Private Screening
Page 21
“I manage Stacy Tarrant.”
His tone made this personal, between the two of them. “After Senator Kilcannon was shot,” Lord asked, “did you help rush him to the ambulance?”
“Yes.”
“And before that, in Chinatown, you tackled him when he was speaking from a cartop.”
“Yes.”
“For what reason?”
“I thought firecrackers were gunshots.”
Lord gave him a quizzical look. “Were you an admirer of the senator’s?”
“No.”
The answer was so flat that Lord heard a faint contempt. “Then what made you do that?”
Narrowing, Damone’s eyes reminded Lord of their first confrontation. “Reflexes,” he answered tersely.
As if sensing antagonism, Kleist leaned forward. “From Vietnam?” Lord pursued.
“Yes.”
They watched each other, Lord knowing that the trial might turn on his next question, knowing that only Damone knew the answer. Then he asked, “What was the nature of your service?”
Placing both palms together, Damone touched them to the edge of his beard. With equal quiet, he answered, “I was an assassin.”
The word had a shocking, literal sound. Covering his surprise, Lord amended in feigned puzzlement, “You mean you were in combat.”
Damone gave a slow shake of the head. “I mean I murdered people. On assignment.”
Stunned, Lord thought too late that Damone’s desire not to testify involved more than Stacy Tarrant, or himself. “At whose direction?” he managed.
“A CIA officer. Named Glennon.”
Rainey leaned toward Damone, as if to interpose a question. Reluctantly, Lord asked, “How did he recruit you?”
“I’d been wounded, following orders.” Lord caught a faint, sardonic undertone. “Glennon promised me more independence.”
“Did you work alone?”
Damone hesitated. “In teams of three.”
Lord felt the jury’s instinctive stiffening. “Where did Glennon find the others?”
“In military prisons. He went to people charged with murder or assault, and gave them a choice.”
Several jurors glanced toward Carson. Calmly, Lord asked, “Is that the choice he gave to Harry?”
“No.” Damone’s tone grew quiet. “I gave it to him.”
“For what reason?”
“I knew him, from processing into ’Nam.”
“Do you know why he accepted?”
“He wanted to get married.” Turning toward Carson, Damone finished with terrible irony. “Harry would have been in prison for a very long time.”
Silent, DiPalma must believe the last three questions to be fatal. But Lord had no choice but to finish.
Quietly, he asked, “How did your team work?”
Damone’s eyes betrayed surprise, and then went hard. “They dropped us at night, near a village, with scarves, knives, and grenades.” Pausing, he added coolly, “Plus a map of the hooch Glennon wanted.”
The last phrase, Lord thought, conveyed a warning, or a dare. He forced both hands in his pockets. “And once you found it?”
“We knotted our scarves and slipped in to where they were sleeping.”
Damone’s stillness, like his answer, had the tension of withheld violence. “And then?” Lord finally asked.
“We pinched their nostrils, so they’d open their mouths to gulp air.” Pausing, Damone’s voice took on a laconic fatalism. “Then we stuffed our scarves in all the way to the larynx, to muffle screams, and cut their throats.”
There was suffocating silence.
Lord stared at him. “Whose throats?”
“VC officials and whoever else was there.” Even the pause seemed sardonic. “Glennon gave us names off a CIA computer run.”
Appalled, Lord remembered something Shriver had told him. “Did he also give you drugs?”
Damone kept watching him. “Dexedrine,” he said at length. “And some stuff left over from the French.”
“What was their effect?”
“They killed memory and inhibitions.” A brief, bitter smile. “Glennon didn’t want his people feeling or remembering too much.”
Lord hesitated. “Why do you remember?”
The smile faded. More quietly, Damone answered, “I didn’t need the drugs.”
Lord heard his own silence. “But Harry did,” he ventured softly.
Slowly, Damone nodded. “The work didn’t agree with him.”
An ironic inflection, Lord thought, yet close to tender.
“When did you discover that?”
The faint smile. “On his first mission.”
“What was involved?”
“Glennon sent us to kill a VC tax collector.”
Lord tilted his head. “Did Harry have some particular assignment?”
“To kill the wife.” Damone paused. “Glennon wanted him to ‘get wet.’”
“‘Get wet’?” Lord repeated automatically.
“Cut her throat so blood spurted on him.” Each word was tight. “Glennon liked to see the proof.”
Carson covered his mouth. Everyone else—Rainey, Kleist, the court reporter—was still. Damone had stripped the last veneer of normal cross-examination; his dialogue with Lord had turned visceral and explosive.
“The woman,” Lord said. “Was that usual?”
Damone nodded curtly. “Glennon’s rule was to kill them.”
“To what purpose?”
The jurors looked back to Damone. “If she cried,” he finally answered, “someone might hear her.”
Lord’s fists bunched in his pockets. “Did something go wrong?”
“The wife was young.” Damone glanced at Carson. “Harry couldn’t kill her.”
“Did you?”
“Capwell, our scout.” Damone folded his hands. “Then he laid the flat of the blade against Harry’s face, to leave blood, and whispered, ‘Now Glennon won’t send you back.’”
Lord saw the Japanese juror touch her throat. “What did Harry do?”
“We got him out of here.”
At the edge of Lord’s vision, Kleist was writing with slow deliberation, the others looking everywhere but at Carson. “How did Glennon react?”
Damone raised his head. “Capwell lied to him.”
“In fact, would he have sent Harry back to prison?”
“He’d done it before.” Damone paused. “With others. Capwell knew that.”
Lord removed both hands from his pockets. “And after that,” he finally inquired, “Harry took the drugs from Glennon?”
Once more, Damone’s response was soft with irony. “He knew we depended on him.”
Kleist stopped writing.
Lord stepped forward, drawing the jurors to him. “How did he come to leave?”
For the first time, Damone looked away. “It was after a special mission,” he said. “In daytime.”
“Why daytime?”
“Glennon wanted it filmed.”
Astonished, Lord felt the phrase “feeding the camera” on his flesh. “For what reason?”
“A newsman found out that the CIA was running death squads—they called it the ‘Phoenix program.’ Glennon decided to use our team to solve their PR problem.”
“How?”
“By having a combat cameraman film us bringing in a live VC. Problem was, the guy couldn’t film at night.”
“So Glennon sent you out in daytime?”
Now the pause suggested pain. “He sent Capwell and Harry.”
“But not you?”
“It was suicide.” Damone seemed resolved not to turn from him again. “I told Glennon to try and kill me himself.”
“What did he do?”
“He preferred to send me on an errand.” The touch of dryness vanished. “I told Harry to come with me.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Capwell. Harry said he owed him.”
“What happened then?”
<
br /> Damone kept staring. “I left.”
“And when you came back?”
A brief flicker. “Capwell was in a body bag.”
“How did he die?”
“He’d bled to death.” The steady eye contact had begun to seem like self-punishment. “From a bullet wound.”
“Who told you that?”
Damone paused. “I opened the bag.”
It broke the rhythm of Lord’s questions. He felt the jury and Carson, waiting.
“Did you ask Glennon about it?”
Damone’s eyes seemed to darken. “He wouldn’t talk.”
“Did he get his film?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where was the cameraman?”
“I never saw him again.”
“And Harry?”
“Gone.” Damone snapped his fingers; the startling gesture galvanized the courtroom, and then he added, “Glennon sent him home, just like that.”
Lord waited. “Since then, did he ever tell you what happened?”
“He doesn’t remember.”
When Lord turned, Carson was staring at his hands.
“The final mission,” he asked quietly, “when was that?”
For a long moment, Damone watched Carson. “The first of June,” he said.
“Mr. Lord forgot to ask,” DiPalma began. “Did Harry Carson become an assassin?”
Damone leaned forward, elbows on knees. “Yes.”
“How many people did he kill?”
“Five.”
DiPalma looked contemptuous. “Any women?”
Damone seemed to consider him. “Harry took the men.”
DiPalma’s mouth opened, closed, and then he asked, “What was his weapon?”
“After the first mission, Glennon let him use a Mauser.”
DiPalma let the answer resonate. “Did he kill in any particular way?”
Damone’s eyes lowered. “He was a headshooter.”
Lord saw DiPalma’s surprise becoming confidence. “How did he identify the man he shot?”
“Glennon gave us photographs.”
DiPalma crossed his arms. “So Carson memorized the faces of his victims.”
“Yes.”
“Despite the drugs.”
“Yes.…”
“And then murdered the specific person he intended to.”
It was the key point, Lord knew. Damone looked off, as if reflecting, then answered softly, “Unless there was some mistake.”
The lethal joke was so oblique that DiPalma seemed to comprehend it in slow motion, so that the jury registered his confusion, then his anger. “But you still hired him,” he shot back.
Suddenly, Damone’s stillness suggested control. “I knew what he’d been through,” he answered. “Not what he’d do.”
“Or what happened on this ‘special mission’?”
“No.”
“Or even if it happened?”
“I saw Capwell.” Damone’s voice was still soft. “Something ‘happened’ to him.”
DiPalma flushed. “Whatever that was, do you know of any bearing it has on Mr. Carson’s prior experience in shooting preselected targets?”
“No.”
“Or his murder of Senator Kilcannon?”
Damone turned to Carson. “Only Harry knows that,” he finally answered.
When Carson looked away, DiPalma raised an eyebrow for the jury. “Then I have nothing more for Mr. Damone,” he said to Lord, and sat down.
Walking toward Damone, Lord hesitated. “Glennon,” he began. “How old was he?”
“Late twenties.”
“How would you describe him?”
“The all-American boy—used to play Beach Boys albums in his hooch.” Damone paused. “He was saving his Vietnam pay to buy a Porsche when he got home.”
The description was such a fun-house mirror of what Lord expected that he searched Damone for some heartless joke. But Damone’s eyes were not laughing, or even smiling.
“What did he look like?” Lord asked.
“Southern California.” Damone’s voice was lower now. “He’d bleached his hair blond.”
“What color were his eyes?”
“Blue.” Damone hesitated, then added quietly, “But he usually wore sunglasses.”
The courtroom was hushed.
“Where,” Lord asked, “do you suppose I might find him?”
Damone gazed at the floor. “He’s dead.”
He sounded so certain that it jarred Lord. “Are you sure?”
“I saw him.” Rising to Lord’s, his eyes were preternaturally bright. “He’d bled to death, like Capwell.”
Lord felt a kind of chill. “How?” he asked reflexively.
Damone’s eyes didn’t change. “Someone,” he said quietly, “cut his throat.”
Lord could not look away from him. “Did Harry know?”
“No.” Damone’s voice was almost a whisper now. “I didn’t want to stir bad memories.”
Carson’s mouth was ajar, face filling with shock and confusion. Seeing Rachel through the glass, Lord thought suddenly that he should not leave the city now, for Christopher’s sake.
“Your Honor.” His voice seemed someone else’s. “In light of this last testimony, I move for time to locate any film of the defendant’s last mission.”
Rainey was staring at Damone. From the witness stand, he still watched Lord.
Almost absently, Rainey murmured, “Recess granted.”
THE TRIAL: TONY LORD
November 19-December 1
1
AT fifty thousand feet, Lord felt his life in suspension, the trial behind and ahead of him.
Boarding the 747 to Washington, he had noticed passengers turning to watch him. He sat alone in the darkened cabin, staring at the tops of heads and scattered reading lights.
There was no Glennon, the chief counsel of the CIA had told him, at least no record of such a person. But Lord had seen a blond-haired murderer, dying in Carson’s eyes.
There was no Glennon, he knew, because John Damone had killed him.
“Cocktail, sir?”
A pert flight attendant was smiling at him. He ordered a martini; swirling the plastic cup, he wondered if the warmth of her smile was imagined.
Why had Rachel happened, he asked himself.
Was it fatigue or loneliness or fear? Or memory, turned to anger that he might never feel that for a woman again, or a woman for him. That he would serve out his marriage to Marcia, pay the bills and be blamed for it, send Christopher to college.
As his father had done for him.
Fool, he thought. To hurt for Christopher now, filled with martini regret. Now, when Marcia knew that the one way she could hurt him was through their child. Why hadn’t he lied?
For what reason, he suddenly wondered, had Damone not wished to testify?
An ice cube splashed in his cup.
Startled, he looked up at the flight attendant. “Another cocktail?” she asked.
“Thank you.”
She poured it expertly. “You’re the lawyer, aren’t you? Anthony Lord.”
A gaunt man in the middle row turned to listen. Lord nodded, then remembered to smile.
“Good luck.” She glanced at his wedding ring, and went on. The man watched Lord drink.
It’s all changing, he thought. You don’t know what will happen, and you’re scared.
When he deplaned, TV cameras were waiting.
“Mr. Lord,” someone called, “do you expect to locate the film?”
Sluggish from gin, he stood blinking in the TV lights, obscuring the faces behind them. “I hope so,” he finally answered. “Harry Carson deserves at least that much luck.”
Angling through them, he took a taxi to his hotel, and dialed Christopher.
“Hello,” Lord’s own voice answered. “This is Tony Lord. Neither Marcia nor I can come to the phone.…”
“Christopher?” Lord said above the tape.
&nbs
p; “But if you’ll just leave a message.…”
Damned machine. Lord’s voice rose. “Christopher, it’s Daddy.…” Please, be there.
“Daddy?”
Breaking in, his son’s voice was cautious. “How’s things?” Lord asked in relief.
“Fine.”
“Good.” Lord smiled into the telephone, trying to coax animation from the space between them. “I’ll bring something back,” he promised. “A surprise.”
“Okay.”
At seven, had he been so reticent on the phone? Or was Christopher starting to protect himself? “What are you doing, son?”
A pause. “Mommy’s letting me watch ‘Dawn Rider.’ ’Cause she knows I like it.”
Why didn’t he know that, Lord wondered. “Then I don’t want you to miss it, mugwump. I just called to say I love you.”
“Okay.” I love you, too, Lord silently added for him, and then Christopher finished, “’Bye.”
Hanging up, Lord stared at the telephone.
By calling Marcia, a stranger had done to him what threats could not. Who could hate him so intelligently?
Lord double-locked the door.
There was a wad of pink slips in his coat pocket—reporters’ calls, the last from Rachel. He threw them away, and asked the desk to hold his messages.
Lying on the bed, he inspected the signs of his disorientation. A still life, the whirring air conditioner, a Gideon Bible, the TV bolted to the wall. Strange channels.
SNI was running highlights of the trial.
Lord watched himself, as he would watch a stranger. Saw someone fluent, graceful, never confused—an illusion, losing to DiPalma. Turning it off, he could not sleep.
The next morning, he presented himself at the Army film archives, followed by reporters.
A huge metal warehouse—green metal shelves, lamps hanging from high ceilings. At one end were rows of file cabinets with Asian names, battalion numbers, vague dates. In some strange way, the sheer volume convinced Lord that the film did not exist.
The Army’s politeness reinforced this. A smooth-faced employee explained the filing system in a drill sergeant’s cadences, until Lord was sure that he was being taken on a Kafkaesque tour of the irrelevant. Trapped, he felt the trial, waiting to be finished and lost.
They’d set up a projector in a cramped room to the side. Alone with each day’s cans of film, Lord watched half-forgotten reconnaissance missions in black and white, silent movies of people dying and killing. But not Carson.