Absolute Rage

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  “I don’t understand,” said Karp. “No one did anything? The state? The feds?”

  “No one complained. They were afraid to. Finally, underground mining became unprofitable and they switched to surface mining. The same kind of union, of course. They junked all the underground miners, put a bunch of mostly sick, busted men out to pasture on miserly pensions. But their stock does very well. Majestic’s part of AGAM, a multinational commodity operation. Believe me, their corporate officers don’t eat at Sam’s on Canal. So into this mess walks Red Heeney. He’s got two strikes against him—one, he’s an outsider. They don’t care much for outsiders in Robbens. The other thing is, everyone’s scared there. They’re used to taking what the company cares to give them, or else. So he performs a little miracle. He goes in there, gets a job driving some kind of big tractor, a bulldozer, whatever. And he starts organizing, finding men he can trust. All this is done secretly, just like in the bad old days, which, by the way, are still going on down there. And not just down there, either. He joins the company union, plays it cagey; for years this is, he’s quietly building trust. He’s waiting for his chance.”

  Here Sterner paused and took a sip of his drink, the ice clashing noisily in the glass. His eyes were glittering; he loved to tell a story, as Karp remembered from law school. It was part of what made him such a good teacher.

  “So, one day he gets his chance: there’s a disaster. The company has all these old impoundments, big ponds, where they keep the water they pumped out of their underground mines. They’re supposed to maintain them in perpetuity, but, needless to say, they don’t. Also, they’re blasting at the strip mines. They’re supposed to be limited as to when and where they blast, and how heavy the blast can be, but again, they cut corners. What happens is, they set off a charge and a dam gives way and a wall of water rushes down one of those little valleys, and twelve people die, five of them kids. A whole family’s wiped out. Red organizes a meeting at a church, he gives a speech, and believe me, that man could talk! Holy Moses, what a mouth on him! He gets them all stirred up, he mobilizes his shadow organization, and the next day the whole workforce goes out, a wildcat strike, the first strike in Robbens County since 1921. And, alevai! The company backs down. It’s finally dawned on them it’s not 1921 anymore. Red’s a hero. At first they figure they can coopt him. He plays along, acts nice. Then, this year, he challenges this dirtbag Weames for the presidency of the union. Of course, they steal the election. But Red comes to me, I go to Labor. I still have some clout there, not much, but I use what I have. They’re going to contest the election, send in investigators.”

  Sterner stopped, shook his head. Suddenly, but just for a passing instant, he looked his age. “What a waste! And I consider it partially my fault. I encouraged him. I honestly, so help me, did not think they would stoop to this.”

  “You’re pretty sure it was them?” Karp asked. “The union?”

  “No question,” said Sterner with finality. “All right, Governor Orne’s got a problem. He’s a decent guy, but if you’re the governor of West Virginia, you can’t just spit in the face of Big Coal. On the other hand, he needs to show the state he’s not a coal company patsy either. He needs a victory where the bad guys are really, undeniably shits. But if the feds come in on this, if it’s a big national story, he’s essentially out of the picture. He’s got political assassinations happening and he can’t cope by himself? He looks like a patzer. Not to mention, we got a U.S. AG in there now who’s not exactly a friend of the working man. So let’s say Orne does it himself. He’s still got a problem. His own legal apparatus has been lying down for Big Coal for years. It’s his first term, he’s not sure who he can trust. Also the state’s attorney in Robbens is a kid. Orne put him in there, true, but he’s not up to this kind of case, this kind of pressure. The governor wants to send in a special prosecutor.”

  Karp nodded. “That seems like a good idea.”

  “It is a good idea. My good idea, as a matter of fact.” Sterner looked at Karp expectantly. “Well? What do you think?”

  “I told you. I think it’s a good idea.”

  Sterner wrinkled his nose and looked upward. “No, no! I mean doing it. You doing it. You think I’m buying corned beef sandwiches—even mediocre corned beef sandwiches—just so a fella can tell me I got a good idea?”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Of course, I’m serious. I told Roy about you. He thinks you’d be perfect. Superb reputation, all the right skills, no local interests . . .”

  “No license to practice law in West Virginia,” added Karp, “no knowledge of the laws and procedures thereof, no interest in doing it. Plus I have a job.”

  Sterner’s eyes seemed to drift away from Karp’s for a moment. Could that be a tinge of embarrassment?

  “Well, as to that,” said Sterner, “I talked to Jack. He’s all for it.”

  “You talked to Jack?” Karp asked coldly. “Before you talked to me?”

  “It came out. We were at a party thing the other night, meet and greet with some little Kennedy. Your name came up and I mentioned this thing and . . . you know how people discuss.”

  “Actually, I don’t. I never go to meet and greets. But I’m not surprised that Jack is less than reluctant to let me go for a long stroll through the woods. I put him in a situation he’d like to slide out of, and he can do it a lot easier if he doesn’t have to look me in the face every day.” Here Karp summarized for Sterner the business with the congressman, the pimp, the pimp’s girlfriend, and the hapless Bailey.

  To Karp’s surprise, “So what?” was Sterner’s reply. “You want this fella, you’ll get him on the next round. He’s not going to go away. Although you force me to say that your target has a first-class voting record on labor issues.”

  “Saul, he fucking takes money from a pimp and a murderer,” said Karp, loud enough to draw glances from the surrounding tables.

  “Yeah, and pimping is bad and murdering is bad and bribery is bad, and worst of all are infractions of an election statute that nobody understands in the first place. And you know what? Pimping and murdering and bribery went on before you got there, and believe you me, they’ll be there a long time after you go.”

  “Saul, stop it . . .”

  “No, listen to me! Every year, I used to look out into the lecture hall on the first day of my litigation class and I would think to myself, another bunch of embryo shyster assholes. Ninety-five percent of them were going to end up with the three-car garage and the Jags and the Guccis. I wasn’t interested in them; I was looking for the few that had a real passion for the law, a real understanding for what it meant to the human race. I didn’t find all that many, sad to say, but you were one of them. I kind of hoped you still were.”

  “Sorry, I’m a shyster asshole, too, now, and I don’t even have a Jag.”

  Sterner did not return Karp’s smile. “Butch, be serious! This is a major thing here. This is epic. It’s bringing the relief of law to a bunch of people who have hardly known what law is. It’s freeing the serfs, for crying out loud. Are you telling me you can’t do it because you’re more concerned with pinching a guy who took a little dirty money?”

  Karp raised other objections; Sterner countered them. Karp felt himself rolling. He was no mean arguer himself, but he understood that he was up against one of the great negotiators of the twentieth century, a man who had reportedly wrestled Lyndon Baines Johnson to the mat more than once. It was like batting against Nolan Ryan, almost an honor to be struck out.

  * * *

  Why am I sleeping in bloody sheets? Marlene asked herself, and immediately the answer came: because I am in the bed where Lizzie was murdered. She tried to move and found she couldn’t; something was holding her down. The killers. She felt a thrill of terror and struggled to move. A heavy weight was resting on all her limbs; she screamed. The weight diminished. She was in a dim room. There was a shape there, a man. She let out a little shriek and felt on the bedside table for her key
ring.

  She lit the little Maglite attached to her keys. Dan Heeney, dressed in a faded bathrobe, blinked in its beam.

  “Marlene, are you all right?”

  She dropped the beam. “Yeah, I’m fine.” She was in fact in Lizzie’s room, but on a new bed with fresh bed-clothes.

  “You were screaming. I thought . . .” He hefted the pistol in his hand.

  “No, just a nightmare. What time is it?”

  “Around four.”

  “Oh, great! I must have woken you up. Sorry.”

  “No, I haven’t been sleeping much lately.”

  “I bet. Why don’t you put that thing down?”

  He dropped the pistol into the pocket of his bathrobe. Its weight pulled the robe ludicrously down on one side. He made no move to depart, and he looked so woebe-gone that she said, “Pull up a bed. I’ll never get back to sleep now.” She yawned and stretched. He sat gingerly on the corner of the bed.

  “So, what do you do when you’re not sleeping?”

  “Oh, I’m on the Net mainly. Talking to people, insomniacs and people in other time zones. Reading physics. Trying to find answers.”

  “To physics?”

  “No. Just stuff.” A self-deprecating laugh. “Religion. Life after death. I can’t believe they’re just, you know, gone.” It was dim in the room, the only illumination coming from a baseboard night-light, a white plastic duck. His face was a blur, but she could feel his eyes on her. “Do you . . . I mean, are you like Lucy? You know, heaven and hell and all that?”

  “And purgatory. I guess I’m what they call a recovering Catholic. You are not religious at all, I presume?”

  “No. The opiate of the people. My mom was. I caught her a couple of times in their bedroom, with her eyes closed and her hands clasped, like in those pictures. Praying, I guess. But she kept it to herself. He was so down on it and there were enough things that got him pissed off, she probably figured she didn’t need one more.” He let out a long breath. “So, the deal is what? They’re all in hell according to you?”

  “Actually not. The Church teaches that we can’t tell for certain anyone’s in hell who doesn’t really want to be there. We think it’s presumptuous to try to second-guess the mercy of God. What we have is the assurance of heaven if we live a certain kind of life. That’s not the same thing as saying people who don’t live that kind of life are going to end up frying.”

  “Why would anyone want to be in hell?”

  “The same reason lots of people manufacture a hell on earth. Sin. Evil. Why would you think they’d stop just because they’re dead? They might not even know they were in hell.”

  “But you think that, assuming heaven exists, we’ll, like, be reunited with our loved ones when we die? Like in the gospel songs on the radio?”

  “You know, I am absolutely the wrong person to talk to about this,” said Marlene, a little more sharply than she meant to. “Lucy could give you chapter and verse. My take is, it’s either nothing—in which case, who cares? We experience nothingness every night of our lives and it doesn’t bother us. Or it’s an indescribable adventure, full of the ineffable pleasures of the beatific vision, in which case, whoopee!” This last was delivered in a light tone, to which he did not respond.

  He shook his head, as if to clear it of something sticky. “I just feel this pain; not all the time, but sometimes I’ll just be going along and it hits me. They’re dead! It’s like taking a shot to the belly. I have to sit down and catch my breath. Is that ever going to go away?”

  The line “blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted” floated for an instant through Marlene’s mind, but she banished it. She feared being hypocritical more than nearly anything, and so she said, “I don’t know, but I think finding who did it and nailing them would be a good first step.” Did she really believe this? That was the problem: What did she believe anymore? She sat up in bed. “And, as long as we’re up, why don’t you let me get dressed and I’ll get started on the laws of your fine state.”

  He shot to his feet. “Um, sorry.” He went to the door. At which he paused and asked, “You think I should call Lucy? I mean, would she mind? I don’t feel like talking to anyone from around here. They’re all, I don’t know, involved. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, I think calling Lucy would be a good idea. Making a gigantic pot of coffee would be another one. Also, you can find me the number of the nearest television station.”

  By eight, Marlene was washed, combed, dressed, caffeine-wired to the gills, and pounding on the door of a frame house on Maple Street, McCullensburg. The house belonged to Ernest Poole and needed a coat of paint. And a mowing out front. No answer, front door locked, so she went around the back, jiggled open the cheap lock, and went in with her dog. A smell of garbage in the kitchen, and the remains of a Colonel Sanders on the greasy table. Poole himself had not made it up the stairs last night. She found him in a club chair in the dusty living room, a neat pool of vomit between his feet and an empty bottle of Harper stuck upright between his thighs, like a transparent erection. After making a quick recon of the ground floor, she found a carpet runner in the hall and tipped the man out of his chair onto it. He groaned and twitched, but did not shed his stupor. The floors were hardwood, worn and smooth, so she had little trouble dragging him down the hall to a bathroom. She got him into the tub in sections, upper body first and then the legs. The mastiff looked on with interest, having licked up the vomit while Marlene was thus engaged, and hoping for more.

  Poole writhed like a bug on a grill when the cold water hit him and sat up, banging his head on the tap. It took a moment for his eyes to focus. When they did, they fixed on Marlene, at first in stunned amazement and then in fury. He clambered to his knees and shut off the water.

  “You! What the hell are you doing in my home?”

  “I’m helping you get ready for court this morning, counselor,” she said brightly.

  “You’re trespassing. Get out!”

  “Gosh, and here you invited me in. That’s not trespass.”

  “I did not invite you.”

  “Yes, you did, the other day. Don’t you remember? I thought we had a good understanding. Oh, no! Don’t tell me you forget everything that went on.”

  His eyes shifted. His brow wrinkled with the effort to recall.

  “Why don’t you take off your clothes and have a nice, soothing shower, and shave. I’ll make you some breakfast. We have plenty of time to be in court at nine-thirty.” She flounced out.

  She found coffee, but the milk was sour. The bread was stale. Butter had he none, but she found a jar of strawberry jam in the back of the nearly bare refrigerator, which, when scraped of its interesting fungal cultures, did for smearing across the toast. She produced a tall pile of this, perked the coffee, and set the table. In the cabinet above the stove she located the inevitable reserve bottle and poured a shot into a mug of coffee. Next, a quick dump and wipe in the kitchen; not for nothing had she raised three children and a husband of more than usual sluttishness.

  He came in dressed and clean-shaven, if red-eyed, smelling of Listerine and some old-fashioned lilac cologne. He looked around the kitchen suspiciously. His glance drifted to the cabinet above the stove.

  Observing this, she said, “It’s in the coffee. That’s all you get until after court.”

  He sat down. He took a long swallow of the spiked coffee, closed his eyes, sighed. “Would you mind telling me why you’re doing this?”

  “I need you. Isn’t it nice to be needed? I’m converting you temporarily from a dysfunctional drunk to a functional one, like half the people in the country. After this business is resolved, I’m out of here, and you can finish converting your liver into Silly Putty and die. It’s nothing personal. Eat some toast while it’s warm.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Eat some anyway. Your body needs calories and carbs. You should take some B vitamins, too.”

  He took a piece, nibbled it. Fi
nishing one, he took another, and another. She sipped coffee and watched him. “See? Advice from one who knows.”

  He regarded her balefully over his cup. “A functional drunk?”

  “Extremely. Why do you drink, by the way?”

  “Why do you?”

  “To quell my rage and my sympathies,” she said. “I see cruel, malevolent people getting away with murder all around me and I want to stop them. Not to put too fine a point on it, I want to kill them, and I’m good at it. My options are being either a sober and happy murderess or a slightly stoned mom and businesswoman. I raise and train dogs, and I have three lovely children and a husband. I wish to retain them and their affection, which I can’t do if I’m my real self. Now you.”

  After a silence he said, “I killed my wife.”

  “On purpose?”

  He stared at her, his mouth a little open. “Of course not! It was a car accident. We were driving home from a Christmas party in Charleston. The roads were slick and it was foggy. I ran right into the rear of a truck carrying pipe. The pipe came through the window and hit Sheila. She was decapitated. I didn’t have a scratch. She was six months pregnant and happy as a horse in clover. It was a really great and loving marriage. That sad enough for you?”

  “Yup, that’s pretty sad.”

  “Can I have another drink?”

  “Not until after court, counselor. It’s not that sad.”

  “Tell me something,” he said after his eyes dropped. “How did you get to be such a colossal bitch? Was it heredity, or did you work on it over the years?”

  “It took a lot of work. When I started out, butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth,” she replied without rancor. “You finished with that? Excellent! Let’s go.” This was good, she thought. If he hated her, it might move his mind off its dead center. He might even get mad enough to kick some butt in a courtroom.