joint and a drink, and dropped the subject. The Jan of today faced Tarky with a small smile, looked him in the eye, and said, “That’s exactly the kind of logic I’d expect the informer to use. Because whoever sold us out back then is still part of the group now. So it could be you—or Wes.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” Dana muttered. She glared at Jan, who glared back.

  “There’s one more thing,” Ted said.

  “I’m not sure I can take one more thing,” I said under my breath.

  “Kenny was keeping a notebook,” Ted said. “He got a steno pad from me and said he was going to write down everything that happened. He was going to show us that he wasn’t responsible for all the fuckups that summer.”

  “So where’s this notebook now?” Rap challenged.

  Ted shrugged. “I have no idea. But I think if we found it, we’d be well on the way to knowing whether Jan’s right or not.”

  “So what if she is?” Tarky asked. “Who the fuck cares if someone informed on us?” He faced Jan squarely, his bulk overshadowing her frailness. “It won’t do you a damn bit of good in court, and it’ll focus press attention on the sixties and hurt Wes.”

  “What about 1982?” Ron replied. “What if the whole reason it all went bad is that the government infiltrated the sanctuary movement?”

  “I repeat,” Wes said, his hands spread in a gesture of pleading, “Tarky and I had nothing to do with the sanctuary movement.”

  “Look,” Jan said, raising her voice, “there’s something about 1982 that you don’t know.” Then she looked at each of us, one by one, her gray eyes seeming to stare through us, as if she could x-ray our souls. “Or should I say, there’s something all but one of you doesn’t know. Something that changes everything. Something I have to tell the judge.”

  I looked at Ron. He shook his head, which I interpreted as his telling me that he had no idea what Jan meant. I didn’t like the prospect of my client’s codefendant exploding a bombshell in court, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I’d just have to wait for the hearing to find out what Jan was talking about. At least the hearing would be closed to public and press; I wasn’t going to have to pick up the pieces in the full glare of publicity.

  “Why tell us?” Tarky demanded. “Why not just go into court and do whatever it is you think you have to do?”

  Jan bit her lip, then drew a deep breath and said, “Because I’m trying to be fair. I’m trying to work the Ninth Step, to make amends. There was a lot of shit going down in ’82, but the only thing I care about is what the informer did. I won’t talk about the rest unless I have to.”

  “Oh, right,” Rap cut in, his restless hands punctuating his words, “all you have to do is ask nicely and somebody will step up to the plate and admit they sold us out and killed Kenny and did whatever the hell you think got done in ’82. Get real, Jan. In the first place, all of this is crazy shit. In the second place—”

  We never got to second place. “We’ve got to run,” Tarky said after a quick consultation with his Rolex. “Let’s move it, John Wesley. We don’t want to miss the fruit cup.”

  The candidate stood up from the picnic table, gave us all a wide, meaningless campaign smile, and strode across the lawn in the wake of his campaign manager.

  The group broke up shortly after that. There was nothing more to say, no small talk that could follow accusations of betrayal and murder. Zack and Ron and I drove back downtown in the van, the setting sun a huge orange ball that filled the windshield.

  At the hotel, I said I was tired and went to my room alone. I flipped on the TV and switched it to CNN, then took off my clothes and lay on the bed. I’d planned to read through the court papers, but instead I fell asleep with a story about the Middle East ringing in my ears.

  The phone woke me. I reached for it, still groggy and displaced. I knew I wasn’t in Brooklyn, but I couldn’t have said for sure where I was.

  “Hello?” I said, my voice rusty with sleep.

  “Is this Cassandra Jameson?” a male voice asked.

  I nodded, then realized that wouldn’t help. “Yes,” I said. I glanced at the clock on the bed table: 3:14.

  “Do you know a Janice Gebhardt?” the voice asked.

  “Yes. What is this about?”

  “She was just airlifted to Toledo Hospital. We’d like y
ou and Mr. Ronald Jameson to meet us there.”

  “Who is this?”

  “Trooper Houghton of the Ohio State Police, ma’am,” the man replied. “Ms. Gebhardt was the victim of an assault.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  July 16, 1982

  “They didn’t hurt you?” Jan asked, for what Ron decided was the fourth time.

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t fun, but they didn’t hurt me.” He recalled, also for the fourth time, his urine bag overflowing on the floor of the cell. Nothing he could do about it, so he’d thought he was way past feeling shame. But he’d blushed when the guards went for the mop, blushed like a kid wetting himself in first grade. No, Jan didn’t need to know that part.

  “I was okay,” he repeated, careful to keep the edge out of his voice. At least his attendant had cleaned him up before Jan was released. His bowel evacuation was also overdue, so Andrew had a few choice things to say when he did the rubber glove thing, but Jan didn’t have to know about that either.

  Jan leaned over and touched his cheek. “You shaved,” she said softly. Ron inclined his head, accepting her euphemistic use of the active voice. When her bony fingers reached his lips, he pursed them into a light butterfly kiss that brought a smile to Jan’s wan face.

  They sat at a window table in Posner’s Deli, a courthouse hangout in downtown Toledo, conveniently located across the street from Harve Sobel’s law office. Ron had a half-eaten bagel in front of him, and a cup of coffee with a straw stuck into it.

  “God, it’s so good to see you again,” Jan said. “I’m glad you’re here.” Then her face darkened. “What a stupid thing to say. We’ve been fucking arrested, and here I am—”

  “Stop it, Jan,” Ron said. In the old days, he’d have lifted his hand to her mouth, stopped her words with a light touch. Now his tone of voice had to do all the work. “Don’t blame yourself. I offered my van. I went along. I’m as sorry as you are that Miguel died, but it wasn’t our fault.”