The Onion Field

by Joseph Wambaugh

  They made movies and wrote books about courtroom drama. It was all a hoax. There was no drama. Not in a real courtroom. It was all a cruel joke and an incredibly silly thing to devote one’s life to.

  We’re not remotely concerned with a search for truth, he thought. The advantage to the defense is the passage of time and the courts permit it and pervert justice. Who respects the system? Not the defendants surely. Not the public. Not me, God knows!

  When lawyers were permitted to obstruct and even stop this pathetic process, then it was not even madness. There was some dignity in madness.

  Eyes watering, trembling with chill, unshaven, he stared at himself in the mirror, mouth open, and imagined instead the baggy-eyed bulldog countenance of Kanarek, mouth agape, saying: “Not so, your Honor! Not so!”

  In the dark, in a pool of sweat, he broke into a coughing spasm. It was so bad he felt his lungs would rip apart. He struggled up and staggered into the bathroom. Even the judge had the flu. It was going around. Then he realized who had it first. Where it had come from. Irving Kanarek!

  Halpin bummed around for one year and lived off the eight thousand dollars which represented his life’s savings and total material worth to the world. He returned to the District Attorney’s Office the next year when he needed a job. He decided it would be better than pumping gas, and he knew nothing else.

  Phil Halpin didn’t talk much about the case when he returned. When pressed, he would only say, “At the end, I would’ve made any deal with Powell and Smith if I’d had the power. I would’ve let them go. Dropped all charges. Released them. If only I could’ve put their two lawyers in the gas chamber.”

  Irving Kanarek filed a fifty-four page declaration relating the nature of the case: “In March of 1963 Officer Ian Campbell passed away in Kern County …” He stated his years of involvement as Jimmy Smith’s counsel. He asked that the court pay him $200,000 exclusive of expenses incurred.

  Judge Dell granted him a fee of $4,800 and wrote:

  It’s the intent of the court to discharge in full any and all claims made by you in connection with your services pursuant to Section 987a, penal code, in representing Mr. Smith. It’s the court’s position that your negotiation or retention of such warrant will constitute an acquiescence, and of course, termination of responsibility, notwithstanding the fact that you claim substantially larger amounts.

  Very truly yours,

  There was considerable jubilation when Irving Kanarek was gone. Public Defender Charles Maple immediately altered his own tactics and it looked as though the jury would be selected and the trial would finally begin.

  But Charles Maple was not jubilant. He thought often of his indefatigable colleague, and actually missed his eccentric ways. The two old file cabinets containing stacks of Kanarek’s documents were removed from the court, there was no bulging battered briefcase full of law books and vitamin pills and even an occasional sandwich. Maple recalled the time he went to lunch in the unkempt bachelor’s old red convertible so crammed with books and papers there was hardly room to sit and listen to Kanarek’s discussion of vitamin therapy.

  It was courtroom legend that Irving Kanarek had been an engineer and the inventor of an exotic rocket fuel from which he drew royalties, enough to sustain him. Perhaps it was true, thought Maple, but it was clear that the dogged little lawyer was a poor man. And his payment by the court angered Maple most of all.

  “I’ve never argued that he was a good trial man,” Maple said. “A trial lawyer has to think on his feet and conduct himself with proper decorum, and can’t dwell too long on a point without losing his effectiveness. But I truly believe he’s a good appellate lawyer. He sees issues, and given time, writes about them pretty well. And by God, he gives all he’s got to a case he believes in.

  “I, as a public defender, got my paychecks, but Irving’s in private practice. There isn’t a lawyer in the country who would’ve devoted every day to a case for eighteen months with little if any thought to financial remuneration. Bill Drake was actually in court less than two weeks altogether when Judge Alarcon fired Kanarek. Drake was paid forty-five hundred, Irving Kanarek was paid forty-eight hundred. I would guess about one dollar an hour for what he put into this case.

  “If he’s insensitive and obstreperous, a judge with backbone can punish him through contempt proceedings. If he persists, jail him. Don’t punish him like this. Not in this cowardly underhanded way. Forty-eight hundred dollars? For his years of work?”

  It was not laughable to Charles Maple when his colleague left the courtroom on that last day. Maple helped him cram his documents into the slumping briefcase. Kanarek made several trips to the old red convertible before he had it all. He was sweating when he made the last trip, mouth open, jowls sagging, as he puffed out of the courtroom. He was carrying books in both arms. He looked back, blinking like a long-suffering pit bull. The books were dreadfully heavy. He walked slowly under the great weight of the law.

  SEVENTEEN

  The star witness was by now convinced he had found the solution to his problems. He would escape. He would run away to Oregon and go into farming there. An old friend from his Pierce College days had done it. The friend was lamed by polio and yet he had the courage to strike out anew and make good in farming. It was the thing he had always wanted. If his crippled friend could do it, why couldn’t he, a healthy man, also do it?

  And what was the use of remaining here? Waiting. The retrial hadn’t started in 1967 as they had promised. It had not started in 1968 as they also had promised. The pretrial motions might drag on into 1970. Or forever. They couldn’t bring him back. If they tried to extradite him he’d fight them.

  It was impossible to stay here. He had applied for a job driving a school bus. He thought he’d like that. He liked children and everyone always said how patient he was with them.

  But he didn’t hear from the city of Glendale about his bus driving application and assumed they must have checked on him and learned he had been a thief. That must be it. He never considered any other possibility. He had been a fool to put in the application. When you were once a thief no one could trust you. He didn’t blame them. He deserved it. He wouldn’t bother filling out any more applications. He’d just sell his house and move to Oregon, to a new life for all of them.

  So he put his house on the market and people came.

  “Karl, you’ve got the price too high,” his wife said in agreement with the realtor. “You’ve got to be a little flexible. Some of the offers are good if you’ll just come down a little.”

  “No, I think it’s a fair price and we should stick to it.”

  “Karl, I’ll follow you wherever you say. If you want to try Oregon I’ll go. But you’ll never sell the house if you won’t come down on the price.”

  “No, I think we should stick to our price.”

  “Are you sure you really want to go to Oregon?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Do you think I wanna mow lawns all my life? Do you think that’s all I’m good for?”

  “I think you could do anything you wanted. If you’d only try. If you could only develop a little of your old confidence.”

  “I have confidence, Helen.”

  Once they actually drove to Oregon. It was to be a holiday as well as a business trip to see the country. On the trip he drove out of his way to the town where Adah, now remarried, lived with her husband and children. He decided he wanted to see her and to see Ian’s children. He drove through the town but at the last minute changed his mind. Despite Helen’s protests he drove on. It would be better not to. It was a stupid idea in the first place. What made him think of it? Why would they want to see him? Of anyone in the world, why would they want to see him?

  When they returned, Helen said, “Let’s take the last offer. It was a good price. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go where nobody can ever drag you into another courtroom. Let them turn Powell and Smith loose. Who cares? I don’t care. Let’s get out.”

  “I want
to, Helen.”

  “Then lower the price so we can do it.”

  “I’m sorry Helen. But I … I think it’s a fair price.”

  He occasionally saw policemen from the old days. Once he saw his old vice squad partner, John Calderwood. Calderwood waved to him and looked as though he might want to talk. But Calderwood was laughing. It looked like he was laughing. He knew what it must be. The pension. That was it. They were all laughing about that. They all thought he’d cheated the city out of the money. They probably said things. What right did a thief have to a pension? What right did a … coward have. He believed some of them called him that. He remembered that once Calderwood told him he had invited Ian and his wife over to dinner just before it happened. There had to be a reason for Calderwood telling him that. He wouldn’t just say it. He was telling Karl he thought Karl had killed his friend. That’s what he was saying.

  There were so many things to worry about. To fear. There were the girls at the bank. He knew they wondered. It was clear in the way they looked at him. Why would a healthy man in his early thirties be cashing a pension check? They probably called him a cheat or worse.

  The pastor of the Lutheran Church came to his home. He tried to talk Karl into coming to services. The word of his depressive state, more severe than it had ever been, had gotten to the minister. Karl refused. He had little faith in religion. He went only once when his daughter Laurie sang in the choir. He would go anywhere for his children.

  The desert racer frightened his friends and family. They became afraid for him.

  “Take it easy, Karl,” his childhood friends Terry McManus and Ray Henka told him. “This racing is for kids. You’re ten years older than anybody out there.”

  “I’m careful,” he answered. “Look at my football helmet. Look at my shin guards and shoulder pads. Did you ever see a more careful rider? Or a sillier looking one?”

  They smiled grimly and watched him race his old battered 100 cc Hodaka which could not possibly compete with the newer more powerful bikes of the young desert racers. He was almost old enough to be the father of some of the youngsters who competed in the trail bike class. He rode thousands of miles on the Mojave Desert. He seldom missed a Sunday. He rode from Twenty-nine Palms to Parker Dam. He rode scrambles. He rode any and every kind of desert race.

  Henka and McManus followed him into racing. Now that he was not a policeman, he was seeing more of the old friends from his college days, like Bill Wittick, who gave him a racing helmet with the words “One Lap Hettinger” painted on it. But none of his friends had the daring to stay with him as a rider. They were much too old and wise to take the risks the youngsters and Karl Hettinger would take.

  He rode his little trail bike to a novice trophy at Red Rock Canyon and he gained a little confidence. He raced from Barstow to Las Vegas. He raced anywhere he could. Helen was his pit crew. On Sundays he was a different man astride his sliding bucking machine, the sand in his face, the smell of hot gasoline in his nostrils. He could leave the other self far behind.

  Bill Wittick one day said to him, “Karl, you’re too good a poker player not to know that you got nothing left after you play your hole card.”

  “What’s that got to do with motorcycles?”

  “What I mean is, you shouldn’t try to go through whatever you’re going through by yourself. Why don’t you tell Ray or Terry or me what’s bothering you? What we can do for you?”

  “Nothing, Bill. Nobody can do anything for me.”

  “Is it the trial coming up? Is it real bad, Karl? The anticipation?”

  “I told you, Bill, nothing’s bothering me,” he said and actually trembled at the mere mention of the trial.

  “You’re too strong and stubborn for your own good,” Wittick said. “If you were weaker you’d let us help you. The strongest scrambler needs a pit crew, sweetheart.”

  But his close civilian friends had no more success than his close policeman friends. He wouldn’t talk to any of them. He couldn’t. He could only roar across the desert on a little motorcycle. For a few hours each week he could outrun them all. All the ghosts. All the devils. All his pursuers.

  There were the infrequent camping trips when he would join his other friends for a day during the week. Officers Jim Cannell and Stew James got weekdays off and they would have Lake Isabella practically to themselves.

  Occasionally there would be a spark, just a tiny one.

  “Stew, bring the milk for the baby,” James’s wife said.

  “I can’t. I’m doing two other things.”

  “What’s that?”

  Karl answered for his friend, saying, “Sitting and chewing gum.”

  It was a small joke, but it was a bit of the old Karl Hettinger returned.

  Once he even got blind drunk with Dick Howard when Stew James, who was a boy scout leader, got lost in the mountains, and they had hunted him frantically all night. When he showed up the next morning they got drunk in relief, the first time Karl had been drunk since college.

  Then there were evenings in camp when other policemen were there and Cannell told his autobiographical stories without pause:

  “And so my mother was a Hollywood girl and had to get married about nine or ten times and I ended up in the McKinley Home for Boys along with our good friend and colleague Officer Stew James sitting to your left or to your right depending on where you sit around this lovely fire.…” He would pause only to drink beer.

  “And you talk about precocious. I ran away and hitchhiked to El Paso and bought a phony I.D. and ended up in the big towns all over the South. Nobody gives a shit about you down there. And I was a cab driver in St. Louis at fourteen, a pimp at fifteen. I been shot. I been everywhere, done everything. I went to the South Pole in Operation Deep Freeze just to say I been there. I’ve won the game. I believe when you’re dead, eight people stand around you and you may as well’ve never been there. So you gotta live, my friends. Some of these young coppers today never been anywhere, never did anything. We got two in Hollywood that ain’t ever been laid!”

  His wife, the Jehovah’s Witness, at this point left her husband and went to the tent.

  “These new kids we’re recruiting nowadays are scary. Scary! Either super-cop type goons or just the opposite.”

  And then Cannell realized he was talking about police work and that was a subject they never discussed on camping trips so he changed the subject without taking a breath. “I got some records. You should hear these records, you vulgar bastards,” he said loudly for the benefit of the Jehovah’s Witness, who felt policemen were vulgar.

  “Who’s talking about records?” one of the policemen asked.

  “I am. It’s a good thing to talk about and I don’t care how you feel about classical music. These symphonies would turn you on. I mean turn you on.”

  And on he went. Keeping things going, performing always. They all enjoyed Cannell, especially Karl. But Karl was reminded of something, of another broad shouldered policeman, a quiet one, who enjoyed classical music.

  Karl would usually leave them at dusk to make the long drive home. He didn’t like to camp overnight unless his family was along.

  “Which way you going home, Karl?” Cannell would invariably ask.

  “Think I’ll go home the river way, the Bakersfield way,” Karl would invariably answer, and Cannell would himself become depressed to think that his friend always chose to travel by way of Bakersfield, going close to where it happened—to a place which looked in the winter, at night, as desolate as the moon, especially near the foot of Wheeler Ridge, where onions grew.

  When Karl was gone, Cannell said, “Helen told me they once went to Bakersfield to find the tractor driver.”

  “Tractor driver?”

  “The black guy. The guy who ran with him that night. He went to visit him but couldn’t find him. I wish he wouldn’t always go home that way.”

  Stew James, the one they called the worrier, looked into the campfire with his anxious, worried eyes an
d posed a question to all of them.

  “All right. Six years ago Powell and Smith killed Ian Campbell. They didn’t kill Karl Hettinger. Who is killing Karl Hettinger? That’s what I can’t figure out. That’s what I want to know.”

  And all the faces stared at each other in the firelight, but no one could answer him.

  It had been a hard day and he was glad his family had gone to bed early. He went to the kitchen for another beer. He had to sleep tonight. He had to be fresh tomorrow. It was the most important day of his life. Then he felt the diarrhea coming on just thinking about it. In the kitchen he saw a part of the newspaper which he hadn’t read tonight. That was unusual. He usually read the newspaper through from beginning to end. He began reading absently as he opened the beer. It was an article of the year in review done by a very hopeful reporter who believed the new decade was bound to be better than the last and see the end of riots, cult murders, assassinations. He decided the reporter was a fool.

  Then he noticed an article on Apollo 12 which was scheduled to go next week. The picture showed the photos of the moon’s surface taken by Apollo 11. There was something about these photos which made the gardener look at them carefully. The surface was bleak and gray, flat and desolate. It was lonely, so lonely. It looked like a place where the dust would choke you and the wind would howl in your ears in the darkness. He sat down at the kitchen table. He saw an article about the naval hearings of last January, about the surrender of the USS Pueblo. He looked at a picture of Commander Lloyd Bucher. It was a kind and weary face. He felt very strange while he read. It was about a high ranking naval officer condemning Bucher for surrendering the Pueblo, for not fighting to the death. Suddenly he was sweating and cold and trembling. He had to stop reading. Reading was making him dizzy. He threw the paper in the trash and got a blanket to put around himself.