Primal Fear

by William Diehl

  But eight years ago, on Friday nights, one could still travel down to the Twelfth Street Gym, smell the real smells—sweat, bay rum, resin, alcohol, beer, alum, cigar smoke—and watch from ringside as pros went one-on-one, practicing an art that even the effete and artsy Greeks recognized as a true test of skill, beauty and power.

  Goodman was a dark-haired and handsome man despite the scars of battle he so proudly wore: a slightly flattened nose, scar tissue eyebrows, a bent ear, a right hand so weakened by broken bones that he could barely pet a cat without wincing, and the permanently septum-deviated nasal passages indigenous to prizefighters. He spoke like a man with a perpetual cold, yet when the occasion demanded, he could call up his 132 IQ points and orate as eloquently as any aspiring young barrister. He was two years younger than Martin Vail and three terms of law school and the bar exam away from realizing his dream. It might never have happened had it not been for Marty Vail.

  Goodman had grown up fueled by two passions, boxing and the law, professions not that disassociated. He was as entranced by the eloquence of the courtroom as he was by the vulgarity of the ring; his heroes were legends: Clarence Darrow, William O. Douglas, Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard. A meager and bored college student, he depended on the sport—which had provided him hero status in high school and a scholarship to the state university—to get by. Once graduated, he turned pro in the belief that he could box his way through law school. His idol became Martin Vail, who had already carved himself a little niche in local posterity with a half dozen spectacular court wins. When he could, Goodman sat in the front row, watching Vail perform legal magic, and Vail, a boxing fan, spotted the young fighter in the courtroom. They became friends and Vail became mentor to the pugilistic law student.

  February 3, 1975. He was matched against a slow, slough-footed, lumbering, muscle-bound ox named George Trujillo, who called himself the Tampa Nugget and who had the grace of an ostrich. The true joys of punch and feint, footwork, speed and agility, all had passed Trujillo by; he had moved up the card on brute force alone. He could hit like a hammer and he had an iron jaw.

  Goodman withstood both for ten rounds and by a miracle was still standing when the final bell rang. For six rounds he had battered Trujillo with his powerful right hand, sneaking inside the roundhouse punches, slashing at the Mexican’s nose and jaw. It was like hitting a steam engine. In the seventh, Goodman came out fast, determined to get inside and send the Nugget back to Tampa on a stretcher. The first punch drove one of his knuckles back almost to the wrist. Pain became an infection for the rest of the fight. He kept hitting, each powerful blow shattering another bone in the ruined hand, until finally he had only his left to counter and hit with. Raw pride kept him on his feet. When the last bell rang, he reeled back to his comer and collapsed on his stool.

  “What the fuck happened?” his trainer, Elie Pincus, asked around a mouthful of Q-tips as he shrank Goodman’s gaping cuts with the fire of alum.

  “I think I broke my right,” Goodman gasped.

  Indeed.

  Later, sitting on the edge of the table in the dismal dressing room, he and Vail watched as Pincus cut away the glove to reveal a mauled and bloody mass. Two splintered bones protruded from swollen flesh. Blood seeped from jagged tears in the once mighty right. Vail turned away at the sight.

  “I’ll wait outside,” he said, to be joined a few minutes later by Sawbones Watson, the arena’s resident G.P.

  “He’s gotta go to the Pavilion, Marty. Two of his knucks are shoved all the way back to his fuckin’ elbow. But he says he won’t go. I think he’s afraid they’ll cut his hand off or somethin’.”

  “Just call the ambulance. Tell them to lay off the siren. They can sneak up on him.”

  “He’s through, y’know,” Sawbones said. “Won’t be able to hit a loaf of bread with that paw without he’ll bust a couple bones. Damn shame, too. Very promising middleweight, Tommy was. Fast, smart—always nice to see a college kid in the game, gives us some class. But it’s all over for him, Tommy’s gotta know that.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Yeah, well, stand back when you do, he can still hit with his left.”

  Vail had returned to the dressing room, where Sawbones had bound the fist, now the size of a honeydew, in bandages and given Goodman some painkillers.

  “So it’s a wake, huh?” Goodman said, slurring his words slightly as the Demerol started to set in.

  “Sawbones says your right’s in the growler.”

  “Wha’s he know? He was any kinda doc, wouldn’t be makin’ a living here.”

  Goodman ran his fingers lightly over the bandaged hand and winced. “Shit, s’long law school,” he groaned.

  “Maybe not,” said Vail. “Maybe I could use you.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Investigating. Most of these local bohunks can’t find their hat unless they’re wearing it.”

  “Wan’ me t’ snoop?”

  “I want you to head my investigating team.”

  “Sure. How many y’got on the … Marty Vail Bureau of Invest’gation?”

  “You’ll be the first.”

  “Lawyers.” Goodman said, shaking his head.

  “You can pick up two, two-fifty a day and expenses—when you’re working.”

  “Two-fifty a day?”

  “Two, two-fifty.”

  “Which is ’t? Two … two-fifty?”

  “You start at two. If you’re as good as I think you’ll be, we’ll push it to two-fifty.”

  “Lawyers.”

  “What’ve you got to lose, Tommy? Give it a shot. You can always quit.”

  The Demerol had kicked in and Goodman laid back on the table staring at the ceiling and mumbling incoherently until the ambulance arrived. “Don’t wanna be sleazy P.I. f’rest my life, takin’ pictures some sleazy slob shacked up in a sleazy motel…”

  “I don’t do divorces,” Vail said. “Most of my clients are people with big trouble and lots of money.”

  “S’I heard.”

  “Examine the contents, not the bottle, okay?” Vail said. “In Cicero’s words, ‘Justice renders to everyone his due.’”

  “B’shit. Marty Vail’s ona case, ain’ no justice …” He laughed as the Demerol evaporated the pain. “ ’S Clarence Darrow once said, ‘No such thing as justice—in or outta court.”

  “Who’s Clarence Darrow?” Vail answered.

  It had taken four hours to rearrange the shattered bones in Goodman’s hand and plaster it up. When it was over, Vail paid the bill. Two months later, Tommy Goodman became head of the Marty Vail Bureau of Investigation—and its only member. He was better than good, he was a natural. His first year he made $35,000, pretty good money. By 1982 he was clearing fifty and was well on his way through law school. Only it took a little longer than he expected. There were always those phone calls, always the seduction in the master’s voice, always another mountain to kick over. What the hell, he probably learned more law spending fifteen minutes with Vail and the Judge than he would ever learn in school.

  The Judge sat in one of the thick chairs at the back of Wall Eye McGinty’s horse parlor, legs crossed, legendary black book in his lap, twirling his Mont Blanc pen in his fingers. He watched the electronic tote board as he considered his next move.

  “Look at the old bastard,” said McGinty, who had lost his esophagus to cancer three years earlier and now talked through a voice box that made him sound like he was gargling. “Him and that fuckin’ book. He could make us all rich in a week.”

  “That or put us outa business,” answered Larry the Limp, who was reckless with guns and had blown his foot off while hunting deer in Pennsylvania.

  “Anybody ever grabs that book and makes a run for it, kill him on the spot,” Wall Eyes said.

  The book!

  Judge Jack Spalding had, as his twilight years approached, been devastated by two tragedies. His beloved Jenny, a soft-spoken and demure lady of the South who adored his crusty
nature and to whom he had been married for thirty-seven years, had been cruelly injured in a car wreck and had lingered comatose for almost a month before dying. The second tragedy was of his own making. Never much of a drinker, the Judge had succumbed to a lifelong but until then controlled addiction to playing the ponies. In a wild spree after Jenny died, he had lost thirty thousand dollars to bookmakers in a single month. His reputation and his place on the bench were threatened and a distinguished career dangled from the fingers of the bookies.

  Spalding had been saved by the devotion of defense counsels, prosecutors, cops, newspaper reporters, law clerks, librarians and politicians, all of whom respected his fairness and his wisdom on the bench and who understood his madness. At a closed benefit dinner, they handed the judge an envelope with the necessary payoff in cash—and then, after he had settled his debts, his friends in the vice squad had busted all the bookies who had taken advantage of the revered jurist in his dark hours.

  The Judge had quit cold turkey and, since that night, had never placed another dime on the steeds. Instead, he placed imaginary bets each day, keeping elaborate records of every race, track, jockey and horse in the circuit. Without the pressure of the wager, he became a seer of the tracks, a man who combined wisdom, insight and a staggering knowledge of statistics into a ten-year winning streak. He dutifully recorded all the information in a thick leather journal, a book so feared by the bookmakers that they had once banded together and offered him six figures if he would burn it. He, of course, refused, but assured them he would neither give tips nor impart his vast knowledge of the game to anyone else. In ten years, the judge had gathered an imaginary fortune of over a million dollars, all of it on paper.

  He had three joys in life. The first was his morning seminars at Butterfly’s, where he challenged the minds and hearts of young lawyers. The second was his afternoons at Wall Eye McGinty’s, where he practiced his hobby among the side-talking fringe elements of society, spoke the speak of the trade, enjoyed the vitality of post time, the exhilaration of the stretch and the jubilation of winning. He always sat in the back of McGinty’s lavish suite over a garage on Wildcat Street. A lush emporium for horse players, it looked like the office of an uptown brokerage. A traveling neon board kept the players apprised of changing odds, scratches and the other bits of information that would be foreign language to most humans. A bar in the corner provided free drinks to the heavy hitters. Softly cushioned easy chairs offered comfort to those who watched and listened as the ponies did their stuff.

  His third joy was matching wits with Marty Vail, for this was more than a challenge, it was a test of his forty-five years on both sides of the bar. His forays and collaborations with Vail provided a euphoria unmatched by his other enterprises. The call from Naomi promised exciting days afoot.

  But first things first. He had fifty imaginary bucks across the board on a three-year-old mare named Wishful Thinking who was running in the last heat at Santa Anita and who proved better than her name. A long shot, she came in second, paid $8.80 to place and provided the Judge with a $3,426 overall day, which he dutifully entered in his log before going downstairs to the waiting cab.

  Vail took a single silver dollar out of his pocket and spun it like a top on the desk. The Judge immediately accepted the challenge.

  “Ah-hah. Well, now, let’s see, you’ve got the entire Gas-house Gang here in the freezing cold, on the spur of the moment … the roads virtually impassable … so obviously we are dealing with a matter of more-than-ordinary import.”

  “Uh-huh,” Vail said.

  “We have a new client.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Vail agreed.

  “Hmm.” The Judge walked from one side of the desk to the other, staring at the coin. “A new client,” he said to himself. He looked back at Vail.

  “Did you see anybody after we had breakfast?”

  Vail nodded and held up a finger.

  “So you visited someone—unexpectedly or you would have mentioned it at breakfast—and as a result of that visit, we have a new client. So, was this person you visited the client? Or did he represent the client? Obviously, since you threw down the silver gauntlet, it would have to be someone I know, or something I know about. A new client, someone I know about…”

  He walked to the window and stared out at the icy landscape, pulled on his lips, mumbled to himself, walked around the room. It was quite a performance. He walked back to the edge of the desk, stared hard-eyed at Vail, and said, “Aaron Stampler.”

  “Amazing,” Goodman said as Vail slid the coin into the Judge’s waiting hand.

  “Elementary,” Vail said. “When you think about it, who else could it be but Aaron?”

  “Are we really defending the kid who did in His Eminence?” Goodman asked.

  “Suspected of doing in His Eminence,” Vail corrected.

  “Didn’t wait long to extract their pound of flesh, did they?” said the Judge. “Fate provided the perfect setup.”

  “What do you mean?” Naomi asked.

  “Payoff time,” Vail said. “Their way of getting even for the settlement. Hand us a case we can’t win with a client everybody thinks makes Manson look like Little Bo Peep. Well, let’s kick some ass.”

  “And how do you plan to do that?” Naomi asked.

  “With the power of righteousness!” The Judge laughed.

  “Oh shit, here we go again,” Goodman moaned.

  While they were making sandwiches, the phone rang. Naomi went into the other room, mumbled into the mouthpiece, hung up and came back.

  “Want to know who your opponent is?” she asked grandly.

  They all looked at her expectantly.

  “Jane Venable.”

  “Impossible,” Vail said. “She’s going to work at one of the prestige firms at the end of this month. She’s already given notice!”

  “Well apparently she ungave it. That was my inside man. It’s gospel.”

  “They haven’t missed a trick,” the Judge said. “Everybody’s getting even on this one.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Vail said with a tight-lipped smile.

  They gathered around the big table. Vail ignored food, striding around the room using a ruler as a rapier and slashing the air with it as he spoke. He had peeled off the sweater and was wearing a Grateful Dead T-shirt which was tucked half in and half out of his jeans.

  “Well, they need one thing to tie their case up and they don’t have it yet,” he said.

  “What’s that?” Naomi asked.

  “Motive. They may have the hardware, they may have the prints and Aaron’s bloody little body on film and that scene in the confessional, but they need a motive to clinch this case.”

  “Why? If they can put the knife in his hand, put him in the room, put him in the confessional…”

  “Nature of the crime, Tommy,” said Vail. “It’s too nasty. The jury’s gonna want to know why. When they see this kid up there, they’re going to want to know why he committed such an act. You can bet your VW that Venable’s got Stenner and his whole bunch working overtime on that one.”

  The Judge said nothing. He sat quietly in his chair, eating a pastrami on rye and sipping a cream soda, watching as Vail started developing his case.

  “What if they don’t find one?”

  “Then they’ll manufacture one.”

  “So what do we do about it?” Goodman asked.

  “We find it before they do,” said Vail. “So we can figure out how to tear it apart in court. Right, Judge?”

  “Without a viable motive, I don’t think they’ll burn him. Life maybe, but not the hot seat. So, Martin, tell us about our client.”

  “You’re not gonna believe me,” he said.

  “Is he nuts?” Tommy asked.

  “He acts as normal as anybody in this room.”

  “Which is not really saying a lot,” the Judge threw in.

  “I’m telling you, this is the sweetest kid you’d ever want to meet. Looks like a choirb
oy. If he was six years old he could pass for Shirley Temple.”

  “Does he have a halo?” the Judge asked sarcastically.

  “Swear to God, he could pass for an angel. I talked to one of the sisters at Saint Catherine’s, you know how she described him? Generous, thoughtful, helpful—”

  “Thrifty, brave, clean and reverent… that’s the Boy Scout creed,” said Tommy. “Maybe he’s got a merit badge in carving.”

  “Not funny. You want to hear or not?”

  “Testy, testy,” Naomi said.

  “I spent twenty, thirty minutes with the kid. I’m giving you first impressions, okay? He’s from someplace in Kentucky called Crikside.”

  “Crikside?” the Judge said.

  “Crikside. That’s because it’s beside a crik.”

  “Great,” Goodman groaned. “This is gonna be mine, I can feel it.”

  “You’re right, Tommy. It’s about an hour’s drive south of Lexington near a place called Drip Rock.”

  “Oh, Drip Rock. Why didn’t you say so?”

  “Kid says it’s not even on the map, but he says anybody in Drip Rock can tell you how to get there.”

  “Who’s gonna tell me how to get to Drip Rock?”

  Naomi came back into the room with a large road atlas. She flopped it on the table and traced the highway south from Lexington. “Hey,” she said. “Here’s Drip Rock. It’s just north of Kerby Knob and south of Zion Mountain.”

  “Beautiful,” said Goodman, “and probably buried under about ten feet of snow this time of year. What do I do, parachute in?”

  “You’ll think of something,” said Vail. “I want to know everything there is to know about Aaron Stampler, from the day he was born until they found him in that confessional. I want to know where he grew up, what his parents were like, what he did in school, who his friends were, what he read, what kind of music he liked, did he play sports, when did he get laid first, who his friends are here. I want to know what he thinks, why he thinks it, what makes him mad, what gives him a hard-on … I want to know it all. That’s you, Tommy. The kid’s yours. Chapter and verse. Fly to Lexington, rent a car, get down there as soon as possible. That’s where it starts. But first I want you to check him out locally. Go to Savior House and also his place—it’s on Region Street.”